Bare Minimum

On Sunday I finally moved into the youth hostel I should have booked earlier. It was classic youth hostel, with bunk beds, shared rooms and facilities, kitchen, chill-out area and internet service, and the usual crowd of early twentysomethings backpacking through Europe. I am not a fan of hostels, mainly because I don’t like sleeping with several other random strangers. It’s not that I am prissy like that, I just feel like some people weren’t raised right and have no matters and other folks are just weird and I don’t feel like sleeping in the same room as them. Furthermore, it’s pure capitalism. They charge you the most money for the least possible. It’s like they ask themselves, how little can we give people while still follow the health and building codes (the only stopping them from giving you a mat on the floor in a tiny box and calling it a night, as I saw later on my trip) and then how much can we charge them so that it’s barely preferable to sleeping on a park bench. Shit, you pay 16€ and some places won’t even give you sheets. Don’t dream of a towel. Still, it’s the best way to meet people, and it’s at Los Amigos Backpackers’ Hostel in Madrid that I met Tracey over breakfast and convinced her to follow me to Morocco over lunch. Although I think it was the sharp cut that sealed the deal.

Self-Hating but I Love Them

As much as “The Most Self-Hating Group of Black People on the Planet Earth” annoy me, I love them. It’s one of those “can’t live with them, can’t live without them” type deals. They’re my people, what can I say? My only goal in Madrid was to find my tribe, get some food and chill with them. I quickly got my wish. After the rain let up, I went out for another calling card. I wanted to say hi to the nice lady from the day before since she had saved my life, but her kiosk was closed so I went down to the next one. After buying the card I was so busy lamenting the price, 10€, that I didn’t notice that the man who sold me the ticket was black. Was he one of mine? I asked him if he was Dominican, and he said yes so I chilled with him and his friend who was there to keep him company. After being flummoxed when I tried to explain what it was that I was doing in Senegal and why I would ever go to Africa (remember the title of the blog), they were even more shocked that I hadn’t had platanos in four months. How had a survived? I had often wondered the same thing. The friend pitied me that he invited me to his house for a home-cooked Dominican meal. We took the bus to the bodega, and I felt like hugging the platanos, and yuccas and Goya cans and never letting go. He made platanos sancochados and huevos revueltos with way too much oil, the way Dominicans do it; I bought us two forties to wash the food down. We sat on his plastic covered couches, and I heard his sister-in-law curse at her children in Spanish. It felt like home. Then he got up to get some more oil, his platanos needed more grease he explained.

On the Importance of Learning Your Lessons

Saturday morning I woke up, took my first warm shower in four months and was ready to get to know the city, when the hostel staff told me that since I had only booked my room for one night I would have to pack my bags and leave in less than an hour. Someone else had reserved my room. This time I was serious about crying and the lady saw the distraught looking and told me she could hook me up with a friend of hers who ran a hostel a couple of streets away. So me and some middle-aged Swedish tourists who had just completed the Santiago trail—who apparently were just as stupid as me and had forgotten to book their room for the whole weekend too—went to a dingy looking spot three or four small side streets from Gran Via. Finally I went out to get to know Madrid and of course it rained, and I was forced to return to the hostel and watch Friends and Dragon Ball Z reruns in Spainish.

On the Importance of Planning Ahead

It’s important to plan ahead people. I was going to book my hostel in advance online, but didn’t feel like paying the four or five euro online fee. I figured that whenever you speak the language and have money you are fine and that I would just land, check some places out and pick the one I liked most. That was a truly dumb mistake. Instead I arrived to Madrid’s Barajas Airport at 5 AM to find everything closed. I had to wait for one of the bookstores to open so that I could leaf through a travel guide and get some phone numbers. Then I had to wait for another store to open before I could even get a calling card. All of the places I called were booked for the weekend. Out of ideas, I stopped by McDonald’s to see if there were any Americans who could help me. I saw some valley girls who told me to go to Plaza Callao, and that there I might be able to find something. I had to wait for the Metro to start (If you don’t get it, waiting for things to open was the theme of the day) and finally I arrived at Plaza Callao at 7 AM cold, hungry, lonely, sleepy and tired. I had breakfast at Dunkin Donuts (the only place open) and contemplated my own stupidity until the internet place opened. Online I found a bunch of numbers but everyone I called was booked solid. I started to panic. Would I have to sleep on the street? Finally, the Spainish Barnes & Noble La Casa del Libro opened and I paid up the ass for the Lonely Planet Spain guide. It was actually the second-largest expense of my entire trip. I was going to cry, but then I got myself together and figured that if it came to that it was still early as fuck and I could just take a bus out of Madrid, and find a hotel elsewhere. Finally, the lady who I bought the calling cards from told me to just check the hostels across the street and sure enough the first one I knocked on had a room available for 20€, more than I wanted to pay but at least was clean. After not having slept at all the previous night all I wanted to do was go to bed anyway.

