Finishing up with the more dull and required things (my essays for school) early enough to pass my afternoons with the family, I've been getting to do the Senegalese thing of coming home for lunch with the family, going back to work if there is more, or else sitting with the girls here all day, talking and making ataaya. I've gotten the chance to make ataaya with my friend Sokhna almost every day this week, and I think my pouring skills just might be improving. Of course, I can't match her practiced hand. I make the tea, pour it from glass to glass again and again and again in hopes of seeing that beautiful, hoped-for froth, then hand it to Sokhna, who has Midas' touch with ataaya. She is also an amazing cook, and showed me her style of making ceebujen with "goorjigeen sauce," a tasty tomato sauce. It was without a doubt some of the best ceebujen I've eaten here, because this girl really can cook. The word "goorjigeen," is Wolof for man-woman, or transvestite, and when I asked the relation to tomato sauce, I found none, but in general people think it's pretty funny.
There's been little work around here in the past week, so I've been doing things like this, talking to my coworker Coumba about recipes (since I realized she would much rather talk about fun things like food than answer my questions regarding the work of the mutual, we have a lot of fun), and working on research, which definitely leaves me with less stress for the coming week in Dakar. Yes! But I've also gotten the chance to go to quite a few "general assemblies" as of late, which are interesting to observe, in that the mutual is kind of like a credit bank for unions, and in general not an idea too different from certain systems in the U.S., but the assemblies are without a doubt Senegalese. The entire community is in attendance, there is always a dj and loud music until it begins,and the heads of the community sit in a group in front, taking turns welcoming everyone with "asalamalikum" and discussing. At the end, one of the women breaks out in a traditional song, modifiedto fit the specific people there and celebrate the community, and everyone leaves happy and ready for dinner. One of my favorite parts of this is the drive home, if we're in a more remote area, because it's always late and I love driving past the villages and plains at night. It's spectacular.
Tonight Renee is coming, and we'll leave in the morning for Dakar. My family here is wonderful. They're sincerely happy people who have a true appreciation for life and for each other. As far as my family in Dakar, I feel like I will be leaving a house where I've been boarding for awhile, but I feel like I have really lived as a family with my Kaolack family, and I'm leaving them so quickly. Last night, Momma gave me a beautiful, enormous boubou. Of course pictures will come when I can. She is also sending me back to the states with a giant bag of bouye, the chalky inside of the baobab fruit, which makes tasty tasty juice, as well as my favorite dessert here, called ngaalakh. It's made in a big pail, and someone will pour each person a ridiculously large amount, saying "Ahm!," which means "Take!" or "I'm giving this to you!" and is said constantly. (They're hospitable here, and a little forceful about it.) Ngaalakh includes bouye, peanut butter, millet, sugar, coconut, and mashed up fruit like grapes and banana. It's eaten chilled, and when I eat it, though savoring each bite, I think of the travesty of the lack of cinnamon here. So you all can get ready to drink some bouye and slurp up some ngaalakh.
Along the lines of saying "ahm" constantly, I'm getting the feeling that transitioning into not saying certain constantly expected and used phrases will take some getting used to. I'm thinking of things like greeting every person I see, often responding with "alhamdulilah," saying "wow" for "yes" and constantly thinking about the phonetics of my sentence structures. The last is something I've run into in the states for short periods of time when I'm in French classes for too long. I've been able to watch my use of English morph as my French phonetics progress, and as I speak there is always some parallel train of thought in my mind keeping itself aware of the way words are being structured. But language may flow easier than I'm expecting when everyone around me is speaking English and there is constant fluency and easy communication. The way Wolof is so easy to incorporate into French also leaves me wanting to head to France and perhaps clean up my Frolof, so I don't end up in France throwing in odd Wolof here and there, since it's often so easy to slip Wolof into French conversation here.
So the morning will bring me to the gare routier where Renee and I will cramp into a sept-place headed north to Dakar. I'll spend the next week with other students and then board an airplane that will bring me to Washington D.C., and on to "Terminal 1"! I'm looking forward to seeing the beautiful faces of my friends and family, hearing their voices and splashing into Nokomis again.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
Kaolack time
Well, negligent blogger that I am, I ought to get around to telling you all about the internship phase of my time in Senegal, which is already winding up.
