Having been assigned two years in Senegal‘s most enchanting, culturally-rich city, I am overjoyed and grateful to be once again blessed with a picturesque port on the Atlantic, loaded with rustic character, powered by fishing and tourism and vibrant with a music-scene that provides ample opportunity to pass those hours of the night, as I so often have, hot footing it front and center. But at this point in time, I am most thankful towards my new family, the Dñ ing‘s. They are as delightful as they’re sophisticated. My mother is not only a progressive, single mother of four, who drives, but a doctor who owns a string of pharmacies all throughout the city. My grandmother, “Mom” is nearly 80 years old and as a retired school-teacher, she is well received in every neighborhood for her years of service and for her powerful but kindhearted personality. My only brother, “Pop Sumba” is a high-flying striker who pops his stylish head when he catches a break between his mind-bending studies at the University of Dakar. My sister “Binta” is just recently a teen-ager and is ever too soon acting like one. My two youngest sisters are adorable twins, who from head-to-toe never fail to match and, through the boundless joy they receive from one and other, never fail to make me smile. There is also a rotating cast of maids, tutors and drivers appearing at different times, all of whom, contribute to the rampant hospitality of the house. Drinking up their sweet company, growing ever more in love with them, is and probably will be the lasting highlight of this experience.
So where am I? Let me tell you. After two months of training, following by our ceremonious swearing-in, October 16th, we were set free in our sites of service. I arrived to St. Louis October 20th, and I have been here since now, without much hankering to leave. Perhaps I’m like the French in that respect, who first settled here in 1659 and have, by and large, remained ever since. Although no longer the capital of the colonial empire, nor is it occupied by the French, the island of Saint Louis, which straddles the Senegalese River on one side, and the vast Atlantic Ocean on the other, is rather content to embrace it’s transformation--from the cradle of a European empire, to now, just another big city in a developing nation. The colonial architecture: shady patios, wrought iron balconies and large magazine doors of the earlier merchants and aristocracy, today, sit side-by-side the more contemporary styles of Sub-Saharan Africa; tin-roofs, dry-wall and yards and yards of clothes line. Also, in many restaurants and cafés on the island, the eerie vestiges of the slave auction remain palpable; so as to use the rest-room, one often has to walk the same raised stage where African men once stood, shackled in chains, awaiting the highest bidder.
For those who need a little more tug to visit Africa than me, all within a day’s stroll, my new home cares for a range of high-end hotels, concert-halls, swimming pools, as well as sprawling beach, billowing surf and one of Africa’s largest and chirpiest bird sanctuaries!
After the New Year, towards the beginning of February, all fifty or so of us who arrived together will return to the city of Thè is for another two week training. Now having a much more concrete understanding of the community we are serving, and a stronger command on the local language (Wolof in my case) and French, we will receive technical tools and techniques that are geared specifically to our site. Once I return, will my work really begin and the projects I‘ve been preparing for, little by little, since I arrived in Saint Louis, will have the support and funding to go their proper course “Insha’Allah!”
For a while there, I was in fact a member of Peace Corps. Below are a few passages you could have found on my blog, richardaross@blogspot.com with a couple brand new edits and additions, but to spare you the holiday traffic online, I have included some of them here. As I have said, for the first two months, as a part of Peace Corps’ Senegal’s training philosophy, we were immediately heaved into the culture and the language, sink or swim. These memoirs remember the first few weeks, when I found myself in a West African village, with three other volunteers, with no real ability to communicate, or any real idea what the heck I was doing. They are written in the style that I prefer writing, so I apologize in advance if they’re, lets say, wordy and over-the-top.
A Village Welcome
In the late afternoon, while the shade was spreading, certain villagers of Kër Sadero sat so as to see the passing of cars. Mané Thaiw was one among the bevy thronged alongside the sulfurous pavement of Senegal.
When the decrepit sports utility vehicle came to a halt, I was in the company of three sluggish Americans. We had all spent the first three days in Senegal, damping our jet-lag and rifling in the mental rubble of culture-shock. We gathered our bags, along with our water-filters, mosquito-nets and medical-kits we recently received (I might add, with the same feeling of empowerment as an infantryman, when he receives his rifle and ammunition) and we lumbered to the shady-tree where the Africans sat. When we reached, motherly women were overjoyed, clapping their hands and warbling like fertile geese. Mané Thaiw, soon to be my mother, even appeared unsteady when she stood, longing for balance between vertiginous shudders of delight. She was plump and had the hips of a prolific child bearer. Her arms and legs were chunky with softness, like a feather-pillow following a good-fluff. Loosely and uncaringly, she wore draping fabric, colorful, and constantly aloft with the winds of her energy.
