The iron sits atop an old, empty Nescafe can. In its iron belly, embers glow orangey-gold, lending their beauty to the night’s ambiance. A white-collared shirt lays spread out beside it, waiting for her ochre hand to grasp that wooden handle and press out its weary wrinkles.
~+~+~+~+~
A television commercial: for those of you who are Christians, come buy a myriad of toys for the holiday season! You can buy a plastic duck that lays eggs, or a my size (white) doll, or a xylophone, or some (white) Barbie dolls, or an art kit, or some books…with white children on the covers…
~+~+~+~+~
A horse-drawn cart clippety-clops over the hard pavement, accompanied in its orchestration by the clink-clank of abundant coke bottles, laden with a beverage that will soon reach a tiny street-side stall and then the appreciative throats of parched passers-by. With the image of official looking commercial trucks hauling soda-pop in mind, I smile at the seeming simplicity of this animal, pair of wheels, and set of planks. It clinks and clops by, doing its job as well as any industrial machine…
~+~+~+~+~
The leftovers of Tabaski are in a small heap along the side of the road: a pair of horns and a sheep skin tossed away like a pair of tattered sandals. Plug your nose as you go past…
~+~+~+~+~
There they are; a haphazard trio of spindly, plastic pine trees, propped up before a couple smiling men with dazzling, gaudy garlands ringing their necks and wrists. They’re there, wedged in between a couple fruit stalls, grinning at me as I eye their merchandise. Voila one of the few traces of Christmas in this Allah-enraptured locale. I cannot help but chuckle at how out of place they seem.
~+~+~+~+~
I’m peaceably eating my breakfast of bread when my cousin whips out a butchering knife and starts whacking away at the last piece of mouton from the holidays. The laudry-woman’s three-year-old daughter is intimidated by the sight but watches intently.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Les Papillons
The multitudes of white flecks drift down, fluttering in eddies that alight upon the brilliant emerald grass and fuchsia flowers. -- “I’m dreaming…”-- The palm trees are misted with pearls… -- “…of a white…” – and looking into the sky, college students extend their arms passionately, reaching for those infinite flitting figures, like children with expectant tongues stuck out towards the heavens. – “…Christmas.” We may not have lit-up trees and mistletoe, but ours is the finest butterfly snow that Senegal has ever seen.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Forget the gym! I have sand dunes! And oh, how much joy can be contained in one mountainous heap of sand! I race up them, feeling my feet sink deep into the orangey powder and knowing that for every three steps forward I sink two steps back. Atop my sand castle, I grin, overlooking a vast landscape of golden swells and furrows and, steeply below me, the neat row of squat tents that compose our humble abodes for the coming night. And now for the real adrenaline rush: 1…2…3! And there I go whishhhing and bounding down that slope with a spray of sand at my heels and the late-afternoon glow on my face. Do that three times in a row, transporting cameras up and down on each occasion, and suddenly you know your calf muscles and abs much more intimately than you ever did before! But don’t wear yourself out too much now; you’ll need those ab muscles when you perch yourself upon a camel -- overlooking the desert at sunset. Yum! Life has seldomly been so sweet, and the stars are yet to come.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My last week in flash format:
Distractableness.
Photo-editing procrastination.
Booking flights craziness.
DESERT!!!
Buckle down baby;
its time to pump out those
final essays – in French.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My timeline:
Dec 20 – flight to Portugal
- a week traveling down the coast with Allison and her friend Dorothy.
-“I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams!”
Dec 28 – hop a flight to Madrid
-New Years in Madrid, surrounded by museums, cathedrals, and culture.
-Dorothy flies home
Early January – visit friends in Alicante and climb with Allison and my old climbing buddy Ricardo!!
-climb with another friend in Cartagena. Wheee!! So much climbing!
-revisit my favorite city: Granada. Ah, Alhambra, how glad I’ll be to wonder at your hispanomuslim architecture once again!
Jan 10 – Allison flies out from Sevilla and I head south.
Mid-Jan – Morocco! Think burber villages, the Casablanca Mosque, Roman ruins, Fez, and the Atlas mountains! Yeah’ya!
Jan 23 – go back up north to catch my flight out of Sevilla, Spain.
And then…home sweet home!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Forget the gym! I have sand dunes! And oh, how much joy can be contained in one mountainous heap of sand! I race up them, feeling my feet sink deep into the orangey powder and knowing that for every three steps forward I sink two steps back. Atop my sand castle, I grin, overlooking a vast landscape of golden swells and furrows and, steeply below me, the neat row of squat tents that compose our humble abodes for the coming night. And now for the real adrenaline rush: 1…2…3! And there I go whishhhing and bounding down that slope with a spray of sand at my heels and the late-afternoon glow on my face. Do that three times in a row, transporting cameras up and down on each occasion, and suddenly you know your calf muscles and abs much more intimately than you ever did before! But don’t wear yourself out too much now; you’ll need those ab muscles when you perch yourself upon a camel -- overlooking the desert at sunset. Yum! Life has seldomly been so sweet, and the stars are yet to come.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My last week in flash format:
Distractableness.
Photo-editing procrastination.
Booking flights craziness.
DESERT!!!
Buckle down baby;
its time to pump out those
final essays – in French.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My timeline:
Dec 20 – flight to Portugal
- a week traveling down the coast with Allison and her friend Dorothy.
-“I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams!”
Dec 28 – hop a flight to Madrid
-New Years in Madrid, surrounded by museums, cathedrals, and culture.
-Dorothy flies home
Early January – visit friends in Alicante and climb with Allison and my old climbing buddy Ricardo!!
-climb with another friend in Cartagena. Wheee!! So much climbing!
-revisit my favorite city: Granada. Ah, Alhambra, how glad I’ll be to wonder at your hispanomuslim architecture once again!
Jan 10 – Allison flies out from Sevilla and I head south.
Mid-Jan – Morocco! Think burber villages, the Casablanca Mosque, Roman ruins, Fez, and the Atlas mountains! Yeah’ya!
Jan 23 – go back up north to catch my flight out of Sevilla, Spain.
And then…home sweet home!
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Of Turkeys and Sheep
He took a mouton out of his trunk. The taxi man. He hoisted a sheep, out of the back of his cab, with the help of another man. An absurd kidnapping scene, to day the least; the mouton, feet bound, finds itself returned to daylight, released into a strange place. It looks around, it blinks, it spits, and it is led within the house to a certain fate. Oh yes, the fate of this sheep and the multitude of sheep that are mulling their way through crowds and holding up herds of cars has been writ for millennia. Their destiny has been foretold ever since Allah spared Abraham’s son, Ishmael, from a bloody, sacrificial end by inserting a goat into the scene to take his place. Thus, we all replay the drama year after year, killing sheep after sheep (after sheep after sheep) and eating them all up with great satisfaction. Oh yes, ‘tis the day before Tabaski and everyone’s preparing. But we Americans have another animal on our minds…
We depart from the kidnapping scene by cab, arriving at another dusty neighborhood wherein we meander in search of our fellow tubabs. And voila! Up some flights of steps we find ourselveswelcomed into a little haven of American joy. It doesn’t take long for the dishes to squish themselves onto the table -mashed potatoes, stuffing, and even cranberry sauce all cuddled there as contentedly as the forty-something pairs of eyes that oogle them in anticipation. Thursday had been a mildly lonely day for the most of us; a slightly empty feeling overtook this group of students as the Thanksgiving sun set on another dinner of ceebu yapp. But Friday’s sun set over a meal so happily shared and thankfully appreciated that the roast chicken we all shared may as well have been a true turkey!
So, stuffed to the brim we all went to bed, knowing that we’d be equally full by mid-day the day after. Oh yes, Tabaski was marching in right after Thanksgiving, and no amount of stomach distention would be able to convince our Senegalese mothers that we’d had enough xar! Most Senegalese woke at dawn to head for the mosques before doing the deed. Shortly thereafter, blood flowed freely and the grills lit up as the men undertook a long and arduous task involving entrails and the like while the women started cooking up that meat just as fast as they could! I’m sad to say that I missed the actual killing of the sheep on that fateful day. By the time I woke up, showered, and made my way over to a friend’s house, because my particular Catholic family doesn’t happen to do mouton slaughtering for Tabaski, all them there sheep had kicked the bucket and I was only able to eye the dismembered animal as it awaited the grill. Oh well. I did eat it, which was delicious, but my vegetarian stomach didn’t much appreciate that afterward. As the Senegalese say, the sheep butted me in the stomach this tabaski! But only a little bit. Touti rekk!
After the food coma, the children took to the streets in their fine new boubous, confidently extending their hands with the expectation that a few coins or treats would find their way into those mocha palms. Megan and I took a walk to help settle the mouton and took to a little Hansel and Gretel adventure, following a trail of blood droplets in what some might consider a morbid way but which we conceived of as a great opportunity to make up a saga about the sheep’s final battles; look! There’s where the three men started the journey with the goat. And that there, that’s indication of the first battle, wherein the sheep took down the first man but couldn’t escape the other two. And there, the sheep managed to overcome the second man! It looks like he bit him hard! And there, a bird tried to come to the rescue but the last man took down the bird instead! And then, voila! The sheep killed the last man and, licking his wounds, made a U-y in the middle of the dirt road... and headed back the way he came? Hmmm. Our little trail has turned itself back around. Did somebody forget their keys or something? Oh well! The goat saga completed, we continue with our little promenade.
I definitely spent the rest of my Tabaski watching Dirty Dancing for the first time, which I absolutely adored, and then chillaxing at another friend’s house playing cards and chatting about teenage relationships! The chilling was the most Senegalese thing I’ve ever done, but the cards and the conversation we’re definitely in the American style!
Well, the weekend of turkeys and sheep came to a close just in time for a week full of homework to kick into gear with final papers rearing their grisly heads on the horizon. But in spite of those beastly papers, I have plans to go to the desert next weekend to see the dunes. I had better be productive for the time being!
Hugs and love,
Jocelyn
We depart from the kidnapping scene by cab, arriving at another dusty neighborhood wherein we meander in search of our fellow tubabs. And voila! Up some flights of steps we find ourselveswelcomed into a little haven of American joy. It doesn’t take long for the dishes to squish themselves onto the table -mashed potatoes, stuffing, and even cranberry sauce all cuddled there as contentedly as the forty-something pairs of eyes that oogle them in anticipation. Thursday had been a mildly lonely day for the most of us; a slightly empty feeling overtook this group of students as the Thanksgiving sun set on another dinner of ceebu yapp. But Friday’s sun set over a meal so happily shared and thankfully appreciated that the roast chicken we all shared may as well have been a true turkey!
So, stuffed to the brim we all went to bed, knowing that we’d be equally full by mid-day the day after. Oh yes, Tabaski was marching in right after Thanksgiving, and no amount of stomach distention would be able to convince our Senegalese mothers that we’d had enough xar! Most Senegalese woke at dawn to head for the mosques before doing the deed. Shortly thereafter, blood flowed freely and the grills lit up as the men undertook a long and arduous task involving entrails and the like while the women started cooking up that meat just as fast as they could! I’m sad to say that I missed the actual killing of the sheep on that fateful day. By the time I woke up, showered, and made my way over to a friend’s house, because my particular Catholic family doesn’t happen to do mouton slaughtering for Tabaski, all them there sheep had kicked the bucket and I was only able to eye the dismembered animal as it awaited the grill. Oh well. I did eat it, which was delicious, but my vegetarian stomach didn’t much appreciate that afterward. As the Senegalese say, the sheep butted me in the stomach this tabaski! But only a little bit. Touti rekk!
After the food coma, the children took to the streets in their fine new boubous, confidently extending their hands with the expectation that a few coins or treats would find their way into those mocha palms. Megan and I took a walk to help settle the mouton and took to a little Hansel and Gretel adventure, following a trail of blood droplets in what some might consider a morbid way but which we conceived of as a great opportunity to make up a saga about the sheep’s final battles; look! There’s where the three men started the journey with the goat. And that there, that’s indication of the first battle, wherein the sheep took down the first man but couldn’t escape the other two. And there, the sheep managed to overcome the second man! It looks like he bit him hard! And there, a bird tried to come to the rescue but the last man took down the bird instead! And then, voila! The sheep killed the last man and, licking his wounds, made a U-y in the middle of the dirt road... and headed back the way he came? Hmmm. Our little trail has turned itself back around. Did somebody forget their keys or something? Oh well! The goat saga completed, we continue with our little promenade.
I definitely spent the rest of my Tabaski watching Dirty Dancing for the first time, which I absolutely adored, and then chillaxing at another friend’s house playing cards and chatting about teenage relationships! The chilling was the most Senegalese thing I’ve ever done, but the cards and the conversation we’re definitely in the American style!
