First Day's Impressions

After a night of flying, I was told that my new name would be Fatou Samb and collapsed into bed at 7am. I slept until 10:30, when I was awaken by the shouts, shrieks, giggles, and assorted brangling of guess what-- a recess. We are right next to an elementary school of some sort and Senegalese kids can create even more of an unholy racket than American ones.

I love my host family, although they're not exactly what I was expecting. Mostly its "Papa Samb" who has been looking after me, making sure I'm comfortable and know how everything works.Although Mama Aita has cooked some delicious meals for me! They are retired people and have seven adult children, but five of them live and work in Ohio. The two that are married live in the house with us, which seems like one of the nicest houses in the neighbourhood. They have a maid who cooks and helps clean. I can have great French conversations with any one of them, but when they talk among themselves they tend to speak Wolof and I get left out. However, they are all very friendly and intelligent. Papa Samb was a teacher and then a "directeur du jeunesse et du sport," which as far as I can tell is a goverment official responsible for.... youth and sports? I still haven't quite figured
it out, but he showed me little pictures of him wearing a suit and speaking into a mike at international conferences. He set out a nice little breakfast for me and hovered over me making sure I had everything I needed. I find that I like being mothered by a Papa.

Breakfast is pretty much the only meal that works like an American one. The traditional Senegalese style of eating is much more fun. Basically, you put a tablecloth down on the living room floor, put a couple of sheets of newspaper on top of that, and then put a gigantic plate (like a circular cookie sheet) on top of that. Then four or five people will all eat out of that gigantic plate.

If you're being REALLY traditional, you scoop it up with your hands, but we used spoons. Today for lunch it was spicy rice with random tubers scattered here and there and a big pile of fish in the middle. There were four or five different sauces that we could dib or dab over our portions as we liked. One person made it her job to break off little bites of fish and distribute them evenly among all the eaters. If they wanted you to eat more, they would just shove more onto your section of the plate. I like it better than American-style eating. It just gives this nice community feeling to the meal.

School-wise, we didn't get to really do anything today except meet our classmates. Living Routes is just a mite disorganized. A lot of random teachers and admin wandered in and introduced themselves, but I didn't really get BRIEFED like I was expecting to be. No, "Welcome to Senegal," no "this is what dangers to expect," no, "this is what you should start planning for." JUst, "Ummm, let me go print out some schedules for you..." Then I get handed this schedule for the week where all the days are blank except for tommorow. Because tommorow is the only day they've planned so far...

My new friend Jessica says its just the African way. And yes dad, I can just hear you muttering, "that's why Africa never gets anything done!" But clearly, if I expect to know what's going on and have schedules and have everything planned, I've come to the wrong place. Everything is on a very informal basis here. I'm expected to just go with the flow and live in the moment. And since "going with the flow," is something I practically never do, maybe its time I learned it!

Jessica is my classmate who came for the January term. Which means she got here a month ahead of us and knows everything. She loves sharing information, so I received plenty of briefing from her. But you know, its kind of disquieting when the ONLY briefing you get is from a fellow-student and the adults don't say anything more to you than, "Hello." It was Jessica who took us on a tour of Yoff after we finished chatting with our African classmates at the GENSEN headquarters. (GENSEN = Global Ecovillage Network Senegal.) The Senegalese students, by the way, are awesome. I think all of them are majoring in English, and they're all really smart. There are eight of them and six Americans in my class. Rumor has it there was going to be about twelve Americans before the economic downturn hit.

I honestly think Africans have the most beautiful smiles. They seem to smile not only with their whole face, but with their whole being. And they say nice things too. When groups of people meet, they laugh for no particular reason. They just laugh for the sake of laughing, and it makes me feel very happy and relaxed.

We were having a conversation about the pros and cons of learning from books vs. learning from life. Jessica said she learned so much Wolof just demanding the names of random objects as she drove down the street. I said that sounded much better than sitting in a room memorizing a vocabulary list. Jessica said, "erm, you need both," and than Emmanuel, a nice African student, said, "But if you only learn from books, there's no heart to it." "No heart to it," expresses perfectly what I think is wrong with our school system.

Cody and Pete, the other two Americans who arrived today, seemed like nice fellows.
Although, like me, they were walking around in a blurry state of exhaustion, so it was kind of hard to tell. Jessica took us on a brief tour of the neighbourhood, which is called Yoff. One thing I hate, absolutely HATE about Africa, is all the beggars. That sounds harsh, but if you were here you'd understand why. Maybe I'm just too flustered, but when a pack of beggars converges on me, I feel like I'm being hunted by a pack of wolves. They just keep on shouting at you, and you can't get rid of them by being polite. They try and shake your hand and talk to you and if you say, "Sorry, not today," they just keep following you angrily shaking the bowl and shouting in your ear. Some of them are begging on behalf of the marabout, the religious leaders. Jessica disapproves, saying that she doesn't want to give them money if its all going to some marabout.

Arriving in the airport was total hell by the way. They lost my baggages and I sat there waiting forlornly by the conveyor belt for the longest time. Then, while at the peak of exhaustion, I had to describe my problem in French to the airport authorities, who finally told me to come tomorrow and look for my bags, which I sincerely hope are not gone forever. My French gets progressively worse the sleepier I get. But this was merely annoying. What was upsetting was the terrible hordes of young men who converge on you offering you services, "carry your luggage," "call a taxi," etc. etc. Even when you tell them no they DON'T leave you alone, just keep hounding you, these crowds of people all of them clamoring for your attention and telling you what to do. Maybe you will laugh at me for being so
easily intimidated, but I felt a bit like they were going to eat me. The people who were meeting me were really hard to find as well, so I felt pretty forlorn and abandoned temporarily.

