J'aime beaucoup ma vie ici!!

This is a phrase which comes up a lot in my beginning French class as many assignments involve writing a carte postale to a friend about life in Senegal, as everyone in the class is foreign. Simply, "I like my life here a lot!"

I wanted to take this entry to brag about my life, I guess. Or really to speak honestly about how much I love my life right now. Living in the US, I couldn't say that I loved my life everyday, perhaps because I was living in the "real world," meaning I had normal responsibilities. Right now I feel like I'm taking a break from that and it's worth talking about how wonderful it is because it won't last forever! Not that this isn't the "real world," it's very real, but somehow not because I'm living off my savings. I do not need to work for money right now.

Most importantly, I've fallen in love with this dance and music form which I'm studying. I decided I wanted to come here to study Guinean and Senegalese dance this past summer. At the time, I was dancing in Urbana with Djibi (my teacher there) and a solid group with whom I rehearsed and performed at various places. I've danced since I was a small child, but this summer was the first time in a while that I was always excited about the next class, rehearsal, or performance, even five minutes after the last one ended. I feel the same way now. I'm dancing (or drumming or singing) maybe 2-4 hours a day 6 days a week and, after I've had something to eat and lots of water, I can't wait to do more! I can't pinpoint exactly what it is I love about it, especially not in a blog entry, but it'll suffice for now to say that it's wonderful. Besides loving what I'm doing, I love where I do it: in an open building (no walls, but a roof for shade) on the beach away from the loud city; and the people I'm working with: an excellent teacher, awesome drummers, and often visitors who feed me or otherwise humor me. For instance today two very young boys amazed me with their drumming skills, even though the drums were 3 times the size of their bodies, and their family shared their lunch with us and gave us attaya in the middle of my lesson (when I happened to be very hungry). I don't even mind the hour it takes to get there and get home, during which everyday between 2 and 5 men propose a relationship or marriage or at least a visit to his family in Mali. C'est la vie.



Outside of dance, my daily interactions keep life exciting. People here seem to value human interactions much more than people in the US. Just walking down the street, it's important to greet many people. If you want to buy an orange, you must first go through a series of greetings. Whenever someone enters or exits a room, he or she will greet and shake hands with each person present. If a group of people are having attaya (tea involving a long ritual and 3 different cups everyone drinks) on the street and you greet them as you walk by, they often insist that you sit down and have a cup (or 2 or 3) with them. People are outside all the time. Many people's businesses are outside. Life here is rarely boring. It's full of cheerful greetings, cheerful goodbyes, cheerful people. Besides keeping life happy, this is helpful for learning languages as it forces me to converse with people all the time. It's also helpful that people here are very forgiving about my lack of communication abilities.

That said, I could easily write a blog entry about the frustrating aspects of living here and the challenges I face each day, but I think I'll save that for later.

Yoon bu bes – The new road

In a few hours I’ll finally be on the road to Tambacounda in eastern Senegal. (Scroll to the right on the map on our blog to see where I'm headed.) Weeks ago, I decided that this past Monday was my final deadline for going to Medina, the village where I hope to do my research. Of course nothing happens on time (I’ll leave it to you to determine whether to blame me or the environment I’m working in). But today, after rushing around town in taxis looking for the bus station, I finally have a ticket stamped with a departure time (an approximate one). That’s a good feeling.

Note: There are lots of options for traveling between towns in West Africa, including sept-place (seven seat) station wagons, mini-buses, and lumbering 1960’s Mercedes buses called Jaaga Njaay after the guy who owns most of them. All of these methods work on the principle of maximizing the amount of money made on passengers. That means packing people in. (Although at least the sept-place in Senegal cap it at seven. In Guinea they supposedly hold nine, including one straddling the stick-shift and sometimes someone on the roof.) They also wait to be full, for as long as it takes – days sometimes. Another model of transportation employs used tour buses from Europe, and tickets are sold in advance for a fixed (more or less) departure time, generally sometime around 3 in the morning. These buses depart from various marked or unmarked corners around Dakar. It seems no one can tell you which buses leave from a given station until you show up and start asking around.

Senegal is an emotional roller-coaster for me: I can swing from home-sick to jubilant and back from morning to evening. My day can suddenly brighten if I meet an especially street-side coffee-seller. Lately, I’ve been swinging about just how far away Medina really is (in an emotional sense). If it feels a long way away, being there means adjusting to a whole other world. I’ll be out of touch, I’ll be isolated. On the other hand, if it feels close it’s not such a big deal. Just like going on a weeklong work trip. I debate with myself whether it’s one way or the other, marshaling facts for each side:

• “It’s far! - They speak Pular and Jakhanke, so it will be much harder to communicate.”
• “It’s close! – They say there is cell phone reception in the village, so Dakar is just a phone call away.” (The village was in a network black hole when I was last there in 2006.)
• “It’s far! – They say it’s so hot in Tambacounda now, people have to soak their mattresses in water before they go to bed. That will make it hard to accomplish anything.” (Today’s high: 45 C = 113 F)
• “It’s close! – They just re-surfaced the road from Kaolack to Tambacounda. Now it supposedly takes only eight hours to get there!” (This section of road was memorably awful during my last visit. The trip to the city of Tambacounda used to involve twelve hours of erratic pothole-dodging. The road was so bad in some stretches that the drivers gave up on the road and drove in the dust alongside.)

