I was sitting on a concrete bench, amidst peanut shells and water packets, watching two Senegalese soccer teams fight it out in front of a crazed crowd when the player collapsed. The match had just ended, with a decisive penalty kick sealing the outcome, and the teams were wandering off the field when one of the forwards from the winning team fell to the ground and began to have a screaming seizure fit near his opponents’ goal. I was pretty taken aback but when I glanced at my host brother who had invited me to the match I was even more startled to realize that he was entirely disinterested in the drama playing out below. When questioned, Asan explained that the other team’s marabout (an Islamic religious leader) had brought this upon the player and that, although he admitted that this was slightly unusual in Dakar, it was not entirely unexpected.
In the larger cities, of which my host-brother cited Mecca and Medina, this sort of thing is apparently far more common as the teams employ many more marabouts to both assist them and harm their opponents during the match. In these more important venues he told me, the crowd often also dissolves into a brawl because different tribes back different teams and a small conflict caused by mystical intervention such as I was witnessing can rapidly escalate past a friendly rivalry. I suppose this would explain the police with riot shields and batons patrolling the soccer game in the little neighborhood of Mermoz.
During the month or so that I have been in Dakar, I’ve learned that there’s always another layer to anything that happens in Senegal and it’s not always one that you would expect. I know many faithful, and many more fanatic, soccer fans but had never experienced religion so deeply intertwined with the sport until a few days ago. And it’s not just the athletic arena that comes with surprise elements. With presidential elections approaching in 2012 the hot topic in politics at the moment is, not which candidates are gearing up to campaign, but the age of the current head of state, President Abdoulaye Wade. You see no one actually knows how old he is (apart, I would imagine, from his close friends and family) and, if they do know, they’re not saying. In French class the other day my professor explained that by all accounts the president must be at least 87 years old. He then proceeded to substantiate this claim with the theory that if President Wade’s recollection of running behind the horse of Cheikh Amadou Bamba, who visited his village in 1925, is accurate, and he had to have been at least 3 years old to have been able to both run and remember running behind the horse, then today he should be 87 years old, at least.
With all of the hype that surrounded President Barack Obama’s birth certificate during the American presidential race, and the many close examinations of his family tree, the idea of not knowing something as basic as his age is unfathomable to me – almost as unimaginable as not knowing when Easter would be each year until the night before. I’m now referring to Korité, the Islamic festival that signals the end of Ramadan, which because it is on a lunar calendar does not have a set date until a few days before the celebration itself takes place. This year, when the clouds over the moon parted on a Saturday night, Islamic religious leaders all around Senegal looked up at the same moon, at the same time, and then disagreed, with some brotherhoods declaring the holiday would be Sunday, while others marked it for Monday. For me this meant a two-day holiday but for families, friends and neighbors in Dakar it created confusion and not a small undercurrent of hostility.
Woven among all of this unfamiliarity, I did find a comfortable American moment a few days ago when the two young boys living in my house asked if we could listen to Akon. With them dancing around the room and singing along to lyrics that they know by heart but (thankfully) do not understand, I had to pause again as I remembered that Akon is Senegalese. He may sing in English and his music may propagate American culture but he actually belongs, so to speak, to Senegal – more unexpected layers.
