I haven't come up with a unified complete blog post for a while so here are a series of scattered thoughts.
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Hot season in the Fuuta is upon us, which means scorching sun with an even hotter wind. Its like when you're baking a cake and you open the oven door to pull it out and get that rush of 350° air. Except imagine you also get a face full of blinding sun. And the other air around you is 115-120°. And you can't shut the oven.
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I've become proud of my sense of smell here. Its a big part of my life, really. You're sitting in your compound, on a horse cart (a charette or saret), or walking to the market. There isn't always all that much to see here in the desert but there is always some smell to identify. I can tell at quite a distance the difference between human poop and animal poop, which is very different from your diarrhea, which is again distinct from a baby's diarrhea. Then there is the more watery smell of sewage, when you're in a place that actually has a sewage system (of sorts). The age of it matters too, as manure is completely different from any of the above smells and so too is the fresh smell of a horse pooping in front of you while it is pulling your charette. But it's not all about poop, not always. There are smells of a freshly powdered baby, mud oven bread baking in the early morning, the lilac-y scent of the bushes surrounding my village when they bloom in February and March. The house-based smells of laundry drying in the sun or simmering beans in my favorite tomato sauce. I can identify the type of wood we are using to cook or the amount of dung tossed into the fire by the smell. An over-perfumed man, often wearing a distinctly feminine scent, can actually be nice to walk by. Anyone who lives here knows the humid, dusty and slightly sweaty scent of an alhum (small bus) full of people. Some smells I can't describe, you'll have to find a better writer. I know the smell of meat in a market or the smell of fish and then dried fish as you turn the corner. A scent that is fairly distinct to the Fuuta is the smell of a dead animal, the strong, acrid, vomit-y smell of its carcass baking in the sun. Garbage fires, with its sickening burnt plastic overtone mixed with a heavier rancid aroma is a standby here. Garbage in Senegal lacks the sickening rotting sweetness of American garbage, probably due to the lack of milk and fruit. There are seasonal smells like ripening mangos or flowering neem. There are weirder smells that you only get to know after a while, like the oddly sweet smell of a person's sweat when they have had a lot of kosam (soured milk drink) recently. The smell of old well water when you've left it in your bucket too long- musty and plastic-y. The dusty smell of my mattress after a windy night outside.
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You know you're part of the family when your little sister picks your nose for you.
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I love breakfast stands here. It's like heading to an airport in the states. A heady sense of excitement concealing your underlying tiredness from an early rise; you're going somewhere. Whether it's a 15 hour sept place ride to Kedougou or a plane to California, you are on a trip, and treating yourself to expertly mixed café e meew or Starbucks and a muffin is the beautiful beginning to your journey. You banter with the breakfast lady and the other customers, you people-watch everyone on the automated sidewalk. Now, if you get breakfast from a stand every day or you are at the airport all the time it loses its magic. It stops being the horizon to a new adventure, loses its place as the daybreak oasis between leaving and arriving. If you're lucky though, you realize it for what it is. Breathe, sip, savor, smile.
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After being in Senegal for over a year, I am dirty. So dirty. Somehow, there is a film of dirt on me that just doesn't come off anymore. I'm being completely serious, honestly not exaggerating and romanticizing the dirty Peace Corps volunteer thing at all here. There is a distinct difference between the new volunteers and old ones. A year of transportation- alhum rides, bush taxis, charettes, walking- plus the constant sweating and a season of dust storms must have something to do with it. From between my toes to the crevices of my ears, I am dirty. And thats just the outside of me. On the inside it's just as bad. I eat almost exclusively refined white sugar, white flour bread, rice and copious amounts of oil. A little fish, some vegetables. Mostly carbs, sugar and oil though. It has got to be rotting me from the inside out, I'm sure. The only thing that has a chance of getting cleaner while I'm a Peace Corps volunteer is my soul I guess.
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Oh That Ring There? My Husband Gave It To Me...
So, after I posted this picture of my hands all raw from pulling water at the well last week, I got some questions about the ring on my left hand.
No, I am not engaged or married. At least not in the legal or terribly real sense. I do however have a fake husband, and everyone who knows me in Senegal aside from Peace Corps staff and volunteers believes this to be absolutely true.
My husband and I have been married for three years. We met at University and lived together in Boston in an apartment for a little less than a year, and the rent in our apartment was $200 per month (if you didn't know this was fantasy up until now, that certainly gave it away). He is half black, half white, and most times I let people believe he is half Senegalese. He lives in Linguere and he is very busy, which is why he hasn't visited my village yet. We see each other every couple months when we go to Peace Corps meetings, and once we went on vacation to St. Louis. He is very kind and he doesn't hit children. I don't want him to get a second wife and we talked about it and he doesn't want one either because he loves only me. He misses me very much and calls me almost every night. He buys the phone credit, and if he is in America he calls from a computer. We are waiting to have children because right now we want to work and have babies later when we are ready. Right now he is in America because his mother is just a little sick and she misses him. We spent some of Christmas together and some with our own families and he gave me my ring for Christmas this year. I think in the next month or so he is going to break his leg so that he can't come back to Senegal at all and thus won't have to visit my village.
