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.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Petite Côte, continued
Night 1, Day 2:
The sun set over our Atlantic-facing dessert drinks, and a long and slender minute hand smiled a friendly smile as it pushed the group of us, living somewhere between the reckless energy of our youth and a solemn, contented appreciation of the most simple things, up layer after layer of seashell-lined blocks, until we had had just the right amount and pulled our pillows from our rooms to the balcony to join Bob Dylan under the stars.
Eventually the half of me that was awake built up the energy to split off enough to tuck the rest of me into bed, beside Renee, under a denim-topped-fashion mosquito net.
I woke to the smell of salt water, carefully took in a classic breakfast of the last nescafé our holiday had in store and bread, preparing each bite for the trek it was about to fuel with butter, jam, and a lecture about it’s important place as part of the most important meal of the day. I was happy to wipe the crumbs from my mouth with a feeling of mutual contented closure between myself and Toubab Dialo, to follow the pull of an empty coast, just flaunting the exotic indefiniteness of its natural beauty. Our welcome had yet to be worn out, so Dylan stepped on a sleeping cat at the bottom of the stairs. It told him to leave with quite the knee-jerk, emotional, and oh-so-catty response of shrieking and reminding him how to behave if he valued his skin (which he apparently should have been reminded of earlier that morning, when he applied sunscreen everywhere except the backs of his legs).
Setting off for the coast, we were met by many requests to guide us but, as per usual, the most helpful was the friendly pharmacist, who directed us to the less windy, more direct road. And so we moved on south, poking at dead jellyfish, playing word games, and wading into the ocean when moved to. As for the jellyfish, even after the trip, I have yet to find the French word for them, and am thus inclined to call them nothing other than poissons de la confiture. Teehee.
The next seven or so kilometers of coast we had to ourselves, but by the time two massive fishing ropes being pulled by a swarm of strength peeked out, Popenguine was near. When you want to find the center of a city of any size in Senegal, just look for the mosque and walk towards it. Fortunately, an old woman doing some sort of work on the rocks directed us up to the road, as our eagerness had overlooked the fact that the route would not go through on the rocks. Onward and into the city, inadvertently disguised as walking candles of sweat, past Wade’s “second palace,” back to the beach and past a row of hotels, both in order and fallen into the sand, we found the villa where we would settle in and extend our stay for the next two nights.
As I ran out to the ocean for a dip, then rummaged around the villa in excitement about the balcony, kitchen, and bissap left by unknown travelers who are who knows where now, my stomach tapped it’s little tummy foot patiently. The folks up at the restaurant balcony noticed the neglectful way I was treating my stomach and beckoned my appetite. The food was terrific; it was calamari for me again, this time in form of a salad. Power outages in Senegal are common enough to be counted on every day, but not reliable enough to show up at the same time each night (though I not-so-secretly revel in the peacefulness of them). That night, the power went out as we walked into town to get the makings of a dinner, and stayed out passed our buying preparing, and midway into eating our sort-of-spaghetti-and-Gazelle dinner.
Inside the room, where the base of the bed was nothing short of a three-foot-tall block of poured concrete (I can only come up with completely ridiculous reasoning for this, guessing that whoever did it was determined to present a creative challenge to anyone who might ever try to remodel the room), the heat was a little much, so I cozied up in strange Barbie-animal sheets on the couch-thing in the living room.
Day 3:
Another morning was devoted to the sea (devocean?? Eh?), as I’ve found is the perfect way to wake up. I think I will spend every morning I can for the rest of my life on water. On the table were four plates, each with a spoon and an adorably cut division of melon. After our pre-breakfast, we headed toward bread and coffee. As the group attempted to make plans for the day at breakfast, the cliff just beyond our area of beach kept interpolating itself between each bite Dylan took. As he gazed at the cliff and the rest of us buried our focuses in Accrobaobab (and peanut butter), everyone seemed to look up once in awhile and say, “Yeah, that would be a fun cliff to climb,” then return to the more serious, cultivated and adult idea of climbing giant trees. I warned him of the idea that was, oh-so-wrongly in my head that the chunk of rock in front of us held the same jungle-like density and labrynth effect of the mountain I climbed in Laos. Still, I completely agreed that it looked like fun. So why not give it a try? That we did, and it turned out to be nothing more than, as I should have guessed, paths and dried boscage through which it would be pretty hard to loose oneself, not to mention on a small enough scale. The view of the ocean and of the surrounding nature was unbelievable from the top, and along the way were shells of old military posts, deserted, weather-worn and covered in the names of curious tourists before us, proving that they had “been there!” in 2005 or 1998 or when they thought that Jesus saved.
