Claire: get…me…out of here

is the phrase i have been repressing for the past two and a half days.

It’s not that my village is bad or anything…just…DIFFERENT. every single thing about it is different.

Here I live not in a house but in a communal dwelling encircled by concrete with about five concrete buildings inside and two grass tents for cooking. Needless to say i live with a big big family. There are kids running everywhere in a big gang playing; adults sit under a big tree and talk, nap, nurse babies, etc; boys are pretty much nowhere to be found during the day. I honestly dont see any of them until around 9 pm when its time for dinner: girls my age and moms do most of the work, such as cooking, cleaning, taking care of the animals, etc. There are chickens and goats running around my compound as well. I made friends with one baby goat. I pet him and he nuzzles up to me, which everyone thinks is quite hilarious and stupid of me.

I sleep on two foam pads on a concrete floor. I didnt know it until too late but I basically kicked my sister out of her room; she sleeps in the living room now. I tried to get her to switch back but she refuses. She’s about my age but still has four years left before she graduates and goes on to university; she is constantly running around making dinner, helping a blind man who lives in our compound, doing laundry; getting water, etc. I feel totally inadequate and lazy all the time. Oh, and she’s gorgeous, by the way.

It’s not all completely rustic. There are lots of things I have here that I didnt have in Dakar; the best news of all is that I HAVE AN ACTUAL FACTUAL SHOWER! This is something I definitely did not have in Dakar. Also, ALHAMDILILAH, i have a flushing toilet WITH a toilet seat, which is new. For the past two nights weve brought a table and tv out on the concrete patio to watch after dinner; I’ve seen more tv here in the past two days than in two months in Dakar. Also we drink ataya (this really amazing tea) like its nobodies business. So its definitely not all bad.

No its not bad at all. The highlight so far has been yesterday when I followed my sister and all the other girls from the village to the well. They tied ropes to old gasoline jugs and dipped the jugs down down down the well to the water, hauled them back up, dumped the water in a big, plastic, rainbow colored buckets, filled them to the brim and carried them home on their heads. She gave me a smaller, toubab sized bucket to carry on my head and I walked back home in the line of girls with buckets of water. I was pretty elated: lets face it i had been practicing for this moment ever since I saw the jungle book and idolized the girl at the end with the bucket on her head singing my own home and luring mowgli away from the jungle.

I also like the weather here, at night theres a cool breeze that makes it the perfect weather to just sit outside and chat. It reminds me of summer nights in colorado and reminds me of something my fav african studies teacher told me: if you like colorado weather youll like western africa. Well I think she meant interior western africa. Any way its pretty gorgeous weather here, made more beautiful by the absence of city smog and garbage smell in the air.

It is just completely and totally different and therefore really hard to get used to; i have no idea if my family likes me or hates me or is simply putting up with me. Mostly i suspect the third.

The men are also even more forward, which I didnt think was possible. I have so far gotten three marriage proposals and even more requests to take them back to america with me.

When I walk the sand path home after work children come RUNNING out of their houses yelling TOUBAB and pointing and laughing at me.

Actually people laugh at me a lot, if I try to speak wolof or sererre, if I try to cook or clean, etc. All I want to do is be included; it feels so much better when I’m actually doing something or helping someone. When I was dropped off I was told by my prof to assimilate completely and I’m trying, but I feel like most of the time I just get laughed at or am so inadequate its sad.

It also sucks being in an area where there is almost NO french spoken, many people in my compund dont even speak french. I’m either wondering if they’re talking about me or absolutely certain they are. And all in a language I dont understand but am expected to.

I knew this wasnt going to be easy, but I found myself wondering why I thought it would be anything but extremely hard, maybe the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Not painful or traumatizing, just HARD. I dont fit it not because anyone is inadequate but just because i just really do not fit in. I am and they are just plain different.

But I’m going to keep my chin up and keep thinking about it as an exercise in self confidence, will power and self assuredness. And also in accepting and experiencing completely different cultures. I go through about twelve emotional roller coasters every day, from I LIKE IT HERE! to GET ME OUT OF HERE! and back, but I keep reminding myself that five weeks will actually go pretty fast so I should soak in the experience while i can. I tell you what, tho, it definitely puts two and a half years in the peace corps into perspective.

