Archives: March 2007
Mon Mar 26, 2007
A Great Weekend
After this weekend I think I’ve gotten over Stage 2 of culture shock according to Sam’s travel book. (Stage 1 is euphoria, Stage 2 is characterized by bitterness and being a hypochondriac, Stage 3 is acceptance)
It started with a nice evening of cards on Friday night at Sisco and Lulu’s house with them, Anne, Samba, and me.
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Fri Mar 23, 2007
A boring little update
AU@43qvbswzzzzzzzbxz3eswdf555555555555gggggggggg
ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggds4g444444444
4444444xcccccccccccccccccDDS* Vvvvvvvvvvvvveddddddd
ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd4eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee33333333333333
333sa!EEEEEEEEE
That intro was masterfully typed by my kitten, who’s now named ‘Bideo,’ which is the Wolof word for ‘star’. He’s getting big fast, and is becoming a crucial piece to the Ndoy family. Let me paint you a picture of this afternoon. Its lunch time, anywhere between 1 and 3, and Ndaiye Samb (my mom), Mari (my sister), Mustafa (my brother), Bideo and I are all sitting outside out house enjoying the down time. The alley outside our house is a mixture of broken concrete and sand. I sit on our brick porch with the bright warm sun on me, knitting a hat for my host dad. Marie and Ndaiye are plopped in a pile of construction sand that’s been slowly diminishing over the past few weeks. Tafa is jumping rope and we all take turns, even my mom. Mari can jump rope like it’s her job, and Tafa just tries to do tricks. All sorts of people pass, and everyone gets handshakes and a “Naka wa Ker ga?” (How’s your family?) We build a sand house for the cat, called Chez Bideo. (As a side note the Wolof word for cat is ‘muus’, pronounced like ‘moose.’) A horse cart rumbles past and Bideo who was busy chasing Tafa’s jump rope gets all sorts of wide-eyed and bushy tailed before bolting into the house at lighting speed. Then Fatou, our maid, comes out with bags of lait caille, a delicious yoghurt-y type snack, to share. When I say bags, I mean sandwich bags filled and knotted off. All sorts of things (popsicles, water, yoghurt, bissap, tamarind, and buy- the fruit of baobab) are served like this. You just bite off a corner and suck out the yummy-ness. Down the street are the Talibe children, sitting on the ground in a circle, eating whatever they’ve scored for lunch. Sometimes they come over and play soccer with my brothers and me. The whole scene was just absolutely pleasant, and gives one an idea of the pace of things here.
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Mon Mar 19, 2007
Loose ends
I realize I end a lot of these blogs saying “I’ll tell you more about this later” and never tell. Well let me take some time to tie up loose ends.
I don’t remember too much about the day I chased the President, but I’ll share whatever memories I can dust off. It was pre-election day, so there was a lot of pro-somebody sentiment in the air. The Wade sentiment was definitely the strongest too, as one can see by his landslide in the polls. Anyway, I was hanging out with Max, who is a Senegalese friend mentioned often in the blog.
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Sun Mar 18, 2007
There is peace, and there are no worries
Beautiful things happen again. I realized this today when the smell of Cafe Touba came to me. I was searching for something to put more nutrients in my body than rice and fish alone can provide, and a very welcome smell came. Cafe Touba is coffee, but there is another ingredient that makes it unexplainably unlike any other coffee. The smell takes me back a week to my visit with Racine and Amy to the city Touba for the Mourid holiday, the Grand Magal, and back farther to my first encounter with the drink a few weeks ago.
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Sun Mar 11, 2007
The Village!
It’s been one very long dynamic week. As usual I write to you in a super fatigued state, blankly trying to recollect all the important and interesting events. We left for Mboumbaye last Friday. Hard to think that it’s been only a week. The 6 hour car ride ended up being a lot of fun, and I knew before even arriving that we were going to have a great time. Instead of giving you the play by play I think I’ll just throw you some highlights. I don’t know if I can even remember being as hot as I’ve been every day this week, and find it hard to imagine what summer is like here. Spending the intensely hot afternoons swimming in the brackish Senegal River was so nice. The river is so beautiful, it’s more clear, calm and warm than any river I’ve ever swam in back home. The bottom is sand, and if you swim out far enough you’ll hit a shallow sandbar island in the middle. When Ann and I first found it we pretended to be Ahmadou Bamba (the founder of Mouride brotherhood who is known for doing all sorts of amazing things like praying on water.) The river is line with huge palm trees, leaning over exposing their stringy roots. Chances are you’ll also have 15 village kids keeping you company (aka splashing). One fun part was everyone taking turns giving Jacob lessons; and we’ve set a goal to have him swimming by the end of the last village stay.
