B.Y.O.T.P.

My baby brother, Ouseman. He's sexy and he knows it.

Cité Niakh, Sor, Saint-Louis

I made it to Senegal! My host family lives in a quartier called Cité Niakh on Sor, the mainland portion of Saint-Louis. It's about a 40-minute walk to the center of town (la ville/l'île), located on an island off of Sor. Since I've only had two days at my internship, I'll focus on life at home for now.

The N'Diayes

My host family, the N'Diayes, are truly warm and welcoming, always making sure that I feel "chez moi" with my "deuxième famille." Although Senegal is a patriarchal society, my family seems to run on girl power; our matron, Madame Oumou, spends most of her time at home while her daughter and daughter-in-law, Ngagna (pronounced nyanya) and Mama, support the family by working as teachers at the local nursery school as well as taking care of all the shopping, cooking, and cleaning. Granddaughters Fatou and Mama Oumou (both 11) bring the house its energy, while the only grandson, Ouseman (3), brings the laughter. The only male other than Ouseman is Cheikh, Madame Oumou's son and Mama's husband, who works as an artist well outside of the city.

I love spending time with every one of them. Ouseman and I like to share a pot of tea in the afternoon (the secret to good tea à la Senegalese toddler, it would seem, is to add a handful of sugar for every few drops of tea). Fatou and Mama Oumou have yet to figure out that I learn just as much by helping them with their homework each night as they do: for example, Fatou's homework two nights ago was a recitation of The Five Structures of African Society (la famille, le clan, la tribu, l'ethnie, et le royaume), and Mama Oumou's was to translate numbers and phrases from French to English to Wolof. I try to help Ngagna and Mama by doing the easiest (although not necessarily most pleasant) chores, like crushing whole onions in the mortar, washing the dishes, and taking the dirty water out to the river. I'm sincerely hoping that, by the end of my stay, I will have been promoted from onion duty.

Things that have been very easy to get used to:

-The food. Senegalese breakfasts always consist of tea with baguette. On the baguette, you can put butter, la vache qui rit (laughing cow cheese), jam, or chocopain (African nutella!). Most meals consist of rice with some kind of meat in a sauce served in a giant bowl on the floor. Since I don't eat meat, I get my own little platter of vegetables and/or rice.

-Repellent-impregnated mosquito netting. With a little bit of imagination, it's just like having the princess canopy I always dreamed of.

-Flipflops in January!!! My home is a short walk away from the river, meaning that the streets are really just wide trenches of unpacked sand. I'm thinking about getting a pretty pair of Senegalese sandals in the near future, but only once I've had some more practice haggling at the fruit stands.

Things that I am still working on getting used to:

-The quantity of food. The amount set aside for me at every meal is often equivalent to the amount my entire family in Minnesota would have, and I cause great consternation and offense by not finishing it all.

-The constant staring and heckling: "Toubab!" (white person), "Bonjour Madame, donnes-moi de l'argent" (Hello ma'am, give me money), and "Je veux une femme blanche" (I want a white woman/wife) are the most common.

-The bathrooms. I...don't want to talk about it.

Banes of my Existence:

-Fatou and Mama Oumou's multiplication/division word problems. They are in French and use units of measurement that I've never seen before. I've been taking a hopefully less annoying Mr. Jeff Trinh approach (for two years, his answer to every physics question was a variation of "I don't know! You figure it out!")

-Electricity outages. They happen multiple times a day, as Senegal has to buy all of their energy from neighboring countries that are not always reliable. Apparently one of President Wade's pet budget-balancing techniques is to cut off electricity to whole regions of the country, sometimes for days at a time.

Proof that Marielle is an infinitely better person than I am:

Her second-to-last blog post mentioned that she practiced her considerable generosity by giving a cookie to an old woman on a train without expecting anything in return. My mother snuck two whole trays worth of chocolate chip cookies into my duffel before I left, and I secretly hoarded and then consumed every. single. one. You can really know a person by how they treat animals, children and cookies.

à +

Jacqueline