Last In

Before surviving the Sahara I had the even harder challenge of surviving my first Senegalese summer, AKA the rainy season AKA the fucking hot and humid season, when it seems it’s always about to rain but really it only rains like six times. A couple of hours before my flight to Madrid, the rainy season decided to go out with a bang. It poured. The coordinator for my program was supposed to take me to the airport but was late due to the rain (and probably also due to a mild case Senegalitis) and showed up to my host family’s house less than two hours for the flight. He and I had some outstanding business, and I was pissed enough that I didn’t care about missing my flight (and I figured they would have to delay the flight due to the biblical rain) so we started beefing. We argued all the way to the airport in the rain, and in the end I had to run with my bags in the rain through puddles hoping my flight wouldn’t leave without me. Fortunately although my flight was in 55 minutes I made it, barely so, as they closed the flight the moment I stammered in, wet and winded. On the bright side, there was no waiting, I went right through security and directly onto the plane.

Eating Colonialism

So clearly there are a couple of things I always complain about like relaxed and fake hair, food, TV, music videos, etc. and I will always blame them on capitalism, racism, patriarchy and colonialism. It’s time to complain about food again. The eating patterns here were thoroughly colonized by the French. I have already complained a lot about the bread, butter, cheese, Nescafe, chocolate spread and powdered milk for breakfast. It is just too French for me (although it is low-budget French). I would prefer an American breakfast, eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes, waffles, cereal, fruit, etc. or some platanos sancocha’os o mangu con queso frito o salami. Although, I knew that rice was also introduced by French I was happy eating it until one day I stopped to observe the grains before putting them in my mouth. I realized that they were much shorter than the rice we eat in the US. I figured that rice wasn’t the same everywhere until I remembered something Oke mentioned a long time ago. They eat broken rice here. Broken rice is basically the waste produced from preparing and packaging white rice for market. Some brief online research (and you know you can always believe what you seen online) revealed that in the US broken rice was mostly used for brewing beer and is now used for pet food. We’re eating dog food. It’s all imported from Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries and it’s advertised as 100% quality broken rice. Why do they eat it then? Because it’s cheap. According to the website it’s low in nutrients and fiber, but high in “energy” content, i.e. it’s empty carbs meant to fill the tummy as quickly as possible.

What I have to do more research on, is why they don’t eat more Senegalese couscous which is already the most feeling substance I have already put in my mouth. Made from ground millet, a little bit of Senegalese couscous (it’s brown rather than yellow like Moroccan couscous which they also eat here) with some stewed fish or beef is guaranteed to put you to bed and make you forget any thought of hunger for several days. Millet is the traditional grain that was the main staple (they would have it with real milk for breakfast, I have no idea how they got through their days eating this stuff more than once daily) before the French introduced them to rice and bread. The imported rice is cheaper than the native produced millet although I get the feeling that there is also a social status aspect to it in that people associate millet with villagers and rice as more urban and therefore prefer rice.

But the French really did a good job overall here. Their influence is all over the cuisine. For example, people here love everything here super-sweet even though sugar is also something they didn’t know before the French. I can go on, they love mustard, mayonnaise, and gruyere. Could anything be more stereotypically French than mayonnaise, mustard and gruyere? Could the French colonial policy to “educate” and assimilate West Africans in order to create “black Frenchmen” have worked any better?

