Christmas & 500 CFA ceebu jen

Today I listened to Christmas music while I recorded some interview notes from last week, and it occurred to me that this is pretty much the only preparation for Christmas that I've had. Senegal being a Muslim country, you're unlikely to encounter Christmas music in stores and on the radio, after-Thanksgiving Christmas shopping sales, stocking stuffer commercials on TV, Christmas movies on TV, or even decorations and painted windows in shops. And by unlikely, I mean it just won't be there, although there is one shop near SIT (frequented by non-locals, I should add) that has had its windows decked out for Christmas and 2008 for several weeks, which is just jarring beside the sandy streets and hot weather in Dakar. When I get back to the US (in three weeks!), I think I'll be ready to see America's more garish displays of holiday cheer once more.

Yesterday I found out that you can get a chocolate and banana sandwich on French bread for about 25 cents from a little kiosk near my boarding house (where I've gotten used to sheep on the roof and doing my laundry on the roof by hand and all the sounds of the city). And a delicious lunch for a dollar in a little restaurant/shack near school. The woman who runs it is really friendly and doesn't seem to speak much French, and it's frequented only by Senegalese. Every weekday she makes two dishes you can choose from, and then you get to drink tap water (and not get sick! - because I've been here for a long time now) and try to speak Wolof with the other patrons.

Senegal is fun once you've been here a while and know your way around and can drink the water without getting sick and aren't afraid of street food. It was good before, but being able to do more authentic things - like eating lunch in a shack at a communal table - makes it much better.

I should add that ceebu jen - rice and fish - is the national dish of Senegal and what pretty much everyone eats for lunch. 500 CFA is a dollar in Senegalese currency. And getting really good ceebu jen for 500 CFA - well, that's a good reason to come to Senegal in the first place.

From HLM Fass

I'm now living in a boarding house in a neighborhood called Fass. It's close to the university and SIT, and it's run by a wonderful old woman named Baye. It's pink and yellow and has three floors, with a courtyard in the middle and the best view of Dakar I've ever seen is what you see from the roof, if you're not too distracted by the pen full of sheep up there. That's right, there are sheep on the roof of my house, along with a few rooms for boarders and communal laundry lines. There are a lot of boarders, and it's nice to be in a place where I can talk to people who speak French but where I don't have to worry about what time I come home; it's definitely better for ISP period anyway, although I miss my homestay a lot! Outside, there's the grossest-smelling canal in Dakar (because it's basically a garbage/raw sewage drop-off spot), but at least I know that when I smell the canal, I'm in the right place. I'm living with three other students from the program, and a fourth one will be joining us in about two weeks. It's really really strange living with other Americans again after living in a host family. Sometimes I actually get tired of speaking English and talking about American things when I want to practice my French and actually be in Senegal. I hope I get used to it before I come home!

ISP is weird. I've been hanging out with medical students at the university, mostly my host sister's friends, and it's been really interesting to see the university system/situation up close. The campus is HUGE, it makes Smith look like a quaint little traffic circle or something. There are several entrances lined with people selling snacks, passport photos, bookbags, clothes, shoes, notebooks, homemade bissap and bouye juice, and the use of the copy machines in the little shacks they sell things from. The buildings are almost all concrete, and some of the dorms look a little like they're falling apart. There are palm trees and taxis driving through the campus at all times, and a lot of students. They're all really young-looking, and most of them wear western-style clothes; some girls are veiled. There are also a lot of foreign students, so I don't really stick out too much when I'm there.

The medical school (which also houses pharmacy school and some other schools I can't remember) is actually in a large and beautiful building with a tiled facade and columns and has directional signs, which is really weird to see. My favorite place thus far is a "garden" outside the medical school that is basically just a lot with some trees on it, and some concrete benches that are so tall your feet dangle from them. It's a nice place to sit in the shade when you're waiting to interview your informants.

