Impending Reverse Culture Shock

Last spring when I was still at Grinnell, Richard Bright, the head of the International Studies Office, warned all students studying abroad this semester about reverse culture shock, amongst other things- often when a person spends a large chunk of time in another country, coming home and readjusting to one’s own culture can prove difficult.

This past week I’ve started to realize how weird going home in a few weeks is going to be, gauging by the things that happen in my day to day life here that I no longer think are weird. For example- Saturday I went to market day in Sandiara with Baay Paté, my host dad, and Nafi, my host sister. I didn’t give a second thought as we climbed onto the cart behind the family horse, Pap Guye, and rumbled off down a dirt road that runs beside the paved highway. Sights and sounds of the market that would have made my eyes pop my first week in Senegal are now familiar- men walking by holding fistfuls of live chickens by their feet; women in vibrant boubous waving to the piles of dead fish they’re selling; a few kids sitting on a pile of peanuts pulled on a cart by a donkey or two; a man crippled by polio, pulling himself along on the ground, shoes on his hands. Sunday Baay Paté bought me frozen bissap juice, and it took me half an hour to notice I was drinking out a bottle with a faded label that read “Genuine Brake Fluid.” I realized today that Pap Guye, the crazy kid for whom Pap Guye the horse was named, has been wearing for 3 or 4 days a sports jersey #62- but where an athlete’s last name should be, the shirt says “TOFU.” Going to bed at 8 or 9 PM every night makes sense these days- when there’s no electricity, you can’t really do much after dark. I’ve learned to eat properly, with my right hand, at a bowl shared by my family and whatever other kids or visitors wander by at mealtime. Another mouse moved into my armoire after the first one died, but we have an understanding- he doesn’t come near my bed, and I don’t put out the rat poison. We’re very nearly friends now! … At any rate, I can definitely tell that getting back to a land of running water, grocery stores, and forks and knives is going to be a real kick in the pants.

My Wolof is improving, though I sometimes feel that I’ve just gotten better at having the same conversation with every new person I meet. It goes about like this:

“(Toubab!) Asalaa Malekum!”
Me: “Malekum Salaam!”
“Nanga def?” (How are you?)
“Maangi fi rekk.” (I’m here only.}
“Yaangi noos?” (How’s it going?)
“Maangi noos bu baax!” (It’s going well!)
“AH! Degg nga Wolof??” (You understand Wolof??)
“Waaw, tutti tutti.” (A little.)
“Noo tudd?” (What’s your name?)
“Mariame Niass.”
-lots of laughing.-
“Fooy dekk?” (Where are you living?)
“Keram Baay Paté, ci campement.” (At Baay Paté’s house, at the “campement”.)
“Am nga jekker?” (Do you have a husband?)
“Waaw, am naa juroom jekker!” (Yes, I have 5 husbands!)
“JUROOM (x$ sln*) JEKKER??”
“Waaw, ci Etats-Unis!” (Yes, in the US!)
-lots more laughing.-
“Mariame Niass kaay ndekki/an/reer!” (Come eat breakfast/lunch/dinner!)
“Suur naa, jerejef. Lekk naa ba pare.” (I’m full, thanks. I already ate.)
“Kaay lekk, waay!” (Come eat, anyway!)
“Baax naa, jerejef! Maangi dem ligeey. Ba ci kanam!” (It’s ok, thanks! I’m going to
work. See you later!)
“Baax benen yoon!” (Until next time!)

My favorite times in Séssene have been those spent with my family. This past week everyone has been getting all jazzed up for Tabaski, a big holiday coming up on Saturday 11/28! They call it “La Fete des Moutons,” (“The Party of Sheep,”) because every man who has the means buys a sheep and kills it for his wife (or wives) and children, and the family eats meat for a few days. Tabaski celebrates the Koranic story of Isaac (or maybe Ishmael?) who had to make a sacrifice to God, but had only his son to offer. His wife and son both gave him the go ahead to kill the boy to appease God, but being all powerful and beneficent, God switched out Isaac/Ishmael’s son for a sheep at the last minute. M. Dia explained the story to me on our way out to the garden last week, adding that it’s damn lucky the story ended that way, or every man would have to kill one of his children every year. In my house alone there are five nuclear families, so potentially five sheep deaths this coming Saturday- a veritable blood bath! Anyway- all the women of the house have started braiding weaves in their hair and choosing fabric for their Tabaski outifits. My host brother Ndiaga is a tailor, and he’s been working every day and late into the night for the past week on his foot pedal operated sewing machine. I’m very much looking forward to Saturday! Should be an adequate replacement for Thanksgiving.

