Senegal...that's a city in Europe, right?

As my return to the States draws nearer, I’m increasingly bombarded with the all-important holiday query: What do you want for Christmas?!

As I considered the question last night, I had the weird and wonderful realization that I cannot even think of things that I want. This is not only because being with my family, breathing cleaner air, eating as many fruits and vegetables as I want, and having hot running water will be MORE than enough of a gift, but also because I’ve been so removed from American consumerism and advertisement that I can’t even think of what there is to want.

So, (and I admit that this is a major First World Problems moment), I googled, “What should I want for Christmas?” After about 10 minutes of perusing websites full of ridiculous gadgets—a self-stirring coffee mug, an alarm clock that launches rockets, a case for your iPhone that looks like an oversized ear—I started to feel sick (and not because of food poisoning this time). 

All I could keep picturing was this family I know that lives on the street outside of my neighborhood. They spend all day out there in the sun, babies in tow, sometimes attempting to sell trinkets. They talk to me every day when I pass by, greeting me by name and asking me how school is going, but they never, ever ask for money. This is a huge deal, because everyone asks me for money—even respectable people who clearly have enough to live on. And yet here is this huge family wearing genuine, non-resentful smiles and full of kids that hold out their hands for a high-five rather than for my spare change. Ironically, it actually makes me want to give them money and food (maybe they know about reverse psychology…those clever homeless folks).

Anyway, in my head I couldn’t help but think: The same $14 that could purchase a pair of microwaveable slippers could feed this family for a week. “Roly, the ‘hilarious canine’ toy” could fund one of those kids’ schooling for a year.

Now, I realize that money and its corresponding ethics are all relative… I don’t like it when people say things like, “If you would just skip one pedicure a year, you could feed a starving child for a month!” I mean, that may be true, but people have a right to decide what they want to do with their own money. All the same, there is something striking about being able to make those money comparisons in regards to a specific family—a group of extremely kind people I’ve come to be really fond of. So when I think about using $15 to either buy a Digital Voice Changer (“Scary fun!”) or to buy those kids a ton of fruit, bread, and water, the choice is clear. 

I realize that not everyone lives in West Africa and can just walk ten meters down the road to give to people in need, but I just wanted to share what this semester has done to a person who used to have pretty extensive and detailed Christmas lists.

(…Although, I’ll be honest, microwaveable slippers might come in handy this winter, now that 75 degree nights here feel cold to me).

For those who have not perused my new facebook photo album as extensively as I’m guessing my mother has, here’s the low-down on what I did this weekend: Rode a camel for 8 minutes, “camped out” in the desert in an absurdly fancy tent, witnessed a car accident that resulted in the death of two of the Senegalese president’s deputies (I also caught a glimpse of the president’s son! Starstruck.), explored the hipster-esque city of Saint-Louis, went on a bird-watching boat ride, sat in a bus for upwards of 13 hours, and contracted food poisoning.

All in all, an eventful weekend, but there’s only one story that I really want to tell in detail, simply because I cannot stop dwelling on it:

The bird-watching site we visited was, predictably, filled with middle-aged European tourists. One such older Frenchman approached me and asked if I spoke English. When I confirmed, he pointed to the boats and said, “Ees good!” I replied by telling him (in French) that the Wolof phrase for that is “Baax na.” He did not comprehend, because he didn’t know what Wolof was (the most widely-spoken language in the country he was visiting, might I add). He said, “Oui, parfait!” as if my ramblings were just a poor attempt at French. I tried again: “No, Wolof, the language.” He then started to say, “Oui, voler!” mimicking the wings of a bird, as if “wolof” were just a pathetic attempt at the French word for “flight.” As I tried again to explain what I meant, he patted me sympathetically on the arm and made an “isn’t she cute?” face at one of my friends, then walked away.

Everything about this situation made me annoyed. First of all, I speak French. How could I have carried on the first half of the conversation if I had such low proficiency that I could somehow confuse “neex na” and “parfait”? Secondly, how can you come to a country and not even bother to learn the name of the language spoken there? In the end, though, I just had to laugh. His patronizing attitude didn’t keep him from being the ignorant one, and I took a certain vindictive pleasure in knowing that he would soon get robbed blind by taxi drivers (who notoriously hike up their prices for tourists who don’t know any better)…I’m kind of a horrible person, it’s okay.

