Food Again

• First of all, the friend's name is Mounass, meaning I was not that off.

• Second, I have spent so much time writing about the food here (if you haven’t gotten that food is a big deal for me, it is. My life is organized around food, and I never skip meals.), but I have yet to write about the most distinctive aspect of eating here for most people raised in the US: how the Senegalese eat. Food is always served in a large tray and everyone eats together. There are no individual plates, so you have to share. I think it is a great antidote to the way many Americans eat, alone in front of the TV. Instead the Senegalese way of eating emphasizes eating as a social event, more than just mere necessary consumption as it is too often seen in the US. It requires a whole different approach to eating as we are all used to being to eat everything and anything on our plate. But what do you do when there is just one plate? My French teachers has told me funny stories of foreigners (always North Americans or Western Europeans, with the random Japanese thrown in) eating in Senegal where one hijacks the fish leaving everyone else with no fish to eat, and then another steals the carrot leaving no carrot for everyone else to eat, and so on until they all get the idea that they are supposed to share. How do you share? Usually one person—the most senior person in the circle—will distribute everything or you are in charge of distributing whatever ends up on your side of the plate. So for a plate like chebuyen where there is a base of rice topped with fried fish, lettuce, manioc, carrots, eggplants, sweet potatoes and peppers, if the carrot ends up on your side you dice it and distribute it to the other folks eating by tossing it to their side of the plate. It is always fun to be mowing down on rice and then having some random chunk of fish or potato just fly onto your spoon. That’s the other thing too, we eat with spoons. Traditionally (and I hear still in most villages) people used to eat with their right hands (the left hand is taboo, but more on that later) but now many people in Dakar eat with spoons. In my host family only the person who cooked the meal (invariably a woman) eats with her hand, in this case she will also distribute the food. I actually prefer it that way because as someone who is used to eating with fork AND knife I am not used to slicing food with only one utensil. I am always scared to cut items like the manioc because I am afraid the food is going to jump off the plate onto me or—more embarrassingly—onto one of the people closely sitting next to me. As a social event the meal also reflects many of the status hierarchies and customs characteristic of Senegalese culture. For instance, if there is a large party the adult men will eat separately from the women and children, and of course the women will serve them first and include the best of the fish or meat, while the women eat later and less. Visitors—even if they are female—also receive the “star” treatment, with the distributor launching the best parts of the fish or meat your way. You also get first crack at the peppers. They are also disappointed if you don’t clean up half the plate. And like I said the most senior person will often be the distributor, so that you can easily observe the hierarchy by noticing who distributes; the “man of the house” always distributes, but in his absence it will be his wife or brother and then onto his children starting with the oldest. I like how they eat here; I think I am going to force my family to all eat from one plate as I (as the man of the house) launch huge pieces of platanos their way.


• After three weeks in Senegal I have officially had more fried fish here than I had ever had in my life before coming here.


• It is ridiculously hot.


• No clubbing this weekend. I spent Friday and Saturday nights glued to my laptop watching all of Season One of the Greatest Show on Television, “The Wire.” If you have not seen it, you should; although, I warn you that it is highly-addictive.


• On an utterly random note, I was listening to the album “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” by Public Enemy yesterday (I know it came out when I was 4 years old, but it is still better than lots of what passes for hip hop music nowadays) and heard the song “She Watch Channel Zero?!” where Flava Flav admonishes black women to "Yo baby, can't you that's nonsense you watchin'? Look, don'tnobody look like that, nobody even live that, you know what I'm sayin'? You watchin' garbage, not'in' but garbage. Straight up garbage. Yo, why don't you just back up from the TV, read a book or som'in. Read about yourself, learn your culture, you know what I'm sayin'?" Does anyone else see the great irony in this coming from the “Flava of Love” star?


• The little girl has now shortened "Good morning whitey" to just "whitey." Everytime I see her she just exclaims "whitey!" and I look around like "oh, shit where whitey at? I should probably hide." And then I remember that she is referring to me. It fucks with me every single time.