Gaïnde

The lion is the national symbol of Senegal. The national football team is called The Lions of Teranga. In fact all of the national teams are the lions of something. Lions are used to advertise everything from butter to politicians to TV channels. The latest hit song from Youssou Ndour encourages people to be tenacious like a hungry lion when they encounter life’s obstacles. I have even heard stories of Presidents’ parading lions through the streets of Dakar for major state holidays. In other words if you are like me and think Americans have an infantile obsession with the bald eagle you should know that the Senegalese obsession with lions proves that the fixation with “national animals” can get much worse. In the US it’s ironic that the bald eagle would be the national symbol given that until recently it was endangered and can be found in Canada and Mexcio also. Then again what could be more American than destroying the environment and causing the extinction of species? But at least I am sure that the US has most of the world’s bald eagles, while I always clown the Senegalese because there have to be at least 20 countries in Africa (and yes there are that many African countries) that have more lions than Senegal. Shit there might be more lions in US zoos than in all of Senegal. Therefore I think it’s funny that they took an animal that many more countries have more “valid” claims to and have turned it into this central national symbol.

I am torn as to how to interpret it. On the one hand, it seems an admirable attempt on behalf of an impoverished group of people to venerate what little they have rather than focusing on how others have much more (i.e. Senegal may not have as much money or lions as other countries but it insists on being positive and focusing on what little it has rather than what it hasn’t). Analogous to the country seeing the glass as ¼ full rather than ¾ empty like it really is. On the other hand, it could be similar to the national obsession with fake hair and it’s like the exaggerated attempt to take what you would like but is denied to you because of your low status in the world system, a system that is rigged against you because the standards for success are arbitrarily set by those in power to meet their needs (in this analogy white people see lions and long, straight hair as cool and the Senegalese then want long, straight hair and lions even though their hair is short and nappy and they have few lions).

When I ask them where I might go as an American tourist to see lions in Senegal so that I can therefore better understand the national psyche, they all stammer and reluctantly concede that Senegal has few lions. At this point, if they are clever they point to the fact that Senegal is also shaped like a lion’s head, and hence the symbolism. This factoid aggravates me on many levels. First of all, it reinforces just how childish the obsession with lions is. Are we nine-year-olds giggling about why Montana has a face and why it’s staring at Idaho, or whether Florida is the US’ boot or its penis? Secondly, I think Senegal looks more like a fish (which to me makes more sense considering that they eat so much fish here) than a lion’s head (which I guess is like penis or boot, I say boot by the way). Third, Senegal’s shape has nothing to do with the “national” anything; its borders were drawn up by a French bureaucrat to meet the needs of the French colonial administration. Jokes aside, I am talking of how much more absurd nationalism and the idea of the “nation” seems in the younger nations of “post-colonial” Africa.

Senegal makes no sense as a country. To varying extents that is true of all the countries in sub-Saharan Africa (I would even push it to say that “nations” everywhere are a myth and we should have no national borders, kumbaya yall). The borders were drawn arbitrarily by colonial administrators and the results of intra-European rivalries in the 1880s and 90s. For example, the mouth of the Senegalese Lion (or Fish) is The Gambia. The Gambia (and yes, it’s always “The”) was a former British colony that basically just encompasses the Gambia River. It is tiny country, with less than 2 million inhabitants and being something ridiculous like only two miles wide at some points. Gambians are the same as the surrounding people in Senegal, except that instead of French the highest sectors of society are English speaking. There was a failed attempt at a Senegambian union several years ago, but I guess the idea just makes too much sense for politicians to make it happen. I would think that the weak argument of behalf of Senegalese nationhood—the fact that no notion of Senegal even existed before the French created it less than 120 years ago—would make it easier to merge countries like Senegal and the Gambia into Senegambia or (if God were just) all of sub-Saharan Africa into a United States of Africa. Instead it just means that the politicians have to exaggerate even more and pull out more of the usual tricks to convince people that “Senegal” actually exists. We end up with a national obsession with lions and notebooks for schoolchildren emblazoned with patriotic messages.

