Returning and Losing

Reflecting lately I've been struck by how many things I've brought back with me from Dakar that are useless to me here. So many experiences and skills are so specific to Senegal that I'm having trouble finding a way to enjoy their expression or use in my new context. What's more is I'm finding some of the habits I developed while in Senegal fit strangely back where I'm "from". That's the problem with traveling so much, you begin to feel homeless and misunderstood wherever you go.

Even if you can't appreciate them fully, there are hundreds of things, so many that I can't count or even name them, that I learned either proactively or naturally through living in Senegal that are slipping away now. It's as simple as knowing how to cross the street or knowing the different coins in my pocket. It's the fun of bargaining for a taxi, growing relationships with local shop owners, and knowing how to cut a mango. It's the new vocabulary each day and reveling privately at my first use of a word or phrase. It's feeling comfortable in the sand, with the 5 am call to prayer, and no longer having to be reminded to find and greet every family member when I get home. It's knowing your host family enough to serve drinks to guests, and joke, sing, and dance together. It's the deepening of an appreciation and comfort in a culture rooted in the history and reality of a place.

I tried and never succeeded to get a good picture of the cityscape of Dakar. The city, which struck me as sandy and full of unfinished, whitewashed structures when I arrived, became so beautiful to me throughout my stay. I was surprised by how comfortable I felt by the time I left.


This picture is from the Dakar Paris blog.

And if you're interested the things that struck me as strange upon my return to America: the greenness, brand name clothing, lack of formalities, and conversation topics and flow (Someone debate something insignificant with me, please, for fun? Is Nutella hazelnut-based with chocolate or chocolate-based with hazelnut? This was the subject of a long, surprisingly enjoyable debate with my family in Dakar).

These are a few of my favorite things...

• The neckline of women's boubous: Traditional Senegal wear for women has a neckline with a soft curve that slips off the shoulder frequently and perfectly frames their elegant faces and hear wrapped in pulars of the same fabric.
  
• Bissap, juice and sauce: Bissap juice is made out of hibiscus flowers, is a fantastic deep fuschia color and tastes amazing with the right amount of vanilla sugar. My father is from the ethnic group Balante, which also uses the leaves of the bissap plant to make a sauce that we eat with caldo, the traditional Balante rice and fish dish. Yum. Below is me on my birthday with a bissap juice cake- awesome!
  

• Winter wear: Although it doesn't feel cold often to me, a popular item for men here is a knit hat that goes down to just above the ears complete with poof ball. There's also a surprising number of scarves.
  
• Music and community: Music seems to run through the veins of Senegalese people. Community gatherings are often organized around the drums. In the arid north, the stringed insturments like the kora are used and their notes travel across the sand. In the Casamance at the south the forest requires strong djembe drums to call everyone. We learned djembe in Toubacouta, where the lead drummer had played so hard his hands were bleeding, second picture below. The last picture below is women in Sokone, the native village of the program director playing drums on calabase gourds, also used for preparing food and carrying water. They used a discarded shell casing on their fingers.
  





• Waxataan and ataaya: Every afternoon, for some Senegalese, is an affair with friends and family, centered around a gas stove with a tiny teapot full of sugar, strongly Chinese green powder tea and other local tea leaves. Ataaya, or tea, is a respected tradition because making the tea is a repetitive process, usually there are three rounds from the same pot. They get progressively less strong, which I noted after my heart was beating quickly after drinking the first round. The tea isn't even the point of the get-together. Instead, it's to facilitate the discussion of anything and everything in raised voices or calm tones. In Wolof, ataaya is the noun and the verb- "To do tea" includes all of the above. Below is my host mother in the village outside Toubacouta where we stayed for a night.
  




• Respect for elders: The most important status here comes from your age. Elders are respected and family roles are determined according to your age and place in line. My grandmother stayed with my family in Dakar and I appreciate that you are exposed and submit to those with more experience in the world more often than in the States. But seeing that the demographic makeup of much of Africa is so young now, this may be in flux.
  
• Teranga: Senegalese are proud to be good hosts and they are indeed hosts to many foreigners, both from Africa and other continents. 50% of the migration in West Africa is to Senegal. My history teacher called it a "trampoline" for people to head to France, the US, or other places in Europe. I've found Senegalese people to be overwhelmingly welcoming, happy to have visitors, and willing to put up with annoying questions. Below is host family in Dakar.
  

• Salutations-Repetitions: I wish that each of you could hear and understand the way in which the Senegalese traditionally greet one another. Greetings are of utmost importance and it is rude when you encounter anyone you know to not take the time to properly acknowledge them and anyone they're with. There is a sing-songy way that greetings are done that makes me smile whenever I hear it. It uses the repetition of the same phrases while the tone of the voices gets lower and lower. By the end of time in Senegal I had got the hang of the repetitions but couldn't match the song.
  
• Baobabs and pain de singe: Who doesn't like baobabs? And their fruit makes such a unique tangy juice. They're all over Senegal! They really do feel ancient. Below is a picture I took looking out of a 500 year old baobab on the road to Saint Louis.
  

Differences

A good thing to dwell on by Ron Rolheiser.

