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sandy and golden beaches of Southern California (at least I’m told there sandy and golden…I’ve never been there) have been replaced by the majestic, snow-capped peaks of Colorado.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
No comments:
Post a Comment