Bubus, Tacos, and Zombies

I had my first run in with mind-altering chemicals last night. No, mom, don't worry, not those. It's the ones I'm supposed to be taking - you know the ones that are supposed to prevent me from getting the shakes and the chills and the vomiting - malaria.

The prescription slip that came along with my mind (I mean malaria) drugs reads, in big capital letters something like this:

WARNING! DO NOT TAKE THIS MEDICATION IF YOU ARE SUFFERING FROM DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, SCHITZOPHRENIA, MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER, OR ANY OTHER MENTAL DISORDER. THIS MEDICATION HAS BEEN KNOWN TO EXACERBATE (wait did I spell that right?) ANY AND ALL MENTAL CONDITIONS.

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS INCLUDE: (the boring kind like) HEADACHE, NAUSEA, STOMACH ACHE, FUZZY VISION, (and then the much more fun)VIVID NIGHTMARES, PARANOIA, ANXIETY, HALLUCINATIONS, CONFUSION, SEIZURES, LOSS OF PERSONALITY, MEMORY LOSS, LOSS OF A SENSE OF REALITY...and the list goes on and on (I didn't make any of those up either).

Now, before leaving for Africa, I was (admittedly) looking forward to some of these side effects. I mean confusion and memory loss are things that I've dealt with my whole life, usually it goes something like this: I'll be walking down the street on my way to class, then I'll almost get run over by say, a firetruck on its way to rescue an old lady who managed to get stuck in a tree. Then I'll promptly forget where I was going and I'd be confused: Do I know any old ladies? And what's she doing in that tree anyways?

Fortunately, I've managed to defeat natural selection for just over 20 years (because we all know that the caveman wondering what the old lady is doing in the tree isn't going to catch any buffalo), so confusion and memory loss are nothing new. What I wanted was something hipper, edgier: paranoia, loss of reality, hallucinations, vivid dreams. Something to write home about. Something to brag to my friends about when I got home: "yeah, you think your trip to Paris was cool, well I went to Africa where I discovered that eviler pelicans are plotting to take over the world and convinced the evil hoards of evil goats to join me in defending humanity." The seizures though I can do without.

Unfortunately, my medications and mental state would not comply and I remained hallucination-free dissapointedly sensible, and all my dreams were just weird.

That is, until late last night.

I'm on some elevator, riding it around. It's like Willy Wonka's great glass elevator: it goes upways and sideways and downways and leftways and inside and outside and inside-out and outside-in. So I'm going through my day, taking the elevator to and from class. When I try to go to the library however, the elevator decides that I would rather go to the cafeteria because it's hungry. So it does a bendy loopy turn and dives down to the cafeteria. It crashes through the window and dumps me in the top of the playspace above the food court (yes, apparently my foodcourts come with playspaces).

I pick myself up, dust myself off, and turn to go get something to eat. Except I can't. Something's holding me back. I turn around to find a man in a bubu holding on to me. That wasn't the weird thing (if you can believe it - how many times do men in bubus decide that they're not going to let go of you? How many times do men in bubus grab you in the first place?). The weird thing was that this man in a bubu had no eyes - just holes where his eye sockets would normally be. Fortunately, he kept his eyes closed so as to spare me the sight of his brain, but still it was freaky enough.

Now, when I see a man in a bubu with no eyes, I immediately get suspicious. I mean the color of his bubu looked really good on him, and how did he pick it out if he had no eyes? How did this dude find the bubu in the morning after he woke up? Do eyeless men in bubus open their eyelids when they wake up or are they just "awake" in a metaphysical sense of the word? When he finally got out of bed, how did he find his closet? Did he put the bubu on himself or did his wife dress him? Who would marry an eyeless zombie anyways? Did they have eyeless bubu-clad zombies to go with their bubu-clad house? Do you think he cleans the sockets of his eyes or do they just collect dust? What is he going to do when the evil hoards of evil goats implement their plot to take over the world? He'll just be sitting there looking as the goats silently ate every last scrap of clothing on his body, and wouldn't notice until it was too late and he was chilly (cause it doesn't get cold here).

