skin

I want to elaborate on something I mentioned in my previous entry: about being watched all the time. I guess that sounds pretty creepy, which isn’t exactly the way I meant it to come across. To explain what it feels like, day to day, to be a toubab (meaning foreigner, but mostly white person) in Dakar touches on issues of race and class and "development". These are just some rough thoughts, sure to offend somebody, somewhere.

The closest thing I can think of to compare being a toubab in Senegal to is to being a B-list celebrity. When you walk across the street, or through the market, or into a store, all eyes turn towards you. People are curious to see what you’ll do, and what you’re wearing, and what you’ll say. You can tell that they have assumptions about you. One of the fun parts for me is speaking enough French or Wolof to prove people’s assumptions wrong. Or knowing enough of the cultural lingo/jokes/food references to prove that I’ve been in Senegal longer than the average tourist. However, having the same conversation over and over again is tiring. Much as celebrities must get tired of the fans asking the same five questions, it becomes painful to explain where you’re from, why you know Wolof, and that you don’t actually have any idea how to help people get green cards. (The ‘are you married’ question is just standard, Senegalese women seem to get that one, too. I’m talking about the ‘oh, you’re an american’ talking points.)

The major difference, of course, is that I haven’t done anything worthwhile. To have people stop you and ask you for your autograph because you’ve acted in a movie that touched them, or played a song that they like is one thing. To have people come up and ask you for your story simply based on the color of your skin is a weird kind of superficiality. To call it racism would be an insult to everyone who has experienced actual, negative racism. Still, it’s the closest I’ve come to feeling constantly uncomfortable in my own skin. Knowing that people are watching you and are assuming that you are smart, interesting, rich, connected and enviable creates a constant sense of guilt. I found myself in conversations trying to explain that us Americans were just like everybody else. That I wasn’t rich, and that I’d had to work hard to get to come to Senegal, where I was working, not on vacation. It felt like my duty to educate people about their misconceptions about the States. (Just like I felt the need to respond to the occasionally vaguely anti-Semitic comments I heard.)

However, after playing down my opportunities and singing my we-are-the-world, we’re-just-like-you song, I realized that that wasn’t entirely truthful, either. Of course I was richer than most of the people I was talking to. Maybe not in my own personal bank account, but I couldn’t pretend that my college education and study abroad opportunities were luck or simply hard work on my part. Their conceptions about Americans were partially right, and to deny the incredible advantage I’d had simply by being born a white American would also be ridiculous.

There’s no moral to this story – mostly I just sort of stumbled around the explanation of the division of wealth between the global North and South, mentioned that the riches in the US also appeared to lead to an increase in unhappiness, apologized for not knowing how to get them a green card, and confirmed that I was not, in fact, looking for a Senegalese boyfriend at the moment.