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!

It's pronounced San Loo-eey

I started writing this the day it happened, but didn’t finish it until today (of course). But here’s one of the days I spent in Saint-Louis:

Today has been one of the most amazing days of my entire life. I don't even know how to explain except to start at the beginning.

I woke up this morning after our second night here in Saint-Louis. Saint-Louis is about four hours north of Dakar, and it was the capital of Senegal before the capital was moved to Dakar. It was also the capital of francophone colonial west africa, so it has a rich cultural significance and historical pride. It's a UNESCO historical site, or however you call it. It's much smaller than Dakar, and is much less overwhelming and frustrating. The weather is also better, because Saint-Louis is an island. There are bridges on either side, one connecting to a smaller island/peninsula/thing (okay, so i'm a little unclear on the geography...) and another bridge on the other side that connects to the mainland, where the city continues somewhat.
Our hotel is on the main island, which is quite small and easily walkable. The people in the streets are curious and friendly, and although the kids follow us and call us 'toubabs' (white people) and the street vendors pssst at us (the way to get someone's attention here) and tell us to buy things, it's simply not as intense as Dakar is, and has a much more laid-back vibe.

So back to this morning. It's been amazing sleeping in air conditioning and beds with no mosquito nets and such, but I did go bed lat last night, so I was pretty tired when I woke up for breakfast. Some of the other students have been complaining that there is no substance to the breakfast and that they're sick of eating only bread for breakfast. But anyone who knows me will understand that I am in HEAVEN eating croissant and mini pain au chocolates and baguette with butter or jam. That and a small cup of coffee, lots of milk and sugar, and I was actually prepared to face the day.

Here in Saint-Louis we are working on projects; presentations on different historical sites. I picked L'Eglise du Sud, the catholic church here, which happens to be the oldest catholic church in West Africa. I'm doing my project alone, although some people are doing them in groups. Our afternoon was free to work on the presentations, but we did have a lecture on the litterature of Saint-Louis in the morning. Normally it wouldn't have been part of the best day ever, but we had a HORRIBLE lecture the day before about the history of the city. It was very boring and VERY repetitive and was three hours long when it was supposed to be an hour and a half, so today's lecture was refreshingly interesting and to the point.

After class, I set off to try and find the curate/priest of the church. I had tried to locate him yesterday, but he wasn't in the office. Luckily today he not only was in his office but welcomed with with typical Senegalese teranga (hospitality) and let me ask him questions about the church and the role it plays in the community. It was nice talking to him, and I found myself extremely happy to be in the company of someone who was the same faith as me. That's not something I'd thought would be a problem, but after a month of people asking me over and over every day why I'm not fasting, it was sincerely nice to be able to talk with someone about the social pressures that the minority of Christians here (5% ish) have to deal with in a Muslim country. At one point he opened a cabinet and brought me an old baptism and marriage registry. It was from the mid-1800s, I don't know if I've ever held something so old and interesting and been able to leaf through it like it was just any random book. It was pretty amazing to look at the elegant tiny handwriting documenting every single baptism in the Church with a paragraph each and the signatures of the parents and witnesses afterwards.

Of course he kindly opened up the church for me after the interview, and showed me around and answered my questions about the paintings, old (broken) organ, beautiful original stained glass windows, and the renovation that is so obviously necessary for the church to stay intact. (The government promised money for a renovation years ago, and hired people to come and look at the church and see how much it would cost, but so far, of course, they haven't seen a cent.) I had forgotten how much I love old churches, and how that was one of my favorite things to do while traveling. I haven't had a chance to visit a mosque yet, so I have nothing to compare it to, but the church was simple and open and felt heavy with history.

We were all due back at the hotel by 2:30, to take a little field trip in the bus. I finished up at the church when my camera's battery ran out, and then headed back to the hotel to re-group a little, grab some lunch, and just made it back in time to change into my bathing suit and tie-dye dress. Then we all headed out for La Langue de Barbarie. (Mom and Dad and Ellen, you may remember that name from the Lonely Planet guidebook for Senegal that was laying around our house before I left. It's a national park specifically known for being a bird sanctuary, although I don't think this is the prime season for it.)