And when an eyeless zombie all decked out in a really nice bubu won't let go to me, I (naturally enough) start to panic. I mean what does this guy want with me anyways? He better not come for my eyes because I enjoy doing things like looking. I hope he doesn't try to eat me because I'm kind of skinny and don't have that much meat on my bones - and everyone knows that toubabs taste like sour milk anyways. So I did what anyone would do when attached to a very persistant bubu clad eyeless zombie - I kicked him in the shins. But everyone knows that bubu-clad eyeless zombies are immune to shin kicks - a fact that I was made painfully aware of when my bubu-clad eyeless zombie turned into (and I'm not making this up) a little alligator wearing a t-shirt that said "get me some taco." Oh and he still wouldn't let me go.

Little alligators are scary enough, but when they come with a craving for Mexican food they become downright freaky. My dad showed up to save the day (from where I cannot say), and started to stomp on our t-shirt wearing taco-eating lizard. At this point, I decided that enough was enough. I wanted out. You might think I'm a quitter, but up to this point I had endured the Willy Wonka ride from hell, an eyeless bubu-wearing zombie, and a taco loving lizard. You would have left too. This being a dream, I did what any sensible dreamer would do - I forced myself to wake up.

I opened my eyes and found myself gasping in my room. My heart was beating a million miles a minute, and a cold sweat was pouring down my back. It was really really dark (maybe because it was only 1.30), but luckily my eyes came equipped with built in flashlights. I would look at the walls and there would be a little patch dimly illuminated - just enough so I could see the graffitti painted all over my walls.

It was at this point that I realized that eyes don't come with flashlights built in. Furthermore, upon going to sleep the walls of my room were painted in a dull shade of white - no graffitti to be found anywhere. Something was amiss. I began to panic. I knew I was awake, but still seeing all sorts of crazy things. Don't look at the fan, the little red lights will look like eyes oh my god they do look like eyes quick turn on the light before you start imagining people in the room what the hell was that shadow over by the door am i going crazy?

I reached over and turned on my bathroom light. I saw that my fan did not have eyes and was only an air-mover. I saw that my walls were eggshell white and sufficiently graffitti free. Its effect was immediately calming - like a cool breeze on a hot day - I wasn't crazy.

I got a drink of water and tried to slow my heart down. But I kept coming back to my bubu-clad eyeless zombie and taco-eating alligator. Every time I pictured that eyeless zombie face or taco shirt, I shivered a little bit.

But it might have just been the chilly (not cold) air.


Anyways, I've got to go discuss the impending eviler pelican invasion with the evil hoard of evil goats that lives by my house. Right after I take this week's malaria meds...

Love,
Jake

Food Coma: Dakar

Yesterday I promised that I would have a Thanksgiving story to tell you guys about our Thanksgiving dinner and by golly I intend to keep that promise. So ready, set, go!

I’m told yesterday at school (yes, I actually had to go to class on Thanksgiving day – how unfair is that?) to show up at Serigne’s roof at 18.30 (that’s French for 6:30 pm) because that’s what time the party starts. So 18:30 rolls around (because the watch I bought here is stuck in French time) and I realize that I need to buy some bread to bring to this party. I buy some bread and head on over to Serigne’s house. Luckily, he lives in my neighborhood and even more luckily he provided an easy to read map to direct me to his house.

It’s 18:40 by the time I roll up to Serigne’s rooftop and I’m informed that even though I am 10 minutes late, I am the first one there. First thing I’m thankful for: the fact that the other toubabs are even later than me covering up my chronic lateness.

So people start trickling in, bringing in all sorts of things that they’ve made and/or purchased for the feast tonight. I made a list as the night went on and it looks something like this:

Asian food rolls
Homemade applesauce
Kraft mac-n-cheese
Homemade mac-n-cheeze
Mashed sweet potatoes
Orange squash
Fried plantains
Vegetable noodles
Garlic and rosemary mashed potatoes
Chicken
Stuffing la Africain
Quiche with tomatoes on top
Salsa
Cranberry sauce in a can (!!!)
Juices de: bissap, buie, ditakh, gingembre
Egg rolls
Bread
Salad
Canned popcorn
Homemade trail mix
Canned fruit cocktail
Homemade fruit salad
Peach cobbler
Squash pie
Vegetable vendor squash pie
Madelines with chocolate
Cookies, esp. of the Aladin, Karen, Salsa, Favorite, and Alaska varieties (don’t worry the names have nothing to do with the actual cookies)

Second thing I’m thankful for: the creativity and ingenuity of all my toubab comrades that made such a feast possible.