I stood watch while her effusive flutters waned. When she regained her footing, she took only a few breaths before she smothered the little air between us with several stentorian sonorities--each one more singsong than the next. Rather obvious I was in a dither, having heard everything, and having comprehended nothing, she assisted me along by flinging a hand out pendulously while repeating two more freakish words, this time though, a bit slower.
“Bay Zal “
“Bay Zal”
I took her hoary hand and joined her in the sing-along, “Bay Zal. Bay Zal” By now, I realized the emphasis attached to these two words, and as we went on repeating, I rummaged through my incipient supply of Wolof vocabulary, but proving hopeless, I returned my attention to the confusing center. Famished for clarification, I nearly requested that any French speakers step forth, but before I broke the sacred seal of ‘Wolof emersion,’ someone else did, and did so, much more egregiously.
It was Emily from the back! “I think it’s your new name,” she spoke in forbidden English. As if we were two whales in the deep-blue, we had brilliantly transmitted sound-waves that were to be read by no sensory registers but our own.
It all made sense. I was now “Bay Zal!” In this fleeting lucidity, I endeavored to release from her crushing grip, but she contested, so as to even reaffirm her thrall. Suddenly, she heaved up another blizzard of verbiage, but this time, Peace Corps Senegal and I stood ready. “Nga Def!”
Peace Corps thankfully coached all of its trainees, rather painstakingly, on the one stroke of Senegal culture not to be smudged, the greeting. Not just in Senegal, but in all of West Africa, the greeting is an occasion when two people cross paths, and the excessiveness of mirth they both share brings them to sheer deadlock. From there, it is gentle interrogation, independent of one’s true curiosity, and without fail, evokes only but the same sequence of question and response. So when I was to return Mané ’s question, “Nga Def,” I did so with conviction, for all across the land, there is only one accepted answer.
“Mangiy fi!“ I ejaculated (note: literary usage).
In the prolonged clutch, I would go one to reassure her I had spent my day in peace and that my family in the United States, as far as I knew, was enjoying good health. By the time all matters had been addressed and my good hand was unclasped, I noticed all of my belongings were in the hospitable hands of someone else. Mané Thaiw, as well, carried my red pillow and had made several footsteps since our stand-still. Stalling at the entrance, she waved and wagged with that grand eagerness that charges all of us right before we introduce the ones we love.
Bending the corner, stepping conspicuously into the quarters of the compound, there appeared a broad selection of men, women and children. All of whom sat low to the earth. Everyone looked extremely preoccupied with idleness and bliss.
My arrival, however, breached the solace. I was immediately the rage. In a furious succession, I saw and met and greeted an indefinite amount of jubilant people. Head-nodding, hand-shaking, hips-swaying and tongue-twisting, I stepped in the ring with all of them. One after the next, I two-stepped with, topping off with the paterfamilias in purple pants. Seeing as the merry-go-round was still in spin wherever I went, I grew more appreciative of my recent adoption. It seemed, the whole cackling caboodle: the bare-footed, the bare-breasted and the bare-assed were all wishing the white-man a very special welcome.
I was then showed to my tin-thatched room, which was built, unwittingly, around the basic thermal technologies of a sauna. When the door closed behind, I remained calm despite sharpening nips of anxiety. A brigade of creepy-crawlies scurried out to greet their new roommate, as well as the dozen or so errant mosquitoes, for whom, my fleshy romp was just too mouthwatering to handle. Needing backup, the malaria-carrying nightshift was called in chop chop.
Playing hard to get, I anxiously rigged the four-masted mosquito net and slithered in discreetly, as to not invite any into bed with me. With a white skuzzy net drooping onto my knee caps, like sunken snow-drifts, I laid there entombed, with no where to go. The bugs, so it seemed, had me trapped! It was not very late, I wasn’t tired nor had I unpacked, but hearing all the buzz, I knew they were machinating. My headlamp gave light to the vermin that hovered noisily above, and as they bounced their bloodthirsty eyes off the sticky mesh, I did, in fact, decide to remain still.
And so, rather than reheating another hullabaloo outside, I made my first real impression in the West African village on my sponge mattress.
Life on the Farm
I would wake up the next morning, as I would many more, to the cacophony of boisterous livestock. As a child, having been aboard my share of hayrides and having passed through a petting zoo or two, I recognized straightaway the chorus-line of baas, barks, neighs, grunts and oinks. It was at first a lot to negotiate; a sandy village covered in horse-shit, but step-by-step, I would soon make tracks of my own.