"We spend too much time and energy angry and frustrated with each other over something that basically we cannot control or change. Our differences, however much they may frustrate us and tax our patience at times, are not a crime, a sin, or indeed (most times) even anyone's fault. We don't need to blame someone, be angry at someone, or resent someone because he or she is different than we are, no matter how much those differences separate us, frustrate us, and try our patience and understanding. "

Random Observations from Today

All of the newspapers in Senegal always have a different headline. It's like no one agrees on what is important. Youssou Ndour, Senegalese superstar, is also the owner of Senegal's most popular paper- L'Observateur.

I don't know where the handicapped man that I see each day hides his wheelchair. I know he has a wheelchair and that he leaves to go somewhere else but I don't know where he goes. Today he asked me to teach him English, because all he knows is "Give me some money." I taught him "please".

There are a bunch of great Senegalese movies that are "made for foreigners" as my friend told me. There is one functioning cinema in Dakar at the moment, which is expensive. I'm going to try to buy some DVDs of Senegalese movies before I go back but I have a feeling they might be hard to find.

I talked with someone yesterday about time being more fluid in Senegal. It's true. And what's also true is that people make promises to do things that they don't keep because deadlines aren't serious. But, I have a flight out in three weeks. That's a real deadline and I'm starting to understand that some things might not happen before then. And that's okay.

But hey, I also promised to write on my blog more than I have and that's not a big deal, right? Maybe I'll continue after I get home with stuff I didn't have time to post now. We'll see. I'm not going to promise anything.

Giant Fight

If you're up for it- check out the fight from Sunday. Large men. But the fight is still very skillful. I found myself arguing with my mother, sister, and the maid yesterday about how exactly Yekini beat Tyson II. Everyone is into lutte, or lamb in Wolof. This is the superbowl.

Do yourself a favor and start at 6:00 minutes into the video. Notice screaming in Wolof. This language no longer sounds strange at all to me.

I hate holidays.

This post will certainly be unfiltered. I’m just going to tell you how it really is to do Easter in Senegal. The title is a direct quote from my host mother, on the eve of Good Friday. She said this when I arrived home from my travels for spring break and found her outside the house directing our maid and a girl hired for 4 days (for $1 a day) in the making of Ngalax.

Ngalax is a dish that all the Christians make on Good Friday and share with their Muslim friends in the neighborhood, in exchange for the sheep meat that they share with us on the Muslim holiday, Tabaski. It is a tool for neighborly and interreligious love at the same time. And it is good. It is a great example of a category of food whose texture would never fly in American dishes- the heavy sauce and rice/millet/couscous combo. Many Senegalese eat Thiakry every Sunday, which is ground millet or couscous eaten with “lait caillé” which is a soupy flavorless yogurt. Ngalax is more special, probably because it is a hundred times harder to prepare.

The ngalax sauce is made with a truly Senegalese mixture- peanut paste (Senegal’s largest product and export is peanuts) and buuy/pain de singe (literally translated monkey bread, this is the fruit of the Baobab tree). Now I want you to try to imagine a tart peanut buttery sauce (good luck, it’s bizarre). After pounding the buuy in the gigantic mortar/pestil combo that is essential to Senegalese cooking, you add the peanut butter (note giganto bucket which my host mother said would last the whole year).


I slept through the part where they cook it, but just know that they cook it. Then you serve it with Senegalese couscous, which is smaller and browner than your traditional Moroccan couscous, along with raisins. What results is a tangy, thick sensation with sweet tones from the raisins. Like I said, a weird texture that I can’t really handle too much of, but a good taste. Apparently one of our neighbors puts coffee in her ngalax, which is a travesty. Food drama.

I did get up in time to help my family share the ngalax with our neighbors. This was a process of finding all the medium sized containers in the house, filling them, then practically running around from house to house delivering the goods and bringing said containers back home and washing them. Receiving families seem to hide a huge pot where they mix all the ngalax they get and eat it for days. Other people have the option to come to your house and eat ngalax for the next few days and you’re expected to have it for them. Apparently everyone gets so sick of it that they don’t make it again for a year.

I can understand why my host mom does not like holidays. The division of labor felt heightened this weekend, as the men of the family sat around and talked and drank palm wine and the women became grumpy running around making food and serving it. I felt like I was integrating well because I got grumpy too, and my host sister got angry at me for not getting up early to help make the Easter dish. The other thing that may indicate that my family likes me is that a few of my uncles, at different points in time urged my 16-year old host brother to marry me. He somehow refused without making the situation more awkward and my host father said they’d just have to find me a husband in the village (unspecified location) and keep me here. Now that they know I can clean dishes, the next step appears to be marrying me off.

Other than ngalax, grumpiness, and arranged marriages, the big news of the weekend was church. We went on Good Friday to see the “living stations of the cross”, which was a dramatic retelling of Jesus’ crucifixion. Then on Saturday night we went to church from 9 pm to 2 am Easter morning, for the “Midnight Mass”. This mass is treated like prom. I should qualify that by saying that everyday is like prom for lots of Senegalese woman who can wear a boubou, a couple pagnes, a head wrap, heels, walk around the sand in Dakar, sweating in the 100 degree heat, and still look fabulous. So, it was quite fancy and included lots of shiny and sparkly fabric, which is really in here. I didn’t understand much of the Catholic liturgy that went into the mass, but it included lots of beautiful singing in Latin, lots of quick baptisms, two marriages, and a homily.

