As a travel blogger, one thing I’ve successfully avoided in my travel blog is any semblance of me blogging about my travels…  Sure, those deep moments will always stick with me, and (In’challah) with you.  But, I’ve so far successfully painted a picture of Senegal which is but a thread of the masterpiece I’ve see woven before me every day. 

Once again, addressing the aforementioned dark in which I’ve shamelessly left you, I’m going to assume you know nothing about my life here.  So, for the basics:  I live in the respectable domicile of the Sow family of Mermoz, Dakar.  My brothers are Ousmane, (aka Papi), Amadou, Moustapha, and What’s-his-face-that-now-lives-in-Paris.  I also live with my awesome 10-year-old nephew, Ameth.  I’ve been ceremoniously named Modou, following what appears to be a law that deems virtually everyone in all of Dakar must given an Islamic name.  I really have no idea how people keep track.  I have about four friends named Mamadou, six named Ousmane, and another twelve who go by Papi. It is pretty interesting, however.  So I’ve learned from my History of Islam course, taught by the Dakarois celebrity Abdoul Aziz Kebe, the practice of Islamic naming was adopted as a method to solidify the Islamic community and to differentiate from those African tribes known for the violent human hunts associated with the Transatlantic Slave Trade.  Anyway…

Ibrahima and Coumba are my, respectively, woefully detached father and painfully protective mother. At least I’m getting the real show.  I’ll explain:  Sow is a name traditionally attributed to the Peul people of Senegambia, and on top of being an impossible background to visibly distinguish from the 10 or so other African ethnic groups in Senegal, it succeeds in being one of the most impossible words to pronounce.  Forget tuyau or rencontrerons with a faithfully glottal /r/, or even doodle for francophones (seriously, try asking them to say it.)  The word Peul is an awful hybrid of the words pull, pole, and pool.  Add in the fact that the Senegalese accent is, albeit really cool and filled with bouncy vowels, a nightmare for the Academie Française.  What you get is an embarrassing mouth cramp and an amusing misunderstanding wherein which you tell your Senegalese host family that they’re a bunch of sweatshirts—pull in French.

Either way, Peul mothers are referred to as hens.  True to form, Coumba’s brand of love feels a lot like what I’d expect getting hit by a gladiator net to feel like.  Needless to say, super-protection is her MO.  No discussion is held when it comes to what she wants. And that’s not because I don’t have anything to say, or that I’d prefer to remain silent to preserve the calm.  No—instead, every time I’d venture to say something to the effect of, ‘I am an autonomous human being who has come here to experience Dakar and Senegalese culture, not your living room,’ I’m quickly and harshly interrupted with the twentieth reprise of whatever ridiculous thing she’s holding against me at the moment (i.e. that I’m untrusting and am convinced that the entire family is obsessed with my belongings and wants to steal them).  My father, on the other hand, is pretty disinterested.  His favorite thing to do between meals is sit alone watching soccer on his 72” TV.  His actual favorite thing to do is to eat meals while sitting alone watching soccer on his 72” TV.  I really haven’t heard much about what stereotypes Peul fathers follow, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the rough translation went something like, “They don’t give a damn.”  It’s not a big deal, really.  I just have no inclination whatsoever to live here next semester. 

 It’s not all bad, by any stretch.  The days of serenity between my host mother’s outbursts are common, and I often make her laugh to lighten the mood.  She calls me a Saay-saay, which means “player,” in both the sense of a jokester, and that of a playboy.  True, the ideal Senegalese man is supposed to be a player of sorts.  However, if you know me, you can probably guess that the character of “the player” is one I simply cannot pull off.  Duma saay-saay is my token response. 

To allude to my nephew’s birthday party: neither my father nor my brother Amadou, who happens to be the father of the birthday boy, Ameth—who I also used to think was my brother—attended.  They were downstairs watching TV while me, my American housemate Tim, and a throng of tiny, impeccably dressed youngsters were all on the roof-terrace, dancing in the dark and the flashing lights to Papi’s amateur remixes of the Guana, eating heavenly cake and fataya.  I’m not even sure if it was good cake, really.   I certainly had been warned upon arrival here:  following a protein-rich diet will undoubtedly lead to sugar cravings.  That was well understood.  What I didn’t understand before arriving here, though, was what a sugar craving really is.  We all love chocolate, save for you Dad, but normally wanting sweets is more like wanting to bask in a bit of luxury for a short while and less like a zombie obsession which spurs you in its bloodlust.  It’s as close as I’ve ever been to insanity.  That cake could have been made out cardboard.  But it had sugar, and that’s all that mattered to me. 