Other than Tabaski preparations, I’ve been enjoying taking part in every day goings-on around the house, like fetching water from the well, cooking, doing laundry, etc. One of my favorite parts of the afternoons I spend at home is making attaya after lunch. Attaya is very strong green tea that virtually all Senegalese people make and drink regularly, usually after lunch. Attaya is made in three rounds, each round sweeter and less bitter than the first. All three rounds take up to an hour and half to make, and everyone has their own idea about how much tea and sugar should be added to the pot for each round. My family has been giving me attaya lessons since I arrived here, and now I can make the tea myself! I bought an attaya tea pot, glasses, and tea at the market this past weekend to bring home so I can make it in the U.S. too!

Things at work have improved in the last week. The program coordinator for MSID, Waly Faye, came to visit last Monday- he and the assistant coordinator Adji Fall do site visits halfway through everyone’s internships, to check up on us and make sure we’re still alive and whatnot. It was a short visit, but he did ask me about my internship and what might help to improve it. I told him it would help me if M. Pene and I sat down at the beginning of each week and made a schedule, so that I could have a general idea of what will happen day to day and what projects Agrecol is focusing on for that particular week. Waly told M. Pene this, and it turns out M. Pene has been making a schedule, just never showing it to me! Anyway, M. Pene gave me a schedule at the beginning of last week and this week, and it’s helped loads. Last week Agrecol’s car was fixed, so we spent most of our days traveling to the villages in the region to check up on three projects- the progress of the chicken houses started with the Belgians, the “cases de solidarités,” and village gardens. Though I was still pretty much just tagging along, it was nice to know where we were going and why, and to have a better sense of a general goal for the week. I also learned a bit more about Agrecol’s ongoing projects in the Séssene area.

“Les cases de solidarités” were an idea of Agrecol’s, and are managed by Mariame Faye, who is in charge of working with “les groupements des femmes,” or women’s groups, in villages around Séssene. The idea is that each time each women’s group meets, a calabas (a kind of gourd) covered in cloth is passed around, and each woman puts her hand under the cloth to donate whatever money she can spare. The cloth keeps the donations anonymous, so that no one is judged if they can only give a small amount, or nothing at all. The women then vote on what they want to do with the money, though Agrecol insists that it must go first toward issues of food security, health, and education. The women are also not allowed to divvy up the money amongst themselves. Last week Mariame checked in with the leaders of the women’s groups in the villages we visited, keeping tabs on how much money each group has raised since the project began in June and how the money have spent the money. One village has raised 39,000 CFA since June, (about $88,) a significant sum for women who usually have no money to spend but what their husbands give them.

At each village we visited, M. Dia checked in with farmers involved in Agrecol’s “maraichage,” or gardening project. Last year, Agrecol donated large tanks for water storage and a system of piping to each farmer interested in the program, so that these farmers could rig up simple drip irrigation systems. Before planting begins, the farmers meet with M. Pene, M. Dia, and Mariame Faye to plan which of them will grow what fruits and veggies, and when they will plant. This way, Agrecol knows what crops to expect at harvest time, and can figure out the timing of planting so that crops with different growing periods are ready to harvest at roughly the same time. The farmers are also instructed on methods of organic farming, like crop rotation and fertilization, and are expected not to use pesticides or chemical fertilizers. When the harvest comes, farmers bring their produce to Agrecol. The NGO transports it to Thies, a city about an hour away, and sells it at a special market attended by Agrecol’s partners, (mostly hotels and restaurants,) who buy the produce at better prices than the farmers can get at local markets. Right now farmers are getting ready to plant their fields, and this past Monday was the meeting to plan which farmers will grow what, and when. Unfortunately I missed it because I was sick, but am looking forward to hearing about it from M. Pene.