If you thought that the holiday was over, just wait. There was the biggest Senegalese wrestling match of the year between two gigantic men on Easter Sunday, which also happened to be the 50th anniversary of Senegal’s independence and the inauguration of the infamous African Renaissance Statue. In fact, Senegal also has Easter Monday as a official holiday without work or school so that everyone can recover. But all of that will have to wait for next time. For now, I am thankful that we have made it through the holiday, we’ve eaten well, I’m still single, and Jesus is risen.

Storyless

I just finished reading a book about “story”. It talked all about how stories are important and humans love stories more than anything else and we must place ourselves in a good story to have a good life. This was rather depressing for me since I’ve realized that I cannot tell good stories in French. My host family likes me well enough, but 90% of what they know about me comes from what I do, not what I say.

On top of that, all of my stories are rooted in my own culture. We all know that in stories, setting the context is the most important thing. Well, it’s practically impossible to do. And without knowing the context, and what my culture values, and how my cultures sees people, my family can’t grasp the real meaning of my stories. And I don’t get most of their stories either, to be honest.

The best form of stories is comedy. However, my sense of humor has been reduced almost exclusively to making fun of myself, which gets old after about a day. I only get to belly-laugh when I’m talking with my real family or my American friends here.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve given up, and my family here won’t really know me, and I will live as a semi-human here because I can’t communicate and participate in life fully. It feels like after 3 months that my family should know me and everything should be peachy-keen. But adjusting to living in another cultures takes a lifetime and is really never complete. So I have to stay humble, because my French is still bad, I still don’t wash my laundry very well, and I still am lost when it comes to Senegalese culture sometimes. And even if I did understand, parts of my stories and myself that are American could never be fulfilled here because they require the American context.

Stories are the way we connect to one another. Heck, all forms of communication and language were created because we live in this world with other people who we want to know and love and hug. So I am missing out, in a way, by not being able to story with my family here. But having a shared life together and shared experiences does make up for my muteness in some cases. My family knows that I like to eat, which is a good start. My personality comes out through my actions, as does theirs.

So we are building our own new story together. It’s a strange story that is usually awkward and sometimes has to be repeated many times to be understood, but it is still meaningful. It just doesn’t flow as naturally and the plot turns aren’t as obvious as they would be in a quality American film. But I’m trying to believe that my Senegalese story is still worth living in and participating in, even if I’m tongue-tied half the time and don’t feel like my American self.

I am woman, hear me... pontificate.

I've been stewing about writing this post since I arrived here. Now that I look back, I should have written many posts instead of waiting for a "conclusion" or "synthesis".

Gender, I think, is more basic to human beings than almost any other characteristic. I'm convinced that there are things about gender that are true the world round. But each culture has some special ways of showcasing the differences between men and women.

In Senegal, men are more forward than they are in the States. I've been told by a 5, 10, and several 20-something year olds on the streets here "Tu es belle, je t'aime." or "You're pretty, I love you". The other day I talked with 20 minutes with a university student who told me that he liked America, then later American women, and finally he said that he loved me from the bottom of his heart, "I'm almost sure." I told him to tell me when he was sure. Two minutes later he said, "Okay, I'm sure, I love you with all my heart." I told him that I might take a bit longer to decide.

For me, the problem of race and culture are mixed into my experience as a woman in Senegal. I'm not sure what a post like this written by a Senegalese woman would sound like. In fact, it's harder to get to know women here because they've got so much work to do. I can sit around and have tea or watch TV with my brother and father, or some young men at the university, but that kind of freedom and time isn't as readily available to girls and women here. My host mother is retired but she's still in charge of the maid, looking after the kids, tries to make money on the side, and looks after her elderly mother. Every night when I go to bed she's still up working on the computer.

The other day, the professor for my music and dance class said "Men in Senegal don't do a damn thing." It felt a little good to hear that coming from a Senegalese man. They go to work, come home, and are served. The social hierarchy also emphasizes age, so my little brother, for instance, still has to open the door when people come to the house, or change the volume on the TV if my father thinks it's too high. But my brother does not have to go into the kitchen, rarely has to clean, and sits in front of the TV just like my father.

You can sense the gender disparity in conversations. At home my little brother somehow gets to voice his 16-year-old opinion more than my sister or me. He's encouraged to be more verbal. In the English classes that I teach at a center near the university, the girls are almost all shy and quiet. Another cultural tidbit I picked up on recently is eye contact. It's rude to look your parents in the eyes when they're talking to you, and it's also rude for women to look men in the eyes when they're being talked to. Women are trained to be quiet.

Well, here I come Senegal! A loud, opinionated, look-you-dead-in-the-eyes American woman who is single and proud of it (usually), a feminist, and not afraid of...

...being beat or killed! Since apparently, that is an option if a woman refuses you! My Senegalese, male friend who overheard my conversation with lovey-dovey university student mentioned earlier told me that I should say no and that he wouldn't beat or kill me.

...being mean or impolite if I don't know you! I've been told plenty of times that I'm mean or impolite by men who want me to stop and talk to them or give them my number. I'm over that now.

