Filed under: Village Life
My day had started being awakened by a shrew. I didn’t know it was a shrew at first, all I knew was that something was clawing at the metal front door and the sound was reverberating through my little stone hut and it was only 3:30 in the morning. I lifted my mosquito net, staggered across the room after arming myself with a dust pan, to find the shrew trying to wedge itself through the probably 6 cm opening between my door and the stone threshold. The shrew was tinier than I imagined it would be, not that I sit around imagining shrews. It could have been a mouse for all I knew. It was the snout that made it recognizable – a longer, slim snout, that was now poking in futility through the small space next to the door. The sound of my footsteps scared it and it momentarily ran towards me erratically and then zig zagged back to the door. If I hadn’t been so slow and dumb from being woken up at 3:30, I really would have killed it. I lifted the plastic dustpan, fully prepared to smash the disturbance into the floor. Then a voice in my head came out of the confusion. It said, “Who are you kidding, Renee.” The voice was right. I liked rodents. I had hamsters growing up. I twisted the key in the door and with a familiar metallic pop, it swung open and the little shrew scrambled into the night, leaving me there, the lone beam of my headlamp casting a lazy white light over the sand.
Even though the entire fiasco lasted less than 5 minutes, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I stared at the peaked folds at the top of my mosquito net until the morning call to prayer signaled that life was starting and I could now get out of bed. First, some yoga was in order. I got dressed, but before I could begin, there was a knock at the door. It was my very pregnant sister Oumou. She was fast, considering her delicate condition, and before I knew it, she was through the door, locking it behind her - barely even saying a word. She was so small that I might have even believed that it was a weightless beach ball that was ballooning out from under her traditional Mauritaninan robes. If beach balls existed here, and if people had the habitude of putting them under their clothes. Delirium from the sleepless night was manifesting itself. Note to self: try to sound less stupid.
“You’re going running.” She asked me. Well, it wasn’t really a question.
“No, I’m going to do yoga.” Does she even know what that is? Surely the two volunteers before me have explained yoga.
“Go ahead and do yoga, I just want to lie down. Don’t tell Yaye that I’m here. My back hurts so bad.” I didn’t know how she expected me to tell anyone that she was here, since we were both now locked inside my hut. Did she think I was going to scream it over the stone walls?
She refused to lie on my bed, instead she wanted a lesso on the floor. I felt guilty seeing her laying on her side on the stone floor. Should I have insisted that she lie on the bed?
“Do you want me to take you to the hospital?” It wasn’t a hospital. It was technically a dispensary with the only doctor (who is never there…) in the Department of Kanel, with its population of 200,000 people. And I wouldn’t really be “taking” her there. More like walking with her. No one had a car. Even if we did it would be a bumpy ride. The only thing separating us and the dispensary was a very sandy 2 k walk.
“Not now, its too early.” It was 7 am. “We will wait until 8. Just do your yoga.” I guess she did know about yoga. Why was I thinking about stupid things? There was a pregnant woman who said her back hurt lying on my floor, and I was about to do yoga. The absurdity of the situation started to sink in. And why didn’t she want me to tell Yaye? Would Yaye be mad if she knew that I was harboring her pregnant daughter?
I barely had time to do one sun salutation when Oumou made some strange noises. “We’re going.” I said. I didn’t care if she wanted to wait. I knew next to nothing about pregnancy. So what if she was really in danger? Or the baby was in danger? Mild panic. I tried to ignore it.
“You get dressed. I’ll go tell Yaye that I’m here. But hold this for me, and don’t let ANYone see it.” She handed me her small green “carnet de sante.” It is what every woman receives when they go to the dispensary for their first prenatal check up. The midwife uses it to record notes about the health of the mother. I flipped to the back and noted that her next appointment was scheduled for November 20th. What day was it? We were in December now, right? I scarcely noted the days anymore. No one else does. They don’t have any concept of time, other than its relation to prayer times or the position of the sun in the sky. I looked at my cell phone. It was Thursday, December 3rd. Oumou was almost 2 weeks late for her appointed check up. Oh that was it, she was afraid Yaye would be mad at her.