Now don’t worry, I made sure that I tried everything. And I can definitively say that even though my comrades had to get a little creative when faced with some of the ingredients that us Americans like to put in our traditional foods (I mean why would anyone can a pumpkin in the first place? But squash makes a darn fine substitute), they still managed to put on a fantastic Thanksgiving meal. I am also incredibly impressed at the American traditions that somehow found their way through the USPS, a plane ride or two or twelve over the Atlantic, and then (as if that wasn’t enough punishment for a box of food), survived the Senegalese Package Depot.

Just so you understand what it was like we’ll digress for a bit – when I had to go pick up my package I had to first of all find the package depot (not a clue why we can’t just keep packages at the post office near school). That involved a car rapide ride (always fun and never rapide) downtown, asking about four different people at the post office downtown, then about a half hour walk to find a building that was only two blocks away. When I finally got to the package depot, I went up to a window and showed them my package slip. They told me to go talk to a guy in the next room. The guy looked at my package slip and told me to go talk to a guy in a back room. I wandered through this door into an air-conditioned room and found a guy at a desk whose only job must be to verify that people do, in fact, have their package slip because he told me to go find that big guy out front. He also stamped my slip to prove that he had looked and made sure that I had my slip. The big guy told me to go on through to the package room. I showed the guy in the package room my slip (that had been stamped to prove that I in fact had it) who went back into the labyrinth of bookshelves, with packages strewn everywhere like some sort of Greek ruin. How he even found my package is beyond me. But he came back with my package. He then opened it to make sure that there was nothing illegal (like goat feed) in it. After taping it back up, he told me to go talk to “that guy.” So I went back to the big guy, who wrote something in a notebook. Then I had to go talk to another guy right next to the big guy who wrote something in his notebook. They both then stamped my package slip to prove that they had, in fact, looked and even written in their notebooks (at this point my package slip was looking more like a page in a diplomat’s passport than anything remotely useful). I was then told to go pay the customs fees (oh by the way I still don’t have my package). So I go pay my custom fees (who stamps my passport – I mean package slip). He then tells me I need to go talk to the guy at the front desk, who really is just the guy from the package room. The guy at the front desk looks at my passport and tells me I need to pay these ladies the processing fee. I pay them and they stamp my passport to prove I paid. They then tell me I need to go back to the desk and our friend from the back shows up and tears out a page from my passport. He then ventures back into the labyrinth, battles a Minotaur, and returns with my package. Apparently I can now go.

Third thing I’m thankful for: packages being delivered straight to your door.

Anyways, somehow the cranberry sauce and Kraft mac-n-cheeze made it through this and into my bowl where it was mixed with all of the above (my own personal Thanksgiving tradition) and thoroughly appreciated by my stomach.

People are eating, Kiki and I are discussing the finer points of the bissap markets in the States, as well as the effect that China’s entry into the WTO would have on market dumping and the fragility of the African bissap growers (how intellectual I know!), and general thanks are being given all around. The night is getting late, it’s getting sort of chilly (not yet cold though), and someone decides to start a Circle of Thanks. After everyone had gotten in a rather large circle on Serigne’s terrace, we went around and said what we were thankful for this Thanksgiving. It was a good moment, some girls cried, and everyone was happy and felt good.

Are you ready for our Christmas Spirit moment? You’d better be because it’s coming…

That night on Serigne’s roof, I learned that the true spirit of Thanksgiving is not stuffing yourself on delicious food until you burst, and then washing it down with three slices of pumpkin pie. The true meaning of Thanksgiving is to remember all the things that we’re happy for having in life. As the metaphorical baton was passed around the Circle of Thanks and people started saying what they were thankful for, I heard people who have struggled with Dakar All the cynicism that permeates CIEE discussion about Dakar was thrown out the window, off the roof, out of the country, and replaced with love: love for new friends, love for family (and how much they missed them), love for the opportunity to have the chance to live in Dakar and test yourself and experience new things, love for Thanksgiving, and love for all that good food that had been brought. remember why they came here, remember the good times they’ve had here with all the new friends they made.