...being wrong! I'd rather have a voice and be wrong sometimes than just not talk at all. We saw that it was more devastating for a girl to be wrong or make a mistake in class in Kenya than a boy. I try to stick my neck out and just try to have a conversation. Likelihood is that men are wrong sometimes too.

...telling you I'm single. A lot of Americans who come here wear a wedding ring and make up big grand stories about their strong, big, mean American fiance who would eat you for breakfast. I've never been a good lier and as far as I know being single is not a disease, so I'll own up to it. I get the chance frequently as the second question after "Noo tuddu?- What's your name?" is always "Am nga jekker?- Do you have a husband?" When I say no, they ask if I would prefer an American or an African. I claim no preference and then we're off to the races. Either someone present is willing to marry me on the spot or everyone has someone in mind. This goes both ways- I've had several requests for my little American brother from Senegalese girls.

...tell you I don't know why I'm single. My favorite question is "Why don't you have a boyfriend? You're smart and pretty and have money." The "I haven't found the right man yet" response usually doesn't help the direction of the conversation. (See above.) Trying to explain gender relations in America in French or Wolof usually doesn't help either. I've taken to saying I don't know why.

The best strategies I've found for dealing with the attention and the tension of girl-guy interactions here are joking and asking good questions.

In reality, Senegalese people joke a lot about dating, marriage, etc. It's a principal topic of conversation and an important part of the society and thus fertile ground for jokes. Understanding humor in another culture is difficult, so sometimes I feel like all Senegalese jokes are based off of making people (read: me) uncomfortable. But, in general, it's more fun and lighthearted if you assume everyone is joking when it comes to this subject. The best responses I've thought up are "Sorry, I don't know how to cook." and carrying around a keychain with a picture of a famous Senegalese wrestler and saying "Sama jekker- my husband". Those responses usually illicit the most laughter, which I'll count as success. Sometimes they also just give me enough time to change the subject or walk away.

Senegalese people, and men, love to debate (with tea if possible). So the next best thing is to start asking questions, feigning ignorance. Questions about Senegalese society, polygamy, laws about marriage, and gender roles will all carry a conversation to more interesting territory. But the question which I love to ask and think about and debate, is "What is love?" I don't think that any one country has a lock on this topic, but each country has it's own interpretation, which usually illuminates cultural differences.

A Senegalese man (apparently) thinks he loves me from the bottom of his heart 20 minutes after meeting me. And many others think that when his first wife gets boring and he sees another woman that he "loves", he should marry her. In fact, for my birthday my friend gave me a shirt that says, "Si tu m'enerves, je prends une deuxieme femme." Which translates, if you annoy me, I'm getting a second wife. That's the topic of the famous Senegalese novel, Une Si Longue Lettre that I finished recently. And for many Senegalese women, that is reality. So, the answer to "What is love?" is paramount in determining the conditions for the majority of women here.

And when you throw a young American woman in the mix, this is what you get- something in between an ego boost and training to be a defense lawyer.

Getting Ready for the Big Fight Tomorrow

My Senegalese "husband" is fighting tomorrow in what might be the biggest fight of his life. Unfortunately, I can't go see the fight because it's too dangerous. Enjoy the mbalax and images of Senegalese wrestling.



Update: Video changed to the real deal.

Banana Bread and My Identity

This weekend my friend Colleen and I started out on our first solo-cooking adventure in Dakar. Goal: banana bread via Great Grandma’s recipe. We paid too much for ingredients at the fancy grocery store before making a few friends at the small “boutiques” closer to home. My family watched with raised eyebrows as we made the dough. (So you eat bananas and bread together? You make bread and put bananas in it? The bananas are in the bread? You paid how much for that?)

The dough stayed overnight in my fridge and we took it Friday to the English Resource Center, where we’ve been volunteering. We christened the oven’s maiden voyage there and discovered there was no temperature guide on the knob. This led to a crispier than desired (read: black), but still-good-in-the-middle loaf, which we carted back a few kilometers home to share with our respective families. While my family was appreciative, I don’t think that they got the same joy out of the experience that I did.

Finally, I created something here! I’m no longer just a blob that observes and absorbs my surroundings and sometimes mumbles intelligibly. I make banana bread therefore I am!

Okay, it wasn’t quite that dramatic, but let me explain. Today, I was given the chance to cook again, this time a meal for my family. I made two of my favorite things, a balsamic vinaigrette salad and pesto bow-tie pasta. However, I kind of got my feelings hurt in the midst of making it because it seemed every time I turned around they were correcting me. (Put more salt in. Leave it in longer. You did what?)

I was a little distraught. I know I’m not a great cook, but pasta is easy right? And I know how good salad dressing should taste. Then why don’t they like it? Well, welcome to cross-cultural living Emily- it’s just different. And that’s okay.

Let me repeat that. It’s just different. I’m just different. You’re just different. Here I was trying to figure out what was wrong with me (or with them) when really, I’m just hitting my head against the wall of culture.

I’ve been angsty the last few days, in the midst of my cooking adventures, and I kept on trying to figure out why. I think I forgot for a minute that I’m in Senegal. These people do not understand me or my banana bread. We’re all trying, and I really have a great family, but I’m the minority here and that means that I have to bow to Senegalese tastes, tools, and ingredients when I cook. And I have to adjust to Senegal in the rest of my life, most of the time whether I want to or not.

