Hey all – sorry for the long space between posts. The week before last I was on fall break in the Gambia, last week I was swamped with homework, and this week I’ve been sick and holed up in my room where there is no internet.
Those members of my family who I managed to send e-mails to during my week-long stint in the Gambia already know that I really didn’t enjoy my time there (for those readers who are planning trips to the Gambia themselves, fret not – it wasn’t the Gambia’s fault. I’d still recommend it as a vacation spot). In light of that, it would probably make sense to dedicate this blog post to my ill-fated week, going over exactly what I didn’t like about it. But I’m not. (Ha! Ha!) This blog post will be almost entirely dedicated to Senegalese Mealtimes.
Most of my fellow classmates have run into problems with food, mealtimes, and eating in Senegal. After all, it’s hard to imagine a cross-cultural comparison between Senegal and the United States that yields more differences than eating. The Senegalese diet is very different and much less varied than a typical American’s. In the US, we eat with fork, knife, spoon, and our very own plate or bowl. In Senegal, everyone eats out of the communal bowl at mealtimes. Those of us who, like me, were lucky enough to get a modern family have the luxury of using such amenities as a table and a spoon. Otherwise, you sit on the floor and eat with your hands.
I’m a self-centered creature, so I’m not going to take the three typed pages I’d need to explain why eating this way, in the Senegalese cultural context, makes sense – just take my word for it that it does, and if you’re interested, shoot me an e-mail. But as glaringly huge as the gaps between American and Senegalese mealtimes already seem, these are still only surface level differences.
In Senegal, how you eat, when you eat, and where you eat says a lot about your status and role in your family. Because of this, mealtime with my family is the one place where I feel like Carolyn Carson and Caroline DIENE are on a collision course set for disaster. As Carolyn Carson, I’m a guest in the Diene household. My responsibilities are to eat as much as I can hold to do honor to the cook and not question how food is repartitioned around me. Happily enough, these responsibilities coincide almost perfectly with the two cultural rules regulating eating that I grew up with in the United States: Clean Your Plate, which is really just shorthand for Make sure you get enough to eat so you don’t bother Mom for a snack between mealtimes, and Don’t comment on how much or how little those around you are eating.
But, for better or for worse, I’m not just Carolyn Carson anymore. I’m also Caroline DIENE, oldest daughter and second child in my family – a position that comes with very different mealtime responsibilities than those of Carolyn Carson. It’s Caroline’s responsibility to make sure that everyone around her gets enough to eat by monitoring how much people are eating and how much food they have in front of them and it’s her responsibility to repartition the food in the communal bowl as necessary. The difference between Carolyn Carson and Caroline DIENE goes way beyond being the youngest daughter in my American family and the oldest daughter in my Senegalese family – it’s the difference between communal living and independence, the difference between a society based on individualism and self-reliance (make sure you get enough to eat) and a society based on hierarchy and mutualism (make sure everyone you’re eating with gets enough to eat).
Unhappily, the transition between Carolyn Carson and Caroline DIENE is not going to be an easy one. Caroline DIENE is a young adult in her society: she knows how to run a Senegalese household, has fully mastered Senegalese values and cultural norms, and understands how her status relates to the status of everyone around her, and how her behavior should change accordingly. Even if I was capable of achieving these things in the four short months I will be in Senegal, there are aspects of Caroline DIENE’s identity that Carolyn Carson doesn’t much like. American, feminist, and individualist as I am, there are some parts of my Senegalese identity that rankle against my American identity.
I guess the upshot of all this is, at any given moment, I’m not entirely sure whether I’m Carolyn Carson or Caroline DIENE. And I’m even less sure who I’ll be when I finally go home.