And like I said the case for nationhood truly is weak. There are several languages spoken, and even though Wolof is dominant it is still not spoken by all Senegalese (many of the villagers where I was for example spoke only Sereer). There are many ethnic groups so that contrary to say Somalia that is 90% ethnic Somali, no ethnic group has a majority. At least there is a unifying religion. But there wasn’t even an independence war around which to build a national mythology. It’s telling that the memorial at Independence Plaza while a tribute to fallen soldiers (always the military-nation connection, another reason to despise nationalism, kumbaya yall) is homage to martyrs who died for France. Imagine if the Washington Memorial was a memorial for American soldiers who died for England. The Senegalese are not as annoyingly or frighteningly jingoistic as Americans, nor do they insist on putting their flag everywhere from sidewalks to scandalous swimsuits like Brazilians, in fact they are no more patriotic than “average.” I just hoped that people would tone it down since it is an even more obviously fake country than all of the other already obviously fake countries. It’s like how you will often see black women in the US and wonder if they are wearing a weave, but you don’t want to say it because although it’s clearly fake it could be her hair. Here if you see a woman with hair below her chin it is definitely not hers.

Man ak Mom

Sunday afternoons here only mean one thing, ridiculous music videos. After lunch I decided to watch TV as my stomach digested the greasy rice and pork I had had. First it was all concert footage of French “adult contemporary” artist (think Celine Dion) and it was like watching the French VH-1. That at least seemed more “authentic” than the blatant imitations I saw on the French BET that came on afterward. So after seeing Cherish “Do it do it” and Young Jeezy spew his latest nonsense about cars, hos, clubs and jewelry, I saw the French imitations. The first video “Ma soeur” (my sister) by Vitaa is about the French Cherish finding out that her friend was sleeping with her boyfriend (and after she bought her that great bag for her birthday!) I shouldn’t have to explain how this is a ludicrous. The second is Kenza Farah’s "Je me bats." Maybe it’s just cause she’s not white, but I think she does a better job imitating American R&B. (The third clip is some of that VH-1 French pop nonsense.) Then just when I had forgotten that it could get worse the Senegalese imitation of American hip hop and R&B came on. Gaston featuring Titi in “Man ak Mom.” It’s Wolof for “Me and Him/Her” but it’s clear that it’s “her.” This clown had the audacity to wear a fur coat while shooting a video in Dakar. It’s hot as fuck. Motherfucker are you crazy? Do you seriously fantasize yourself as a flossin’, ballin’ American rapper so much (already a fantasy none of those clowns live either) that you lost your mind? A fur coat in Dakar! A fur coat! An animal died so this fool can wear a fur coat in 90 degree weather. Gente pero es verdad, en este mundo se ve todo.

I was happy that after that the shows shifted to the less enraging, more laughable absurdity of mbalax music videos. I love them. They too imitate American music videos in always trying to have the singer perform surrounded by luxury, except that they don’t have big houses and nice cars so the videos always looked like they are filmed in some rich Senegalese person’s living room. The rest of the scenes will be in front of a nice car (just one) that while genuinely a nice car like a Ford Explorer is something I could own if I ever get a regular job. No Bentleys. But at leas they are trying and the acrobatic, lively dancing is much more endearing than trying to look cool in your fur coat when you live in a poor, hot African country.

The Humid Season

Senegal’s rainy season runs from June to October. It has rained about a dozen times in four months, and only four times has the rain been harder than an intermittent drizzle. Really it’s the hot and humid season, to be hopefully followed by a cool and dry season. Or what they call “winter.” It’s so hot that I don’t even go out during the day unless I have a good reason to. I feel bad because rain here means that some people can’t sleep in their homes that are regularly flooded by even the tiniest amounts of rain during the humid season (I refuse to call it the rainy season anymore) but the only times it isn’t ridiculously muggy is when it rains so I find myself hoping for rain often. Most of the time it is like 90˚ F and 90% humidity and it feels like it’s about to rain until it doesn’t.

The Village

Two weeks ago I went with my host family to their village. Palmarin is a collection of 5 villages in Senegal’s Petite Cote where most Sereer come from. The region is also has a large numbers of Catholic and is famous for its beaches and for Joal, the hometown of the famous French language poet and first president of Senegal, Leopold Senghor. I only had to hear that little factoid about a dozen times from everyone I met before memorizing it. I went with my host mom and Alphonse (who at this point should require no introduction). We got up early and took a station wagon shared taxi to Mbour, the resort town at the entrance to the region. There we switched to a “car rapide,” which was fine until we ran out of paved highway. The rest of the ride was a hot, bumpy, cramped, dusty, slow jaunt along the coast. I learned that my host mom can be as bossy with random strangers as she is at home when she smacked some teenage boy upside the head while we were stopping to pick up yet another passenger by the side of the road when there was already no space in the bus.

