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