Well, the weekend of turkeys and sheep came to a close just in time for a week full of homework to kick into gear with final papers rearing their grisly heads on the horizon. But in spite of those beastly papers, I have plans to go to the desert next weekend to see the dunes. I had better be productive for the time being!
Hugs and love,
Jocelyn
Sunday, November 15, 2009
French Relations to West Africa
Below is my response to a New York Times article pertaining to French relations to countries in the West African region. Voila the link to the article:
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2009%2F11%2F13%2Fworld%2Fafrica%2F13francophone.html%3F_r%3D1%26ref%3Dglobal-home&h=1281af9a255a6533299950b72c573095
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2009%2F11%2F13%2Fworld%2Fafrica%2F13francophone.html%3F_r%3D1%26ref%3Dglobal-home&h=1281af9a255a6533299950b72c573095
This is quite an interesting article. It is true that there are pervasive anti-french sentiments throughout this region and, within Dakar itself, the sense of outsiders imposing themselves here extends to all westerners. For example, in a conversation with a family friend yesterday, he lamented with annoyance that, "the city seems to be going to the tubabs" in reference to the rich neighborhoods that are "over-run" by foreigners.
The French have maintained significant control over this region thanks to the colonial period when they sowed the seeds of dependence between themselves and the local governments, economies, and infastructures. In other words, rather than investing in the infastructure in a way that would encourage autonomy and sustainability, the French implemented cash crops and export-oriented economic systems that benefit foreigners and harm the locals. In Senegal, this manifests in a massive encouragement and export of peanuts that are refined into oil and re-imported to Senegal at a higher price than they were first exported for. Thus, the local economy is drained outwardly and France reaps the benefits.
My issue with this article, in spite of its accuracy concerning the French-West African relations at present, is its presentation of the US as a good example, refraining from maintaining relations with certain corrupt governments. However, the US is just as complicit within these abusive systems that create West African dependence on "western powers" thanks to our close ties to the IMF and World Bank. These two organisations are closely tied to the US goverment and they have conscientiously sapped local west-african economies through their Structural Adjustment Policies of the last 40 years. In short, these policies require the realocation of resources from infrastructure and education to debt repayement, which goes straight into the pockets of rich nations in an endless spiral due to the unfair terms of this debt. So, villifying the French without implicating the US within the abuses of this region is misleading.
Although the locals are not altogether fond of the remnants of the French colonial system, their imaginations are captured by the wealth associated with France and particularly the US. So, they want to partake of this richness and be your friend, because you represent money and opportunity, but they carry chagrin simultaneously. Many Senegalese still refuse to send their children to french-speaking schools. But this is a predictable legacy of colonialism.
As for the political situation, Senegal doesn't fit into the same mold as the other countries of the region because, in 2000, the French-backed former-president was ousted peacefully in favor of Abdoulaye Wade. So, their was a semblance of independence and democracy around the turn of the century, but since then it has become clear that Wade is infringing on the democratic nature of the constitution by extending his term limits. Likewise, he is maintaining close bonds with European powers, although I'm not informed enough to know whether this extends to the French.
Well, let me know if you have any questions about what I've written or about the situation in general!
~Jocelyn
Friday, November 13, 2009
Smacking Peanuts
Smack! The stick comes down hard and so gratifyingly! Smack! The hot sun melts the fatigue from hours of lazing about right out of my pores. Again, smack! And that stick hits that pile of dried peanut plants once more! I get into a rhythm with the men beside me, and someone lets out an “eeey!” signifying the start of a song. “Faster!” they cry, challenging me to keep pace with their well-toned arms. Smack!...Smack!...Smack! Smack! Smack! And those peanut plants finally start loosening up, breaking into pieces. I’m jolting those peanuts right off of their roots, chopping up these hay-colored stocks with the sheer “thwat!” of my hooked stick. Swatting that stick down is like a particularly good twirl on the dance floor, or the second-to-last move on a long and gratifying climb that really got your heart pumping! Never mind that Victoria and I are the best entertainment these men have ever seen; two white tubabs farming! And not just farming, but out in the fields doing men’s work! But the joy was not meant to last; I looked down at my hands during a slight reprieve and was shocked to perceive some very unhappy skin trying to abandon my right hand. “Eh! See here, skin!” I exclaim. “We’re only fifteen-minutes into this thrilling experience, and here you are jumping boat! None of that now!” But what was done was done, so I stuck out my blistered hands to show the men, explaining that my muscles were in no way tired –that it was my soft hands that were the problem. We can’t have them thinking that tubab women are wimps, or anything! I mean, Victoria had already made her escape under the pretext of seeking her camera, so I had to represent!
Well, the glorious peanut smacking having come to a tragic close, we moved on to new work: peanut sifting! Covered in bandaids, I took the calabash bowl in hand and learned from the local women how to hold it high over my head, shaking it just enough so that its contents would tumble out slowly, allowing the wind to carry away the lighter stalks as the peanuts and dirt clods fell straight down. The next step was to pick out all of those dirt clods from the piles of peanuts and resift by hand the stalks that didn’t separate out. I watched as, day by day and calabash by calabash, that mountainous pile of pre-chopped peanut plants dwindled and reformed into heaps of peanuts and horse food side-by-side.
“Wait! Jocelyn, what were you doing out on a peanut field playing around with a stick and picking up dirt clods? We thought you were in the middles of a bustling metropolis with taxis everywhere and pollution galore!” And so I was, before my program sent us all out to experience a different, somewhat more rural side of life in Senegal. I found myself in a sept place trundling two hours down the road to…well, this little place! The sign read “Louly Ngogom” and my resident host dad, Doudou, assured me that six thousand inhabitants make up this sprawling village. We were there for the week, shacked up with Chris, a very fun Peace Corps volunteer, amidst a host family composed of Doudou, his two wives, their various kids, an aunt, some cousins, and several other kids who somehow managed to find themselves in the mix. They were a rowdy bunch, those kids, but they were also wonderfully uninhibited and curious when it came to us. They would ask us questions in Serer and we’d try out a few words in that language before resorting to our rudimentary Wolof and, in extreme cases, throwing out a French phrase haphazardly.
In spite of the language barrier, we all got along just fine, teaching them hopscotch and sharing in the uber-sugary ataya tea that Wally brewed after lunch each day. I wish I could have brought Wally back to Dakar with us because he had a great energy and kind, open eyes; I wonder what my host family would have said if I unloaded a 14-year-old from the cab saying, “Hey host mom! Welcome home your new host son, Wally! He’s here to keep me company!” You know, with eleven people living in the house, what’s one more?!
I spent those days living at a slower pace, with nowhere to be at any given time and with a watch that seemed rather decorative and hardly utile. I breathed slowly, witnessing suns setting over rosy millet fields and stout but stately baobab trees, reveling in moons rising over communal bowls of peanuts being shelled by chattering kin. How I adored sitting about the peanut bowls with spoon in hand, listening to the crinkling, popping sound of the shells coming open and thinking of how that sound, combined with the smoky smell of the charcoal cookers, gave the impression of sitting about a late night campfire. All that was missing were the smores!
At the close of this leisurely but peanut-packed week, I found my way back to this city with the odd sentiment that I was returning home, but now quite. Even if the people embrace me by pulling me into their folds by giving my own Wolof name, Ramatulaye or Rama for short, I’m always aware of the strangeness of my culture in this place. But I settle in, little by little. And the new English girl living in our house reminds me of how far I’ve come. There’s nothing like warning the new girl about toilet-flushing to make you feel like you’re in the know!
Peace and love,
Jocelyn
PS If you ever wonder what exchange students in Dakar spend 80% of their time talking about, its food. Smores, homemade-meals in the US, ceebu jen versus maffe in Dakar, that amazing peanut rice in Kedougou, peanutbutter, thanksgiving turkey, café touba, candy bars, mangoes, fruit, and cookies…I’ve had multiple conversations about all of these items, and I’m not the only one!
Well, the glorious peanut smacking having come to a tragic close, we moved on to new work: peanut sifting! Covered in bandaids, I took the calabash bowl in hand and learned from the local women how to hold it high over my head, shaking it just enough so that its contents would tumble out slowly, allowing the wind to carry away the lighter stalks as the peanuts and dirt clods fell straight down. The next step was to pick out all of those dirt clods from the piles of peanuts and resift by hand the stalks that didn’t separate out. I watched as, day by day and calabash by calabash, that mountainous pile of pre-chopped peanut plants dwindled and reformed into heaps of peanuts and horse food side-by-side.
“Wait! Jocelyn, what were you doing out on a peanut field playing around with a stick and picking up dirt clods? We thought you were in the middles of a bustling metropolis with taxis everywhere and pollution galore!” And so I was, before my program sent us all out to experience a different, somewhat more rural side of life in Senegal. I found myself in a sept place trundling two hours down the road to…well, this little place! The sign read “Louly Ngogom” and my resident host dad, Doudou, assured me that six thousand inhabitants make up this sprawling village. We were there for the week, shacked up with Chris, a very fun Peace Corps volunteer, amidst a host family composed of Doudou, his two wives, their various kids, an aunt, some cousins, and several other kids who somehow managed to find themselves in the mix. They were a rowdy bunch, those kids, but they were also wonderfully uninhibited and curious when it came to us. They would ask us questions in Serer and we’d try out a few words in that language before resorting to our rudimentary Wolof and, in extreme cases, throwing out a French phrase haphazardly.
In spite of the language barrier, we all got along just fine, teaching them hopscotch and sharing in the uber-sugary ataya tea that Wally brewed after lunch each day. I wish I could have brought Wally back to Dakar with us because he had a great energy and kind, open eyes; I wonder what my host family would have said if I unloaded a 14-year-old from the cab saying, “Hey host mom! Welcome home your new host son, Wally! He’s here to keep me company!” You know, with eleven people living in the house, what’s one more?!
I spent those days living at a slower pace, with nowhere to be at any given time and with a watch that seemed rather decorative and hardly utile. I breathed slowly, witnessing suns setting over rosy millet fields and stout but stately baobab trees, reveling in moons rising over communal bowls of peanuts being shelled by chattering kin. How I adored sitting about the peanut bowls with spoon in hand, listening to the crinkling, popping sound of the shells coming open and thinking of how that sound, combined with the smoky smell of the charcoal cookers, gave the impression of sitting about a late night campfire. All that was missing were the smores!
At the close of this leisurely but peanut-packed week, I found my way back to this city with the odd sentiment that I was returning home, but now quite. Even if the people embrace me by pulling me into their folds by giving my own Wolof name, Ramatulaye or Rama for short, I’m always aware of the strangeness of my culture in this place. But I settle in, little by little. And the new English girl living in our house reminds me of how far I’ve come. There’s nothing like warning the new girl about toilet-flushing to make you feel like you’re in the know!
Peace and love,
Jocelyn
PS If you ever wonder what exchange students in Dakar spend 80% of their time talking about, its food. Smores, homemade-meals in the US, ceebu jen versus maffe in Dakar, that amazing peanut rice in Kedougou, peanutbutter, thanksgiving turkey, café touba, candy bars, mangoes, fruit, and cookies…I’ve had multiple conversations about all of these items, and I’m not the only one!
Thursday, November 12, 2009
What is this “community” of which you speak?!
We talk about individualistic societies and communitarian societies, but what does it mean to be in a communitarian society on a day-to-day basis? Well, in Senegal the communal nature of society manifests itself in myriad ways: It can be found in the lengthy greetings that are addressed to every acquaintance encountered on the street, the “salaamaalekum”s and the “how’s your morning, work, affaires, family, mother, cousin, aunt, and husband…?”s. Recognizing everyone around you is critical and saying “I don’t know you” is a paramount insult indicating that you feel you owe that person nothing, which makes no sense since everyone is interdependent and can’t help but owe everything to their community.
Emphasis on community is in the little things; the way that everyone seems to remember everyone else’s names with ease regardless of how occasionally they may interact with them. In the fact that we eat around a single bowl, unified by our close proximity and equal sharing. In the way that this sharing extends into every nook and cranny of life where any food at hand is first offered to anyone close at hand before being tasted and even a lollypop can make the rounds
But then there are the big things, like how households include the entire extended family and the relationships between everyone is critical. Even the language reflects this; in Wolof, for example, they distinguish between your father’s sister (bajjan), your mother’s sister (tataa), and your uncle’s wife (yumpaañ), all of which we refer to as simply, “aunt.” It does not suffice to overlook the details of how one person relates to another. You are not merely an individual with your own credits under your belt but rather a thread in a greater tapestry, intertwined most closely with your kin and ancestors but reaching out to and depending on the entire society to sustain you and imbue you with identity.
Why would you live alone when you could share in the joys of life with your parents, children, in-laws, and cousins all together? Why would you pass by a smiling face with only a brief wave and a “hi” when you could pause to speak with them, thereby recognizing their import role within the community and, by extension, their entire family, network of friends, and ancestry? Why would you hoard a candybar all to yourself when you could share one bite with every person in the room and truly relish the single morsel saved for yourself beside the appreciative smiles of the community you have knit around you?