I’m at a cyber cafe in a town kind of close by but it was kind of an ordeal to get here. I felt like my family was both amazed and annoyed that i wanted to come here, they feel like they need to accompany me everywhere, despite my protests. So, my posts will be much less frequent, but I will try to hoof it here at least once every weekend…

Eben: I am here

In Wolof, the first question asked when meeting or running into someone is “Nanga def?” which essentially translates to “How are you doing?”  The proper response is “Maangi fi,” or “I am here.”  This seems particularly appropriate given that I am, in fact, now here at my internship site, Ngaye Mekhe. After exchanging parting gifts with my family on Tuesday night — I gave them T-shirts, they gave me doughnuts and chocolate spread — I woke up the next morning at 5:30 to begin the next phase of my time here.  I hauled the entirety of my current belongings to school for our 7 am departure at 7:30 am. (This was still more on time than expected.)  After driving in our bus northeast for a few hours and dropping off Jasper and Lisa, we arrived in Mekhe around midday. Waly threw my bags at me off the top of the bus and left me at my family’s doorstep with a wave and a smile.  (Once again I find myself lying. We actually went to my internship site first to meet my supervisor and chat for a half hour or so about my work, and then I went to see where my friend Trina was staying before being left at my new house after a lengthy introduction from Waly.)

The family has been great. Unlike Trina’s new family and much of the rest of the town, they all speak very good French to complement their Wolof and Pulaar, another local language.  The father, Pa Diop, works for a local microfinance organization (different from mine), and the mother, Ma Sow, just opened a small boutique selling printed fabrics and assorted household items.  Pa Diop has a pretty sober demeanor and gives off a general vibe of seriousness, but after a couple days I would no longer describe him exclusively as such.  He’s very interested in my opinions on American and international politics and loves giving advice to his kids.  In news from the Irrelevant Details Bureau, he’s pretty short.  Ma Sow is not.  She’s unbelievably nice (to be fair, I believe it, but she’s nice nonetheless), and so she calls me “my son” and reminds me from time to time how happy she is that I’m here.  I now have a new Senegalese name, Yoro, which she chose for me within 20 minutes of my arrival.  (It’s a Peul name, since she comes from the Toucouleur ethnic group, which is part of the Peul tribe.)

Then the kids, of which there are nine as of my last count.  Some are children of Pa Diop and Ma Sow, while others are nieces and nephews here for unexplained reasons.  I repeatedly forgot all their names the first day, prompting me finally to pass around a notebook and make them write their names down after many jokes at my expense about my memory.  Save for the 5-year old, Adama, they all speak good French and love talking.  But although Adama is the only one I can’t really communicate with, he’s the one who likes having me there the most.  He ran in the door on the first day when he saw me sitting in front of the TV, and he tends to break into dance in front of me whenever any music is on.  I think he’ll be great for my nascent Wolof abilities, as he often tries to speak to me in Wolof and there are tons of natural translators around the house.  There’s a 19-year old, Demba, who is soft-spoken but quite smart and easy to talk to, and the one I talk to most is 10-year old Cheikh Tidiane, who has endless stories about the past Americans who have stayed with the family.

The house is roughly what I expected, with a few minor differences.  Like most houses here, it’s quite open-air, but most of the house is covered instead of being open to the sky.  The main area is defined by relatively dilapidated concrete flooring and walls, and it includes, of course, a TV set.  I have my own nicely-sized room directly off the main area, and otherwise inside on the first floor there is a boys’ room, a girls’ room, parents’ bedroom, and an unused living room.  (It all sounds bigger than it actually is.)  Then outside is a kitchen, a toilet hole, and a shower.  Finally, the roof is used as a petting zoo for the pet rabbits and pigeons.  The pigeons stay up there, but the rabbits love wandering around the house, often going into my room to hide under the bed.  The kids bring their mattresses up to sleep on the roof with the animals now that the rainy season is done.

I may have made the house sound somewhat simple, but the family is far from poor village folk or anything like that.  There are two computers in the house, one in the parents’ bedroom for Pa Diop to use the internet and the other in the boys’ bedroom for them to play computer games.  We get more TV channels than at my house in Dakar, since there is cable at this house.  And like the Mendy family, everyone speaks French, the parents are well-educated, and the kids aspire to go to college.