Over the bump and on the other side sat immediately a small fishing village and a mosque poked out in the distance. Where there are people in Senegal, there are tiny boutiques that pack in a tremendous amount of uniform imported products that are considered indispensible to a Senegalese identity. These items include Magi bouillon, Sofi and/or Jadida margarine (and its less often seen counter of “real butter,” the first ingredient of which is vegetable fat), piles of onions, sacs of Asian rice, nescafé, sugar cubes, and usually, 1.5 L bottles of purified water for toubabs. But this was not a toubab village, and so we walked from place to place with no luck, other than meeting friendly folks along the way who offered us their own water, not knowing how tantalizing it was (we hadn’t brought any with us at the start). Near the far side of the village we found luck, loved the propieters of the boutique for it, and found that we were not in La Somone, but only a kilometer away. An hour and a half of walking brought us to a strange resort in what can really be described as the middle-of-the-most-nowhere I’ve ever been, not to La Somone, and to a solidified realization that “1 kilometer” in Senegal means “it isn’t far,” “maybe three or six or eight kilometers,” or, probably most accurately, “If you keep walking, you’ll get there.” So we filled up on more water and food and jumped back to the villa.
That night we met up with a fellow MSIDer who was staying in the area for break and some other WARC students who were sliding down the coast for a couple days of holiday, made dinner again, ate on the balcony by candlelight, and drank some homemade bissap.
Day 4:
Our next stop was Saly-Portugal, about 18 kilometers south, so we hopped on a bush taxi, got off at the end of the road leading into the city and walked west towards the ocean, where, among a melanged maze of boutiques, hotels, fanny-packed, bucket-hatted, neon-short-sporting tourists, and restaurants Senegalese and tourist-focused, we found the place where we would lay down our bags, rest our feet, and hop in the pool. We found the first of what would prove to be the best sort of Senegalese restaurant, meaning that when we walked in to the tiny shack with cloth-lined walls, a man looked at me and asked, “Fan ngeen dem?” or “Where are you going?” in Wolof, in surprise of seeing tourists attracted to communal plates of ceebujen with locals in lieu of pizzas costing quadrupal the price across the street. I told him, “Here, for good ceebujen.” And we ate. Lots.
Saly turned out to be “Daytona Beach” of Senegal, as one missionary I ran into described it (this may have also been the only other group of Americans I saw), and so our hotel was a little further from the ocean than it had been in Toubab Dialo or Popenguine, and the beach front was largely privately owned. Still, it wasn’t a bad idea to take advantage of the day to rest for cheap, on beach chairs at one of the resorts on the beach, where we found ourselves gifted with free drinks and obligatory people-watching. We had found ourselves in what seemed to be an obscure sort of never-land, where time and any outside reality don’t exist and where all of the seasoned paradise-seakers are eternally over-middle-aged, the only visible progression of time being measured in leather-tough wrinkles of skin folding over speedos and bikini bottoms. So I laid back in the shade of my umbrella, soaking up the beach-front wonders, the music from Joey’s ipod, and Richard Brautigan short stories, for hours until it was decided best to move back toward the hotel.
The sun set over our Atlantic-facing dessert drinks, and a long and slender minute hand smiled a friendly smile as it pushed the group of us, living somewhere between the reckless energy of our youth and a solemn, contented appreciation of the most simple things, up layer after layer of seashell-lined blocks, until we had had just the right amount and pulled our pillows from our rooms to the balcony to join Bob Dylan under the stars.
Eventually the half of me that was awake built up the energy to split off enough to tuck the rest of me into bed, beside Renee, under a denim-topped-fashion mosquito net.
