Love, and other strong emotions

Senegal and I are finally starting to get used to each other. There have been some rough, low times, when I feel like it’s just too hard to deal with everything, and don’t really know what to do with myself. The week before last, the students of a school that shares our campus were on strike, so the entire campus shut down and we only had 1 day of class all week, and not even much access to computers or Internet to do any work. If that were to happen at home, I would have loved it, but I found out the hard way that too much free time when you’re in a new place isn’t really all that much fun. I was actually very happy when classes started again last week.

But I’ve found that I’m starting to really love it here in Senegal, and, for the most part, Senegal is loving me back. Sometimes a little too much, actually. I got my first official marriage proposal last week, which I think is a pretty momentous occasion in a person’s life. (“You have to marry me. You have to.” What came next was, “What’s your name?”). But since then I feel like they’ve been happening all the time, and this past Saturday pretty much topped them all. My friend Emily and I went downtown to the Sandaga Market, which is always a tiring experience, with a million people who try to get you to come to their shop to buy something, or who try to get your phone number. I would say those are the two main interactions me and the other girls in the program have with random people we meet, no matter where we are or what we’re doing. However, I’ve started getting a lot more used to it, and I’m learning to handle those interactions with humor. This time, though, was over the top, even for an experienced 6-week resident of Dakar such as myself. This time, I sort of got married. Accidentally. There were quite a few guys who tried to start a conversation by grabbing my arm, or yelling, “Hey! Toubab!” and even one who just came straight up to me with a glazed (stoned?) look on his face and the words, “I love you.” But those were pretty typical. The number of times they happened was just a little higher than usual. Towards the end of the afternoon, I helped Emily waxaale (Wolof for “bargain”) for a scarf from a guy named Babacoul (I should have known. Any name that close to “Babacar” means trouble). After we bought the scarf and went over to look at some sandals, he decided to accompany us to help us find a pair, despite our insistence that we didn’t really need him. But Babacoul was not going to give up. He was on a mission, and it wasn’t to find us sandals. Sometimes speaking through Emily, (“tell your friend…”) he proceeded to shower me with complements and declare his love for me, and then demanded when he was going to see me again. To shake him off, I told him I couldn’t give him my number but promised I’d be back to see him, but that wasn’t enough; he wasn’t going to let me off that easily. He was wearing a wooden beaded necklace, which he demanded that Emily unfasten from his neck so he could give it to me. We didn’t know what to do. I tried to tell him no, I didn’t want the necklace, but after a while I realized that just going along with it would end it a lot sooner. That’s usually how it goes here—saying no isn’t very effective. So I told Emily, I think you’re just going to have to do it. She unscrewed the necklace, and Babacoul took it and fastened it around my neck. Of course, there was a little crowd of guys gathering to watch the scene that this was creating. One of them called out, “C’est un mariage?—it’s a wedding?” and Babacoul said “Oui.” Yes. Then, when I thought it was all over and I could just walk away, Babacoul shocked me again. He put his hand on my stomach and announced, “We will have another Obama!”

As soon as that happened, I was out of there. I pulled Emily around the corner so I could stop for a second to recover from my ridiculous experience. Wedding. Whatever it was.

Um, yep. That’s what happened. No exaggeration. I am now “married” to a man named Babacoul who sells stuff in downtown Dakar. I have the necklace to prove it.

Oh, Senegal. Sometimes I really don’t know what to do with you.

Last weekend, the entire program went to spend a couple of days at a resort in a town called Toubab Diallo, a couple of hours outside Dakar, for no educational purpose. I don’t know why we went there, but it was terrific; a nice break from the stress of Dakar and living with our host families; sometimes, I think we just need that. A lot of our time was spent relaxing on the beach. Since it was an extremely touristy place (with the word “toubab” in its name, how could it not be?), there were the usual pushy trinket sellers and guys who would just plop themselves down on the beach to chat, but as I said, I’ve been learning to tolerate it, and make something of the conversations. One of my favorite moments was an hour spent eating crepes in a little restaurant right on the beach, with the sun starting to set and the waves crashing, and a little group playing the drums in the background. Pretty much perfect. I also accomplished a short run on the beach one morning and my first plunge into this side of the (still cold) Atlantic. Amazing.

I’ve started to feel like I'm falling in love with this country. I feel it even when I'm doing every-day things that are just starting to feel normal. Taking the car rapide to school, for example, and watching the street scenes as we pass by. A guy in dirty clothes lying back in a chair by a bunch of rusted trucks. A 10-year old girl carrying her baby brother on her back with a strip of cloth the way the mothers carry their babies. A bunch of men welding something on the side of the road, sparks flying. People everywhere just sitting or lying on the side of the street, hanging out because they have nothing else to do, and because it’s perfectly acceptable and normal in this culture to just sit and do nothing. The talibes (street beggar boys) holding out their little tin buckets. Two kids struggling with the weight of a gas container that they’re carrying between them. A woman walking down the street in a long wrap-skirt with a heavy bucket balanced on her head.