Cross-cultural living is not easy (although I think these thoughts apply to moving in country as well). Sometimes it seems impossible to express myself here, to engage and give of myself. I think it’s natural as human beings to want to have meaningful work. But for now, my role as a student minimizes opportunities for “production”. Cooking may seem like small stuff, but I guess I’d rather experience some of these things cooking than in a huge project where I tried to bulldoze through cultural ignorance. Perhaps getting your cooking criticized is needed for while before you can understand how to really relate to people and work alongside them towards a common goal.

Joal-Fadiout

I’ve been wanting to return to my list habit, so here we go, this time with pictures, describing last weekend.

Things accomplished in Joal-Fadiout:

1. Took a sept-place- a shared taxi that goes most places in Senegal, our ride was $4 a person for a 3 hour ride. One suggestion- don’t sit in the back.
2. Averted being majorly ripped off, twice.
3. Saw childhood home of Senegal’s first President Leopold Sedar Senghor. His father (nickname: The Lion) had five wives, he had 40 brothers and sisters and they don’t even know how many grandchildren there are.




4. Made friends with a Serer traditional lutteur (wrestler) who told us he had “chocolate abs.” (Think like a chocolate bar.)
5. Saw one of the regions (Senegal’s?) biggest baobabs. Went inside said baobab. Was ripped off by artisans there but also got free coffee.



6. Survived horse-cart ride to and from baobab with complementary bruised butt and doggy friends.



7. Saw a mixed Christian muslim cemetery built on an island of shells collected for hundreds of years by the in habitants of Fadiout.


8. Discovered the island of Fadiout, also completely shells, on our own with no guide, a true feat given the touristy nature of the place and the omnipresent tourist syndicate.
9. Spent a lot of time on bridges.


10. Entered the veritable sea of colorful mou-mou’s (traditional Senegalese dress and head wrap for women) to enjoy the Serer hymns at Fadiout’s Sunday mass. (Wish I had a picture for this one.)
11. Backgammon fail, sand checkers success.


12. Rocked French, threw in some Wolof and picked up some Serer.
13. Pulled off the shoe-string, student, backpacker’s weekend outside Dakar with less than a column of Lonely Planet to guide us.
14. Saw some great sunsets.

Feast Your Eyes (And Ears)

Must sees of this week (All of them! I promise!):


1. Photos of Senegalese wrestlers that were awarded by World Press Photo. I will have to write another post on wrestling here, it is hard core and dripping in cultural differences.

2. Akon (Senegalese rapper who made it big in the US) was chosen to compose a song for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. The video below has a traditional Senegalese beat, paired with the Soweto Gospel Choir. It also features my favorite African footballer, Drogba!



3. Salagne Salagne by Youssou Ndour- the most famous Senegalese singer. This song is played everywhere here and it's rhythm feels almost ingrained in my life here. It's beautiful.

Drama: Food

All of the drama in my life for the past few weeks has been centered around food. (And you’ve been wondering why I haven’t been writing on my blog.) I’ll give you a little recap.

After the all-important discovery of the beignets, my host-sister, smart girl that she is realized how much I like desserts, or any food that is bad for you, really. I knew that she was coming to understand me when she said, “Emily et son ventre, une grande histoire d’amour.” Which means, Emily and her stomach, a great love story. True words.

But this love story is in the midst of a battle. This battle takes place every time we eat fish for dinner. My sister, again, noted that I am constantly engaged in combat again fish bones. It amazing how many there are, and usually I resort to using my hands. Every once in a while my family has pity on me and removes them for me.

Yesterday was the newest chapter in this epic of love and war. I was going to be the only woman in the house at dinner time, so my host father said, “You are the woman. You make the dinner.” (So that’s how it works, I guess.) So I embarked on a mission to make French toast- in French it’s called “pain perdu” or lost bread (I was holding out for American toast, but no luck there). Road block one: no cinnamon. Okay, we’ll use sugar. My sister ended up being at home when I started and she said that we couldn’t mix sweet bread with salty eggs. She then proceeded to put tons of salt and seasoning in the dip for the toast, pour oil in the frying pan, and fry the pour suckers. This, she explains, is Senegalese pain perdu. Well, shucks. It was a far cry from any French toast I’ve ever had, but it was fried, so I ate it.

Again, it comes down to having the right materials. We have no spatula. There is no sliced bread, only baguettes. Stores close on Sundays. I am intent on making an “American” meal for my family at some point, which will require boxing out my sister and mother from the spices and stove top. I’ll have to do some conditioning before that, and search the city for cinnamon, sliced bread, and spatulas. Like I said, drama.

Seventh in Seven

Traveling to Senegal is the seventh time that I’ve been abroad my life, and I went abroad for the first time seven years ago. I’ve had a pretty good average, I’d say, of going abroad once a year. This is also my third time in Africa.

It’s strange to travel with people who are going abroad for the first time or even to Africa for the first time. I developing, secretly, (not anymore) a theory about cross-cultural experiences and what people experience as they go abroad more or stay abroad longer. I’ve decided to make a list of changes I’ve seen in myself and in others who have more experience abroad.

