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!”

Mr. Blue Sky

Holla. Another day brings new adventures. Today, I became acquainted with how to wash clothes in Senegal. You use three buckets of water, one soapy, and rotate them around, and then you hang them on a line to dry. I was a little worried, though, about the family goat eating my clothes. I see him up on the roof sometimes wandering around, and the thing eats anything it can get its mouth around…these are the things I worry about now. I remember used to worry about things like grades, money, relationships, now I worry about the family goat eating all my clothes. Also, since I have to wash my clothes by hand, I’ve become a lot less strict about how clean my clothes need to be. I thought my college days of “sniff testing” clothes before deeming them acceptable to wear were over, but apparently not. It’s hard to justify always wearing clean clothes when walking to the nearest taxi makes one sweat profusely anyway, so when I am deciding if my clothes are clean enough to wear, I hold them at arms length, and if I can’t smell them at that distance, I consider them clean. Well, clean isn’t really the right word…I consider them wear-able.

The children that I teach are coming along nicely with their English, but it’s very difficult to hold their attention sometimes. Especially since my French is not very good. Thankfully, they are mystified by my guitar. Whenever I pull it out, they immediately are quiet and attentive, so I started bringing it every day, and we sing little songs in English. I try to incorporate music into the lesson because they really enjoy it, and it teaches them new words. When we had a lesson on the weather, I played the song Mr. Blue Sky by ELO on my laptop and we pointed out all the weather words we knew. The adults are much easier to teach, because they are more eager to learn, and have more patience. Most classes, I can give them some paragraphs to read and they write their opinions about it. They like to hear about the US and what my life is like back home. Some of the things I tell them, they find so shocking. They find it strange how independent we are from our families, since most families here all live in the same house regardless of age for their entire lives. Also, I told them that in the US, people get divorced frequently, because this is unacceptable in their Muslim culture. They told me, “When you get married over here, you are hooked for life.” With an attitude like that, I hope they don’t write their own wedding vows.

Here are some pictures of the bats emerging from their roosting trees at sunset in St. Louis. Yes, those are all bats.

Bugs check into Steve's room...they don't check out

Heya Fams and Friends. My first week here has given me many insights into the Muslim culture. September is the month of Ramadan, during which Muslims do not eat or drink anything while the sun is up. Before I came, I thought I might give it a try, just to kind of appease my family, but the idea of going without water is just too crazy for my body which is still adjusting to the climate. My first day of teaching, I didn’t drink enough in the morning, and I could feel myself becoming lightheaded only a few hours later. I don’t think I could make it all day in the heat. Most people don’t expend much energy during this month and many businesses are closed. Some of the other volunteers gave it a try for one day and said that you can do it, but you just have to stay in the shade and do nothing all day which I can’t really do with work, so I just eat and drink out of sight of my family so as to not be rude to them. There is also going to be a large feast at the end of Ramadan, and I was asked by my family if I wanted the honor of slaying the feast goat! I did not hide my surprised expression well, and I hope I did not offend them, but anyone who knows me knows that the task of killing a goat would be impossible. I haven’t seen them kill any animals yet, but I wouldn’t put any long term bets on the goat that lives behind our house. I asked my host family if it was a pet, but they didn’t recognize the word, so I said “animal friend” and they just laughed. They said they sometimes see documentaries on tv about people from Europe or the US who have animal friends and they say it makes no sense to have an animal that gives you nothing. I tried to explain how they give companionship with their life, and you become attached to their personality, but they said that they wouldn’t be able to be friends with it because they would just always want to eat it.

The local fauna here isn’t too incredibly diverse. There are the standard street animals: goats, cows, horses, donkeys (also mini-goats, so cute). There are some pretty large bugs in my room that I have no idea what they could be. My first night here I squished something out of Men in Black that was crawling on my wall. Biggest cockroach I have ever seen. I usually get about one a night. The first time I heard one crawling on the wall I thought for sure it had to be a mouse or rat just because it sounded so huge. Then I turned on the light and saw the thing dart across my wall and stood there with my mouth open just in shock that roaches got that big. After the first blow from my shoe, the thing just looked annoyed, the second hit slowed it down, and the third blow put the wretched beast down. There aren’t too many mosquitoes, which is kind of surprising, because we are still technically in the wet season I think, but there are a lot of flies. At any point during the day, you just have to learn to be comfortable with 2 or 3 flies always being on you. Also, there are all over the food, so I’ve completely lost any fear of any fly-born illnesses. The most exciting animals here are the bats. They are about the size of seagulls and they roost in trees during the day and you can see them in huge clumps, then at night they all emerge and the sky has this prehistoric look to it from these huge flying mammals. I’ll post some pictures of them soon. There are also the rats. I saw one when I was out with the other volunteers at a restaurant. It was the size of a loaf of bread. It looked like it could have taken any cat that I have seen here in a fight, which I guess is how they survive, but wow, just enormous.