Fourth thing I’m thankful for: the power of Thanksgiving to make people happy.

Once the Circle of Thanks had dissolved, people started to trickle out as slowly as they had trickled in – saying goodbyes and happy thanksgivings and plans were made for this weekend. Stuffed to the gills, I decided to have one more piece of squash pie before leaving.

Fifth thing I’m thankful for: the fact that I only live 10 minutes away from Serigne’s house so I didn’t have to walk a long ways home before passing out full on my bed.

So I hope everyone had a delightful Thanksgiving this year. I’m going shopping today (Black Friday!) but I’m pretty sure that today is one of those days where I’d rather be hassled at a market in Dakar than looking for 4 hours for a parking place at the Danbury Fair Mall only to have to endure population densities that would make Tokyo look like the wide open tundra of northern Canada once I finally made it inside.

Oh and goats, I’m thankful for goats.

Love,
Jake

PS - I'm officially updating only the Google Pictures now. Picasa just takes too long and is too complicated. Sooo...from now on all new pictures will be on the google link over there ----->

Barlie Chown’s Thanksgiving Day Special

Does that make me Charlie Brown (or Barlie Chown as he’s apparently called in Senegal)? In any case…

Happy Thanksgiving boys and girls (and I suppose women and men for the over-18 crowd that may/may not be reading this)!!!

I know it’s been a while since I’ve written last, and I’m sorry, but for the past 10 days, Devon’s been here hanging out and generally seeing exactly what it is that Senegal has to offer (other than goats of course, which she saw plenty of). We went to Popenguine, which is Heaven’s answer to Toubab Dialow. Remember how awesome Toubab Dialow was? (it’s alright if you don’t, you can read about it by finding the post “Thiebudjen in Paradise” which is found in September somewhere over there ----->). Well Popenguine was 8.548.567.578 (that’s French for 8,548,567,578) times better. Pictures are found by following the Google pictures link (also found) over there ------>. There’s also pictures of all the other neat stuff Devon and I did when she was here, including Iles des Madelines part deux, and more fun at the escarpment. They say a thousand pictures are worth one word (or something like that), so I’ll just use the pictures and save my words for a much more important story: that of Thanksgiving.

A long time ago, there were some people who came here from a far away land to escape the developed world. Nowadays, we call these people “CIEE Students.” In November, with a little less than a month to go in their trip, these CIEE students gave thanks and celebrated the fact all of them had made it this far alive and relatively unscathed (except for the occasional run in with an evil army of evil goats plotting to take over the world). They celebrated in the traditional way of their forefathers and foremothers and foreparents who they had left behind in the Old Land many moons ago (well, maybe only 3 or 4 moons): they held a large feast, and they called it “Thanksgiving.”

In the Old Land the time leading up to Thanksgiving was a time of change. The seasons were changing from Summer (the hot season) to Winter (the cold season). The time in between was called Fall, or Autumn depending on who you talked to and how pretentious they wantedto sound. Nature herself also changed. Nights would get longer and the days would start to get colder. The leaves of the trees would change color, from the deep, dark greens of Summer to brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges of the Autumn. When all the leaves changed color, the trees would shake them off and they would fall to the ground. Likewise, the clothes of the people in the old country would fall towards the ground (no, not in that way): sleeves on shirts would get longer and thicker, shorts would turn into longs, all in the name of keeping legs and arms warm. For many a CIEE Student, this period of change was their favorite time of year: the air smelled of cold and the wind carried the spice of the leaves about.

Things were different in the New Land (as it was called way back then). It was still a time of change, but the change was more subtle. Instead of hot to cold, seasons changed from Really Freaking Hott (with two T’s) – as it was called – to not so freaking hot (note the differences in capitalization). It also changed from the Wet season (which was probably a misnomer since it only rained about three times – and for only about 15-20 minutes each time) to the Dry season (which was correctly named – because it never rained - not once). The Evil Army of Evil Goats that roamed the Streets of Dakar turned into the Eviler Army of Evil Pelicans that sat on the rocks as they plotted the demise of the boatful of Toubabs that was stupid enough to get too close to them.