The last point is important. I feel way more confident thinking about continued trips to and from Medina knowing that it takes less than a day to get there. It’s not a physical emergency I’m scared of; it’s a psychological one – the desperate need to escape the hot, dusty world of Tamba. Now I’ll have an out. With a new road, Medina sounds like less of a different world.

Also different is the purpose I’m going there with. In my previous visit I just showed up and prayed that if I talked to enough people, research would happen. Today I feel better prepared, more humbled, and more goal-oriented. Amy has been reminding me that this is just work, and that it can feel routine. If I focus on what I want to accomplish, and the details I need to work out to get me there, this seems much more manageable.

Meanwhile, Amy will be sticking around Dakar. Her work with her teacher is going so well, she’s taking advantage of every hour she has to dance. She’s also starting to handle Dakar like a pro – knowing the buses, bargaining with taxis, and speaking some impressive French.

In Senegal, it’s important to give blessings, when someone is leaving on a trip, so here’s one: Yalla nanu yalla jaapante. May God help us all out. I’ll let you know how my visit goes in about a week.

Shopping in Dakar

I used to think that clothing store staff in the United States hassled shoppers too much. Obviously, I had never been to Dakar.

Today I decided to go shopping, as I lost a white shirt I brought with me during our first week here. Having brought a very limited quantity of clothes, I missed this shirt a lot especially because not having it meant I couldn’t wear a dress I brought. Since I was downtown for my French class, Ewan suggested we go to Sandaga Market, which is I think the busiest, most touristy market in Dakar. As we began wondering the streets of Sandaga, wearing our backpacks in front and trying to sneak past the numerous men hassling us constantly, I noticed that all of the clothing stands seemed to sell men’s clothing only. We eventually asked someone where we could find women’s clothes. He led us into a shop which sold only men’s clothes, had us sit down and wait while he went to find what I was looking for. Apparently, you can’t exactly browse in Sandaga. The first person you describe what you want to will do what he can to find it while you wait, meaning getting many other sellers involved. As we waited, men brought in white shirt after white shirt. The first was too thick, so the next one was a very thin XL kids t-shirt. They brought shirts glittering with rhinestones, shirts with ridiculous buttons, shirts in every color of the rainbow even though they knew I wanted white only! Eventually when nothing worked and I was convinced I wouldn’t find a white shirt, we were led to another place and went through the same ordeal there, looking at shirt after shirt, led to a third place with many more shirts, and when I was about to give up someone finally showed up with a plain white, fitted women’s shirt. It seems that every western clothing item for women here is size small, so as the shirt was too small, I realized I wouldn’t find anything better.

When I decided I wanted it, the next step was settling on a price. The crowd of men who had helped look for shirts now numbered around 10, and they all took part in this bargaining session. At this point, I had decided to buy 2 shirts, hoping that at least one of them would work, and they originally asked for the equivalent of $48. For 2, cheap, small, plain, boring t-shirts. After much arguing (Ewan did this part), after we pretended to forget the whole thing and leave empty-handed, we settled on about $9 for both shirts.

By this time, I was famished and happy to find the first Lebanese restaurant I’ve been to yet here. I excitedly ate a falafel sandwhich, possibly my first vegetarian meal outside of my house, even though the sandwich consisted of about equal parts greasy french fry and deep-fried falafel. :)

Ko weli warataa - What's pleasant won't kill you

When I first heard this Pular expression, I thought: “Well that definitely has it’s limits.” But sometimes this kind of thinking helps me look at the big picture when I’m doubting myself. Once again, the phrase is courtesy of Sadio, who always has an idiom on hand, whatever the language, whatever the situation. On Sunday, we were digging a garden out of the square of dust that makes up a corner of the courtyard. Sadio reminded me that even though I haven’t jumped on a sept-place station wagon heading to Tambacounda to start doing interviews, I’m still more or less on track. One week’s delay in Dakar won’t kill my research ambitions. A political scientist I met at a Fulbright potluck this weekend put it another way: No matter how long you’re in the field, at least a fifth of the time will be a total waste. Ko weli warataa doesn’t have much else to do with what I'm writing about today, but it’s a nice expression.

 
Dirt is a phenomenon I’ve been thinking about since we first looked at our house in Dakar. The dirt in Dakar comes in at least two varieties: First, the gray sand that makes up most of the city streets, and finds its way into even the very few paved neighborhoods such as Liberté 1. The second type of dirt is a fine red dust deposited by the Harmattan, the dry-season winds that blow off the Sahara. This dust is nefarious stuff – it clings to the floor in long streaks when you try to move it, and at the same time flies into the air when you sweep to be redeposited everywhere. Given enough time, the dust even accumulates on walls and ceilings.