Every time I go abroad I stay for a little bit longer- I was in Kenya 1 month, then Argentina 2, then Kenya again 3, and now Senegal for 4 or so. None of these trips are long-term, so this list would probably look very different if written by a seasoned ex-pat. In any case, I’ve just found the differences in myself interesting, so I thought I’d share.

1. Logistics- From frustration to expected challenge: Entering a new place and culture presents logistical challenges as much and perhaps more than it presents social challenges. A person has to relearn simple things that they never remember having to learn at home like finding a bathroom, using the phone, or buying groceries. At first, I’ve found that people react with anger or disbelief when they encounter these new realities. People find themselves saying that the way the new culture works is stupid or slow or inefficient. They blame the other rather than realizing that it’s just different. The more I travel the more I expect these challenges and take them as part of the experience as much as the cultural aspects. It’s even fun to wake up every day and look forward to the next logistical puzzle and experiential learning experience.
2. Unexpected- What?!? to leaving space for it: Making a schedule in another country is a funny thing. You can do it, but you never know what will pop up. Again, I’ve found reacting with anger or frustration doesn’t help the situation, while leaving room for delays or sidetracks and taking them as they come makes every day more enjoyable. Eventually you come to understand better what you can accomplish in one day with the resources available.
3. Planning- Every detail to on the fly: Speaking of unexpected, getting to know a culture makes you more able to figure out things as you go. I’ve often started off with grand plans gathered from the pages of my travel book. But the more I get my nose out of the book and watch the world around me, the more I learn from the people I get to know and get to experience things off the beaten track.
4. DIY to making friends: Every time I try to do things by myself at first in another country, I end up getting ripped off or taking all afternoon for a task that should take half an hour. The more I can learn from other people or follow them and learn from them as they do things, the better. I recommend ditching your “I can figure it out on my own” attitude as soon as possible and humbling yourself enough to ask for help. This hopefully, will lead to meaningful friendships and working relationships that will facilitate getting tasks done and learning about cultural differences.
5. Relationships- Excited and Shallow to Real and Slow: I was hesitant to put this on the list. But the truth is, I’ve experienced it first hand. There can be a lot of false-intimacy when you travel abroad. I’m talking about the “We are the World”, “You’re my brother/sister” stuff that is used a lot to evoke emotional responses but actually is only true once you’ve been through the fire of cross-cultural living. I’ve found that quickly made friendships don’t usually last, although sometimes they continue with a veneer of agreement at the cost of not learning anything from one another. The sooner you realize how different you are from one another, the better. This includes the difficulty of the economic disparities as well. Facing this reality is not fun, and can sometimes be isolating, but jumping over this hill allows one to engage in the hard work of building lasting relationships across cultures. This, I believe, requires a lot of self-awareness, humility, and patience, which can yield a great reward in the end.
6. Being proudly Non-American/Wherever-you-are-ian to Being Yourself, including American: My sophomore year of college I would say that I was half-Guatemalan, half-Kenyan, and half-Argentinean. When I abroad I would join people in bashing America. Eventually I realized that I will always be American, no matter what I do, and I actually like many things about America, despite its faults. I now try to walk the fine line of being myself, including my nationality and all of the history, good and bad, that comes with that. I believe that I’ve learned more in cross-cultural experiences when I know where I stand and then I can place the traditions, beliefs, and experiences of the people I meet in relation to that. Surely being abroad changes people and opens their eyes to new things. But if a person doesn’t know before leaving which beliefs they hold that will not change, they can become a punching bag in another culture. This gets at the point that when you travel, cross-cultural learning is a two way street. I am a representative of myself, my family, my university, my city, and my nation wherever I am in the world, and the people I interact with want to learn about me and America as much as I want to learn about them and their nation and culture. As the traveler, you are required to bow to the realities of your host culture more often and to put your interests to the side frequently in order to learn, and I recognize that this is essential. Yet, doing this does not have to equal demeaning yourself or your own culture. The more I travel, I find that I learn more and do better if I keep a good hold of who I am and where I come from, have my own pillow, and keep a few Clif-Bars with me. People have their own non-negotiables that should be examined and reflected upon when you travel, but not abandoned.
7. Theory-making to Question-making: My favorite pastime is listening to people who have been in a country for two weeks talk about how they would fix the healthcare system, the corruption problem, or the ubiquitous lack of coins (a real issue in Dakar, and Buenos Aires for that matter). In short, I’ve found that the solutions posed oversimplify the problems and rarely use local resources, including local expertise and labor. The best thing that I’ve found one can do with these issues is ask questions of people who are from the country in question, or who have been engaged with the problem for a significant amount of time. This may reveal some of the complexity that a visitor’s initial frustration hides.
8. Only in Insert-Country-or-Continent-Here to Bubble Bursting: I’ll finish with this. I’m tired of travelers making stereotypes from their experience of a place. Recently, I said I was tired and wanted to sleep all day and another student said “Oh, you’re becoming Senegalese!” Uh, no, and that’s offensive. The conversations I hear between some students here who have created their own Dakar-merica bubble are circular, whiny, and unproductive. Those conversations are similar in pattern to the international development blogs that I’m tired of reading. Talking about the same thing with the same people from your same culture over and over again every day leads nowhere. I try to ditch that for new adventures, or sometimes naps.