The change of the seasons also affected the minds of the CIEE students. Things that once appeared normal to them started to look rather strange in the New Land. They saw pictures on the television of people from the Old Land – dressed as Old Landers would normally be dressed in November: with longs (as opposed to shorts), sweatshirts, and strangest of all: coats. The outfits looked oddly familiar, like a long lost toy from their childhood that they had stumbled upon in the closet. Yet, as they tried to remember what it was like to be actually “cold,” they found that it was a concept that was largely lost on them: the vast majority hadn’t been really “cold” in months apart from a few times in a room with the air conditioner turned up way too high.

Strangest of all however, were the customs that were imported to the New Land from the Old Land. In the Old Land, Thanksgiving and November were usually accompanied with the traditional images of Christmas: white snow-covered Christmas Trees, snow-covered mountaintops, and images of landscapes covered in snow, both the ground-lying and falling varieties.

Now, the New Land was predominantly a Muslim land, with a very small Christmas-celebrating population. Yet still, Christmas paraphernalia permeated the land. Gas station convenience stores would have white-washed pictures on their windows depicting the very same snow-covered Christmas trees, mountaintops, and landscapes (complete with both the ground-lying and falling varieties). It seemed out of place to see frigid, snowy mountain peaks in this New Land with the average flatness of a pancake where the air never dropped below what Old Landers would call “sort of chilly.”

Try to imagine passing this gas station on a Car Rapide – misnamed as most of them are in fact not rapide but quite slow – packed like sardines in a can so that half of you is sitting on some dude’s lap while some other dude is sitting on your other half. Oh and it’s really, really hot and you’re sweating through your shirt. And then you see snowy mountain peaks (did I mention this is a Muslim country?).

Where am I???

So as you’re sitting in your living room, enjoying the chestnuts roasting over the open fire as the wind blows the leaves around outside, watching football, with the turkey and stuffing in the oven, wearing your sweatshirt, dreaming of a white Christmas, remember those of us who are sweating through our shorts and T-shirts, eating Eviler pelican (no turkey here) casualties of the battle between the evil armies of the Evil Goats and the Eviler Pelicans, and are really confused because the calendar is telling me it’s Thanksgiving but the sweat pouring down my back is telling me it’s closer to the Fourth of July.

Save me some stuffing.

Love,
Jake

PS- we are having a sort of Thanksgiving feast tonight, it’s at the program director’s house. It’s sure to be the most interesting Thanksgiving I’ve ever had…what with the absence of such Thanksgiving staples as cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, oh yeah and turkey (I think we’re using chicken instead). It’s sure to be interesting so you can expect an exciting post about it tomorrow…until then inchallah.

Hitchock was Right…

I have never been so terrified of birds in my life.

I used to think that I was ok with animals, wildlife in general, and especially the flying variety. I’ve got a dog who thinks that the only place she can puke and/or poop and/or pee in the house is on my bed. I’ve been to Maine where I’ve put my hands on live fish as they flop around, only to get stabbed by the evil spines in its back (I’m still waiting for the evil to take me over…but so far the Spot is fighting the effects – only one force is allowed to take me over and the Spot was here first). Even bugs don’t faze me – after prom there was this thing at school where we got to eat bugs – I ate a few of them (my friend here Ruthzee still doesn’t let me forget that). And the other night, I woke up in the middle of the night because something was crawling around my mouth. I brushed it off and it landed on my chest. It then JUMPED back on my face so I swatted it away. I got my shoe and smacked it. That morning, I picked up my shoe to find a cockroach about two inches long still twitching underneath it. My reaction on discovering that a cockroach had most likely crawled IN my mouth while I was sleeping? “C’est ca l’afrique.”

The point being: I used to think I was pretty comfortable with all fiefdoms (or however they divvy up kingdoms these days) in the Animal Kingdom. Then we went to the bird reserve near St. Louis (no, not Missouri) this weekend.

So we’re on a boat, taking pictures of wild boars drinking from the river, applying sunblock so as not to get roasted by the African sun, and watching pelicans and other birds as they lazily float by. Our only concerns are the crocodiles that might decide to eat our feet if we dangle them in the water, so we don’t dangle them in the water, and the water’s too high for the crocodiles anyways. It’s very idyllic and peaceful. It’s a real vacation from the hustle-bustle of the city. We’re enjoying each other’s company and enjoying life.