The Senegalese family tree is pretty crazy, on that note.  Those who are technically your cousins on your father’s side are actually referred to as your brothers and sisters. This would be easy enough if it weren’t also Senegalese custom to call all older males your uncles, Tonton, and all older women your aunts, Tanta.  Or if they didn’t introduce pretty much every one of their friends and neighbors as being your brothers and sisters.  Or if it were even clear at this point whether or not they even know who’s who.

Mermoz is a small yet vibrant neighborhood of Dakar Fann, complete with everything from a mosque to a boulangerie to as many identical boutiques as you’d could ever imagine wanting in a square mile plot.  The standout boutique is the one on the corner of my street which sells makeshift burgers out of chocolate and butter, or sausage and cheese, depending on your preference, for the drool-worthy price of 50 cents.  American.  Dollars.  Personally I feel bad about how advantageous the dollar is here.  Thinking about every weekend when I’m haggling fiercely with a taxi driver over what comes to be a grand difference of about 40 cents makes me feel a little ungrateful.    

Quite tragically, there are a large number of streetwalkers who ask for money and food.  Their situations are unenviable, to put it very lightly.  The most tragic are the Talibé, small boys who are students at Koranic schools.  They are sent from all around the country to be instructed in the words of the Koran, a route seen traditionally as a parent’s way of giving a much better life to their son than they had:  they were never asked to be sent. 

They are clothed, fed, and lead in their studies by Marabouts, the religious leaders of local Islamic Brotherhoods.  These Marabouts are way over their heads in children, and although their political and social power is mighty, they simply don’t have the means to feed and teach the hundreds of kids they’re struggling with.  So, during the day, they are sent out onto the street to kick rocks and dodge the scorching sun.  They are charged with a dirty yellow tin and a single word: sarax.  Please.  If they don’t come home with enough money, they are beaten. 

It just kills me to see people begging on the street.  However, more on a matter of principle than anything, it’s pretty insulting when the Talibé beggar boys see you from hundreds of yards away and quite visibly plan their “casual approach” to ask you for money just because you’re white and, stereotypically, you’ve got money.  I almost didn’t even go to Dakar because I waited so long to get a ticket, hoping to scrounge out one of those cheap and desperate final spots.  But their methods are as racist as they are insulting.  I don’t have to describe what it feels like to be profiled.  You know when it’s happening.  It rears its head as a twist of the neck, a double-take, and a quick change of vector to a collision course with you.

Personally, I like conversations.  For that express reason do I abhor when my host mother interrupts whatever I might like to say:  at that point it has ceased to be a conversation.  Also for that reason, I naively enter into conversations with most everyone on the street.  I’m pretty much trusting to a fault, and I’ll let anyone walk me anywhere they want, even stupidly, as I’ve come to realize, to ATMs.  I’ll let them chat about terranga, the local custom of hospitality, basically an unspoken agreement among the families who belong to the one big Senegalese family that their sons will always be taken care of wherever they go.  To me, this tradition translates to a heaping pile of food at every meal and the license to go up to any door in Senegal, ask to use the bathroom, and subsequently be obliged.  Directly after they tell me how nice their country is and how kind its people are, I get offered necklaces as gifts and get incessantly harangued for money for this guy’s son’s baptism, or that lady’s hungry baby back home.  …I was just enjoying the company of a local…I had no idea I was getting myself into this. 

And the decisions about how to help are nearly impossible to make.  Between figuring out if they’re serious and that they actually need the help, or if they’re lying to me, or even how much to give them or whether I should buy them food, I get so flustered and caught up that I barely notice the fingers creeping towards my pockets.  I want to help.  I really do.  But Senegal has really made me question what sort of help is actually helping, and not inadvertently hurting.  Just like a blood transfusion, foreign aid needs to be natural, and compliant.  If you put a certain type of aid into the wrong cultural milieu, it won’t take.  In some cases it gets violently rejected.  I’m not “foreign aid” per se, but I have means that didn’t exist in the system before I got here.  Where they go does make a difference.  And whether the 10 000 francs CFA I accidentally let go is making sure Moustapha’s baptism reception will have enough couscous or is instead supporting begging and economic dependency is of no small consequence.

