Huggies

I have 9 days left here, and the thing that still strikes me everyday is the weird juxtaposition of tradition and modernity. Yesterday I visited my homestay family. We were watching "Les Deux Visages d'Ana," a much-loved Mexican telenovela dubbed in French. During a break, a commercial for Huggies diapers came on. In the commercial, two women have their infants tied on their back with fabric in the traditional style that I witnessed so often in both Dakar and the various villages I visited. The babies, swathed in bright colors and African patterns, seem to meld onto the backs of the mothers. It's a quotidian Dakar sight, but it still strikes me as traditional and distinctly African. In the commercial, the women, speaking Wolof, enter a convenience store. I was surprised to discover that the commercial was advertising the incredibly familiar brand of Huggies diapers. Another bizarre contrast between tradition and modernity, Africa and the West.

Almost Famous

Sometimes living here in Dakar makes me feel like I'm a celebrity. Every time I leave my house, I know I'm stared at by virtually everyone. It's rare that I take a walk and I'm not approached by at least one man, who asks "am nga jekker" (do you have husband), or, if he has more tact, he'll ask my name and phone number first. When I took my little brother to Magic Land on Saturday, two kids asked to take a picture with me.

I would love to tell myself that all this attention is the necessary symptom of my overwhelming beauty, but really, it's because I have white skin. It's strange to live in such a homogeneous society, and it's stranger to be a part of the minority-- an obvious member of the 0.5%. When I go to France/ Italy in two weeks, and afterward, when I go back to NJ/ NY, my relative anonymity will be a welcome repose from all this scrutiny on the street, but I wonder if I'll feel any blow to my ego. I'll walk down the street in Manhattan and wonder, "how come no one's staring at me? Why are no men approaching me, no children following me, yelling 'toubab, toubab'?" No, back in the States, I'll be just another toubab on a street of toubabs.

A Good Day.

Although I rarely use this blog to chronicle my daily activities, I want to talk about past Saturday. A great day overall, and since I'm starting to think of each of my days here as one of my last, I attribute some special significance to such a good Saturday.

Around noon, I went over to my homestay family's house. I had promised to take my 12 year old brother, Abdou, to MagicLand, an amusement park on the corniche overlooking the ocean. By 12:30, Abdou and I had hopped into a taxi and were en route to MagicLand. When we arrived, we were told that it wouldn't open until 2:30. Abdou and I sat on the rocks on the beach for two hours, talking and connecting in a big way. Abdou says he wants to be President of Senegal when he grows up, and he wants to make enough money to travel to the States. Finally, we went into MagicLand-- a Disney Land type place with about 20 rides. Abdou and I got two giant hamburgers for lunch and then we went on a lot of rides. Haunted house, moon jump, bumper cars, this spinny thing that disturbed the hamburger uneasily grumbling in my stomach, you name it-- we went on it. It was expensive, but so worth it to see the joy on Abdou's face.

After dropping Abdou back at his house around 5, I went home and hung out with my roommates. We made a delicious family dinner of jambalaya, and served it on one big platter. We've adopted the Senegalese eating-style, all circled around the same plate. If I could bring one custom back to the U.S., it would be that. Eating is such a communal, intimate experience here because of the shared plates.

After dinner, we went over to the apartment of some American friends we've met. They're leaving to travel around Africa, and this was a little goodbye soirée. They made crepes and we sat around and talked.

Around 1:30 AM, the night was just getting started. This place on the beach called Oceanium hosts a party on the first Saturday of every month; it's a fête that's really infamus among the toubab community of Dakar. After getting dropped off by our taxi on a deserted-looking street, scrambling over some rocks and traversing a steep hill, we followed the booming music into this rundown building that, like a good surprise, opened up onto a beautiful terrace overlooking the ocean. The place was packed with lots of Senegalese and, I'm convinced, all the toubabs I've ever met in Dakar. The DJ played great music and we danced until 5 AM, when my roommates and I taxi-ed home.

My roommate Clint had surprised us with pancake mix-- he has a family friend who's a flight attendant, and she had brought him some treats from the States. So around 5:30, we decided to make pancakes. Avery and I cooked them on our two stovetops, and then we all sat around devouring the pancakes, circled around the same plate for the second time that day, until the sun came up. Literally.

