Family structure and loyalty in Senegal was explained to me by means of a simile involving a person climbing up for palm wine. In short: you share, and you expect others to do the same. Don’t open food in public if you don’t plan to offer some to everyone within eyeshot. Meals are taken out of a communal bowl, and, after discovering in an orientation session that my skill at traditional eating leaves something to be desired – it involves breaking yams and such things into bite-sized pieces and pressing them together with fish and rice to form a ball that the locals seem to be able to magically make adhere together, all with no tool but one hand – I was thrilled to see most of my host family members break out spoons.
That’s probably what interests you, dear (if possibly nonexistent) readers. I assume you’d rather know about my host family than about the start of classes yesterday. I’ll admit that I was nervous to move in on Friday, after having an orientation filled with more information than even my Georgetown-honed retention skills gave me confidence I could recall at opportune moments. Make sure to cover your legs appropriately while sitting. Greet every person individually in any room you enter. Never give a direct “no” as an answer – even to the constantly swooping street vendors and beggars the correct response is “bal ma ko ba benene” – “forgive me until next time.” If someone demonstrates interest in being given or lent something you have via excessive complimenting, you can foil them with “tudde na la ko” – “I’ll name it after you.” Sometimes in order to give a compliment you must say the opposite of what you mean, or else follow the sentence with “mashalab” to fool or ward off malignant jinnes. For the same reason, don’t ever count people or ask someone to give you a number of children, siblings, etc. And etc. And more etc. By the time my name was called to meet the representative of my host family, my whirlwind internal attempt to list off everything I’d need to do in order to not offend them had reached tornado proportions.
The person to fetch me was my new brother Aziz. He handily took my suitcase, ushered me into a cab, and prevented the driver from conning us into paying double. He’s eighteen and starting his last year at lycee (high school), just as my 17-year-old brother is doing in Ann Arbor, MI. His knowledge of American hip hop is somewhat superior to mine. His mother, now my yaay, is a kind, firm older woman. “Alxamdulilaay,” she said, when I told her that I had always wanted to live in a house with a balcony.
The house itself is full of contradictions as striking as those I mentioned in my first impressions of Dakar. I’d never actually reflected much before this on the way I or my native culture would prioritize household amenities, but it’s quite clear that my new residence doesn’t conform to the order of importance I’ve held implicitly for my entire life. There are heavy brocade pillows on the multiple couches in the two living rooms. The bathroom, on the other hand, is a true logistical puzzle. The very close proximity of the toilet, sink, and the naked showerhead between them makes keeping my clothes and towel dry while I shower a difficult feat, and also leads to the presence of a constant clinging decoration of water on the tiles and strong-smelling paint of the close-pressed walls and floor. In fact, I have yet to really figure out how other people manage normal bathroom-ly things, either. I seriously doubt that the other members of the family have, like me, constructed a bathroom kit consisting of a bag hanging ready by the door out of my room stocked with a roll of toilet paper, a soap box, and a towel for drying my hands. They have two TVs, but no modern kitchen appliances or air conditioning. This last is, shall we say, a particularly excellent opportunity for my own personal growth. I am glad to have my own room for the possibility of relative peace it affords during the day, but I found myself even happier that I could – at the risk of sounding too risqué for public consumption – remove progressively more layers of clothing and sheets in an effort to sleep with only the valiant aid of the electric fan to stave off a hovering day of over 90˚ F and 70% humidity.