~Jocelyn
PS This glowing depiction does, of course, overlook those instances where personal interests win-out over the golden standard of sharing, but the general custom is present none-the-less. Granted, communal cultures bring with them their own host of problems, just the same as individualistic cultures such as our own. The giving and sharing nature of Senegalese culture combined with the required alms-giving in Islam can lead to people falling into dependence on others easily, passively expecting to receive rather than working to pull their own weight within society. So, every society has its own problems, regardless of whether it is individualistic or communal, but the key is to understanding the merits and weaknesses of both so as to idealize or vilify neither.
Emphasis on community is in the little things; the way that everyone seems to remember everyone else’s names with ease regardless of how occasionally they may interact with them. In the fact that we eat around a single bowl, unified by our close proximity and equal sharing. In the way that this sharing extends into every nook and cranny of life where any food at hand is first offered to anyone close at hand before being tasted and even a lollypop can make the rounds
But then there are the big things, like how households include the entire extended family and the relationships between everyone is critical. Even the language reflects this; in Wolof, for example, they distinguish between your father’s sister (bajjan), your mother’s sister (tataa), and your uncle’s wife (yumpaañ), all of which we refer to as simply, “aunt.” It does not suffice to overlook the details of how one person relates to another. You are not merely an individual with your own credits under your belt but rather a thread in a greater tapestry, intertwined most closely with your kin and ancestors but reaching out to and depending on the entire society to sustain you and imbue you with identity.
Why would you live alone when you could share in the joys of life with your parents, children, in-laws, and cousins all together? Why would you pass by a smiling face with only a brief wave and a “hi” when you could pause to speak with them, thereby recognizing their import role within the community and, by extension, their entire family, network of friends, and ancestry? Why would you hoard a candybar all to yourself when you could share one bite with every person in the room and truly relish the single morsel saved for yourself beside the appreciative smiles of the community you have knit around you?
~Jocelyn
PS This glowing depiction does, of course, overlook those instances where personal interests win-out over the golden standard of sharing, but the general custom is present none-the-less. Granted, communal cultures bring with them their own host of problems, just the same as individualistic cultures such as our own. The giving and sharing nature of Senegalese culture combined with the required alms-giving in Islam can lead to people falling into dependence on others easily, passively expecting to receive rather than working to pull their own weight within society. So, every society has its own problems, regardless of whether it is individualistic or communal, but the key is to understanding the merits and weaknesses of both so as to idealize or vilify neither.
Photos! Louly Ngogom, peanut smacking, and baobabs.
The women loved seeing the pictures and videos we took of them. :-) Chris is the resident Peace Corps volunteer and Victoria is the other student from my program who lived in Louly Ngogom with me. (PS I did her hair. :-D)
The emblem of Senegal: baobab trees.
Me eating freshly roasted peanuts out in the fields. Can you tell that they were charcoal-black?! Yum! This is the way they were meant to be!
Sifting peanuts, with a little help from the wind.
The men out smacking peanuts.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Sipping on sunshine and bathing in moonlight: a day that lulls along
The moon is glorious tonight. I would that I were scribbling on notepaper in place of my laptop so that I could feel the moon’s full, round beams reflecting off the page. Alas, the comforting violet hues of the evening breeze and the shimmering moonlight are pierced by this electronic’s false glow. But the silhouettes of swaying trees and flapping laundry still create a lovely ambiance for reflection here atop the mosaic-tiled terrace. I could bathe in the thoughtfulness of this moon’s radiance, letting her swallow me whole and birth me into the realm of dreams and wistfulness; such is the evening.
I feel pensive, slow, bittersweet, and content. The day rolls off of me like a heavy cloak sinking slowly to the floor: pregnant with smooth strolls through hot afternoons, meandering from one swatch of shade to another. Humming would overtake me at times, adding a spring and a swish to my step, as I would swing my bag of fresh veggies around my wrist. It is on walks such as these that time lolls contentedly, like a child wandering through pastures with nowhere to be until dinner. I’m on my way to the post office to leave a letter and the lovely Senegalese woman on the stamps winks at me from her corner down in the depths of my bag. I see these various men now, sitting guard or watching passersby, and I will see them on the way back. We are each looking at the other, but only when they aren’t looking. The more forward ones will hiss at me, to grab at my attention, or make kissing sounds, but there are only a few with energy enough to make such attempts on this heat-laden afternoon. With nowhere in particular to be and nothing pressing at hand, my American pace has fallen into nothingness and my vibe slows to match the pace of this place. If I walk too quickly, strangers make note of it out loud, encouraging me to go ndank, ndake, to take is easy. But I don’t stand out today, or not anymore than a fair-skinned, scarf-wearing, yogurt-bearing girl ever does. I suck my yogurt out of the corner of its plastic sack, appreciating the creaminess and reflecting on how my gratification derived from this particular form of yogurt must go straight back to the joys of infanthood. I must face it; in spite of my Senegalese pace, I stand out distinctly because a local can never be seen walking and eating simultaneously. Ah well, at least I’m closer to the Senegalese demeanor than usual with my respectfully relaxed steps.
I am quite different now from how I was when I first arrived, or my perception has changed at any rate. I no longer perceive the folks clad in waxed fabric as being wrapped in plastic tablecloths, which is excellent considering the popularity of this form of clothing for formalwear. I even find these garments beautiful and have to remind myself at the large fabric market that no, there is no way I’ll be able to pull off that shinny fabric in the States. The hand washing and communal eating bowls seem downright normal these days and I no longer turn when I see a few goats lolloping around at the corner of a busy intersection. Perhaps best of all, I can grab a cab for within 200cfa, or forty cents, of the price I want and chat in broken Wolof with the cab driver the whole way there. Sometimes my haphazard responses to their inquiries fool them into thinking I actually speak Wolof, but when the conversations seldomly stray from the topics of origin, studies, and marriage, it’s hard to go wrong.
But the warm wanderings of the day are taking their toll and I’m fading into sleepiness. Tomorrow morning I leave for the small village Louly Ngogom without my laptop or the internet. Thus, you will not read this until I come back from that voyage and post it. By then, I’m sure I’ll have much more to share.
Hugs and love,
Jocelyn
I feel pensive, slow, bittersweet, and content. The day rolls off of me like a heavy cloak sinking slowly to the floor: pregnant with smooth strolls through hot afternoons, meandering from one swatch of shade to another. Humming would overtake me at times, adding a spring and a swish to my step, as I would swing my bag of fresh veggies around my wrist. It is on walks such as these that time lolls contentedly, like a child wandering through pastures with nowhere to be until dinner. I’m on my way to the post office to leave a letter and the lovely Senegalese woman on the stamps winks at me from her corner down in the depths of my bag. I see these various men now, sitting guard or watching passersby, and I will see them on the way back. We are each looking at the other, but only when they aren’t looking. The more forward ones will hiss at me, to grab at my attention, or make kissing sounds, but there are only a few with energy enough to make such attempts on this heat-laden afternoon. With nowhere in particular to be and nothing pressing at hand, my American pace has fallen into nothingness and my vibe slows to match the pace of this place. If I walk too quickly, strangers make note of it out loud, encouraging me to go ndank, ndake, to take is easy. But I don’t stand out today, or not anymore than a fair-skinned, scarf-wearing, yogurt-bearing girl ever does. I suck my yogurt out of the corner of its plastic sack, appreciating the creaminess and reflecting on how my gratification derived from this particular form of yogurt must go straight back to the joys of infanthood. I must face it; in spite of my Senegalese pace, I stand out distinctly because a local can never be seen walking and eating simultaneously. Ah well, at least I’m closer to the Senegalese demeanor than usual with my respectfully relaxed steps.
I am quite different now from how I was when I first arrived, or my perception has changed at any rate. I no longer perceive the folks clad in waxed fabric as being wrapped in plastic tablecloths, which is excellent considering the popularity of this form of clothing for formalwear. I even find these garments beautiful and have to remind myself at the large fabric market that no, there is no way I’ll be able to pull off that shinny fabric in the States. The hand washing and communal eating bowls seem downright normal these days and I no longer turn when I see a few goats lolloping around at the corner of a busy intersection. Perhaps best of all, I can grab a cab for within 200cfa, or forty cents, of the price I want and chat in broken Wolof with the cab driver the whole way there. Sometimes my haphazard responses to their inquiries fool them into thinking I actually speak Wolof, but when the conversations seldomly stray from the topics of origin, studies, and marriage, it’s hard to go wrong.
But the warm wanderings of the day are taking their toll and I’m fading into sleepiness. Tomorrow morning I leave for the small village Louly Ngogom without my laptop or the internet. Thus, you will not read this until I come back from that voyage and post it. By then, I’m sure I’ll have much more to share.
Hugs and love,
Jocelyn
Photos! Village life in Louly Ngogom
Me and a host of children from the family I lived with for this last week in Louly Ngogom.
Meet Jibi! This little tyke is the greatest. Not only is his smile absolutely glorious, but he eats dirt and has the roundest belly I've ever seen on a toddler. I have to wonder if the last two tidbits are related, or if he's got something more serious going on with his stomach.
Meet Oussmane the adorable troubl-maker in the foreground with Abdoul on his tail. Abdoul is the sweetest of the kids, and we had an ongoing joke that he's promised to Victoria, the other student staying in this family with me. She'll have to wait a couple years, of course! When asked, Abdoul said that, no, he's not engaged to me, that I'm engaged to Bass, one of the other little kids depicted below. :-) This is my second senegalese husband, having met the first one down in Dindenfelo on my last trip!
Meet Bas -my fiance. :-) He's carrying the tea cooker on his head.
A few girls from the village.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Insights through a Facebook Convo with my Sis
This is an ongoing conversation I've been having with my sister, Maryellen, on facebook. I thought some of you might be interested in my responses to her questions. I love you MaryEllen!
Maryellen: (asks me about school)
Me: My school is actually really easy. Sure, its in French, but I can speak French pretty easily now and I don't have to write too much. Writing in Fench is definitely more work. But they purposefully don't give us very much homework so that we can do a lot of learning outside of the classroom -on the street with the people. They know that we want to have time to learn about Senegalese culture. :-)
Maryellen: Thats good, whats the other launage your learning????
Me: Wolof. That's the language I'm learning. For a long time nobody ever wrote in Wolof. They only ever spoke it, but in the last couple hundred years it has been turned into a written language also. Its fun because its completely different from english, spanish, and french, which all have latin roots. Wolof uses some french words and some arabic words, but otherwise it has African roots. :-) I like it.
Maryellen: Thats cool :D does it sound really different? You'll have to speak it for me! I wanna hear it now. [...] So how are you? Like how is it when your just at home with your family?
Me: Well, I'm doing pretty well. At home with my host family, I'm constantly having to be careful not to do something that will offend them. Like, when they're eating around the communal bowl, I can't lean over to check and see if there is meat in the dish to see if I'm supposed to join them or if I should wait for another plate to be brought out for me that is vegetarian. Its hard figuring out what is expected and what is inappropriate, but when I remember to laugh at myself and joke along with the others, its a lot of fun. My host brother, LouLou, likes to tease me and joke around. Since I had a run-in with my family on Thursday about food and I mentioned that I was just checking to see if the communal bowl had protein, he will joke to me every meal, "so, is there enough protein on your plate?" or, "ooh, yum! look, its protein!" They just don't understand why I would be vegetarian, but I laugh with them because I understand that they're just playing. My host mom is nice, but when she gives suggestions it sounds like she's angry and yelling at you, so I have to remind myself every time she gets like that that she's not mad -its just her way of talking. A lot of the host mom's are like that here; its the culture. There are two two-year-olds who are constantly playing and laughing and crying and getting into trouble. I love them so much! We play all sorts of games together. There's also another host student here, Britta, from the US and she's really sweet, but we both do our own thing. Its good because that way we don't spend all our time talking in english together at home and, instead, are able to practice our French with the family. But she has a lot of fun playing with the kids, too. There are always a lot of people around. There are about 10 people currently living in our house and we'll usually have a few guests drop by for every meal. Sometimes, there'll be 15 of us eating together, and that's not weird here. Family is very important here, so my host mom lives with her grown children and their kids, the two-year-olds, and a couple of maids who do a lot of cleaning and make the meals with my host mom and sister. But my cousin Assane is my favorite because he helped me put up a mosquito net over my bed and laughs with me and is easier to talk to.
Maryellen: So your family seems nice! :D I wish I could meet them sometime. Why arent you supposed to lean over and see what if the dish has meat or not? So how much time do you spend at home and at school? Do all the kids and teens go to school everyday? And is there anyone my age in your host family? Do most people in Senegal go to college? What does your family do for a living? Do you have to do chores and what do you guys do for fun? -- Haha, that was a lot of questions :D
Me: I'm not supposed to lean over the dish because its considered rude. They expect me to wait until I'm called to eat and not be nosy about what everybody else is eating.
