Anne meets Africa: May 2011

Hey guys. Big things are happening. As of yesterday, I’m done with PST. Tomorrow, we’re swearing in at the American ambassador’s house in Dakar, dressed in our Senegalese finest. From now on, we're PCVs, not PCTs. Woo! On Saturday, many of us ship out to our new regions. On Sunday, the rest of us do, including me. This Wednesday at exactly noon, I will be installed in my site, presumably to much fanfare on the part of the village since I’m their first ever Volunteer (but we’ll see).

I thought I would do a slightly more detailed post on my life in Mbour, my training village, since I had just left for good. Then I had the crazy idea to write in the third person just for fun. So I did. Then I read back through it and thought writing in the third person was kind of stupid. Here it is anyway.

It was a dark and noisy morning.

Well, dark because it was only 4:30 a.m., and noisy because noise is what you get when you live in Senegal. Anne groaned. She had just been dreaming about something nice for a change, couldn’t quite remember what, but it had a distinctly comfortable American feel to it. But no use fighting the inevitable - it was time for the second or third wake-up call of the night. The mosques were yelling about Allah knows what. There were cats fighting outside her window, and a donkey was screaming somewhere in close proximity. Anne fumbled around for the iPod that she had misplaced somewhere in her sheets, ignoring the mosquitoes that buzzed threateningly just outside her mosquito net (hope they don’t find the holes) and searched for loud yet relaxing music. Three more hours, she told herself as she settled back, let’s try to make the most of it.

Every day in Mbour starts pretty much the same. In fact, as she’ll bemoan quite frequently, every day is alarmingly similar. Shortly before 8, after changing into something more appropriate (knees are generally frowned upon in Muslim countries) she tiptoes out of her room and around her host sister, who is mopping the floor. This always makes her feel a bit guilty because A) this sister has been cleaning the house for an hour already, and B) walking through the just-mopped area is unavoidable, and everyone knows how annoying that is to the mopper. Some things transcend cultures.

“Fatumata,” says her sister, looking up. It’s a statement. Oh, Anne is not Anne here, she is Fatumata, and she is still not sure how she feels about that name. She rattles off the basic morning greetings that have been drilled into her since day 1: “I saaxoma. Heera sita. I siinoxota kende? Heera doron.” Sometimes, when she’s really just not in the mood for obscure African languages (you know how it goes) she’ll greet her confused family with a defiantly American “Heyyyyy, good moooorning!” Breakfast consists of enough bread to drown a duck, and enough sugar to send even the most mild-mannered child into a fit. Anne/Fatumata watches as her host mother spreads watery chocolate (Nutella’s ugly cousin) on half a baguette and dumps sugar cubes into her tea/coffee/sweet powdered milk combination, and worries that this no longer seems abnormal.

Anne and Nicky (Nandin), living closest to the training garden, have been elected to water it every morning, which neither of them really minds since it gets them out of the house a little earlier. Plus, pulling water is one of the easiest forms of exercise to be found, and can be done even in a pagne (long wrap skirt). On the way out of the schoolyard, they converse briefly with a middle-aged man, dressed in a suit. Encounters like this are familiar, and the conversing is, familiarly, heavily one-sided. “Hello, you speak-a de English? I love you. Are you married?” Anne and Nicky continue walking. Honestly, no creativity. Marriage propositions are becoming positively tedious these days, even when aimed towards two girls at once.

Language class starts at 9. Anne has learned enough Jaxanke to satisfy Peace Corps’ training requirements, but somehow still leaves each class feeling a bit dumb. Along with her LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator) and three other Trainees/would-be Jaxanke talents, she learns vocab, structure, unnecessarily long greeting sequences, and how to say things like “I don’t eat mystery meat.” Recently, one of the sample phrases in class was “He talks to me every day about beating children.” Some things don’t transcend cultures.