I woke to the smell of salt water, carefully took in a classic breakfast of the last nescafé our holiday had in store and bread, preparing each bite for the trek it was about to fuel with butter, jam, and a lecture about it’s important place as part of the most important meal of the day. I was happy to wipe the crumbs from my mouth with a feeling of mutual contented closure between myself and Toubab Dialo, to follow the pull of an empty coast, just flaunting the exotic indefiniteness of its natural beauty. Our welcome had yet to be worn out, so Dylan stepped on a sleeping cat at the bottom of the stairs. It told him to leave with quite the knee-jerk, emotional, and oh-so-catty response of shrieking and reminding him how to behave if he valued his skin (which he apparently should have been reminded of earlier that morning, when he applied sunscreen everywhere except the backs of his legs).
Setting off for the coast, we were met by many requests to guide us but, as per usual, the most helpful was the friendly pharmacist, who directed us to the less windy, more direct road. And so we moved on south, poking at dead jellyfish, playing word games, and wading into the ocean when moved to. As for the jellyfish, even after the trip, I have yet to find the French word for them, and am thus inclined to call them nothing other than poissons de la confiture. Teehee.
The next seven or so kilometers of coast we had to ourselves, but by the time two massive fishing ropes being pulled by a swarm of strength peeked out, Popenguine was near. When you want to find the center of a city of any size in Senegal, just look for the mosque and walk towards it. Fortunately, an old woman doing some sort of work on the rocks directed us up to the road, as our eagerness had overlooked the fact that the route would not go through on the rocks. Onward and into the city, inadvertently disguised as walking candles of sweat, past Wade’s “second palace,” back to the beach and past a row of hotels, both in order and fallen into the sand, we found the villa where we would settle in and extend our stay for the next two nights.
As I ran out to the ocean for a dip, then rummaged around the villa in excitement about the balcony, kitchen, and bissap left by unknown travelers who are who knows where now, my stomach tapped it’s little tummy foot patiently. The folks up at the restaurant balcony noticed the neglectful way I was treating my stomach and beckoned my appetite. The food was terrific; it was calamari for me again, this time in form of a salad. Power outages in Senegal are common enough to be counted on every day, but not reliable enough to show up at the same time each night (though I not-so-secretly revel in the peacefulness of them). That night, the power went out as we walked into town to get the makings of a dinner, and stayed out passed our buying preparing, and midway into eating our sort-of-spaghetti-and-Gazelle dinner.
Inside the room, where the base of the bed was nothing short of a three-foot-tall block of poured concrete (I can only come up with completely ridiculous reasoning for this, guessing that whoever did it was determined to present a creative challenge to anyone who might ever try to remodel the room), the heat was a little much, so I cozied up in strange Barbie-animal sheets on the couch-thing in the living room.
Day 3:
Another morning was devoted to the sea (devocean?? Eh?), as I’ve found is the perfect way to wake up. I think I will spend every morning I can for the rest of my life on water. On the table were four plates, each with a spoon and an adorably cut division of melon. After our pre-breakfast, we headed toward bread and coffee. As the group attempted to make plans for the day at breakfast, the cliff just beyond our area of beach kept interpolating itself between each bite Dylan took. As he gazed at the cliff and the rest of us buried our focuses in Accrobaobab (and peanut butter), everyone seemed to look up once in awhile and say, “Yeah, that would be a fun cliff to climb,” then return to the more serious, cultivated and adult idea of climbing giant trees. I warned him of the idea that was, oh-so-wrongly in my head that the chunk of rock in front of us held the same jungle-like density and labrynth effect of the mountain I climbed in Laos. Still, I completely agreed that it looked like fun. So why not give it a try? That we did, and it turned out to be nothing more than, as I should have guessed, paths and dried boscage through which it would be pretty hard to loose oneself, not to mention on a small enough scale. The view of the ocean and of the surrounding nature was unbelievable from the top, and along the way were shells of old military posts, deserted, weather-worn and covered in the names of curious tourists before us, proving that they had “been there!” in 2005 or 1998 or when they thought that Jesus saved.