I spend a couple hours every morning at school before coming come for lunch for an hour or so. Then I go back to school again until 4:30 or 6:30 pm, depending on the day. I usually stay at school later to do homework and take advantage of the internet connection. Then I get home in time for dinner at 8:30. On the weekends, I go out and do different activities, but I hang out at home sometimes, either playing with the kids or talking with my family or doing homework. So, I spend a lot more time a school than at home.
Most all kids and teenagers go to school monday through friday, but there is a whole bunch of kids who live on the streets. They are called talibe and they beg because they have no parents taking care of them. Its complicated, but basically there is a fake religious leader called a marabout who is supposed to be taking care of them and teaching them the Coran, but instead of having the kids beg only around meal times and then calling them back to study, like they would have done in the villages in the past, he just takes advantage of the kids by making them bring back money to him in the evening. And they don't learn about their religion. Its sad. As for other kids, some of them work instead of going to school and even those who do go to school are sometimes in classes with 100 students for one teacher. The education system here is in a really bad state.
Nope, there is nobody your age in my family.
No, very few people are able to go to college. And even if they do go to college, the education is not as good as ours because the professors keep on going on strike because the government doesn't pay them regularly like its supposed to. The government doesn't work very well because it's corrupt. The politicians are greedy and the president is constantly changing the constitution so that he can have more power.
My host mom is retired. My host brother works at a bank and my host sisters stay at home and raise the kids. My host cousin is out of work, but that's pretty normal. 50% of the population here has no formal job. Many of those people work "informally" by selling fruit or books or towels or just about anything on the street, but a lot of those people just have no job. Its really troubling.
I don't have any chores because they kinda think of me as a guest and we have two maids. I take my clothes downstairs every wednesday so that the maids can handwash it all, hang it up to dry on the clothes lines to dry, and iron it before giving it back. My host mom will start cooking lunch at 10am in order to serve it at 1:30pm and the second maid is constantly sweeping with this little hand-held broom made of long, whispy bristles and scrubbing. So, there's a lot to be done, but I just keep my own room clean and, lately, have started washing my own bowl and spoon on the tub. The maids laughed when they saw me doing that for the first time, but I do it anyway because I know they like it and it makes me feel better.
For fun, I go surfing, talk to mom and dad on skype, go to the market with my friends, hang out and talk with my senegalese friend, make little trips out of the city, run errands, go to the beach... But my host brother and most other people go out clubbing on the weekends. We also go to concerts and other cultural events sometimes.
...
Maryellen: (asks me about school)
Me: My school is actually really easy. Sure, its in French, but I can speak French pretty easily now and I don't have to write too much. Writing in Fench is definitely more work. But they purposefully don't give us very much homework so that we can do a lot of learning outside of the classroom -on the street with the people. They know that we want to have time to learn about Senegalese culture. :-)
Maryellen: Thats good, whats the other launage your learning????
Me: Wolof. That's the language I'm learning. For a long time nobody ever wrote in Wolof. They only ever spoke it, but in the last couple hundred years it has been turned into a written language also. Its fun because its completely different from english, spanish, and french, which all have latin roots. Wolof uses some french words and some arabic words, but otherwise it has African roots. :-) I like it.
Maryellen: Thats cool :D does it sound really different? You'll have to speak it for me! I wanna hear it now. [...] So how are you? Like how is it when your just at home with your family?
Me: Well, I'm doing pretty well. At home with my host family, I'm constantly having to be careful not to do something that will offend them. Like, when they're eating around the communal bowl, I can't lean over to check and see if there is meat in the dish to see if I'm supposed to join them or if I should wait for another plate to be brought out for me that is vegetarian. Its hard figuring out what is expected and what is inappropriate, but when I remember to laugh at myself and joke along with the others, its a lot of fun. My host brother, LouLou, likes to tease me and joke around. Since I had a run-in with my family on Thursday about food and I mentioned that I was just checking to see if the communal bowl had protein, he will joke to me every meal, "so, is there enough protein on your plate?" or, "ooh, yum! look, its protein!" They just don't understand why I would be vegetarian, but I laugh with them because I understand that they're just playing. My host mom is nice, but when she gives suggestions it sounds like she's angry and yelling at you, so I have to remind myself every time she gets like that that she's not mad -its just her way of talking. A lot of the host mom's are like that here; its the culture. There are two two-year-olds who are constantly playing and laughing and crying and getting into trouble. I love them so much! We play all sorts of games together. There's also another host student here, Britta, from the US and she's really sweet, but we both do our own thing. Its good because that way we don't spend all our time talking in english together at home and, instead, are able to practice our French with the family. But she has a lot of fun playing with the kids, too. There are always a lot of people around. There are about 10 people currently living in our house and we'll usually have a few guests drop by for every meal. Sometimes, there'll be 15 of us eating together, and that's not weird here. Family is very important here, so my host mom lives with her grown children and their kids, the two-year-olds, and a couple of maids who do a lot of cleaning and make the meals with my host mom and sister. But my cousin Assane is my favorite because he helped me put up a mosquito net over my bed and laughs with me and is easier to talk to.
Maryellen: So your family seems nice! :D I wish I could meet them sometime. Why arent you supposed to lean over and see what if the dish has meat or not? So how much time do you spend at home and at school? Do all the kids and teens go to school everyday? And is there anyone my age in your host family? Do most people in Senegal go to college? What does your family do for a living? Do you have to do chores and what do you guys do for fun? -- Haha, that was a lot of questions :D
Me: I'm not supposed to lean over the dish because its considered rude. They expect me to wait until I'm called to eat and not be nosy about what everybody else is eating.
I spend a couple hours every morning at school before coming come for lunch for an hour or so. Then I go back to school again until 4:30 or 6:30 pm, depending on the day. I usually stay at school later to do homework and take advantage of the internet connection. Then I get home in time for dinner at 8:30. On the weekends, I go out and do different activities, but I hang out at home sometimes, either playing with the kids or talking with my family or doing homework. So, I spend a lot more time a school than at home.
Most all kids and teenagers go to school monday through friday, but there is a whole bunch of kids who live on the streets. They are called talibe and they beg because they have no parents taking care of them. Its complicated, but basically there is a fake religious leader called a marabout who is supposed to be taking care of them and teaching them the Coran, but instead of having the kids beg only around meal times and then calling them back to study, like they would have done in the villages in the past, he just takes advantage of the kids by making them bring back money to him in the evening. And they don't learn about their religion. Its sad. As for other kids, some of them work instead of going to school and even those who do go to school are sometimes in classes with 100 students for one teacher. The education system here is in a really bad state.
Nope, there is nobody your age in my family.
No, very few people are able to go to college. And even if they do go to college, the education is not as good as ours because the professors keep on going on strike because the government doesn't pay them regularly like its supposed to. The government doesn't work very well because it's corrupt. The politicians are greedy and the president is constantly changing the constitution so that he can have more power.
My host mom is retired. My host brother works at a bank and my host sisters stay at home and raise the kids. My host cousin is out of work, but that's pretty normal. 50% of the population here has no formal job. Many of those people work "informally" by selling fruit or books or towels or just about anything on the street, but a lot of those people just have no job. Its really troubling.
I don't have any chores because they kinda think of me as a guest and we have two maids. I take my clothes downstairs every wednesday so that the maids can handwash it all, hang it up to dry on the clothes lines to dry, and iron it before giving it back. My host mom will start cooking lunch at 10am in order to serve it at 1:30pm and the second maid is constantly sweeping with this little hand-held broom made of long, whispy bristles and scrubbing. So, there's a lot to be done, but I just keep my own room clean and, lately, have started washing my own bowl and spoon on the tub. The maids laughed when they saw me doing that for the first time, but I do it anyway because I know they like it and it makes me feel better.
For fun, I go surfing, talk to mom and dad on skype, go to the market with my friends, hang out and talk with my senegalese friend, make little trips out of the city, run errands, go to the beach... But my host brother and most other people go out clubbing on the weekends. We also go to concerts and other cultural events sometimes.
...
Photos! Gorée Island, etc.
Sunset view from school.
Senegalese money: the CFA franc.
Gorée Island. Known for its historical role in the transatlantic slave trade.
A view of Gorée Island from the boat.
My hand over my first communal eating bowl experience in Senegal during orientation week. Let me say, my host family doesn't tend to go all out with this sort of hand-eating. Mostly they use spoons or forks, but if they do use their right hand (never the left) then it is usually for the fish and doesn't end up being quite as messy. :-)
Photos! Obama and Toubab Diallo
Obama icecream!
Yes We Can!!! This is in the neighborhood of Wakkam.
Megan and the amazing architecture at the artist colony in Toubab Diallo.
Toubab Diallo! *chorus of angels starts singing softly*
Me batiking in toubab diallo.
Photos! Bassari Region Photos Continued...
Itty-bitty goats!
Dindenfelo. This is a fairly large village with over 15,000 inhabitants, but its oftentimes difficult to draw a clear line between nature and town.
Megan, Ed, and our fabulous guide/my savior Jibi behind a waterfall.
Alfonso the monkey!!! (and my shoulder)
Alfonso!!! :-D He's got his eye on Megan's peanuts.
Photos! Our Trip to the Bassari Region
Megan, Kate, and I standing on a mushroom termite hill with our guide, Alfar, in the area surrounding Dindenfelo.
Kate, Ed, and I taking a quick reprieve on the way up "mountain."
A custard apple tree!!! This is for you, Pintos!
The whole crew at the top of a hike: Kate, Me, Megan, and Ed.
And welcome to our life: one week absolutely crammed full of peanut-butter. Mind you, this is even more hard-core than organic! This stuff is straight up; no sugar, salt or nothin! Yum! We ate the whole tub!
Just One Week of Many: Midterms, dispensary, and malaria.
This last week midterms crept up on me. Who knew that “une devoir,” literally translated as “homework” or “a project,” would turn out to be a straight up in-class essay about the history of Islamic confreries in Senegal and their relationship to politics and the development of the modern state?! (If you’re curious about that, by the way, you know who to ask. ☺ ) Add to that a French grammar exam on Monday and you’ve got yourself a whole lot of studying going on this week for what seems like the first time this semester. It feels good to be busy in a productive way. Of course, that’s the American in me speaking out in preference of productivity from amidst a cloud of the slower-paced Senegalese life-style.
Today I went back to a health clinic dispensary that I had worked in the Friday before vacation. To sum it up in three pretty words: abscesses, worms, and screaming children. (Make that four words.) Lets just say that a lack of hands leads to even novices jumping straight into cleaning and bandaging wounds –and you haven’t seen a real wound until you’ve started working in a Dakar dispensary where awful skin infections are the least of it and only the straight up stitches are saved for the trained nurses. I brought my friend Andy and he actually fainted, which is not altogether surprising considering the combination of overwhelming smells, sights, and emotions coursing through that little white room on a muggy Friday morning. Somehow, all of us working there manage to keep up a relatively jaunty air in the reprieves between the cries and screams.
To complete an already full day of bandaging, I took part in the organizing of the CIPFEM study session this evening wherein we helped the girls with their homework and then started a Dreams and Goals Collage project that we’re going to finish next week. It went really well, but I’m surprised I’m not already conked out asleep because it was an exhausting day.
Well, this weekend is looking to be equally academic with a Wolof test coming up on Monday and a Society Culture and Society paper due on Thursday. But I’ll be balancing that out with a little visit to a local market with my friend Soraya on Saturday and some playground climbing on Sunday with my rockclimbing withdrawals buddy Megan and an on looking Senegalese friend, Hassane, who I’m sure will be laughing at us the whole time!
Megan, by the way, has just been diagnosed with malaria, which is not as serious as it sounds. She’ll just be taking some extra medications for a while so help her get over the chest pains and fever. Since she is the first person in her host family to have ever had malaria, we’re thinking of having a little celebratory cake with little mosquitoes drawn on it! Personally, I want to be part of the cake decorating committee!
I love you guys! Take care of yourselves!
Love and hugs,
Jocelyn
Today I went back to a health clinic dispensary that I had worked in the Friday before vacation. To sum it up in three pretty words: abscesses, worms, and screaming children. (Make that four words.) Lets just say that a lack of hands leads to even novices jumping straight into cleaning and bandaging wounds –and you haven’t seen a real wound until you’ve started working in a Dakar dispensary where awful skin infections are the least of it and only the straight up stitches are saved for the trained nurses. I brought my friend Andy and he actually fainted, which is not altogether surprising considering the combination of overwhelming smells, sights, and emotions coursing through that little white room on a muggy Friday morning. Somehow, all of us working there manage to keep up a relatively jaunty air in the reprieves between the cries and screams.