I’m living in Kaolack. Wanting to prepare myself for the city, I read up what I could and asked folks about it before coming here. The books and tourist reviews were all pretty unanimous in saying it’s a town to pass through, as it rests on a main road, but there is no reason to stop. Travel guides listed ways of “getting away” but mentioned nothing of “getting there” (which is really easy enough; it’s just a sept-place ride from Dakar). The Senegalese I asked about the city were, on the other hand, more unanimous in immediately responding, “Kaolack? It’s hot there.” My brother Souleymane in Dakar told me not to drink the water because people here have red teeth. I later found that this is due to “dangerously high fluoride levels.” Well, I guess a little fluoride would be helpful, anyway. I grind my teeth in my sleep.
So, despite the guides being right about this being a dirty, hard city where you “don’t come to live the good life,” as one guide put it, and those I spoke with being right that it is, in fact hot (around 108 every day), Kaolack is kind of pleasant. It isn’t pleasant to look at; the majority of streets are lined with, if not covered in trash and piggies eatin’ it up, and I often find myself walking home at the unfortunate time when someone has decided to burn a field of this trash. I also wish there was just ten minutes of the day when I wasn’t covered in sweat, but I got used to that after about a week. I even got used to the heat frequently being the topic of conversation. People here love to point out the obvious ("It's hot!"), which took getting used to when I didn’t know how to respond to someone telling me that I’m sitting or that I’m going home. Today I was walking home with a coworker who exclaimed (after mentioning the heat, of course), “Whoo! There’s a lot of sand!” This just made me laugh because we’re in the desert. The streets are made of sand.
But Kaolack certainly embodies the teranga that Senegal is known for. I might be walking home with inches of dirt caked onto my skin in sweat, thinking about breathing fresh air, but I will surely be invited to eat by multiple people along the road, and told to come and sit by almost everyone. This is saying a lot, too, since the entire community is constantly outside. People sit along the road or are visiting between homes of friends and family at all times. So as with most things I’ve encountered here, I have mixed feelings about the city, but nights are always peaceful in a picture-esque way, and I’ve met some truly amazing people, people always more than willing to teach me about their culture and themselves.
My day starts off with me happily peeling my mosquito net away from the foam pad on which I sleep and walking out to a table of baguettes and coffee. I have a bag of “Kinkéliba” tea, which is usually sold by the giant leafed-stem in the market, and called “Séxéw” when talked about, as not to loose the medicinal properties, so I usually have a cup of tea with the AMAZING gift of green beans my mom bought for me, snug and fresh inside my baguette. (She bought me a giant bag of them, knowing that I, unlike apparently anyone else in Senegal, enjoy fresh vegetables. Most people prefer to stay away from veggies all together, as it’s commonly believed here that vitamins and nutrients come from fat, so I suppose the saturation of palm oil is enough for most people). I head out to the health mutual where I’m working.
My work varies from days at the office, transcribing evaluation-type things we do with our clients, or translating. These are my least interesting days, though I fortunately have lots of time for my research and paper-writing. On other days, I go to different villages and talk with people about how the mutual is and isn’t working for them. In some respects this can be very interesting, though I have little interest in some of the things that I’ll never be working with, such as the economics of the mutual. My work is focusing on the literacy and function of linguistics in Senegal and, as things have moved forward, that means moving from looking at the more local state of language in health care for those living in poor or very remote places, to the more global place of linguistics in the livelihood of and communication between cultures.
So, if I’m in a village I eat a big plate of ceebujen with the folks there, if I’m at the office I go home and eat the leftover ceebujen. I secretly prefer this, because I get all the leftover veggies that the family left.
When work is over and I’m back home, I spend time with my neighbors across the street or at my house. There are always at least five people, whether they are relatives, neighbors, or both, I generally don’t know, sitting on the mat under our tree and talking while my cousin Batch or friend Sorna (or sometimes me!) makes ataya. The maids adorable little boy of six months runs around, and I usually play with him or talk to the family or read. There are usually one or two French-speakers around, in an otherwise Wolof-speaking family/community, so I get that pleasure as well as the fun of attempting to expand my Wolof.
I can usually help a little with dinner, but if I ask to help at 7, I’m usually told it’s all done, and we eat at around 9 or 10 when Momma comes home. Nights here are unbelievably peaceful and beautiful. After dinner I sit out with grandma and read my book in the nice breeze, until I go into Momma's house, where we and my spunky little nine-year-old sister often share a mango or two before I go off to sleep.