More so than the Mendy family, though, the Diops very much engage in the “typical” Senegalese manner of interpersonal interaction.  Every family member who enters the house shakes everyone’s hand upon arrival, so Pa Diop shakes his sons’ and daughters’ hands multiple times daily, which is pretty foreign to me.  A few minutes of every conversation are taken up by greetings, which usually consist of the same question asked multiple times by both parties, with full knowledge of the answer to come.  In French or Wolof:

“How’s it going?”
“It’s going, it’s going.  How’s it going for you?”
“It’s going well.  So how’s it going?”
“It’s going well, it’s going well.  How’s the heat?”
“Oh, it’s going a little, but it’s hot.”
“Yes, it’s always hot here.  And your day?”
“It’s going, it’s going.  Yours?”
“It’s going well.”

And so on, until perhaps you start talking about whatever it is that you wanted to talk about, or the conversation might be over after this exchange.  You are not, under any circumstances, allowed to answer these questions by indicating that something is not going.

Robert: Holy. Daoist. Mountain.

I’ve caught a couple minutes’ respite here after a two-week homestay that was coupled with the final weeks of my language classes in Kunming and the beginnings of my preparations to conduct a project of my own here in Yunnan.

I really enjoyed the homestay– I think they enjoyed me too, despite my inability to understand Shanghaihua. They really sweet people who moved to Kunming in the 80s, I believe as part of the same danwei. Dad later became a Japanese translator and Mom a nurse. They have a son attending Shanghai University now who’s almost my age, so I felt like they were prepared for and receptive to the mindset of a 20-something college student. I had to miss more meals together than I would’ve liked due to my workload at school, but we did manage to have some great times together– particularly at a wedding I didn’t realize was an actual 650-person reception until I walked in the door (wearing a Twins cap, not smelling particularly great) and saw the bride and groom, who’d gotten married this weekend but was having the ceremony mid-week, as many couples employing the western wedding tradition usually do. In China, apparently they’ll do it on a Monday night. Lesson learned, karaoke sung. Dad can really belt ‘em out.

Now we’re on the road for two weeks as a group, moving up towards Dali, Lijiang, and Zhongdian/Shangri-la. Had an incredible day on one of China’s 12 holy Daoist mountains, Weibaoshan, hiking to the top by myself in a nice seven-hour jaunt. Got to Dali yesterday, declined the multitude of offers to buy weed that every white person surely gets (it’s not just the beard!), and decided that there was nothing I could do about the old town being a tourist trap full of laowai marveling at the orient and vacationing Han shoving cameras in front of everything while they toss their empty Honghe packs into the street. I got a little surly yesterday taking all this in, but a decent slice of pizza, a bottle of Sol, and a two-hour nap put me back on top.

I’m about to go up in to the middle of nowhere for a few days. We hike in to a town called Shaxi, where I’ll stay with another family for four days. I’m sure I’ll have more to share when I get back!

Claire: Last day in Dakar

So today is my final day in Dakar.  I ran some errands, did what was left of my laundry and went to the school. Can’t tell you much about my errands, except that i bought some really cool PRESENTS there. I leave tomorrow for the village of Tattaguine and recently found out that there is no internet there, not even a cyber cafe. The closest one is about a 15 min bus ride away, so i will try to hoof it there at least once every weekend to post.

Needless to say, I am pretty nervous. Well, make that extremely nervous. My mom keeps telling me, though, that if I don’t like it or if my Tattaguine family is mean she will march straight there and give them a piece of her mind. I’m going to miss my family so so much. It’s comforting to feel like i already have a family in the country; I feel nothing like the fear I had before I met my first family when I just arrived here. I’m still scared, however, that they wont speak much French and that we won’t be able to build a relationship because I don’t speak much Wolof at all. I’m also scared because there almost certainly will be no shower and no toilet—just a hole in the ground.

I’ll also miss being able to get on the internet and keep up with the rest of the world at least once a day. I’ll definitely miss keeping up with glee, 30 rock and the office.

Most of all I’ll miss having all my friends around. Everythings about half as scary when you go through it with another person; every traumatizing experience becomes laughable with a friend. I’m going to have to buy A LOT of credits.

The bright side is that the village should be a breath of fresh air, literally. Dakar has lots of cosmopolitan things to offer, but it’s full to the brim of smog and dust and garbage—literally big piles of garbage everywhere. its…lets see how to put this…not the BEST smelling place I’ve ever been.