We round a bend in the river, and the stench hits us first. Then a gap in the trees reveals about 3,000 pelicans chilling out on rocks in the river. Our guide tells us that these are the pelican nesting grounds, and lucky ducks that we are (though curiously there were no ducks in this river…weird huh?), we’ve arrived right smack in the middle of nesting season.

I never realized how untrustworthy 3,000 pelicans look when they’re just sitting on a few rocks sticking out of the water, just looking for something to do.

Our guide though, wants to take us in for a closer look. Uh oh, I’m thinking, I’ve seen The Birds, I know what a flock of 3,000 birds can do if they set their minds to it. And I don’t trust these pelicans. I mean, are they used to a boat full of toubabs coming within 100 feet of their nesting grounds? Are pelicans like mama bears and kill anything that threatens their young? Where are all the goats? Whose gonna protect us if the pelicans attack? I don’t wanna take any chances on pissing off 3,000 pelicans, especially if there are no goats around. My mind flashes to that scene in The Birds with all those crows just chilling out on the playground equipment at the school. Not cool.

Unfortunately, I’m not driving, and our guide seems to think it would be a good idea so we go through a gap in the trees. Oh dear.

If you thought 3,000 pelicans were untrustworthy, then try 21,000. Yeah, that’s right, twenty-one thousand pelicans, sitting on three long rocks, just waiting for someone to mess with them. I don’t think we have that many soldiers in South Korea. And North Korea is building a nuclear bomb.

My mind flashes from the playground to the last scene in The Birds, you know, when they walk out of the house and the landscape is covered in crows: crows on their front yard, crows in the road, crows on the power lines, crows on their roof. My mind is a SportsCenter highlight reel of aerial attacks on humans: the scene where the seagulls attack the dude and that lady in the boat. And then the scene where the sparrows pour down the chimney into their house. And that montage from America’s Funniest Home Videos where the people get bonked in the head with kites, paper airplanes, giant Styrofoam airplanes, and 35 balls to the head in 30 seconds.

And here I am sitting in a boat, staring at 21,000 pelicans and their babypelicans, hoping that they can’t read my mind and get ideas from the highlight reel in my head, praying that they don’t get spooked by the motor (which the driver has now thankfully cut off), begging the kids in the boat not to throw anything at the pelicans, hoping an army of evil goats is on its way up from Dakar to protect us should the eviler pelicans attack (can goats even swim?). I’d even take the less evil daytime-only goats of St. Louis until the round-the-clock Dakar goats get here.

Just someone, please send some goats?