I’ll stop here for the sake of your free time and continue with these thoughts later on. Please post your thoughts and reactions to the items on this list- is your experience similar?

Sorry Mom, I'm joining a roller-gang.

That's right. Today I was enlightened. I now have a goal in life.

As I was walking home, on the side of the VDN, one of the biggest highways in Dakar, where cars go pretty darn fast (I'm not good at estimating speed), there came buzzing down the road a group of 4 young men wearing roller blades and roller skates, holding onto the back of a truck. At the cross-street where I was standing they let go of the truck and did some spinny tricks and stuff (I'm not aware yet of the technical terms).

A couple of seconds later about ten more spun and rolled off. They then proceeded to catch other rides with trucks. Only one truck refused to let them roll along. All the others acted like this was normal. They either got the trucks as they were going slow turning onto the road or built up enough speed to catch a truck cruising by.

I have been searching for a cheap, yet fast way to get to school and I think I've found it. The only problem is that it's CRAZY AND DANGEROUS. Welcome to Senegalese extreme sports.

Feminism, Senegalese Style

In my Gender and Development class on Wednesday morning, we watched the film Faat Kine, created by Ousmane Sembène. Sembene used the film to address issues that people don't want to face in Senegalese society and to present an alternative to the traditional African woman, and to some stereotypical aspects of African culture.

The film shows a lot of Dakar, but it also shows something that I haven't experienced very much here- free, independent, powerful women (although the woman who owns the beignet shop previously mentioned is certainly doing well, there's a line all the time). Faat Kine had two children out of wedlock, owns her own business, drives a car, is sending her children to college, bought her own house, and is what we would call in the US, sexually liberted. Now, I don't believe that the last aspect is necessary to be a happy woman, but all in all, Faat Kine is a formidable and welcome character.

The questions that I was left with after watching the movie were the following:

• How was this film received by Senegalese society? Or was it at all? While Sembene is well known, a small portion of the population has access to films in the theatre or in their homes. And if the film didn't reach very broadly, that raises the question...
• How is or isn't this film a depiction of Senegalese society? Where did Sembene draw his idea of an indpendent woman? Is it Western, or do I just think it is because I'm American? Clearly some aspects of the film are true to my experience here, but the film looked a lot different from the scenes I usually see on the TV here.

Below is a 5 minute scene from the film wherein three unmarried, successful women talk openly about issues that sometimes aren't addressed in Senegal. Check it out.

What I do all day.

I thought that I might give you, my readers, something steady to stand on when it comes to understanding where all of my ranting and raving comes from. That would be, my schedule (in a vague sense).

Each week I take classes at WARC, the West African Research Center, which hosts several study abroad programs in Dakar, and from IFEE- L’Institut de Français pour Etudiants Etrangères., which is a section of L’Université Cheik Anta Diop, or UCAD. All my classes except Wolof are 3 hours once a week.

My classes consist of the following:
WARC
French Grammar Review
History of Islam in Senegal
History of the Senegambia
Gender and Development in Senegal
Wolof
IFEE
French-English Translation, Level 3

I had planned to take at least one course at UCAD proper, along with the other, normal, Senegalese students. Unfortunately, the system proved too difficult to navigate for an outsider. I would venture to guess it’s difficult for most insiders as well. I made a good effort to attend a African Literature course, and two weeks in a row the professor did not show up, although both time hundreds of students sat waiting for the entire length of the class. The first time that this happened, I learned when I got home that there was a strike at the University that day. But the second time is still unexplained.

Strikes in the universities here are frequent, usually in response to the inadequate number of classes for the volume of students enrolled. I feel like U.S. universities haven’t had a good strike since the 60’s, but apparently it’s still commonplace in other Western countries, like France, as well. I’m not sure if Senegal picked up the practice from France or if the system here works poorly enough to incite students’ anger time and again.

After sitting through a couple of classes with no professor, I thought that I might like a little striking too, especially if I was paying for that class specifically and needed it to advance to the next level of my degree program.

Why the university works the way it does is a mystery to me still, and I won’t venture a guess into its inner workings. Let’s just say that the final product isn’t a well-oiled machine and there appears to be more organization within departments than throughout the university as a whole.

If this entry is any evidence, my English spelling is slowly disintegrating. I hope that means my French is getting better.

TWTW: Television Shows

I am convinced that there are two types of families in Dakar. And no, I am not referring to Christian and Muslim. I'm not even referring to Southern and Northern Senegal or poor and rich.

I'm referring to the families who watch Prison Break and the families who watch Vaidehi. I happen to have landed in the Prison Break camp.

Prison Break, if you're not in the know, was first aired in 2005 and had, from what I can tell from IMDB, four seasons. Well folks, we're finally in the fourth season here. They show the new episodes about every other day from what I can tell, maybe even every day. I'm clearly not good at following it because it is dubbed over in French. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to watch something where people's mouths are moving in English and but I still can't understand what's going on. I also don't know that Prison Break was that original or amazing in the United States. But according to my brother, the writers were the most brilliant writers ever and the show is "extraordinaire".

