Happy Birthday to me!

Out the window: the huts of Kedougou. Maybe it's billed as a big city, but it's definitely the dirt roads and huts and naked babies kind of city.
Inside: me on the internet. facebook, blogger, nytimes.com, e-mail, whatever my greedy modern heart desires
mood: surreal and also incredibly content

I woke up this morning in the full sized bed that I have been sharing for the past three nights with two other students. Evie and Chesa and I took one look at the bed, and at eachother, and burst out laughing. Once we'd calmed down, we decided to sleep sideways on the bed with our feet hanging off so that we could fit all three of us. We used my mosquito net, but our feet stuck out the end so I don't know how much good it did. So I woke up this morning achy and scrunched up. But happy.
I opened my present from my mom that I had brought all the way from Dakar to Kedougou to my rural village, just to have a present to open. It's a really pretty necklace that somehow matches perfectly with the only pair of earrings I'd brought with me.
The second thing I did this morning, not to get to graphic here, was to pee outside. Then I had breakfast. We were served many varieties of cornmeal mush in the village, but breakfast was the one we have affectionately named Witch's Brew. I'll post pictures. You'll understand. Sort of a cardboard-flavored ground chalk substance. I managed a whole bite and a half.
We were supposed to leave our village stay at 9am ish, but we had gotten up early. Maleke, who I think was supposed to be one of our host fathers, had been our most valuable friend during this short trip, and he had offered to take us to see his fields. We were supposed to go the night before, but forgot and had gone on a walk to show Chesa the soccer "field" and gorgeous views up on the hill surrounding the village. So instead he took us this morning. It was a little bit of a walk- not far, just hot, though. His fields are all planted by hand. He grows eggplant. Others grow eggplant, corn, and peanuts. The views of the Gambian River by his fields were breathtaking. Its hard to explain, especially on this keyboard with the keys so stiff with dust, but I felt so happy and lucky to be where I was this morning. So many people never get a chance to do what I have just spent the past few days and months doing, and to have such an amazing landscape be a part of my birthday was humbling and just plain nice.
Of course to be completely honest I just as much enjoyed the other part of my birthday so far, which came after we crossed back into kedougou. (crossed with the pirogue/wooden canoe with so many holes in it that it needs to be bailed out as they are paddling us across). I don't know that I've EVER had as great a birthday meal as the baguettes and jam and coffee that they gave us back at the hotel when we asked for some breakfast. I don't think I've ever been so consistantly hungry with no way of getting food before in my life, and I just couldn't stop grinning as we SHOVELED the baguettes into our mouths and laughed about the twenty different kinds of corn mush we've sampled over the past few days.
Then other students started trickling back to the hotel from THEIR ethnic minority village stays and then I took an AMAZING shower in my AIR CONDITIONED hut/room and then ate a GREAT lunch with RICE and BEEF and mafe-like sauce and a COKE and then went and lay down on my bed where my head and feet all fit and opened a card and a present from Alex, my friend from home, and a bottle of maple syrup from my mom and then rested and then set out for the internet cafe. And here I am checking my facebook and reading all of my friends and relatives birthday messages to me and feeling loved and in a few minutes I will go and buy TONS of the indigo fabric that is imported from Guinea and is gorgeous and cheap here.

This is why it is only 4:30 and I am already having THE BEST BIRTHDAY EVER.

Love,
Robin Claire Mariama Diop McGrath

p.s. sorry for the lack of posts lately, and how confusing this one must be. more when i get back to dakar on sunday!

"If I was Bob Marley/ I'd say, could you be loved"

Well, dance yesterday was just as sweaty as I thought it would but, but infinitely more fun than I had anticipated. I forgot about those exercise-induced endorphins! It was pretty awesome. The rhythms are somewhat different than what we're used to so it was sort of hard. The whole afternoon of trying to keep your arms and legs doing very different things felt like an epic struggle of trying to pat your head and rub your belly, you know? Very worthwhile however.
Classes will re-commence next week, but tomorrow morning we're off on our first rural 'Village Stay'. We aren't going very far, just an hour or two from Dakar, but I think it will be very different from what we're used to. I'm a little worried just about the physical discomforts, but really excited about meeting my mini-homestay family. It sounds sort of silly, but it's going to be a really authentic experience (just in case we felt coddled here in Dakar, HA!).
Today I voted! Well, okay, I filled out the ballot, I'm going to bring it to the embassy in a bit. (You can just mail it, but it's free if you mail it from the embassy, and I want to check out the embassy anyway.) I bet you two dead cockroaches you can't guess who I voted for!

Last night I had a really long and intense discussion with my homestay brother, Sydee, about religion. I'm really pressed for time and don't know if I can do it justice, but it was pretty honest. I'm always on my guard about offending people here, and when talking about religion I'm always very careful to talk about 'religion' in general, and not just Islam. But last night it wasn't too hard to do, because we were discussing issues that are at the core of every major religious debate for religions with sacred texts. Such as, fundamental gender differences, strict adherence to the text, interpretation and modernization of a religion over time, and whether or not it's okay to ask too many questions. (Me = yes, Him = sort of).

I find that in discussing in the abstract what I think God and religion is, Sydee very much agrees with me. But when I start to get more specific about what God is NOT (i.e. rules and laws and sexism, etc), we find ourselves disagreeing. Still, he is the person I feel most comfortable talking to, because although he is very religions and very strict in his faith, he is intelligent and has enough of an open mind that I can discuss issues with him without fear of offending. (That's not to say that I have brought up abortion or gay rights, but we've skirted some pretty heavy topics).

Hopefully more on this later, these conversations are where I feel I'm making the most interesting discoveries about this country, and interestingly, myself.