We took the bus there, which was exciting as usual. (Without scaring my mom, let me just say that driving in Senegal is an... experience.) We drove for awhile, then we got out and took a pirogue (wooden boat, sort of like a large canoe, I'll put pictures up of them). La Langue de Barbarie is where the Senegal River meets the Ocean, so we took the pirogue down the river for awhile. It was gorgeous and fun, and of course the breeze was wonderful. Eventually we got out and crossed the 'langue' to get to the other side, where we swam in the ocean on one of the most beautiful stretches of beach I've ever seen. Completely deserted except for us.

Eventually we went back to the other side, got back in the pirogue, rode back to the bus and drove back to Saint Louis to the hotel. And it was during this return, during the pirogue ride back, to be specific, that we saw a very faint and very small rainbow, over the river. (Those of you who know me very well will understand why this was one of the highlights of my trip so far.) I tried to take pictures, but it’s hard when the rainbow’s so faint, you know? Anyway, I was very happy.

Going back to the hotel was one of the nicest parts of being in Saint Louis. Opening the door to a blast of (comparatively) icy air and being able to take a long cold shower and cool down before going out again is a luxury I’ll never underestimate again. For dinner we walked the entire length of the island looking for a restaurant that the SIT people had pointed out to us. We went all the say there just to discover that it was closed, but luckily for us we discovered another place to eat very close by. It was clearly the tourist restaurant of choice, since it was full of toubabs (French, American, English, etc). I had pasta, linguine carbonara and it was amazing! I miss pasta a LOT. Saint Louis is much cooler than Dakar, with the breezes coming from the ocean, and by nightfall it’s actually pleasant to walk around outside. We walked back towards the hotel, and met up with some other students downtown. They had met some Senegalese guys and said they were going to the beach to go play djembe (kind of drum). I decided to tag along with them, even though, I have to admit, the whole thing sounded pretty sketchy. We were a large group, so it was safe enough, but I was beginning to suspect that these guys were leading us on a wild goose chase as we walked around the city and crossed the bridge onto the smaller island next door. It was dark and people were shouting at us from all sides and little kids were grabbing us and asking for money, and all in all I was beginning to suspect that the night was not going to end up being any fun.

Just when I thought it was maybe time to turn around and disentangle ourselves from our ‘guides’, we came to the beach. We passed some kids playing late night soccer, our friends put their djembes down in the sand and began to play, and all of a sudden the night when from sketchy to sublime. I think we stayed on the beach for two hours or so, but I have no idea really. We danced, we sang, lots of kids and young women about our age heard the music and came and joined us. They all stayed together and occasionally one of them would start dancing and we’d all cheer her on, or an American girl and a Senegalese girl would dance together for awhile. I mean, I’m making this sound like a Lifetime movie of cross-cultural understanding, but that’s really what it was like. I went down the water and put my feet in. I stared at the stars. I sang Bob Marley songs. I got to try out the djembe, and finally figured out how to make some of the beats they’d been doing for us. I probably should stop using the word amazing so much, but that’s exactly what it was.

When we finally decided to call it a night, our Senegalese friends kindly walked us all the way back to the hotel. I got to talk some American and Senegalese politics, which is always my favorite way to end a night, and then I got to go back and go to sleep in an air-conditioned room. Sure, the whole thing sounds a little cliché, I guess, but it was such a perfect example of everything I love about traveling and being here in Sénégal. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we all went skinny dipping, too. :p

A bientot!

It's almost the end of the rainy season, so now would probably be a good opportunity to talk about the weather here. As I may have already mentioned, it's quite warm here. Hot, even. Horrible, dripping with sweat even right after you step out of the shower heat. The rainy season simply means that the heat comes with an enveloping humidity that makes it feel like you're wearing a fur coat. I've always hated the cold more than I've hated the heat, and after complaining for the past 20 years about my house being too cold, or my mom making me take off my sweater in the summer, I'm trying not to complain too much about the heat here. Can't be too much of a hypocrite.