Love,
Jake

Flag Waving for Ex-Pats

I’m watching TV last night, which I will admit is a rare occurrence here, you're more likely to find me staring at the sun than watching TV (it might be because Senegalese TV is in some combination of French and Wolof, and can be hard to tell which is which, or it might just be because Senegalese TV is just plain weird).
Anyways, I’m watching Senegalese music videos with my Senegalese sister after having eaten some real delicious Senegalese food for dinner (which I ate Senegalese style – on the floor)…point is, I’m doing things Senegalese-style here and feeling pretty good about it, like I've got this place down. So this music video comes on, and it’s got some Senegalese rap group or whatever playing Senegalese music. I notice one of these guys in this group has on a New York Giants (yeah, those Giants) big puffy jacket, which gets me thinking. Do those guys even know who the Giants are? Next, I see a guy wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap, and I’m forced to conclude, that at the very least, the New York motif is intentional. But even so, I wonder sometimes, what is this guy trying to say by sporting these team brands?
For example, does he know about the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, without a doubt one of the biggest rivalries in American sports? Does he care that this year was the first year in forever that we haven’t had a Yankees-Red Sox NLDS (or whatever those letters are…I mean I ask if this guy cares but I clearly don’t)? Does the name George Steinbrenner mean anything to him? What about Derek Jeter? Do these names mean anything to you? Does he know that by wearing that hat he’s supporting the so called “Evil Empire” that is New York Yankees baseball?
And what about the Giants jacket? Does Giants stadium mean anything to him? Does New Jersey (probably not...its Jersey why would it)? Did he care that Eli Manning was drafted and does he know that his brother is one of the best quarterbacks in the league? Does he even know who Tiki Barber is???
I ask these questions, not to mock a Senegalese rapper supporting a team that he may or may not know anything about. Because he in fact might be a Giants fan or a Yankees fan, and he may have been legitimately bored when the Yankees didn’t play the Red Sox to see who went to the World Series again. But even if he does, there’s no guarantee that the average Senegalese teenager (his assumed audience) does. And this is where I started thinking.
In the States, wearing a Giants jacket or a Yankees hat in your music video is a statement. If, for example, you wear a Yankees hat, then you are stating, very clearly, that you support evil empires in all their forms. “Win at any cost” is your motto. You throw your lot in with Gengis Kahn and his crew. Maybe Vader wasn’t so bad a guy after all, he was just misunderstood. And it really is a shame that they had to destroy that second Death Star, I mean it wasn’t even finished yet. What about all those innocent contractors? You’re probably that guy who feeds the evil armies of evil goats that roam the streets of Dakar while they plot to take over the world. But then again I don’t like the Yankees.
Now, I’m not Senegalese, but something here tells me that that’s not the message that our rap-video friend was going for. I mean the Senegalese aren’t very confrontational. Aggression is found in mostly the passive form (silent treatment, refusing to take your neighbors fish - we watched a movie on it so I would know). Vader just doesn’t seem like their kind of guy (but then again it probably is because they identify more with the rebels – that whole throwing off the yoke of colonialism thing). Plus, they definitely eat goat here. But on a more serious level, why wear a Yankees jacket if there’s a high likelihood that a good three-quarters of your audience don’t know what a touchdown is (or am I mixing up my sports again?)
As I was watching this video, and our pinstripe-topped friend rapped in a language that I could not, for the life of me understand, I couldn’t come up with a suitable answer to one question: just why was this guy wearing these clothes? I was feeling a little bit outside this whole “culture” business, because surely his Senegalese fans knew why he wore those clothes right? And if I couldn’t figure out what a rapper is doing wearing a Yankee’s hat, then how am I ever going how to learn how to cram 10 goats on top of a station wagon (not to mention the four suitcases and a bike)?
So I sit down to write this and it hits me: people probably don’t have any idea where Giants stadium is, and they’ll most likely stare blankly at me when I make fun of New Jersey to them. All any Senegalese rap fan really needs to know though is that the Giants are an American…thing. What they do or where they do whatever it is that they do is not important at all, but for our Senegalese rap friend, all that matters is the red, white, and blue lettering on his jacket.
Because one of the things that I’ve noticed since I’ve been here is that no matter how much Senegalese people complain about how Americans are rude and their President doesn’t like Muslims (though apparently Bill Clinton is a national hero here – and ‘Monica schmonica, what the president does in his private time is his own business’), I have yet to meet a Senegalese who doesn’t want to go to the States. I’m sure they exist, but they haven’t yet invited me to their secret club where they discuss going to Marseilles and eating fromage while wearing a beret. Meanwhile, American flags (and other American “symbols”) are seen everywhere from the back of wheelchairs to doors to clothing. If you’re planning on coming to Senegal to escape all the flags on pickup trucks and “God Bless America” slogans, then well, I’d start looking elsewhere, because the American dream is alive and fighting here in Senegal.
What’s it fighting you ask (or maybe you’re asking…when’s this going to end? Or did I forget to turn off the oven last night)? Preliminary reports are sketchy, but messengers from the front lines say Dearth Vader has invaded with an evil army of evil goats. Witnesses report seeing George Steinbrenner on goatback leading the charge. As for me, I’m hiding. Goats scare me.

Love,
Jake

In Other News...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/02/AR2006110201896.html

Senegal's made the Washington Post! It's a very good article that paints a good picture of life in Dakar, as well as the issues facing Africa today.

By my book! (wait, what???)
love
jake

A Joke Waiting to be Written

A turkey wearing spoons on his feet walks into a bar in Los Angeles…

I’m sitting in my Wolof class, staring at a map of the US. Like most things here in Senegal, “map” is a relative term: instead of the majestic lands of the United States of America represented from sea to shining sea, from the eastern forests, to the great plains to the great lakes, to Texas (don’t forget Texas, we can’t forget Texas), what is drawn on the board before me looks roughly like a defeathered turkey trying desperately to take off. The comparison is apt for two reasons: one, rumor has it that the majestic turkey was almost our national bird (which would mean endless ridicule by the other teams at the Olympics as the “USA Gobblers” took the field), and c) it's almost Thanksgiving and turkeys everywhere are being plucked and trying desperately to take flight so as to escape the ovens and turkey basters that await.

