GatewayAbroad

Tuesday, September 25, 2007. For your future reference, dear Theophilous, don't take my complaints too seriously, for I am likely to drastically change my mind within the hour. Earlier today I was thinking that I'm a little tired of Dakar, but tonight I'm enjoying my little life here again. This evening, after class, about ten of us trooped down to Medina for our first dance class in the city. Back when we visited the artists' colony at Toubab Dialaw, we had the opportunity to take one class in either dance, drumming, pottery, or batik, and following the wild success of these activities, the program directors arranged for teachers to continue our lessons if we desired. So tonight we met with Ibou, the most muscular person I have ever seen in real life, to learn some basic steps of mbaalax. It was a lot of fun and a great workout. Although the real mbaalax dancers flail about pretty intensely, the movements themselves aren't really difficult - but they lead us through a lot of repetitions, which add up quickly for non-athletic people like me who otherwise avoid movement as much as possible. I'm glad that there are no mirrors in our little studio, which is actually a room in the Agency for Health and Education of Adolescents, because otherwise I might be much more hesitant to throw my limbs around. African dance is very expressive, and while I've always been wont to loosen up my entire body while dancing, mbaalax is quite a shift from the stiff postures required by ballet. Despite the faltering fan, you're soon dripping with sweat, but again, this is not a new experience in Senegal. Sweat-soaked, sunscreen-slathered, unwashed clothes and bodies smell a little like baking bread, or so I tell myself so as to be less disgusted. But these details are immaterial when you're rapidly contorting your limbs, counting the beats along with the BAH-bah-bah of the djembes, watching the instructor move faster and faster and faster until you think you'll fall down and flinging sweat from your fingertips as it mixes mid-air with others' perspiration and losing track of your thoughts as you scramble to pound more and more energy into each step---- and then it's done, and we all hold hands in a circle, respiring in unison, perspiring in unison, and finally punctuating our silent reflections with a loud "Alxamdulilaah!"

Monday evening, September 24, 2007. Well, we can all relax a little, for the evening was a lot of fun. Three of my mother's daughters currently live in Dakar, and they with their husbands and some of their children were over for dinner and all in all it was a great big party around the bowl. From what I've observed, the sisters have a very genuine rapport, seeming to really enjoy each other's company. When one of the other sisters calls from Morocco or Cote dIvoire, they pass around the phone, smiling and repeating "Ca va, ma cherie? Cherie, cherie!" They all laugh a lot together.. I think everyone's energy level explodes from the symbiosis of being together. Even when I don't understand their melange of French and Wolof, I laugh along, wanting to share in their joy. One of the daughters is slim and gorgeous (everyone noted her especial beauty when she came to pick me up the first day!) and wears stylish Senegalese clothing, while the other two are a bit rotund and wear loose floppy buubuus. My newest admirer, four year old Sadiya, provided the evening's entertainment. After squishing her face next to mine and requesting that I draw "flowers and presents" of varying sizes for the hour before dinner, she wowed her audience of parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and toubab with her English renditions of "You make me feel like a natural woman" and "Go tell it on the mountain (dat Zhesu Chry is bore)." Evidently Aretha Franklin's legacy lives among the youth of Dakar.

Saturday, September 22, 2007
**it's difficult to be diplomatic. My plans for meeting with my Fall Break group met some kinks and it fell on my shoulders to work things out, and I hate knowing that people will probably be upset as a result of what I say. It really bothers me when people are upset at me in general, and especially when I feel like I'm doing the best I could. I guess no one likes having even temporary enemies, but I can be really sensitive sometimes. So that made me think of the foreign service and actual diplomacy - could I handle it? The girl who spoke to us from the Embassy did say that it was tough sometimes when she'd go thru the airport and run into guys who she knew whose visas she had rejected, and they recognized her and snarled.
** With that and other things in mind, let me just comment quickly on the laudable idea of "finding yourself" while abroad. Well, sometimes it is unpleasant to discover things about yourself. Discovering inner bravery - that's fun. Discovering inner weakness - that's depressing. Although maybe it bothers non-neurotic people less.
**I keep thinking that it's good that I'm young and able to do these things unfazed. Yes, there's a mouse in my house, but I deal with it. Yes, I know it's only temporary; but also yes, I'm not yet so jaded as to be totally disturbed by it. So I'm not sure if I expect that I won't want to travel when I'm older, or if I just assume I won't have the opportunity to, but these experiences are definitely associated in my mind with the fact of my youth. I don't know what to do with that detail besides take advantage of it, in case I do grow magically unadventurous in the next few years, which will probably happen right about the time that my body realizes that, based on the amount of sugar I consume, it should weigh about six times what it does. So a good combination of things to look forward to in the future.

