In Senegal, that is (or at least in my Wolof class). The daughter of the Islamic great prophet Muhammed is my Turandoo (wolof for homonym), a name given to me by none other than a Senegalese street vendor. While visiting Toubab Dialow with other students, where we not only witnessed beautiful art and architecture but also the local flavor of reggae music and dance, I was bestowed with this esteemed Senegalese name. It was after I bartered "like a true Senegalese woman" that the shoe vendor sold me my shoes at half-price and with a laugh called me Fatumata.
Bartering for anything in Senegal is almost mandatory. Not only for a good price (relatively) but also for earning respect from those with whom you interact. If I wish to lessen my status as a toubab, it is necessary that I not accept the first price given to me for an object. However, there is also a fine line between playing the game and becoming a rude or snooty client. The product is as it is, and to expect it to be better is often times more condemning than to pay too much for this object. So while I may not want to overpay, I must make sure that I do not inherently insist through my bargaining does not demean their product.
Beyond learning the street lingo, I am learning how to redo how I have lived up until this point. My maids make it the most apparent: I am a baby. When I arrived, my sister Yacine took care of me, making sure that I knew how to get in the house at night , making sure I got some fish and carrots from the bowl at each meal, translating Wolof in French, and showing me where to get extra water on the days that I need to wash my hair. However, Yacine went for 2 weeks, so this entire past week, I've found a bit more independence because I was no longer able to be Yacine's "nene" (baby in Wolof), as my maids (nDee and Sanaba) so love to call me.
When I'm at school, I live in a house with other college students. We have our own rules and our own keys. When I'm at my parents' house, I inform them of my whereabouts and use a key to let myself in at night. physically leaving the house when I am not going and coming from school in Senegal, has proven to be a very sticky situation. First off, it's really only "normal" for men to go and come from the house a lot, while women are more apt (and expected more) to stay home during the day. While many women here love to stay home (for it shows their lack of need for extra money for the household), after some time my feet get antsy. My room is comfortable and my family is a hoot, but sometimes I just like to take walks. Also, in the States, we entertain friends at home for a small amount of time followed by a mutual enjoyment of some activity outside of the home (i.e. a movie, an ice cream, a concert, etc). I definitely have had my fair share of friends over to meet the family. Every week, the Ouakam girls get together at my house to have tea, eat some fruitbread, and chat about our week. The first night that this happened, we stayed up until atlas 1 AM, laughing until we cried. The next morning my brother Alboury asked if I had some friends over the night before. I cautiously replied yes, thinking that I was about to get a stern talking-to about our "rowdy" behavior. But, to my surprise when I said yes, he started giggling (yes, the man was giggling) and with a huge smile reassured me that he was not only ok with it but that the amount of laughter was a good sign of the family's good fortune to have so many happy people within this house.
While my friends usually grace the house at later hours, our house consistently hosts visitors throughout the day, including sporadic people joining our bowls. I can't believe I haven't written about the food here yet! (Or if I have just ignore my all-too-common forgetfulness, please.) So much of Senegalese society is focused around the preparation and eating of food. So I've already kind of delved into the process of Ataya, but the concept of eating around the bowl is key one's existence in many eastern cultures. Remember the concepts of mbokk (the people with which you share) and njaboot (all the people that you literally or figuratively "carry" on your back)? Well, the concept of eating around the bowl flows out of this and into this, where teranga is the guiding the concept for relationships between people. If you remember the first "rule" from Zeus to the Greeks, one has an obligation to to protect those who ask for protection. Similarly, the Senegalese have the concept of teer, which means "to come ashore." When a person comes to a new shore, they are in need of someone to protect them and guide them in this foreign place. Teranga is based on the belief that a mother who assists a foreigner or visitor ensures that her children will never find themselves in a desperate situation away from home without help or support.