The only other news of import is that today is Thanksgiving! Nothing says “Hey, sucker, you don’t live in America anymore” quite like having a full day of classes on Thanksgiving day, except maybe for the fact that my Thanksgiving lunch will probably be a power bar and a bag of yogurt (yes, yogurt is sold in pouches here…like go-gurt, but worse).

So today while all my fellow Americans’ stomachs are full of turkey and sweet potatoes, my stomach will be full of the 5 liters of water I drank today in order to flush all the food poisoning out of my system. But hey, it’s cool, because while sleet and snow descend upon the midwest, the weather here is consistently in the 80s and sunny. So THAT is what I’m thankful for this year: T-shirt weather in late November…and the little blue passport that will let me back into America in just 25 days.

I’ve been slack about updating, but only because I’ve been busy having such a fun and crazy week that there has been no time!

My friend Chris came to town two Saturday nights ago, so Sunday morning I woke up freaking out with excitement to see a familiar face. After showing him around my neighborhood, we gallivanted around downtown and I got a chance to see his swanky hotel. Seeing the hotel was my first experience with really nice things since coming to Senegal: first elevator ride, first time using hot tap water, first time not having to constantly sweep the floor with my eyes for cockroaches (I still did, though; habits die hard)… Even the smell of the hotel blew my mind…it reminded me of America.

Fortunately, all of the hotel employees thought I was Chris’s wife, so I was welcome to show up there whenever I wanted. This came in handy when I was able to sneak into the rocking breakfast buffet the hotel puts on every morning. Now, I’m a sucker for buffet-style things in America, too—mediocre hotel continental breakfasts have always overwhelmed me with happiness; who knows why—but this one was just unreal. Bread, eggs, sausage, pancakes, crepes, fruit, cheese, jam, cereal, and REAL COFFEE. I was in heaven, and Chris can attest that I ate an obscene amount. 

Anyway, the past week has been spent in an alternate Dakar universe…from the breakfast experience, to seeing an old friend from my hometown juxtaposed with my regular life in Dakar, to suddenly getting a glimpse of the “rich white people” sector of the city. I actually enjoyed pretending I didn’t speak French or Wolof while at the hotel so that I could remain as anonymous a “tourist” as possible.

Sadly, Chris has now returned to the illustrious United States of America, and things in my neighborhood have taken a turn for the crazy. From getting ambushed and asked for money by my host mom late one night while the power was out, to my friend’s host mom pulling a machete out on her maid, to the biggest surprise: Finding out that my host dad has another family I didn’t know about. I found this out because one of his sons from his other wife died after getting hit by a car (that part was unsurprising, in light of how many times I’ve almost gotten hit by buses/cars here). And they haven’t told my little brother. But nobody warned me that he didn’t know yet, so when he came to me asking about it I almost spilled the beans on accident).

Apart from those major upsets, things have just been a bit on the bizarre side here. I find myself in the midst of many uncomfortable conundrums, such as, “Should I ask the maids why my t-shirt came back from the wash with a burn hole in it?” Or like today, for instance, when I fell INTO the sidewalk on my way to work (there was a large hole that apparently I did not clear effectively enough. My knees took quite the beating). There was also an instance the other day when a man asked me if he could have a lock of my hair to remember me by. I said no. He responded, “Just a small piece. You won’t even miss it.”

All in all, this has been one of the most surreal, rollercoaster-esque weeks I’ve had in Senegal. I’ll be very proud to be able to look back on my semester and say that I honestly did run the gamut of experiences here (and relieved that I lived through it, Inchallah). In the meantime, I will be locking my door at night and hoping there aren’t too many more crazy surprises in store for me (other than this weekend, when I’m going camping in the desert in northern Senegal…camel-riding and mosquito bites await!)

In the meantime…I encourage everyone to be grateful for sidewalks that don’t fall in on themselves and to double check with their spouses/parents that they have no secret extra families (clearly you never know).