I also really enjoyed the meals. They were served in this big cement room covered with bright plastic thatch style rugs. There were always flies, and when it was dark and cool candles were lit in the windows and the huge plates of food which were placed in the floor had to be illuminated by our LED bulbs.(No electricity in village) When the toogkat yi (cooks) learned that most of the Americans were vegetarian they graciously prepared special meals for us. Positively. the. best. food. I have eaten since my plane landed. (Almost better than Golden Grahams) Beets, eggs, tomatoes, peppers, bread, sweet onion sauce, lettuce, fries and whatever else they felt like giving us. Everyone was very touched that they prepared an extra plate for us. We even go out of eating ceb u jen at lunch time. (Not that ceb u jen is bad, just repetitive- the only meal the Senegalese vary from day to day is dinner or, in Wolof, ‘reer’.)
After dinner, the villagers and visitors all stayed in the room telling stories, cracking jokes or playing games until everyone was tired. It was such a beautiful sight to see men, women, children, black, white, traditional, contemporary, Wolof, French, and English all sharing in one moment. One man, Ndikke (who’ll be one of my Ecogaurd students) was a particularly good story teller, acting out everything, yelling, running out of the room, building up suspense and whatever other thought grabbing tactics he knew. The room never went ten minutes without a huge burst of laughter.
I feel like after this week I’ve really bonded with the others. We spent hot afternoons and late night playing cards with the Senegalese guys. Everyone was always taking cheap shots at each other in multiple languages. (Par example, quand nous avons joue UNO, et il faut que quelle qu’un prete (?) beaucoup des cartes, les autres jouers ont il dit “je vous en pris, de rien, voulez-vous plus?” etc) Basically all sorts of teasing in good fun.
I also enjoyed washing my laundry by hand, sleeping in mosquito nets, taking candle lit bucket showers, dancing with the kids, digging for crabs, playing soccer on the beach and sharing everything.
The only bad thing about the trip was that one of our troops had fallen ill pour la plupart. Thanks to plenty of village moms, and concerned friends Our little Miche pulled through and is now back among us.
Oh no, I’m late for dinner. More on Magal and whatnot later!
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Thu Mar 01, 2007
Book Thief
Tomorrow we go to Mboumbaye, a village. Yoff, where we are now, is called a village. It's next to Dakar, and resembles the city more than Mboumbaye, with easy electrical access, wide use of cell phones, and abundance of internet cafes. The word "village" does not make a very important distinction. When I was deciding to go to Senegal, I tried make sure that my attitude was appropriate and that my goals were not "dispense my superior American knowledge and save unfortunate people." I read the program material about spending weeks in different villages, and felt embarrassing benevolent and condescending thoughts. "Village" is a strange word that instantly summons many ideas. People in my hometown discuss how important it is for the town to be called "Village of Granville," for the quietness and quaintness that come from not being a city. The word summons nostalgia, like how the sheep and fields in Greek pastoral poems are supposed to be an urban longing for simplicity. Beyond this word, "African village" summons more things: large families, dirt roads, dinnertime scolding about "children starving in Africa," clips from "Save the Children" commercials, and sometimes feelings of cultural superiority.
One reading that we have says, "To reach indigenous villagers, we may feel that we are making a personal, internal pilgrimage to revisit ourselves tens, hundreds and sometimes thousands of years back in time, hoping to retrieve and protect lost knowledge." I agree with the goal of protecting cultural knowledge. I do not agree that thinking of a group as being in another time is useful. Thinking this implies that “African villages” are inferior to “Western cities” and that villages should grow into industrialized cities. For a more respectful way, think that the people in Mboumbaye are living at the same time as those in North Dakota farms, Paris suburbs, and Canadian communes. People in all these communities have been making decisions for a very long time, successfully enough to exist still.
Here are the reasons I stole two books from the Yoff library. (The logic is not awesome.) The building has been elusive. It is open Wednesday and Sunday, except Election Day. I planned my visit different unsuccessful days over the last few weeks, but I found it at last yesterday. I arrived, but the hours are always subject to change, so I waited an hour and a half for the actual opening. Inside, a man who didn’t like my French unsuccessfully tried to tell me in English how to get a library card. I found two useful books by local poets, and I read awhile. Then I realized that I would not be able to return on the library’s open days for the next two weeks, and I felt an overwhelming inability both for advancing on my project and for communicating with the librarian. Then it happened: I walked out of the library with Mante des auroras and Cri d’un assoiffe de soleil. I promise to give them back.
My sister and I played harmonica. We rocked out.
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NEWS!
