Happy Tabaski!

Tabaski is a holiday to honor the almost-sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. That means sheep killin’ here in Senegal!

The morning started out when Alyssa’s family slaughtered a big ole sheep bull in the compound. They placed it near a deep hole to catch the blood, and with three men holding it down, her dad slit the sheep’s throat. It was gruesome. (I have video.) The men went to work skinning and butchering up the animal. The women sliced kilo upon kilo of onions and potatoes for the afternoon meal. A few hours later, we all dove in to a gigantic platter of sheep, lettuce, French fries and onion sauce. …And then it was over. No more sheep. Or, at least, one less sheep in the world.

Once everyone was over the food-induced stupor (naptime!), it was time to get dressed up. Tradition says that Tabaski (and Korite) is the time of year to go house to house and ask forgiveness from your neighbors. Tradition also says that you have to do this dressed to the nines in a new outfit and, if you have white people living with you, it’s good to make them dress up and parade them around the neighborhood looking ridiculous. Why I’d be happy to oblige. We put on our complets – mine’s a repeat, Alyssa’s is new – and asked Mami to do our makeup Senegalese style. Sure enough, we looked silly. Pictures are posted; go see for yourself. We went around the neighborhood to a few families with one of Alyssa’s brothers, but honestly that part of the evening was boring, uneventful. Still, now we can say we’ve done Tabaski from beginning to end. Next year, we’re already planning on killing our own sheep…

A full belly makes me smile

Happy day-after-Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope you all got to eat plenty of delicious food, and I hope you were surrounded by people you like.

I am on my first trip away from site and unsurprisingly feeling a lot better than when I wrote my last post. Early Tuesday morning, I started the trek up to Dakar - the ferry ride, the 4.5-hour cramped bus ride, the taxi ride. (Nothing, I know, to volunteers who have to take 20-hour+ rides.) Eventually, I landed at the regional house (dorm-like transit houses throughout Senegal for PCVs) and re-found Alyssa, Katherine and Jackie. We celebrated surviving our first five weeks by eating out at a Chinese restaurant. Eggrolls and hot-and-sour soup were oddly absent, but the lo mein, Sezchuan tofu and cumin calamari were delicious. I'd forgotten what spices taste like...

Wednesday found us at the Peace Corps office, getting Swine and regular flu shots. People will be heading back from their Mecca pilgrimages soon, and the risk for Swine flu is going to be especially high. I'm covered - phew?

Thursday, Thanksgiving, the greatest holiday ever, devoted to food, glorious food, and family. Admittedly, even in the company of my friends, Thursday was tough. I'm used to spending Thanksgiving in the kitchen with Eema, cooking up a feast which we've planned for days, opening the wine early and staying full late into the night no matter how early we start. I'm used to trying new pies from scratch, new turkey or stuffing recipes, and finding new ways to incorporate pumpkin into at least one dish. I'm used to spending the entire day with my family. Anything else is, well, not Thanksgiving.

But there is Thanksgiving, even in Africa, and PCVs were lucky enough to be invited to celebrate at the Ambassador's house. We spent half the day at our boss' house using her kitchen to make some delicious garlic mashed potatoes. Apart from our potluck contribution, we also threw together some cupcakes from a mix which Alyssa's mom sent over in a care package. [Shout-out to Sharyl: they were amazing!] Then, about 40 of us converged on the Ambassador's home and had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Sappy as it is, being surrounded by other Americans, getting in some kitchen time and, above all, a full belly, made for a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Now, I'm back in Thies, crashing at Alyssa's place to witness the glory (translation: sheep-killing) that is the Muslim holiday of Tabaski. More on that tomorrow.

There are a few pictures of ML~ online, finally. New pics start around #144.

Emo alert!

This has been a bad week (mostly explained by the presence of one irritatingly arrogant French person). Also, I've been at my site for 4 1/2 weeks now and I'm fed up with it, with this whole PC experience. It turns out that the country director's challenge to stay at site is worthy of a prize or a treat. I'm thinking a one-way ticket home right now, but a trip to Dakar will have to suffice. Next week is Thanksgiving - my favorite holiday ever - and I don't get to spend it with my family. Instead I'll be going with some other volunteers to celebrate the holiday at the Ambassador's house. Better than nothing, of course; but I'd forgotten how depressing it is to spend this one away from home. [Flashback to France, Nov. 2006 and me eating a slab of slimy deli-style turkey, alone. It was probably raining, too.] Still, there will be good food (American food), friends from my stage, hopefully some alcohol, and plenty of English. For now, I guess that'll have to do.


