I have a couple addendums to my last post about Sokone. First is that I now have a Senegalese name: Souleymane Diop. I got Souleymane from my friend Casimir, who studies English at the university in Dakar. He was (or is) probably my best friend among the group of those students, and when I remarked that I didn’t as of yet have a Senegalese name, he gave me Souleymane. My picture with Casimir is pretty terrible, so here’s one of him attempting unsuccessfully to braid my friend Alex’s hair.
And Diop came from a stoic man of probably 60, who was sitting with a group of similarly-aged men on a dirt road in Sokone when my group-mate Vu and I walked by. He started to chat with us, and when he asked me if I had a Senegalese name I responded that I just had been given Souleymane. He didn’t think it was acceptable not to have a family name, so he gave me Diop. I then kept walking.
And finally, I have one last story about Sokone, which I should have included in the section about lack of irony (or perhaps animal sacrifice—you may want to stop reading now if you didn’t like the cow story). One day Casimir mentioned something about wanting to have our group of Americans over to his house for dinner, since he hails from Sokone. I then heard the next day from Casimir’s cousin, Moustafa, that we were supposed to go to Casimir’s house later that night. He told us we would be going there after dinner at our compound, so I assumed that the dinner that Casimir had mentioned would be happening some other night.
After dinner, we went to an open-mic concert-type event, with the intention of going to Casimir’s after that since we were told by our group leaders that we had to go to the concert. We had just settled into our seats in the small assembly hall when Casimir stormed into the room. Being his friend, I went to go talk to him, at which point he informed me that he had killed a pig for us. Oh. So we rallied the troops and went to Casimir’s house. (For those wondering, Casimir’s family is one of the 5% of Catholic families in the mostly Muslim country, so they do eat pork.) Like most people, I don’t generally eat two dinners, and I never eat pork, but I think he would have been more than slightly offended had I politely declined. Casimir is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, but he was serious about that pig. I guess whoever wrote my guide book wasn’t lying when she said the Senegalese are aggressively hospitable. Lesson learned.
Global Crossroads 