To complete an already full day of bandaging, I took part in the organizing of the CIPFEM study session this evening wherein we helped the girls with their homework and then started a Dreams and Goals Collage project that we’re going to finish next week. It went really well, but I’m surprised I’m not already conked out asleep because it was an exhausting day.
Well, this weekend is looking to be equally academic with a Wolof test coming up on Monday and a Society Culture and Society paper due on Thursday. But I’ll be balancing that out with a little visit to a local market with my friend Soraya on Saturday and some playground climbing on Sunday with my rockclimbing withdrawals buddy Megan and an on looking Senegalese friend, Hassane, who I’m sure will be laughing at us the whole time!
Megan, by the way, has just been diagnosed with malaria, which is not as serious as it sounds. She’ll just be taking some extra medications for a while so help her get over the chest pains and fever. Since she is the first person in her host family to have ever had malaria, we’re thinking of having a little celebratory cake with little mosquitoes drawn on it! Personally, I want to be part of the cake decorating committee!
I love you guys! Take care of yourselves!
Love and hugs,
Jocelyn
Two Twenty-year-olds: Face to Face and Worlds Apart
There we are; two twenty-year-olds who are worlds apart and face to face, looking into each others’ eyes in the health center’s treatment room. I found him face down on the wet pavement a few hours before, the rain smattering over his dark frame –plastic sandals, khaki shirt, and raggedy black backpack. Is he dead?! His trembling stills my initial alarm and my pink umbrella serves as a beacon to the passing cars that halt and unload, their passengers crowding around. No one knows if he’s epileptic and everyone is using their cell phones to call for help, but the boy starts pushing himself to standing. Stumbling and haltingly, he rises and shuffles along the sidewalk, clutching his stomach as the crowd looks on fretfully and a man in white follows him to offer a supporting arm.
I end up accompanying the boy and this man in white to the nearest health clinic where I can do little more than provide a comforting hand on the shoulder and offer my gym towel as a makeshift hat for heat-retention. By the time he is allowed to see the doctor, he has regained enough energy to be able to explain his situation in a mumble of responses; he is a Guinean and knows no one in Dakar. He has no family and no connections. It becomes apparent that he collapsed out of exhaustion because his situation of unemployment and homelessness had prevented him from eating anything for two days. The nurse enters and is not happy to see him: “I know you,” she spits out in dismay. “You were here five months ago. I know this one, doctor. Last time I paid for his medicine, food, and bus fare back to the Guinean embassy, and here he is again! What are you doing back here? Why aren’t you with your family?!”
Guinea is in a state of utter chaos and political conflict wherein the police are shooting civilians in the street in reaction to some worker strikes a month-or-so back, so it comes as no surprise that a young man, disillusioned by pain and violence, would seek refuge in neighboring Senegal, with its reputation of political stability and its flourishing capital. But what does he find upon his arrival in Dakar?: a welcoming committee of fifty-percent unemployment and utter helplessness due to his lack of familial connections in a society where relatives are everything. Nonetheless, the nurse shouts, “You go back there to your family! This nice man [in white] has paid for your food and medicine, but you can’t stay here! If you come back I’ll have to call the police!”
What’s sad is that there are many more like this young man –many more refugees from political violence and societal disfuntioning. But the nurse is right; Dakar has too many problems of its own to truly aid this multitude of displaced, impoverished people. But what is even sadder is that one of these times, there might be nobody there to find that boy, and he might never get up.
So I stand there looking at this young man, knowing that there is nothing more I can do for him, knowing that the cycle of pain within which he is submerged is one that is not easily broken. I know that, in his eyes, I am an emblem of wealth and an embodiment of his unattainable dreams. All I can do is wish him luck from the bottom of my heart and go back to what I was doing before: walking to the expensive gym and back into my world of privilege and security. I leave the clinic of distress and black skin, finding my way to an arena of a slightly lighter complexion where hip-hop music booms and ipods abound. Looking around me, I feel oddly out of place.
~Oct 23, 2009
I end up accompanying the boy and this man in white to the nearest health clinic where I can do little more than provide a comforting hand on the shoulder and offer my gym towel as a makeshift hat for heat-retention. By the time he is allowed to see the doctor, he has regained enough energy to be able to explain his situation in a mumble of responses; he is a Guinean and knows no one in Dakar. He has no family and no connections. It becomes apparent that he collapsed out of exhaustion because his situation of unemployment and homelessness had prevented him from eating anything for two days. The nurse enters and is not happy to see him: “I know you,” she spits out in dismay. “You were here five months ago. I know this one, doctor. Last time I paid for his medicine, food, and bus fare back to the Guinean embassy, and here he is again! What are you doing back here? Why aren’t you with your family?!”
Guinea is in a state of utter chaos and political conflict wherein the police are shooting civilians in the street in reaction to some worker strikes a month-or-so back, so it comes as no surprise that a young man, disillusioned by pain and violence, would seek refuge in neighboring Senegal, with its reputation of political stability and its flourishing capital. But what does he find upon his arrival in Dakar?: a welcoming committee of fifty-percent unemployment and utter helplessness due to his lack of familial connections in a society where relatives are everything. Nonetheless, the nurse shouts, “You go back there to your family! This nice man [in white] has paid for your food and medicine, but you can’t stay here! If you come back I’ll have to call the police!”
What’s sad is that there are many more like this young man –many more refugees from political violence and societal disfuntioning. But the nurse is right; Dakar has too many problems of its own to truly aid this multitude of displaced, impoverished people. But what is even sadder is that one of these times, there might be nobody there to find that boy, and he might never get up.
So I stand there looking at this young man, knowing that there is nothing more I can do for him, knowing that the cycle of pain within which he is submerged is one that is not easily broken. I know that, in his eyes, I am an emblem of wealth and an embodiment of his unattainable dreams. All I can do is wish him luck from the bottom of my heart and go back to what I was doing before: walking to the expensive gym and back into my world of privilege and security. I leave the clinic of distress and black skin, finding my way to an arena of a slightly lighter complexion where hip-hop music booms and ipods abound. Looking around me, I feel oddly out of place.
~Oct 23, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Inspiring Reflections from Heather
This wonderful post is from my friend Heather's blog. In her own words, "My name is Heather and I will be living in Jinja, Uganda with Light Gives Heat this summer, doing my senior internship and having my eyes opened to a hope that doesn't make sense." Several elements from this entry resonate with me on a very deep level. She has agreed to let me share this with you:
What Heather expresses here concerning issues of being viewed as walking money by virtue of your skin tone and nationality applies to Senegal and the entire region as well. Many of us students here have received requests for financial assistance and more than one divorce has come about between American students and locals when the issue of green cards came to the surface. Honestly, you have to wonder why you're suddenly so desirable and popular in certain social contexts; I can tell you this, its not because they appreciate my intellectual capasity, because that hardly communicates through the mild language barrier. And it can't be by dress, because I'm grungy compared to the lovely ladies dressed to the nines who stroll down the dusty streets here. No, I am tubab, and thus I am a resource.
Regarding image and expectations, it is truthfully critical to walk into any experience with the least preconceived notions as possible. If you don't, then your job is to deconstruct them on site. I did not come to Africa expecting to find happiness gurus who could maintain eternal positivity in the face of poverty, but I certainly did have a certain notion of Africa as this incredibly "different," dare I hazard the word "exotic," locale. It is wonderfully to walk down the street these days and suddenly realize that I'm on another continent because, frankly, it doesn't seem that odd 99% of the time. Its not Africans and Foreigners here; it comes down to people -a bunch of people who happen to be in the same place at the same time, striving for something in life and seeking to connect with others through the process. Sure, I constantly run up against cultural differences but, as Heather says, people are people. It is so simple and yet so profound.
* * *
Below I have included my response to Heather's entry and her reactions thereafter:
Heather:
My last sunrise in Uganda threw amber-gold watercolor onto the clouds I love.
My friend Caitlin asked me to tell her the biggest thing I am taking away from my time here in Uganda. An inordinate number of souvenirs aside, there is a lot I am bringing back in my perspectives, my desires, and even my eating habits. I have grown immensely more comfortable with the person I am and confident that that person can not only survive, but even make a positive impact in the world. I have gained an unlikely tolerance for eating large amounts of food and drinking multiple sodas in one day. (I hope that I don’t suffer from cravings for carbonated, caffeinated sugar-water when I get back. I wouldn’t be surprised if I did.) I’ve gotten used to thinking in terms of acres, dry and wet seasons, tribal politics, and selling charcoal to pay for school fees.
But Caitlin asked for the biggest thing, the single greatest impact this small, beautiful country has had on me. It is a realization that came to me within my first two weeks here, yet it has continually shifted shapes and reasserted itself in unexpected ways. The simplest manifestation is this: people are people are people. The most obvious symptoms are the ones I recognized first. People here, like people in America, like (probably) most people on Earth, need food, want to care for their children, like to have nice clothes, and either are proud of the house they own or worry about paying rent. Oh, and they like to be happy. I think the difference here might be that most Ugandans don’t seem to depend on external circumstances to make them happy as much as Americans do. They don’t feel entitled to the material goods that are supposed to “give” them happiness; they may be discontent with their standard of living, but they decide to be happy with what they have. Women decorate the half of their one room house that is partitioned off as their living room as proudly as if it were a Victorian-age parlor. Children amuse themselves to no end by transforming junk into toys; some string and an old iron become a boat to tug around, and a bicycle tire rolling along the dusty ground is fun in and of itself.
On the other side of the coin, many Ugandans are by no means content with their lifestyle, as they will bluntly tell you; expecting you, as the almighty and rich mzungu, to enable them to become as materially blessed as you are. I will never be sure whether strangers I met wanted to talk to me because I’m white, because I’m a girl, because they think I have money, or because they were just being friendly. To a lesser extent, it has been hard not to be suspicious of the true motives of friends I have made here. If I were black, or if they knew I was poor, would they be as interested in me? There is no way to separate the quality of my experience here from the color of my skin.
In this way, as well as some others, many of my expectations and subconscious idealizations about Africa in general and Uganda in particular have been shattered, leaving the familiar knowledge that people are people. People in Uganda aren’t, as I longingly imagined, poverty-stricken gurus of how to live life happily with few possessions. I held this ideal as the object of my passion, love, and desire before I came here; if the ideal isn’t true, what do I love, what am I compassionate about, what do I desire to learn? The challenge, I have realized, is to allow the picturesque to fall apart, revealing a basic, common, real-as-murram-dirt humanity. The choice is exposed: do I continue to search for the pure, simple, poor yet happy Acholi widow on whom to bestow my love and hopes for the secret of joy? or do I love reality despite its unsatisfying and disillusioning flaws? I have chosen to love. The pain I feel at the idea of leaving this place in twelve hours is all-too-real evidence of this.
The challenge of loving reality in the face of crumbling, imaginary ideals has been both reassuring and disappointing. It means that there is no secret to happiness that cannot be found in my own life, in my own culture, because no such secret lives here in Africa. At the same time, I feel let down and lost because my search for how to live in joy without material possessions has hit a dead end. I can no longer strive for asceticism as the sole standard by which I should find true joy; no such standard exists.
Yet even this disappointment contains its own hope and the seed of a new challenge. If Africa does not hold all the answers, then maybe America has a few of its own. Maybe I can live the life that I long for within my own culture and country, not longing for some ideal environment within which I can easily find true contentment. At the same time, a new obstacle faces me. As some of you might know, I have tended to be overly critical and pessimistic towards the thriving American culture of consumerism. My justification for this was the juxtaposition of my country with that of the mystically simple joy in the face of difficulty I saw in Africa. That joy has indeed proved to be mystical, though a real, imperfect joy still exists here. However, I can no longer judge myself, my friends and family, and my culture against an imaginary standard. Try though I might, I cannot pretend that America fails to be strong against the allure of materialism while Africa succeeds. Like any serious relationship, true love exists when you choose to love the reality, not the ideal. I have learned to love the reality of Uganda. The hope I have found here is to learn to love the reality of America.
Apwoyo matek, Uganda. Amari bene wubibedo icwinya kareducu. Thank you, Uganda. I love you and you will be in my heart forever.
~Heather, from her blog The Greatest of These Is Love (9/15/09)
What Heather expresses here concerning issues of being viewed as walking money by virtue of your skin tone and nationality applies to Senegal and the entire region as well. Many of us students here have received requests for financial assistance and more than one divorce has come about between American students and locals when the issue of green cards came to the surface. Honestly, you have to wonder why you're suddenly so desirable and popular in certain social contexts; I can tell you this, its not because they appreciate my intellectual capasity, because that hardly communicates through the mild language barrier. And it can't be by dress, because I'm grungy compared to the lovely ladies dressed to the nines who stroll down the dusty streets here. No, I am tubab, and thus I am a resource.