Following the first cries of the rooster, 430am precisely, I rather groggily came to accept life on the farm. Often abandoning my scorching NESQUIK® and loaf of bread, I spent my breakfasts ushering wayward chickens out from inside my room and herding ugly, crooked-legged goats, who beeped unceasingly from my front gate. I even once stood in between the growing antipathies of a ratty cow and a burly horse, as to see that the quarrel was settled before all of us carried on. But nothing was more distressing as when a moribund cat, crossing my path, whispered its last meow and before my very eyes, keeled over, earthward. She was later pitch forked by my brother and taken by wheel barrel to the compost.
Seldom was there any real escape from the rambunctiousness in merry Ker-Sadero and for those moments, I and my American coeval, Erin, eked out a wisp of privacy, we were promptly waylaid. After lunch, we often sat ruminating Russian literature, not realizing that for the busybodies outside, we had slid the curtain on something else a whole lot more salacious.
On afternoon in particular, when we had recklessly overstepped our propinquity, we were investigated by the whole harem, one concubine after the next. They teetered the doorway, occasionally entering, roaming awkwardly from corner to corner. Proceeding with that theatrical insouciance and chit-chat, a detective without a warrant so purposefully does, they searched, hungrily, for the scandal. But as I had said before, behind the hanging drape of privacy, we had little to show but a sophistic critique of Tolstoy.
One wife, a bit more fit and fertile, spent the daylight freighting watermelons in her arms and, on her back, harnessing her newborn Mohammed. Mohammed was not alone, for many Senegalese babies are introduced to life as baby kangaroos are--on the trot, sunken snug into the pouch of their mother. As she entwined her newborn in loops of her taut fabric, she spoke happily. So very happily, I was soon entwined by the fine stitch of her spirit. She desired euphoria and in the opportunity to teach a foreigner her language, she demanded that he knew the euphoric words too.
How was the day in the city? Nex-na!
How is the rice? Nex-na!
It was all Nex-na! And the more you repeated it for her, Nex-na Nex-na, the more her mouth watered like the pink pulp of her watermelons.
Lunch Time
For most of my stay, however, lunch was only an agreeable activity for the infidel; indeed, for the others, the month of September was the month of the fast (Ramadan) and every Muslim in the village would pass time, as they would otherwise, slow and low, but without food in their stomachs, their sloth was now a topic of discussion. As the state of sloth heighten as the days numbered, the women, having to still cook for their infidel of a guest, were less verve and more slapdash and the plates, subsequently, were less zing, and more slop.
But towards the late afternoon, when the sun grew as lazy as all those who, the whole day long, hid from it, the mood of a country changed. Minutes before sunset, Senegalese would rise from the puddles of lassitude that they had lain, and all at once, in some weird act of urgency, they would gather around a bucket of hot sugary milk. There, they would chew bread with new health and a contagious joyfulness, and I, having usually just returned from my early evening jog would let the cool sweat dry in the warmth of their friendly company.
On those afternoons following the fast, the lunch hour returned to as the day’s paramount happening. The forceful commissariat, manned by childbearing wives and prepubescent girls, took their posts in the kitchen early. For the next few hours, pots and pans jangled to the beat of gossipy hoo-ha. Bespattering their arms and hands in the scaly flesh of fish, they prepared one bowl of Ceebu jën after the next.
Ceebu jën, pronounced “Chebbew Jin” is Wolof for rice and fish, and is the national dish of Senegal. For a Senegalese person, perhaps the dish whets the same passion as cheese may for the Frenchman or sushi for the Japanese--but never have I seen a person of any nationality approach his gastronomy with such voraciousness as the Senegalese do. Such craving, a fairer comparison may only lie with the grizzly-bear and his ravenous appetite for head, scale, and tail.
Cooking Ceebu jën is an art form, requiring a fine balance between proportion, between boil and simmer and between season and spice. It’s prepared in a tin bowl deep enough to bathe a young toddler and shiny enough for a teenage girl to do her make up--of which functions I’ve seen both. But it is in the bowl’s final shake when the true Senegalese shines, when all her ingredients, in a few sudden thrusts, bleed their juices into the greater medley, and the true flavor of this vivid, rich culture, sizzles. Until that is, small and big hands crawl up the rim and together plunge--with finger tips soon to meet--in the burning inner-core of mush ; )
That’s enough! Go sledding! Merry Christmas! And a Happy New Year! Love,Richard aka Alec aka Bay Zal Again for more photos and recap, take a trip to richardaross@blogspot.com and feel free to Skype...221 77-33-0-4829.