A few notes:

Laura, thanks for the blog love!! It's lovely having your enthusiasm to put me straight once in awhile!
Ang, yes, use the Fimela address down below. I've already received 2 pkg notifications, which I'll try to go turn in tomorrow! As far as other mail info, go back to that first or second email/post to see some suggestions.
Alaina, no, no, I swear I'm not judging you on this one. I try to keep foreign words in italics; madeup ones like ¨shitton¨I will leave in regular font to keep you guessing. Puzzles are good for the brain.

One long post (sorry!) or a collection of shorter posts for your reading convenience

Friday 11/13: Seawater, milk and millet flour. This is the protective magic potion which my work partner gave me yesterday. He unceremoniously poured it into a used Kirene water bottle and advised me to sprinkle it in front of my door (it’s not Passover yet, is it?) and then bathe with the rest of the potion. According to local tradition, this will ensure that I’m in the good graces of the appropriate neighborhood génie, and protected from unmentioned evils. At some point, I will need to witness a ceremony where a guardian will sprinkle that same mixture on the spirit’s holy tree and I, having been doused in more of the mixture, will be submerged in the river. Then (chick-chack) I and my future work are all protected against ill. This is simply an expression of the animism which pervades this community and Seereer tradition.

Saturday 11/14: The potion’s protective powers did not cover today, apparently, as I’ve just witnessed my first pig slaughter. (So much for coming to a Muslim country.) This was somewhat more traumatizing than last week’s killing of a chicken because the pig made a shitton more noise in the moments leading up to its death. And this time Death came in the form of a half-drunk Rasta who I thought would burst into tears from shame as soon as the beast stopped kicking. As I write this, he – Death – has regained his composure if not his sobriety and is butchering up the animal in the twilight. I won’t be dining on his handiwork; while my family picnics on pig tomorrow, I’ll be having lunch with my counterpart and a visiting American study abroad kid. [Africa lesson #843752: Pig that has been left overnight is absolutely one of the worst smells in the world, especially first thing in the morning.]

Week in review: Deb, an American exchange student in Dakar, spent a few days this week at my counterpart’s campement for the “rural visit” part of her semester. A campement isn’t the most rustic rural site, but Deb took advantage of the situation to learn a little more about Seereer culture and cooking all the same. For my part, I took advantage of some much needed good ole American company, even though it came in the form of a complete stranger.

With the help of some experts – Hadi and Fambaye – we learned how to make cere, laxh and mbaum sauce. Cere (a.k.a. sacc, a.k.a. millet couscous) is a Seereer staple. Until recently, it was the main starch for two, if not three, of the day’s meals. Millet is immensely more nutritional than its imported replacement rice and far more filling, too. However, preparing cere requires a lengthy process of hulling and pounding and mixing and sieving and mixing and steaming and sieving and steaming…to get to its healthful form. And it has the unfortunate characteristics of tasting like nothing much at all, and of having the same texture as soggy sand.

Laxh is millet in its least healthful form. It’s much easier to make than cere because you can buy the necessary larger-size morsels at the boutique. From there you boil it, add some salt and citrus juice, and top with sweetened yogurt – either store-bought or made from curdled cow’s milk and mixed with baobab fruit (a.k.a. monkey bread). Laxh has the texture of a thick porridge and tastes like cake frosting. Amazing. For obvious reasons, this “dessert for dinner” meal is rarely eaten more than once a week. (We haven’t had it at all in my new ML~ family.) Equally obvious is that the homemade yogurt is better than the store-bought version.

Mbaum sauce. The only way to think about this dish is to imagine yourself as a poorish college student trying to put together a meal with whatever you can find in your barren kitchen. Only now imagine yourself as a genuinely poor person scrounging together anything remotely nutritious in the immediate environment to get you through the exhausting work that is living without farm machinery or running water or electricity. Mbaum is leaves of the nebbedie tree, desiccated mussels/oysters, desiccated fish (both cooked and raw), black-eyed-peas, and crush peanuts, all of which are easily available in Senegal. Eat over the previously mentioned millet, and you have one hell of a healthy meal. I didn’t stick around to try this dish, but Deb didn’t exactly give it rave reviews.

