Oh Waaw!!!

The spelling of “wow” there was an intentional pun, as in the indigenous Senegalese language Wolof, waaw means yes. Alors, je suis arrivée au Sénégal et c’est une expérience nouvelle bien sûr ! My flight went well, under 8 hours. After meeting/playing UNO with the rest of the MSID students in the Dulles airport (introductions to come), I sat next to Griffin for the flight (who goes to Northeastern in Texas but in an it’s-a-small-world moment also was in my post-Katrina cooking class in Evanston). He and Lucretia (quiet girl from University of Illinois) were both worrying beaucoup that they forgot their cartes jaunes, the yellow cards detailing your immunizations that are required by the immigration checkpoints of any African country, however, when we arrived at the Leopold Senghour airport in Dakar, they asked us for little more than our name. We fumbled over French with the immigration officers when they inquired about the address of our destination but they eventually got frustrated and stamped our passports when we mumbled something about the University of Dakar, with which in reality we have no affiliation. Leaving the airport was ridiculous though and even the reviews online that describe the Dakar airport as a “disgrace” could not begin to explain the beggars and riffraff that swarmed us and tried to “help carry our bags” even after incessant “NOOOOO”s and “Bouge-toi!”s. In fact they did not se bougé, but instead continued to talk to us in a combination of Wolof, French, and English (Ça va? My sister! No toudou? - How are you? My sister! What is your name?) as we dragged our bags to the van. There was even a guy who pretended he was part of our group and helped instruct the driver on how to pack the suitcases on top of the bus until someone shooed him away. We were met by two of the members of the MSID équipe, Waly (a very nice and funny if not bossy and talkative guy) and Korka (a smiley, beautiful Wolof princess). At the hotel we would meet Adjii (Ad-gee) who is Senegalese, of a Muslim brotherhood who wear the headscarf, and sometimes sounds American and has American mannerisms when she speaks English.

However, sleeping was not in the cards for us young Toubabs, for our plane landed at 5:30am and by the time we had brought our valises to our rooms, the sun was rising. I actually witnessed the rising of my first African sun standing on our balcony, overlooking a dirt road, an Arabian-inspired three story house, an incomplete cinder-block shanty, and an alleyway decorated with a delicate mix of domestic trash and a pile of moldy ottomans. Standing next to me where two other girls from the program who lacked a balcony in their own room, Sydney, a funny and intelligent Penn State student who as they say runs on “sénégalaise time” (she’s always late), and Keianna, a Colombia student who has Jamaican roots. When my own roommate Kenzie arrived, the four of us plus Griffin and Joe (a skinny guy with an accent from the University of Minnesota) ate breakfast (bread, croissant, butter, jelly, coffee) in the hotel lobby. Kenzie explained to us that she had been living in Dakar for a month already, getting her fourth semester of French as per required by the program, and that she could bring us around. Kenzie maintained this tour guide-like conversation skill until, well, it’s still going. She did manage to lead us to the beach, through heap of trash and busy interstate alike, twisting her blond dreadlocks the whole way.

The beach of Youff (this particular district of Dakar) as I would find out, is a very cool place. There were hundreds of colorful flat fishing boats and the accompanying ladies and girls who were there to pick out from them the catch of the day to sell in the market. As for any other animal life, if you were wondering, we saw a couple herds of nappy-headed goats, a dying kitten, a stray dog that followed us, and a boxful of grilled sea urchins. With that and the trail of trash and fish bones along the beach, I’m kind of regretting not getting my rabies shot. At one point we stopped to help pull in one of the boats after being asked by one of the very, very few people there who spoke French, fewer of which had creepy milky white retinas like him. He kept pointing to a boat out in the water and saying we were pulling in that one but after ten minutes of pulling and not seeing it move, I really think it was all just a big Senegalese joke and there were really some dudes in the water pulling back. Anyway, no one really cared to see us white people there it seemed, as per African history goes white people (toubabs- really means foreigners) haven’t always been the bearers of good news. That being said, I have to note that before coming to Senegal, all of my MSID packets and reading material commented extensively on the willingness of Senegalese men to whistle, request your hand in marriage, or at least try and get your phone number. Feeling slighted, I later asked Kenzie why this was and she explained it was because we were with two guys and so they didn’t care to bother us. This came as good news to me. And so, we returned to the hotel, navigating through a shanty-ish neighborhood with dirt roads and unfinished cinder-block houses with fresh laundry or wooden fruit stands out front.

For me, I could have called it a day right then, but this day was far from over. It became a reoccurring impression that I had been there for a couple of weeks, or at least it was our second day due to the fact that when we arrived and entered our hotel rooms, it was still night, and when we left them an hour later, the sun was out, blazing. So at noon we were picked up in a van by Waly, Korka, and Adjii to have a short orientation and eat lunch at Houdrine’s (a program director) house. Her house was very fancy for Senegal and had a small courtyard decorated with foliage behind the gate, three stories, and a flat roof with a little gazebo, bathroom (with a washing machine!), and African paintings hanging in the sun. Lunch smelled almost as awful as the fish stank of the beaches while it was being prepared, but the Cebu Jën (Cebu = Wolof for rice, Jën = fish) was soooo delicious. The nine of us in the summer session sat on the ground around three large platters and rolled up the rice, veggies, and fish into little rice-veggie-fish balls and shoved them into our mouths. Sydney had the orange-colored oil from the rice all over her face, but don’t tell her. The rules are you can’t use your left hand because you wipe your poop with it and you can’t reach over and grab the tasty morsels in front of others. I was delighted to find that the weather in Senegal is as hot and humid as New Orleans; read that as sweat was pouring from every crevice of my body as I was wrapped in an African-print pagne and drank steaming ataya tea on top of the roof.

After a couple hours of orientation (all in French and I understood!), we took a walk through the area in the late afternoon, down through the meandering streets with their packs of stray dogs, goat, cats and little children shouting “Bon soir, toubab! Toubab! Toubab!” through the market lined with stalls of plump boubou-donned women selling a plethora of fish, along the beach lined with the same multicolored boats. Drink. it. in. We then made our way to a rock sequestration where I played with Houdrine’s children, catching hermit crabs and small poissons. After returning a different way, passing an intensely spectated neighborhood soccer match and other groups of people (everyone is on the streets and everyone is wearing a Kobe Bryant or other bootleg soccer/basketball jersey) we ate again on the rooftop. This time we had chicken, french fries, this oniony sauce, and baguette and needless to say it was also very good. I think I like Senegalese food more than any of the food I eat at home. Thank god, what felt like three days of my life was over, and after we helped ranger, bringing the platters and cloths down to the servants on the first floor, we all piled back into the bus. A short car ride and shower later, I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.

Pictures!!!
More to come!