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.