Half-way Hysteria

So. Tomorrow is my half-way point. I've been in Senegal for 6 months. And since I have another 6 to go, I think I will indulge in some panicking. Maybe bordering on hysterics.

It’s hard to put a finger on how I’ve changed in my 6ish months here. It’s been gradual, slow. I’ve hardly noticed it, in some ways. But some experiences have led me to see just how much I’ve transformed as a person. Immersing myself so readily in a different culture, letting myself flow with unfamiliar norms and ways of life has in turn changed what I think is normal. In terms of life, one year from home and all things familiar is not so much time. I thought, one year away couldn’t change a person that much. But for me, it has. I used to worry about petty things. I worried about my hobbies. When was the next Argentine Tango festival? If I practiced, I would get that step better, and my dance would improve. What was my latest 2K time in crew? How was our boat improving for the next race? A lot of my interest and time revolved around school and my social life; the typical college student self-absorbed in finding answers to homework, in finding a social niche. But I found both those things easily. I was chafing. I wanted real problems to worry about. I wanted my life to start, and this time for real, not just moving out of my parents’ house. I wanted problems and dilemmas that nobody else could relate to. I wanted to leave home for a year because I wanted to test who I thought I was as a person.

Before leaving, I took a weekly Global Citizenship seminar. I wish everyone who went to college was required to take this class, because it helped me answer so many questions I didn’t know I had been considering. But once a week they were laid in the open for me to discuss and consider. It made me consider the relation of myself, my role in life, with the rest of society. I mapped out who I thought I was, the activities, interests, and foundations that defined my personality and all my opinions. I left for Senegal knowing exactly who I was as a person. What I was burning to know was if I was right, because my assumptions would never be tested at home like they have been here.

And I was right in many ways. Everything I thought as normal has been challenged. Base assumptions to casual observations, all have been brought to my attention. And studying abroad in Europe, or any other developed nation, wouldn’t have done this for me. It would have lacked the total cultural reversal that I was looking for. I come from green places, relatively affluent lifestyles, liberal political views, feminist agendas, monochromatic culture, and extreme consumption. I come from clean streets, well-nourished children, active communities, and good school systems. I come from alcohol-soaked parties, from all-night studying, regional and national crew competitions, international dancing festivals. I come from a place which celebrates the progression of women, as long as they adhere to an idea of beauty which degenerates their ideas and focuses on their bodies. Where I come from there are never any power outages, and the government is so stable most of the population doesn’t pay attention to it like they should. (Until recently) I come from a place which is as self-centered as most of its inhabitants, busily working within their own lives for their own benefit.

What I came to: my street in Sacre Coeur

What I came to: Camel rides...

What I came to challenged everything about home. I came to pollution in the streets, in the water, in the air. I came to a place where 10% of the population holds nearly 80% of the wealth. I came to a place where water, electricity, and internet are no longer assumed to be existent/ of good quality. I came to a place that sends their brightest and smartest students abroad for better education, leaving their families hoping that they return home to improve the country. I came to a culture that values family as much as its religion, where it is disgraceful to put the elderly into nursing homes, as it is kin to abandonment. I came to a place where vibrant music and dance unites a population despite geographic distances. I came to a place that has at least one person in all the extended family working abroad to help support a vast family. I came to a place with delicious (and sometimes scary, it is true) food, even if I can’t pronounce it right. This is a place of gender roles so complicated, that to say one is “subordinate” compared to the other merely speaks to vast levels of ignorance. I came to a place that is just as racist as the U.S., though perhaps with different assumptions. I came to a place where every person speaks at least 2-3 different languages every day, sometimes more. I came to place that is finding its place between modernity and tradition, and thus creating a rich hybrid between the two. I’m now in a place that will forever leave an impact on what I feel is truly important to me, and it has shown me how I can reject things about home that no longer apply to me.