As is clear, life here isn’t always all that colorful, and I got the chance to run up to the coastal town of St. Louis a couple weeks ago with Renee, where we got to see Joey and Dylan and momentarily Allie, the other girl who lives with my family in Dakar, who work there. St. Louis is a quaint, fun, little town, with old French colonial architecture lining the streets of the island, where we found a mix of Senegalese and expat/tourist life abounding. The air there was a refreshing and welcome wet chill that soaked into my bones. Renee and I got a terrace-top breakfast each morning, where we got to revel in good ol’ English conversation as we patiently began our days and ate St. Louis’ awesome baguette (each town has different quality of bread, it seems). We both decided it would probably be best, if not necessary, to extend our stay in this lovely little place where goats wandered the streets.
Now things are winding down, and this weekend it back to Dakar for me, where I’ll regroup with the other students.
I’m living in Kaolack. Wanting to prepare myself for the city, I read up what I could and asked folks about it before coming here. The books and tourist reviews were all pretty unanimous in saying it’s a town to pass through, as it rests on a main road, but there is no reason to stop. Travel guides listed ways of “getting away” but mentioned nothing of “getting there” (which is really easy enough; it’s just a sept-place ride from Dakar). The Senegalese I asked about the city were, on the other hand, more unanimous in immediately responding, “Kaolack? It’s hot there.” My brother Souleymane in Dakar told me not to drink the water because people here have red teeth. I later found that this is due to “dangerously high fluoride levels.” Well, I guess a little fluoride would be helpful, anyway. I grind my teeth in my sleep.
So, despite the guides being right about this being a dirty, hard city where you “don’t come to live the good life,” as one guide put it, and those I spoke with being right that it is, in fact hot (around 108 every day), Kaolack is kind of pleasant. It isn’t pleasant to look at; the majority of streets are lined with, if not covered in trash and piggies eatin’ it up, and I often find myself walking home at the unfortunate time when someone has decided to burn a field of this trash. I also wish there was just ten minutes of the day when I wasn’t covered in sweat, but I got used to that after about a week. I even got used to the heat frequently being the topic of conversation. People here love to point out the obvious ("It's hot!"), which took getting used to when I didn’t know how to respond to someone telling me that I’m sitting or that I’m going home. Today I was walking home with a coworker who exclaimed (after mentioning the heat, of course), “Whoo! There’s a lot of sand!” This just made me laugh because we’re in the desert. The streets are made of sand.
But Kaolack certainly embodies the teranga that Senegal is known for. I might be walking home with inches of dirt caked onto my skin in sweat, thinking about breathing fresh air, but I will surely be invited to eat by multiple people along the road, and told to come and sit by almost everyone. This is saying a lot, too, since the entire community is constantly outside. People sit along the road or are visiting between homes of friends and family at all times. So as with most things I’ve encountered here, I have mixed feelings about the city, but nights are always peaceful in a picture-esque way, and I’ve met some truly amazing people, people always more than willing to teach me about their culture and themselves.
My day starts off with me happily peeling my mosquito net away from the foam pad on which I sleep and walking out to a table of baguettes and coffee. I have a bag of “Kinkéliba” tea, which is usually sold by the giant leafed-stem in the market, and called “Séxéw” when talked about, as not to loose the medicinal properties, so I usually have a cup of tea with the AMAZING gift of green beans my mom bought for me, snug and fresh inside my baguette. (She bought me a giant bag of them, knowing that I, unlike apparently anyone else in Senegal, enjoy fresh vegetables. Most people prefer to stay away from veggies all together, as it’s commonly believed here that vitamins and nutrients come from fat, so I suppose the saturation of palm oil is enough for most people). I head out to the health mutual where I’m working.
My work varies from days at the office, transcribing evaluation-type things we do with our clients, or translating. These are my least interesting days, though I fortunately have lots of time for my research and paper-writing. On other days, I go to different villages and talk with people about how the mutual is and isn’t working for them. In some respects this can be very interesting, though I have little interest in some of the things that I’ll never be working with, such as the economics of the mutual. My work is focusing on the literacy and function of linguistics in Senegal and, as things have moved forward, that means moving from looking at the more local state of language in health care for those living in poor or very remote places, to the more global place of linguistics in the livelihood of and communication between cultures.