One of the first nights we were here, during Orientation Week, we were at this restaurant down the street from our hotel for dinner. (We ate dinner there basically every night, it was paid for by the program. Sometimes it was great, sometimes it was so-so, but the vegetarians had a very hard time. It's basically impossible to be a vegetarian in Senegal if you don't at least eat fish.) Anyway, one night while we were eating our ceebu jen or some such, there was a sudden rainstorm. As if there's any other kind here! We haven't really had rain now for the past week, but when we first got here it was fairly predictable. It would be quite sunny all day and then pour now and then at night. Just a sudden downpour, completely drenching. I've never seen rain so intense last for so long! I tried to take some pictures at the restaurant while we were waiting for our food, in the hope of conveying the ridiculous amount of water that was pouring down into the restaurant. (We were basically covered by the mats overhead, but it came down the walls and leaked through in some places.)

There were ten days in a row that it rained at some point during the day or night, and apparently that hasn't happened in Dakar for a long time now. There was serious flooding in 'les banlieues' (suburbs, sort of) of Dakar, it's been all over the news here. And there was lots of sort of minor flooding in Dakar. Just lots of huge puddles filling in the already huge potholes. The streets aren't exactly up to New Jersey standards. We saw lots of drivers stuck in some serious water while driving around one day.

So, to apologize again for not updating more, I have to say that it's the fault of the weather! And hence why I've devoted an entire post to it. La chaleur me rend parraseuse. (The heat makes me lazy.) It's hard to do anything productive, when it involves doing anything other than sitting in front of a fan trying to not think about how much you're sweating. But it seems like I'm very behind, because there is so much here that I want to write about!

Let's consider this my test post, to see if it's possible to post movies that I take with my camera. The one I'm trying to post is of that same night in the restaurant, with the rain pouring down and all of us sitting around the table. It's not very long and it is taking FOREVER to load. But if it works than I can share with you all the videos of the religious meetings they have at my house and of the soccer game I went to last night! So let's hope it works. I'm inspired by my sister's recent video adventures. Ellen's been sending me videos using her new laptop, and it's been really nice to hear from her and my parents. Anyway, it appears to have worked but the video is very dark. :( Oh, well, there will be better ones later!!

Much love from sunny, sunny, sunny Senegal,
Robin

Yaasa Poulet

Tried to update here with this entry last night, but the power went out at the school, which means that the wi-fi goes out as well. So here it is now!

One of the things I was most worried about in coming to Senegal was honestly the food situation. Dakar is a located on a peninsula, and Senegal has a long coast to begin with, so I knew that fish would be a large part of the diet. The national dish, in fact, is called Ceebu jen, and is basically fish and rice. Okay, it's pronounced Cheh-boo-jen, I just copied the spelling from wikipedia. :p
But the fish here is very good, and tastes a lot like chicken to tell the truth. At my house we've had a variety of foods. Maafe is made with a peanut sauce and is a little more spicy, but really excellent. And my favorite dish is Yaasa Poulet. (Another variation of which is Yaasa Poisson.) The wikipedia definition of Yaasa Poulet is "chicken or fish simmered in onion with a garlic, mustard, and lemon sauce". But since I haven't (yet) learned how to make them for now all I know is that it's really excellent.

Eating a la Senegalaise involves eating with your hands. Since almost every dish is either chicken/fish/beef and rice the best way to do this is to roll a handfull of the dish into little balls and then try and get it from the communal dish into your mouth without spilling too much on the mat that's been laid down for that purpose. On the left you can see us trying to do just that! My host family doesn't normally eat like this, we have spoons. But we do eat from a communal bowl. If you imagine the bowl like a pizza pie, then every person normally eats from the slice in front of them. If there are big pieces of meat than the Mom or the head of the family will distribute it evenly into everyone's portion of the bowl.

On the right are Evie and Scram, two students from the program during orientation week, when we learned to eat with our hands. But like I said I haven't done it much since then. Last night there was a lot of people over at my house for dinner, so I think there wasn't enough silverware. My host brother and a few others did just naturally end up using their hands.

Anyway, more tomorrow on my host family. And a very happy birthday to my lovely sixteen year old sister!