Under African Skies

So my village stay.

I’ve talked to several of the other students about writing blog posts on the village stay, and we were all talking about how difficult it is to write about so anyone would actually be able to understand what it was like. This is less a teenage angst “no one ever understands me!” sort of statement, and more because first I have little faith in my ability to articulate what that nine days was really like or meant to me, and second, because I’m not sure that I entirely understand yet what happened there, or what it meant, or how it affected me.

My family was great. It was huge, which was a nice change from my Dakar family, which for a while after Korite was down to just Astou and me. My mother, or yaay as you say in Wolof was a wonderful regal matriarch sort of figure, who seemed to rule over the rest of the family. My father was the president of the village, and seemed really interesting, even though he was never there so I never got to talk to him much. My family DID for the most part speak French, so my biggest fear was assuaged as soon as I got there, though they spoke Wolof to me much more than my Dakar family. We lived in what was not so much a house as a compound, with several buildings surrounding a sandy courtyard area where we spent most of our time. And I have to say, I think I preferred it to sitting in front of the tv all the time like we do in Dakar, we would sit on mats in the sand surrounded by cats and chickens and the occasional frog, and once the sun set, with an astounding tapestry of stars overhead. The electricity cuts would mean the fan in my room wouldn’t work, so it was difficult to sleep, but it also meant that the street light (I can’t think of a better word for it, though it is difficult to have a street light without streets) would stop working, and the stars were more brilliant there than anything I’ve seen before.

My sister Fatou, was really sweet and took me under her wing for the week. The first day, we arrived around eleven, and at three or so Shani showed up at my house with her little sister; she was exhausted because her family didn’t speak French and she had already used up most of her Wolof vocabulary. Fatou took us on a walk to the river (or “un bras de le fleuve” an arm of the river) and then to her friend’s house where they tried to teach us to dance. As we were being dragged around, we hit upon what turned out to be the theme of the stay “xamuma” which means “I don’t know” in Wolof. So much of my time there was learning to go with the flow in a way that I don’t think exists in the US, in a “I don’t know where I am or where I’m going or the names of any of the people I’m with or what you’re trying to say to me” kind of go with the flow. “Xamuma” became a bit of a talisman, (a gris-gris, as our Islam professor would say, which are the amulets that many of the Senegalese wear) to deal with the absolute uncertainty of every situation, and to find humor in it.

My birthday was good, nothing like any birthday I’d had before, but I had a really good time, mostly because I was determined that I would. I was staying in the rural village with a really big family (who did speak some French after all) and they threw me a party. We had these pink shrimp-flavored chip things that are really good (you might have had them before, you can get them sometimes at Thai restaurants) with sauce, and they sang me happy birthday in English, which was pretty funny, and then we danced to Senegalese music. The other students had a competition over who could make me the best card out of things they found in the village, so I got a lot of… interesting birthday cards (no really they were great) and Shani, came to the party with my family, which made it less awkward than it could have been. We walked to the market in the town where we met for lunch everyday, and we went in the hottest part of the day, when none of Senegalese are stupid enough to be out. While we were walking, I said to Emily, who had her birthday a day before mine, “I think this is the first sweltering hot birthday I’ve ever had.” October in Michigan is rarely t-shirt weather, let alone hot. It was unlike any birthday I’ve had, and probably unlike any I’ll have again, but it was good. For a while I was a tiny bit bitter about having my 21st birthday here, since I can’t exactly do any of the traditional things, but then I thought “how many chances will I have to have people throw me a Senegalese birthday party?”

Now we’ve been in St. Louis for four days, but I still feel like we just got here, because I’ve been sick and spending most of my time lying in bed listening to The Golden Compass on my computer. Thanks mostly Deborah, I will have an outfit made here, which I’m pretty excited about. Getting clothes made in Senegal deserves it’s own post and might even get it one of these days.



I had to wait to post this because I couldn't get internet in Saint Louis, so I'm back in Dakar. It funny how much like home Dakar feels now.