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.