Sorry Sheep...

Tabaski finally arrived last Tuesday, the much ballyhooed sheep killing holiday. Three sheep were killed at our house in the morning, and right afterward, the bodies are taken up to the roof to be butchered. Moctar was telling me that there is sort of a race between all the nearby houses to be the first one to be finished butchering their sheep, so while we were on the roof, we could see all our neighbors on their roofs and they were yelling taunts about how much of their goat they had butchered already, and were holding up sheep body parts triumphantly. I took a video of the third sheep being killed just so I can show others what the experience is like, but the internet connection here isn't stable enough to upload it, so I will wait until I come home next week to put it on the blog.

At the Vito household, there is usually less blood during our holidays. I mean, there’s always some blood, just…less. I was a bit nauseous after watching the three sheep get butchered, but I did have some of the meat at lunchtime. It tasted ok It was kind of surreal because I had just been petting the happy sheep about and hour and a half before. They use all the parts of the sheep too. The head is used to make a kind of brothy soup and the intestines are turned into a special dish. The skin of the animal can be sold to people who make rugs, drums, and blankets, so I was pleased with the fact that they used all the parts of the animal they killed. Food is prepared about every hour, and all day is spent eating. Friends come to visit and the talibe children in the streets are allowed into the houses to partake in the feast. After my third or fourth meal (in addition to the meat, there is also a lot of onions, rice, potatoes, and olives), I went out with my friend Delaney to visit some other houses, and my bubu (specially made for the occasion) got a lot of compliments from people on the street. That about wrapped up the holiday.

Christmas is celebrated here to a less extent than the US obviously, but the schools are going to be closed. I am coming home next Sunday for the holidays and coming back to Senegal on January 3^rd. I do really enjoy it here, but I am really glad to be going home to see everyone for Christmas. I was teaching my kids some Christmas carols on the guitar, and it’s just not the same singing “Jingle Bells” when it’s 80 degrees outside. Hope to see you all next week!

Here are some more pictures. There are some pictures of the butchered sheep at the end, so don't look past the second picture if you don't want to see it.

Me eating with my host brother and sister and Delaney (Portland)

At the mosque in the morning. Moctar took this picture.

The little ones learn how to butcher from watching the parents.


Edible parts of the three sheep. These are actually the same buckets I wash my clothes in...

Sheep Shopping

My family wanted three sheep for the holiday Tabaski, so we went to the sheep market on Monday night hoping to get some last minute deals. My host brother Moctar is a bachelor, so he said he didn’t need to have a big sheep, but my other host brother, Cheikh, is married, and it is expected that you bring home a healthy sheep to your wife for Tabaski, so there was some pressure on him. Leaving the house had a feeling similar to the we-are-going-to-get-a-christmas-tree feeling for Christmas. We walked to the sheep market which had thousands of animals. They were arranged into clumps of about 10, each one governed by a shepherd. Shopping with me was probably not the best idea, because they assume all white people have a lot of money, so when Moctar or Cheikh would ask for a price, the shepherd would say a price that was too high and say that since they were with a toobab, they could afford it. One shepherd told me I was the only white person he had ever seen shopping for a sheep. I did feel really out of place, and I started to hang behind my host brothers while they haggled for a price so the shepherds wouldn’t think I was with them. Just some random white guy…checkin’ out the sheep. I know nothing about sheep and had no intention of buying one, but after the two hours we spent looking around and getting prices, I started to be able to size up and guess about how much a sheep would cost. The average price for a sheep is about 80 dollars, but it all depends on size and health. I was bored for a while and amused myself by asking random shepherds how much money their biggest sheep costs. Then I would pretend to haggle for a while then walk away. There is also an inspection process where you walk around the sheep and slap it a little, get it to move. It’s kind of like kicking the tires on a car. I did feel kind of bad for the sheep just because they are treated like objects instead of animals. Sometimes you can tell they are clearly in pain, but the shepherds just keep whipping them. Also, after they are bought, they are incredibly intractable when taken away from the shepherd. I can add “sheep wrangling” to my list of “things I didn’t know I was bad at until I moved to Senegal”. They just don’t want to move and are surprisingly strong. Thankfully, once we got to the road we hailed a taxi. To transport the sheep back to the house, the legs are tied together and they are put in the trunk of a taxi. It is inhumane, no doubt, but considering it took me 20 minutes to drag the poor thing about a hundred yards, the trunk ride was probably less painful than me dragging it the remaining half mile home. Also, I can’t really cast blame, because I’m sure I transported my little brother in the same fashion at some point in my childhood. Now there are four sheep behind our house. Three are getting the knife tomorrow morning. Moctar says he will spend the day separating the meat from the organs. Ahhhh the holidays…

The Kindest Mob

The striking at school has become more aggressive in the past few weeks. Often, when there is a student strike, the students go to nearby schools and try to get those students to rally behind their cause, in order to put more pressure on their own administration. Recently, one of the strikes turned violent and some students were getting into fights with police. I’ve tried to find out the reason for the striking, and the reason is dependent on who you ask. The teachers told me the students are striking because there is an upcoming holiday (Tabaski) and some people need to do some traveling to see their families and want school to be closed. However, I asked some students why they were striking and they told me it was because the school had promised them scholarships and then not provided the money. For whatever reason, school is chaotic. On Wednesday, I was helping one of the other teachers give a test and about a half an hour in, we heard a yelling mob approaching. I gave a look to the other teacher (Mr. Sow) who gave me a shrug and just said to try to give the students as much time as we could. It’s kind of scary hearing an angry mob approaching, and I asked Mr. Sow if the door had a lock, and he said it wouldn’t matter. About a third of the class was finished when the mob finally made it to the door, and Mr. Sow was able to stall them for about 10 minutes, telling them he was giving a test, and just needed a little more time, then they could strike to their heart’s content. Well, finally the strikers poured into the room and started running around yelling (although they were full of energy, the mob did seem rather amiable. I recognized some of the students from my summer school, and they were very nice to me. They were screaming and yelling and throwing papers, then they would stop and smile and politely say, “Bonjour, Stephen!”). Mr. Sow and I were running around trying to collect all the tests before the students left. I got a wad of papers, hopefully everyone has something I can grade, but how can one be expected to perform on a test amidst an ensuing mob? I think I will grade them rather graciously. Can you imagine taking a failed test home to your parents and them saying, “Explain this grade, mister.”
“It’s not my fault, Dad. There was an angry mob in the class!”
“No excuses. Go to your room.”

