In Which I Go Into the Desert and Am Mobbed By Cute Children

Sorry about the big gap between entries. Synthesizing new experiences can be an overwhelming task. So overwhelming you procrastinate on it.... Anyway, lets start with a scene from Guede-Chantier.

"We're so dusty," Sydney complains, running her hand over her gritty face.

I stop and grin. "Yes, we're dusty from the desert, and we're coming home to an oasis. How magical is THAT?" I exclaimed enthusiastically. Everyone stops to look at me, and chuckles. "You're so cute, Charlotte," says Sydney. I frown in puzzlement and made a "What? What? Why am I cute?" sort of grimace, and we continue on our way.

Guede. How can I descibe it? So many goats, so many children. Trees bearing exotic fruits like mangos and dates and lemons. A large green river for the fishermen. Birds with irridescent blue wings. I could hear miles of silence in every direction, and feel myself relax after the exhausting hustle and bustle and traffic of the city. You can walk along the canal through the rice fields in the early morning and feel so peaceful and happy.

I think Ousmane (the program director) really enjoyed showing us his home. When he's in the city, he seems so stiff and British (he was educated in England you know) but when we got into the country it was as if he relaxed and became a little boy again. When we were walking through the community garden, he cried joyfully, "Oh! A lemon!" and climbed up and got it for us. It was the biggest lemon I had ever seen: swollen like a grapefruit. The whole class shared it, ripping pieces away from its sweet flesh of juiciness. I don't know why, but even without sugar it was so delicious.

Also in the garden, we saw an anthill as tall as a man. It was like the ant Tower of Babel. If only human beings could be that organized in their collective efforts. There was also a gigantic bird's nest that Ousmane explained was made by a very tiny bird. Flamboyantly, he gestured at the nest, saying, "There is proof that meglomania also exists in the world of animals. What does such a tiny bird need with such a huge nest?" I really enjoy the way Ousmane expresses himself.

We visited the marketplace and saw a wide variety of local foods are grown. But you know, people sell the larger part of it to pay their debts, and then they don't have enough left to feed themselves. Debt can so easily become a vicious cycle. But despite the poverty, the children seemed happier to me than American children. Americans spend so much time with electronic entertainment devices, they become vacant-eyed, slacked-jawed, and fretful. These children were scampering around, boisterous and full of life. I saw a boy who had attached wheels and a stick to a plastic bottle, and turned it into a little truck he could push around. He made a toy out of garbage, that was every bit as entertaining as something you could buy at some fancy American toy store.

They rarely see white people in Guede, so great excitement (especially on the part of the children) accompanied our arrival. Whenever a child saw one of us, they would scream, "TOUBAB!!!! TOUBAB!!!!" Which means "White person! White person!" After awhile I started to feel like I was some sort of zoo animal or museum exhibit on display. I felt like saying, "Hello! There's more to me than the freakish color of my skin, you know. I'm a person; I have a name." We learned how to say good morning, good afternoon, and good evening in Pulaar (the local dialect) but whenever I used the words I knew, people were so astonished to hear me speaking Pulaar that they were struck speechless. White people are supposed to speak French!!! The children would run up and practice the French phrases they learned at school on me. They would want to shake my hand, or hold my hand, or kiss it. (Kissing hands here is old-fashioned, but not improper.)

We have this slightly abrasive guy in our class called Pete. When we discuss things like polygamy, he'll say stuff like, "Four wives! I have to say, Senegal is the PERFECT society to be a man. It's AWESOME over here," seeing if he can tweak any of our feminist noses by blatantly rejoicing in patriarchy. But anyway, when we were touring the community garden, a little child crept over to Pete and began holding his hand. Pete's confusion was a pleasure to see. He looked at the child; he looked around; then he held the child out to us, saying, "Ummmm, anyone want a homey?" But the child had fastened barracuda-like onto Pete and was not to be parted from him. The longer we stayed in the garden, the more children homed in on us. Soon I had three children clinging to one hand (each of them took a finger or two.) Pete looked at the little flock that had gathered around him and said, "Help! I'm being over-homied!" In fact it is very cumbersome to move with several little ones holding onto you. I was simultaneously inconvenienced and charmed.