That’s about all for now! Tonight I’m going with Nafi to get my hair braided for Tabaski, which is very exciting, and tomorrow the German donor who funds Agrecol/Afrique is visiting Séssene, so that should be interesting. Hope you all are well- can’t believe I’ll be home to see some of you in less than 3 weeks! (Inshallah)

French keyboards are LAME

Hallo everybody--

I'm in a cyber cafe and can't figure out how to switch the keyboard to english, so forgive typos and the shortness of the post.

Last weekend in Joal was a nice break from the nitty gritty of village life- I arrived Friday afternoon and spent the evening hanging out with Emma's family and enjoying the ELECTRIC FAN (!!! I know. Hold onto your hats folks.) in the room of the auberge where we slept. Saturday morning Emma and I walked to Fadiouth, the town on an island of shells connected to Joal by a long foot bridge. We also checked out the only mixed Muslim and Christian cemetery in all of Senegal, connected to Fadiouth by another foot bridge. Around lunch time, Claire, Britta, and Elke arrived. In the late afternoon we took a horse cart ride 12 km out to "Le Baobab Sacré"- the biggest baobab in all of Senegal! The tree is 850 years old and 32 m in circumference, and you can climb inside! (Cool in theory, but rather scary to be pooped on by bats you can't see.) It started getting dark right as we started the ride back to Fadiouth, and it was beautiful to ride back across this great big empty sandy space as the stars were coming out.

Though we did have that one adventure, most of the weekend was spent eating things that weren't rice and fish, (Pasta and meat sauce! ICE CREAM!) exhanging stories about the past two weeks and watching Scrubs. Would write more but this keyboard is making things really difficult.

Monday I stayed home from work for the baptism of the new baby! Most exciting part of the day- some guys killed a sheep for the occasion! Much less dramatic than I expected, no blood spurting or sheep screaming, but crazy nonetheless. The marabout announced that Gora Niasse, the baby's father, had chosen the name Pap Malick Niasse. That makes 3 sons in a row that Gora has named Pap Niasse- makes things simpler, I suppose. The rest of the day was spent eating, getting dressed up, and taking pictures- next time I have wireless I'll post them, Inshallah.

Tuesday I went back to work- my first day back I sat at the office all morning, which was extremely disappointing. Wednesday, though, I got to accompany M. Dia to a village 40 minutes on foot from Sessene, where Agrecol is trying out a new garden project. In exchange for the use of a small plot of land, Agrecol splits whatever veggies they grow with the landowner. The aim is to demonstrate methods of organic gardening to the farmer, like crop rotation and organic fertilization, and establish a relationship between Senegalese farmers and the NGO. Gardening is especially important here, because it's possible all year round, unlike cultivating cash crops like millet or peanuts. M. Dia is currently fertilizing and replanting the garden in Ker El Haj, so I got to help him water, fertilize, and plant carrot seeds the last three days of the week! Much much better than getting bedsores from a hard wooden chair in the office.

That's about all I can do right now on this darn clavier. Can't quite believe I'm already half way done with my internship. Hope you are all doing well, I miss you!

Greeting from Séssene, Senegal! First- I’m sorry for being blog M.I.A. for so long! My mom told me people were starting to ask if I was still alive, so I’ll start by saying YES, I’m alive. Also, my disgusting feet healed up nicely so no need to worry about that either. I don’t know how to start explaining the last two weeks, but here goes-

I arrived last Monday. Early that morning all us MSID kids headed South of Dakar for our internships piled onto a bus and set off. I was the very first to be dropped off- Waly kept referring to me as his “first victim”. After a couple extremely nervous hours on the bus, we abruptly pulled off the side of the road toward a stand of grass thatched huts and small cement block rooms. Waly and Awa got off the bus with me, where I met my new supervisor at Agrecol/Afrique, M. Mamadou Pene. The four of us walked to the small sandy courtyard (for lack of a better term) in the middle of the huts and rooms where my new family lives. I was briefly introduced to my host grandfather, Grandpere Doudou Niasse, an old man who typically wears blue robes and a matching cap. Waly told me that here in Senegal, “you treat your grandfather like your husband!” and laughed, slapping me on the back- I’m don’t know what he meant by that, nor did I particularly care to find out.