This makes cleaning in Dakar very different from in 'the North.' It isn’t just that Dakar is dirty, although the urban waste of fish spines, batteries, and plastic bags does confront you on a daily basis. It’s also a matter of attitude: rather than conquering dirt (or ignoring it) you have to manage it, continuously and conscientiously. You can’t distractedly run a vacuum cleaner across the floor. You have to strategize: Where is the dirt concentrated? (there are no dust bunnies here) Where will you take it?

Sadio and our neighbor Maggat showed me how this is done: First, sweep the larger sand particles, bent over double with a hand held, straw broom (“balé”). To tackle the dust, you have to fill a bucket with water – add all-purpose powdered soap (“omo”) if you’re really serious. Start at a corner and work your way downhill towards the drainage point, pouring water, scrubbing with the broom bristles, and sweeping to keep the dust-filled water going where you want it to. If you’re really good, you won’t get too wet, or tread too much dirt up-hill where you’ve already cleaned. It took me about an hour to clean the tiled front garden when we first arrived. Rose, the mother of six who we hired to clean for us once a week, accomplished it in about ten minutes.

Which points to a larger issue related to dirt and cleaning. Although infamously dirty, the existence of any clean space whatsoever in Dakar is due entirely to the daily labor of literally a million women. When we get up early - the sun doesn't rise until 7 right now - in front of every house we see a teenage girl (the maid) bent over, her seer skirt folded up at her knees. They are scrubbing the tiled front stoops, and sweeping up the candy wrappers in the cobbled alleys in our middle class neighborhood. In neighborhoods that lack the infrastructure of Liberté 1, women sweep the sand back into the deep, red potholes that it creeps out of during the day. When we were staying in Village Ngor, we noticed spider-web patterns in the sand streets as we walked to the taxi stop in the morning. Then one day we saw an elderly lady with a broom, scooping up the pile of detritus she'd gathered. Every morning, Ngor women sweep the streets clean of yesterday's litter.

I complain about littering here - most people's attitude is buy it, unwrap it, and drop it where you stand. People also complain about the State's lack of investment in public goods - paved roads, sidewalks, reliable trash collection. (Although to be fair, I often see men in uniforms sweeping up along major streets.) Could men's lax attitude towards cleaning, or even the negligence of the entire government, stem in part from the assumption that women will do the work for you? A million women work hours a day to provide clean space in Dakar. Their labor used to be invisible to me, but now I see it everywhere.

Bienvenue a notre maison!

A note on the following: We had a housewarming party this past Sunday. A wonderful way to serve dinner to a group of people is to grill some fish, throw them on a tray and top it off with onions. Delicious! I never knew, living in Illinois, how good fresh fish is, without any seasoning. Yummmmm. Although we don't have very many friends here yet, our party was a huge success with good fish, good music, good dancing, and great company.

Magalee ak jam - Have a safe pilgrimage

Today is the Maggal, the annual pilgrimage undertaken by members of the Mouride brotherhood to the city of Touba in Senegal. It's been the talk of the town for the past week. Members of the brotherhood have been preparing to leave (and asking us why we're not going) and everyone else has been talking about how hard it is to get around Dakar.

It seems like a good majority of all automobiles make their way to Touba this week. These include privately-run Car Rapide and Njaganjaay buses, potentially private (I'm not sure) TATA buses, taxis, and apparently even public Dakar Demm Dikk buses. And if the cars and buses haven't gone, then their drivers have. That's because people are paying to cram into any moving vehicle available to make their way to Touba, the holy city.

This leaves Dakar feeling like a different town entirely. It feels a little desolate. There are still plenty of people around, and cars on the street, but somehow the in-your-face, overwhelming energy isn't quite there. Half the storefronts have their metal doors rolled down. Wind gusts through town and sand slithers across the street. The buses don't come - Amy waited more than an hour each way going to her dance lesson yesterday. When the buses do come, they inexplicably refuse to stop to let you on, or they're already so full, people are hanging out the door almost dragging their toes on the road.

I haven't got much done today - it took an hour just to find an open cyber café - but I feel like I don't have to accomplish much. It's a pilgrimage for the Mourides, and a sort of laid-back early Sunday for everybody else. As for what's happening in Touba, I can only guess.

The grand mosque in Touba, built by several generations of Mouides.

Note Mouride members make up a huge portion of Senegal's population, making the brotherhood hugely influential, politically, economically, and culturally in Senegal. It's said they control almost the entire peanut production chain in Senegal (peanuts are the primary export crop). The city of Touba is governed autonomously by the Qadifa leadership. It's also often quoted that a NYPD survey found that Mourides sell over 90 percent of watches and perfume on the streets of New York.