The Art of Taxi-ing

It’s a game I’ve learned, the memorized progression of action to successfully taxi in Dakar. Wait for the ostentatious yellow to tow in at your feet. At the open window on the passenger’s side, lean in, widen eyes and dive into the verbal tennis match: Salaamaalekum, maalekumsalaam. Na nga def? Maangi fi rek*, chanted mechanically like a knee-jerk or the song Mother always sang, now a memory ingrained. Continue: Yaangi nos? Yaangi ci jamm?* And the taxi man might smile, appreciative of your efforts or amused by your bad pronunciation. Now is time to deliver the destination name, stare at the driver, who glares ahead without expression. You prod, ask, vous le connaissez? He’ll say the starting price. You’ll jump back from the window, friendly demeanor evaporated on the tar heat, aghast. Now’s the high-pitched haggling, and your insistence: Jangkat laa. Amuma xaalis!* He’ll shake his head, you scowl again. You play hard to get. Lean away from the window, squint into the sun like a cowboy in an old Western, stoic and strong: Ce n’est pas grave. Une autre va venir. Another will come. Start to wander away, and he’ll wave you in, wordlessly affirming that you’ve won. If he looks angry, it’s because you’re paying the price everyone else pays. After the first block, his displeasure will dissipate when he remembers that a young, reasonably attractive toubab woman is sitting in his back seat. He’ll glance into his rearview mirror at you. Donc, an nga jekker?* Full speed ahead into the tangled maze of Dakar's ridged cul-de-sacs and freeways.

*Hello! How are you doing? I'm here only.
*Are you doing well? You are in peace?
*I'm a student. I don't have money!
*You have a husband?

Ataayah

Ataayah: the Wolof word for tea. You might be surprised to hear that the tea culture here in Senegal is huge. It's not your grandma's cup of tea, though. It's super strong, and somehow thick and heavy. The first time I drank ataayah, I was convinced it was some sort of spiced espresso. In many Senegalese families or gatherings of friends, ataayah plays a nearly omnipresent role.

The making of ataayah is a ritualistic, complex, and specific process. It takes about 30 minutes to prepare a round of tea, which is served in small shot-sized glasses. The ingredients: water, tea leaves, a buttload of sugar (the Senegalese, I've discovered, have a national sweet tooth rivaling any sweet tooth I've ever witnessed before), and optionally mint leaves, depending on the preference of the tea-maker. After precise durations of simmering and resting unheated, two of the shot-sized glasses are used to "cultivate the foam." (That sounds weird translated into English, but that's literally how they describe it in French). With a steady, accurate hand, the tea is poured from glass to glass, back and forth, really rapidly. In my two-month tutelage of learning how to make ataayah, I learned that this vital step looks way easier than it actually is.

The first round of tea is served and consumed fast. Then, the second round begins. Ataayah is an all afternoon, all evening, and all night thing. At my homestay, my father starts the first cup of ataayah around six and continues until midnight, when everyone goes to bed. He pauses the constant ritual of mixing, sugar adding, and pouring from glass to glass when we eat dinner. People love teaching toubabs how to make tea. I've had about 4 steady ataayah tutors throughout my time here. I wouldn't say I've mastered the process-- I spill frequently, add too little sugar, put the mint in before the water boils (big faux pas), etc. I'll just say it's a work in process.

Muscle Memories

If living in a new culture is like one big cranial work-out, surely some muscles tone and tighten. Some muscles even appear where there was only bone and skin before.

In about three weeks, my Mom is coming to visit. After staying in Senegal for 4 days, it's off to Paris. I've been brainstorming a list for my Mom of things to expect in Dakar to lessen her shock so she can perhaps enjoy herself a bit while here. The problem is, I have these muscles now, and it's hard to remember a time when I lacked them. All of the sights and sounds that shocked me originally feel familiar now. In the continuous work-out of living here, my mental muscles have strengthened and adapted to Dakar-- and now that I'm accustomed, it's hard to separate the things that felt strange.