Mermoz really is a spectacular place.  It’s filled with friendly faces that, as I pass by their many stoops and makeshift roosts, call me over and teach me the newest and most in vogue Wolof phrases, all the while laughing at my inevitable, comical confusion.  My favorite: Yaangi chill?  Ruthlessly shanghaied from English, this really only means, “You chill?”  Actually, my real favorite stands to be Naka muu? because I use it all the time and really still have no idea what it means.  These tiny groups line the many, networked alleyways which weave intricately through the neighborhood.  These tiny paths are sandy and asymmetrical, sometimes even downright dirty and rubble-strewn.  They have the air of being kind of crooked, like living challenges to Renaissance art.  Like delicately placed veins, they give a veritable, even mystical pulse to the city, and as they thread the tin roofed, stucco houses and makeshift basketball courts, they twist and turn and connect randomly as if they had a fear of being mapped.  People have no right-of-passage over the migratory goats, dogs, and toads who use the alleys with equal fervor.  My entire universe was shattered when, on one day early on in my stay before I had figured out the lay of the land, I walked aimlessly around the neighborhood trying to find my way.  At one point I got lost, only to realize that I had actually ended up standing right in front of my very own house.   

Every morning from the boutique my mother goes out early and picks up two batons of bread for breakfast.  We buy chocolate bread, preloaded with a thick layer of chocolaty, pasty goodness, most likely for the dual purpose of 1) actually making me want to get up early in the morning and 2) masking all the bleaching and other treating processes this bread quite obviously, yet oddly, goes through.  I guess it’s not that weird that they want to make sure the bread is clean, especially in a highly populated city.  But you’d never expect bread this ghastly shade of white to come out of a traditional bakery.  It’s nothing like tapalapa, the thick, well-kneaded, whole-grain bread my friends and I enjoyed in the Basari Country in the southeast of Senegal over Fall Break.  Boy, did we bien mangé down there.  For those of you who haven’t tried warthog:  Pumbaa has many more qualities than simply his undying loyalty to lions and established monarchy.

To go with my breaded chocolate, I’ve actually become accustomed here to drinking coffee, which is far away from the norm for me.  Not so much for the taste, and certainly not for the marginal effects I get from it, I’ve used it to supplement the juice I’d normally drink for breakfast.  Juice, while available here, is expensive and small in portion-size.  Plus, I can’t deny the fact that having juice outside the house necessitates a higher intake of water, a practice from which everyone can benefit. 

The food here is more or less incredible.  The formula is pretty consistent:  a base of a sizeable amount of very oily rice (depending on the dish, actually), thrown in a big bowl and tossed with vegetables (mostly starches and local tubers, but occasionally including cabbage and what looks like a small under-ripe pumpkin which, frankly, tastes like death), and finished off with either whole fish or meat.  Originally, or so I’ve inferred from some scattered conversations between my father and mother, oily rice was seen as a status symbol amongst the families of Senegal.  I think as the caste system has become more or less outdated, so has the practice of using oil to and end other than cooking.  Dakar, having drawn all ethnic groups from far and wide, has become regarded widely as the most cosmopolitan city in West Africa. It would seem that the cuisine here has followed the trend of integration the city has laid down. 

Sure, my ceebu jen, the national dish of rice and fish, leaves oily smears on the side of the bowl.  But when we have yassa, a dish of chicken/fish and a delicious onion sauce traditionally associated with the Djola, I’m not sure if even a drop of liquid lipid hits the plain white rice.  My personal favorite, mafe, is a Bambara dish made with white rice and peanut sauce.  It’s almost like eating peanut butter, but not quite.  I’ll make do, though, because among the many things I’ve missed about home being so far away, from fall, to pumpkin cake, to apple crisp and other apple sports, to non-powdered milk, to my Dad’s stupid humor, peanut butter was the least expected to make the list.  It’s just nearly impossible to find in the form we’re all used to.  Sure, one of Senegal’s main exports is peanuts, but we Americans just love large volumes of salt and all those delicious unnaturals that make Skippy stick so happily to the top of your mouth. 