Over the bump and on the other side sat immediately a small fishing village and a mosque poked out in the distance. Where there are people in Senegal, there are tiny boutiques that pack in a tremendous amount of uniform imported products that are considered indispensible to a Senegalese identity. These items include Magi bouillon, Sofi and/or Jadida margarine (and its less often seen counter of “real butter,” the first ingredient of which is vegetable fat), piles of onions, sacs of Asian rice, nescafé, sugar cubes, and usually, 1.5 L bottles of purified water for toubabs. But this was not a toubab village, and so we walked from place to place with no luck, other than meeting friendly folks along the way who offered us their own water, not knowing how tantalizing it was (we hadn’t brought any with us at the start). Near the far side of the village we found luck, loved the propieters of the boutique for it, and found that we were not in La Somone, but only a kilometer away. An hour and a half of walking brought us to a strange resort in what can really be described as the middle-of-the-most-nowhere I’ve ever been, not to La Somone, and to a solidified realization that “1 kilometer” in Senegal means “it isn’t far,” “maybe three or six or eight kilometers,” or, probably most accurately, “If you keep walking, you’ll get there.” So we filled up on more water and food and jumped back to the villa.
That night we met up with a fellow MSIDer who was staying in the area for break and some other WARC students who were sliding down the coast for a couple days of holiday, made dinner again, ate on the balcony by candlelight, and drank some homemade bissap.
Day 4:
Our next stop was Saly-Portugal, about 18 kilometers south, so we hopped on a bush taxi, got off at the end of the road leading into the city and walked west towards the ocean, where, among a melanged maze of boutiques, hotels, fanny-packed, bucket-hatted, neon-short-sporting tourists, and restaurants Senegalese and tourist-focused, we found the place where we would lay down our bags, rest our feet, and hop in the pool. We found the first of what would prove to be the best sort of Senegalese restaurant, meaning that when we walked in to the tiny shack with cloth-lined walls, a man looked at me and asked, “Fan ngeen dem?” or “Where are you going?” in Wolof, in surprise of seeing tourists attracted to communal plates of ceebujen with locals in lieu of pizzas costing quadrupal the price across the street. I told him, “Here, for good ceebujen.” And we ate. Lots.
Saly turned out to be “Daytona Beach” of Senegal, as one missionary I ran into described it (this may have also been the only other group of Americans I saw), and so our hotel was a little further from the ocean than it had been in Toubab Dialo or Popenguine, and the beach front was largely privately owned. Still, it wasn’t a bad idea to take advantage of the day to rest for cheap, on beach chairs at one of the resorts on the beach, where we found ourselves gifted with free drinks and obligatory people-watching. We had found ourselves in what seemed to be an obscure sort of never-land, where time and any outside reality don’t exist and where all of the seasoned paradise-seakers are eternally over-middle-aged, the only visible progression of time being measured in leather-tough wrinkles of skin folding over speedos and bikini bottoms. So I laid back in the shade of my umbrella, soaking up the beach-front wonders, the music from Joey’s ipod, and Richard Brautigan short stories, for hours until it was decided best to move back toward the hotel.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
I'm going to attempt to describe my spring break.
Day 1: Toubab Dialo
A week ago, three lovely friends of mine and I left Dakar to engage on a week of relaxation and fun along the Petite Côte of Senegal. Our first destination was the northern most town of this segment of coast; a nice, welcoming, toursity (as would be all of the Petite Côte) chunk of coast.
After our sept place escaped the perma-traffic on the way out of the city, (where I finally got a taste of these bags of cookies, which are among the many things sold along road by people who walk between the cars selling products all day, and they're stale. I don't know why I was surprised by this, but I wasn't really disappointed. Anyway, just remember, if someone is walking around in the sun all day, carrying food that may have been made that morning and may have been made three days ago, keep the effects of nature in mind.) after having haggled an unhappily high price for the sept place in the first place, we zoomed on down to our completely seashell ordained Toubab oasis.
We promptly got some food in us and headed to the beach. After having explained at lunch to my friends that I will always have the spirit of an eighty-year-old woman, Joey and I ventured to a nearby establishment to ask for empty margarine tubs with which we could build sand castles. We raced back. "I am a child," I explained further. We had a great time playing around in the sand, when the first in a run, which would prove to surpass the week, of women selling the jewelry from oversized baskets atop their heads strolled over. The margarine buckets were left to some talibe kids who thought it looked like fun (and were much better at castle making) while I bought some necklaces.