So, if I’m in a village I eat a big plate of ceebujen with the folks there, if I’m at the office I go home and eat the leftover ceebujen. I secretly prefer this, because I get all the leftover veggies that the family left.
When work is over and I’m back home, I spend time with my neighbors across the street or at my house. There are always at least five people, whether they are relatives, neighbors, or both, I generally don’t know, sitting on the mat under our tree and talking while my cousin Batch or friend Sorna (or sometimes me!) makes ataya. The maids adorable little boy of six months runs around, and I usually play with him or talk to the family or read. There are usually one or two French-speakers around, in an otherwise Wolof-speaking family/community, so I get that pleasure as well as the fun of attempting to expand my Wolof.
I can usually help a little with dinner, but if I ask to help at 7, I’m usually told it’s all done, and we eat at around 9 or 10 when Momma comes home. Nights here are unbelievably peaceful and beautiful. After dinner I sit out with grandma and read my book in the nice breeze, until I go into Momma's house, where we and my spunky little nine-year-old sister often share a mango or two before I go off to sleep.
As is clear, life here isn’t always all that colorful, and I got the chance to run up to the coastal town of St. Louis a couple weeks ago with Renee, where we got to see Joey and Dylan and momentarily Allie, the other girl who lives with my family in Dakar, who work there. St. Louis is a quaint, fun, little town, with old French colonial architecture lining the streets of the island, where we found a mix of Senegalese and expat/tourist life abounding. The air there was a refreshing and welcome wet chill that soaked into my bones. Renee and I got a terrace-top breakfast each morning, where we got to revel in good ol’ English conversation as we patiently began our days and ate St. Louis’ awesome baguette (each town has different quality of bread, it seems). We both decided it would probably be best, if not necessary, to extend our stay in this lovely little place where goats wandered the streets.
Now things are winding down, and this weekend it back to Dakar for me, where I’ll regroup with the other students.
And the end of spring break!
Whew! I haven't been the most loyal blogger. I apologize if I've left anyone feeling bereft. This is how my little vacation wound down, and I will fill you in on Kaolack very soon.
Day 5:
Minnesota has shaped the way I think in many ways, and without going into any deeper personal or sociological analysis, I’m just going to state that and that it has given me a certain practicality about the effects of weather on everyday life. For instance, when women in catalogues sport barely-there skirts with big winter boots, my reaction is more naturally, “What season could it possibly be where this makes sense?” and the cuteness is lost on me. This engrained weather-consciousness is also what causes me to be filled me with silly delight every time I get that first realization that I am “indoors” and “outdoors” at the same time. The first time I experienced this “Not in Kansas anymore! We don’t need walls!” feeling was at an already really cool, unique restaurant in Siem Reap, Cambodia (which also marked somewhere near the top on the list in my head of restaurants with the best som tom, which is important, because most restaurant just didn’t measure up to those cherished street vendors). It wasn’t until after the meal, when I stood up to leave that I realized there was no roof and some walls were missing. What?!?? What about snow and rain and hail and unbearable temperatures? I realized that night that open-air establishments make me absurdly happy, for some reason.
So I hopped out of bed bright and early and jumped in the pool (above which there was no roof) for a morning swim before investigating the hotel a little in the quiet morning hours. I found my way through the doors of a peaceful garden courtyard of flowers and colorfully-painted benches, nestled right in the middle of the hotel, where I caught some quiet time watching horses and talibe wander by as women swept the streets on the other side of the Crayola-blue metal gate.
As we were about to head out in search of lunch, we were invited by the friendly hotel staff to join them around their ceebujen dish, of course, because this is Senegal and you can’t pass someone who is eating or preparing food without being invited or simply yelled at to “Come eat!” People here are wonderfully hospitable (“Teranga,” which means hospitality in Wolof ((I think. It could be Seerer or Poular or something else)) is seen on restaurants and every sort of establishment here, as it’s what the Senegalese are apparently known for). And with that, we were off to the other Saly stop.
From there we called the folks who owned a campement in La Somone, a city we still wanted to visit after all the “wandering in the desert” adventures. With simple directions of “a left after the third speed bump,” we were on our way to the peaceful winding down of the week. Strolling down the main road, counting speed bumps, it hit me that we had walked, so, coming up to the main road from the coast instead of starting on the road, we didn’t know how many “dos d’ans” (the French’s much better word for “speed bump” is “back of a donkey”) we had passed before beginning our counting. All it took was a bit of broken Wolof questions to find we were very close.
