“Actually, I have five husbands already – thanks anyway.”

And the weird part is that sometimes even that won’t make them go away. By “them,” I mean, of course, the men. They’re everywhere: on street corners, in shops, on transit, at social events. And, yes, I know that the fact that I see members of the other half of the human race fairly regularly is not exactly an earth-shattering observation. It’s just that, usually, I’m not especially aware of the fact that they’re men, and I’m a woman. In the U.S., I spend most of my time thinking and doing things without active reference to my gender. Here, it’s hard to ignore.

“Ma belle,” they’ll call, or sometimes they’ll just hiss, stare, or pucker their lips.

“La plus jolie des blanches.” – “The prettiest white woman.”

“Donne-moi ta numero!” – “Give me your phone number!”

“Comment tu t’appelle?” – “What’s your name?”

“Vous êtes sûre que vous ne voulez pas un mari?” – “You’re sure you don’t want a husband?”

And even an answer as clear as “yes, quite sure,” doesn’t seem to get the point across. At this point these types of male people have been categorized in my head somewhere near telemarketers: I can’t usually bring myself to be downright rude to them, but I’m not above having a little fun. The fabricated stories I tell to the men who start running with me about a third of the times I go by myself have gotten increasingly ridiculous. The first time this happened I was caught off guard: running is something one does in public, but I always thought it generally understood that, aside from the companionable wave to other runners, exercising alone is a private activity that’s supposed to stay that way. Suddenly, though, there was a young man next to me, whose conversation quickly descended into repeated pleas for me to be his girlfriend and promises that “I’ll do whatever you want.” All the while that I fumbled my way through slight modifications to my name and residential location, of course, I was subtly picking up the pace, hoping to drop him. I would like to think I can be forgiven for not successfully doing so considering that I had already gone two miles when he started, and the results weren’t entirely negative in that his increasingly heavy breathing inhibited his commentary somewhat. In the end, I was only able to get him to go away by telling him I didn’t remember my own phone number and was about to get a new e-mail address, and accepting his phone number written on a piece of paper that he extracted from the clods of errant trash on the side of the road.

Next time I’m going to see if I can get someone to believe I come from a nonexistent country; I’ve already progressed to Canada and jumped to Latvia, and made the rounds of college majors from anthropology to chemistry. Next time I may be eschewing college in favor of a yacht tour around the world with my boyfriend the colonial governor of Antarctica. Yes, I do miss ever being cold, thanks very much.

And sometimes I do find it all absolutely hilarious – but I’ll admit that sometimes I don’t. It depends a lot upon my mood, and I think the endorphin high I hit on the Corniche provides a substantial boost to my good humor. Sometimes, when I’m more tired or stressed or simply at my daily limit for random propositions, I just want to yell at them to get away from me, that I’m not an object for their entertainment, that in fact I talk and even mean what I say when I say no, and that they had better start affording me a basic level of human respect or so help me I will skewer them with the nearest convenient sharp object even if it’s my pencil.

There are places in the U.S. where I expect men to be romantically forward, even if generally the sidewalk is not one of them. I don’t go to dance clubs and get offended if someone asks me to dance. Here, however, in my (granted, not incredibly extensive) clubbing experience the men generally skip the “fair lady, would you be interested in grinding with me?” phase in favor of moving straight to the “look, I am now grinding with you” phase. And I’m not even terribly surprised or offended by that, when it’s compared to the fact that they are almost totally unresponsive to “actually, good sir, I’m not interested in grinding with you at the present moment.” Indeed, their response to an actual physical move away – as in, away to a different area of the dance floor – is to follow. Their response to a relocation to a corner table occupied with people I know is to sit down next to me and put their arm around me. At one point, I started dancing with someone else only to have the man who had been following me around all evening grab my wrist and attempt to pull me in his direction. I was a bit angry; and I was even in a good mood at that general time. I mean, there’s certainly some humor to be found in that level of (I can only assume) intentional obliviousness – it’s so absurd I almost wouldn’t believe it happens. But at some point it still strikes me as an issue of basic respect. I expect to be treated as though I am capable of accurately representing my thoughts and feelings and as though those thoughts and feelings have weight, and I am used to the world generally living up to this expectation.

And it was all the more jarring when I realized that it wasn’t just an issue of gender. It’s an issue of race. Yeah, I know. Let’s raise the political incorrectness-potential of this post to the second power – I’m all about life on the edge. But, seriously: one glance at the dance floor from above, and you realize that it’s only the white girls who are dancing with guys in a way that we would consider to be “dancing with guys.” (And, in all cases that I’ve experienced, my group of fellow CIEE students are the only white people present.) There are overwhelmingly more men than women out at night, but the local women also seem to keep mostly to themselves. As I’ve heard it expressed, almost in these exact words: if a man sees a girl going out, he’ll think she’s the wrong type and won’t marry her. All of which, of course, leads me to the uncomfortable conclusion that guys are all over my fellow tubaabs and I because they see us as their best and possibly only chance to, ahem, “get some.” And it’s not like I’m vain enough to have thought that I really have “the beauty of an angel,” or that the advances of my random running companions are caused solely by my overwhelming allure at mile 3.5… but, still. There’s a whole messy package of connotations that go along with being white, and especially American (this is on the future-post sticky note, never fear), and I’m discovering that one of them is that white people – especially Americans – are fairly loose, physically. The thing is, too, that this stereotype, like most stereotypes, is not entirely unfounded. I think of myself as a fairly un-sketchy person, compared to my demographic of U.S. college students – but the fact remains that a judgment that I would at least consider dancing with a guy in a way that a Senegalese woman probably wouldn’t is an accurate one.