We spent the evening trying to prepare for the relaxation we were in for by strolling along the local streets and beach taking photos and listening to goofy little goat bleats. The sun began to set, so we settled in at the place that was nice enough to give us buckets to play in the sand with, and kicked back with a dinner of local (ok, one of two Senegalese choices of) beer and fresh seafood on the beach. Really! Our table was set ON the sand, and we were facing the sunset and next to the djembe rhythm that is never far when in Senegal. I followed my spectacular calamari dinner with a banana crêpe and stargazing.
I would like to stop writing about how wonderful life is at this point, but I will have to continue with the rest of my week on a later day.
A week ago, three lovely friends of mine and I left Dakar to engage on a week of relaxation and fun along the Petite Côte of Senegal. Our first destination was the northern most town of this segment of coast; a nice, welcoming, toursity (as would be all of the Petite Côte) chunk of coast.
After our sept place escaped the perma-traffic on the way out of the city, (where I finally got a taste of these bags of cookies, which are among the many things sold along road by people who walk between the cars selling products all day, and they're stale. I don't know why I was surprised by this, but I wasn't really disappointed. Anyway, just remember, if someone is walking around in the sun all day, carrying food that may have been made that morning and may have been made three days ago, keep the effects of nature in mind.) after having haggled an unhappily high price for the sept place in the first place, we zoomed on down to our completely seashell ordained Toubab oasis.
We promptly got some food in us and headed to the beach. After having explained at lunch to my friends that I will always have the spirit of an eighty-year-old woman, Joey and I ventured to a nearby establishment to ask for empty margarine tubs with which we could build sand castles. We raced back. "I am a child," I explained further. We had a great time playing around in the sand, when the first in a run, which would prove to surpass the week, of women selling the jewelry from oversized baskets atop their heads strolled over. The margarine buckets were left to some talibe kids who thought it looked like fun (and were much better at castle making) while I bought some necklaces.
We spent the evening trying to prepare for the relaxation we were in for by strolling along the local streets and beach taking photos and listening to goofy little goat bleats. The sun began to set, so we settled in at the place that was nice enough to give us buckets to play in the sand with, and kicked back with a dinner of local (ok, one of two Senegalese choices of) beer and fresh seafood on the beach. Really! Our table was set ON the sand, and we were facing the sunset and next to the djembe rhythm that is never far when in Senegal. I followed my spectacular calamari dinner with a banana crêpe and stargazing.
I would like to stop writing about how wonderful life is at this point, but I will have to continue with the rest of my week on a later day.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Ile de Madeleine
Last week I was lucky enough to make the hop from mainland Dakar to l'Ile de Madeleine, where there is a national park, perfect for bird watching, and baobabs, of varieties both miniature and enormous (the standard) are scattered about. The three other girls in my environmental class, my professor, the lovely Awa, an obligatory guide, and myself jumped into a pirogue, the little colorfully-painted wooden fishing boats, and bounced atop the ocean waves to the island.
The boat propelled forward with the push of waves, gliding just above the surface until it again smashed into contact, and little dropplets of salt water misted back, as if to fool us into thinking the ocean is gentle, only as a game until another massive push came from below and our toy boat was again flung through the air. Along with the boat bumped my mind, between the physical beauty around me and the question of whether or not I had accidentally stumbled into the world of mythology, with Poseidon just trying to impress us with the ease of his power, surrounded by what seemed to be the very islands Ulysses found so dangerously magnetizing.
Fortunately, the islands could only allure from afar, and we moved passed, stepping off the boat at only l'Ile de Madeleine, and I was able to leave Ulysses to deal with the modernist struggles of life by himself while I climbed baobab trees.
Baobabs have this fruit that makes some tasty smoothy-consistency juice:
The boat propelled forward with the push of waves, gliding just above the surface until it again smashed into contact, and little dropplets of salt water misted back, as if to fool us into thinking the ocean is gentle, only as a game until another massive push came from below and our toy boat was again flung through the air. Along with the boat bumped my mind, between the physical beauty around me and the question of whether or not I had accidentally stumbled into the world of mythology, with Poseidon just trying to impress us with the ease of his power, surrounded by what seemed to be the very islands Ulysses found so dangerously magnetizing.