Then we were off, slowly picking our way through the sand to the dispensary. Part of the trip required us to walk through a field of trash. Someone the day before had decided to burn a few piles and the smoldering heaps of burning trash remained; their chalky white smoke hung over the trail. Oumou had to stop every few moments to rest. She was clinging to my hand and wobbling unsteadily, repeating that her back hurt. Little did I know that this was code for “I am about to have this baby.” Then it occurred to me that Oumou had to walk to see me this morning. How long was that walk? Three kilometers? Four? She had walked by herself from her home across town to my little hut. How did she do it? Her condition was now worsening and I thought she was going to collapse. Throat closing. How can I get myself to breathe? How can I get her to the dispensary safely? Just keep going. All we could do was just keep going.
We finally arrived and the worst part was over, so I thought. We had to look for the midwife. I walked to the “maternity ward,” led by my friend Myrum. She was saying something about how I hadn’t called her in a long time. Oh god, is she serious? I’m holding the hand of my pregnant hyperventilating sister and you’re chastising me for not calling you?
The “maternity ward” was a long room with a fresh coat of paint; the air smelled like it. For a nanosecond I wondered if the paint was still wet, or if it was lead based paint. That would have made as much sense as anything else that had happened today. There were two beds. One looked like it could have been taken from a five year olds bedroom. It was decorative wrought iron painted white. The other bed I swear I recognized from a few scenes of Escape from Alcatraz. I directed Oumou to the white one because I didn’t trust the prison bed.
Now where was the midwife? Oumou was breathing hard and squeezing my hand in a way that said “I’m doing this for relief and I hope I don’t hurt you, but I’m really, really in pain.” I heard the booming voice of the midwife outside and saw Yaye appear in the doorway and I felt instant relief. She was in her sixties and thin as a rail but still one of the strongest women I’ve ever met. She should be the one doing this. I felt so unqualified.
Yaye came over and dropped a bag of clothes on the bed next to us. “The midwife is leaving. Her shift is over and she wants to go home. I am going to go walk to the other midwife’s house and bring her here.” Then she was gone. I think I must have been in a state of shock. My sister was having a baby and no one was helping us or even acting like they cared. It was vaccination day and there were throngs of laughing women sitting right outside the door. The noise was almost deafening because it echoed off the walls. Over it all, I heard the chanting of a crazy man who lives at the dispensary. He sits in his filthy clothes and pretends to quote the Koran. Today, he was writing gibberish on bits of cardboard with a pen that someone must have let him borrow. More waiting.
Yaye returned 30 minutes later with the new midwife. Oumou was whisked into another room and I was left with Yaye on the five year olds bed. I looked straight ahead into the next room, the room where Oumou would have her baby. It was empty, except for a table. Yaye was slumped over, her kala silhouetting her thin frame, fragile as a wilted flower. I realized that she was crying.
In no time at all we heard the healthy cries of a baby coming from the next room. We had been there for maybe an hour and a half in total. It struck me that Oumou’s water must have broken during the night, after which she walked to my house and then to the dispensary, alone. Make of that what you will.
We stayed with Oumou until well into the afternoon. People came and went, saying prayers over her or bringing ruiy , a sort of porridge that is said to be good for women who are nursing. Oumou had had a little boy, her first. In keeping with tradition, he didn’t have a name yet. His name would be officially given at the innde ceremony in the next few weeks. In her moments of lucidity, Oumou said she wanted to name him after my father.
At last another family member came to relieve us and Yaye and I walked home.
I felt jittery after the day at the dispensary. Every one was happy and asking questions about Oumou and the baby, but life went on normally. No one thought it was strange that Oumou had weakly walked across town alone, or that my sixty some year old host mother had to personally search for a midwife. The baby and the mother were healthy, that was what mattered. This was true.
With the happy outcome of a stressful day, I had an almost euphoric feeling. My hut needed to be cleaned, that’s it, I was going to use all of this nervous energy to clean my hut. I orginally planned a modest cleaning: maybe sweeping and dusting and arranging. My two host sisters though had other plans, they announced that they were going to help me. In a matter of minutes, the contents of my room were turned upside down. We had a few unpleasant surprises. First, under the trunk where I keep my clothes was a scorpion. I can’t for the life of me figure out how those things enter my room, since I’ve been told they can’t climb. In any event, a few swift blows of a flip flop and it was history.