Regarding image and expectations, it is truthfully critical to walk into any experience with the least preconceived notions as possible. If you don't, then your job is to deconstruct them on site. I did not come to Africa expecting to find happiness gurus who could maintain eternal positivity in the face of poverty, but I certainly did have a certain notion of Africa as this incredibly "different," dare I hazard the word "exotic," locale. It is wonderfully to walk down the street these days and suddenly realize that I'm on another continent because, frankly, it doesn't seem that odd 99% of the time. Its not Africans and Foreigners here; it comes down to people -a bunch of people who happen to be in the same place at the same time, striving for something in life and seeking to connect with others through the process. Sure, I constantly run up against cultural differences but, as Heather says, people are people. It is so simple and yet so profound.
* * *
Below I have included my response to Heather's entry and her reactions thereafter:
Heather, this is an absolutely beautiful that strikes a chord in me on so many levels. I hope you don't mind if I ask everybody reading my blog to please come and see this entry; it speaks volumes to what I hope to communicate little by little through my own entries.
How are you coming along in your project of learning to love America in all its imperfectness? What you say about breaking illusions as being the real process of learning is absolutely true.
Isn't it wonderful to know that we are all just like anybody else? And yet, so unique individually and culturally? The layers of difference and commonality are endless, enmeshed, and ever-shifting. Beauty incarnate.
Love,
Jocelyn
Heather:
thank you so much for letting me know what you think, jocelyn! you are welcome to share this post with anyone...a huge part of why i write is to help communicate what i learn about the world to people who maybe haven't had the chance to learn the same thing. i'm glad you like it. :)
i have had a really tough time learning to be back here and love america. it's been a little over a month, and i'm just now feeling like i'm on my feet again. (it didn't help that i only gave myself a week before school started.) i think that being out of this culture and country for three months has made it nearly impossible to ignore all of the things i didn't like about america in the first place. where before, i could put up with aspects of this culture that annoyed me, now i feel like they are glaring and unavoidable. things that i thought used to satisfy me don't anymore.
although that all sounds super doom-and-gloom, it's like a painful but good pruning. from this i'm learning what can truly satisfy me and make my life as fulfilling as it was this summer. i can have a fulfilling life here; it just means seeking out truly edifying habits and places, rather than numbing out on what my culture tells me is fun.
yes, one of the most humbling lessons and joyful truths is how absolutely human everyone is. it shatters any ideas that superiority or greater wisdom lies in one culture or another. when i find myself wanting to look down my nose at people who seem to be absorbed in materialism, i remember that many ugandans are just as proud and anxious to have and acquire possessions. once my lens of judgment has cracked and fallen away, i can truly appreciate the individual and simultaneously universal beauty in each person i meet, and it humbles me.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Outback Adventures & NGO Work
Blog blog blog!
I have a very good reason for not having written in my blog lately: last week was vacation so I was out in the middle of the boondocks, away from internet access, hiking through the savanna and jungle, visiting little villages and learning yet another local language: Pular. Where do I even start?! So much has happened:
Kate, Megan, Ed, and I made our way via Sept-place and bus to the furthest south-eastern corner of Senegal called the Bassari Region. We were the backpackers; the active bunch the group that was not going on the city-hopping tour around Senegal, nor the Mali trip forty hours away by bus, nor the cultural tours through Spain, Morocco, or Paris. We planned for dirt, sweat, and a whole lot of green because, when you’re living in a city like Dakar, fresh air and trees become first priority for vacation. Then there’s the allure of possibly finding climbing amid the sole rough terrain in all of Senegal and, oh yeah baby, we climbed the highest mountain in Senegal –all three-hundred and forty-something meters of it! On top of one of these mountains -- er, hills -- Megan and I did actually manage to find a patch of climbable rock and it was bliss. Fingers touching rock = heaven.
What else was there to find besides virgin patches of climbable roche?: waterfalls, caves, monkeys, and wasps. The first three were great, but the last one not so much. Amidst the call of baboons, the four of us and our two guides would set off up steep, jungly paths deeply reminiscent of northern Thailand trekking and the sweat would flow. Pausing for a breathtaking view of a cascade, majestically pouring over the verdure of a nearby cliff side, we would continue upwards, perhaps parting the foliage to find ourselves on a plateau with a small village of thatched huts, or maybe winding through with the river only to suddenly perceive the waterfall tumbling beneath us. Meditation came easily in this space, with the roar of water muting both the words of my companions and the murmurs of my mind. But then you have the wasps. They crept up on me as I rounded the corner, climbing this fabulous blocky riverbed rock, and swarmed Ed first. His cry was my warning call to remain still and relaxed –or as relaxed as you can be while still maintaining a firm hold on some juggy rock a few feet off of the ground…just far enough that you can’t reach safety without making a few moves. Ed got away with two stings, and I was saved by my favorite guide of all time, Jibi, who hazarded the wasps to put me on his shoulders and back me away and into safety. I came away with one sting on my arm and a few imperceptible ones on my fingertips. All I can say is that you’ve never been more keenly aware of a wasp than when you watch it hover over your arm hairs and fingertips, knowing that it has registered you as danger and wondering when it will decide to take action. I was lucky as hell, pardon my French, and Jibi didn’t even receive one sting during the rescue mission.
Okay, now you know about the wasps, but I have not appropriate emphasized the sweat. No, that’s an understatement; the SWEAT. Rivulets running down our arms without end -that was our lot for the first day of trekking on flat, un-shaded savanna terrain between the city of Kédougou and the village of Bandafassi. Why would we do this to ourselves? 1) We wanna walk. It felt so good to get my heart pumping again. 2) Who wants to pay for a Quatre-quatre car at 50,000 francs par jour (~$100)?!?! We are poor students. We definitely brought canned food to save on lunches and sterilized shower water so that we wouldn’t have to pay for the bottled stuff. When our guide, Alfar, found out about that, we suddenly started getting free breakfasts at all of the campements. Its good to be a starving student! But I digress; the SWEAT. I never knew the true significance of this word until I perspired my entire bodyweight over the course of three days on that baked, savanna road. The shaded jungle treks, with only demi-rivultes running along the brow and not-quite-so-soaked clothing, felt exceptionally mild on the following few days. Ah! It was good to have to pee again! And dad, your Elmer’s Glue sunblock is the nectar of the gods; t’aint any other goo that’ll stick in spite of those rivers of sweat! (PS Don’t worry peeps; we drank LOTS of water.)
Other highlights?...
Learning some traditional pottery-making impromptu with the women of a hill-top village. I have an open invite to come back, perhaps during my rural visit in three weeks, to learn from them. So cool.
Alfonso the ity-bity monkey at the Dindenfelo campement. You will see pictures of him later. Suffice to say that he actually put his little lips to the lip of some fine china in an attempt to steal come coffee from breakfast. Absolute cutie, little rascal, and wild animal all in one.
Peanuts! I’d never had a fresh peanut before this trip! Sure, I’d already realized the folly that is American peanuts. Pshaw! Those things are stale by the time they get to us. Real peanuts must be had in the country whose main export is peanuts. But in Dakar, I’d only had the grilled ones. Who knew that you ccould have them uncooked, with that lovely green flavor still embedded deep within? Since it is peanut season, every household that we stopped by offered us handfuls of peanuts fresh out of the ground. I found the peanut plants exceedingly interesting, with the peanuts as sorts of fungal-esk growths on the roots. I didn’t get to go out and pick peanuts with my buddies because I was feeling ill, but they got to get down and dirty, pulling up the stalks to uncover the root structures plein de cacahuetes – abundantly full of peanuts. These bundles of plants could be seen pilled on top of shade structures and unshelled peanuts were out drying in every yard. Peanuts were everywhere.
Anyhow, all in all it was a great trip. There is so much to be said, but you’ll have to pry those stories out of me later! Since I’ve been back in Dakar, I’ve become absolutely inundated in business and realized that I need to recover my internal balance. But aside from some mild kinks in the works, I’m really happy with what I’m doing here. I’ve buckled down and decided to study hard at Wolof. It’s getting to the point where I can actually carry on fragmented conversations, but conversations none-the-less. I was getting sick of getting through the lengthy intros only to have my conversant discover that I had nothing else to say and little else that I could understand. I’m doing a lot of work with my internship co-coordinating CIPFEM, the student-founded NGO providing a tutoring and activities program for twenty girls here in Dakar. The girls are absolutely fabulous and we’ve partnered each of them up with a mentor, which is working out wonderfully. One of our volunteers has started teaching them karate and we have plans for doing goals and dreams collages, a soccer game, a leadership project for the older gals so that they can take initiative and teach the other girls, and many many other things. We’re hoping to bring in a local artist, Kan-si, to do a project with them, which I’m really excited about. This Friday we’re hosting a family orientation event so that we can help inculcate greater understanding in the goals of our organization and get to know them. Doing this organizing while simultaneously navigating multicultural interactions between local volunteers, student volunteers, and the girls themselves is proving a real learning experience. There are so many internal needs of this organization to be balanced at once, such as not imposing American values on the girls through our choice of tutoring activities and not transgressing the local volunteers’ need for autodetermination, which has repercussions on a national level, by overlooking their input. We cannot contribute to the persistence of relations of inequality and residual colonial relations by implementing our own ideas without respecting their need for a voice and choice. It is that negation of their choices that perpetuates the colonial mindset in the first place –and even well-meaning NGOs can take part in that continual subjugation of African countries by overlooking the local voices. I refuse to take part in that, but it is a tangled web to navigate in practice.
Well, I’ll be writing more later. Love to everybody!
Peace and hugs,
Jocelyn Price
I have a very good reason for not having written in my blog lately: last week was vacation so I was out in the middle of the boondocks, away from internet access, hiking through the savanna and jungle, visiting little villages and learning yet another local language: Pular. Where do I even start?! So much has happened:
Kate, Megan, Ed, and I made our way via Sept-place and bus to the furthest south-eastern corner of Senegal called the Bassari Region. We were the backpackers; the active bunch the group that was not going on the city-hopping tour around Senegal, nor the Mali trip forty hours away by bus, nor the cultural tours through Spain, Morocco, or Paris. We planned for dirt, sweat, and a whole lot of green because, when you’re living in a city like Dakar, fresh air and trees become first priority for vacation. Then there’s the allure of possibly finding climbing amid the sole rough terrain in all of Senegal and, oh yeah baby, we climbed the highest mountain in Senegal –all three-hundred and forty-something meters of it! On top of one of these mountains -- er, hills -- Megan and I did actually manage to find a patch of climbable rock and it was bliss. Fingers touching rock = heaven.
What else was there to find besides virgin patches of climbable roche?: waterfalls, caves, monkeys, and wasps. The first three were great, but the last one not so much. Amidst the call of baboons, the four of us and our two guides would set off up steep, jungly paths deeply reminiscent of northern Thailand trekking and the sweat would flow. Pausing for a breathtaking view of a cascade, majestically pouring over the verdure of a nearby cliff side, we would continue upwards, perhaps parting the foliage to find ourselves on a plateau with a small village of thatched huts, or maybe winding through with the river only to suddenly perceive the waterfall tumbling beneath us. Meditation came easily in this space, with the roar of water muting both the words of my companions and the murmurs of my mind. But then you have the wasps. They crept up on me as I rounded the corner, climbing this fabulous blocky riverbed rock, and swarmed Ed first. His cry was my warning call to remain still and relaxed –or as relaxed as you can be while still maintaining a firm hold on some juggy rock a few feet off of the ground…just far enough that you can’t reach safety without making a few moves. Ed got away with two stings, and I was saved by my favorite guide of all time, Jibi, who hazarded the wasps to put me on his shoulders and back me away and into safety. I came away with one sting on my arm and a few imperceptible ones on my fingertips. All I can say is that you’ve never been more keenly aware of a wasp than when you watch it hover over your arm hairs and fingertips, knowing that it has registered you as danger and wondering when it will decide to take action. I was lucky as hell, pardon my French, and Jibi didn’t even receive one sting during the rescue mission.
Okay, now you know about the wasps, but I have not appropriate emphasized the sweat. No, that’s an understatement; the SWEAT. Rivulets running down our arms without end -that was our lot for the first day of trekking on flat, un-shaded savanna terrain between the city of Kédougou and the village of Bandafassi. Why would we do this to ourselves? 1) We wanna walk. It felt so good to get my heart pumping again. 2) Who wants to pay for a Quatre-quatre car at 50,000 francs par jour (~$100)?!?! We are poor students. We definitely brought canned food to save on lunches and sterilized shower water so that we wouldn’t have to pay for the bottled stuff. When our guide, Alfar, found out about that, we suddenly started getting free breakfasts at all of the campements. Its good to be a starving student! But I digress; the SWEAT. I never knew the true significance of this word until I perspired my entire bodyweight over the course of three days on that baked, savanna road. The shaded jungle treks, with only demi-rivultes running along the brow and not-quite-so-soaked clothing, felt exceptionally mild on the following few days. Ah! It was good to have to pee again! And dad, your Elmer’s Glue sunblock is the nectar of the gods; t’aint any other goo that’ll stick in spite of those rivers of sweat! (PS Don’t worry peeps; we drank LOTS of water.)
