The Elders of the Village
One of my favorite things, so far, about being in the village, was the chance to talk with village elders. They've lived in Palmarin their whole lives and give a unique perspective of Senegalese culture that can't otherwise be gained being in the village today. My host grandmother, Khady Ndowe Seck Sarr, was so kind to chat with me, using Honorine, one of the Senegalese students as an interpreter, about her life. I started by telling her that I had heard of African wisdom and the wisdom of elders and that I would love to hear what she had to say. My first question was how life was different under colonialism. She said simply, we used to grow our own rice and now we have to buy it. It was better to grow our own. She said that before the French came, they didn't wear shoes, but now even if the ground's hot and someone doesn't have their shoes on, they will put leaves under their feet to protect them. She also said that they didn't have horses before.
MORE...
She talked about how the village she was born in, another village by the name of Palmarin, was now under water, reclaimed by the sea. She talked about trying to travel to the Gambia with her father after World War II. She and her father got all the way to Gambia, but had to turn around because of colonial security forces not letting people into the country.
She talked about the Casamance, in the south of the country. She spent part of her life there and had two daughters in the region. One later died and one now lives in Dakar.
Honorine, my interpreter, is a part of the Jolla ethnic group, which is predominant in the Casamance. Khady talked about how similar the Cerer and Jolla cultures on, citing the custom that when one his hurt, he puts some of the blood from his wound on his forehead.
When I asked her about her beauty marks, the traditional scarring on her cheeks and lips, she said that in her childhood, girls made their beauty marks around 12 or 13, usually when their friends got them, although Cerer women didn't marry until 30. However, she continued, the girls no longer wanted beauty marks like these because they wanted to look like "toubabs" (white people).
I asked her what she thought about culture deteriorating and she said that it was a very bad thing. She said that you can add new ideas and cultures to your own, but you have to preserve your culture, otherwise, people go crazy.
I also asked Khady what she thought of western NGOs coming into her village and trying to help. She said that the most helpful thing to come to Palmarin had been microcredit. She said that microcredit helped them with a lot, but not with all of them. She talked a lot about how hard life is in Palmarin. The roads are in bad shape, which makes it hard for the women to go to the market. She also showed me the gloves the women use to harvest salt in salt pits. They're men's gloves, much to large for women's hands, so it's hard to work with them, but it's hard to work without them, because the salt and hard work hurts the women's hands. Someone bought woman-sized gloves, but it was a long time ago.
She told me that she plays the calabash (a large gourd, used as a drum) for village dances.
When we finished talking, she told me I was her daughter, and that all the people who came to stay with her were her children.
Posted by: Stirling Grodner on Oct 31, 07 | 6:19 pm
[0]
comments (942 views)