Next, under the bed where I put my big and out-of-place American suitcase, was the shrew. It somehow made its way back inside and was nesting there. My sisters were the ones who discovered it, and screamed like they had never seen such a thing before. You’d think they would be more accustomed to that sort of thing by now because I, for one, had never seen a shrew flagrantly scurrying around like that until I came to Senegal. It ran behind my bookshelf. I couldn’t bring myself to kill it because of my new found, but nonetheless firm, no-rodent-killing stance. They’re too much like my pets, I told myself, too much like Hamlet and Ophelia, my freakishly intelligent hamsters from childhood. My sisters wanted to move the bookshelf to get to it, but in the melee, the shrew was killed, crushed by the weight of the shelf.
When that day finally came to a close, I settled into bed, still thinking about the days events. When it was all said and done, the world was now short one scorpion and one shrew, but had gained one new beautiful baby boy.
Filed under: Village Life
I have another interesting Alham tale for you. Hope you enjoy it.
The cold season has arrived, and oh, how I love it. I can actually sleep inside. I can work for more than one hour without becoming drained and tired. I can actually enjoy the scalding hot “coffee” that my Senegalese mom gives me every morning for breakfast. And, I can wear my hair down – without that pesky neck-sweating problem, because for the first time, it isn’t unbearably, excrutiatingly hot!
I’ve been taking full advantage of the fact that I can wear my hair down comfortably for the first time in 8 months. But what I didn’t realize was that I get more attention this way. Mostly unwanted attention.
Tabaski just passed, the Muslim holiday which my family explained as being the time when they all buy new clothes and kill a sheep. I used this holiday occasion to travel to see my sister. On an Alham of course, only because I had no other choice.
I took my seat next to a window, in front of an elderly Pulaar woman. Nothing out of the ordinary. The trip was bumpy as usual, because of the poor maintenance of the roads. I sat back and listened to music. All of a sudden, I felt the sharp pain of a singular strand of my hair being jerked out of my scalp. I thought my hair, which was down - taking full advantage of the “cold” weather, might have gotten caught on exposed metal from the seat or something. Half-turning for an inspection of the seat, I found that it was not shreaded to its metal frame as I had imagined. It was normal: a new-ish looking brown vinyl bus seat with no jagged metal corners or anything else suspicious. I turned around again. Resumed listening to music.
A few moments later, another prick of pain in my scalp. I whipped around, looking for anything that could have caused the not horribly painful, but still annoying loss of hair. Nothing. Just the little old Pulaar lady, looking blankly forward. But when I overheard her whispered conversation, which included the words “secundu puccu” (horse hair), the cold, hard truth hit me. The benign looking woman sitting behind me was not as innocent as I had thought. She was in fact pulling out strands of my hair. Thought I hated doing this (really I did), I turned and gave her the “I know what you’re doing” death stare and that seemed to put an end to her illicit activity. Or maybe she had gotten enough for her purpose (feel free to imagine creepy horror movie music here).
What she planned on doing with my hair, I have no idea. Perhaps she wanted to make it into a gris-gris, a little trinket blessed by a marabout (kind of like a mix between a shaman and an Islamic “priest”), maybe for an addition to her very own toubab voodoo doll. Or I guess she could have just let it fall to the ground, though this is the least interesting of the possibilities and I prefer not to take it seriously. In any event, my horse hair seems to be a hot commodity here, in ways that I never expected. And I think I’ll go back to wearing it up.
Filed under: Village Life
If you will kindly reference item #9 from the previous post, it might help you to understand the concept of being peed on by a sheep while riding in public transportation more easily.