Palmarin-Gundamane reminded me of Moca. Like in all of my previous “village” experience (Moca has become mon village in Senegal, and “The Most Self-Hating Group of Black People on the Planet” mon ethnie) I spent all of my time reading on the porch, chilling with a bunch of old women who congregate every day at the same place to alternate gossiping and staring at each other in silence, eating too much, smacking at mosquitoes and failing, and sleeping too much. Time just seems to drag in villages. After I had finished my book and taken a nap and had gone to the beach I just had no idea what to do. But villages solve that problem quickly too. I was handed several beers and then had three or four neighbors bring me dinner. I was hoping my stomach wouldn’t burst as I tried to eat enough from the fourth plate to satisfy the cook that I really did like her plate of greasy rice, pork and sauce as much as everyone else’s greasy rice, pork and sauce but really I was just that stuffed.

Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting started two weeks ago. Palmarin is a mostly Catholic village and the small Catholic minority in Senegal seems like they want to shove it in the Muslims’ faces that yes they drink, and eat pork and insist on doing so more during Ramadan when the Muslims fast. I have never eaten here as much pork as I did that weekend.

After I got my nose out of the plates I realized that it was pitch-black around me. Palmarin just recently got electricity (still waiting on running water, for now they get all of their water from the well) but all of the houses I went to only had one or two dim blue light-bulbs that allowed you to see that there were other people in the room but not much more than that. Once out of the houses we were walking by moonlight. When I got back to where we were staying (there were also the obligatory “village visits” to ancient aunts and crazy uncles) I found out that there were no electrical outlets meaning no fan and nowhere to charge my phone. That night I sweat myself to sleep, with the fatigue from all that pork and beer eventually overcoming the heat and my fear of sleeping without a mosquito net in a West African village with several pools of standing water.

For the ride back we waited by in the hardware store across the dirt road for a bus to come. It took a good two hours to come, but fortunately it was relatively empty and the return trip was somewhat more comfortable. It took about four hours to get back to Dakar after stopping something like 50 times to pick people and drop them off at random spots along the road. When we arrived at Mbour we saw that it had rained, but it looked like only drizzle. I was happy cause rain meant that it was cooler and that the dirt would settle as hard mud than as dust on my backpack and my t-shirt. Then when we got off by the highway near my house and started walking home, it starting pouring. I felt bad for my host mom cause she was carrying a large sac full of Senegalese couscous on her head (to resell), but seconds after seeing the drops fall softly on my glasses the rain was so heavy that I couldn’t even see her behind me.

Miss Oscar Des Vacances 2007

Senegal is 95% Muslim. Every other girl I meet tells me she is a model. The Islam here is funny. Whereas throughout the Islamic world whether women should wear the veil is often a source of intense debate (usually billed as secular modernists versus religious fundamentalists) here you are more likely to see topless women than women wearing the veil. It almost frees the women here to try to be just as superficial and consumeristic as women in the West are taught to be (they can’t do it because they don’t have the same cash).