Fete de la Musique

Thursday night Soizic and I went to the Fete de la Musique downtown, an outdoor concert sponsored by Radio Nostalgie and presented over S2TV. Soizic’s boyfriend is a DJ for the radio station and was one of the MCs for the concert. The concert was interesting; it consisted of a bunch of second and third-tier musical acts each performing one song before a mostly bored and unimpressed audience. There was no entrance fee so the place was packed but people were not feeling it. Most of the acts were random Mbalax singers who came on stage and lip-synched their lyrics. I don’t speak Wolof (yet) but I get the feeling that all the songs are about the same shit. Mbalax is one of those “highly-infectious, irresistible rhythms” that “world music” magazines and travel guides always seem to describe, but it is hard to get into it when it is just a random singer singing some song no one knows. The singers that had back-up dancers were always much more entertaining because Mbalax dancing is just bad-ass. It is like a way cooler Chicken Noodle Soup Dance. The other acts were all terrible hip hop acts that imitate the worse of American hip hop. It is like they all watch too much of the “Made in USA” show and think that if they rap about guns, clothes, cars, women and jewelry all of these things will suddenly materialize. The performances consisted of the MC coming on and yelling “What’s up!” in heavily-accented English, with three of his boys flaying their arms to the beat and nodding their heads whenever the MC finished a punch-line. My favorite song was the one where the chorus was “shake your booty” but instead sounded like “check your booty.” This was followed by a trio of female MCs, which led me to think that there might be a respite from the ignorance, but instead they sang a song titled “Bounce.” I will give y’all a clue: it wasn’t about basketball. I also saw what claims to be the first reggaeton group from Gabon. I was frightened by what was about to come when the Soizic’s boyfriend—who is Gabonese—announced the act. I shuddered, and thought as an American hip hop fan I already have so much to atone for; I cannot bear to also shoulder the burden for the ignorance that can only result from the spread of reggaeton. Fortunately, the two MCs sounded like all of the other 50 cent clones I had heard that evening, and I can sleep well after concluding that the reggaeton thing is just a gimmick. The only good thing from the evening was that it looks like maybe Senegalese don’t insist that all of their women be super-skinny. Many of the performers (even two of the three MCs rapping in “Bounce”) were full-figured and natural-looking women.

We are a sad, sad bunch

For those of you who do not speak Spanish, the title of my blog roughly translates to "To Africa, boy, are you crazy?!" Whenever I forget why I am here and begin to think that learning two languages at once is absolute folly I read articles like this one and I remember why as a Dominican-American it is important for me to be here. One of my several reasons for coming to Senegal is to hopefully use this experience to better educate my negrophobic family and community. I doubt I could do anything to change the racist opinions of most Dominicans because as I said in this space already Dominicans are the most self-hating and delusional group of black people on the planet. Thanks Yajaira for sending me the article.

More Cape Verde

• From left to right, Nas (or at least that is how I misinterpret her name); Odette, 25; Soizic, 24 and Nono, 26. Nono and Odette are my host sisters, and Nas is their friend.

• We all went to Club Melissa Sunday night. We ran into Ivan Paris (picture above, in case anyone was curious) , who performed for the small audience at the club. The girls were really excited, but I had had enough of cheesy love songs for the weekend. As we were leaving he hollered at Odette. I am glad to report that he was unsuccessful. I can also confirm—as the photo evidence corroborates—that people in Dakar just love dancing in front of the mirror.

• Every time I leave my house the little girls who live next door yell happily "bon jour toubab" or "good morning whitey." I reply good-naturedly "bon jour senegalais." But I must admit it is still weird every single time.

Ousmane Sembene

Ousmane Sembene, one of the greatest writers and filmmakers in African history passed away last weekend. Sembene the son of a Wolof fisherman, and later a dock and rrailroad worker always wrote and directed from the perspective of the oppressed. I am usually not one to eulogize but to me his example stands out as rare. How many working-class sub-Saharan people can you think became extraordinary artists AND criticized capitalism and imperialism profoundly?

Viva Cabo Verde!

