Mots de passes

So we have mots de passes or "passwords" for when we see our Wolof teacher.

He's taught us:
xaar al ba mu am rakk--wait til it has a little brother
So when someone asks you for something, it's a little too harsh to say "no" outright. So you tell them to wait til it has a little brother, or until you have another one.

ndank ndank mooy jap golo ci niai--slowly you catch the monkey in the forest.
Patience. I'm still working on that.

lekkal lu la neex, waaye sol al lu neex nit ni--eat what pleases you, but wear what pleases people.
It's a proverb about doing what you want in private, but respecting tradition and norms in public, something they really value here.

We also get to give Sidy, our teacher (jangalekat), words too. We taught him:

I have to wash my hair tonight.

That's the pot calling the kettle black.

And this week: My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.

He told us when he was in the Peace Corps they taught him to respond to "How's it hanging?" with "Like a trumpet, wanna blow it?" without explaining what it meant. I didn't even know how you respond to that!

And the other group taught him "That shit doesn't flush."

We're thinking next week will be "I've got my mind on my money and my money on my mind."

Greve and Elections

 

There was a three day transportation strike so Thursday when we walked home from school on Thursday there was a HUGE line waiting for gas.

 

Friday they announced that President Wade is eligible to run for a third time so they were preparing for demonstrations. I guess it wasn't too big of a deal though. All the people at WARC are being really careful about our safety though.

First Week

So here’s another long blog post.

So Monday we didn’t really do a whole lot. It said we’d do a “tour of the city” and then had a visit of WARC (the West African Research Center). But the exciting part about Monday was that we got to meet the other students from Wells College that are doing the same program as us! There are four of them, Maija, Erin, Emma and Hayley. Like us, only one of them (Hayley) actually goes to the college for which their program is named. Also that means that it’s Mattan and 8 girls…but he can only have four wives by Senegalese law! Darn.

The tour of the city was done by van so it was a little hard to get a really good sense of direction. First we saw this giant statue of the African continent by a mall in Dakar. It was really cool and very calm there. One thing I remarked is that I didn’t know Madagascar was so big.

Then we drove around and went to the “Door to the Millennium” monument/statue thing. It was also pretty cool, but there’s also not a whole to do at these things. You get out, take pictures, and get back in the van.

So then we went downtown and saw the old train station. It looks pretty fancy but trains don’t actually leave from there so it’s just a market now. I think, if I remember correctly the trains stopped happening when Senegal became independent, but they keep the train station pretty anyway. There was one boy who was begging and he was very quiet and very sad. In the movie we watched, which I’ll describe later, we learned that the Senegalese believe it’s good luck to give coins to less fortunate people. So far…I don’t really have much luck happening for me. I just kind of freeze up when that happens.

I’m not really sure if this was a planned stop or not, but we pulled over because Amelia was starting to feel sick from all the bumpy roads. It was pretty there and it was kind of a “oh wow I’m in Senegal” moment. The sun was shining; you could hear the ocean; it was all so different from what every other January of my life has been. Nice.

After we dropped Amelia off back in Mermoz we went to see THE statue. That’s what everyone calls it, but I’d never really heard of it. It’s called La Renaissance Africaine.  I guess President Wade paid a North Korean team (that’s not a mistake, really the North Koreans) to make this GIANT sculpture with the hopes that it’d be like the Statue of Liberty for Africa. But…the problems are: it was expensive and no one likes it. From what I hear, Muslims don’t like it because the woman on the statue is showing too much thigh and they aren’t so much into displaying the human figure anyway. So, being ever tactful, Wade made a speech to the effect of “the Catholics LOVE their idols…we can just be like them.” And, as you could imagine, the small Catholic population of Senegal did not take kindly to that. Also, some women’s groups don’t really like it because it looks like the man is pulling the woman behind him. And of course people didn’t like that North Koreans made it when there are so many people out of work in Senegal—makes sense, you know? But regardless of what you think, it’s a big, pretty impressive statue.

So after that we didn’t do a lot. Sat. Ate lunch. Registered with the American embassy. So now I’m officially safe in Dakar…the government and the University of Michigan know where I am. I went home and took a practice LSAT test. It went…well. Nothing spectacular, but definitely something you could work with, you know?

The next day it definitely felt like they didn’t have anything for us to do. The Wells College girls went to Goree like we did so we couldn’t play with them. Our schedule said “Visit of UCAD” (University de Cheikh Anta Diop) and “Homestays Q & A.”  Visiting UCAD was interesting. I don’t think classes have actually started yet but there were SOOOOO many people there. Like…being at a concert but it was just school, especially at the law school.  Awa lead us around everywhere and I don’t really remember a lot of it. I mean even though it’s in Senegal, a school is a school. I’m not sure if I’ll take classes there since the staff and/or students go on strike a lot so it might be difficult to get credits.

Then we came back. Had lunch and checked our email. The schedule said that the homestay Q & A would take 2 hours. In reality, it took like 20 minutes. Awa just asked us if we had any problems or questions about our families. Apparently the only give our family half of the monthly stipend when we arrive and hold the other half until we know we like them. I didn’t really have too much to say. I guess the only thing I’ve had difficulty with is finding a trashcan! I have successfully found it now, but that’s also not really something Awa can help me with either. So we went home with Emma and Maija who also live in Mermoz and I got ice cream at Caesars. That was nice.

Wednesday we took the IFEE test to see which classes in French we would be qualified to take. It was supposed to take 3 hours but really we had an hour for the written part and had to talk to someone in French for 10 minutes. I think I did okay. I got a little confused about what exactly the essay was supposed to be on and I forgot what “chommage” means—it means unemployment. I accidentally told the interviewer that there was no unemployment in Michigan. That’s a lie. But other than that, it went well.

After we got back we had lunch and sat around waiting to watch a movie. We didn’t know which movie we were going to watch or why it was important but not like it take a lot of effort on our part to watch a movie. Waly showed us Xala by Ousmane Sembene. It was…interesting. It’s about a man who already has two wives and is trying to take on a third. But, when he goes to consummate the marriage he finds he is…”incapable,” which is called xala. I don’t think I got all of it, but I got the main message. I’m going to go ahead and say the end since I don’t really think it’s a widely watched movie. SPOILER ALERT: You think it’s one of his wives, particularly the second one, that cursed him as protest for taking on a third one, but really it’s a beggar who disapproves of his way of life. So yeah we learned about how people participate in polygamy for prestige, to have more hands for labor essentially, or to correct the faults of your previous wives. Apparently if you have to pick a wife to be, you wanna be the last wife—she’s probably the favorite, the prettiest, the most spoiled etc. The movie also explored the themes of Wolof vs French and modernization vs tradition. It wasn’t a bad way to spend the afternoon.