Samantha: the past two weeks

The weekend of October 9th I went to a small surf town north of where I live. My “cousin” Sara (she is an exchange student from Michigan and lives in Santiago with my host family’s aunt) and I stayed in a cabin on the ocean!! Friday was beautiful but Saturday was cloudy and cold so we came home to Viña where it was sunny and warm! On Sunday night we went to a Daddy Yankee concert! It was a lot of fun but we were surprised that a lot of families came with their little kids!

On Wednesday October 14th I received the first not passing test grade… of my life! Nico explained to me that I “Shouldn’t worry because you’re not in the red zone so that means you can still pass the class.” Haha GREAT! But these things too shall pass and in my defense I am learning a lot from this class and would have passed the test if it was in English because I knew the material!

The weekend of October 16th I went to an art museum. It was small but had a lot of really interesting paintings. Many were from the 1800s and there were only a small number of modern paintings. On Monday October 18th my friend from home’s sister was in Viña so I showed her around and we ended the day watching a beautiful sunset in Reñaca. 

During this past week my friend Jessica’s family from the US was visiting her here in Chile. It was awesome to see their reaction to how she lives here. They are from Wisconsin too and her dad has the same sense of humor that my dad has, and that almost no one in Chile has!

Yesterday I went to a National Park called La Campana. We hiked for more than 10K up a “hill” which in the States would be considered a mountain! Although I am very sore today it was worth it because the views were breathtaking and it was amazing to spend time in the peace and quiet of nature.

Eben: I heart activities

In between playing online trivia games in class, organizing my next semester, and thinking about big issues like development (ooooh), I actually do try to do cool things with my time here. Here’s a brief slideshow of my recent activities:

And a bunch of other new pics are up at my site, going back to near the beginning of September. Starting from the top, I went last weekend with the members of the environment class, which I’m auditing, to the Ile de la Madeleine. We took a 20-minute motorboat ride into the ocean west of Dakar and arrived in the lagoon shown above, which looked something out of a deserted island movie set. We were ostensibly there to see some plant species or something, but the swimming in the lagoon was the fun part.

The next day, I took my first surfing lesson at a beach on the north side of Dakar. It was about as hard as you can imagine it would be to stand up and balance on a moving plank in water, but as you can (sort of) see from the picture above, I managed to stand and stay up three or four times over the course of the hour-long lesson. Going back for more this weekend.

Then on Tuesday, my friend Sean and I found a golf course on the northwest tip of the city and played a good round of 15 holes after class. (Why else come to Africa than to play golf?) The course was beautiful — right on the ocean, with multiple tee boxes and greens situated on jetties over the water. Wasn’t incredibly well-kept, as the greens played pretty slowly and the fairways were a little rough. But something is briefly right with the world when arms and hips and metal and torque combine to make a tiny ball fly a couple hundred yards, and we’re also not exactly the most discriminating golf connoisseurs about the course we’re playing, so we had a lot of fun.

I’m looking forward to a busy last weekend in Dakar before heading out to my internship in Mekhe next weekend. Working on a post further describing my family now that I actually know some interesting stuff about them, and I have plenty of other observations to report, but I figure keeping things simple for once here is worthwhile. So I’ll leave it with that.

Arianna: OMG

I AM SO SICK OF WORK, SO SICK OF WORK, SO SO SO SICK OF WORK! My brain feels like jelly and I have read over thiry-five “scholarly” (aka, dry-written) articles to work on this final paper and I might tumble over and collapse. After finishing the two essays last week, I feel like I should be able to celebrate and revert back to my doing-nothing-but-laying-on- the-beach routine. What the heck!

Jess and I went to the beach today (mental preparation for the agony of paper writing for the rest of the week) and I am one big freckle explosion once again. I also found a really cool orange sweatshirt (see photos above) that smells like a very delicious smelling man. It sat there all morning so before we left I snatched it….. Jess is currently gagging and is appalled that I haven’t washed it, but like I told her, I am going to wash it, it just smells soooo gooooood……

Well, I suppose I better try to get back to work…. ugh…. two more weeks, two more weeks, two more weeks….