• Last night my host sisters invited me to another Cape Verdean concert at Saint-Michel an old Catholic school downtown. It was not really a concert; it was more like a community festival for religious reasons with live music. The whole event was reminiscent of the Festas Juninas in Brazil, not least of all because it is June, and we were celebrating the Day of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Basically, Dakarois love Cape Verdeans (or at least their music). I too am starting to really love Cape Verdeans mostly because they remind me of Dominicans. They are mixed Iberian and West African also, and therefore look a lot like Dominicans. The first time I went to the Fleet Center (TD Bank North Center, whatever “Big Bank Owns Boston, until the next merger” Center, or whatever they are calling it now) I saw a group of dudes that I could have sworn were Dominican and then they started speaking funny, or funnier than Dominicans usually speak. I found out later those people were from an archipelago off the West Coast of Africa called Cape Verde; ever since then I have been intrigued. Here in Dakar I have gotten as much Cape Verde as I can handle. But it is more than the physical resemblance, Cape Verdeans have some of the same “flair” Dominicans have. For example, the announcer had the same kind of whiny voice many Dominican women have, and although she was overweight she still wore some tight white pants and a glittery tube top with her hair in a pony tail with curls, on a pair of pointy high-heels. I was loving it. Then the main performer, Ivan Paris, also showed up rocking some tight white pants and a turtle-neck even though it was a comfortable 72 F. He also had the world’s sharpest line-up. So Dominican. Then he started singing some cheesy love songs in Cape Verdean kreyol and although they were a minority of the crowd all of the Cape Verdeans started dancing and singing along as loudly as possible. Again it reminded me of that diasporic feeling (the first band was fittingly called “Diapora”) that although we are not at home, and the beer may taste too watery or too dark and all of the signs are in a language we don’t quite understand, but we are going to ignore all of that for a second and just pretend we are not a minority in a far-away land. It reminded me of bachata concerts in NYC. Of course all of the images of a white Jesus and the constant talk of Jesus and the Virgin Mary (did you know she was a virgin? No, well I am going to mention it every time she comes up. She was a virgin. Yup never had sex. Not even once.) made me feel like I was three beers away from Santo Domingo. Next month they are crowing Miss Cabo Verde, I am definitely going to try to make it although I hate beauty pageants.
• This brings me to another problem: the “Paris/New York seal of approval.” Ivan Paris is a big deal because he lives and performs in Paris and of course he emphasizes this by using “Paris” as his last name. Here everything that comes from NYC and Paris is just that much official. It is the colonized mentality that is so funny when it’s not maddening. Half the clothing stores are either “New York” or “Paris Fashion.” Every fancy restaurant claims to have branches in New York, Paris and Dakar. I feel like I get more love cause I am from NYC, like if I was from Philly or Cleveland or some other city no one would care about me. The next time I fly out here, I am going to fly from NYC with a stopover in Paris so that my trip can be that much more official.
• I don’t know if I have mentioned this yet, but Senegalese love salsa and telenovelas. Talk about reminders of home. Right now the Venezuelan soap opera “La Femme de Lorenzo” is all the rage. And it seems like after Cape Verdean music, the second most popular non-French, non-Wolof music is Cuban salsa, especially among the older crowds. You can hear salsa everywhere, in the supermarket, in restaurants, etc. Which is of course, fine by me. The telenovelas though are awful in any language. That is one cultural export that should have stayed home.