Aside from the cooking lessons and good food, having Deb around just to talk to in English (and French and broken Wolof) temporarily did wonders for my mental state. I might not ever have the enthusiasm she has for living in Africa, but her visit reminded me of some of the reasons I’m here in the first place. And even though my “work” (or lack of) might be frustrating/depressing/demoralizing/boring/unfulfilling, some of the random day-to-day experiences [Seereer women breaking into song for me or finding a half-digested little fish in the belly of a bigger fish I was gutting for dinner] start to make up for it. I guess I just need an occasional reminder of home to put that into relief.

Mountain mouse heads to the sea

I’ve been at my site for three weeks and I’m starting to realize why it’s said that you’ll never get more sleep than you do as a volunteer. Especially during these first three months, when we don’t have any projects or well-defined “work,” it feels like I spend a lot of time twiddling my thumbs, reading, daydreaming, just sitting with the neighbors. Depending on my mood, I wile away the day counting either the reasons I miss home or the ways life in Senegal is inherently more cool than life back home (it’s Africa). Here are some of the things I’ve been up to lately; you can decide whether these are mundane details or the day-to-day reality of “integrating into my community” (which is currently my only real responsibility).

1) Peanut harvesting. At sunset the other day, I went into an already harvested field behind my home with three of the women who work at my counterpart’s campement. We sifted through the detritus for unplucked peanuts, clinging dustily to the roots of the few overlooked plants. Unroasted peanuts taste more “beany” than “nutty,” and they never taste better than when you’ve picked them out of the dirt yourself.

2) Catholic Mass. Now that I’m in a community that is half-Catholic, half-Muslim, I get to see how both religions play out in Senegal. Women aren’t allowed into the mosques, but I’ve taken to attending Mass on Sundays with E. (my homestay host). It’s interesting, it kills a few hours on Sunday mornings, and it gives me a chance to greet and chat with villagers who I might not normally have the opportunity to see. Showing my face every week might eventually distinguish me from the toubab tourists who parade through the church taking pictures. Oh, and there are tam-tams! Drums make everything more fun.

3) Ironing. Today I finally got around to ironing the fancy complets I wore the week of the swearing-in ceremony. Ironing involves placing red-hot charcoal into a rusty old contraption and pressing really hard. Fambaye took one look at my pile of folded clothes and asked, “This is already ironed…?” quickly wilting my pride to a wrinkly mass not unlike my pile of wrinkly clothes.

4) Women’s groups. My work partners explicitly requested a female volunteer; in this community, women are especially active. One group I’ve spent a lot of time with is a gaggle of older women who are learning to do batik cloth dying as a way of creating a small business based on a local artisan tradition. They’re all grandmothers (which here pegs them around 50) and they are tireless, taking care of huge families and also spending whole days organizing themselves and their batik work. They, along with the antiquary market women and the younger women’s tam-tam/social group, have been very welcoming and infinitely patient with me. (I mostly just sit around listening to them.)

5) Seereer class. I didn’t think it was possible, but my Seereer class is actually moving slower than my Wolof class ever did. I’ve had three classes so far with Georges, my very patient – too patient – tutor, and we’ve covered only 10 vowels and 11 consonants. He told me the language has some 46 sounds, so I figure we’ll be lucky to cover them all before my 3-month tutoring stipend runs out. On my own, I have figured out some basic salutations and the ever-appropriate expression “It’s very hot today.” (Aa sum aa sum aa ha ne).

6) A delta tour. ML~ is a tourist community and my two counterparts both own campements (hotels…sort of). I’m lucky to be able to chalk tourist activities up to “work.” Hence last week’s pirogue tour of the delta to see salt mining/harvesting in action, a traditional fishing port and its modern replacement (poorly planned by the state) and the endless mangrove canals. Pretty sweet. And, no, I’m not just putting this here to coax you to come visit me (but you should).

7) Ndangane. Even here in Senegal, it seems I still get cabin fever or itchy feet or whatever you want to call it. The PC country director challenged our stage to stay at our sites every night until Thanksgiving – a challenge I can handle since it doesn’t preclude me taking the boat over to Ndangane, on the mainland, for the day. It’s not too much of a change of scenery, but the shopping’s better (island life comes with some limitations: sadly only small packs of Biscreme and no toilet paper [the horror]). My homestay host G. swears you can find chocolate there since they have round-the-clock electricity to power refrigerators. I didn’t find any on my first crossing this week, but chocolate is reason enough to schedule another trip. I might make Ndangane into a weekly excursion.