Fortunately, the islands could only allure from afar, and we moved passed, stepping off the boat at only l'Ile de Madeleine, and I was able to leave Ulysses to deal with the modernist struggles of life by himself while I climbed baobab trees.
Baobabs have this fruit that makes some tasty smoothy-consistency juice:
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
ramblin'
After living a month in Senegal, I've stumbled across myself in that strange way that happens every now and then, when I feel as though I'm waking up and stretching from limb to limb on a bed in a room that I've been sleeping in for some time, renting out long enough that everything is familiar when I go down the stairs, even though I can't remember having done this before.
I'm serenaded by Voodoo's lanky, wiry little chios morning and night, with chants of "hayya ala-l-falah, hayya ala-l-falah" (Hasten to real success. Come to prayer.) in the background, crackling through the mosque speakers at every prayer time. At the sound of the call to prayer, people gather on the slab of concrete outside of my front door to pull their prayer mats from a nearby tree, unroll them and lay them out toward mecca. The habits I've grown accustomed to and the faces I see every day make me feel like this is what I've known forever, but I'm also finding myself more at home in the challenges.
Trying to soak up the languages around me, realizing that I have to study and work at it, has kept me alert and mentally active in my interactions with Senegalese. I realize that I had this idea that somewhere inside of me, half-way hidden away, I carried a pocket of language that was soaking everything up and would one day just be saturated and I could ring out everything I've ever wanted to say in flawless French or Wolof. This is certainly not the way things are, but in this case, at least, the struggle presents its own reward and I'm enjoying it more and more as time goes on, especially as I'm simultaneously engrossed in the role of linguistics in different communities and in the history of Senegal.
I've realized more and more as I pass through time that being able to snuggle into foreign places and manifest in being out of my element is how I build my home, and that the same peregrine nature that keeps me exploring is also what makes me feel so grounded in places. I often see places and people in very similar ways. I feel like I have this home in my head with which I am perfectly contented, and I love all of the rooms in it that I know, but there are always rooms that I've passed by and never opened up. Then each time I do open a door, I recognize something in it and it is a part of the complete picture that was just idle until I illuminated it. I guess like a paint-by-numbers picture. This is why, though I don't miss Minneapolis, I certainly am excited to revel in life there when I get back.
I'm serenaded by Voodoo's lanky, wiry little chios morning and night, with chants of "hayya ala-l-falah, hayya ala-l-falah" (Hasten to real success. Come to prayer.) in the background, crackling through the mosque speakers at every prayer time. At the sound of the call to prayer, people gather on the slab of concrete outside of my front door to pull their prayer mats from a nearby tree, unroll them and lay them out toward mecca. The habits I've grown accustomed to and the faces I see every day make me feel like this is what I've known forever, but I'm also finding myself more at home in the challenges.
Trying to soak up the languages around me, realizing that I have to study and work at it, has kept me alert and mentally active in my interactions with Senegalese. I realize that I had this idea that somewhere inside of me, half-way hidden away, I carried a pocket of language that was soaking everything up and would one day just be saturated and I could ring out everything I've ever wanted to say in flawless French or Wolof. This is certainly not the way things are, but in this case, at least, the struggle presents its own reward and I'm enjoying it more and more as time goes on, especially as I'm simultaneously engrossed in the role of linguistics in different communities and in the history of Senegal.
I've realized more and more as I pass through time that being able to snuggle into foreign places and manifest in being out of my element is how I build my home, and that the same peregrine nature that keeps me exploring is also what makes me feel so grounded in places. I often see places and people in very similar ways. I feel like I have this home in my head with which I am perfectly contented, and I love all of the rooms in it that I know, but there are always rooms that I've passed by and never opened up. Then each time I do open a door, I recognize something in it and it is a part of the complete picture that was just idle until I illuminated it. I guess like a paint-by-numbers picture. This is why, though I don't miss Minneapolis, I certainly am excited to revel in life there when I get back.
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