I’ve begun to notice a strange disconnect between Things That Are/Are Not Acceptable in America and Things That Are/Are Not Acceptable in Senegal. For example: Hitting/screaming at your kids in public…usually not acceptable in America. Totally fine here. Also, in America, an insurance company giving out 100 sheep as prizes for a sweepstakes probably wouldn’t go over well with its constituency. Here, however, sheep are given higher value than pedestrians (although I guess that isn’t saying much, considering the nature of Senegalese traffic).

However, there are a lot of things that Americans might do in Senegal totally innocently that would make people here super-offended. These things are more tied to respect and purity, two things that aren’t valued quite as much in the US. In Senegal, touching food/other people with your left hand is rude, because the left hand (used for wiping…) is considered dirty. I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve been turned down for an unthinking left-hand high-five by a little Senegalese kid. Another big purity thing is with feet—bare feet are okay, but shoes are for some reason considered way dirtier than feet (although I can say with certitude that my feet are usually WAY dirtier than my shoes).

So one day, I’m in a car rapide (the colorful yellow buses), my head jammed into the window because there are about 30 extra passengers crammed in, and my stop approaches. In order to catapult myself over the masses (and to extricate myself from the man half-sitting on top of me), I have to step on the edge of the seat. An old man grabs my ankle and pulls it off, yelling about how wrong it is for me to put my foot on the seat. I was so flabbergasted that I couldn’t even respond, but I’ve had ample time to think about what I would say now, should l suddenly become fluent in Wolof, and it would go a little something like this: “We are sitting in a dilapidated bus made essentially of fortified tin foil with no working mirrors or brake lights. I can see the road speeding beneath us through holes in the wooden floor, and I just groped the woman in front of me in order to extricate myself from in between the large hips of the Senegalese women sandwiching me, not to mention the fact that the pleather casing of this seat has already been entirely ripped away, leaving only foam and exposed springs. But clearly my shoe touching the seat is the real problem here.”

The most confusing dichotomy: I’m not allowed to show my knees, but taxi drivers pull off on the side of the road and urinate on the edge of the sidewalk. Similarly, many middle-aged women whip off their shirts (no bras, might I add) when it gets hot in the house. If this makes sense to anyone, then please enlighten me. Until then, remember to greet with your right hand, and PLEASE keep your shoes off of everything. This is not a drill.

Well, my “Rural Visit” ended up being pretty much the opposite of the experience we were supposed to have. As our program director prepped us for these week-long trips, he told us to be ready to be surrounded by Senegalese villagers who didn’t speak French or Wolof, to be put to work harvesting peanuts or transforming cereals into millet, and to be totally disconnected from the outside world.

Instead, I found myself in Thiès, a fairly large and bustling city, staying with a Peace Corps volunteer who works a regular 9-5 job at the Peace Corps house in an air-conditioned computer lab. Instead of harvesting peanuts, I partook in the devouring of TWO half-pound Reese’s Cups. Rather than transforming cereals, I ATE cereal…lots of it. For dinner. Along with all other manner of Western food: salads, garlic bread, popcorn, and tons of vegetables. It was like a reprieve from Senegalese living, rather than an immersion into it. So although I wish I could have had a real “rural” experience, I still had an enjoyable week.

On to my favorite subject of the moment: Halloween. I realize it’s November now, and therefore I should no longer be celebrating Halloween. BUT: the same lack of noticeable weather and season change in Senegal that is making me miss Fall in Ohio also enables me to totally ignore typical holiday boundaries (silver lining!). If I want to watch Halloweentown in November (although, let’s be real, I also watch it in July), then who cares? It won’t feel any less like Halloween than October 31st did, when I wore a tank top and skirt to class and still sweat bullets. Same with Christmas: While everyone else has to wait until the day after Thanksgiving (ostensibly) to have Christmas cheer, I can start the merriment whenever I want. So today I will eat some candy corn, wear ghost earrings, and watch Halloween TV specials online. Maybe tomorrow I’ll listen to some Christmas carols and pair my (one) reddish shirt with my (one) pair of greenish pants. Who cares? Certainly not the Senegalese man I passed today sporting a “Drink beer, get more head” shirt, paired with a prayer cap and jelly shoes.

Merry Hallo-ChristmEasterukkah, folks.