Mr. Sow invited me back to his house for tea after class (tea is a traditional, social thing here, and people always invite everyone over for tea. The tea is served in something the size and shape of a shot glass. It’s incredibly strong and sugary. Personally, it’s not my cup of tea (sorry, couldn’t resist) but I drink it to be social and amicable) and had a chat for a while about the upcoming holiday, Tabaski. The story behind Tabaski is actually a version of the Old Testament story of when God asked Abraham to offer his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice. Just before Abraham is about to kill Isaac, a ram is provided so that Abraham doesn’t have to kill his son. So, on Tabaski, everyone kills a sheep to symbolize Abraham’s faith. They are planning to kill three sheep at this house. Both of my host brothers and my host mom all have a sheep, so now we have a small menagerie behind our house. However, shockingly, the one sheep that our family already owns, the most annoying thing on four legs is going to survive the sheep slaughter. I asked my host brother and he told me the sheep was still too small, so it will wait for next Tabaski. If I don’t kill it first, that is

Let's see. One box makes....oh just put the whole thing in!

The Americans couldn’t just sit by and let Thanksgiving go uncelebrated, so one of the volunteers’ dads was visiting and brought a box of instant Thanksgiving food. There aren’t turkeys here, so we just found some hearty chickens. Delaney (from Portland) offered her kitchen as a headquaters and we all helped in the food preparation. The power was out for most of the food preparation, so we were cooking everything by candles and flashlight. Apparently not eating American style food for so long has caused us to be unable to approximate food quantities. There were 10 of us in total, and we wanted to replicate an American thanksgiving, so we made everything we had. We filled something like 5 or 6 giant plates of stuffing, mash potatoes, chicken, fruit, bread, and salad. We didn’t even realize we had over-prepared until about halfway through eating and we just kind of came out of this we-want-food hypnotic state. Then we were all full and saw we hadn’t even finished a third of the food. I asked to look at the empty food boxes and discovered we’d made enough food for 32 people. We joked that we were all possessed by some hunger induced mania; pushing each other out of the way and dumping the boxes of food into the pot, “JUST PUT IT ALL IN!” “THERE’S NO TIME TO DO MATH!” “SO HUNGRY!” Then after we were stuffed and sprawled around the floor, we came out of our crazed state and just looked at each other, and were like, “Why did we make all this food?” “Who’s going to eat all this?” “I think there is gravy in my hair.” We ended up feeding the talibes with the left over food. It was so great, because they usually go door to door and ask for food, and they get some from the house, but the day after Thanksgiving, they hit the mother load at Delaney’s house. It created quite a frenzy.

I was looking up crafts for my students related to Thanksgiving and came across something kind of humorous. A lot of the crafts involved a piece of food as part of the craft, for instance a potato or something that you would accessorize to look like a turkey or a pilgrim. I was thinking about what would happen if I actually handed my underfed, hungry students potatoes and told them to decorate them with glue and construction paper. There would be big bite sized chunks of potato missing, or some crafts would be eaten entirely. It reminds me just how affluent the US is when we have so much food, that we can afford to just glue googly eyes to some and use it as a decoration. One more thing to be thankful for.

Here are some pictures of the event.

Caleb cooking. Delaney looks on while wearing an amazing Star Wars t-shirt. Cutting fruit by headlamp

Mash potato lagoon. Necessary at every Thanksgiving
Danny (New York) Caleb (New Hampshire) briefly pause before diving in with both hands
Sara came and joined us even though she's a Brit. Thanksgiving wouldn't exist without England right?
The kitchen at Thanksgiving. A little different from my Grandmom's back home.

A Real Live White Person

Another day another strike. School was briefly in session earlier this week, but on Wednesday, another teachers strike took place. I now see why school is in session for 6 days every week. You must take into account at least one strike day per week so your students are guaranteed 5 days of school. On Tuesday I taught in the morning and one of the teachers asked me to do a presentation at a different school about the US elections that took place a few weeks ago. It was the same school I was teaching at during September, so I recognized some of the students. I explained to them the election process and the major differences between the Democratic and Republican parties. Then we had a discussion about US politics, which went really well too. They asked me why Americans were afraid of Muslims and why we were in Iraq which kind of put me in an awkward position, because I hoped they didn’t think I was afraid of them or supported the war. I just explained that not all American are afraid of Muslims, but that many don’t know that there are different Islamic ideologies that people follow. And because we were attacked by a group of Muslim extremists on 9/11 and more attacks have been threatened, some Americans don’t distinguish that group of extremists from other peaceful Muslims. They seemed to get what I was saying. They were all really nice to me, and the discussions never got heated or anything. It’s fun teaching the advanced classes, because you can have discussions like this that help teach them things about the world along with English at the same time. I know a lot of them have never seen an American in person, so their opinions are based mostly on what they see on television.

When I enter most classes for the first time, everyone just starts laughing at me immediately because I am white. I think some have never actually seen an actual white person before, and when they do they can’t help but laugh. Even on the street, little kids go crazy when they see you and yell the word “Toobab” (pronounced too-bop) which means “white face” in Wolof. There is another word for white people that sounds like “honka-nob” which means “red ears”, but that one is a little more derogatory. I’ve only been called honka-nob a few times since I’ve been here, but kids yell “bonjour, toobab” about every 10 seconds when I am walking in the street. Toobab isn’t derogatory, and the kids are always friendly when they say it. At first I thought all the kids were calling me a bad name, because I imagined what would happen if I yelled to an African American “Hello, black face” in the US, but here it’s acceptable, and I’ve never really been called an ethnic slur before, so it’s kind of interesting to know what it feels like.

