Mungiy ci jamm. Everything is in Peace.

PST is almost over and everyone in my language group seems to be itching for it to end, be done with and behind us. Our language teacher, who since the beginning hasn't exactly been enthusiastic, is as guilty of this PC-senioritis (ick, cliche) as any of us. The veil of serious academic study has been disintegrating over the course of the class. Today, as a way of "studying the future tense," she took us to visit a seetkat - a fortune teller.

Down a dusty alley and past a compound of toubab-awed families, we walked into a dark, hot room. One at a time, the seetkat gave us a handful of shells to wish/pray over and then told our futures while tossing the shells over her woven plate. Each of us got a similar, fairly mundane, curiously upbeat prescription with some obvious reference to our work here in Senegal and our families thinking about us back home. Everything was baax (good) and everyone ci jamm (in peace).

Most of the details did not live up to our expectations of juicy detailed gossip (who would ET, who would find a Senegalese wife), but some amusing fortunes were told. There's a marriage in at least one person's distant future and 3 girlfriends in another's (!!!). Someone was told to prepare sweet milk and give it to 3 little girls. As for me, the seetkat pegged me as intelligent, quick in my studies, but sometimes forgetful and lost in thought. ("Airhead" is a concept which translates across the Atlantic. Too true in my case.)

Forty minutes later, we walked out of that sauna of a room, each 200CFA lighter. It was an interesting, ridiculous experience - too familiar to take seriously, too foreign to deride completely.

Beyond that, mungiy ci jamm.


As an aside, Alyssa insists I mention this experience: I sat through an uncomfortably graphic, dubbed film with my family (kids included) last night. Soft core porn apparently can get more awkward... Thanks, Anna Nicole Smith, for your contributions to African entertainment.