But that was just on the first day. Later, I grew to be less enchanted with the children's enchantment with me. It made me uncomfortable that simply having a weird color of skin should merit all this fuss. The children didn't flock around our Senegalese classmates, who were also visitors-- why should they flock around me? I'm just a person like any other person. I decided my Mission was to convince my little niece in my host family that my name was not Toubab, my name was Charlotte. Whenever she wanted my attention, she would shout TOUBAB! I got someone to teach me how to say, "I am not a toubab," in dialect. I repeated the sentence several times. I also learned the words for yes and no. Whenever she said "Toubab", I would cry "No no no!" in her language, and make faces. Then, whenever she said my name, I would clap my hands happily and cry, "Yes yes yes!!!"

It backfired a bit because she thought the horrible expressions I made when I heard the word toubab, were hilarious. So she started saying "Toubab," just so she could watch me make funny faces. But she also enjoyed making me clap my hands and dance around. So she said the word, "Charlotte," a lot too, and I think I eventually got the idea across that I preferred to be called Charlotte. What a cute little girl! She also taught me to sing a little song in Pulaar. I have no idea what it means, but she taught me how to sing it.

My host mama was gone for a wedding at a neighborhood village during the bulk of my visit, but when I first arrived here we had a really nice conversation. She didn't speak much English, but she said in English, "I want you to know, you are welcome here." It made me feel so GOOD to hear my own language. Nothing can give you a subconscious resonance of "home" like hearing your mother tongue. Mama explained she loved learning languages and was always trying to collect new words. "Each word you get is like a treasure," she explained. Later, she flipped through my English copy of "une si longue lettre", and sighed, "I love English! Next time you come, you must bring me a French-English dictionary."

We got to learn a little bit of the history of Guede from Ousmane. The village was actually started by the French, who grabbed and kidnapped people from a bunch of different villages and collected them in the Guede area to do forced labor. We looked at a big cage the French used to hold recalcitrant people. Ironically, one side-effect of the village being formed this way is that there are no "first families." In other African villages, the longer your family has lived in the village, the higher your status is. At the top of the hierarchy are the people descended from the villlage founders. But that kind of hierarchy doesn't really make sense at Guede, because there were no "founders," everyone was brought over at the same time.

Different subcultures exist within the village. For instance, all the fisherman live in one gigantic house that holds about a hundred people. But the herders and the farmers don't take communal housing to that extreme. According to local superstitions, it is dangerous to offend a fisherman because they might cast a spell to make a fishbone stick in your throat and choke you. They are also said to talk to crocodiles and have this sort of mystical connection with the river.

We made brief visits by a Naming Ceremony and a wedding. I was kind of oblivious to what was going on, just sort of drifting after the group, so when we entered the wedding I was just like, "Here is a big group of people standing around..... I wonder what is going on?" Then this LOUDLY dressed African lady makes this whoop-of-joy sound, and starts CLANGING these big silver dishes together like cymbals, to make a sort of beat. And then, oh my god, she comes dancing right at me! I flinch back at first, but then I smile a little and start swaying back and forth to the beat. A circle forms around the dancing lady. When she finishes dancing, she backs out of the circle, and Aisha pushes my American friend Benson into the center of it. One by one the visitors from Dakar are forced to dance. When I twirl around in my spinny skirt, everyone claps and cheers and I narrowly manage to avoid melting into a little puddle of embarrassment. I'll even confess that it was kind of fun.

The next day, somebody is talking about "the wedding we went to," and I'm like, "What wedding?" They stare at me and say, "Remember? The wedding we went to? Where we danced?" Oooooohhh, I exclaim. So THAT'S what that was! (Way to go, Charlotte.)

The Naming Ceremony was superficially similar to the wedding; big silver bowls of food, singing and dancing, people sitting on mats chatting with one another and having a good time. The mother of the baby was dressed in her best clothes and had pink glitter on her eyelids. The ceremony makes total sense to me. One week after a baby is born, everyone in the neighborhood assembles to give it gifts and learn its name. If we have funeral rituals to celebrate death, why don't we have corresponding rituals to celebrate life? Why don't we have "naming ceremonies" in America? Maybe we just keep things on a more informal basis, but in my opinion, the miracle of birth deserves a certain majesty and formality. Come, friends, let us gather together to herald the coming of a new life!