I have less than a month left here in Senegal, so I'm trying to get the most out of it. On Saturday, I went back to Goree Island with one of my friends from the program, and we went to the beach and to the market, where women say things like, "Come to my shop, good price!" in English and "Elle est ma cherie - She is my lovely" to us while we look at the jewelry they're selling, and then charge us exorbitant prices for the jewelry, because they're used to tourists. Then we had a wonderful dinner in a less tourist-full (if that is possible on Goree, which it's not really) restaurant, and saw "Persepolis" for free as part of Goree's Diaspora Festival. It was great, although I didn't catch all of the dialogue (it was in French), so I'll have to see it again when I'm back in the States.

It was really weird going to Goree a second time. The boat over was full of more tourists than usual, probably because of the diaspora festival, and honestly it was really strange to see so many white people (I've been in Africa for two and a half months), it was even weirder seeing obese people. That's not really a problem in Senegal. Coming back on the boat, it occurred to me that most tourists probably visit Goree, go to the beach and the House of Slaves (hopefully, because it's kind of the reason to go there), buy a quilted bag in a stereotypically "African" print (men with spears, anyone?), and head back to their nice hotels in Dakar. This is what you do when you're a tourist, and I've definitely done that before, in other countries. But that really hasn't been my experience here in Senegal, and I'm grateful for the difference.

As I said, I have less than a month left. It's weird and sad and good to know that I'll be home in a short time. Also, Thanksgiving is this week and I'm in Senegal, where you can't even buy a turkey that isn't pre-plucked...or, I think, pre-slaughtered for that matter. There are a lot of things I have to do before I go home, including an increasingly complicated independent research project. Oh well - petit-d-petit, l'oiseau fait son nid.

Funny Story

So sometimes I take the bus from Ouakam to and from school in Point E. It costs about 40 cents and takes about 40 minutes, and it's always incredibly crowded unless you catch it at the terminus, but even then you've got to put your bag down on your seat to save it and fight the line to pay the cashier your 150 CFA. If you don't get a seat, you get to hang onto a pole and try not to fall down. But this is usually not a problem, as you are surrounded by people on all sides. On the bus ride, you pass the embassies for Madagascar and Indonesia, Suffolk University's Dakar campus, and a bunch of stalls where people sell things to stopped traffic. There's also a monkey that belongs to someone near there who is always tied up in a tree.

A few days ago I took the bus home as per usual, was really glad to not fall over at all, and finally secured a seat as we entered my quartier (but not my neighborhood) when I heard this great big bang! Now, being a silly American, I instantly thought that a bomb had exploded on the bus or something. But it turned out that the cashier's cash box had fallen onto the floor, and a group of people were helping him pick up the coins. Then I started smelling smoke, consequently was worried, and asked a woman, "Qu'est-ce qui se passe?"

"Pneu creve," she said - flat tire. I was really glad to hear this. As I descended the bus with the rest of the passengers, I saw the busted tire, and I also noticed that everyone was getting off the bus. So there we were, this parade of displaced bus passengers, and everyone walked home. No one stuck around to wait for the tire to get fixed, or even to get another bus. We were all close enough to our houses. There were business people, students, women in elegant boubous - I was definitely the only white person (it's not as weird as you'd think) - and no one seemed upset. They just got off the bus and went on their way.

As I walked to my house through the dusty streets, past tailors and stalls and garbage piles and kids playing soccer in a large field, it occurred to me that this would never happen in the US. People would be so angry if a bus got a flat tire. They would probably stick around and wait for it to get fixed - demand that it be fixed. They might wait around to see if another bus would show up. They might call a friend or relative to come pick them up. They might call a cab company. They might threaten to send an angry letter to the local government. But they certainly wouldn't walk home. And that is exactly what my fellow commuters - and I - did. And I thought to myself, this country is pretty amazing.

Corrections

I want to append my last post by saying that I was pretty judgmental of the people I stayed with and I want to clarify something - first of all, I didn't get the perspective of the women residents of the village on what their lives are like, because they didn't speak French. From what I learned from the men in the village, it seemed like women there didn't have a lot of power, but I'm not sure this is true, because I never was able to actually speak to one of the chief's wives or his daughter-in-law about how they feel about their lives.

So, I don't want to speak for them. Because the power structure in the village may allow for women to have power in a way that wasn't visible to me. I don't know that they feel oppressed or mistreated by the men. One thing that I do know, though, is that they are strong - they work in the fields, cook, clean, raise children, and are a crucial part of the system that keeps the compound going. I truly believe that without the women, the compound wouldn't be able to function. So even though they may not speak French or hold power in a way that a western feminist like me would instantly recognize as such, they are still incredibly strong individuals who play an indispensable role in their community. Senegalese women are strong.

