Tag Archives: senegal

Background Noise (and Unnerving Silence)

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Tonight is the first night my host house has been quiet since I moved in here three months ago. This happened only because the power company decided to cut our (and only our) power for the evening. As the angry Wolof phone conversations have finished, this has left is more-or-less complete silence.

It’s very weird.

This is one of the things that no one thinks to tell you when you are moving abroad, particularly in regards to a host family. My family (and, as best I can tell from other students, most host families in the program) has some sort of noise going constantly. The TV is frequently left on as background noise, and if the TV isn’t on the radio is. Frequently multiple radios or TVs are turned to different stations at the same time, both left loud enough to be heard in the central room. My host mother sleeps the whole night through with the TV or radio (occasionally both) in the background. Senegalese music (including the snapshot above from an Independence Day festival) is like 90% Very Loud Drums.

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Going to the Delta

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Hanging with the termites.

I’m officially back from the Sine Saloum delta, ie your friendly reminder that everywhere in Senegal that is not Dakar is staggeringly beautiful.

This was a whole program trip, so all 60 of us rolled up after a three-hour bus ride on Friday. We then took pirogues (think 30-person canoes) over to our campment, which was composed mostly of thatched-roof, solar-powered cottages and hammocks. It was populated by increasingly ridiculous birds–think two-foot-long irridescent blue things, and songbird-sized hummingbirds.

While settling in the first night, I bought some jewelry from a Tuarag silversmith. The man was six feet tall and all done up in blue robes (the Serer women next to him were not thrilled, as no one looked at their wares). The jewelry is lovely and, you know, desert nomad.

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Let’s Talk About Higher Ed.

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So, lately I’ve been thinking about study abroad, and about how the ways in which higher ed institutions approach it is kind of profoundly broken.

At most universities, once a student applies to and is accepted to their program, their university piles them into a room with all of the other study abroad students and everyone has a nice chat about how to not get murdered. Culture shock is discussed. Personal boundaries are tested. Slideshows are played.

Sometimes discussed in the meeting is the graph charting students’ study abroad experiences. At the beginning, the student is in a honeymoon period. Life is great! Locals are just like me! Then, reality sets in and the student is bummed out for a while about cultural differences or loneliness or whatever. Then, there’s a spiky bit on the line that trends generally upward, and by the time the student finishes their time abroad they don’t want to go home, they feel like they are one with their new countrymen, etc. etc.

Study Abroad Model

Both of these are really stupid ways to prepare folks for the study abroad experience.

Because here’s the thing–both the meetings and the graph treat study abroad students as one group. And, for university insurance purposes, they are. But I think there are actually at least three distinct subgroups within study abroad students that need different information, have different goals, and will have profoundly different experiences during their time abroad.

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Toubob Frappacino

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Today I had a tiny food revelation. In the midst of another game of “things I will eat when I go back home” (the favorite game of ex-pats and study abroad kids the world over), I said, “iced coffee.” For a country in which 80 degrees leads people to start wearing scarves (really really), Senegal has in no way hopped on the iced beverage bandwagon. People are still more than happy to pop a cafe touba* for their caffeine fix.

But, in the midst of this game, I realized that every component of my coffee experience in this country is already water soluable–instant Nescafe, powdered milk, and white sugar. There was no reason I couldn’t make my own coffee.

So, I meandered on over to my local grocery store. (True fact: you are never more than 2 minutes from a place to buy food here.) I grabbed a 16 oz. bottle of water, two individual-sized Nescafe packets (like those Crystal Light things for your water bottle, but full of mediocre instant coffee), and–in a moment of excited product discovery–a packet of presweetened Vitalait (slogan: “Fatfilled sweetened milk!”). Continue reading →

Massage Weirdness

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So, the massage from last entry? Was great. Worth every last CFA that I paid for it, if just for the use of the hot (hot!) shower alone. It was also completely weird.

The first thing that I noticed about the massage was that my French vocabulary was pretty much not in any way up for the task. My French, like most school French, was learned in a series of themed units—“Talking about hobbies,” or “Makeup,” or “Describing the floors of buildings and their furnishings.” There are a variety of units that were not covered (“Insulting cat callers,” “Ordering mixed drinks,” and “Explaining to the tailor that you want a cuffed sleeve made out of the lining fabric,” among them), and unfortunately “Getting a massage” falls into this category. The massage therapist kept asking me questions about the kind of massage I wanted, and after enough smiling and nodding she basically just did what she wanted and told me to shout if it hurt.

Mostly, this was fine—I just had to concentrate on not laughing when she touched my feet and/or “My Heart Will Go On” came on the radio (twice). But then, the massage therapist gestured for me to roll over on my side. While trying to clutch a towel to my chest, I propped myself up so that the massage therapist could do some sort of crazy chiropractic stretches on my legs. (At this point she had stopped speaking, instead just moving me where she needed me.) Continue reading →

Spring Breakdown

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So, remember that time when I went to Barcelona for spring break, but then it wasn’t spring break at all and I just bailed on a week of classes? Well, fun fact, it’s actually spring break now! I have elected to stick it out in Dakar because a) I hate sept places and b) I’m saving up my broke-being for my trip to Paris in May. So, I’ve been kicking around with a group of girls in Dakar, instead.