I have a cat! Correction, I have a KITTEN!! Max and I found him in the alley by my house two nights ago. He came right out to us, and was so friendly and sweet and affectionate I had no choice but to sneak him in. I felt pretty bad about doing it, especially after Max reminded me cats aren’t very popular round these parts. Even worse was that my mom specifically told me not to bring any cats in the house. Apparently she was on to my plans from the get go. But I just couldn’t resist his charm. I fed him some Vache qui Rire (very popular cheese in these parts) then we snuggled up for the night. Well he started crying around 3am so I had to put him outside. He didn’t approve of that decision at all, and cried even louder all night long.
I suppose you don’t really need the entire story, so to cut it short, Max talked to Ndeye Sambe (my mom) and she said it was perfectly fine for me to keep him! She even offered to take care of him after I leave!!!! 7th heaven.
As a side note, I’m sort of hoping I won’t have to take her up on that offer… But I’m still waiting for a call from the US Embassy about the State’s animal import policy. (Cue the angry email from Dad)
Other exciting news is the upcoming trip to the village of Mboumbaye. I cannot wait. Tomorrow they’re going to give us the rundown on what to pack, what to be prepared for, and whatever else we need to know. As of now, we don’t know if we’ll have electricity, clean water, beds, meatless food or anything. The mystery is a bit unsettling, because we won’t have much time to make preparations, but its fun too. I’ll be sure to take my camera, so in a week or so you’ll know exactly what the village is like.
From the village we’re planning to go to St. Louis for a few days. St. Louis is a jazz-y town very close to Mboumbaye. We’re all very excited about checking out the sights and being able to take our first warm showers in a month.
Wow, as I’m typing this, it’s the 28th, exactly one month since my plane took off. Amazing. In some respects it seems like it hasn’t been that long. Especially when I wake up from a dream that’s taking place at home. I look around my room completely disoriented, because there’s nothing on the wall, and the windows are in the wrong spots. Sometimes it takes a very strange minute of sorting things out, to remember.
Other times it feels like we’ve been here forever. Especially today when I was copying all the lecture notes from my email on to my computer and realized this is only the third week of lectures. Or that the election was only three days ago.
I feel like now that the lectures are nearly finished, and the projects well underway, that time will just start flying by. With village stays, exams, in the field research, and presentations I’m sure May will be here before any of us realize it.
P.S. My kitten is still lacking a name, and I’m very open to suggestions.
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A Great Weekend
After this weekend I think I’ve gotten over Stage 2 of culture shock according to Sam’s travel book. (Stage 1 is euphoria, Stage 2 is characterized by bitterness and being a hypochondriac, Stage 3 is acceptance)
It started with a nice evening of cards on Friday night at Sisco and Lulu’s house with them, Anne, Samba, and me.
More...
[0] comments (1197 views) | [0] Trackbacks [0] Pingbacks
A boring little update
AU@43qvbswzzzzzzzbxz3eswdf555555555555gggggggggg
ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggds4g444444444
4444444xcccccccccccccccccDDS* Vvvvvvvvvvvvveddddddd
ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd4eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee33333333333333
333sa!EEEEEEEEE
That intro was masterfully typed by my kitten, who’s now named ‘Bideo,’ which is the Wolof word for ‘star’. He’s getting big fast, and is becoming a crucial piece to the Ndoy family. Let me paint you a picture of this afternoon. Its lunch time, anywhere between 1 and 3, and Ndaiye Samb (my mom), Mari (my sister), Mustafa (my brother), Bideo and I are all sitting outside out house enjoying the down time. The alley outside our house is a mixture of broken concrete and sand. I sit on our brick porch with the bright warm sun on me, knitting a hat for my host dad. Marie and Ndaiye are plopped in a pile of construction sand that’s been slowly diminishing over the past few weeks. Tafa is jumping rope and we all take turns, even my mom. Mari can jump rope like it’s her job, and Tafa just tries to do tricks. All sorts of people pass, and everyone gets handshakes and a “Naka wa Ker ga?” (How’s your family?) We build a sand house for the cat, called Chez Bideo. (As a side note the Wolof word for cat is ‘muus’, pronounced like ‘moose.’) A horse cart rumbles past and Bideo who was busy chasing Tafa’s jump rope gets all sorts of wide-eyed and bushy tailed before bolting into the house at lighting speed. Then Fatou, our maid, comes out with bags of lait caille, a delicious yoghurt-y type snack, to share. When I say bags, I mean sandwich bags filled and knotted off. All sorts of things (popsicles, water, yoghurt, bissap, tamarind, and buy- the fruit of baobab) are served like this. You just bite off a corner and suck out the yummy-ness. Down the street are the Talibe children, sitting on the ground in a circle, eating whatever they’ve scored for lunch. Sometimes they come over and play soccer with my brothers and me. The whole scene was just absolutely pleasant, and gives one an idea of the pace of things here.