I was on my way to to St. Louis, aka Heaven, the place where I can have brick oven pizza, visit a white sandy beach, get lost in artisan markets, and go to a REAL bar and have a REAL beer. Unfortunately for me, one leg of this trip involves riding an Alham. Alhams are the big, white, and most of the time very intimidating buses that traverse the roads here, stopping frequently to pick up or drop off passengers. They aren’t called Alhams generally, we volunteers refer to them as such because nearly all of them have “Alhamdoulilah” (“thanks be to God”)painted across the front. My Heaven bound Alham was particularly rickety, and was, as usual, crammed full of people, baggage and animals. I was seated next to very nice elderly Pulaar man who, as my friend said so appropriately, spoke in riddles and rhymes, and he kept me entertained for most of the trip. That is until I felt a warm liquid dripping onto my shoulder. I looked up to the exposed riveted metal ceiling and saw the source of the leak, dead center between me and nice-Pulaar-man in his crisp white bubu. I wasn’t sure what was happening at first and assumed it was just water, until nice-Pulaar-man broke the news that it was not very dirty water mysteriously dripping from the ceiling, but was instead the urine of a sheep that had been hog-tied and strapped on top of the roof for transport. Then, I had a brief flashback of the moment when I first saw how goats and sheep are taken from town to town: legs bound and then hoisted up top (sorry, animal rights activists, you don’t want to come here). All of the oversized luggage is also tossed on the roof, and I even remember thinking: “What happens when one of those things has to go to the bathroom?” Then I did a silent prayer that I wouldn’t recover my suitcase soaked in goat urine.
Back View of Alham
Luckily, I had my headscarf (kala) with me to wipe up the mess, and luckily, we were about an hour away from our destination, so I had little time to think about the pee remnants on my skin or the dirty kala in my lap. My friend, seated in front of me, was laughing, and nice-Pulaar-man (who had sporadic urine stains on still crisp but no longer white bubu) was laughing, so I laughed too and it wasn’t so bad afterall.
Filed under: Village Life
1. People here really like writing their phone numbers on the side of their homes and businesses. They write it in marker in bold letters on exterior walls, they pencil it in on the sides of doorways or in inconspicuous places, I’ve even seen it traced with a finger into wet cement.
2. Pink is not just for girls. My sister’s new little baby boy, Ngaari (which means ‘bull’ in Pulaar, by the way), has a fuzzy pink blanket with “Fairy Princess” embroidered on it.
3. Pulaars typically have two vertical scars on each temple, each about an inch long, called pesode. It was once thought to ward off childhood illnesses. There’s nothing like 4 bloody gashes on your face to keep the flu away!
4. Men hold hands as a sign of friendship.
5. People say “Inch’allah” or “So allah jaabii” (“god willing”) to get out of almost anything. I once had a conversation with a school director that went something like this: “We’ll have the meeting inch’allah next week inch’allah and we’ll get everything organized inch’allah.” My response: “Ok, I’ll be here next week, so allah jaabii.”
6. Men fall in love with you in less than 5 minutes. I talked to a Random Senegalese Guy (RSG) in the market once and it went a little something like this:
Random Senegalese Guy: Are you Italian?
Me: No, I’m American
RSG: Oh! I have a friend in Portugal, he has a girlfriend that’s French.
Me: That’s cool.
RSG: Are you married? Because I love you.
Me: Yes, I’m married.
RSG: Oh that’s too bad. Then can I have 500 CFA? I want to buy some coffee.
7. People close to you will constantly brag about your ability when you’re not around. I helped my sister sweep the house for all of 5 minutes and I heard my mom telling my dad later: “Did you see Nene? She swept the entire house!” One can be considered exceptional with very little effort.
8. Conversely, it is completely normal to make fun of someone as a way to encourage them. There’s no positive re-enforcement here.
9. People are shoved into public transportation like cattle. On a bus that is supposed to seat 15 comfortably, they will somehow fit 30. With baggage. And chickens tucked under the seats.
10. Any way of getting someone’s attention that is considered rude in the States is acceptable here…hissing, snapping, yelling. The good part is, I can do this too and no one gets offended. Liberating.
11. Animal body parts litter the streets. During a walk home, I might see a goat leg, cow horns, or a tail. At first, I thought it was disgusting. Now I just step around them.
12. Quite possibly my favorite thing about Senegal, is that you are considered a great guest if you go to someone’s house and fall asleep.