Other highlights?...
Learning some traditional pottery-making impromptu with the women of a hill-top village. I have an open invite to come back, perhaps during my rural visit in three weeks, to learn from them. So cool.
Alfonso the ity-bity monkey at the Dindenfelo campement. You will see pictures of him later. Suffice to say that he actually put his little lips to the lip of some fine china in an attempt to steal come coffee from breakfast. Absolute cutie, little rascal, and wild animal all in one.
Peanuts! I’d never had a fresh peanut before this trip! Sure, I’d already realized the folly that is American peanuts. Pshaw! Those things are stale by the time they get to us. Real peanuts must be had in the country whose main export is peanuts. But in Dakar, I’d only had the grilled ones. Who knew that you ccould have them uncooked, with that lovely green flavor still embedded deep within? Since it is peanut season, every household that we stopped by offered us handfuls of peanuts fresh out of the ground. I found the peanut plants exceedingly interesting, with the peanuts as sorts of fungal-esk growths on the roots. I didn’t get to go out and pick peanuts with my buddies because I was feeling ill, but they got to get down and dirty, pulling up the stalks to uncover the root structures plein de cacahuetes – abundantly full of peanuts. These bundles of plants could be seen pilled on top of shade structures and unshelled peanuts were out drying in every yard. Peanuts were everywhere.
Anyhow, all in all it was a great trip. There is so much to be said, but you’ll have to pry those stories out of me later! Since I’ve been back in Dakar, I’ve become absolutely inundated in business and realized that I need to recover my internal balance. But aside from some mild kinks in the works, I’m really happy with what I’m doing here. I’ve buckled down and decided to study hard at Wolof. It’s getting to the point where I can actually carry on fragmented conversations, but conversations none-the-less. I was getting sick of getting through the lengthy intros only to have my conversant discover that I had nothing else to say and little else that I could understand. I’m doing a lot of work with my internship co-coordinating CIPFEM, the student-founded NGO providing a tutoring and activities program for twenty girls here in Dakar. The girls are absolutely fabulous and we’ve partnered each of them up with a mentor, which is working out wonderfully. One of our volunteers has started teaching them karate and we have plans for doing goals and dreams collages, a soccer game, a leadership project for the older gals so that they can take initiative and teach the other girls, and many many other things. We’re hoping to bring in a local artist, Kan-si, to do a project with them, which I’m really excited about. This Friday we’re hosting a family orientation event so that we can help inculcate greater understanding in the goals of our organization and get to know them. Doing this organizing while simultaneously navigating multicultural interactions between local volunteers, student volunteers, and the girls themselves is proving a real learning experience. There are so many internal needs of this organization to be balanced at once, such as not imposing American values on the girls through our choice of tutoring activities and not transgressing the local volunteers’ need for autodetermination, which has repercussions on a national level, by overlooking their input. We cannot contribute to the persistence of relations of inequality and residual colonial relations by implementing our own ideas without respecting their need for a voice and choice. It is that negation of their choices that perpetuates the colonial mindset in the first place –and even well-meaning NGOs can take part in that continual subjugation of African countries by overlooking the local voices. I refuse to take part in that, but it is a tangled web to navigate in practice.
Well, I’ll be writing more later. Love to everybody!
Peace and hugs,
Jocelyn Price
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Lu et approuvé :: Read And Approved
This is a text written by Aminata Traoré, a malian writer, and translated from french to english for a short film by Kan-si, a Senegalese artist. It is a powerful film entitles Lu et approuvé, featuring an African woman's mouth speaking these english words to us. They are painful words for us to hear, but they are powerful. I'm sharing them with you because not because I want to insite defensiveness, but because I believe they touch on important issues that all of us have to face. Living here, they are at the forefront of my mind daily.
~Jocelyn
~Jocelyn
"The African continent enters into globalization from below, absorbing the waste that you rich countries would have difficulty recycling if it were not for our own initiative and unpredictable behaviour. In this way, the structure and dynamic of the local urban and rural markets is seriously compromised.
The phenomenon is world wide, I agree. However, I would like to focus on one of the dimension of the open market, presented as being inevitable, that impoverishes, that alienates. If it is so, the expansionist West can expect an ever greater influx of immigrants, people who culturally uprooted due to an irresponsible, mindless globalization process.
In a world order that showed responsibility, and that respected the most basic of human rights, the Ivory Coast would not have to rip itself apart in order to supply the world market with products such as cocoa, coffee and wood, while its own people, mostly young, get poorer every day, and are forced to move , or turn to ethnic or religious contentions and /or violence in various forms.
Equally, Mali, a landlocked country in the Sahel without access to the sea, would not have worked so hard to produce significant quantities of cotton which subsequently it cannot sell because those same economic powers that invite Mali to join the open economy are flooding the market. The people of Mali would need to emigrate in such great numbers to Europe or elsewhere, nor wear our old clothes, not sleep beneath our old blankets, hoping to dream like us.The textile artisans Sénoufos, Peuhl, Bamanan, who are still working in our countryside and still create quality textiles by hand, would not be relegated to Bamako, the capital of Mali, waiting for an improbable visa in order to reach your cities.
The prevailing economic order not only robs us of the riches of our lands, which gives back, but also robs us of our dignity. We enter into the global world imitating you, masking our real selves. That is how your great companies can prosper and win the battle of competition. That is how you balance your budgets and disrupt ours. This outrage, that has gone on too long (Slavery, Berlin conference, Post-colonisation…) prevents the international community from being moved by the plight of Africa .
All the more reason why you have no right to judge our democracies, or tell us how we should make our society democratic. Robbed of the riches of our lands, of our knowledge and of our experience, in the near future our only resort will be to take up arms, just to survive."
-Aminata Traoré
Monday, September 28, 2009
A Tree House Made of Seashells with Princess Beds
The ceilings are a spread of seashells. And the myriad archways are lined with sky-blue mosaic tiles that lead you up stairways, along hallways, and up a ladder to the terrace room that overlooks a mini-paradise: lush gardens and intricate architecture framed by garbage-laden dirt roads and sprawling concrete homes. It is an artist colony, a resort, a tree house made of seashells with princess beds, as Kate put it, thanks to the beautifully draping mosquito nets. A magical locale that exudes tranquility and begets creativity. It is no wonder that the gardens along the pathways are bespeckled with gorgeous contemporary and traditional art pieces all nestled into the scenery; they are proof of its inhabitants’ open minds and hearts.
I spent my weekend here, in company of the fifty or so other students on my program, and partook of batiking and dance classes. A calm city somewhere south of Dakar, Toubab Diallo overlooks the ocean and attracts a certain brand of tourists as a means of supporting the artist colony and the local craftspeople. Of the bookend bus rides on Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon and all that came in between, there is one moment that deserves verbal recreation:
We overlook the ocean, damp from the sweat of dancing and hearts racing with the thrilling thought of racing down the beach and plummeting into the sunset salty waters. And we go, smiles extending farther than the beach itself and cries of excitement turning into song as we twirl and tumble into the water. Crash! Swish! And we’re overtaken by a warm tide and embraced in its tumultuous churning. Coming up, we experience the final wisps of daylight’s pinks and yellows fading into lightning. And the rain comes forth, pelting from behind. Is that rain or sand? It’s hard to say. Is that salty or fresh? We are all wet, so we can hardly tell. On the beach, a beautiful man with short dreads plays kapoera with our friend and we come forth from the water, clapping and dancing, ready to join in the acrobatic martial-arts dance that has already begun. He was our dance teacher and now he is our kapoera companion, but the warmth and crash of the oceans beckons us back as a cool wind whips up. I stand in waves, and waves, and waves; arms raised to the darkness and the flashing, crinkly lightning. My toes pay homage to the magnificent sand and my calves are sustained by live-sustaining waters; and I free-fall back, am caught by a wave, and die happily. --- Who needs words when you have the ocean? Song bursts forth necessarily and the tune has never been heard before –because it is one of the heart, the senses, the cheeks, the eyes. These are the moments that one lives for. I give it to you with all my heart. May the sounds or rolling water imbue you with an urge to dance melodiously.
Peace and love,
Jocelyn
Sept 27, 2009
I spent my weekend here, in company of the fifty or so other students on my program, and partook of batiking and dance classes. A calm city somewhere south of Dakar, Toubab Diallo overlooks the ocean and attracts a certain brand of tourists as a means of supporting the artist colony and the local craftspeople. Of the bookend bus rides on Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon and all that came in between, there is one moment that deserves verbal recreation:
We overlook the ocean, damp from the sweat of dancing and hearts racing with the thrilling thought of racing down the beach and plummeting into the sunset salty waters. And we go, smiles extending farther than the beach itself and cries of excitement turning into song as we twirl and tumble into the water. Crash! Swish! And we’re overtaken by a warm tide and embraced in its tumultuous churning. Coming up, we experience the final wisps of daylight’s pinks and yellows fading into lightning. And the rain comes forth, pelting from behind. Is that rain or sand? It’s hard to say. Is that salty or fresh? We are all wet, so we can hardly tell. On the beach, a beautiful man with short dreads plays kapoera with our friend and we come forth from the water, clapping and dancing, ready to join in the acrobatic martial-arts dance that has already begun. He was our dance teacher and now he is our kapoera companion, but the warmth and crash of the oceans beckons us back as a cool wind whips up. I stand in waves, and waves, and waves; arms raised to the darkness and the flashing, crinkly lightning. My toes pay homage to the magnificent sand and my calves are sustained by live-sustaining waters; and I free-fall back, am caught by a wave, and die happily. --- Who needs words when you have the ocean? Song bursts forth necessarily and the tune has never been heard before –because it is one of the heart, the senses, the cheeks, the eyes. These are the moments that one lives for. I give it to you with all my heart. May the sounds or rolling water imbue you with an urge to dance melodiously.
Peace and love,
Jocelyn
Sept 27, 2009
WalfTV and Freedom of Speech
The Chariots of Fire theme song comes on the television, but this time its not images of a triumphant final race. Rather, its images of aggressors; pending violence. I had heard about it on the car rapide. I rode past an unusually large crowd along a public street, so I turned to the middle-aged and traditionally robed man beside me to inquire. It’s a TV/Radio station, he tells me. The journalists broadcasted something that “the youth” didn’t like, so they attacked the station. I peer over the heads of the grand crowd, imagining the wrecked computers and gashed faces that his explanations describe. And now I sit in the living room, peering at this curious sequence of images; youths standing in mid-motion, odd angles, the blatant middle fingers. WalfTV wants to make sure everyone knows what has happened to its journalists, to its facilities, and to their freedom of speech.
The controversy concerns local marabout, or religious leader, Serigne Aboo Sall whose brother shared some negative information about him with WalfTV (or Walfadjri). Serigne Aboo Sall then blamed the station for this blotch on his record, claiming that they invented the entire story about his corruption in the government, and so, he sent his disciples to attack the station. The brand of Islam in Senegal is unique, as it is in any other locale. The Sufi Islam here has formed an mélange with local traditions, creating a syncretism of animist and ‘fetishist’ beliefs and the Qua’ran that allows for a very flexible approach to Islamic Shari‘a law. More importantly for us, the Sufi tradition allows for multiple brotherhoods –such as the Maurides and the Tidjaan who are the most powerful and prevalent brotherhoods respectively- and a myriad of religious leaders, here called marabouts, within each of those. These marabouts are incredibly important to Senegalese culture, its history, and its contemporary political scene. Aside from being important spiritually, they also have a hand in directing political activity, as we see here. All that this defamed marabout had to do was say the word and his disciples took actions against the journalists. Uncovering the truth about governmental corruption associated with Serigne Aboo Sall wrought havoc on the lives and work of these journalists. To sum it up in one word: censorship. They are being silenced by this marabout through his disciples, and “the authorities” have no way of implementing retribution. The politicians and the police know who has the real power, and they’re not about to put at stake what little they have in order to punish these attackers.
Frankly, the politicians, and especially their darling President Wade, are carrying out their own implicit censorship. Theirs is a façade of democracy. When the president changes the constitution to extend his second term from five to seven years and then announces his intent to run for a third time in 2012, which is unconstitutional, you know there’s a real problem. Besides which, shouldn’t the president be taking care of his country when in it is in the worst period of power outages and flooding that it has seen in the last four years instead of off gallivanting through Europe on vacation? The people here are angry.