I don't really find it that exciting but compared to the other shows on TV, which are mainly Spanish soap operas (not even the good ones, like there's not even attractive people in them) also dubbed over in French.

The one exception to this Spanish soap opera dominance, and that is Vaidehi. While my family does not normally watch this show, the star was in Senegal this last week, and she was all over the news, so we let ourselves go and watched one episode this week. All I can say is that I've ever seen so many different close-ups of the same person in quick succession. It is truly a cinematic feat. Instead of ranting more about how I can't stand the television here, I thought that I'd share some tidbits of this Bollywood feat right here. Enjoy.

Immersion? An Analysis of Wifi Coverage, Hairstyles, Poverty and Globalization.

I’m having trouble being so connected. Trouble might not be the right word. I feel like I’ve never travelled and been so in touch with my family and friends at home. Why does this trip feel easier, maybe, less distant from home than the others?

In Dakar I spend the majority of each day at the West African Research Center, which has glorious Wifi (pronounced weefee en français). I was surprised to see the new(ish) laptop computer that my host family owns, in addition to an older desktop. And they have DSL internet in their home that they use almost daily to talk to their oldest son, who is studying in France, or multiple other relatives who live in Europe. This is a huge change from the talk of shipping in huge satellites to get slower-than-molasses connections in Kenya. Here people are connected. Gmail, skype, excel, internet-ready phones, they’ve got it and my family, a “middle-class” family, uses it all.

This raises several questions for me. The first being, how will I ever learn French if the World Wide Web in English is at my fingertips? So far, self-discipline is the only solution. It is difficult, however, to regimen oneself to the extent that I refuse to communicate in my “mother-tongue” with other American students. That’s almost impossible to prevent. And as a woman, it would be very hard to be a loner in this city and make friends on my own. So immersion feels elusive, despite being in another country. (Bubble in French is boule.)

Connectivity in Senegal has raised other questions for me about relative poverty, globalization, and the relation between the two. If we’re talking about relative poverty the best gauge I know of is observing mention women’s hair styles. Women in Dakar almost universally get their hair braided or have weaves, which displays an investment of time, money, and perhaps a relatively high value of aesthetics (but describing Senegalese fashion will have to wait for another post), or even the empowerment of women. In Kenya, all girls had very short hair. Only older women or richer women got their hair done. Even in Durham a lower percentage of black women had their hair done than in Dakar. So in that respect also, Dakar feels “richer” to me.

In 2007, Senegal was ranked 166 out of 182 countries on the human development index- in the group of the least developed countries. So why can I not see the poverty? How might the poverty here look different than that of the southern United States or a village in western Kenya? And, I must question my expectations as well, must immersion in Africa be immersion in poverty? Certainly not. Africa suffers from the problem of “poverty porn” in the United States, where the image of starving children is synonymous with the continent. Check out these other blogs for a discussion of this topic. I plan to continue learning about and reflecting on this subject.

The final issue that makes me feel, shall we say, less immersed than expected is the similarities between Dakar and the United States. There are far more similarities than I would have expected. Most of these are cultural phenomenon related to music, dress, food, and entertainment. But the question with globalization is whether it is a two way street. Yes, I’d argue, I’ve heard of Akon, who is a Senegalese rapper now popular in the United States. But I never knew he was Senegalese. The reach of the American media giants (YouTube, Google, but NOT Starbucks, MacDonald’s, or movie theatres) here is convenient for my comfort, but seems to my water down my experience of Senegalese culture. As a professor from Paris said in a lecture yesterday, the United States is dominant in all spheres except soccer. It also feels ironic that I am trying to become more Senegalese during my time here while many others are trying to become more “American”.

In short, my question is why doesn’t Senegal feel more drastically different than the U.S.? Is it my bubble in class with other American students and Wifi? Is it the constant comparison to my hut sans water and electricity in rural Kenya? Is it because Senegal is relatively rich and therefore I am comfortable? Or is it the invasion of American culture? Or just the uniformity of urban culture worldwide? Maybe I’ve begun to undervalue cross-cultural experiences, or am beginning to live like an experienced traveler. Or something else?

It’s hard to know, but it could all be because I’m in a bubble. Maybe Senegal is so different and I just don’t see it yet. I’m just hoping that I can shut up enough to appreciate Senegal for what it is, not what I make of it.

I apologize for the overuse of parenthetical statements in this post, but it was worth it to be able to use the word parenthetical. Twice.

Heureuse

My favorite moments from Senegal thus far are the following:

1. My mother telling me that if I whistled at night Harry Potter would come for me.

2. My first French spoonerism: pot de masse. (In place of mot de passe- password.)

3. Learning Alhumdililah, which is the equivalent of Hallelujah in Arabic and Wolof.

4. The juxtaposition of the following phrases. “Je suis la folle. Je suis la foule.” They mean, respectively, I am the crazy person, and I follow the crowd. Je me demande, pourquoi le français me deteste?

I’m sorry that the blog posts for the past couple of weeks have consisted of disjointed thoughts and reactions. I plan to continue, dutifully, TWTW Dakar 2010 (Sounds sort of like an MTV show) and a thorough review of Senegalese history and culture in the weeks to come. Also planning on more pictures presented in a more thematic manner.