We started the week off on Tuesday (Monday, being the day after Easter, is a national holiday, and so was dedicated to writing papers) with a trip to the West African Research Center. While there, I took advantage of the sweet, sweet wifi and copy edited a friend’s cover letter to Linden Labs. I also managed to obtain the first of the approximately 87 blisters I from this week on the walk over to WARC.

After we finished researching/creeping on Paris housing rentals, we walked to a nearby pizza place. They were having their fabulous Tuesday promotion, in which you could get two large pizzas for $12. We ordered that, and so were surprised when they brought us four pizzas. We waited for a few minutes to see if they were going to come back for them, but they didn’t. Being unethical and also hungry, we chowed down, and each managed to eat pretty much an entire three dollar pizza. Fulfilling American stereotypes is delicious.

During lunch, a man selling pirated DVDs came by. Several were purchased, including American Terrorist Film and Time Cop. We attempted to watch these in the evening, but eventually gave up for the wiles of French-language Titanic (which I have still never seen in English). Weeping and Celine Dion were had.

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On Tattoos and Children

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I had a quick, bizarre interaction with my middle host niece today. She’s three, and because she is little she has not quite realized that my inability to speak Wolof is indicative of a single missing skill, rather than general idiocy. (Her sister, who is five, has figured out that I understand her beginning French and most hand gestures. We work it out.)

She was sitting on the eating mat and looking at my feet. I figured she was checking out my shoes, since they’re gold. She said something to me in Wolof that I completely did not understand, both because it was exclusively composed of verbs I don’t know and because she’s three and kind of mumbles.

My host dad laughed at what it was that she said, and answered back. They chatted for a minute before he turned to me and (in French) said, “She likes your tattoo.”

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Cultural Whiplash

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Sometimes I have days where I feel reasonably secure in my ability to function in my life here in Dakar. Other times, I feel like I may in fact be completely broken. Today I had both of these experiences within about five minutes of each other, and felt what I can only describe as cultural acquisition whiplash.

The positive experience was–as almost all of my positive experiences are–an interaction with my tailor, Ousmane. I like him both because he makes me pretty, pretty clothes and because he is the most deadpan human being that I have met since leaving the United States. He’s great.

I was passing by his shop this evening with a friend when I saw him outside taking a smoking break. We waved. He waved back. Then, he hissed at me (the way that most folks here indicate, “I don’t remember your name despite knowing the circumfrence of your entire body, but I have something to tell you”). Continue reading →

I Performed a Pelvic Exam. Yeah.

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So, at the end of five days and a very bumpy four-hour ride in a sept-place, I am officially back from Ndaufanne. Huzzah!

As per the last post, I was in Ndaufanne (about an hour outside of Kaolack) in order to look at health care in Senegal, mostly due to the fact that I checked the “healthcare” box on the placement form because it looked interesting. Let it never be said that my decision process is a great one.

The story of what happened in Kaolack is a boring one (short hour: ungodly early sept-place ride, a lot of waiting, really good chebu jen at APROFES). However, on Tuesday I was sent away with a clump of girls to go be village-placed. We were all under the impression that we would be dropped off together, which made it somewhat startling when there was about an hour of savanna between each of us. Everyone else in the group was in an electricity-less village where no one spoke French.

However, I unintentionally placed out of that experience with my choice of area–pretty much all of the health care providers in Senegal speak French, since they’re university-educated. Though a lot of the conversations around me during the week were going on in Wolof, I was never more than two feet away from an obliging translator. Everyone was incredibly nice. In addition, because I was living with the clinic’s doctor, I had electricity to spare. It was pretty sweet.

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Updatestravaganza!

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Have been in one of those funks where rather than write, or read, or be productive, I nap for six hours a day and try not to be hit in the face by the children who live in my house. So that’s been fun. (Study abroad: I am the worst at it.) So, in lieu of actual, structured post, here’s some interesting things that have happened recently:

Thesis, oh god why: So my thesis adviser’s suggestions and my wordiness led to a thesis proposal that was roughly twice the length it was supposed to be. Whoops. Hatcheted it down, and the entire time I wept for killing my babies. (“Don’t you want to know about theoretical frameworks for death? Or blogging? Or my love for danah boyd? No? Okay.”) Need to get it sent in by the end of the week. Am somewhat terrified. Then realized that I would happily not do a thesis if it wasn’t a Prudent Thing to Do, and stopped caring as much. (Also, did you know that GDocs now has MWord comment support? It does! This is the best thing ever.)

Senegal has a new president: So that’s pretty neat! The night he was elected there was a spontaneous parade in the street near my house. It was pretty fantastic. This also means that a) we’re not going to be like Mali and b) I can stay in the country without fearsome emails from the embassy. Yay! Continue reading →