This country does value their freedom of speech and they recognize that it is being threatened. Thus, the people flooded the TV station in support the moment the news of the aggressors was spread. They are speaking out against the violence, showing their support for the news station that is always the first to tell them the most important news, always the one to criticize the government in spite of its intimidation tactics. The people love Walfadjri and weren’t about to stand by and see it harmed so. Thus the images on the TV; the only way for this station to stand up for itself and the freedom of speech that it stands for is by broadcasting how they have been wronged, to show the faces of the aggressors and let the general public recognize them and react to them on the streets in light of what they’ve done. If the government cannot punish this violence then it must be done through the people –because social relations are everything here and shame is a powerful tool. Power to the people. If only the government could match their valor. This is a country worthy of stability and flourishing.
Peace and love,
Jocelyn
A final note: When I asked, my host cousin Assane explained to me that the Chariots of Fire tune was also played when WalfTV first broke the news about 9/11. We may associate this song with awe-inspiring triumph, but here, it indicates a breathtaking tragedy.
The controversy concerns local marabout, or religious leader, Serigne Aboo Sall whose brother shared some negative information about him with WalfTV (or Walfadjri). Serigne Aboo Sall then blamed the station for this blotch on his record, claiming that they invented the entire story about his corruption in the government, and so, he sent his disciples to attack the station. The brand of Islam in Senegal is unique, as it is in any other locale. The Sufi Islam here has formed an mélange with local traditions, creating a syncretism of animist and ‘fetishist’ beliefs and the Qua’ran that allows for a very flexible approach to Islamic Shari‘a law. More importantly for us, the Sufi tradition allows for multiple brotherhoods –such as the Maurides and the Tidjaan who are the most powerful and prevalent brotherhoods respectively- and a myriad of religious leaders, here called marabouts, within each of those. These marabouts are incredibly important to Senegalese culture, its history, and its contemporary political scene. Aside from being important spiritually, they also have a hand in directing political activity, as we see here. All that this defamed marabout had to do was say the word and his disciples took actions against the journalists. Uncovering the truth about governmental corruption associated with Serigne Aboo Sall wrought havoc on the lives and work of these journalists. To sum it up in one word: censorship. They are being silenced by this marabout through his disciples, and “the authorities” have no way of implementing retribution. The politicians and the police know who has the real power, and they’re not about to put at stake what little they have in order to punish these attackers.
Frankly, the politicians, and especially their darling President Wade, are carrying out their own implicit censorship. Theirs is a façade of democracy. When the president changes the constitution to extend his second term from five to seven years and then announces his intent to run for a third time in 2012, which is unconstitutional, you know there’s a real problem. Besides which, shouldn’t the president be taking care of his country when in it is in the worst period of power outages and flooding that it has seen in the last four years instead of off gallivanting through Europe on vacation? The people here are angry.
This country does value their freedom of speech and they recognize that it is being threatened. Thus, the people flooded the TV station in support the moment the news of the aggressors was spread. They are speaking out against the violence, showing their support for the news station that is always the first to tell them the most important news, always the one to criticize the government in spite of its intimidation tactics. The people love Walfadjri and weren’t about to stand by and see it harmed so. Thus the images on the TV; the only way for this station to stand up for itself and the freedom of speech that it stands for is by broadcasting how they have been wronged, to show the faces of the aggressors and let the general public recognize them and react to them on the streets in light of what they’ve done. If the government cannot punish this violence then it must be done through the people –because social relations are everything here and shame is a powerful tool. Power to the people. If only the government could match their valor. This is a country worthy of stability and flourishing.
Peace and love,
Jocelyn
A final note: When I asked, my host cousin Assane explained to me that the Chariots of Fire tune was also played when WalfTV first broke the news about 9/11. We may associate this song with awe-inspiring triumph, but here, it indicates a breathtaking tragedy.
Monday, September 21, 2009
The Tea and Coffee Pic Post
Here is Sadio steeping café touba. Delicious stuff, I might add.
Here is how much sugar they put into the ataya tea. Mind you, this is only the preliminary sugar for the tea kettle. Each single cup receives its own added third of a cup that recuires the tea and sugar to be poured between two cups repeatedly in order to mix it perfectly and get it frothy.
Here is the tea and sugar mixing that I just described. It is an almost ritualistic process.
Here I am making some ataya tea. :-)
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Roadside Tea pics (and a lizard!!!)
Andy and me. This picture doesn't do Andy justice, btw.
Sadio and me. He is our tea and wolof professor! A very nice man.
This is the chair that Andy used. Makeshift brilliance, in my opinion!
And, as a side note, a fabulously tiny lizard that I found in my room the other day!
Junior's B-Day Pics
Junior's birthday cake. :-)
Britta, the other exchange student in our home, and myself. She is an absolute sweetheart -and its nice to have someone to make a quick English quip to over dinner every once in a while. Mostly we speak french to one another, but she's from Minnesota.
In the center looking towards the camera is my host sister Melanie who is so friendly and makes me feel welcome. I suspect she'll be the one to help me the most with my Wolof.
"Happy Birthday" was sung 3 times: first in French, then in English, and finally in Wolof. It was lovely! On the far left is my host brother Lou-Lou, although I'll have to get a better picture of him later.
Everything! (And Maids)
ONE HECK OF A WEEK: Lets hear about tea, turtles, and parties!
I sit scrubbing two rainbow colored socks between by hands over a bucket of soapy water and think back over the week; it has certainly been eventful...
On Monday I split a cab with Andy and Lauren to go visit an English learning center downtown where we spoke with various classes about anything and everything and helped them with their English.
Tuesday we celebrated Junior’s birthday, even though the little two-year-old was asleep for the last half of his own get-together. This event, I was assured later, was in no way an actual party, seeing as how that would have involved music and dozens of guests, rather than the ten or so friends who spontaneously stopped by.
Wednesday brought mine and Andy’s roadside tea date with local vendor and informal Wolof professor Sadio. It is an art to correctly steep, sugarize, and mix the ataya tea that people love ever-so-much here, but Andy and I are learning. However, next time I’m going to sanitize the cups myself because the residual stomach ache from our last rendezvous is not to be repeated.
Thursday was an epic day because I managed to flood both mine and my cousin Assane’s rooms. Let me just say that if I’d known that I’d be spending two hours sopping up water and wringing it out of a towel into a bucket that night, I wouldn’t have gone to the gym in the morning! Whewee! A full body workout for sure! Note to self: never turn the tap on in the bathroom and then leave to unlock your door with the intention of returning and turning it off when the bucket is full. Bad, bad, bad idea. Once again, maids to the rescue! After nearly two hours of work and seven buckets of water, our maid Mare took pity on me and helped me finish the second room. I swear, she did what had taken me two hours in twenty minutes. This is something to be admired: the work ethic of the gods.
But onwards to Friday –and let us not dwell on the soreness that persisted throughout thanks to the hardcore workout class combined with the even more hardcore towel-wringing from the night before- when we ventured to the fabric market HLM to purchase some gorgeous materials to have a tailor form into outfits for the end of Ramadan festivities coming up this weekend.
Saturday was the day we made our way out into the boondocks to check out the turtle refuge and that night was the Catholic Choir Soiree where only we Americans showed up at the appointed starting hour -9:00pm. Everyone else filtered in over the following two hours and the music didn’t even start until 11pm. Apparently we forwent the whole party because we left at 1am when the music ended and the dancing was only just getting started. My host mom didn’t get home until, get this, 8:30am!!! ---This is not at all unusual. ---I think the next time I plan to go out to a party or dance venue, I’ll have to prepare myself for a few days by sleeping in. Otherwise, I’ll be asleep before anyone even arrives!
You can imagine that, after this zany week packed with adventures, my Sunday would be a day of repose, and you’d be right; I did virtually nothing on Sunday and stayed at home in bliss.
Fun plans for the rest of this week: check out a documentary at the cultural center, have a climbing play date at a park jungle gym with my fellow climber-in-withdrawal Megan, go surfing, and enjoy the end-of-Ramadan festivities. :-) You just can’t complain when life is good!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GRATITUDE
Sweat intermingles with rain as I make my way back home from the gym, thinking how ironic it is that I just finished taking a shower and am already drenched once more. Entering my home, our maid Mare is in the courtyard putting out buckets to catch the rainwater that pours down from the terrace rainspouts. These hefty washtubs are full within a minute, spattering water across the tan cement and down a drain; we now have all we need for doing laundry over the next few days. Laundry is a full day’s worth of scrubbing and a second day of drying and ironing, which turns into a third day of drying if it rains. Never am I more grateful for our maids than when they return that pristine stack of clothing to my door and I think of how long I toiled just to wash out some measly socks and bras. They are, indeed, amazing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hugs and love to everyone -especially Oma, Mom, and Uncle Mike. Thank you so much for sharing my blog with GG Jerry before he passed away. That means a lot to me.
Love,
Jocelyn
I sit scrubbing two rainbow colored socks between by hands over a bucket of soapy water and think back over the week; it has certainly been eventful...
On Monday I split a cab with Andy and Lauren to go visit an English learning center downtown where we spoke with various classes about anything and everything and helped them with their English.
Tuesday we celebrated Junior’s birthday, even though the little two-year-old was asleep for the last half of his own get-together. This event, I was assured later, was in no way an actual party, seeing as how that would have involved music and dozens of guests, rather than the ten or so friends who spontaneously stopped by.
Wednesday brought mine and Andy’s roadside tea date with local vendor and informal Wolof professor Sadio. It is an art to correctly steep, sugarize, and mix the ataya tea that people love ever-so-much here, but Andy and I are learning. However, next time I’m going to sanitize the cups myself because the residual stomach ache from our last rendezvous is not to be repeated.
Thursday was an epic day because I managed to flood both mine and my cousin Assane’s rooms. Let me just say that if I’d known that I’d be spending two hours sopping up water and wringing it out of a towel into a bucket that night, I wouldn’t have gone to the gym in the morning! Whewee! A full body workout for sure! Note to self: never turn the tap on in the bathroom and then leave to unlock your door with the intention of returning and turning it off when the bucket is full. Bad, bad, bad idea. Once again, maids to the rescue! After nearly two hours of work and seven buckets of water, our maid Mare took pity on me and helped me finish the second room. I swear, she did what had taken me two hours in twenty minutes. This is something to be admired: the work ethic of the gods.
But onwards to Friday –and let us not dwell on the soreness that persisted throughout thanks to the hardcore workout class combined with the even more hardcore towel-wringing from the night before- when we ventured to the fabric market HLM to purchase some gorgeous materials to have a tailor form into outfits for the end of Ramadan festivities coming up this weekend.
Saturday was the day we made our way out into the boondocks to check out the turtle refuge and that night was the Catholic Choir Soiree where only we Americans showed up at the appointed starting hour -9:00pm. Everyone else filtered in over the following two hours and the music didn’t even start until 11pm. Apparently we forwent the whole party because we left at 1am when the music ended and the dancing was only just getting started. My host mom didn’t get home until, get this, 8:30am!!! ---This is not at all unusual. ---I think the next time I plan to go out to a party or dance venue, I’ll have to prepare myself for a few days by sleeping in. Otherwise, I’ll be asleep before anyone even arrives!
You can imagine that, after this zany week packed with adventures, my Sunday would be a day of repose, and you’d be right; I did virtually nothing on Sunday and stayed at home in bliss.
Fun plans for the rest of this week: check out a documentary at the cultural center, have a climbing play date at a park jungle gym with my fellow climber-in-withdrawal Megan, go surfing, and enjoy the end-of-Ramadan festivities. :-) You just can’t complain when life is good!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GRATITUDE
Sweat intermingles with rain as I make my way back home from the gym, thinking how ironic it is that I just finished taking a shower and am already drenched once more. Entering my home, our maid Mare is in the courtyard putting out buckets to catch the rainwater that pours down from the terrace rainspouts. These hefty washtubs are full within a minute, spattering water across the tan cement and down a drain; we now have all we need for doing laundry over the next few days. Laundry is a full day’s worth of scrubbing and a second day of drying and ironing, which turns into a third day of drying if it rains. Never am I more grateful for our maids than when they return that pristine stack of clothing to my door and I think of how long I toiled just to wash out some measly socks and bras. They are, indeed, amazing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hugs and love to everyone -especially Oma, Mom, and Uncle Mike. Thank you so much for sharing my blog with GG Jerry before he passed away. That means a lot to me.
Love,
Jocelyn
Monday, September 7, 2009
Host Family Pictures
This is Jayna, my sister-in-law and the wife of Lou-Lou (the brother who likes to mess with me and joke around), with her son Gi-Gi (or Junior). Gi-Gi is the assertive one of the two toddlers in the house. There's a lot more noise when he's around! Jayna is due in a month, but people don't really talk about pregnancy here because it is associated with bad spirits who, if overhearing, could curse the child and mother. So, I actually didn't ask when she was due. The other student unwittingly asked and received a somewhat surprised response.
This is my host mother, my host "cousin" Assane who is my best bud, and me. Assane is the muslim of the household.
Me and my host mom.
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