I was skyping a close friend from back home a few weeks ago, and he said something that startled me. We hadn’t spoken for a couple months, and he said I was different now, but not in an obvious way. He said I seemed older, more competent. He made me think about all my experiences that incited the change. What are other American 20 year olds doing right now with their lives? What have they done? University students, trade school students, young additions to the workforce, or those still floating through their life with no idea for the future? I realized that more than anything else, I am the latter. I am the floater. Because in my 6 months here, I’ve had so many questions that needed answering and no one but me could have answered them. For once, I couldn’t run to my parents’ (mostly) unfailing wisdom for answers. I needed experience. I needed a reason.

My Norm: Work...and Relaxation...

My cousin=adorable cuteness seen almost every week

And what I found was, sometimes, more than I could handle. Now I have those problems that make my petty life seem like a single grain in the 10-gallon sack of rice. Now, I’m doing more than read about the abstract reports of malnutrition in children and the rights of women. I’m in the middle of those reports wherever I go. I worked at a children’s hospital, saw HIV infected children come in for check-ups, and watched surgery hallways get crowded past capacity. I work in a school where desks are in disrepair and young girls have difficulty talking about their future careers because they never considered having one. I’ve found the problems that I was so eager to fix back home. And if I have days that I want to go into my room and cry for all the things I can’t change, then that’s all part of it. Because so many of the problems that I’ve found are not mine to fix, necessarily. For the most part, it’s not my place to fix them. I’ve learned to fully invest myself in the present, because thinking about the past or the future only gets me homesick. I pour all I have into my everyday life, because if I live inside my head too much and constantly think about home then it will be like I never left. 

And I’m happy to discover that I can experience all these things and still feel like I’ve retained who I am. When I left home, it turns out, I did have a pretty good idea as to who I was. I’ve found friends I’ll keep for the rest of my life. I have that social niche that I was so disdainful of before, but which I know is essential to my sanity now. I have a host family here that I will never lose contact with, who teach me so much is everyday interactions. I’ve travelled between two different African countries without knowing where I would sleep the next night; but I did have the faith that something would work out eventually.

My Norm: Seeing trash and pollution

So when my friend told me I changed, I realized that my assumption of norms had changed, not me as a person. It is life now. I’m used to power cuts, to random blasts of music from alleys, to men kneeling for prayer in the streets, to walking home at 5:30 AM, just as the call to prayer lifts people from their beds. I’m used to a different rhythm. The phrase “time is money” is used to scorn people too rude to stop and chat with someone they see in the street. I used to the rhythm of speech unfamiliar to mine, just as I’m used to a music rhythm different from mine. My norm is to eat mutton almost every day; just as it is my norm to see people who obviously don’t get enough to eat everyday.  

My norm: sketchy power sources in our tent

Now, my fellow students gather in the student lounge, only 1 week left in the semester. I’m torn by their conversations. When they speak of all the things they are going to do when they get home, I get up and leave the room. Because so much of me misses my family and friends like my limb was cut off. I know this halfway point means a lot for my boyfriend and I, especially. I hear things like lattes, Mexican food, down comforters, drinkable tap water, or snow with the same bemused sentiments that the 21^st Century has for intergalactic travel, world peace, or (Oprah would love me for this one) free cars for everyone in the room. On the other hand, I hear people making plans for last minute sorties around the city/surrounding area, panicking because they’ll “never have enough time.” This is the part where you find me sitting back, cracking open a metaphorical newspaper, and smugly ignoring all their all their talk of regional travel. Because even though I miss home, I have shit to do, quite frankly. 
 

·         I need to obtain fluency in 2 foreign languages.

·         I need to turn CIPFEM into a nationally recognized NGO.

·         I need to see the outcome of the elections, and watch as the country transforms before my eyes.

·         I need to travel to Timbuktu and evade kidnapping by extremists.

·         I need to participate in Muslim holidays.

·         I need to haze a whole new batch of students at the end of January!

You see? I have plans…and I’m only half-way…

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.