Living Teranga shows your understanding of everyone's dependance on one another; people have an obligation to each other. Your mbokk is the unit within which you practice teranga, but this mbokk is basically limitless. At the start of each day (about 6 AM as I found out this morning when I heard the bread being delivered for our petit-dejeuner) the food for that day is brought in the house and prepared by our cook Ndee (pronounced with like "Day" but with a slight 'n' rolling off the tongue with the 'd'). Therefore, what we have that morning is what we will work with at the end of the day, no matter if we have 1 visitor or 10. As well, each family sets aside what is called a boolu-gan: a bowl of rice just in case someone visits at an odd hour and is hungry. The other day as I was helping Ndee prepare ceebu jen (fish and rice) as usual on days that I don't have school, the doorbell rang. I went to open the door and greeted a woman who carried a child on her back. We exchanged greetings, and she presented herself as a woman with children who were in need of rice to eat. Immediately my first thought was "is this woman for real or is she faking it?" Not knowing what to do I called for Ndee, who readily gave her two small plastic bags of clean rice. I say "clean rice" because here rice does not come as a bag of equally shaped and colored grains. Each day, we pick through bowls of rice, looking for black grains. When I look back on how I questioned the legitimacy of this woman's hunger, I feel embarrassed. It didn't matter if she was actually in need of rice or not. It was my duty to give it to her anyway, for she had asked for my protection.
So for those of you are assured me that being abroad meant I would lose weight. Right, okay, no.
I've learned to make ceebu jen: basically a HUGE platter of rice with an onion sauce, vegetables (carrots, eggplant, lettuce, "bitter" tomatoes, yams, and beets), fish, and a bissap leaf sauce. What I also had to learn was how to eat it. First off, I've managed to scoop up enough of my food using my right hand. For those of you don't know, I'm left-handed. However, in Islamic culture, the left hand is used for nothing else than cleaning oneself. One's right hand is used for everything else: greeting, writing, and eating. Around this platter, there can 4 to 8 people eating. So, it becomes necessary to be mindful of how much you eat and from where you eat. Each person carves a semi-circle out of their section of the platter by the end of the meal. It is necessary to stay in your own section, only getting vegetables and meat from the middle. If someone has a piece of food in their section, it is their responsibility to split it up among the others.
And here's where another shout out to CIEE for their awesome program is due. I learned most o my knowledge about all of the food etiquette when, during orientation, we visited the Baobab Center for a day of eating. I'm really glad that I got this "training." Eating with other foreigners at ht seam bowl (who don't know the silent rules), is a bit difficult because they tend to offend the host. Even after living with here for a month, some other foreigners that I have met haven't realized that there is a specific etiquette to eating around the bowl. This etiquette exists so that everything may be equally shared where it is due. And to witness the obstruction of this carefully knit structure because of a lack of care to appreciate it really rubs me the wrong way. The phrase "bon appetite" is a french mannerism, not Senegalese. To repeatedly say this when it is obviously not appropriate is not very deserving of the place that the visitor takes at the table. A person does not give you something to receive in-appreciation in return. Thought for the day: continually evaluate your situation so that you welcome rather than offend those around you.
Those who eat together, laugh together. Or at least when you spend all day making Senegalese beignets and fatayas with 8 women, ha. Right before the two Canadian girls left to return to Canada, my sisters taught us how to make this scrumptious stuff. I was so full that day that the only thing that I could say to explain it was the Wolof phrase that describes how you absolutely can't hold anymore food within you. I patted to my butt and said "Surr na." My sisters just kept laughing.
The Wolof is coming. I've entered that realm where Ndee, Sanaba, and I try only to speak in Wolof. It's painful, but totally worth it. When guys here learn that you can speak Wolof (even if it's a bare minimum), they might just tell you that 1)they love you 2) they want to take you home to meet their parents and 3) they think you should marry them. Senegalese men are very different from American men: they are extremely forward. At first it's awkward and kind of gets on your nerves. But as it keeps coming, I just keep retorting back witty answers. That's really what it's about (well at least in my head); it's just another game to see who can outwit the other.
As the photos have preceded the blog post, most of you probably know about my recent hairdo. What can I say? Do as the Romans do. But, in all honesty, don't do it just for the sake of doing it. I've always wondered what it would feel like to have my hair braided, showing my beautifully, blindingly white scalp off. Besides the incessant itching on my back from the mesh that is woven into my real hair, I like my hair braided. It's a different look, but one that is appreciated here. While I'm not planning on keeping it like this for a long time, I'm really interested in trying different styles. Hope I don't get too carried away…