As you can see, it has become a rather elaborate lie so that I can satisfactorily answer all of the questions people have for me. I admit, sometimes it can be fun to make up stories like this. Overall I've tried hard to create a man who is virtually immune to comments from Senegalese. Whats that, kind sir on the bus? I need a black man who can do me better? Well he is half, so that should be enough for me. A lot of times it can be very instructive- I can talk about birth control with women or spousal communication. Most of the time though I hate that I have to lie to my village and I hate that I have to pretend to be someone I'm not.
Ultimately though, making up a fake husband has been one of the best decisions I could have made here. Quite literally all day long every day I am proposed to, cat-called, and harassed. Sometimes its innocent, sometimes it is extremely vulgar, but it is always constant. The only option that gives me a little relief is to pretend that I have a man who I belong to. Its not that the men harassing me stop because they care about my marriage. They stop because I am someone else's property, much as you wouldn't brand another man's cow.
This isn't about me though. I chose to be here and after another year I will go home. There, I will be subjected to slightly less overt sexism but at least it will be in my own language and people won't expect me to be married after age 16. I wrote this post not so that you would feel bad for me, but that maybe it would get you thinking about how sexism operates in your own society. There are so many things I could write about this topic, but this video says so much more than I ever could. PLEASE watch it, I promise it will change how you think about your life
http://happyplace.someecards.com/29141/oppressed-majority-a-french-short-film-that-reverses-gender-roles
No, I am not engaged or married. At least not in the legal or terribly real sense. I do however have a fake husband, and everyone who knows me in Senegal aside from Peace Corps staff and volunteers believes this to be absolutely true.
My husband and I have been married for three years. We met at University and lived together in Boston in an apartment for a little less than a year, and the rent in our apartment was $200 per month (if you didn't know this was fantasy up until now, that certainly gave it away). He is half black, half white, and most times I let people believe he is half Senegalese. He lives in Linguere and he is very busy, which is why he hasn't visited my village yet. We see each other every couple months when we go to Peace Corps meetings, and once we went on vacation to St. Louis. He is very kind and he doesn't hit children. I don't want him to get a second wife and we talked about it and he doesn't want one either because he loves only me. He misses me very much and calls me almost every night. He buys the phone credit, and if he is in America he calls from a computer. We are waiting to have children because right now we want to work and have babies later when we are ready. Right now he is in America because his mother is just a little sick and she misses him. We spent some of Christmas together and some with our own families and he gave me my ring for Christmas this year. I think in the next month or so he is going to break his leg so that he can't come back to Senegal at all and thus won't have to visit my village.
As you can see, it has become a rather elaborate lie so that I can satisfactorily answer all of the questions people have for me. I admit, sometimes it can be fun to make up stories like this. Overall I've tried hard to create a man who is virtually immune to comments from Senegalese. Whats that, kind sir on the bus? I need a black man who can do me better? Well he is half, so that should be enough for me. A lot of times it can be very instructive- I can talk about birth control with women or spousal communication. Most of the time though I hate that I have to lie to my village and I hate that I have to pretend to be someone I'm not.
Ultimately though, making up a fake husband has been one of the best decisions I could have made here. Quite literally all day long every day I am proposed to, cat-called, and harassed. Sometimes its innocent, sometimes it is extremely vulgar, but it is always constant. The only option that gives me a little relief is to pretend that I have a man who I belong to. Its not that the men harassing me stop because they care about my marriage. They stop because I am someone else's property, much as you wouldn't brand another man's cow.
This isn't about me though. I chose to be here and after another year I will go home. There, I will be subjected to slightly less overt sexism but at least it will be in my own language and people won't expect me to be married after age 16. I wrote this post not so that you would feel bad for me, but that maybe it would get you thinking about how sexism operates in your own society. There are so many things I could write about this topic, but this video says so much more than I ever could. PLEASE watch it, I promise it will change how you think about your life
http://happyplace.someecards.com/29141/oppressed-majority-a-french-short-film-that-reverses-gender-roles
Saturday, May 3, 2014
You Know You've Been In Village Too Long When...
- You start using Pulaar word order and phrasing with English words:
"Rain came!"
"Where shoes your are?"
- Your hair falls out in chunks, which doesn't help support your claim that its not a weave or a wig: "really- look, I can't take it off, its attached to my head- oh, well, not that piece..."
- A volunteer says they are looking up how to do an exorcism in order to fix the jinn (genie spirit thing) in the regional house computer and you think its a great idea
- You crave sweet, hot tea every day at 4pm every day (even if it is over 110°)
- You have no idea what legs even look like anymore
- You associate the smell of burning plastic and dung-fueled fires with home
- You sleep through the 5 am call to prayer and the numerous yells of goats, sheep, roosters, and donkeys but wake up from coma-like sleep if you hear anything related to water
- You think you'd look good in cornrows
- Anything- tin can, book, rock, stick- can be your pillow for a midday nap
Probably only people from my region will understand this, but I think its a decent representation of the random things that are important in my life these days.
In other news, I'll be spending a month in America starting June 27th! Clearly I've been spending a lot of time being integrated to village life and I think I deserve a good dose of America. And as much as I appreciated Ramadan last year and had a great experience, I'm going to bow out this year.
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