On Strike

The school I am teaching at now is a Senegalese public school. There are a couple thousand students, and about 60 in each class. My first week went smoothly enough, I sat in on some classes of the teachers I would be working with, and at the end of the week I taught for some of the classes. My second week was a little more eventful. There was a teacher’s strike at the beginning of the week because some of the teachers weren’t getting paid. The management didn’t really offer much of an explanation, but I didn’t teach at the beginning of the week. I’m not getting paid anyway because I am a volunteer, but I felt like if I taught a class that would have been taught by a teacher who was striking, that would mean I was siding with management and I didn’t want to be a scab. Then on Thursday the strike was over and teaching resumed. I was teaching the first class and about halfway through a group of 20 or more students between 16-18 years old came in and started yelling something to the class in Wolof. Then all the students in the class started yelling and everyone got up and left the class. The lady I teach with (Mrs. Fall) was just shaking her head and I asked what was going on and she said it was a student’s strike. Apparently the students were expected to take some standardized tests, but the school failed to provide teachers for some of the subjects they would be tested on, specifically, French and math. I guess it’s a reasonable enough reason to strike as a student. So that ended the week for me. Mrs. Fall assures me that there are periods of time where no one is striking and classes can actually be taught, but in public schools, it appears the administration isn’t very well organized, and strikes like these are common. I am currently organizing the other volunteers for a volunteer strike to protest the frequency of strikes in the schools here.

I have been using the long weekend to send out applications to graduate schools which is a pretty grueling process, but I am going to need to do something with my life when I eventually return to the states. The internet situation here is pretty spotty. The cafes seem to be working about half the time, and there are two hotel restaurants that have wireless that you can use if you buy something. One of them usually has a stable connection, so when it does, I usually set up camp there for most of the day doing grad school research. My family finds it strange that I need the internet so much because so few Senegalese people use the internet. I tell them that if you have a job in the states you need to be able to check the internet every day, and they are flabbergasted. I've also been passing the time by playing soccer with some of the kiddies in the house.

There is also a lot more animal street traffic due to the upcoming holiday Tabaski which will be the day when thousands of sheep and goats are killed and there will be a large feast. Merchants from all around are coming in to Saint-Louis to sell their livestock to meet the high demand.

Hell hath no fury...

We have a new child staying at the house with us. He is a talibe (pronounced tahlee-bay), which means he is a student of the Quoran and under the instruction of a maribou (pronounced mariboo). Often when families don’t have enough money to support their children, they will give them to a maribou who promises to instruct the child in the ways of the Quoran. The children beg in the streets for money to give to the maribou who gives them some food and a place to sleep. It is sad though, because they are given very little food (some rice and sugar) and are beaten if they don’t collect enough money. It is an unfortunate cycle, because many families view their children as a means of support in their old age, and so many families have children even though they aren’t prepared financially and the result is having to give the children away to the maribou as a talibe. We helped put a new floor in a building where the talibes sleep and it was so sad. They sleep on a concrete floor, about 30 kids in one room just sleeping side by side. We also gave the school some money to help pay for some mats for the kids to sleep on. I can only imagine what it is like on cold nights in there. There are also huge bugs crawling around and no running water in the building. We met the maribou of the building who knew some of the volunteers. He seemed ok, but he does carry around a belt-thingy to wack the children with when they get in his way, and he also asked some of the volunteers to marry him, so I wasn’t exactly endeared to the man. Polygamy is common here, and having a white wife is a status symbol that shows you are very important and wealthy. Naturally, the maribous all want to appear as authority figures, so they always hit on the volunteers and often ask to marry the women after a short conversation. Sometimes if I am walking with some of the other female volunteers, people on the street ask me how many of them are my wives. The girls are sick of getting hit on everywhere they go, they usually play along and pretend to be married to me or another volunteer. Then sometimes the person tries to buy them off of you, usually with goats or sheep. It’s times like these that make the girls feel really special.

I was talking with my host brother Moctar about marriage and he said it is possible to have up to 4 wives. That is the maximum according to Muslim law. It seems like two is the average just from what I have seen. As you can imagine, this makes holidays very interesting. Moctar said that during a holiday coming up in December (Tabascay I think is the name, but I know I am spelling it wrong) it is traditional to buy a goat for your wife. However, if you have two wives, you buy them both a goat and must make sure that both are equal in size and health. He said, “If you buy a strong goat for one wife, and a weak goat for the other, you will have all the problems of the world.” He said that being given a weak goat on Tabascay can be grounds for divorce. I can just imagine a Senegalese wife filling out divorce paperwork, and under the reason for the divorce, checking the box labeled “weak goat” right next to “irreconcilable differences” and “adultery”.

The dancing gene skips a generation

There are about 15 volunteers currently working with Projects Abroad in Senegal. The number fluctuates almost every week. Three are from the US and the others are from Europe. I’m going to be here for a relatively long period of time, so I will see most of the volunteers come and go over the next 6 months. It’s sad to see some of your friends leave because it’s quite certain you will never see them again, especially if they’re from Europe or elsewhere. Because of the large international mix, you do get exposed to a variety of interesting people and accents. Everyone from Europe speaks English fluently and most know at least a little French. There a lot of people from Germany here right now, and a few from the UK. There are social events sometimes where all the volunteers get together for dinner or drinks or something. There isn’t really a whole lot to do in Saint-Louis for fun. There aren’t any movie theaters here, but there are two discotheques. Both are pretty small, and there isn’t anyone there until about 3am, but after that it can be quite fun. When my friend Cecilia (from Norway) was leaving for home, we all went out to one of the discotheques. I got to debut the famous Vito dance moves, mostly inherited from my father. My dancing also helped me work on my French. For instance I was really cutting a rug when I heard a Senegalese person say, “l’americain est horrible!” which MUST translate to “that American sure can dance!” I also heard, “Il est stupide” which must be some colloquialism for “I wish I had moves like that.”

My friend Julia (from Scotland) is having her last night in town tonight, which is going to be kind of sad. I’ve tried not to get too close to any of the volunteers just because I know I’m going to have to watch them all leave. It’s kind of a strange setup because you of course want to be friends with all the volunteers, but as soon as you meet them, your friendship has an expiration date, usually about 2 months, so you want to befriend them, but not become emotionally attached so it will be painful when they have to go. There are only 3 volunteers here now that were here when I first arrived in September.