I only had time to drop off my suitcase before the four of us hopped back on the bus and drove a ways down the road to the office of Agrecol/Afrique. I hugged Waly, Awa, and my fellow toubabs goodbye, and with a few toots of the horn the bus was off down the road and I was all alone in this crazy new place. M. Pene gave me a brief tour of the one room office and explained some of Agrecol’s activities here in Séssene.

Agrecol’s main goal is to promote organic agriculture in Séssene and the 19 other small villages in the region. M. Pene explained that farming organically is important not only because pesticides and fertilizers can cause all sorts of environmental problems, such as groundwater contamination, but also because organic farming saves Senegalese farmers the money they would normally spend on these pesticides and fertilizers. He explained the projects that Agrecol has undertaken here in Séssene, including cooperating with Senegalese farmers undertaking organic farming or gardening, helping organic farmers get their produce and other goods to market, organizing a monthly hour long radio program about Agrecol’s recent projects, and setting up a connection between women’s groups growing bissap and international buyers in Europe (last year these women sold thousands of tons of bissap abroad and made almost 17 million CFA!) He explained that the Séssene office’s latest project was hosting a group of Belgian high school students, who would arrive in the region on Wednesday to stay for about a week, helping build chicken houses in 20 different locations. The Belgians were paying for the building materials, as well as a gift of 10 chickens to go along with each house. The goal is to provide villagers with a means to raise local chickens to sell at the market, which they can breed to be larger and more healthy than your average Senegalese chicken by keeping them separate from other chickens in the new chicken houses.

After my tour and briefing, M. Pene sat down at his desk and started a crossword puzzle, and I was left to sit, read my book, and write in my journal until noon, when Pene threw down his pencil and announced it was quitting time. The rest of the day I was left to settle in at home.

My first few days at my new home, I was positive I would never get used to living in the village. My only hope was that when I first arrived in Dakar in September, I thought I would never get used to living there, but I did- I could only hope the same thing would happen in Séssene. (It has, don’t worry!) The first afternoon I spent there, I lay down on a mat in the sand to take a short nap, but was rudely awakened by a chicken that jumped on my back and started walking around until I shook him off. I decided to forgo the nap and rinse off instead- of course, there’s no running water in my village, so my host sister Nafi helped me tote a bucket to the “shower,” a corner of a small fenced-in area reserved for Pap the horse shielded by a sheet strung between two branches stuck into the sand. My first couple of nights were absolutely miserable. Apparently I was spoiled in Dakar, having a fan in my bedroom- my new family’s home has no electricity, so my days of living a life of luxury in the big city with an electric fan are OVAH! My first night I was so hot I didn’t fall asleep until around 4 AM. The second night I moved into a different, supposedly cooler room that my family had prepared for me but that wasn’t ready the first night I arrived. It was indeed cooler, but my second night I was kept awake until the wee hours by the scratching of some sort of crazy big nocturnal beetle on the concrete floor, and some more worrying large thumps coming from the armoire. The next morning, Ndiaga, my host brother, told me they had found a rat in my room, but that he had put out a bowl of water with poison in it, and the rat would probably be dead really soon, so I could still sleep in the room, no problem! However- being a spoiled city girl, this was a bit more than I could handle, and I insisted on sleeping in a different room and only moved back two nights later when Ndiaga showed me the dead rat before tossing it away.

Anyway, that was the worst of the shock I felt my first days here. Since then, bathing with Pap the horse, passing donkey drawn carts on the road, and going to the bathroom in a hole in the ground have begun to feel almost normal. I’ve also gotten much more comfortable at home thanks to the fact that my family is AWESOME.