One of the younger guys who visits my father sometimes (who, in fact, told me that Papa Diop is like another father to him) is named Cheikh. I've had some minor consternation in regards to Cheikh. At first I found him to be very nice and kind, and we spoke a mixture of French and English and he asked me about America and I asked him about his family. Then I think he decided that meant we should be dating, so he'd keep sitting next to me and trying to lean his head on my shoulder, at which point I suddenly developed an undying urge to go do lots and lots of homework. At one point, he told me that Paris Hilton was very "gentille. He had also used the same word to describe me, and I;m not sure how I feel about that implicit comparison. It's too bad that Senegalese men have such different approaches to women, because it would be nice to have Senegalese friends like Cheikh, who seems like he'd be a really nice guy if I didn't have to worry about whether he was going to make things awkward suddenly. For example, I'd love to go tour Universite Cheikh Anta Diop (University of Dakar) before those students start classes, but even if my other friends were with us, I don't really want to encourage this guy to do recreational things with me. Sometimes I'm too wary, sometimes they're too invasive; it's hard to balance. ~*~ My sudoku skills have gone seriously downhill. Granted, I had probably been getting too attached to my daily sudoku puzzle, but it's never pleasant to measure your own atrophy. ~*~ I saw either two mice or the same mouse twice in my room today. Very disconcerting. Very very very. It crawled up the side of the wall where there's a curtain obscuring a dresser. Aside from my fright, I was actually very impressed because I didn't know that mice had that kind of vertical scampering talent. Now tonight, I keep hearing something buzzing in my room. I know that mice don't buzz, but I'm not sure whether I'm more or less scared of things that do buzz. ~*~ Now that it more directly affects me, I recall that my host father mentioned mice in his cabinet, while commenting that he hoped our unofficial cat would stick around and scare them off. While people occasionally have dogs as pets (which we did not learn until we saw pet food in the grocery store; there are, however, zillions of sad skinny stray dogs in the streets), cats are seen as worthless since they aren't at all useful and provide no real companionship. But there are lots of beautiful stray cats (maybe they're fighting the dogs for the food, because stray dogs here are pathetic but stray cats are plump and pretty), including a black cat that hangs around our house at night, mewing plaintively, or screeching like a banshee if something infringes on its territory. One morning when I opened my window, the cat was sitting on the ledge. I decided at that moment that I am definitely a cat person and proceeded to wrestle with my camera for a good fifteen minutes trying to photograph the little beastie. I inadvertently took a video of the cat, in fact, making it the most well-documented aspect of my semester thus far.

I think I like my host father. What he has told me about his life is very interesting and explains some of the less-than-typical-Senegalese aspects of my new life in his house. He is not Wolof, which is the primary ethnicity in Dakar; he is Toucouleur, coming from a prominent family in the North (his surname, Diop, marks him as nobility). In fact, I believe he said that his father was chief of his village, which was the reason that the French colonists sought out young Ibrahim (my father) and siphoned him away into French school in Dakar. So he grew up with a very Westernized education, which is why, for example, he is now not accustomed to eating out of the bowl. After French school, he spent several years in the French army, fighting the wars in Algeria, Lebanon, and Indochina. It's very touching to hear him talk about how he has seen war and therefore hates war; he doesn't understand why people don't get along. As my econ teacher pointed out, people don't make wars, governments make wars, and I think Papa Diop would agree. ~*~ I'm a little unclear on the transition, but after he left the army (decorated with numerous French medals, I might add) he became a doctor, and although he is now retired, a variety of former patients still come to visit his little "cabinet" to get basic medicines. He was married once to a French woman with whom he has several adult sons, but since their divorce and his remarriage with my host mother, he has lived in this present abode while raising their five daughters, now grown. He is an old man, whose expressive face reveals the strength he once had. At rest, he is stern; when I enter, or when he laughs, his face lights up with kindness. Sometimes my host mother interrupts his carefully punctuated speech, as she is too impassioned to resist bursting out thoughts as soon as she thinks them; but when I am alone with Papa, listening to his stories of the Koran and of human nature, it seems clear that the role of wise storyteller is a familiar guise. ~*~ And despite his impressive personage, I am so very amused by some of his habits. He typically wears monochrome polo with slacks, or else he stays in his pajamas all day, like a big patterned child with red silk cuffs. It is only recently that I have seen him in the traditional Senegalese garb of kaftan and loose pants. When he eats, he smacks his lips like my dog does; he has rheumatism in his legs, so when he walks, he takes little sputtering steps just like Winter in 'Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.' My host father punctuates most of his comments with an accepting, peaceful utterance of "La vie est comme ca," his variant on C'est la vie. It's a little bit like that Avril Lavigne song that goes "Lifes like that.." but that's probably not where he picked it up.