On a separate note, my salmonella is completely gone, and from what I’ve heard, it was fortunate that I was only sick for a few days. Maybe the stars were right. It seems I am well suited mystically-speaking for life in Senegal. My hair can apparently lift curses and my astrological sign grants me immunity from certain bacteria, so my body is well adapted to the supernatural fauna of Senegal. So rest easy, Mom.

Just glad I’m not a Pisces

I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid any illness in my first 2 months here, so I guess I was due for this, but I just went to the doctor and found out I have salmonella. It’s not as bad as it sounds. Abdominal pain is my only symptom and the doctor gave me a painkiller and some antibiotics. I didn’t really know what to expect when I went to the doctor’s office, or how it would compare to a Western doctor’s office. I had to wait for about an hour before seeing the doctor, so that part made me feel right at home. His office was like any doctor’s office in America. I scanned the walls looking for a diploma and didn’t see one, but Nicole (from Scotland. Projects Abroad person who deals with the volunteers) said that the doctor was on the level and I needn’t worry. I went in and Nicole helped my French along explaining my symptoms and he poked around my stomach for a little while and said that it was most likely the beginning stages salmonella which wasn’t great to hear, but he seemed to be very sure. The doctor did everything I expected and I chided myself for not having confidence in the man initially. Then he asked me what my birthday was. I said May 20, 1986, and he said, “Oh you’re a Taurus. You shouldn’t be worried then. Your sign doesn’t usually have a problem with this.” That single comment, which to most Senegalese people is probably a great comfort, completely shattered all the confidence I had in the doctor. He just slipped it in at the end too, just as he gave me my prescription. Then before we left, the doctor said something really fast in French and there was a word I didn’t recognize, so I asked Nicole what it meant and she said “worms”. My face did what you would expect it to do, and I said, “Nicole, I don’t have worms. Tell me I don’t have worms” she said I didn’t, but the doctor said that I might want get checked up in another couple months to make sure. “To make sure I don’t have worms? Should I see the vet or something?”

After I got my prescription, I called my parents later that night and had them google my medications to make sure they are normally given to treat my symptoms and everything seemed to be fine. Eggs are a big part of Senegalese food, and my family makes me food with eggs in it a lot, and I remember a particularly runny egg I had at the beginning of the week that I believe to be the culprit. Not to be critical of my family, but there isn’t a great amount of care in making sure the kitchen is completely germ/bacteria free. Here is a picture of the family sheep just walking in and having a look around.

I tried to tell my host family that I had salmonella and they didn’t understand what I was saying which I thought was a language barrier issue, but later once I had the French word for it (thanks Bryan) I found out they actually didn’t know what salmonella was. This was also made clear when they made me a big plate of eggs for dinner, just after I told them I had salmonella. I couldn’t help but laugh a little when they knocked on my door and presented me with a whole plate full of what made me sick.

It shouldn’t last too long. The round of antibiotics only lasts for a week, so hopefully it will all be cleared up by then, including any possibility of (sigh) worms. It’s not a debilitating illness and I can still go out with the other volunteers. Unfortunately, my first name lends itself to alliteration with the sickness I have, so right now I am trying to avoid the nickname “Salmonella Steve” given to me by one of the other volunteers which gained some popularity when we were out last night.

I hope everyone had a great Halloween. Also, congratulations Justin and Ashley Boutwell! Sorry I couldn’t make the wedding. I hope yesterday was magical for you both and I wish you the best from across the Atlantic.

Loves,
Steve

Tomorrow we'll talk about setting up a wi fi

Right now I’m between the summer school and the start of the actual school year, so to fill in the time right now I’m teaching at a school that’s more of a daycare for youngsters. It’s the same school that I helped renovate. I teach a little bit, but the children only speak Wolof (A native African language. They are taught French when they begin school, but many of the adults here don’t speak French at all). So I have been teaching the kids a little beginner French and numbers. We play lots of games with the kiddies and my guitar has aided me greatly. There is one lady who helps us who speaks Wolof and French so we English to each other, French to her and she Wolofs it to the children. Very awkward setup. Also, she is not afraid to reprimand the kids physically. A lot of the things she does will land you in jail or court in the US. Slapping the kids in the face, hitting them with a little stick she carries around. Although I disagree with how she punishes the kids, it does feel kind of good to see a kid who is being a total brat get wacked on the head with an empty soda bottle. Next Monday I start at yet a different school, which will be the fourth one that I’ve taught at so far. I think I will be there for a while though, because the school year will be starting. Here are some pictures of the care center. The two other girls who are teaching are Julia from Scotland and Jocelyn from Wisconsin.

My family has seen some of the technology that I brought with me here, and they said that they want to give me money to buy some things for them when I come home for Christmas. It’s difficult for me because they don’t understand a lot about computers or technology, so they asked me to get a laptop, but then I asked how fast and how much space they wanted and they were very confused. They also asked me to get them an ipod and I was trying to explain how they need sound files to put on the ipod and complicated by a language barrier, the process was really arduous. I was showing them the difference between left and right click, then right to mp3s and file formatting and I could tell they had no idea what I was trying to explain. Not only that, but I feel like there are a lot of other things that the house would benefit from instead of the technology. For instance, a toilet. Right now we just have a hole in the floor. I could never say this because it would be rude to them, but when they talk to me about buying a computer, I want to tell them that usually the progression of technology goes toilet – computer – ipod, and they were proposing ipod – computer – toilet.

Also, a follow up to a previous post (The Maribou’s curse). It turns out that whatever the good Maribou did with mine and Jocelyn’s hair worked and the curse of insanity (or whatever it was) was lifted from Lamine’s brother. He is acting normal again and will be able to play in the soccer game that his opponents tried to prevent him from playing in with the evil hex. It’s also not too late for Disney to pick up this storyline for a made for tv movie.