13. A large percentage of Senegalese women seem to be afraid of kittens.
Filed under: Village Life
About a week ago, I saw for myself just how painful a scorpion sting can be. My sister, Fama, had gone out to a nearby store by herself to buy some sugar. It was after dark and she didn’t bring a flashlight. She didn’t really need one, now that the rains have stopped and the clouds have gone away, the night sky is filled with brilliant and glowing stars. There was a commotion when she returned and I didn’t realize what had happened at first, having just woken up from my before-dinner nap, curled up in the corner of my family’s lesso (woven mat). I learned a new word this night: yaari. Scorpion. Fama was crying hysterically, it was awful to watch. Apparently, she had stepped in some tall grass to avoid a puddle of water, and, lacking a flashlight, didn’t see the scorpion, which stung her on the ankle. There wasn’t much we could do for her. I gave her some pain medication and we all tried to keep her as comfortable as possible as she moaned and writhed around on the lesso. At one point, she stood up abruptly and hobbled around the front yard, violently stomping the injured foot on the ground, mumbling to herself. I turned to my brother and asked him if he had ever been stung before. “Oh yes, many times,” was his answer “It feels like fire in your body. She won’t sleep tonight.”
Before this, I had seen, and killed, one scorpion. It was in my “douche,” the concrete, high-walled area adjacent to my hut. It was much smaller than I had imagined, about the size of my thumb. A fellow volunteer had once told me that scorpions are easy to kill, “Just hit it with your shoe.” So I did. And it kept moving. I hit it again. And again. Five tries later, the teeny but dangerous little thing was no longer a threat to me.
Yesterday, I was doing some work in the garden. It had become overrun with weeds after the rains and my little lucena trees were in desperate need of transplanting. Earlier this year, I had dug a 1 meter by 1 meter plot and filled it with 60 structured plastic tree sacks for my lucena. Now it was time to remove the sacks and prepare to transplant. I pulled the first sack out of the ground, and what did I find: A disgusting, white, almost shiny, slimy looking scorpion nestled underneath! And it was much bigger than the last scorpion I had encountered; about the size of the palm of my hand. Rake in hand, I was stunned for a moment, and I think the scorpion was too. I had visions of it leaping at me and biting my neck like a vampire, and other ludicrous things. So I took the end of my rake and blindly attacked the empty hole left by the sack (and by default, the scorpion, or so I hoped). When I stopped myself, all I saw was a pile of loose dirt, surrounded by shredded plastic from neighboring sacks. Timidly, I turned the dirt a little with the rake, looking for the scorpion, or remnants of it, and found nothing.
This was a job for Mbarou. Mbarou is my little brother. He’s 15 years old and a renaissance man. He’s helped me with fence building, he’s jumped a wall when I was locked out, he’s repaired my flat bike tire a million times, and now, I needed him to help me find a dead (hopefully) scorpion. So he came and fearlessly dug around in the dirt and plastic chaos I had created, and after a few moments he triumphantly produced a very dead scorpion, dangling from the end of my rake. Disaster averted for the moment.
My family actually clapped for me. The toubab killed a yaari!
Filed under: Snapshots
New baby Sada
Attempting to cook dahine (much tastier than goat brains and millet!)
Innde guests; my mom is the second from the left. Here you can see her facial tatoo, at one time an important tradition among Pulaar women
Kids at the innde
:-)
- My sister Uma Lam with new mom, Binta
Filed under: Uncategorized
What would I do with myself if it weren’t for unexpected little reminders? They keep me sane…
I was confronted with just such a reminder, one that came in a most unlikely package, in the form of the inndeor baptism for the newest member of the Lam family, Sada. Originally, I was extremely excited about the event. It was a party after all, and I am not one to turn down a party. The innde is a day long event, during which the hosts invite family and friends to spend the day lounging in the shade, eating beignets and drinking bouye(boabab fruit juice), and enjoying the entertainment of griots who dance and sing both traditional and improvised songs. For some reason that is still unknown to me, my family decided to keep all of the “refreshments” in my little hut, which stands apart from the main family house. According to the original plan, only a few family members were allowed entrance to my hut and when it was unoccupied, it was to remain locked. The original plan was probably followed for all of five minutes, before an entire gaggle of women descended on my hut, making juice and little gift bags of beignets, haphazardly spilling things everywhere. My feeble cries of protest were drowned out by the gossiping ladies, who continued on happily in their booming voices as if everything was perfectly normal. For them, I’m sure it was perfectly normal.