A bit of mostly accidental research led to a discovery about seventeen times more disturbing. Apparently, according to a half-page blurb in my guidebook, the Gambia (the country that squiggles part of the way through the middle of Senegal from the Atlantic Ocean in one of the most awkward cartographic endeavors I have ever seen) has a problem of reverse sex tourism. I say “reverse” because it’s the opposite of what I (and, I think, most people) think of as sex tourism. Here, it’s not foreign men preying on young girls but European women over the age of forty being seduced by young Gambian men who apparently receive some sort of indirect financial benefit from this situation. And… I know I’m not in the right age demographic or even the right country for this, but I have to wonder: what is it that the random guys on the street think they’re going to get from me? Much though I’m tempted to assert that they’re just stupid, I know that’s not true, and the only other alternatives are that they have actually been reinforced for this behavior in the past or that there is some reason known to half the population of Dakar for them to expect to be reinforced for it in the future. I mean, I know that following me for a few minutes is not an incredibly costly endeavor, particularly if your profession is selling phone cards or buying things for a boutique or nonexistent, but… do they actually think that there is some chance that pestering me will lead to any sort of future romantic or fiscal relations? I would say that, obviously, the answer to this question is no, except for the fact that, obviously, the answer is yes.

I will, however, slide a little ways away from the major political faux pas of chalking the entire issue up to race. While Senegalese women seem to get many fewer unwanted and persistent advances, they do still seem to get more than I would in the United States. We were told in orientation that “no” from a woman does not always mean “no.” In fact, the answer has to be “no” the first time because otherwise the woman risks falling into the “wrong type” category. I know there are problems with this in the U.S. Even in my fairly liberal college setting I am disturbed by the fact that, not all the time but much of it, a guy who messes around is lauded or at worst teased by his peers while all of the names for a girl who acts similarly are too derogatory for me to feel comfortable writing here. Whatever your moral or psychological opinion is about such behavior – it should at least be the same regardless of the gender of the person doing it, right? But the double standard is much worse in Senegal. Parents will let their boys do most anything they please but jealously guard the reputation of their girls. A woman’s value is still fairly closely tied to chastity before marriage and fecundity after it. I’ve heard awful stories of girls thrown onto the street by their families when they become pregnant outside of wedlock, which is a fairly high risk given that condoms are generally associated with promiscuity and/or HIV and thus avoided. I’ve heard of girls hiding themselves until they give birth, entirely alone and in dangerously unsanitary conditions, and then killing their own children because they know that otherwise both they and the children will be rejected, ridiculed, and possibly even left to die anyway. Senegal is not a good place to be refusing, on principle, to say that I’m married or engaged because, to my mind, I should be able to say I don’t want to marry you, go out with you, or “discuter” with you whether or not I belong to another man. Here, belonging to a man is a primary goal. A woman will not be taken seriously in the public sphere unless she’s married – which is ironic considering that the duties of marriage are time-consuming enough that the public sphere often ceases to be an option anyway.

None of this is to say that there’s not been major progress. There are female ministers and professors and businesswomen in Senegal, even if women are underrepresented in these areas. The fact is just that women are expected to do a career’s worth of work in the home. Mothers, sisters, and maids cook every meal, clean the house and do the laundry, and it is considered unnatural for men to come near these tasks. The activist who came to talk to us one day in class told an amusing anecdote about his mother-in-law’s utter horror when she discovered him one day in the process of giving his young child a bath. I often get dressed in the morning to the sound of Sokhna sloshing water over the tiles of the hallway. Clothes are washed by hand, powdered soap against the pervasive dust, often by a hired laundress. Hired female help of this sort is common: most of the more economically stable families in Dakar have a live-in maid, a job that I’ve universally been told is the most difficult and the worst paid in Senegal. Maids are expected to do everything in the house and are rarely treated kindly. I’ve heard of a yaay calling the maid from the kitchen to fetch her a bottle that’s two feet away, and chiding her for not being quick enough. Because of the high rates of unemployment and the fact that this is one of the few careers open to women without an education, people are willing to accept brutal conditions and that’s often what they get.

Much as maids are treated poorly, though, mothers are highly respected. A man can stomach an insult to his father, but never to his yaay, and he will fight physically if necessary to defend his mother’s honor. At meals, it is the mother who distributes the food, breaking pieces of the meat or vegetables in the center of the plate with her hands and placing them before whoever she thinks should get them.