So here I am looking at a featherless turkey trying to take flight when my professor decides that he could use a bad case of acne. Spots are drawn in strategic places across the turkey’s body, roughly correlating with the location of several NFL franchises (Seattle, Denver, Detroit, DC, Boston, among others). Its as if standing before the class stark naked with his lack of a flying ability on display for all to see wasn’t embarrassing enough for this poor turkey, now the full force of puberty has to hit him all over at once. How was he supposed to get a girl turkey as his turkey date for the annual pre-Thanksgiving turkey ball? Nobody wants to go to the turkey ball with a weirdo.

Kebs, my professor, points to a dot labeled “Colorado” located roughly near where the city of Los Angeles would be found on a normal map. He asks me: fii California la? Which means “is this California?”

Now let’s imagine for a second. I’m looking at a very, very rough representation of the United States, asked to identify if a dot, located in what would definitely be Southern California in the real world, is in fact “California.” But of course, this is Senegal, and the concept of “the real world” is apparently deemed some sort of health hazard here, at least when it comes to mapping. I was therefore forced to deny the existence of California and substitute in some sort of alternate reality where the sandy and golden beaches of Southern California (at least I’m told there sandy and golden…I’ve never been there) have been replaced by the majestic, snow-capped peaks of Colorado.

I would like to note that this whole alternate reality thing would have been much easier to swallow if he had pointed to say, the dot on the east coast marked “Michigan” and said “Fii Seattle la?” I could have said “deedeet, fii du Seattle, fii Michigan la,” denying one false reality and substituting it for another, equally as false as the first.

Which brings me to my next point (or not at all, but you all understand the importance of a catchy transition now don’t you?). This wasn’t the first time that I was forced to confront alternate realities in my Wolof class. Why, just before learning how to ask if Southern California was really Colorado, I learned something much more valuable and imaginationally (yes, there I go making up words again – and you thought/hoped that I was finished) more stimulating: “Lii lan la?”

Roughly translated (or maybe more exactly translation, initial reports are still sketchy), “lii lan la” means “what is this?” The exercises to engrave this phrase into our mind included pointing to an object in the room (usually a door, window, table, or shoe) and asking if that object was something that it was very clearly not (similar to the California/Colorado exercise mentioned above, but without the warped continental drift). It usually went something like this. I would point to a window and say to a classmate “Is this a shoe?” They would reply “no, that is not a shoe,” to which I would ask “what is this?” and they would respond “that is a window.” All very basic, until you get one bored individual such as myself who starts to question things. Asking myself things like, what if that window was a shoe? Do you think it would make me run faster, jump higher, be like Mike?

No, that purse is not bread, but if it were, I bet it would be really hard to cut with the water bottle that you’re pointing to because you want to see if it’s a knife (though I’m told they cut things with water, which I did not know so maybe that water could make a mean knife). And it would be really hard to eat my daily pen of chakiri (that’s Wolof for yogurt and millet goodness served in a bowl – and there’s no mistaking it for a hat) with that desk…but I’d be up for the challenge.

So you see, this is where my mind is going during the insanity of Wolof class. They say (or maybe they don’t, I’ve never really asked) that you can learn a lot about a culture just by studying it’s language, and with Wolof being the 3rd foreign language that I’ve studied, I’d say that for the most part it’s true. But I never knew that the way I learned Wolof would give me such insight into cross-cultural mayhem at work. Maybe it’s because it’s been a while since I’ve studied a language and wasn’t this clever (wait, did I really make that claim? Juuuust kidding!!) when I was younger. Maybe it’s because the French and Spanish are too busy assigning genders to their forks and knives to contemplate just what would happen if you tried to sit on a fork and use your knife as a desk. Maybe it’s because of the hoards of evil goats roaming the streets of Dakar as they plot to take over the world.

Maybe I should just pay more attention in class…

Love,
Jake