Loves,
Steve

Battle of the Bowl

It’s difficult to explain how weird it is for a Westerner to experience a traditional Senegalese dinner. Sharing a giant bowl with five other people presents many things that are strange to us. We are used to food that is inherently “ours” and no one else should touch it. The communal bowl has what can be described as food territories. The small amount in front of you can claim as yours, but where your food ends, and your neighbor’s begins is tricky. Some are defensive eaters. Eating only what is directly in front of them unless shoveled some by a neighbor, and others are aggressive eaters, often venturing far out of their territory to retrieve a choice bit of food. I am more defensive, just because I don’t know these people that well and I don’t want to accidentally take anyone’s food that they see as theirs. The most common dish here is called “Thie’ bou djen” which is a Wolof (native African language) word for “fish and rice”. It is mostly fish and rice with a couple veggies thrown in. Every day they eat this meal for either lunch or dinner. I really didn’t like it at first, but after eating it every day for six weeks, I’ve acquired a taste for it. My favorite part is the carrot. There is one carrot which is the only real source of vitamins in the meal and I always try to sit in front of it so it will fall near my food territory. Here is a little diagram to describe what it is like at the dinner bowl.

As you can see, the center of the bowl has no real owner. I tend to think of it as “no man’s land” and stay out of there unless one of the family tosses something from the middle into my territory. There is the fish, but it’s kind of hard to eat because the bones are still in it so you kind of have to dissect it with a spoon. Ends up being too much trouble. The only time I venture out is to go after the precious carrot. Occasionally, one of the family members will knock down the little food walls between each territory to eat them, but I have never wanted to because I feel like I’m a dictator invading a foreign country. I talked with another volunteer who said that he was a really aggressive eater and he carves out his territory and has no fear of venturing into no man’s land for extra food. There are also people who eat with their bare hands, and I try to avoid them just because they sometimes push food into your area that they’ve mushed around in their hands. Also, there is a lady who sometimes breast feeds while we’re eating, and I try to keep here out of my direct vision so I can maintain my appetite. The most important part of dinner is getting to dinner early so you can get a good spot. A late arrival to the dinner bowl could leave you sandwiched between two hand-eaters and directly across from the breast feeder, no carrot in sight, and you can kiss your appetite goodbye.

I try to avoid observing where our food comes from and how it is prepared. I once went to the food market on the street where my family buys food, and it was a shock to the eyes. Here is a picture of our butcher shop.

There are so many flies you sometimes can’t even see the actual piece of meat. Also street cats are always around getting into the food. One time I was in the house and my host mom came home holding what looked like a goat leg, from the knee down and she shook it at the joint and said, “Stefan, this is for the dinner!” In a way that I was supposed to be really excited, like, “Wow! Goat knee!” I do get some western food along with teaching supplies from care packages from my parents, my grandmom, the McClannings, and Caroline. Thank you all so much!

Loves,
Steve

Crowd of White People: A Pantaloon Man's Dream

Dealing with street vendors is an everyday struggle in Saint Louis, especially for a foreigner. These are the people who have small shops of goods on the road or just lay their wares on the sidewalk and try to entice people to come and buy. Some are nice and will let you be on your way when you say you don’t want anything, but others are not so kind. Occasionally, they will follow you and try to stop you and invite you to their shop and they simply won’t listen to you when you tell them you don’t want anything. Sometimes, someone who owns a shop will be nowhere near it and will strike up a conversation with you on the street. Then after a few minutes, they invite you to their shop and you discover the whole conversation was just a feigned friendship in hopes that you would buy something off them. It’s difficult sometimes, because there are genuinely nice people who you meet on the street who want to be your friend and spend every day in the same area, so if you have to pass by them everyday, you want to be on good terms. I tried just avoiding everyone at first, but I accidentally ignored a couple of my friends from the volunteer center and occasionally a student. My new strategy is to adopt foreign nationalities. I’ve been American, Spanish, and German so far. It seems to work. They try to talk to me in French, I say I am one of those nationalities then they usually switch to elementary English, which I pretend to not understand, or claim to be German or Spanish, since no one here really speaks those languages. It’s gotten tricky though, because I don’t really remember all the street vendors I have to dodge, so occasionally I’ve switched nationalities with some of them, and they are puzzled, but if you act it with enough confidence, it is easy to get away. Once when someone tried to pull me over to his shop and was just being really rude and belligerent, I told him that I had a shop too, and that I wanted him to come look at my things. He looked puzzled and left me alone after that. I think confusing them is the best countermeasure.

There are also some street characters in Saint Louis that you come to see everyday walking the same path. There is a crazy man who wanders around one area of town known by the volunteers as the “mango monster”. He likes to yell at people that come near him, and he always tries to touch you. We’re pretty sure his diet consists solely of mangoes. There are always bits all over his face and clothes, and he is usually eating one when he tries to run his fingers through your hair. Another street character who unfortunately has a cart directly across the street from the school where I work, is the pantaloon man. As his name suggests, he sells pantaloons, but in kind of a strange way. Whoever taught him English failed to tell him that people don’t really call pants “pantaloons” anymore. He also speaks just enough English to sound creepy, and talks to you as if he is trying to covertly sell you drugs. The first time I met him, I was a little afraid. He told me in a very quiet voice, “Hello, my friend. You come to my shop. I show you my pantaloons.” To which I replied, “Umm….no thanks, I don’t need any pantaloons.” Then I thought about my statement, and realized that it was incorrect. Everyone needs pantaloons. Imagine a world where we didn’t, so I rephrased my answer. “I mean, I have all the pantaloons I need, thank you.” His English was not very good so he interpreted my statement to say I did, in fact, need pantaloons, so what resulted was more confused discourse about the needing of pantaloons, equivalent to an Abbot and Costello routine. Sometimes I am fortunate and a group of tourists is in the area. Then when the street vendors confront me, I tell them “I’m actually not a tourist and I actually live here, but there is a big group of white people right over there!” Then they dash off after the tourists who no doubt can’t resist spending 20 dollars on a wooden statue or a set of pantaloons.