More...
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Loose ends
I realize I end a lot of these blogs saying “I’ll tell you more about this later” and never tell. Well let me take some time to tie up loose ends.
I don’t remember too much about the day I chased the President, but I’ll share whatever memories I can dust off. It was pre-election day, so there was a lot of pro-somebody sentiment in the air. The Wade sentiment was definitely the strongest too, as one can see by his landslide in the polls. Anyway, I was hanging out with Max, who is a Senegalese friend mentioned often in the blog.
More...
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There is peace, and there are no worries
Beautiful things happen again. I realized this today when the smell of Cafe Touba came to me. I was searching for something to put more nutrients in my body than rice and fish alone can provide, and a very welcome smell came. Cafe Touba is coffee, but there is another ingredient that makes it unexplainably unlike any other coffee. The smell takes me back a week to my visit with Racine and Amy to the city Touba for the Mourid holiday, the Grand Magal, and back farther to my first encounter with the drink a few weeks ago. More...
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The Village!
It’s been one very long dynamic week. As usual I write to you in a super fatigued state, blankly trying to recollect all the important and interesting events. We left for Mboumbaye last Friday. Hard to think that it’s been only a week. The 6 hour car ride ended up being a lot of fun, and I knew before even arriving that we were going to have a great time. Instead of giving you the play by play I think I’ll just throw you some highlights. I don’t know if I can even remember being as hot as I’ve been every day this week, and find it hard to imagine what summer is like here. Spending the intensely hot afternoons swimming in the brackish Senegal River was so nice. The river is so beautiful, it’s more clear, calm and warm than any river I’ve ever swam in back home. The bottom is sand, and if you swim out far enough you’ll hit a shallow sandbar island in the middle. When Ann and I first found it we pretended to be Ahmadou Bamba (the founder of Mouride brotherhood who is known for doing all sorts of amazing things like praying on water.) The river is line with huge palm trees, leaning over exposing their stringy roots. Chances are you’ll also have 15 village kids keeping you company (aka splashing). One fun part was everyone taking turns giving Jacob lessons; and we’ve set a goal to have him swimming by the end of the last village stay.
I also really enjoyed the meals. They were served in this big cement room covered with bright plastic thatch style rugs. There were always flies, and when it was dark and cool candles were lit in the windows and the huge plates of food which were placed in the floor had to be illuminated by our LED bulbs.(No electricity in village) When the toogkat yi (cooks) learned that most of the Americans were vegetarian they graciously prepared special meals for us. Positively. the. best. food. I have eaten since my plane landed. (Almost better than Golden Grahams) Beets, eggs, tomatoes, peppers, bread, sweet onion sauce, lettuce, fries and whatever else they felt like giving us. Everyone was very touched that they prepared an extra plate for us. We even go out of eating ceb u jen at lunch time. (Not that ceb u jen is bad, just repetitive- the only meal the Senegalese vary from day to day is dinner or, in Wolof, ‘reer’.)
After dinner, the villagers and visitors all stayed in the room telling stories, cracking jokes or playing games until everyone was tired. It was such a beautiful sight to see men, women, children, black, white, traditional, contemporary, Wolof, French, and English all sharing in one moment. One man, Ndikke (who’ll be one of my Ecogaurd students) was a particularly good story teller, acting out everything, yelling, running out of the room, building up suspense and whatever other thought grabbing tactics he knew. The room never went ten minutes without a huge burst of laughter.
I feel like after this week I’ve really bonded with the others. We spent hot afternoons and late night playing cards with the Senegalese guys. Everyone was always taking cheap shots at each other in multiple languages. (Par example, quand nous avons joue UNO, et il faut que quelle qu’un prete (?) beaucoup des cartes, les autres jouers ont il dit “je vous en pris, de rien, voulez-vous plus?” etc) Basically all sorts of teasing in good fun.
I also enjoyed washing my laundry by hand, sleeping in mosquito nets, taking candle lit bucket showers, dancing with the kids, digging for crabs, playing soccer on the beach and sharing everything.
The only bad thing about the trip was that one of our troops had fallen ill pour la plupart. Thanks to plenty of village moms, and concerned friends Our little Miche pulled through and is now back among us.
Oh no, I’m late for dinner. More on Magal and whatnot later!
More...