Claire: The Villa

OOOOOKAY. friends and family, that has been my motto for the past few days, “OOOOOKAY.”

since a few weeks ago my sister has been telling me “we’re going to rent a villa by the BEACH with a POOL and we’re going to stay up all night dancing and having a party and its going to be AWESOME!” At first i was a little suspect, i wasnt sure if i could afford that kind of luxury or if i wanted to just stay here and enjoy dakar but as the weeks past i wanted more and more to just escape the smog and garbage of dakar and my sister said it would only cost about 20 american dollars so i said, hey why not?

well it sort of went like this:

okay we’re going to a seaside villa with a pool at Saly at 8 am
okay we’re going to a seaside villa with a pool at 12 pm
okay at 2
okay at 2 30
okay its 3 and we’re really leaving this time
okay we’re going to a villa but its either seaside or with a pool, not both
okay its with a pool
okay its not in saly its somewhere else
okay we’re here and it looks good but there’s no pool and no beach but there’s a lagoon nearby and we can drive to the beach
okay we’re here and it looks good but its locked
okay the guy is here to unlock it but he cant because he doesnt have the keys
okay the keys are with someone else in some other village
okay we can go to the beach until he finds the keys
okay we’re going to stay at HIS house on the beach until he finds the keys
okay he cant find the keys we’re staying here
okay its fine because now its seaside again
okay there are a lot of bugs
okay there are a lot of bugs but we can pull the mattresses (aka pads of foam) out onto the porch to sleep
okay there are even more bugs on the porch but i can hear the ocean
okay theres a lizard in the kitchen cabinet
okay theres a goat in the yard
okay this house is pretty disgusting
okay its dark because we left so late but we can swim for a minute tonight and then spend the whole day tomorrow at the beach
okay my sister wasn’t kidding they want to stay up all night and go dancing
okay i need to pass out now
okay seriously i need to go to bed
okay good night
okay good morning…
okay its cloudy
okay its raining, i guess we can lay around and read/nap
okay what are we doing here??? lets go back to dakar
okay the sun came out!
okay now im happy, now i am tanning
okay lunchtime
okay the sun disappeared again
okay lets look at the lagoon
okay its a lagoon. nice lagoon. lets go home.
okay we’re going BACK to the crackden?
okay just a few more cups of bissap
okay youre wealthy uncle is coming over with MORE drinks?
okay just one more hour
okay this is pretty fun, i never thought i’d debate the iraq war in french
okay lets go home
okay its 11 pm and i havent done my Wolof homework but really what else is new.
okay that house was disgusting but that was a really good weekend.
okay now im done.

…pretty much sums it up. there were definitely moments when i went a little insane; those were the times when i said “UGH THIS IS SO SENEGALESE!!!” If i havent told you before there is a wolof proverb that goes “ndank ndank moy jap golo ci nay” meaning “slowly one catches the monkey” which (somehow) translates to, basically, “patience is a virtue.” well there are times when the whole country seems to function at ndank ndank pace, such as peoples walking speeds (much slower than even mine) or, for example, when the ENTIRE post office goes on break for an hour between 2-3 and one is obliged to wait patiently. this weekend was, at times, an infuriating example of ndank ndank, for example when we were supposed to leave at 8 but left at 3, or when we waited around the original villa (which we had a reservation for btw) for a half an hour for the guy to come with keys only to be told a half an hour later that he didnt have them, or when we sat around talking and drinking for HOURS saturday night. i tried to keep telling myself was a lesson in patience, that i was learning to be less impatient. i cant say i always succeeded…but i tried.

it was, in the end, a great weekend. i got to stay at a house separated from the beach only by a ten foot garden. that house could rake in so much money if the guy were to fix it up–the location was just beautiful. also on sunday morning a friend of the guy whose house we were staying at caught a big swordfish, id say about two feet long, and gave it to us to cook and eat for lunch. fish lovers be jealous, it was delicious. also, once i got over my impatience i loved sitting around the table by the beach talking about everything under the sun. and i loved the beach. so all in all it was good, especially because i feel like i made some new friends. plus it was fun to road trip again, i love road trips!

Robert: Xishuangbanna!