Friday, September 21, 2007. It's strange to think about how you might be perceived by others, especially when they only see certain sides of you, whereas you see all sides of you. Because I've been copy-pasting a lot of my emails at night, I think I've been writing a lot of really long and fairly emotional tomes, and I wonder if that's weird, especially for the teachers and professors who might not have known the weird part of me before. Maybe it's refreshing since, as my host mother actually pointed out to me tonight, I am in general afraid to make mistakes and am thus pretty "calme," "timide," reserved. In recent years I've stopped using the word "shy" and have switched to "socially phobic" which in my irrational mind sounds like it should be a better thing. That's why my French isn't improving as quickly as it should be: I'm scared to death of talking to people, especially people who speak French. I would hope that going to Africa would improve my confidence, but evidently that hasn't happened yet. Also strange to ponder: Am I changing? Will I notice it? Will my mother notice it? Am I actually having a life-changing experience, or do I just tell people that I am?
**I think I'm understanding more about the psychological phenomenon of creating heuristics, that is, stereotyping the world around you. In my mind, I also make a lot of Hasty Generalizations in my efforts to characterize this new world around me. When I was riding back into the city from Grand Yoff and I saw the stubbly little skyline and the dusty and inexplicably competent highways, I thought how much it was like Mexico; actually, it's nothing like Mexico. But that's not true. In some ways it's a little bit like Mexico. But equally, in some ways it's a little bit like Oklahoma. Simply put, everything is a little bit like and unlike everything else. So which comparisons are valid, which are useful? Kris and I talked for a long time today about the "typical" Senegalese family. I said I felt like I was cheating since my host family has a lot of amenities relative to some other students' houses; she said she had felt similarly when she was a student here, yet her family structure was totally different from mine, and plenty of families in Dakar have lifestyles similar to both hers and mine. This is the utterly confounding problem I always run into with social science. How many groups must partake in an activity before it becomes representative? Representative of what? Aren't extremes noteworthy, too? Isn't every example a little different? How can you aggregate the dissimilar? How can you draw comparisons without excluding important exceptions? How many oranges equal one apple? If even one family lives like this, aren't they nevertheless Senegalese? I guess you want your expectations to be fulfilled - isn't that the purpose of hypotheses in the scientific method? So in this case, it's almost as if I want things to be as bad and rural and even I'd say primitive as possible. For one thing, it makes a better story. I think the general public stereotypes Africa as a series of dilapidated desert huts. It's as if I would disappoint people if I returned and told them that I had running water. And yet that's also exactly why I came to Africa: to denude my own stereotypes and find out for myself what it's like here. Before coming, I think I had more knowledge about Africa than the average person and I talked to a lot of people who had lived in Dakar, and still it's not possible to understand the city (or any city?) until you arrive. Think of every stereotype about Africa and its probably not actually true of my life here. But then again, Dakar is different. It's a city in a pretty stable democracy. Host families are different; to add another mouth to a family and give them their own bedroom, they have to be vaguely well off. So other parts of Africa, even of Senegal, are totally different. I'm trailing off. Plenty more in this strain in the future, I'm sure.