This is not to say, though, that wives are treated in a way consistent with western standards of equality. Attitudes towards women are liberalizing, particularly in cities, but there are still traces of a mindset in which women are property. Excision, otherwise known as FGM (this is definitely one of those issues about which it’s difficult to even talk without assigning moral value with your word choice), has been outlawed, but it’s still practiced in rural regions in the east. The very fact that it’s illegal has made the already dangerous and painful practice all the more medically unsafe, since it has to be performed in secret and families risk prosecution if they go to a hospital with complications following the operation – an interesting parallel, actually, to some of the issues that arose in the U.S. regarding illegal abortions. There are major debates over whether Islam encourages or forbids excision. If you’re interested in watching a very well done (if very politically biased) film on the subject and possibly crying a whole lot, I would recommend Ousmane Sembene’s Moolade.

Another area in which the teachings of Islam are debated is polygamy. In cities nowadays the percentage of marriages that are polygamous has dropped to well under 50%. My host parents are monogamous, but I recently learned that both of their fathers were not. There are several CIEE students living in polygamous households. Often, here, each wife will have her own house and the husband will split his time between them. Islam mandates that a man who takes multiple wives must treat them exactly equally, which, actually, is the main argument I’ve heard leveled against polygamy: it’s not possible to act exactly the same towards two different people, and thus Islam forbids polygamy as outside the human capacity. I’ve certainly heard of men who don’t treat their wives equally at all – but I’ve also heard about the host father of one of my classmates, who sleeps in his car one night of the week so as to split the remaining six days exactly evenly between his two wives. Modern marriage contracts in Senegal have a space to specify whether or not the marriage can be polygamous, so, in theory, a woman can stipulate that she would like to remain her husband’s only wife, though it’s debatable how much freedom she actually has to make this choice given the centrality of family rather than individual decisions and age hierarchy.

Once a woman is married, she is very much the property of her husband: he financially supports her, and she makes sure his life is comfortable. Under the law, a husband has the sole authority to choose a residential location and is obligated to provide a residence for his wife. The husband has custody of children and most assets, and dowries are common. Violence within marriage is illegal, but fairly socially acceptable. Menstruation is strictly hidden – no one talks about it, men and prepubescent girls do not ever touch menstrual blood, and it’s rare to see feminine hygiene products displayed in stores, never mind even the slightest indication of the disposal of such products – but at the same time regulates certain actions. Women are not allowed to fast while menstruating, but rather have to make up the days later. This strikes me as very odd and uncomfortable: the entire world gets to know when I’m on my period based on whether I eat or not, but I can’t buy a box of tampons in public? Sorry, by the way, dear readers, if the mention of such things bothers you; I’ll move on to a more tasty aspect of womanhood now.

As my yaay taught me to say with great pride: “togg naa ceebu jën.” I cooked ceebu jën. Sunday I returned from singing with the chorale de Saint-Pierre des Baobabs to Sokhna’s shy but excited invitation to help her prepare our usual lunch. I drank a quick cup of tea, she lent me a wrap skirt, and we got started. She had already cut and stuffed the fish, which looked more alarmingly fish-like than I had realized from eating this dish; it was, in fact, the largest fish I think I’ve seen outside of an aquarium and it went into the pot in several pieces, eyes and all. I consider myself lucky that I’m not particularly bothered by this compared to many of the other American students – though the Belle Viande truck is another story entirely. You know you’re in a place that doesn’t care quite so much about pretending that their food never looked like something alive when a large ice cream truck-esque vehicle turns out to sell massive hanging slabs of recently butchered meat.

I cut and peeled the vegetables: carrots and eggplant and some other things for which I don’t know the English names. We put a number of spices and tomato paste in the pot – this is what distinguishes red from white ceebu jën – and eventually added the vegetables as well as the fish for a second round. The rice we cooked in the remaining sauce, after hand-washing it three times – it always has to be three, Sokhna said. All of this involves a lot of waiting while the various segments cook, so the two of us sat on low wooden stools crammed into the entrance of the tiny, hot kitchen taking turns reading to each other out of her book of stories. We started at about 12:00 p.m. (not including the time Sokhna had already spent on the fish) and finished at about 2:30, an amount of time that I allocate to a cooking adventure, but which she expends every day between school and homework and other household tasks. The whole process also brought me to a revelation about the kitchen appliances: previously, I had assumed that the reason they cook on a gas stove appearing to be roughly the same age as a dinosaur or a car rapide was a financial one – which it may be, but the fact that the stove isn’t electric also allowed us to cook uninterrupted through one of the frequent power cuts, our work illuminated by natural light from the seemingly unfinished walls and ceiling.

Aziz, standing on the stairs as we finished, sang me a brief song of his own devising, the lyrics going something along the lines of “Yacine cooked the ceebu jën – October 24, 2010.”

“You’re so Senegalese,” Sokhna teased, after I carried the huge communal plate out for the family. And, for a moment, I felt like it.

You know, aside from the white skin and the desire to occasionally wear shorts and the fact that I expect my future husband or at the very least my future washing machine to pull some weight. Being here has absolutely shown me how lucky I am to be able to expect those things. Though, if I want to cook for them even occasionally, I’ll admit that it might be a bit inconvenient to have five husbands, after all.