I’ll start off by saying that the Niasse family is huge. Technically my immediate host family is only my host dad, Pere Paté Niasse, my host mom, Baay Mariam, my host brother, Ndiaga, (22), and my host sister, Nafi (14). (Baay Mariam and Pere Paté have at least 2 or 3 other kids, but they’re all in other parts of Séssene or away at school or in the army.) However, our little stand of huts is also home to a slew of other extended family and their children. My first week in Séssene I started carrying my journal around with me wherever I went and jotting down names and descriptions whenever I met someone new. (Example- 1. Omar Niasse- little boy with funny ears 2. Abdoulaye Niasse- Grandpa Doudou Niasse’s brother; creepy old guy who stared at me through my window 3. Thiama Diaine- speaks a little French, pregnant 4. Ndama Faye- the funny friendly lady who dances crazy 5. Fama Niasse- the lady who’s missing a finger… You get the idea.) The Niasse family tree is further complicated by polygamy. Thiama Diaine and Ndama Faye share a Niasse husband, as does Astou Mbene, (mother of 1. Omar Niasse, boy with the funny ears,) and an anonymous woman who is sick in the hospital but will return to the village soon. Another woman, Mam Diabe Guye, is the second wife of Gora Niasse, who spends most of his time living and working in Mbour, where he has another wife and children. So weird! Another confusing factor is the apparently common practice of sharing children. One afternoon I was sitting with Nafi and Ndiaga, trying to sort out who was married to who, which children belonged to which women, etc. I asked about the mother of Youssou Ndiaye, who eats every meal with our immediate family (Baay Mariam, Pere Paté, Ndiaga, Nafi, and myself) but doesn’t share their last name. Nafi explained that his parents had moved to the Gambia and “given him” to her mother. Another little boy, Pap Guye, is biologically Mam Diabe Guye’s son, but is “shared” by Mam Diabe and Baay Mariam- everyone in the village says he has two mothers! As you can imagine, it gets rather difficult for me, an only child from a household of two people, to keep all these names and family ties straight.

Everyone in the family has been extremely nice to me since the moment I arrived. They insisted that I call myself by a new Senegalese name, Mariame Niasse, which every other Senegalese person I’m introduced to thinks hilarious. The first night when I couldn’t sleep because of the heat, I had a minor break down and started crying in my room. Around 10 people came to my door to see what was the matter, and Baay Mariam even offered to let me sleep on her bed while she slept with the kids on some mats on the floor. Everyone talks to me and asks me about my work, the United States, food, my various gadgets and pills and creams, etc., though the vast majority of them don’t speak any French and my Wolof is ridiculously bad (Nafi, Ndiaga, and Thiama Diaine are the only ones who speak French.) Saturday, Pere Paté drove me and Nafi to market on a cart pulled by Pap the horse! We bought vegetables and fish, and I helped cook ceeb u jen for lunch. Each smaller nuclear family eats dinner together, and I’ve had to learn to hide out for a while after I finish eating because if I try to walk through the courtyard back to my room while others are still eating, 3 or 4 people demand that I come eat, (“Mariame! Kaay reer! Lekkal!”) and I wind up so stuffed I can barely move. When the sun goes down and it starts getting cooler outside, everyone drags mats outside and lies looking up at the stars. A couple of nights last week a bunch of the women of the house would pull me out of my room to dance and sing while Sohkna Jamme would beat on an empty water jug, and everyone had a good laugh when I tried to dance like them. (Everyone’s favorite was when I made up a move called “The Omar Niasse.” Omar loves to dance, stomping his feet as fast as he can on the ground. I imitated him once, to everyone’s amusement, and now they always tell me to do the Omar Niasse- “Feccal Omar Niasse!!”) I love having so many kids around- Astou Mbene has one baby daughter, Fatou, but other than that all the young Niasses are boys. I’ve made three special buddies- Omar Niasse, Pap Ndiaye, and Pap Guye. Omar is 3, has the most contagious laugh you’ve ever heard, and dances nearly constantly. Pap Guye is 4, wears a huge glittery plastic pink necklace every day, and likes to give me high fives (his all-time favorite game is “Up high! Down low… TOO SLOW!”) Pap Ndiaye is around 6 or 7 and pretty quiet, but always runs up to say hi when I get home from work, and asks each morning if I slept well. A