Sweatily,
Robin

Monday

I just got back from our first djembe session! Djembe is a kind of Senegalese drum. I love it, I wish I got to just have drum lessons the whole week instead of sharing the time with dance as well. The people who had dance today loved it but looked like they'd stepped out of the shower. (As Zoe has already noted on HER blog.) I do like to dance but I'm pretty lousy at it, and I'd so much rather be learning djembe. We learned three main rhythms today, sort of. My hands hurt a little bit afterwards, but not much.

Last night I called my parents (well, I actually had THEM call ME, which was kind of them) because it was 1AM and the power was out so it was too hot to sleep. I wasn't unhappy, though, just hot and bored. Of course as soon as they called me back the power went back on, so I was ridiculously happy. How do you describe the heat and cockroach climbing outside your mosquito net to your parents and NOT make them freak out? It's hard to explain how I'm so happy here, but I am. And I killed the cockroach after I got off the phone with them so score one point for me.

I'm trying to get used to writing short updates, instead of waiting a week just to write the perfect long explanation of one incredible day. So that's all for now, I have to go home and eat dinner! I hope it's not ceebu jen, as I now officially have what we students here call 'the ceebu jen blues'.

xoxo,
Robin

p.s. Dear Mom,
Do not, I repeat, DO NOT! make me any dishes with fish in them for at least one month after I come home. Kay, thanks.
:D

Korite

So, Korite was three days ago. It's the very big holiday that celebrates the end of Ramadan. It's been basically a huge subject of conversation for the past month that we've been in Senegal. After Korite, all of Dakar will be a big party. Everyone gets new clothes for Korite. Let's get our new clothes weeks in advance because the tailors will be so busy as Korite approaches. I wonder what we'll eat for Korite? We're all so excited for Korite, because fasting sucks. People spend more money than you can imagine on new stuff for Korite.
Well, needless to say, it didn't really live up to the hype. For me, anyway, it was a pretty average day. I didn't go to school, so in the morning I did what everyone else in Senegal has been doing for the past month, which is sleep to try and deal with the heat. For Korite my family got up at 8am to go to the mosque for an hour, but I wasn’t allowed to go, so there was no point to me waking up. I did get up later in the morning and sort of wandered around bored until they started making lunch. I offered to help and they quickly put me to work washing dishes. (Three buckets, one with soap, one to rinse, one to put the clean dishes in afterwards. This all takes place in the courtyard though, so it never really feels clean with the bugs crawling everywhere.) Our maid, meanwhile, was busy pulling apart most of a sheep into eatable bits and dropping them into another bucket of water to soap. It’s obviously very different from the pre-packaged stuff I’m used to, and what with the intestines lying around and the water it was soaking in not looking that clean I was pretty grossed out in a typical American way. I kept going to my room to drink water and cool down and try not to get too grossed out and grouchy about having to do housework on a day I thought was going to be a holiday.

(Tangent about our ‘maid’: It feels very weird to call Coumba that because she is fifteen years old and is very much a part of the family. She lives with us, but does most of the work and they call her to open the door or get them something even if she is watching tv or sleeping. They also make fun of her a lot, in a way that is sort of good-natured but hard to tell because it’s almost always in Wolof. She’s also sort of short and overweight and always dressed in sloppy clothes that she can get dirty, whereas the rest of the female members are slender and tall and dress impeccably. I was imagining her getting all dressed up for Korite in a sort of chick-flick outcast-girl-turns-beauty-queen fashion. Lo and behold, when I came back from Saint Louis, she had hair braided in this new way that made her look like a new person. And when she changed into her nice Korite clothes, she looked like a rock star, and one the brother’s cute friends started teasing her about how pretty she looked. If life were a movie, a Mandy Moore song would have started playing as the credits rolled over a montage of her going shopping with the cool crowd.)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. It wasn’t just the maid making the meal this time, my sister Aminata (or Ami-Colle) and I were helping. She was using a sort of large-scale mortar and pestle thing, almost like a butter churner, to mash up some onions, garlic and pepper. I helped pound that for awhile, then started separating garlic for her. I cut my finger. I don’t know, it was sort of fun, and it was nice to be helping and to be seeing how the food was made instead of just eating it, but it wasn’t exactly the holiday I had pictured. People wandered in and out. The men and boys watched tv or slept or lay around talking. The women stressed and cooked and cleaned. Ledaru, the little cousin, threw tantrum after tantrum, in the way that little kids are wont to do on holidays where they get overexcited. I took a nap. When I woke up, we ate lunch. (What we’d been making.) It was good, and nice to not have fish for once, but considering that was the big event of the day, it was uneventful. Maybe it was really nice for them to be eating during the day, now that Ramadan was over, but it seemed pretty low-key to me.
Finally, later in the afternoon I got to put on my pretty new Senegalese ‘boubou’, or traditionally dress. I like it a lot. It’s pretty lightweight, so it’s not too bad in the heat, although the sleeves are sort of long. I think I’ll wear it at Christmas, because I can’t think of any other time when I’ll be able to!

The idea behind Korite is forgiveness. You are supposed to go around and visit your neighbors and relatives. The greeting is like this:

Forgive me.
Forgive me as well.
May God forgive us both.

I can’t remember how to spell that in Wolof, but at least you understand the main meeting. You go around all day saying this to everyone, and then you’re all good for any past slights. Well, basically. I did go around and visit the neighbors some and have some more relatives quiz me on my Wolof. (I’ll save for another time my rant on how many things here are normal that would be considered SO incredibly rude in the U.S.)
Anyway, I’ve been trying to upload pictures from my trip to Goree Island and my trip to Saint Louis, AND from Korite, and facebook is being quite feisty and refusing to cooperate with me. But hopefully I’ll be able to soon!

Have I mentioned how ridiculously happy I am to be here? Come visit me in Senegal!