My trip to Xishuangbanna was, as predicted, a mix of spur-of-the-moment decisions, short-term plans, small accomplishments, and the occasional minor failure. Melissa, Rose, and I were a capable bunch with a good mix of language skills (my weak point) and travel experience both within and outside of China. We left ready to spend a great deal of time in transit, to smell increasingly foul, willing to get soaked by any number of downpours, and catch sleep anywhere we might find sanctuary. With the welcome exception of rainfall, we essentially got what we expected. And we got thoroughly schooled at billiards by a one-eyed man.

Of course, we had no shortage of unexpected developments and revelations as well, the first of which was perhaps the most devastating: After boarding a bus that took an inordinate amount of work to get to, Mel discovered she didn’t have her bus ticket. The reason she didn’t have her bus ticket was because she no longer had her wallet, which contained all of her cash, a credit card, and student ID.

During the stop in Tonghai that followed, I contemplated what could have  happened, realizing that the state in which we found ourselves was the ideal circumstances for a thief. There had been only one scenario during which an opportunity to slip Mel’s wallet from her purse ostensibly could have taken place. But all eyes were on the culprit, and her purse was secure during this episode– a diversion perhaps? On the other hand, I had to consider the possibility that she had somehow misplaced her wallet; it just seemed so unlikely that an opportunity to have her wallet stolen could’ve occurred. But Mel seems too responsible and experienced to let something so major happen so easily, and if the wallet had been stolen the most likely scenario was that the thief was still on the bus with us. Stalemate. Genius.

After sleeping on it for another few hours, I decided that it would be totally ridiculous to not loan Mel the money to stay on with us. It was a matter of about $100 and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I had an extra ¥400 and a few hundred dollars in traveler’s checks that I could cash once we got to Jinghong. Of course, I’m glad Mel stayed on with us. The dynamic among the three of us was basically a steamroller of hilarity. We met a new friend on the bus, Tidan, an Israeli who spoke no putong hua and would spend the next two days with us as we made our way toward Jinghong.

At Yuanyang, we trekked through the rice terraces with a “guide” who was nice enough to take us to some places we didn’t have to pay to get into. The irony of having to pay to see a rice terrace in China would become painfully obvious during the twelve hours of bussing through rice terraces we would endure the next day. Tidan took a spill into one of the rice paddies, soaking most of what she had on her, ruining her camera in the process. While she dried off, the three of us made our way across the slopes, balancing everything on our backs as we hoped to not meet the same fate. After admiring the intricacy of the terracing– particularly the key-point irrigation method employed to get water across and down the hillside, we met some Hani women returning to a small, three-house village carrying screeching black piglets that liberated themselves from their pens. As they dragged their livestock by their hind legs, we followed them to the gate surrounding their concrete dwellings, and asked to come in.

During this visit, I recalled that Charles (one of my instructors) had previously said that the Hani tended to be less than hospitable to tourists, demanding money for photographs and whatnot. As much as I enjoy taking photographs, I’ve lately found that the most unusual, resonant, and singular experiences are potentially undermined by the presence of a camera. The mere acknowledgement of a person’s interest in photographing someone else threatens to create a hierarchical relationship of subject and object between people, and not surprisingly can bring about any number of negative reactions. As we sat with the women in piecemeal but genuine conversation, I thought about every time someone here mockingly issues a “hello” in passing, whistles at a female friend of mine, or blatantly tries to overcharge me for something I don’t need in the first place, and enjoyed the respite. I opted to not be the lao wai with a camera in some farmer’s face.

The next morning, in Xinjie, I watched one of the only foreign tourists we saw grab his Chinese tour guide squarely by the shoulders and start pointing both her and his beer gut toward a row of buses as he loomed over her. Then he turned her around, still grabbing her by the shoulder, and cranes his neck to put his face directly in front of hers and says Now, why don’t you ask some more fucking questions? Always ask questions. (Pointing) Where are all these buses going? That’s the kinda stuff I wanna know. Ask lotsa fucking questions. Jesus. First of all, the buses either have signs or full-fledged windshield decals displaying the names of the towns to which they go. Not that he can read a single character. Secondly, she’s a tour guide, not a mind reader. Ask the questions yourself.