• After the Festa Junina we went to a local bar. In the US we would call it a dive bar, but these Third World bars are much, much more than that. After all the nights of living the “jet-set” lifestyle (Thursday night I went with the white girls to Casino de Port, another lounge that simply defines chic. Plush couches. Alternative, artsy shaped cups. The whole nine. Of course, the only Senegalese people were the waiters and other staff. The moment I walked in I could feel my money flying away invisibly from my pocket.) I was glad to be in such an “unassuming” place. The chairs and table were beat-up plastic. The walls looked like they had been peed on, and probably were. The beers cost a dollar and, no, they don’t hand out you a coaster or even open your beer for you. No cute napkin wrap either. We chilled and had shelled peanuts and beers, and as they starting going in rapid-fire Wolof my mind started wandering and I finally resolved a dilemma that had been bothering me since my latest entry. I said hair weaves are a negative legacy of colonialism, but aren’t all legacies of colonialism negative? I could not think of a single positive thing brought by the French that did not serve to further exploit Africans and make them ever more dependent and colonized (like the usual things mentioned by apologists for colonialism, like modern medicine, schools, railroads and other infrastructure). But surely a sophisticated thinker like myself was willing to admit that nothing in life is ever so “black and white;” surely there must be at least ONE positive legacy to French colonialism. Then it hit me: Peanuts! Peanuts were introduced by the French as a mono-cultural cash crop export to further exploit Senegal, like sugar, cacao, cotton and coffee were used in other peripheral countries. Senegal is still enslaved to peanuts, and I am in no way arguing that the reign of “King Peanut” has brought anything but misery to Senegal. Still, I love shelled peanuts. Shelled peanuts remind me of Dominican Christmases and many late nights by Copacabana Beach eating peanuts and drinking Skols. So there, the only concession I will make to the French, peanuts. The rest is all dependency, poverty and bad hair weaves.
• What separates this “dive” bar from any other I have been to in peripheral countries (Brazil is technically semi-peripheral but I don’t want to get into the intricacies of Dependency Theory quite yet) is that it’s in a Muslim country which makes it extra special. Muslims aren’t supposed to drink alcohol or eat pork. The Islam here is not very Orthodox (a topic for a later date) and many people drink and eat pork, but you can only do either at a bar. That’s right, you have to go to a bar if you want a pork chop. So last night they were all eating what I interpret as chitlin soup. I miss swine, but not enough to have had any of that stuff. My rule of thumb is, if you can’t identify what part of the animal then you probably shouldn’t eat it. I was content with my peanuts.
• Finally, adding to the list of people who should not come to Dakar (no contact lense-wearers remember?), no one who likes peace and quiet. If you think lower Manhattan during rush hour is insufferable then steer well clear of Dakar. This place takes hustle-and-bustle to the next level. Although sadly I have seen worse (Cairo is the worse I have ever witnessed) walking through Dakar is still like a blitzkrieg attack on the senses. Everything comes at you super fast, there is simply no respite. The sidewalks are filled with vendors and hustlers selling everything, batteries, fruits, shoes, T-shirts, weaves, etc. You have to dart, duck, and jump around them, running away from calls of “monsieur, c’est pas cher.” And that is just the human obstacle course, there are also the actual physical obstacles, the random pieces of corrugated metal (is that a really old bumper?), the potholes, the litter, etc. Basically, there is no such thing as taking a stroll through town.
• Food, once more. Dinner is also wack. Breakfast is always French bread, tea, and cheese, Lunch is always amazing and dinner is just a wild card. On good days, it is simply lunch reheated, but on bad days it is some Franco-Senegalese fusion or just random carbs piled together. For instance, last week I had peas and bread, then spaghetti lightly sprinkled with olive oil and fried eggs, then macaroni lightly sprinkled with olive oil and fried eggs, and finally spaghetti, bread and French fries. Yikes! It is like they have not eaten dinner traditionally and are just at a loss as to what to eat before going to bed.