The baby at my host family's house is just starting to learn to crawl. Mostly, he lies down on the mat and wiggles like a fish trying to swim. You can see the look of frustration on his face, when his limbs aren't carrying him forward. He loves his grandma so much, his face lights up all over when she approaches. She told me, "Look, my grandson can dance!" Then she picked him up by his armpits so he was roughly in a standing position. He laughed and kicked his legs against the floor while she bounced him back and forth, and it looked like he was dancing a little jig. I'm so glad I'm not a baby. How infuriating to have to wait for others to help you do the things you want to do.

In Pulaar (the village language) the word for child is "chookolell." Such a cute word. We visited one children's school that was in pretty bad shape; gaps in the wooden walls and thatching, not enough benches for all the children to sit. And the only reason they have enough chalk and pencils and things because Ousmane knows how to wheedle money for school supplies out of charity organizations. Sometimes the parents have difficulty paying the school fees. For instance, Ousmane told us the story of a kid who was extremely intelligent, who was getting some of the best grades in the school. When his parents didn't have enough money for fees, he was kicked out, and now he works as a tailor. "Maybe we lost a genius!" said Ousmane.

Since we were making the trip with our Senegalese classmates, each American had a Senegalese roommate. I was staying with Soda, which was wonderful because she is usually quiet and this gave me a chance to know her. She's one of the nicest people I've ever met. If I said I liked a food, she would try to give me her portion of it. If we came home hot and dusty, she would make me take my shower first while she waited. Frankly, it was slightly off-putting. I tried to argue, "No, no, you take the shower first," but she was firm and unswayable. I received an explanation for it later when I demanded the meaning of the word "baifal" (spelling uncertain.)

"Baifal" is a religious concept; it means someone who's trying to be without desires. I got curious about the word when they started joking that my classmate Cody was a baifal. It's because Cody wears his hair in dreadlocks; frequently baifals will wear their hair in dreadlocks to show they are above such worldly desires as trying to create pretty hairstyles. Baifals follow the teachings of Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba. Going to Senegal and asking, "Who is Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba?" is like going to America and asking, "Who's this Obama guy I keep hearing about?" Ahmadou is their national hero. There are stories about him facing lions and not getting eaten by them, and so on. (A lion is the national animal of Senegal, so you can see how symbolic it is if one of them refuses to chow down on you.) He was a marabout (religious leader) who lived during colonialism and made the French nervous because he was accumulating so much power. They worried he would persuade people to revolt against colonial rule.

However he was a very pragmatic as well as a very spiritual guy, and so he told his followers that the "greater battle" to improve their souls was more important than the "worldly battle" against the French. But even though he's preaching nonviolence against the French, he's still making the French very nervous. So they decide to exile him to Gabon. In those days, when you exiled someone, they would usually die. But not only does Cheikh Ahmadou not die, he manages to make it back to Senegal. For the Senegalese, that's like coming back from the dead.

He believed industriousness was good for the soul, and to combat the problem of joblessness, got his followers to start a recycling business. They would take the stuff city people threw out, refurbish it, and sell it. They made quite the pretty penny this way, and to this day, many of the stores you see in Dakar are owned by descendants of followers of Cheikh Ahmadou. So you free yourself from worldly desires, and then you become wealthy.......? I enjoy the irony. Also, his refusal to incite armed struggle reminds me of Jesus refusing to raise an army against the Romans.

Soda explained that she tried to be a baifal, but didn't always succeed. When she made me take the first shower and offered me her cheese, those were her attempts to be baifal-ish. If someone in the United States explained they were trying to live a more self-sacrificing life, everyone would laugh at them (or snicker behind their hands) and call them a flake. But Soda's efforts here win her respect. Why is the pursuit of goodness considered so foolish and naive in the U.S. of A? It seems to me making a conscious effort to improve your character is a pretty reasonable thing to do.

I still haven't told you about my service learning project, which is the most important part of this whole story! But its time to go to sleep, and since I've kind of been starving you guys of news, I'm going to post what I have and tell you the rest in the next entry. :-) I shouldn't forget to tell you about the 105-year-old lady we met either.