All this to say I thought the modeling obsession here was a bit incongruent with the country’s Muslim beliefs and have been clowning the mannequin cousin who comes by frequently. But I now I feel somewhat foolish that I didn’t take her seriously because two weeks she won Miss Oscar des Vacances 2007, a somewhat impressive beauty contest. Oscar des Vacances is a dumb variety show that comes on here every summer (since the 80s they swear) on Sunday afternoons. The few times I saw it, I just remember an over-excited audience, long speeches by random government ministers, an over-animated host, wack skits, tacky costumes and crappy mbalax acts. Dominicanos imaginen Sabado de Corporan, especially cause the show seems to go on for like eight hours but with an even lower budget and happier-to-be-hosting host. The lowlight was when I saw a toddler in a du-rag rapping about something that just couldn’t have been good. The show takes pride in giving the youth of Dakar a healthy form of entertainment them on Sunday afternoons when they might otherwise be idle and be tempted to become juvenile delinquents and deviants, yall know, getting into crime, having sex, smoking weed, being poor. I think this is one of the cases where cure might be worse than the disease. On the show’s finale they crown the winner of the summer long beauty pageant. I wasn’t aware that the cousin, Mami, had made it as a finalist. I didn’t even hear it when she won, actually I couldn’t hear it because my host sisters were screaming so loudly. After Mami won the cameras showed a bunch of hysterical young women who were carried about by security personnel for having violent seizures and I had to wonder if all of these women knew the participants personally (friends and extended family?) or if this is just something Senegalese TV loves to do. It reminded me of how after the big wrestling matches they show someone’s entire neighborhood or town crying as if there had just been a major natural disaster leading to real suffering rather than it just being some random local celebrity in an irrelevant competition the result of which has no bearing on people’s real lives. The other finalists who did lost out on something tangible were carried out in ambulances crying uncontrollably. Mami’s prize includes $1,000+, a round trip ticket to Paris and several sponsorships.

Unexpectedly, Mami announced she was retiring from the modeling. An interview with her was published recently in one of the major dailies here. In it she said that she was quitting modeling because of how fucked up it could be and that instead she was going to apply to join the army. She said that too many models feel obligated to sleep with photographers and agents to advance their careers and that many women use modeling as a guise for prostitution (prostitution is legal in Senegal, but it’s still condemned). Now anyone who isn’t a naïve knows that that is how modeling works, but all of the people in my host family thought she should have said it, even if they conceded that it was true. When I asked why it was wrong to say, they all replied that there was no reason to say it. It’s only the truth.

Chatting with Alphonse

Someone once told me that whenever you are somewhere you don’t speak the language for a long time the children will become your best friends. Some shit about how children are free of prejudice. She was talking about her experiences in some indigenous village somewhere in Latin America. I was skeptical of the generalization. I remember being a child, and children are cruel, mean creatures that are often the MOST prejudiced members of any society. Yet she was right. After three months here my best friend is a shy, passive, skinny nine year old boy, Alphonse. We play hide-and-seek, and soccer and wrestle. In addition to being a physical work out, hanging out with him also makes me have to think too. He makes me bust out the English-French dictionary when he asks me random questions like “Why do the Arabs make war on America?” and “Can I keep a star? What would happen if I tried putting one in my pocket? Would I lose it?” And of course there are lots of questions about Michael Jackson, like this one earlier today:

Did Michael Jackson ever come to Dakar?

I don’t know. I doubt it.

But I saw him. When I was a child.

Alphonse you are still a child.

When I was like 3 or 4 y.o.

And you remember that?

Yeah, he had his hair like this (arching his arms over his head in the shape of an afro).

Michael Jackson stopped being black before you were born.

Are you sure there are not two Michael Jacksons?

Yes.

Cape Verde Encore

Sunday night I went with my host and their “cousins” to Cape Verdean night at “Le Mandingo” the club for the Hotel Sofitel Teranga right by the Place de l’independence downtown. (when I asked my host sister how she was related to them, she replied that they were from the same group of villages and had the same last name, therefore they were cousins). One of the cousins, Mami (her name, I kid you not) is a “mannequin.” Mannequin is the French word for model, which in my opinion is a more honest term for it than the English word. Model connotes exemplary, and what are models exemplary of? A good eating disorder? Mannequins on the other hand are objects designed to display clothing. Ultimately her occupation makes no difference, she took no longer than my host sisters in doing her make-up, was just as broke when it came to pay for the cab and danced pretentiously in front of the mirror at the club like everyone else. Since it was Sunday we left the house at 1:30 AM or slightly earlier than usual. Once at the club the Cape Verdean zouk live band performance I was promised got reduced to a dweeby looking dude in white jeans lip-synching three songs in the middle of the dance floor. I don’t speak Cape Verdean Creole but I understand enough of the Portuguese influence in it to know that the songs are not about anything, the choruses always prominently feature words like “sentimento,” “coracao,” “amor,” and “quero.” Other than that it was “Cape Verdean” night because they played more zouk and funana than usual, but they still went through the typical Dakar club mix so I filled my Lil’ Jon, 50 cent, Mimz, Daddy Yankee and Don Omar quotas for the week. I was just glad that men here don’t have to dress up to go out. I thought I was casually dressed in my uniform of dark blue jeans, high-top Chucks and a short-sleeve T-shirt, but there was some dude there in a giveaway T-shirt, navy blue wind-breakers and running shoes. He beat me. He looked like he was going to go jogging after leaving the club at 5 AM. The women of course were super-made and dressed up.