I humbly expect all of those aforementioned cravings of mine to be satisfied upon my return.  Preferably the moment I get off the plane.  I’m sure you can do it, Mom and Kate.  I know for a fact you can do it, Dad.

Blogging, the act of writing, frankly, has always been a stressful experience, never quite delivering the release that so many friendly encouragements have promised.  The prospect of deconstructing my thoughts and experiences with the hope of arranging them into a tight and well-oiled unit is a daunting one when the moving parts are so numbered, when this mechanic can barely hold onto his “wrench” as it is.  I can hardly hope to connect these irregular shapes with the smooth, calming, solidifying lock that comes with sliding together, finally, two puzzle pieces who were cut for one another.  No, for me this idea is an impossibility when my thoughts are so fleeting, and are annoyingly of such untraceable origin.  No balls find their corresponding sockets in my mind.  When I come to write and organize my thoughts, I am like a child who pushes incessantly on one piece of the puzzle, trying to mash it into a home which was never meant for it.  But blue’s supposed to go with blue, right?  I mean, it’s not like my puzzle box has come with a picture of the finished product… 

So I find it easier not to write.  But to forget the origins or the impressions I’ve felt in Dakar, those which have sparked the most pure and genuine happiness I’ve felt in a long while, just because it’s easy to… That is unyielding disappointment, a life sentence to the cages of my spirit.  No parole.

So although I fear that what I write is mundane, or poorly processed, or generally unimpressive drivel, I promised I would.  Here we go:

I’m beginning to think that, among the several admittedly stupid things my father has passed onto me, my immunity to homesickness is one he probably didn’t know he would give me.  Now, Mom, don’t mistake me by thinking I don’t miss home.  You should all know that I’d give anything to be with you, to see you all, right now.  My departure was celebrated with shiny, beautiful tears on tiny, beautiful faces.  It’s just that I seem to be so fortunately, and unnaturally, content wherever I go.  The road this journey takes me down has had many choices in direction, but after no fork in the road does it feel like I should have taken a different path.  A big, momentous decision like the one I’ve made to pass two semesters here should probably come with a measure of apprehension or regret.  But I don’t feel like I’ve skipped a beat anywhere, or done some part of my life out of order. 

I have no idea where my niche is here, either in my family or within the community in Dakar. But that uncertainty brings me no worry.  Every step I take down L’Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop, past phone card peddlers and fruit stalls and an alarmingly western supermarket, is light and free.  My calls of Salaam Maalekum and inquiries of Naka nga def? are fly easily from my tongue.  My lips, aspiring tri-linguists, are constantly stretched tightly across my face, exposing happy teeth and my characteristic, twin smile-lines.  I am so utterly content and within my element, so nearly full-to-bursting with happy moments and sights, that I can’t help but be at peace with my decision to travel, study, and live, in this unimaginably foreign environment.  My future, always murky and questionable, shines, not clearly, but bright at least.

The rest of our week of orientation was a blur, passed quickly and as a handful of cultural lectures, happily book-ended by indistinguishable nights of camp counselor games, soccer matches and bleary eyed conversations—those whose best venues are the deepest parts of the night, when the deep black turns time into a forgotten nuisance.  Certainly, what I remember most of my first week are the nights.

One night in particular, after a particularly rousing match of “Who’s in the frying pan?” followed by a vigorous round of “Telephone Pictionary,” I walked outside into the small patio area, where all our meals had been eaten, when I was met by the excited hello of one of the workers, Lat.  “Bili-Boi! Viens-ici!”  (For all of you who don’t know, and I’m assuming none of you do, apparently Bili-Boi is a Senegalese comedian, at least so well known that each and every local here, including my host mother, calls me by it.)  I had conversed a few times with Lat, the cook from Casamance, mostly in broken Wolof. Our laughter and broad smiles at the uncomfortable language barrier kept the conversations fresh and enthusiastic.  Having a few kindly exchanges under our belts, I felt comfortable enough with Lat that I didn’t fear an unsupervised, unsupported conversation in the late evening. 