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Book Thief
Tomorrow we go to Mboumbaye, a village. Yoff, where we are now, is called a village. It's next to Dakar, and resembles the city more than Mboumbaye, with easy electrical access, wide use of cell phones, and abundance of internet cafes. The word "village" does not make a very important distinction. When I was deciding to go to Senegal, I tried make sure that my attitude was appropriate and that my goals were not "dispense my superior American knowledge and save unfortunate people." I read the program material about spending weeks in different villages, and felt embarrassing benevolent and condescending thoughts. "Village" is a strange word that instantly summons many ideas. People in my hometown discuss how important it is for the town to be called "Village of Granville," for the quietness and quaintness that come from not being a city. The word summons nostalgia, like how the sheep and fields in Greek pastoral poems are supposed to be an urban longing for simplicity. Beyond this word, "African village" summons more things: large families, dirt roads, dinnertime scolding about "children starving in Africa," clips from "Save the Children" commercials, and sometimes feelings of cultural superiority.
One reading that we have says, "To reach indigenous villagers, we may feel that we are making a personal, internal pilgrimage to revisit ourselves tens, hundreds and sometimes thousands of years back in time, hoping to retrieve and protect lost knowledge." I agree with the goal of protecting cultural knowledge. I do not agree that thinking of a group as being in another time is useful. Thinking this implies that “African villages” are inferior to “Western cities” and that villages should grow into industrialized cities. For a more respectful way, think that the people in Mboumbaye are living at the same time as those in North Dakota farms, Paris suburbs, and Canadian communes. People in all these communities have been making decisions for a very long time, successfully enough to exist still.
Here are the reasons I stole two books from the Yoff library. (The logic is not awesome.) The building has been elusive. It is open Wednesday and Sunday, except Election Day. I planned my visit different unsuccessful days over the last few weeks, but I found it at last yesterday. I arrived, but the hours are always subject to change, so I waited an hour and a half for the actual opening. Inside, a man who didn’t like my French unsuccessfully tried to tell me in English how to get a library card. I found two useful books by local poets, and I read awhile. Then I realized that I would not be able to return on the library’s open days for the next two weeks, and I felt an overwhelming inability both for advancing on my project and for communicating with the librarian. Then it happened: I walked out of the library with Mante des auroras and Cri d’un assoiffe de soleil. I promise to give them back.
My sister and I played harmonica. We rocked out.
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NEWS!
I have a cat! Correction, I have a KITTEN!! Max and I found him in the alley by my house two nights ago. He came right out to us, and was so friendly and sweet and affectionate I had no choice but to sneak him in. I felt pretty bad about doing it, especially after Max reminded me cats aren’t very popular round these parts. Even worse was that my mom specifically told me not to bring any cats in the house. Apparently she was on to my plans from the get go. But I just couldn’t resist his charm. I fed him some Vache qui Rire (very popular cheese in these parts) then we snuggled up for the night. Well he started crying around 3am so I had to put him outside. He didn’t approve of that decision at all, and cried even louder all night long.
I suppose you don’t really need the entire story, so to cut it short, Max talked to Ndeye Sambe (my mom) and she said it was perfectly fine for me to keep him! She even offered to take care of him after I leave!!!! 7th heaven.
As a side note, I’m sort of hoping I won’t have to take her up on that offer… But I’m still waiting for a call from the US Embassy about the State’s animal import policy. (Cue the angry email from Dad)
Other exciting news is the upcoming trip to the village of Mboumbaye. I cannot wait. Tomorrow they’re going to give us the rundown on what to pack, what to be prepared for, and whatever else we need to know. As of now, we don’t know if we’ll have electricity, clean water, beds, meatless food or anything. The mystery is a bit unsettling, because we won’t have much time to make preparations, but its fun too. I’ll be sure to take my camera, so in a week or so you’ll know exactly what the village is like.
From the village we’re planning to go to St. Louis for a few days. St. Louis is a jazz-y town very close to Mboumbaye. We’re all very excited about checking out the sights and being able to take our first warm showers in a month.
Wow, as I’m typing this, it’s the 28th, exactly one month since my plane took off. Amazing. In some respects it seems like it hasn’t been that long. Especially when I wake up from a dream that’s taking place at home. I look around my room completely disoriented, because there’s nothing on the wall, and the windows are in the wrong spots. Sometimes it takes a very strange minute of sorting things out, to remember.
Other times it feels like we’ve been here forever. Especially today when I was copying all the lecture notes from my email on to my computer and realized this is only the third week of lectures. Or that the election was only three days ago.
I feel like now that the lectures are nearly finished, and the projects well underway, that time will just start flying by. With village stays, exams, in the field research, and presentations I’m sure May will be here before any of us realize it.
P.S. My kitten is still lacking a name, and I’m very open to suggestions.
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