Steve Vito and the Adventure of the Maribou's Curse

This is the most bizarre thing I think that has ever happened to me so far during my stay in Africa. It’s kind of a long story, but here goes. I received a call late last night from another volunteer (Jocelyn) who sounded very nervous and told me to come meet her down at the soccer field in our neighborhood because of a “special request”. Confused, I headed out and waited under a light. Then she came up with a Senegalese man (Lamine) whom I knew well from working at the summer school in town. He appeared very upset. He was on the verge of tears, and Jocelyn told me his brother was very sick. Then things got a little strange. She said that one of the local holy men (which are called Maribou) said he could heal his brother if he was brought the hair of a white man and woman. Jocelyn surrendered one of her locks to the cause, and asked if I would donate some of mine. I was quite skeptical that my hair possessed any real healing power, but when I saw how upset Lamine was, I decided I could part with some. I knew Lamine was studying to be a doctor and was a believer in modern medicine, so I trusted that he first took his brother to a hospital and they could either do nothing for him, or could find nothing wrong. Jocelyn made a little pony tail somewhere in my hair and snipped some out and put in a bag and the two hopped in a cab. I went back to bed a little confused, because I didn’t really have any real facts about the situation, but figured no harm could really come. All I did was remove some hair and give it to someone I thought was a respected religious leader. The next day I was eating lunch with my host family and asked if the Maribou had the power to heal sick people. I told them about the previous night and their eyes got very wide and told me I had made a huge mistake. This confused me because I was under the impression that Maribou were respected religious leaders. They told that there were good and bad Maribou. Their functions varied widely from being advisors of the religious texts, to political figureheads, and shaman. Then they described some of things that “bad Maribou” do and what they described was what we would call a (gulp) witchdoctor. Making potions, voodoo dolls, curses, talismans etc... While I am no believer in black magic, voodoo and the like, I still try my best to avoid involvement, which I think is a safe practice for everyone. I called Jocelyn and said something like, “Hey…um…my hair…you didn’t give it to witchdoctor did you?” First time in my life that sentence had ever come up. Then I got the whole story. Apparently, Lamine’s brother is really good soccer player, and a big game was coming up. One of the players on the opposing team contacted a bad Maribou and put a hex of insanity on Lamine’s brother so he would be unable to play. Jocelyn said she went and saw him and said he was really acting crazy, not completely off the wall, but not being himself, sleeping in strange places, just weird behavior (this is where my mind began to demur and suggest that if one were to grow up believing in things like hexes/curses, and believed that someone else had put one on him, then maybe there could be some strange behaviors as a result of some sort of supernatural placebo effect. This is my theory). She said that a good Maribou was going to extract the oil from our hair, and make some sort of potion thing that Lamine’s brother was going to bathe with 3 times a day, which would remove the hex. It seemed so straight forward. She said that bad Maribou were afraid of white people, so our hair has the ability to ward off evil on someone who has been cursed by them. After this conversation I was strangely fine with everything. I found it all reminiscent of a Scooby Doo adventure. Lamine told us that the hair oil is already working, and the curse is going away. Maybe in the future I could embrace the healing power of my hair. I thought about the content of the oil that was extracted, and decided it was mostly my Pantene-ProV 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner that Lamine’s brother is going to be bathing with. In addition to lifting his curse, my hair oil should give his hair nice shine and bounce. Lesson learned. Be careful who you give your hair to in Africa.

Here are some pictures from the school renovation last week.

Trading Spaces: Senegal

The new school I was placed in last week hasn’t exactly worked out the way that I hoped. It is a French school for the wealthy children of Saint Louis. I new something was special about the school when I showed up and saw an overweight child. The first I’d seen in my 6 weeks in Africa. It is a very nice school and the rooms are air conditioned and the classes are small. However, I don’t really feel like I am needed. I teach with a man from Senegal who speaks perfect English, so I am not needed to sort out any difficult grammar, and I don’t actually lead the class like I did in the summer school. The kids are brand new to English so we are learning things like counting and days of the week, which could easily be taught by one of the other teachers at the school. I talked to my boss about switching to a different program, and this week, I’ve been helping with the renovating of a different school. It makes more sense for me to be helping with that project just because the need is a greater for help. I’ll still go to the French school on Fridays to have a special songtime with the kids with my guitar, but the other days of the week I will be teaching at a different school starting in October. In the meantime I am helping with a child care center Monday through Thursday.

Though the work was strenuous, I did enjoy my time renovating this week. I discovered that I’m not genetically inclined to be a construction worker. In fact, even light masonry should be avoided. There is a certain finesse to laying concrete that I was unaware existed. We also had to repair some damaged walls by filling holes with cement and build some small walls for sinks and things. After my first attempt at sculpting a small cement wall, which took me about a half hour, my employer came by and let out a long sigh before kneeling down and dexterously corrected my monstrosity and transformed it into a geometrically sound barrier. My boss then moved me to a slightly easier job which was filling in holes in the wall with cement. For a particularly large hole in the wall, you had to fling the cement with force enough so that it would stick to the existing wall, but not so much force that it splatters off of the wall completely. As you can expect, there is a learning curve. My first fling was unexpectedly good, surprising my boss and making me cocky. I tried a really big throw for my second which missed the hole completely splattering the existing wall and getting wet cement on two other volunteers. Humbled, I lessened my pace. The task was still much easier than the first, but after about a half hour my boss came by, and with another sigh, corrected all my imperfections. Shortly after this, I was moved to a different location to help haul sand. These gradual demotions were a little discouraging, but I still kept in high spirits. Whenever you see home decorating/renovating shows on TV they usually speed up the video of the work while playing some song like “I’m Walking on Sunshine” while all the workers dance about painting each other and having an absolute ball putting up wallpaper. I tried to get my fellow sand-haulers into a similar spirit. Failure. For some reason manual labor in intense heat doesn’t excite people to the point of breaking into song. Later that week, I was given a second chance with a trowel and with some coaching; I vastly improved my cementing technique, completing a few walls and a footpath. I had a good time, but not enough to inspire a career change.

I have some pictures, but I forgot my camera cord when I came to the internet cafe, so I will put them up on the next post.