Music videos

Check out these clips of coupe decale and mbalax videos to get a clue of what I am talking about. And yes, some people actually do dance like that at the club.

Poor, but not Cheap

• OK, so scratch that, apparently US$4 doesn’t get you a coke in Dakar either. This city may be poor but it ain’t cheap. I went out on Friday to Club Alexandra in downtown Dakar, and saw a very good live Cape Verdean band play. I played myself while I was in Boston, I had no idea that Cape Verde—as small as the archipelago is—has such a rich and diverse musical heritage, I should have gone out and heard more Cape Verdean music while I was there. The lounge was crazy expensive though. A cup of coke was more than $4. I don’t want to say how much I spent cause it’s embarrassing, but let’s just say that I have gone out and had a good time in NYC for less dough.
• But it’s not just the club, everything else here is super-expensive compared to other peripheral countries. I am starting to wonder just how the poor majority of Dakarois are able to survive. Shit, if tourists feel the pinch I can only imagine how desperate the people who are actually struggling must feel. After all if I can’t afford to buy as much street food and beer as I planned it isn’t the end of the world, if you can’t pay your rent or afford dinner then you really are fucked.
• Saturday night I went to another bourgeois club, The Casino de Cap-Vert. The cover alone was US$12. It’s near the airport in the richest part of Dakar, so I figured I was partying with the elite. I thought I may even run into the president’s daughter, only to find out that there are even bougier clubs. Shit it’s not bad enough that I was spending someone’s monthly salary in a night, apparently I am not spending real dough until I am spending someone’s yearly salary on cover and drinks. Count me out, though, after this weekend I am done seeing how the rich party. My curiosity is satisfied.
• What did I learn? Like bourgeois people all over the Third World, Senegalese love them some damn European culture. I was forced to endure a set of techno by a French DJ to start off the night. After we were done with our, “Let’s pretend to be in Paris, Milan or Brussels” part of the evening, we moved on to the real shit. The DJ hit up that coupe decale, that mbalax, followed by Cape Verdean funana and zouk, more coupe decale and ended with a set of remixes of the biggest club hits in reggaeton and hip hop of the last two years. So I learned that 5o Cent is truly ubiquitous, and that they will never stop playing Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina.” In addition, I am astonished by the cosmopolitan and worldly nature of the club culture here. In the course of one evening we heard several genres from several diverse parts of the world in different languages. How often do you get that in a club in NYC, ostensibly a world-class cultural center?
• And yes, they really do love themselves here. I saw more people dancing in front of the mirrors again on Saturday. It hasn’t stopped being funny.
  Cats here really know how to party. They go out mad late. Friday night when I asked at what time we were going out, my host sister replied that not until after midnight. She was serious; we left the house at 1 AM, and didn’t get back until 5 AM. I can’t hang. I spent too many years in Cambridge where by 2 AM you are already walking home after a night out, where you shower at 9:30 PM to make sure you can be at the bar/club/lounge by 11 pm. I was still getting used to NYC time when you start getting ready at 11 pm. Here they told me to take a nap until midnight and then get ready to go. Saturday we didn’t leave the house until 1:30 AM, to return at 6 AM. The club doesn’t even open until midnight. The craziest shit was that as we were leaving the club at 5:30 AM there were people walking in!
• I think my host sisters have set a new record for how long it takes a group of women to get ready to go out. I thought no one could beat my actual sisters, but they have raised the art of “getting ready” to another level. I was completely expecting them to come out as transformed human beings, and was disappointed when they just looked like themselves in make-up and heels. It was cool though, cause while waiting for them I watched a bunch of music videos on Senegalese TV. First there were a bunch of low-budget mbalax music videos, which are just hilarious. They look like they are made with someone’s camcorder in their living room and backyard, but the dancing in so ridiculous that they are great in a kitschy way. They remind me of merengue music videos. Then I watched “Made in USA” which is basically BET’s 106 & Park. They play the latest hits in hip hop and R&B, so that I was able to see the video for the new Rihanna song, the new Mya song, the latest Akon song, etc. Here I thought that I would not be able to hear 50 Cent’s latest remix of “In da Club” but no, you can all rest easy in knowing that I will be kept abreast of all of the latest developments in 50’s career, and that I can see R. Kelly every night tell me how he’s a flirt. Felt just like home. Then the worse part was when they started playing French hip hop videos and I could see how hip hop has spread ignorance world-wide. I saw a video where some French 50 clone, was doing some drug deal and then goes to Rio de Janeiro and has a party with a bunch of women and crystal and then gets arrested by the police (the Feds? Interpol? The French? James Bond? Whose jurisdiction?) sent to jail where he writes his girlfriend a letter. I was horrified.