The first full day at the house I woke at 4:30 a.m. – intentionally, actually, not that I think it likely that I could have remained asleep through the hoarse chanting and clattering rhythms of what I assume to be helpful emissaries from the nearby mosque blasting their way through the streets to remind everyone that if they want to eat before 7:30 p.m. they had better do so pronto. The family, of course, had insisted that I didn’t have to do any part of Ramadan with them if I didn’t want to, but, well, I’m here for the ride, right? Even if the ride is a fumbling dark one through the aforementioned bathroom creativity, into a skirt, and onto the mat downstairs for a breakfast of baguette and eggs (the baguette doubling as the primary utensil) on the communal plate. That night we would break the fast with dates and baguette and butter, and tea with chocolate Nesquick and powdered milk. They would pray at length on their mats, yaay in her chair, providing another particularly jarring contrast to the French soap opera on the TV, which at that moment happened to be playing a lengthy scene featuring a woman in a leopard-print bra. At 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. we would eat the traditional dinner of fish, vegetables and rice on the communal plate, with all of what seems to be the nuclear family unit within this very fluid Senegalese family culture. There’s yaay and Aziz, and my host father, who spends most of his evenings at home in his own separate living room with a larger TV than the one in the main living room. There’s also a man whose place in the family is somewhat of a mystery to me. At first I thought he was one of those people who appear periodically at meals, being greeted always as members of the family, but his presence at every meal thus far has convinced me otherwise. Despite having had several very nice conversations with him about his profession as an Arabic teacher and his study of the Quran, I haven’t managed to muster enough confidence in the clarity of the Senegalese system of identifying relatives or my own ability not to make a terrible social gaffe to ask anyone who exactly he is. There’s also Sokhna, the live-in maid and more distant relative, a girl of thirteen. At that point all of my attempts to talk with her or help her with anything had been met with near silent deference, but in that after breakfast pre-dawn I was startled by the rustle of her mat on the roof. I had gone there to watch the sunrise – my favorite place in the house. The balcony has nothing on this. Flat concrete loosened by a waving clothesline, the roof affords a view of the spire of the mosque rising over the basketball court in one direction, a sliver of the ocean sky in another, and the clustered buildings of downtown Dakar in another. It, like the TV, electric fans, and concerning bathroom setup is actually a fairly common feature of the houses I’ve seen in Mermoz, the neighborhood in which I’ve settled, but to me, at the moment and in that one, it’s magic.
Sokhna finished her prayers on the mat as I stood uncertain, then invited me to sit beside her. We talked about music and sports and her proud collection of Facebook photos until she said that she was going back to bed. Since everyone else appeared to have done the same, I decided to try my luck with the fan again. It was much quieter than at night, and I slept for two hours or so until at 8:30 a.m. it was truly too hot. I made my way through the getting-ready routine once more and descended to a quiet house. We students had been cautioned against leaving without telling the family anything, so instead I brought my book to the low curb just outside and waited to see what would happen as the neighborhood passed me by. Within a single chapter I got a number of stares, several “bonjour”s, several “salaamaalekum”s, several comments about my attractiveness, two curious young children, and one very persistent man wanting me to go to his house – the sort of situation in which etiquette forbidding a plain “no” becomes especially obstructive. A different man also came to talk to me, and, seated next to each other on the curb, we chatted about his job as a building painter, his family in Paris, whether I intended to convert to Islam, and whether I was married. After some time I was interrupted by an accented call of my name, and I turned to see yaay beckoning to me from the door. After she set up chairs for us just inside, she gave me a long talk, interrupted by frequent greetings to passers by she knows, about how I ought not talk to strange men. My mom in Michigan would be quite pleased.
When they appeared along the street, my two fellow CIEE program participants shone like beacons – and that’s not just a pathetic attempt at poetry. I believe the first thought through my mind was something like oh my goodness: white people! I subsequently spent several minutes mired in deep guilt for my reflexive bigotry. But… it’s interesting to examine the sudden comfort I felt wandering around with them, even though I don’t know either of them all that well. It had only been a day since I’d been in an auditorium with the other 47 American students, but even so it had been more tiring than I’d realized until I was safely ensconced between two fellow foreigners. With them, the defining characteristic of my presence was no longer the color of my skin. Sure, the chance to speak English helped. Sure, these happen to be some excellent people with whom to wander the streets and hold dripping whole mangoes to our mouths over the side of a roof. But the stark comfort of a shared physical trait, particularly one that has garnered such attention just walking down the street, was more relaxing than I would have thought. I had wanted, among many other things, to see what it would be like to be a racial minority, something to which I’ve certainly never come close before for any prolonged period of time. I don’t know if this sliver of experience is anywhere close to universal, but it’s certainly a powerful feeling, even a scary one. I’ve always tried hard to avoid the mentality of “us” and “them.” But I’m seeing now how the smaller and more visible the “us” is, the more alluring it becomes. My new family shares with me and welcomes me, and I like them very much. But it’s also true that without even trying I can share this experience and its occasionally suffocating sense of uncertainty and strangeness with the other Americans. I’m not at all sure I like the social psychological implications of that, but it’s a lovely thing to have – none of us are going to fall off the palm tree and die, for all that I’ve occasionally felt drunk on the ride.