Loves,
Steve

The white kid got a spider in his hair and flipped out

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, there are quite a few crawlies sharing my room with me. It’s not a big problem. They don’t really bother me while I sleep. Last week, however, was different. It was six o’clock in the morning and I awoke to what felt like something large and hairy, about the size of a cell phone, crawling on my stomach. I leapt up and moved my body in some sort of dance, and gave out a pretty loud yell (One positive thing I discovered from this incident is that I have a really nice throaty, manly yell. Not some high pitch shriek, but a true bellow. But that is neither here nor there). I don’t really remember which language I was yelling in, but I hope it was English because I ran out of my bedroom shouting and dancing and found my host family praying on the floor of the living room (This was during Ramadan, so the family had woken up just before sunrise to have food because they were fasting during the day). Not only that, they had guests, so about six people witnessed the display. I had been asleep 10 seconds ago, so my French grammar was really off, but I think they understood what happened. After calming me down, they were kind enough to help me search my room for whatever it was. They found this spider that looked something like a daddy long leg, but I knew that wasn’t what crawled on me. I tried to tell them it was big and hairy, but I didn’t know the French word for “hairy” so I pointed to my own hair, which they interpreted as the spider got in my hair, and then I was miming my reaction which just made me look like a ninny. In their minds a tiny spider crawled in my hair and I completely flipped out and ran around screaming like a crazy person. Later that day, as friends were visiting the house, I could tell that they were sort of teasing me about what happened. I didn't hear what they were saying, but it ended with a very unflattering pantomime of my reaction to the incident. I found a picture of what I think it was that woke me up. Here it is.

Howabout I say "Happy Kourite!" instead?

Kourite

Experiencing a holiday that you never knew existed is bound to be surprising in some way. There seems to be a lack of logical progression in most holiday traditions, but Kourite (pronounced Core-i-tay) is surprisingly straight forward. It is the holiday following the holy month of Ramadan. I woke up to a very festive atmosphere in the household. People saying “It’s Kourite!” similar to a Christmas morning feel in the states. Then Moctar told me, “Come Stephen. Now we eat porridge!” I honestly don’t think I’ve ever had porridge, so I was reasonably excited. It was a kind of heavy sugar cream that you pour on top of couscous. Very good. Then, Moctar was kind enough to lend me an article of clothing known as (sigh) a bubu. It’s a traditional Senegalese garment. It’s not incredibly flattering but I think I pulled it off. The worst part would have to be the copious amounts of fabric used in the design, which caused body drenching amounts of sweat. During Kourite the men of the house go around and visit the houses of other family members so, after the porridge, Moctar, Cheick, and I hit the street in our bubus. Cheick is Moctar’s brother and took us on a four hour tour of Saint Louis. We stopped at all the houses of relatives of the family. I was shocked at how large the families are here. Because polygamy is common, and contraceptives aren’t exactly widely available, the result is an enormous extended family. We walked around to about 10-12 houses, and I was the only white person, so all the kids in the streets died laughing when the saw me walking around in a bubu. We met a lot of people, and I asked if they had a traditional holiday greeting comparable to “Merry Christmas”. Moctar told me that they traditionally greet someone on Kourite by apologizing for all the ways that they have wronged them in the past year. They actually say this when they greet each other (I found it strikingly similar to the Festivus tradition celebrated by the Costanzas on Seinfeld. The “airing of grievances”.) The trip was fun, but took a lot of walking stamina, and because of the sweating, by the end it looked like I just got off the flume ride at a water park. The women stay at the house all day and greet visitors. There’s also a big porridge exchange that happens at night and more porridge is consumed. I discovered that dehydration and vast amounts of porridge are not a good combination, and I started to feel sick. I told my family and they laughed and said it was all part of the tradition to eat way too much porridge. I didn’t ask them the following day if it was also tradition to spend a half hour vomiting the night of Kourite, but hey, there’s always next year!

Also worth noting. The family sheep survived the holiday. The family said it wasn’t big enough to eat yet. I actually won’t be too upset the day that thing dies. Recently it’s been sitting outside my window and bahhhing at me relentlessly. They asked me again if I wanted to do the killing when it was time, and well, the jury is still out.

Here are some pictures of the family that came to visit for some of the day. The big lady in the blue is the one that tried to marry me to her daughter.

I do! No, I don't, wait... We're joking right?

I have gotten used to how people eat here in Senegal. I’m no longer intimidated by the one big bowl and everyone sharing. I usually build a little fort out of food and put the food I want in it, and I think it is understood in the family that none of their spoons or hands are to cross into my territory of the bowl. We had guests for dinner last night who were unaccustomed to my unspoken food-fort boundary and thus ignored it. Some of the people here eat with their hands instead of a spoon and I can deal with that, as long as the food they touch doesn’t come anywhere near mine. I spend the entire dinner just staring at which areas of the bowl they touch and make a little map of where it is safe to eat from. The lady was not only feeding herself, but also her toddler that was sitting on her lap. She would reach in and mash up some food in her hand and shove it into her baby’s mouth. As you would expect, my hunger diminished greatly at this spectacle and disappeared completely when she grabbed a hunk of meat and mashed it up into little pieces with her hands right on top of my food fort, telling me that I need to eat more. It was the same hand she fed the baby and herself with. At this point, I had two options, the first being a short microbiology lecture, the second being that I just suck it up and try to ignore everything that was going on along with four years of college level biology. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the French words for germs, dysentery, bacteria, or communicable disease, so I was left with the latter option. I find when I am under stress, my French is terrible, and so I just switch to English, and hope my listeners are able to interpret by my inflection what I am feeling. So I close my eyes and take a bite, and they asked me if I like it, so in English I think I mumbled something like, "Mmm….oh yeah….so good. It’s nice, when it’s….you know….mushed for you…so you don’t have to…Oh! More….that’s great…just keep…okay, that’s plenty I think." It took a lot of mental effort, but I was able to eat while keeping a fairly calm face. Afterwards I went to my room and brushed my teeth for about 10 minutes, and chewed a whole pack of gum.

Thinking this would be the end of my ordeal, I returned to the room with everyone to be social. The hand-food lady with the baby said something to me in French, which I translated to "Do you want a black wife?" I had her repeat it a few times because I was sure I had some words wrong, but no, she actually was asking me if I wanted a black wife. This brings to light the biggest problem with the French language. There is only one present tense, so there is no difference in French between "I go to the library" and "I am going to the library". This problem is evident when you want to describe things that you do generally, and things you are currently doing. So when she asked me if I wanted a black wife, I assumed she meant generally, do you want your wife to be black. I told her, "I don’t know, maybe" then she said, "I will give you one." What followed was mostly my fault. I assumed she was joking, so I agreed with a sarcastic tone, like I was playing along with the joke (In retrospect, I don’t know why I did this. The Senegalese are not renowned practical jokers or anything. I just thought they were messing with me because I’m foreign). Unfortunately, she was not, and I accidentally accepted her daughter as my wife. What followed was me backpedaling like crazy, trying to tell the lady, that I thought she was joking, but she found it strange that I thought she was joking, and I had to explain that in the states, it is a lot different and, oh, it was just awful. I’m fairly certain she knows that I don’t plan on marrying her 16 year old daughter, but I really just need to stay away from this lady. Every experience so far with her has been tragic in some way. I went back to my room and went through another pack of gum examining how my social awkwardness somehow transcends language barriers and continents.