It was a great little place, both for its beach with shell-stocked sand and the town itself, which ended up being my favorite of those we visited. The couple who owned it were rather quiet and peculiar and intriguing. They are people I think I’ll end up having to write about.
Wanting to go to a nearby bird reserve the next day, I asked directions from the campement lady, who again measured distance in speed bumps, with “the big baobab” as a point of reference. This last bit was funny just because all baobabs are “big,” and Senegal is covered in baobabs. The lagoon was completely beautiful. We even got the opportunity (because our guide was some guy with access to a boat who could tell us nothing but matter-of-fact untruths about bird species, as Renee corrected him under her breath) to uncomfortably disturb the flocks who were gathered on sandbars. Absolutely contented with staying at a watching distance from the birds, floating through a salty, blue lagoon, lined by mangroves, was a lovely afternoon to bookend our spring break.
Day 5:
Minnesota has shaped the way I think in many ways, and without going into any deeper personal or sociological analysis, I’m just going to state that and that it has given me a certain practicality about the effects of weather on everyday life. For instance, when women in catalogues sport barely-there skirts with big winter boots, my reaction is more naturally, “What season could it possibly be where this makes sense?” and the cuteness is lost on me. This engrained weather-consciousness is also what causes me to be filled me with silly delight every time I get that first realization that I am “indoors” and “outdoors” at the same time. The first time I experienced this “Not in Kansas anymore! We don’t need walls!” feeling was at an already really cool, unique restaurant in Siem Reap, Cambodia (which also marked somewhere near the top on the list in my head of restaurants with the best som tom, which is important, because most restaurant just didn’t measure up to those cherished street vendors). It wasn’t until after the meal, when I stood up to leave that I realized there was no roof and some walls were missing. What?!?? What about snow and rain and hail and unbearable temperatures? I realized that night that open-air establishments make me absurdly happy, for some reason.
So I hopped out of bed bright and early and jumped in the pool (above which there was no roof) for a morning swim before investigating the hotel a little in the quiet morning hours. I found my way through the doors of a peaceful garden courtyard of flowers and colorfully-painted benches, nestled right in the middle of the hotel, where I caught some quiet time watching horses and talibe wander by as women swept the streets on the other side of the Crayola-blue metal gate.
As we were about to head out in search of lunch, we were invited by the friendly hotel staff to join them around their ceebujen dish, of course, because this is Senegal and you can’t pass someone who is eating or preparing food without being invited or simply yelled at to “Come eat!” People here are wonderfully hospitable (“Teranga,” which means hospitality in Wolof ((I think. It could be Seerer or Poular or something else)) is seen on restaurants and every sort of establishment here, as it’s what the Senegalese are apparently known for). And with that, we were off to the other Saly stop.
From there we called the folks who owned a campement in La Somone, a city we still wanted to visit after all the “wandering in the desert” adventures. With simple directions of “a left after the third speed bump,” we were on our way to the peaceful winding down of the week. Strolling down the main road, counting speed bumps, it hit me that we had walked, so, coming up to the main road from the coast instead of starting on the road, we didn’t know how many “dos d’ans” (the French’s much better word for “speed bump” is “back of a donkey”) we had passed before beginning our counting. All it took was a bit of broken Wolof questions to find we were very close.
It was a great little place, both for its beach with shell-stocked sand and the town itself, which ended up being my favorite of those we visited. The couple who owned it were rather quiet and peculiar and intriguing. They are people I think I’ll end up having to write about.
Wanting to go to a nearby bird reserve the next day, I asked directions from the campement lady, who again measured distance in speed bumps, with “the big baobab” as a point of reference. This last bit was funny just because all baobabs are “big,” and Senegal is covered in baobabs. The lagoon was completely beautiful. We even got the opportunity (because our guide was some guy with access to a boat who could tell us nothing but matter-of-fact untruths about bird species, as Renee corrected him under her breath) to uncomfortably disturb the flocks who were gathered on sandbars. Absolutely contented with staying at a watching distance from the birds, floating through a salty, blue lagoon, lined by mangroves, was a lovely afternoon to bookend our spring break.
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