Although the build-up of our conversation is blurry, (something about me liking his pants and him my olive drab shorts and then somehow onto the topic of being a soldier), we got to talking about our thoughts on humanity.

Now at this point I was still brushing off my French with a wire comb.  For sure, this night was one I wished I didn’t have to speak French to be counted as anything more than a pesky Tubaab [a.k.a white — yea that apparently flies over here].  Either way, after asking me whether or not I’d ever want to be a soldier, Lat, upon hearing my response to the negative, explained his childhood wishes to fight. He detailed his time spent as a Talibe in a Koranic school following the teachings of a Brotherhood Marabout, as well as his more recent sentiments of pacifism and, moreover, humanism.  I don’t know how we were both able to hike up our pant legs and swing our eager legs over the looming language barrier with such great success, but I’m still not convinced that it was at all a success of either my French or his, well… my French.  No, my French was broken and awful and I feel obligated to apologize to my grandmother for my corruption of her prided second language.  But I guess, even when you’re standing in the shadow of that barbed, disorienting wall, you can look deep and find the strength to turn your mind into a Berlinese sledgehammer and punch out a gaping hole. 

Appealing to our most brotherly sentiments, smiles and laughter weaved paragraphs in the fabric of the air, detailing our love of peace and brotherhood and our goals for harmony.  The happy length of our longing sighs expressed great desire to work toward such cooperation.  And we spoke at length with emphatic gesticulations and hard prods on our white plastic chair arms as to why peace and philadelphia can sometimes be so difficult to attain.  Many a happy handshake was held as we realized this was one of those moments when two societally polar humans broke through the bonds of language, culture, caste and class, to come to the common ground of fraternity.  I’ve had few of these moments in my life, like one late night in the Dominican Republic seated at a long table covered in a sweaty plastic tablecloth, talking deep into the night with a beloved Reverend and a close friend. 

This was my first in Africa. Lat was my first African brother.

One thing I’ve noticed about places like Africa:  Societies which have at one point been subjected to external pressures in the form of colonization or modernization still hold fast to traditional societal hierarchies.  Patriarchalism, for example, puts men as the head of society and attributes them with all powers of heritage and property, including the right to polygamy. Standing up stalwartly to modernism and the growth of woman’s rights, the patriarchal system persists as a monument not to persecution or obstinacy, but to pride in tradition and culture. 

Then there’s the tradition of elder respect.  In Senegal, the most important people in the community aren’t exactly “people” anymore.  At the summit of community politics and social hierarchies you find the spirits of the community’s ancestors (who I have to assume are probably too busy being at peace to deal with community politics).   Below them are the elder living and adults, down to adolescents and children.  Each rung of the ladder can only be achieved once the rising member of the community has passed by rite of passage, like the unanesthetized circumcision all Senegalese boys have to undergo, to this day, to become men.  These rites set up a palpable distance between age groups, and as such the amount of respect the youth show for the elders is astounding. 

And so I’ve seen multiple times, parents, teachers, and elder siblings all around take whatever chance they can get to beat the youth into the ground with long-winded speeches.  We Americans are not exempt.  I sat and listened patiently as my Wolof teacher explained polygamy for a half-hour.  That’s not so bad, really, but we had a 2-hour guest speaker go into painful detail about the frankly self-apparent custom a day before.  Plus, he was eating up time I would have rather spent butchering his poor dialect with my monotonous reptitions of Nanga yendoo? or Suba saangi nii rekk.  When my host mother, Cousma Sow, asks me how my day has been, I often commence confidently only to be halted by her impatient continuation of whatever banal thought she may have had. 

I used to think it was a lack of respect on the part of the elders, but after much deliberation I’ve concluded that it actually is a lack of respect on the part of the elders.  It’s not that they don’t like younger people.  It’s just that the hierarchical society sets up such vast partitions between age groups.  It’s pretty insufferable, but so a close friend once told me, the second stage of culture shock is “Irritation.”  So here’s to second gear, I guess. 