Eben: Meals Without Wheels

A few weeks ago, during the presession, we took a field trip to the island of Ngor, off the northwest tip of Dakar, to conduct interviews with strangers on the beach on the subject of polygamy.  We were informed that Waly and co. had bought food for our lunch there.  Naturally, given my concept of what a portable lunch should be, I was excited for the possibility of sandwiches and maybe, if we were lucky, some fruit.  My cold-cut dreams were shattered when I was asked to carry a large vat of oil to the bus, which we subsequently carried with us on the small, wet pirogue that took us to the island.  Accompanying that vat were multiple pounds of chicken and uncooked French fries, along with a gas cooker.  We were going to have a normal lunch, field trip be damned.  And we did; Waly’s assistant, Adji, tended the cooker for a couple hours until our communal platters were ready.

And this is the way Senegalese food works.  There are restaurants, sure, and even a few fast-food places, but a real meal is hand-cooked.  And in this process, there are no compromises, no shortcuts, and certainly no need for lessons from Michael Pollan.  A meal is a meal, and it must be cooked in a certain way no matter the location or circumstances.  All of which is somewhat surprising given the way food is actually eaten.  Despite the elaborate tradition that surrounds meals here, people eat quickly and usually without stopping to talk or take a drink.  When you’re done eating, you get up even if others are still working.  After hours of cooking — at my house, a 2:30 pm lunch often gets started around 9 am — the meal is usually done within a 10 or 15 minutes.  Then onto the next meal.

At my house, lunch (which I only eat there on weekends) is the biggest deal of a meal.  The family eats with spoons around a large bowl, as depicted in the picture above of students eating in Sokone.  In many families, the bowl is present but the spoons are not, and people sit on mats around the bowl, rolling balls of rice (or millet) and sauce with their fingers.  (All of this is done with only the right hand, for cultural and hygienic reasons.)  Everyone eats the rice and sauce in the area in front of them, while people break off small pieces of the meat/fish and root vegetables in the middle of the bowl to eat with their rice.  This role is often also played by the woman who did the cooking, in which case she’ll distribute the pieces she breaks off to everyone around the bowl.

On the other end of the spectrum, dinners at my house are casual, less stereotypically traditional affairs, eaten on individual plates at each person’s leisure.  Usually, the kids and I eat around 8:30 with Ester, the youngest daughter of Mère Vitou (she’s probably about 30), and the maids.  Mère Vitou gets a plate in the living room while watching tv, and the rest of the house eats later if at all.  Moving back in the day, breakfast, the least important meal, is a very European affair that is done, as far as I can tell, exactly the same at every house throughout the country.  You get a piece of baguette and some chocolate spread or jam, accompanied by a hot drink (despite the heat) made of whatever powders — coffee, milk, hot chocolate mix, sugar — you want.  The French really sold Dakar citizens short in terms of whatever baguette recipe they taught them, and so I’m generally hungry by the end of my walk to school.  Eating air would at least require less chewing.  Outside of Dakar, though, the bread is great — much heavier, but still soft enough to eat comfortably.

In terms of the food itself (beyond breakfast), I’d love to be able to come back to the States and, like many who have traveled abroad, say that the food here was inconceivably wonderful.  But that would be dishonest.  I generally like the vast majority of what I’ve eaten, but I’ll return home and be perfectly happy to go back to eating the food I have for most of my life.  Most meals consist of a starch, meat or fish, and a dark, heavy sauce.  The starch, as I started to explain above, is either rice or very fine-grained millet during one of the traditional “bowl” meals, and then often it’ll be French fries or pasta for our more casual dinners.  The fish is always served whole and I’m pretty sure is usually herring.  It’s nice, flaky white meat once you get past the fact that the thing you’re eating still has its head on.  The meat is either chicken or beef, although Catholic families do eat pork from time to time.  Regardless of the meat, it’s served on the bone with plenty of fat still on.  In my house, beef is much preferred to chicken, much to my disappointment.  I grew up not really eating red meat, and so I do my best to pick around it here, but I’m essentially required to eat at least a little bit given the rules of hospitality.  The meat is always flavored very heavily with spices ground together with the equivalent of a mortar and pestle, and like most everything else, cooked very slowly over a gas cooker.  Finally, the sauce usually falls into one of two categories: onion-based or not.  The onion-based sauce is very thick, and brown, and delicious.  Reminds me of caramelized onions.  The other types of sauces are a mixture of oil with either tomato, peanut butter, or spinach.  This thick spinach sauce (as shown in the picture above) is about the most you’ll get in the way of green vegetables, as the only other “vegetables” you might get are carrots, potatoes, or white roots whose name I have no idea.