Monday, March 24, 2008

Easter in Senegal

This is a very dated picture of me and a few other Volunteers, at the WAIST party. Don't we clean up good?

It's Easter monday so, of course, we have yet another "jour ferie". Although less than five percent of the country is Catholic, everybody gets the days off. Also, last wednesday was the "Gamou" celebration of the prophet Mohammad's birthday. Almost everyone cleared out of my village to go to Kaolack for the event, which left only a few of us in an unusually quiet Keur Ali Gueye. They all came back wearing fancy clothes, new jewelry, and toys for the kids. Noos yu bare! Meanwhile I have finally got a little tree nursery started in my backyard. Hopefully I will eventually have a hundred baby trees to outplant in the rainy season. I also plan to have sacs and seeds available to the villagers, if they want pepinieres of their own. We'll see how that goes! Mango season is starting, too, which makes me very excited. I love mangoes. There will be a stash of them hidden in my hut. The trees are shady and beautiful, with the heavy fruits hanging off in all stages of development. It's so exciting! Yesterday of course was Easter. It was an awesome time! I went to a friend's town, where four of us congregated to celebrate. Celebrations are of a significantly different caliber here. Ours involved going wallowing in the shallow salty river nearby, cooling off in the heat of the afternoon. Dinner was another highlight of the day. We bought a ton of vegetables at the market: lettuce, carrots, eggplants, tomatoes, onions, and green peppers. These we sauteed lightly, then simmered in spaghetti sauce with a little salt and pepper. The spaghetti we bought had bugs living in it, but, we shook out most of them and boiled it anyway. Extra protein, right? Boiling sanitizes everything. For the side, we mixed a green salad in a bathing bucket. Ah, Peace Corps gourmet! The dinner was truly delicious. We wound our fingers into the piping hot spaghetti, tipping our heads back to dangle it into our mouths. With fresh village bread we wiped up the chunky vegetable sauce, and we took handfuls of salad, dipped it into an impromptu oil-and-vinegar dressing (vegetable oil; cheap red vinegar) and it was amazing. Laughing and chatting all night, eating real, good food - these are the essentials to a fabulous evening. Happy Easter to all!

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Random thoughts

I will take this opportunity to write out some of the many, seemingly-insignificant details of my life that, when taken as a whole, turn out to be surprisingly interesting. Here we go!

Names
The Senegalese people are big into names. They are very important. Everyone is named after somebody else, and some people play important roles in the lives of their namesakes. In terms of family names, there are running jokes between certain ones. I'm still trying to figure them all out, but for example, some people when they hear my last name of "Gueye" will say, "Oooh! Gueyes like to eat!" It's pretty funny for them. That being said, there are very few origional names, and it's difficult to figure out who is who because they have the same names (first and last) as everybody else, only perhaps in a different order. Anyway, here is an incomplete list of common first names in my area. If you live in my village, chances are you or one of your many siblings has one of these:

For Women:
Fatou
Aissatou
Penda
Xhadie
Amy
Awa* (Interesting fact I just recently learned: if twin girls are born (which happens rather often, surprisingly enough) they are always named Awa and Adama. That might explain the unusual prevalence of those names.)

For Men:
Ibrahima
Moussa
El Hadji (This is the title given to men who go on the Hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca. I don't believe it is technically allowed to be passed on to others, but here it is anyway, resulting in many, many men and young boys (namesakes) named El Hadji who never have (many never will) made the Hajj)
Papa/Pape (I find this name hilarious, especially when a little kid has it; for obvious reasons)
Abdullaye

Fun words in Wolof
In my opinion Wolof is not the prettiest language in the world, but it has plenty of fun words to play with. Here are a few of my favorites:

"tigadegie" - meaning peanut butter - pronounced tig-uh-deg-ee
"jafe-jafe" - meaning problem - pronounced jaf-eh-jaf-eh

I guess that's only two words. But they're funny ones! And now my least favorite word in Wolof:
"xalis" - pronounced ha-leese - meaning money. I hear it way too often.

The shirt off my back
One of the annoyances I deal with on a daily basis is being asked for things. Not just money, though there is plenty of that, especially in town, where there are a seemingly inexhaustible supply of big-eyed, ragged "talibe" - street boys - begging for food or coins. Also not including the frequent requests for me to take so-and-so (their baby, their husband, their son, themselves) to the United States. Despite frequent earnest repetitions of the fact that I cannot get visas for anybody, they'll have to go to the embassy in Dakar; or, when that gets old, joking that my checked baggage isn't big enough to fit them inside, this is a constant and predictable question. I am resigned to responding to it regularly for the next two years. No, what I am talking about is an aspect of the village culture that is very difficult to get used to, and that is that people directly ask for what they want. Example:
"Give me your bracelets!"
"You're going to the boutique? Buy me a lollipop!"
"Your skirt is pretty. Won't you give it to me?"
Mostly, these are said jokingly, and can be brushed off more or less easily, depending on the intensity of the request. It's best to use humor, if possible, and then it just becomes one big joke and everybody laughs. But, after being asked for the sixth time to give somebody my shirt, I get sick of it and the creativity of my denials descreases signifigantly. Being a naturally nonconfrontational person, I am every day putting on an act by meeting such events head-on. Just ignoring it or trying to change the subject will not work; it must be battled through to the end. This can be stressful and exhausting. But, it's part of life for me now. And no, I will not give you my hat.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Working for Peanuts

If you had asked me this time last year what I would be doing in March 2008, I would not give you the one-word answer I have now: peanuts. Yes, peanuts make up the majority of my days' activities. This is what the women of my village are doing now, every day, morning to night. Shelling peanuts, sorting peanuts, threshing peanuts, storing peanut seeds, cooking with peanuts...I'm sure it goes on! The pads of both thumbs and forefingers are rough, callused from hours of cracking the shells against a hard surface. Often the women will dampen the peanuts to make them easier to shell, but the sheer volume of them - bathtubs-full of peanuts! - overrides such efforts. Peanuts also offer social opportunities, which I enjoy. In the afternoons, women will bring their peanuts (side note: peanut shelling/threshing/sorting, etc, appears to be exclusively women's work, like so much else) into the shade of a big old neem tree, spread out their plastic mats, and talk together as they work. Often, we'll all pitch in a little money to buy tea and sugar, or packets of powdered milk, which they sweeten with mint candies and drink in the little tea-shotglasses. The Senegalese tea ceremony is very interesting. It involves slowly boiling the leaves in hot water, adding measured sugar, and frothing the liquid back and forth between a pair of cups several times, to make a foam on top; then, it is quickly consumed with a series of slurps. Same goes for the minty milk. Now, a story of the life cycle of a peanut, as I understand it: first, they are shelled (a sharp snack against a rock or wooden stool will do the trick; experts get a two-handed rhythm going on, which I am trying to emulate) and then the nuts and shells are put back in the bucket to be threshed. This means they are shaken so the lighter shells move to the top, where they are scraped off; this is repeated until only the nuts remain. The shells are later used for cooking. Next, we spread the peanuts out on trays and pick through them. The pretty ones are destined to be seeds for next year. Those that are cracked, shriveled, or misshapen will be made into "tigadegie" - peanut butter, the base of several sauces. These are also the ones that will be weighed and traded for fish, or other foods, at the boutique or traveling horse-cart salesman. So, that's what we do!