Je suis arrivé

Initial impressions:
· Whenever I read an article about Africa, and the reporter is writing from Khartoum, or Kinshasa or Abidjan or Nairobi, anywhere on the continent they always talk about how this or that city is mad dusty, it’s always the “dusty streets of Africa” and it’s true, at least in Dakar and Cairo (the two African capitals I have been to, and yes I am moving Egypt back from the “Middle East” to “Africa”) are mad dusty. Contact lens wearers beware.
· I am living with another foreigner, Soizic, a 24 year-old woman from Belgium, trained as a teacher who is trying to find work here. She was here in Dakar for three months before with the same host family, the Sarrs, and liked it so much that she came back. She seems nice but her French is impossible for me to understand, I just hear strong “r”s. It sounds like she is about to spit at me every time I reply “oui” to a question I don’t understand at all.
· Senegalese women are beautiful (OK, people everywhere are beautiful) but they ruin it by wearing way too much makeup and really bad weaves. It’s bad enough that they have to be all colonized and must attempt to look like white women, but they can’t even afford the better weaves and relaxers that black women in the United States get. C’est triste.
· The food here is great. It usually consists of fish, beef, chicken or lamb in sauce over rice, millet or couscous. Mostly fish. Or as my Dominican brain processes it, arroz con carne guisada. As long as there is some kind of sauce and a heavy starch component I can’t complain. Breakfast, however, is no good. It’s more of that French-style, café de manha shit I had in Brazil. Every morning it’s French bread, instant coffee, butter, powdered milk, chocolate and cheese. I’m sorry but I like breakfast. I want a real breakfast, either American-style eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes, sausage, etc. or Dominican-style, platanos, and (yes, Dave, I do like it) salami or cheese. I feel like I can hate on the breakfast here because it is not “authentically” Senegalese. I am trying to not sound like one of those foreigners that complains incessantly about how shitty everything is and how much better things are at home. Shit, if you don’t like where you are, you are a foreigner, you must have some chip if you were able to afford the flight so use that money and go home where everything is better. In general I try to stick to the rule of “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” (and considering the fact that I am learning to squat to shit, and wipe my ass without toilet paper, I think I can be excused for the moment, but more on this later). So as far as I am concerned, the petit-dejeuner is a negative legacy of French colonization along with economic dependency, poverty and bad hair weaves.
· I went out last Monday night with two other young foreign volunteers, one American and one British. First we went to listen to some live music at this club called “Just 4 U” (I love how corny phrases in English are super cool and chic abroad) where this live jazz were playing some standards. The band was decent but the place is overpriced. Senegal is not as cheap when compared to other peripheral countries. A beer at a club here is about $4, not bad considering in NYC they won’t even serve you a cup of coke for $4, but not as cheap as elsewhere. Then we headed to “Africa Star” a dance club downtown that was absolutely hilarious. (Yeah, the after-party, it is nice to know that Dakar never shuts down, unlike Santo Domingo whose nightlife has been destroyed by the anti-youth, anti-fun 2 am weekend curfew. I am still not over the fact that it was 2:30 AM on a SATURDAY and everything was closed and I couldn’t even find a place to get a fucking pastelito). I thought clubs in NYC were superficial and pretentious, but we got nothing on Dakar. People were straight up dancing in front of the mirrors checking themselves out. My favorite part was when one dude who was clearly into himself moved laterally—never losing sight of himself in the mirror—toward a woman that was clearly into herself, and then they coordinated movements (I refuse to call it dancing) while they both looked at themselves in the mirror. Then of course there were the random, sketchy dudes. Would the club be the club without them?
· Last Sunday I went to the beach with Soizic and some of her friends who are also volunteers. They were Belgian and French so I just nodded and said “oui” a lot and hoped they wouldn’t spit at me. One of them had just done a high school exchange at a private school in Westchester and she spoke English. She tried to explain to me a little bit of la vie blanche a Dakar. My first reaction, was, “thank God I am at the beach, if people are confusing me for white then I really do need a tan.” My second thought was, “whoa, if I am white now does that mean I get to have all of the privileges, like no one asking me twice where I am from, or corporate stock or being adulated as the most beautiful beings on Earth by self-hating people of color worldwide (see post above)?” The idea of being white, was positively titillating. Then I realized that everyone was staring at me, and not shy, curious stares, but the kind of “mad hard” stares that you get on the subway when you stare too long at the wrong person’s girl. It could be that I was walking around with four, gleaming beacons of freedom (the white women) but it was obvious that I must have looked like the fifth beacon. Suddenly being white wasn’t so cool an idea (I’d still take the corporate stock though).
· I am taking four hours of French par jour. Three night I had my first nightmare in French. I was buttered and eaten for breakfast in the middle of a giant baguette.