Night of the Living Crabs

Summer school comes to an end today. My first few weeks here I was kind of thrown into the end of it, so I will be starting with new students for the beginning of the official school year next week. Today was their graduation where everyone gets little certificates and the parents come in. We’ve been practicing a song about Senegal at the end of the past few classes, and the kids sang the words in English to the parents. It was all very cute. I feel good about the progress we’ve made over the past few weeks. I didn’t really know where the last volunteer left off, so sometimes I would plan a lesson and coincidentally it was something they already had learned, so I had to ad lib a few parts of class, but I could see that the kids were definitely improving. The adults as well, but they are worlds easier to teach than the kiddies. Here’s a picture of my kids class.

Last Saturday, the other volunteers and I decided to spend the night on the beach. We heard there was a campsite with a fence that would be a safe place for us to stay the night (a group of foreign people just sleeping on the sand with all their stuff completely unprotected is not a great idea in Saint Louis). When we arrived at the campsite, however, we discovered that the fence was roughly three feet high and structurally flawed in several places. I would say that it could have protected us from small children or little people, but actually, with some speed they probably could have pushed through it. As we laid on the “safe” side of the fence, I couldn’t help but point out to the other volunteers our illusion of security and how we were really only safe from thieves too lazy to make a high step motion over the barrier, also any animals not willing to find one of the many holes in the castle walls. We did only pay one dollar for our night’s stay, so complaining about anything seemed unwarranted, but the mere thought of sleeping on the other side of the fence was simply out of the question for some people. “Our stuff will get stolen” said one volunteer “Crabs will get us” said another. When asked to clarify the word “get” she struggled for another word and finally settled on “Attack. The crabs will attack us.” “What did you say?” I heard her the first time, but I made her say it twice, hoping that hearing herself say it a second time would smack her back to reality. It did not.

At some point a rift was formed in our group and you either had the gumption to stay, or decided to take a taxi home. Citing mostly crab-related fears, about 5 of the volunteers left via cab. The other 5 of us stayed at the beach, and a group of African drummers stopped by and played for us. They made a fire and danced around it while playing very rhythm driven music. I felt too self conscious to dance because I thought I would make a fool of myself. I also felt that whatever way I danced would seem patronizing to their culture. Like, “I’m a white kid from the states! This is how I’ve seen African people dance on the Discovery Channel, so I’ll just do that!” Some of the other volunteers had no such fears. Also, some liquid courage may have been involved…It was very nice, and I enjoyed some of the songs, but after about two hours of drums, you’re ready for another instrument to be introduced. Eventually they left. They found a way to detach the fence from its post so they wouldn’t have to make the high stepping motion over it, which completely shattered my perception of security that the bastion we were sleeping in had to offer. I used a mosquito net as a blanket and slept quite comfortably in the sand, using my bag of stuff as a pillow. We had talked about watching the sunrise all day, and we were really looking forward to it, but we all overslept, so we convinced ourselves it probably wasn’t that amazing anyway. I went swimming in the ocean in the morning and spent the rest of the day de-sanding my stuff/body. During our stay at the campsite, not one crab was seen.

Here is a picture of the drummers. Sorry it's so dark, I am still figuring out my camera.

Sorry, John

Well, today I learned that what I have been referring to in the past as the family goat is actually some kind of African sheep. The sheep (to which I’ve given the name John Waller) isn’t exactly wooly. It looks a lot like a goat with horns that curl outward, and also it has a penchant for wandering into the house when someone accidentally leaves the back door open. I was typing at my laptop today when the sheep came into my room and just stared at me for a few seconds before giving a hearty “BAAAHHHHH” noise. My brain sort of melted just at the whole situation, but I had to kind of push the thing out of my room. When the only two things a mammal that size does all day is poop is eat, it’s not something you want in your living quarters. As I’ve stated, there are all sorts of goats and sheep wandering around the streets, and the other day one the volunteers (Delaney from Portland) somehow instigated a confrontation with a goat. She claims it to be a random act of violence toward her, but come on, it’s a goat. She said she was just walking down the street when a group of goats passed and one faced her and started making noises and shoving its horns into her. She wasn’t hurt at all and the whole time she was just laughing at the situation.

I’ve become more used to the food here, and I’m starting to eat more. My first two weeks here, I lost some weight. I’m down to the last notch on my belt, and I’ve poked a notch beyond what the belt designer deemed as “the skinniest that the wearer of this belt should be”. I don’t really know what that means. At first I was worried, but everyone here is skinny because the people here don’t eat very much food, so it makes sense that someone who is used to an American diet would lose weight when coming here. At some point I’m assuming I will plateau into a comfortable weight.

This weekend, the other volunteers and I decided to rent mopeds for the day. One of the great things about Senegal is how cheap leisure activities are. An entire day’s rental of a moped is less than 10 dollars. We decided to go down to a nearby town so we headed out of St. Louis, each atop a moped and had a blast driving around the roads in the backcountry. The mopeds weren’t incredibly fast (they had a 50cc engine which is I believe the equivalent to a weedwacker). We did see some flamingos off in the distance and some monkeys crossing the road. The previous weekend we went to a nature reserve which had a variety of gazelles and tortoises. Pics are here.

The other volunteers are mostly from Europe, so for most of them English is a second language. Although they are fluent, there are occasions where obscure words are confusing or unfamiliar. We had to explain to Cecilia (from Norway) the difference between the words “constellation” and “constipation”. Her confusion with the two was evident when she peered out of the taxi window and said, “Look at all the constipations!”