I was still feeling tired and upset when I got up in the morning, but getting to see the wonderful sights and sounds of Dakar really cheered me up. Well, Yoff is technically a suburb of Dakar, and much more neighborhoodly than city central. To picture Yoff, just imagine a city that is one giant back alleyway and you'll get the general picture. Of course, the streets are wider than alleys, but they all have sand instead of pavement, and they are full of children playing and families shouting, young men hanging out and people playing soccer and stuff. They feel ALIVE in a way American streets don't. There are little shops, but if feels more like a farmer's market than it does like a mall or a downtown. As well as lots of trucks, there are a fair number of horse-drawn carts, although the horses look pretty sickly and I feel sorry for them. I don't feel sorry for the goats-- I saw a group of them running down the sidewalk towards their dinner with an almost dog-like excitement. The Senegalese students laughed at me when I got all excited over a herd of cattle walking down main street. Everywhere you go there is so much to look at. Do you remember that part of the movie Aladdin where the princess Jasmine visits the market for the first time? That's totally what I felt like, and
that's a bit what it looked like too. Maybe certain people would have turned up their nose at it, but I LOVE it. I love how every building looks like it is the back of a building. I love the wrought iron grillwork and the random arches and the hibiscus flowers and the walls with actually rather decorative pieces of broken glass sticking out of the top to discourage thieves from vaulting over them. I love how smelly it is; all sorts of good smells and bad smells mixed up together, kind of like the way C.S. Lewis describes the smell of Taashban.

But the best part of the day was the ocean. True, the beach was covered with garbage except for the bit they cleaned up for tourists. True, there are these gigantic dead fish aptly named stonefish (they actually LOOK like stone fish statues) that you can't step on because they're full of deadly poison, according to Jessica. But the ocean is surrounded by a triple or quadruple layer of frilly waves. No matter how messy people are, the ocean always seems to me so big and fresh and clear. Seeing sparklingness stretch THAT far out always makes my heart soar. I ran out and danced in the surf while the others watched in amusement, (completely soaking my skirt, which was a bad move, let me tell YOU.) Together
we poked at a dead jellyfish, marveling at its blobular transparent goo. And there were so many birds! So close! No seagulls, strangely enough; instead of those, Africa has hirondelles and sea hawks.

Its also fun to be speaking French instead of English all the time. Wolof is nice to the ear, but it pisses me off that I can't speak it. I'm told that French is the language of work here, and Wolof is the language of play and family. And I only know French. Figures. I wonder if I can persuade my family to speak French instead of Wolof at mealtimes. I mean, right now they could be talking about me and I wouldn't even know! Ha-ha.

But at least my host gift of art supplies appeared to be a success. Since there were no children in the family, I held back the kid stuff and just gave them the high-quality artist stuff. Luckily enough, both of the daughters were into painting, and they knew enough to see the supplies were really nice. I felt satisfied when I saw one of them holding up the paintbrush to her eye and stroking the bristles; I knew then that my gift would be used and appreciated.

As far as my house goes, it is far from the "Wilds of Africa." It has wireless and a Playstation and a TV that seems to be always running but nearly always ignored. Honestly, the vibe I get from it is not so much Africa as "Victorian England," or whatever the equivalent period was in France. Doilies draped over flowery sofas, that sort of thing. I get to sleep in a four-poster bed big enough for five people, covered with yellow velvet in a rose motif. Pete and Cody get to live in a house which fits in much better with my idea of Africa: mosaic-tiled courtyard with potted plants and tiny running children and cool, shadowy rooms with water-stained walls. I want to be jealous of them and then I remind myself that I have wireless and they don't.

The part of my house I like best is the prayer nook / room, which is covered with matting and is covered by a skylight. The sunshine which pours in through it brightens up the entire house. (religious symbolism much?) They made a big deal of reassuring me that they didn't mind me being Christian. (Il y a du tolerance en Senegal!) It seemed simplest just to nod and smile. Then they did their whole standing and bowing, kneeling and bowing thing together in a pre-lunch ceremony. I squashed the American in me which finds something incredibly funny about butts being repeatedly stuck in the air, and tried to take the whole business seriously. Watching them, I began to see the point of praying that way, how the repetitive motions could serve to calm, clear, and even focus the mind. (Heh-heh! Butts!)

I love the way Senegalese women dress, such bright colors and such big jewelery, wrapping brightly colored pieces of cloth around their heads in dozens of different creative ways. It looks a bit like their heads are covered with giant mutant flowers. Some of the men dress in these brightly colored gowns and trousers too, but not all of them.

The children are cute too. You see them everywhere watching wide-eyed or playing these elaborate little games that take a lot of imagination to understand. I think children are given a lot more freedom than in the U.S.A. and this whole kid subculture has developed. The children clearly have their own world, their own politics, their own power struggles. Maybe you think that's a bit of a leap to make after only a day of observation, but I thought I saw it.

Wish me luck finding my luggages. Homesickness is working pretty much the same way it always works with me; when I'm doing nothing in particular, I feel miserable, then when I get busy or find something cool to look at I forget all about it. Mostly what I feel is really overstimulated. Its just so much at once. I feel like its all flying in one ear and out the other.