This week also saw an addition to the Niasse clan! When I arrived, Mam Diabe Guye was extremely pregnant, and this past Monday while I was at work, she went into labor and was taken to a hospital in a nearby town. Tuesday, she was back in her hut with a brand new baby boy!! People drift in and out of her room all day to say hi to her and the baby and just hang out, so for the past few nights Nafi and I have gone in and sat with her and whoever else is around, and held the baby. I’ve never met anyone so young! In Muslim tradition here in Senegal, the baby’s baptism is held at the home a week after it is born, and it isn’t given a name until that day. So Monday I’ll take the day off from work and see a baptism!

Of course, not everything at home is perfect. Having so many people around and constantly wanting to talk is difficult when I want some alone time, and the language barrier can often be frustrating. Generally though, I’ve been having a great time with the Niasse clan.

Unfortunately, work has been much less awesome than home life for the past couple weeks. The Belgian students arrived to build chicken houses on Wednesday, as promised by M. Pene. Our first day, we drove on bumpy dirt roads through the countryside to a remote village. The chicken houses were to be build of cinder blocks and cement, and so our first task was to move the cinder blocks needed for the house from their neat pile behind a hut to the building site, about 20 feet away. This first task turned out to be our last, too. A couple Senegalese guys took over from there, using the only two shovels and trowels to dig the foundation, mix the cement, and start construction. I tried my best to get involved- I asked if I could use the trowel to try a bit of cement work, but after about a half an hour, one of the Senegalese guys took it back, probably tired of my slow progress. I felt a little angry and frustrated that I couldn’t help, but M. Pene and the other Senegalese men hanging around were astounded by my half an hour of slopping cement every which way- that kind of work is never expected of women, especially not of toubab women. M. Pene slapped me on the shoulder and said something along the lines of, “You’ve worked SO HARD!!!! And in the SUN!!! You must be exhausted, sit down here in the shade.” He also mentioned calling Waly to tell him what an excellent intern I was. Oh boy.

The last 7 days of “building” chicken houses with the Belgians progressed about like that. We would drive to a remote village, and would promptly be ushered into chairs or a bench in the shade to watch construction progress. The Belgians often played games and sang songs with the village children, which was always entertaining, and I managed to finish a really great book of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri called “Unaccustomed Earth,” and start rereading “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand. The Belgians were all very nice, and I had a good time talking with them about this and that- the new Harry Potter theme park planned for the U.S., Burger King, Belgian chocolate, European geography, etc. I also met the other two people who work in the Agrecol office, Mariame Faye and Samba Dia. Mariame works with the women’s groups in the Séssene region, and though I’m not 100% sure of M. Dia’s job, I think he keeps track of Agrecol’s gardening and farming projects. It was neat to see all the villages in the Séssene region and to meet people who live in them- a couple times groups of women brought out tam tams, diembes, and calabashes strung with beads to make music and dance, and we also visited a couple of schools in the region to deliver gifts that the Belgians had brought along for the kids. Generally the days were disappointing, though. It was frustrating to be expected to do nothing and to sit around for hours on end. The chaperone of the Belgian crew told me that they weren’t very happy with the organization of the trip, though they were enjoying meeting people and seeing the villages. They left this morning to head back to Dakar to catch a flight tomorrow, and I’m hoping that next week I’ll have a more regular schedule and actually start doing things.

So. That’s about all I can write at the moment, though there’s so much more I could say. Thanks to everyone who read this whole entry, holy cow. This weekend I’m visiting Emma Willenborg, my fellow Grinnellian in Senegal, in a town called Joal where she is working for an NGO in microfinance. I’ll get back home Sunday, (inshallah,) in time for the new baby’s baptism on Monday! I’ll be sure to update the ol’ blog by Friday at the latest.