I have included some pictures of St. Louis:

There is a picture of my house, the street that I live on, and some pictures of the streets of St. Louis:

What does lollipop mean in English, Stefan?

Greetings, all. I met the other volunteers that I will be working with a few days ago and they are all wonderful. Hanging out with them makes me feel lingually challenged, however, because they all speak at least three languages, and I speak only one and a half. Sometimes the conversation will just switch into French of German unexpectedly, then sometimes someone will laugh, and I feel obligated to laugh as well, even though I don’t really understand what they’re saying. Thankfully there are 2 other monolingual Americans and we can look at each other for mutual pity. Also, I meant to upload the picture to the left last time, but it is picture of the streets of Dakar. I will upload St. Louis pictures on my next post.

My first day of teaching was just completed and I was pleasantly surprised by how much vocabulary the children already knew. They could say simple things in the present tense and new common nouns. I thought that the first day I would be watching someone teach so I could learn from them, but when I got there, they just showed me the class and I got to jump right in. The children were very enthusiastic, and very easy to please. If ever I started to see that they were getting bored, I would just talk about popular musicians and they would come to life. MTV and other music video channels are very popular with the youth in St. Louis. It was also nice because it allowed the students to make a connection with me. They know nothing about me or where I come from, but who doesn’t love Li'l Wayne? No one.

My host family watches quite a bit of tv, and they enjoy watching the American rap videos. I was watching it with them and explaining what the rappers were saying. They seemed very disenchanted when they found out that a song they really like was just about how much the singer liked his car or his girlfriend’s butt. Also, my friend, Moctar, who is the only English speaker in my house, got to learn some new American slang, such as “fly” used as an adjective and “pimp” used as verb.

I am surprised how much tv is watched after dinner, but there is really little else to do. For dinner, we all eat from one large plate on the floor. We all have spoons, but the children eat with their hands. Usually the meal consists of fish and rice with some sort of sauce and vegetable. When I first saw this as the eating set-up, I was a little shocked, and I tried not to give a “I’m a stupid American, this is strange to me” face, but now I am used to it, and it actually saves a lot of time because there is only a few dishes and it saves space because there is no table in the room. Something to think about, Mom. Here is a picture of my host family in our living/dining room.

Loves,
Steve

Transatlanticism

Hey gang! I arrived safely in Dakar at 12:30am Wednesday. The flight was rather long, because I had a layover in South Africa that extended my journey by about 20 hours. I could regale you with Seinfeldian witticisms about being in a plane that long, but I will spare you the trivialities of the plane ride. Getting out of the airport was quite an interesting experience. As soon as you get your luggage and leave, a group of about 10 people come up to you telling you that they have your ride and try to carry your bags for you. Luckily, my dad did some research on the airport and I knew to expect this. My ride from the airport was delayed for 2 hours because a sudden downpour flooded many of the roads in Dakar. In the meantime I was trying to avoid all the people trying to take my bags and direct me to cabs. At one point, two men started raising their voices next to me and a guard ran over and beat both of them across the back with his nightstick and kicked them out of the airport. At first I was frightened by this, but then I realized if I stayed near this guard, I would be bothered less, and such was the case.

I spent the night in a hotel in Dakar and left for St. Louis the following morning in a seven person taxi. The taxi ride was about 6 hours and luckily, some local graffiti artists were kind enough to draw some graffiti in English for me to read. My favorites were:

Cocktail Explosion
Sunshine Next Level
Pee = Diamonds

I assume they mean something to the people who wrote them.

I met my host family yesterday and they are all very nice. I went into the city today with one of my supervisors (Nicole) who showed me around to the major points of interest. I was considering buying a bicycle to get around, but after seeing how people drive in the crowded streets, I think I’ll stick to taxis and walking. I’ve already seen two people get hit by cars while crossing the street. Also, cows and goats are everywhere on the streets and cars often hit them as well.

I will be taking and posting a lot of pictures, but I must wait a few days because there is a large Muslim holiday on Friday and many people will be worshipping all day and it is impolite to be taking pictures. Also, I need to find a strong internet connections somewhere in the city where I can upload photo. The one picture on this blog took about 10 minutes to load. St. Louis population is about 180,000, but on this holiday on Friday, there will be a million people here. Many have traveled long distances and are sleeping in the streets tonight.

My first class is on Monday so I will be spending this weekend making lesson plans. I will post again soon!