After class, the Trainees part ways, and head back to their respective compounds for lunch. Imagine a streetlight, and the swarms of insects drawn to it at night. In Senegal, foreigners are that streetlight, and the insects are children. Night AND day. This makes walking anywhere a process. One must greet all the adults on the street, and deal with the insects, I mean kids. Common greetings from the children include simply screaming TOUBAB! over and over, “give me a present,” or most often asking your name repeatedly in bad French. Before Anne became jaded, which didn’t really take all that long, she would usually try to explain to the kids that no, she was not TOUBAB!, her name was Fatumata Cissokho and she in fact lived here, and no, she didn’t have presents for them. After, she resorted to mental health survival mode, which means either ignoring them or telling them outright lies for the sake of entertainment (“My name is Michelle Obama/Britney Spears/ Your Worst Nightmare”) Granted, there are cute and polite kids on the streets (these receive smiles and handshakes), but many of the rest run in unsupervised packs, creating chaos wherever they go. As Anne rounds the corner, nearly to the safety of her host family, a boy wearing a pink sequined “Playboy in da House” t-shirt runs up to her and sticks out his hand. She shakes it. He then pokes her in the crotch and scampers towards the rest of his pack, laughing madly. Anne sighs. She wouldn’t hit him, but he doesn’t know that, right? She reaches up and breaks a small branch off the nearest tree, making sure to look like she means it. The pack scatters. Success!

Lunch is the most important meal of the day. Like nearly all Senegalese dishes, rice or millet is the main component, with a sauce or meat or fish and veggies over it. It’s usually very enjoyable, except when it’s intestine or when the fish bones are so small or numerous that half the meal is spent ensuring that none of them wind up in one’s throat, but the trainees joke that even then one can just attribute it to the “conditions of hardship” Peace Corps warns about. What doesn’t kill me (or lead to severe discomfort) makes me stronger, Anne reflects as the lid is lifted off the communal bowl. Sweet! Ceeb u jen, my fave! I love this family. Early on in training, Anne started taking long naps after lunch. Now, if she doesn’t immediately head towards her room, she gets questions like “You will not sleep?” or statements like “You will sleep now.” Fo naato, later, she says today. Instead, hanging out with her family seems like the better option. A mat is laid down in the shade in front of the house, and a couple chairs dragged over. Everyone lounges – mom, sisters, a couple brothers, whoever happens to be visiting at that time. While her host mom begins to prepare a type of porridge for the next morning – sifting flour with her hands in a well-worn calabash, tossing in water a bit at a time as the flour forms into balls – Anne amuses herself by chatting with one of her host brothers, age 21. He tells her that she’s old, and should get married immediately upon her return to the US. Waiting any longer is just inviting disaster. Anne tells him that it’s not uncommon for women in America to get married later than age twenty-five, and slyly suggests that maybe she’ll wait until she’s thirty, or forty. Who knows, maybe even later! He looks scandalized. “No, no, nonono! You can’t do that, it’s not possible! You will get married at twenty-five, no later. Who will marry you if you’re old? How will you have many kids otherwise?” “I only want two kids. Three at most.” His jaw drops and he emits a shrill, disbelieving noise. Cross-cultural education: shock and awe, Anne decides, as her host sisters laugh.

The afternoons in Mbour seem to drag on forever, broken up only by brief forays to the garden with the rest of the Jaxanke/Mandinka trainees to water, work on outside assignments, or simply hang out and exchange stories of strange encounters or awkward conversations. Back at home, Anne’s evening consists of watching horribly yet hilariously scripted Indian soap operas with the family, or, if the power is out, sitting and talking. Or not. Lots of sitting happens here, for hours on end, and Anne appreciates that the speaking is optional. The Senegalese are comfortable with silence (although nobody has informed the Senegalese animals) and it’s enough to just sit outside and enjoy the company of other people. Being a sporadically shy person herself, Anne is ok with this arrangement. Also, her Jaxanke is still at the level of a three-year-old, and the serenity of the evening is easily shattered by an embarrassing mix-up between “kanoo” and “kaano” (love and hot pepper)

Dinner is at 9, and as usual, is much more simple than lunch – tonight it’s rice and a single chunk of dried fish lurking in the middle of the bowl, origins uncertain. Anne claims fullness a bit earlier than usual, and retreats to the couch, where a brother is taking out his ADD on the remote: bad Senegalese music videos, bad soap operas, talk shows in Wolof, and footage of Libya flash across the TV screen. She excuses herself at 10:30 and heads to her room, where she can change into comparatively skimpy pajamas without fear of moral reprehension. Collapsing into bed, she doesn’t know yet that she will in fact wake up four times during the night for various annoying reasons.

But given past experience, she has a pretty good idea.

Anne meets Africa

Monday, May 16, 2011

New address

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Big long post, then off to Tamba