In any case, so went this discourse with Lat:  highly one-sided.  He detailed the dangers of living in Senegal with the joke of a government some like to classify as a “Democracy.”  Really, though, it’s pretty ugly.  The abhorred Abdoulaye Wade was elected to a second 7-year term as President despite his reputation for embezzlement and ineptitude, simply because no clearer path laid before voters.  Plus, you can pretty much get put into jail or “made disappear” for speaking ill of the government.  He looked at me with an air that belied his envy.  He truly believed that I had no idea how lucky I was to live in America, the place where flawless, patriotic democracy reigned supreme. 

I make no effort to say that I’m ungrateful for what I’ve been given.  Above all, I realize how important the gifts which I have received actually are:  a supportive family, a healthy body, and an opportunity for education, let alone sports and health care and service trips and visits to Disney World without doubt make me who I am.  And, although I make no further claim to understand politics, I think I’ve seen too many goofy things within this “Democracy” to know better than to call it “true.” 

I tried to tell him that, although our government may be more stable, the appreciation of life and freedom here is enviable.  I told him that I thought, although mostly corrupt and full of detestable consequences like child trafficking and genocide, wars here are fought by men who believe in a better quality of life, and believe in dying for it; I remarked that this kind of war had ceased in America.  “Aux Etats-Unis maintenant, il y a trop de haine.”  In America, there is too much hate.  Thinking instantly to xenophobes and homophobes, I thought of the Westborough Baptist Church, and the sheer amount of hatred that I’ve seen pour from their mouths and pickets. 

With somber movements and disturbed facial expressions, all of which I hope adequately expressed the fear and disgust these hateful protests brought to lives all around America, I detailed one particularly disturbing movement:  the God Hates Fags campaign.  One of my very closest friends is gay, and I couldn’t love him more for who he is.  So it’s no stretch to say this kind of social movement bothers me.  What I forgot about West Africa and most of the non-occidental world is that most everyone is uncomfortable with steps liberal Westerners have taken in social acceptibilities: low-cut shirts and running shorts are scandalous enough, let alone homosexuality.  (Not that there is nothing to be said against the way Westerners publicly display and privately exploit sex). 

In any case, there’s a piece of advice a close friend had once given me which I should have done well to abide by.  It was to never, not ever,—“Holy God, Bill-Bear, don’t ever do it”—bring up homosexuality to a West African.  Lat, even being the sensible and well-spoken 23 year-old he is, was no exception.  The “conversation domineering” I referenced early was laid on thick like the sour honey I kicked out of this cultural hornet’s nest.  For a half-hour, Lat laid out all that his upbringing said was wrong with homosexuality, stifling all attempts I made to explain my position—that each man should be able to do as he wished.  It wasn’t even as if his arguments were well-founded.  They just sounded scared. 

It was pretty wierd to sit and watch as this kind face of a brother turned so suddenly into the face of a mindset which was so foreign to me. To know that we were so very alike, yet so staunchly opposite in deeply seeded opinions genuinely hurt.  The cultural gap I had just come from cementing shut wrent itself apart, and the smiley Lat stood on the other edge once again.  I still see Lat pretty often, but I’ll never see him in the same light again.  And I’ll never again bring up a hot-button issue to anyone here.  Ever.

And yet, something Lat had said that night, almost three weeks before today, still sticks with me.  Lat himself might be gay.  His brother might be, or his son may be if he ends up having one.  His best friend might be gay.  But it doesn’t matter in Senegal.  You really don’t see many gay people here, in public, but I can’t believe that’s because they don’t exist.  In fact, there are organizations in Senegal created by Senegalese for the protection of homosexual rights.  However, the social pressures against homosexuality are so significant that a gay man here might rather hide who he is than risk the violence he’d be begging from the community and worse, the government.  Lat said you could risk “disappearance” and presumably death from simply speaking ill of the government.  So I believed Lat when he told me you could get killed by your family, or be persecuted by the state, killed even, for violating its cultural rules.  I’ve since slightly rewritten my opinion of underdeveloped places.  I  will stand by and say I get an incredibly strong sense of community and family in places like Dakar.  But that’s only because I abide by the rules of that community.  Separate yourself from the values and customs, and you’re dead to the world around you…

Each place in the world has its beauty, and its horror. That much is true.

This blog so far covers about a week of my stay here, although I’ve been here for 3.  Sorry everyone, I’ll try to keep up with it quicker, but there’s so much to say and I’d hate to leave anything out…  Thanks for reading this time around.