And on the car rapide: a guy in his 20s who puts the 10-year old boy he sat down next to on his lap when it gets too crowded. The fact that personal space does not exist. The baby sitting on a lap next to me who keeps staring up at me with big round eyes and trying to touch my hand, probably because he’s never been this close to a white person before. (Children have very funny reactions when they see toubabs. The little ones are usually dumbstruck; the slightly older ones think the sight of us is hilarious.) And the apprentice, the boy who hangs on the back and collects the fare, rapping out a rhythm on the metal door with a coin to let the driver know he needs to stop. Every apprentice in every car rapide I’ve been in raps out the same beat. My 3-year old host brother likes to march around the house clapping that exact rhythm, and it wasn’t until last week or so that it dawned on me where I’d heard it before.

Earlier this week, a few of us got permission to skip half of French to go visit the Malian embassy (more on that later). We took a taxi there, but decided to walk back. It was a glorious day, and I was feeling so great that me and one of the random guys selling phone cards on the street did a little high five/hand slap as I passed him. I don’t really know why—I guess we were both just feeling it. That’s the kind of thing that happens in Senegal. I think he tried to go for a fist-pound follow-up, but I didn’t because I saw that the woman who was walking between us just then might have gotten knocked out in the process.

Since I am spending a little bit of time in school while I’m here, I guess I’ll briefly mention that. I’ve been taking 5 classes, all taught in French—a general French class, Introductory Wolof, Senegalese Culture/Society, and Crisis Management/International Law in Africa, as well as a seminar for an internship. My internship had not started until this past week, so I had a lot of extra free time on my hands; but now that it has, I’m a little busier. Another student and I are interning at the “Bureau d’orientation Sociale,” an organization that works to help refugees in Senegal get the resources they need to make it. I’ve only been 3 times, but it has already been an incredible experience. All three times, I got to sit in or tag along while refugees were interviewed and evaluated to see what, if anything, could be done for them. Over a week, I’ve met people from Mauritania, Cote d’Ivoire, the Gambia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia and others. I’ve seen their faces, I’ve heard their stories. Some of them have been in Senegal for years; others arrived much more recently. One guy had come to Dakar only 3 weeks ago and was still looking for a place to stay and a way to make some money. Sometimes I would read on a person’s form that his birth year was 1986 or 1988, and I would look at them again and realize, yeah, he is pretty young-looking. It was always a shock to find out that someone was actually my age. It made their situation all the more real to me—if I had been born into his family instead of mine, I could have been sitting in his chair on the other side of the desk.

On Thursday when I went to the internship, I spent the morning tagging along with a law student from Gabon, another intern with the BOS, on “visites domiciles,” follow-up visits that they make to the refugees’ homes to verify the information they received in their interviews. The driver drove us to different parts of Dakar to visit three different people. Hearing their stories and seeing their living situations was extremely intense and emotionally taxing. They all had health problems that required care that they weren’t getting, and little or no income. One man had a family of 5 to support, another woman was a maid who could no longer work for health reasons; when we asked her about her family, she started to cry—she had one brother left, but hadn’t heard from him. Another woman was living, if I understood her French correctly, with a friend of her half-brother’s wife’s uncle. That is true African “communauté et solidarité.” But she can’t depend on their hospitality forever; one of the things that hit me were her simple words, “Je suis très fatiguée--I am very tired.”

On the reports that get filled out to make a refugee’s profile, there’s a spot for “occupation,” and I noticed that a lot of them had the word “débrouillard.” When I asked about it, they said it means the person has no formal work. The word literally means something like, “one who copes.” I guess that’s what they’re forced to do. I would say that term applies not just to refugees, but to a large portion of the Senegalese population.

Being here and having such varied experiences brings a strange mixture of intense highs and lows. I just got an email from a very good friend of mine who expressed it much better than I could, so I’m going to quote it: “I know that, at times, it’s hard to sort one thing out from another or even have a coherent thought about anything that’s going on around you. I know that, at times, you love Senegal and your experiences there. Absolutely love it. And at other times, it breaks you. It saddens you. I know there are times you feel on top of the world, and other times where the world feels like it is falling down on you. ” I’m going to try to take my friend’s advice: to embrace every single one of these moments.

Thanks for hanging in there for an long post. My next update may not be for a little while—this Friday, I'm leaving for spring break! I’m going on a 4 or 5-day hiking trip in Dogon country, an area of Mali (which borders Senegal to the east) with some friends, and it is definitely going to be an adventure. We’ll have a Malian guide and we’ll be camping/staying in villages along the way. At the end, we'll spend a couple days in Bamako, the capital. The trip just to get to Mali may take about 2 days, as a rough estimate; that’ll be an adventure in itself. It’s going to be rough, but I’m really excited, and I’m sure I’ll have lots of stories to share upon my return!