(Later, in a completely unrelated conversation with a town government official, I was informed that in Senegalese culture, all private spaces become public when there are guests. It would have been nice to know this during the innde…)
After 7 months of being here, I am continually learning new things each day. Mostly, I’ve seen that though we share many commonalities, people across cultures can differ in the most unimaginable ways. All of these differences, for me, seemed to manifest themselves during the innde. Taken individually, I can normally overlook them, but put them all together and it becomes a most unpleasant experience.
For example, the word “please” doesn’t exist in Pulaar. Instead, demands are given in the form of orders, sometimes accompanied by a snap. Smiles don’t translate exactly either. It is more polite to greet with a scowl than to smile without greeting. All of the niceties that I am accustomed to were noticeably absent as my innde “guests” dribbled syrupy juice in my personal space and then left me to clean up the fly encrusted mess…
I keep a journal here, as do most volunteers I’m sure, where I record my cheesiest thoughts and most ridiculous ideas each night during what may be my first moments alone for an entire day. After the innde guests had gone home and I was finished scrubbing the bouye from my floors, I was ready to complain. I had outlined every complaint in my mind, ready to take it all out of my small leather-bound outlet. As I opened the page, pen poised, I saw the dot.
So before I left, I took my little journal, opened it to a random page, and made a dot in the corner. At the time I was thinking to myself, “Wonder what I’ll be doing by the time I reach the dot?” Or something like that. After seeing the dot, I started thinking… thinking about all of the things I’ve seen or done since the day when I serendipitously put it on the page. I’ve ridden on a cart, pulled by a donkey, driven by a child. And I’ve almost fallen off of a cart, pulled by a donkey, driven by a child. I’ve attended “professional” meetings, during which the person leading was wearing a shirt that said “Wanna see my tatoo?” I’ve seen herds of camels and troupes of monkeys and played in the pool below a waterfall. I’ve been bitten by spiders and eaten goat brains over millet (not kidding, Pulaars are not known for their delicious cuisine). But most importantly of all, I’ve been completely welcomed in to a community that is frustrating and fascinating and filled with people who are genuinely happy that I’m here and working with them, that would give me the shirt off of their back (or the pagne off of their waist) if I asked for it. Thanks to the dot for reminding me to stop taking myself so seriously and enjoy this experience for what it is.
Silly, I know. That’s all.
Filed under: Snapshots
- Heading towards Ile de Madeleine
- The ile itself
- Sitting in le boabab parasol
- Swimming across the lagoon in the center of the island
- C’est moi
In lieu of the usual rants about whatever seems to be bouncing around in my head at the moment I finally have quality time with a computer, I’m going to leave you with the images of a recent trip with some of my friends to les Iles de Madeleine, a tiny group of islands just off the south eastern tip of Dakar. I miss and love you all.
Filed under: Uncategorized
It’s the hot season here in the Fuuta, which means that almost everyone choses to sleep in the cooler outdoor air. Adjacent to my hut is a small walled area… my “bathroom,” I like to call it. It’s where I take my bucket baths and also where I sleep, comfortably even, on my little wooden bed with my foam mattress. Every night I suspend my mosquito net from the clothes lines that criss cross this bathroom and every morning I wake up to the chorus of farm animals: the throaty bass of the cows, the tenor sheep and the shrill soprano of the rooster. My life has settled into a rhythm such that most nights pass into day in this way… That is, until last night.
Wind is usually a good thing during hot desert nights, unless of course, it carries copious amounts of sand along with it. These dust storms aren’t very frequent but they do happen, perhaps 5 times each hot season. So last night, I woke up a little past midnight because of the howling wind. I immediately got out of bed and stood in the relative safety of the doorway and watched the dirt swirling in the sky. For a nanosecond I debated bringing my mattress inside, until I felt the radiating heat coming from inside my hut compared to the cooler breezy outside. After about 20 minutes there was considerably less wind, so I thought it was safe to go back to sleep.
About 5 hours later, I woke up after what may be the best night of sleep I’ve had since I’ve been in country. The night had been cool and comfortable…. I was also completely covered in sand. Maybe a quarter of an inch deep. It was everywhere… it coated my sheets, it was in my hair, I felt it in my teeth.
So there had been a dust storm. And I slept through it. Go figure.