So, post appended.

Yesterday I found out that my host sister is a Harry Potter fan, that my host mom thinks that Senegalese girls who wear colored contacts look like witches, and that my indepedent study project proposal is due tomorrow. During ISP, our homestays are officially over, but I'm spending an extra week in my homestay, then moving to a boarding house with three other girls from the program for the rest of my time here. It's pretty stressful to think about this, and what comes after - going home. There are so many things I still have to do in Senegal and I am not looking forward to reverse culture shock. I know it'll be weird to see the following when I go home: dogs on leashes, SUVs on perfectly smooth paved roads (how ridiculous!), meat in butcher shops neatly confined to glass cases, people dressed in sweatpants, MacDonald's drive-thrus, signage in English.

I will be glad to see women and girls out running again (here it's only men most of the time - kind of a deterrent if you're a female runner), less pollution, more bookstores and movie theatres, and I can't wait for cold weather, overcast skies, rain at home and snow at school.

It seems a long way off. But I register for next semester's classes tomorrow. Sometimes things feel very slow here, and then I realize that my semester in Senegal has gone by so fast.

Return from Kedougou

We got back from Kedougou this week, after a weeklong excursion with a 3-day village stay outside of the town. Here are some things that happened:

1. I stayed in yet another polygamous family in a village far away from town - no running water, no electricity, etc. with another SIT student. The countryside was beautiful - like a combination of Vermont and northern California, and the people were pretty friendly. But it was also where I saw the most extreme manifestations of traditional gender roles since I've been here. First of all, we stayed with the chief, who had four wives, and then the second day we were there, we accompanied the little kids from the compound to a nearby stream where the family washes clothes and dishes. There were several girls and two boys. When we reached the stream, the boys stayed on the bridge while the girls took the clothes and dishes (belong, I think, to everyone in the compound) to the stream to wash them. We went with them and helped a little, although freshwater contact is pretty much verboten according to SIT. But what really struck me was that these girls were around six years old, and they were performing this chore like grown-up women while the two little boys who came along just played on the bridge and watched them work. I don't think the little girls were unhappy, they seemed to have fun being together while they worked, but it was still pretty shocking to see firsthand this kind of distinction between the treatment of boys and girls.

2. A lot of times you'll see people here wearing t-shirts that come from events in the US, that were probably donated and somehow ended up here in Senegal. For example, a few days ago, I saw a man in the university area wearing a Seattle Parks and Recreation t-shirt. Well, while we were in Kedougou, after spending three days in the village, I saw a boy wearing a March for Women's Lives t-shirt. Abortion is illegal here. Women's rights certainly exist, and there are women who identify as feminists, but you still run into things like a lack of reproductive options and enduring gender roles that can be unfair. Anyway, I know a lot of Smith students who went to that march. It was really weird to see that world and the one I'm in now together on a kid in rural southeastern Senegal.

3. After the village stay and seeing the March for Women's Lives t-shirt, we visited Saraya, a large village outside of Kedougou where a women's gardening project has just begun. The women's groups there have created three gardens for growing vegetables, which they can sell, and also incorporate into the diet of school meals for the kids in the village. This was really cool to see after my stay in the village, and a reminder of the good things that you see happening in rural areas.

4. We went to a mountaintop village to see the biggest baobab tree in Senegal! Although I think maybe it's really the biggest in Africa or even the world. It takes 23 people holding hands around it to cover its circumference. The hike up was beautiful, and at the top you could see a valley full of rice paddies, and mountains and the border with Guinea in the distance. The oldest woman in Senegal lives at the top of the mountain in the village. She is 118 years old. The village itself was very large, more like a city made of huts than a village. It was amazing and the best experience I've had in Senegal so far.

So now I'm back in Dakar, realizing that I have just about a month left here, which is kind of nice and a little sad at the same time. It also means that next week I start work on my indepedent study project. I'm excited to start and to be more independent here. Pictures of the Kedougou trip to follow!