Bizzaro Santa

There are about 6 kids who live in my house right now. I’m not completely sure about how they are all related to the family. They’ve told me their names before, but I forgot them all pretty quickly. One of the kids is a talibe and Moctar told me that the child has a curse of kleptomania on him, so I should always keep my room locked so he won’t steal anything. It’s a lot more likely that his maribou just told him to steal things and the kid is doing it to avoid a beating. Anyway, all the kids are all really nice to me, and I play with them sometimes. They showed me their little games in Wolof, and I tried to teach them leapfrog where you jump over the person in front of you, but after I jumped over the first kid, I kneeled on the ground, it resembled the Islamic prayer position, and they thought I was trying to pray or teaching them some kind of prayer game. They all ran over and kneeled down and started praying beside me in Arabic and it was all very confusing. Here is a picture of the kids in my house holding some beanie babies that my grandmother gave me to give them when I came home for Christmas.

There aren’t any behavior problems with the kids in the house, but sometimes if I am teaching little kids, they can be huge brats. Back in October when I was teaching at a little day care center, I had to deal with misbehaving kids all the time and it was hard because most of the kids only spoke Wolof at that age. The other teachers just smack the kids in the face or hit them with a stick, but I would just send them to the corner which seemed to work ok. I really don’t like the disciplinary methods here. Most of them would land you in prison in the states. Smacking a crying child in the face is just so heartless. There was a nicer Senegalese lady who showed us a punishment called “pumpay” where the children go stand in the corner and squat and stand repeatedly while holding onto their ears, like they are a water pump. This worked pretty well, and I use it whenever I am teaching little kids.

At one talibe center around Christmas, there was a special method to enforcing behavior. Santa Clause. But probably not in the way you are thinking. He was used as negative reinforcement, as in, you had better be good or Santa will come and take you away. Santa isn’t coming for you, but for you. I guess this is the way he is celebrated in the bizarro world. Then they had this terrifying little Santa figurine hanging from a string and they went around to the misbehaving kids and dangled it in front of their faces and they would start crying (I didn’t work at this school. The story was told to me by one of the other volunteers). Over Christmas, Delaney got asked to play the part of Santa (a good Santa) at one of the talibe care centers. Of course, it isn’t every young girl’s dream to be asked to play the part of Santa Clause, but they told her she would be a good Santa because she is white, and apparently, Santa is white even in African countries. Then she told them she was actually Asian, and the answer they gave her was similar to a “close enough” response.