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.