Tamxarit

So. This holiday snuck up on me. Tamxarit is the Muslim new year. 

In Senegal it is starts with a large dinner of couscous, or cere in Wolof. Before eating, Awa Balla and I went to different houses to deliver a meal of couscous to various families. I’m pretty sure the selection was made based on friendship or neighbors. Various family members dropped over to eat with us. At about 10:30 PM I heard drums by our door. I discovered a crowd of about 40-50 people outside our house. About 15 of them were men…but they were wearing womens clothing, right down wigs and heavy make-up. They were pounding on drums and dancing, singing a song that was basically along the lines of the American “trick or treat.” I got a peek around the side of the door, until one tried to pull me into the crowd. Let me tell you, there is something oddly terrifying about a cross-dressed Senegalese man with fake hair in his face. My reaction: run like hell. I only returned when I could hide behind my mom and Bintu. My mom gave them money, and I felt then that the pressure was taken off me, so I moved into our entryway again. In celebration (for my mom had been very generous in giving them CFA5,000, which roughly equals $10) the dancer started a dance mainly comprised of hip thrusts, booty shaking, and shoulder shimmying. When he started all this and was started to look like he was heading toward us again, my mom (full head scarf and all) slapped him on the butt with her prayer beads. He theatrically fell out the door, and the drum circle and their followers moved on to the next house. Everyone was laughing and yelling to people they knew in the crowd. 

I stole this from the internet-but you get the idea

So, can I just say, that when I came to Senegal, I really didn’t think that I was going to need saving from a crowd of cross-dressed, drum wielding men; or that my salvation would come from my conservative, headstrong mother slapping a young man with her prayer beads…I guess the culture shock never ends.

15 minutes later, Nadia and her host-sister Aida came over. I was glad to find that Nadia shared my fear of the strangely dressed men. However, Aida insisted that we join the people following the group. Well, there is strength in numbers. So Aida, Nadia, Awa Balla and I ran out of the house and onto the street to find the musicians. We joined some other girls, and somehow we all ended up linking arms/taking hands and became a part of the crowd. We followed the sounds of drums to another house.

This was a different group of dancers and musicians though. This one had a man wearing a suit and a huge fake pot-belly with a painted surgical mask. The kind of broad, straw hat that you would expect Asian farmers to wear topped it off. His friends had large dark sunglasses despite the night, and some were carrying large walking sticks. They would select a house, see if the door was open, and if it was, they would all throw it open and run inside. The crowd would follow as long as they could, packing into the hallways of houses. The singing/dancing/money routine would continue and when we saw the musicians were ready to leave, we all pushed, screamed and sprinted our way out of the house. If you weren’t careful, they would grab you and force you to dance.

They caught me off guard when I was joking around with my friends, and one man grabbed me from behind and wouldn’t let me go. The pot-bellied guy ran over, shaking his walking stick in my face and screaming. Not knowing that this was an invitation to dance, my brain registered only a few factors: I was trapped, I was surrounded by screaming creepily dressed men, there were deafening drums all around me. I freaked out. I covered my eyes and sort of accepted fate. Then, Nadia reached through the group of men, and with the help of our other friends, yanked me free. Lots of taunting followed, and I was trying to regain my sanity. We put a larger distance between ourselves and the drummers, and they figured out that we were scared, not shy. So they all ran over, took our hands and told us that we were “one people,” and in English, nonetheless. After that, we were pals, and our group continued harassing, singing, and dancing for different families.

We ended up at the house of Mbaye Dieye FAYE. He’s a musician in the band that plays with Youssou N’DOUR. If you don’t know who that is, then I’m ashamed. He’s one of the most famous musicians from Africa, and is a beacon of Senegalese cultural pride. FAYE is one of N’DOUR’s best friends and cornerstone of the music group. And I was in his house. Our drum/dancing buddies went nuts in his living room (in front of all his important guests). Nadia and I were able to squeeze through the crowd to see FAYE, and we were pretty stoked. But our friends had other ideas.

Being white, it suffices to say that I stand out a little in the sea of Senegalese people. I was yanked from the crowd (you can see that this happened a lot) and in front of a national musical icon, was told to dance. Well. Seize the day, right? So Nadia and I broke it down in front of Mbaye Dieye FAYE, making the whole crowd laugh hysterically. We tried no to think about being in the house of a famous person, and so just focused on the drums, trying to get a hang of the polyrhythmic beat and not make a bigger fool out of myself by dancing horribly. When we were finally allowed to stop, we actually shook his hand, and asked how the Tamxarit was going for him. He held out his arms and yelled, “beautiful!” Nadia and I ran outside again, and like 16-year-old girls, we held hands and yelled, “we just danced for Mbaye Dieye FAYE!!” Our friends treated us to some high-fives and Aida shook her finger at me saying, “spicy, spicy!”

After that, we saw that it was close to midnight, and we figured nothing more exciting could happen anyway so we all trouped back through the neighborhood to our houses. We had enough time to have some tea with Grandma FALL, then it was time for bed.

At home, we bang pots and stay up until midnight for the New Year. Here, we cross-dress, dance, and invade our neighbors’ houses.

Happy New Year everyone.