There's the call to prayer that you hear several times every night, as long as you're within a couple miles of a mosquée (which you probably are, being in Senegal). When I first got here, I remember waking up to it every night-- that ominous, nasal voice chanting Arabic over a sleeping city. I don't even hear it now. It's too ubiquitous to notice.

The extended greetings have grown familiar. Of course, when you see someone you know on the street, you shake their hands and dive into the syncopated back-and-forth: "Assalamalakum! Malekumsalaam! Nanga def? Mangi fi rek. Yaangi noos? Waaw, mangi noos bu ba. Yaangi ci jamm? Waaw, jamm rekk allahamdulilah. Ca va? ca va bien? Oui, ca va. Ca va. Ca va?" It'll be strange to not partake in this long process of checking up on the well-being of an aquantaince when I'm back in the States.

Recently I remembered that in the States, we don't haggle for everything. In Manhattan, one doesn't stand outside the taxi before getting in, arguing with the driver about the price for five minutes. In the States, there are less children begging, and there's not a universal symbol that denotes a beggar: the empty tomato paste cans used by all the talibes as a receptacle for coins and sugar cubes.

The car rapides? The sand and trash everywhere? The people balancing large bundles on top of their heads as they stride swiftly down the street? The eating with hands out of one big bowl?
It's strange trying to pinpoint the things that shocked me months ago, because it's the same things that feel so familiar now.

Cell Phone Setbacks

Yesterday, I had an interview with a fairly well-known Dakarois poet named Elie-Charles Moreau. The interview was really successful-- Moreau was totally enthusiastic and gave me a lot of new contacts that will be useful for my Independent Study Project. With the confidence and excitement that's always a positive symptom of connecting with someone despite looming language barriers, I mounted a car rapide, the brightly-painted, wackily-decorated, 35-year old vans that serve as public transportation throughout Dakar. Car rapides are cheap (50 to 100 CFA, which is about a dime in USD), they traverse the peninsula of Dakar, and are usually packed tight with people who would have no qualms pickpocketing a toubab like me.

So I should have known better than to hop onto the over-crowded van, leaving my purse unlocked and mostly unguarded. With one hand, I was holding a handful of books and papers Moreau had given me, with the other, I was gripping onto the back door of the car rapide for dear life, my hair swinging in the wind as we swerved through traffic. Meanwhile, someone else's hand sneaked into my purse and discovered my cell phone. C'est pas grave, just an annoyance. And l can't say how lucky I am that they didn't get my wallet.

The theft of my cell phone isn't the heart of my story, though. Today I went to buy a new one at the Orange store in Point E. Orange is like the Verizon of Senegal, donc, I expected the Orange store to be like a Verizon store in the U.S. You know: you walk in, pick out a phone, and buy it. But that would be too easy, too sensical, for the likes of Senegal. Instead, the Orange store is a collection of long lines, numbers assigned to customers, called in fast succession and skipped quickly. It's the true epitome of beaurocracy. I spent about an hour navigating the line labyrinth there-- explaining to people again and again that I just wanted to buy a new cell phone. My number got skipped a couple times, I got shoved to the back of several lines, but finally, I succeeded in securing a new phone and SIM card.

Feeling triumphant, my next stop was the bank. I had a couple big bills and I just wanted to get change. To my chagrin, though, the moment I entered the bank I found myself on the end of another long line, assigned to another distant number, plunged into total African beaurocracy. As I waited, I attempted to set up my phone, met le pouce et cetera, I couldn't get the stupid thing activated. Gritting my teeth, thinking about my stolen phone, the lost contacts, my time lost waiting in so many lines, I almost felt the familiar frustrated tears.

But I sucked it up. I asked the people sitting on either side of me for help, and soon I found myself swarmed by people in the bank, overwhelmed with generousity and help. My phone was passed around to about a dozen people, each altruistic stranger trying to get it to work, as I explained my story. En fait, c'est mon deuxieme portable-- l'autre était volé hier à la car rapide, et ce matin j'ai du attendre un heure à Orange! C'est dommage, quoi. Finally, a young Senegalese man figured out how to activate my SIM card. He handed my phone back to me, shaking his head at my cell phone ordeal. "Bienvenue à l'Afrique," he smiled. Welcome to Africa.