Cheikh Lo

Friday I went to see one of the only two Senegalese musicians I had heard of before coming to Senegal, Cheikh Lo (the other being the ubiquitous Youssou Ndour). Cheikh Lo makes a much more toned down mbalax—i.e. more true to its roots in son and other Afro-Cuban rhythms of the 1950s and 60s—and adds some samba and flamenco for flavor. In other words, the man is an artist. He is a member of the Baye Fall a subset of the biggest Muslim brotherhood here, that (and I will explain it all when I understand it better) I can only describe as Muslim rastas. They wear locks and really colorful boubous, ignore all the fundamental rules of Islam—they don’t fast for Ramadan, don’t pray five times a day and drink lots of alcohol—and devote their lives to the marabouts—the magical/mystical/saintly clerical aristocrats that run the brotherhoods. They are supposed to work their marabouts’ field for free and you often see them begging for money and food at gas stations. Many of Cheikh’s songs are about being Baye Fall and his latest album is named after the founder of the order “Lamp Fall.” Point being I was excited to see the dude. I was disappointed, however. The music was good but for a mystic (Cheikh himself is rail-thin, wore a simple blue tunic, some typical “Muslim” amulets with inscriptions of the Koran and pictures of famous marabouts, and fewer than a dozen locks that ran down to his knees) he has some serious ego issues. Originally a percussionist he now focuses on the guitar and insisted on doing most of the solos, not letting any of the members of the band get any shine. The problem is that he approaches the guitar like a drummer would, and his percussive style gets jarring quickly. Still he has a beautiful voice, soft and inspiring—unlike the whiny, nasal falsetto people here seem to prefer in their male vocalists—so he’s definitely worth checking out.

R. Kelly

Last Wednesday after some host family drama I decided that I had to get out the house and try to relax for a bit (cause yall know I am not relaxing enough out here. My life is so stressful). Trying to think what I could do I asked my teacher to take me to the spot where we could smoke some “arquery.” Arquery we had established is what he called the hookah I showed him from my pictures in Egypt and my last semester at Harvard. Although I could not find the word in the dictionary I figured it was the French word for hookah, until I asked him how to spell it. R. Kelly. He was trying to say R. Kelly. I couldn’t believe it. What the hell does R. Kelly have to do with hookahs? Is there some chapter of the “Trapped in the Closet” saga where he smokes from a hookah? How come I haven’t seen it? Am I that out of touch with the young ones? I know I didn’t find out about the “Chicken Noodle Soup” song until two or three months into it, but I found out eventually. The spot where we smoked is a random fast-food joint here where you can get a greasy beef shwarma with soggy fries inside wrapped in three pieces of plastic for under $2. For whatever reason they had arquerys (and yes that is how we asked for it) for about the price of a sandwich. The hookah was not well prepared but it hit the spot nonetheless, and considering that one bowl in NYC can easily run you $15 I ain’t complaining.

Paradise Interrupted

On Caitlin’s last day we went to the Ile de la Madeleine, a small uninhabited island off Dakar (hence the cab ride). It is technically a national park and I was going in hopes of finding a beach that was clean, and clear of vendors hissing at me; flabby, pale tourists; buff dudes working out at the beach trying to get one of the flabby, pale tourists mentioned above; and children splashing around everywhere. Unsurprisingly, it was a small adventure just to find the ferry there. It was wedged between two beachfront construction sites, and when we got there they got annoyed that we hadn’t seen the small, inaccessible sign. We took a small motorboat out there accompanied by a tall, muscular soldier with an ancient looking semiautomatic rifle. When Caitlin asked what it was for he said it was to kill annoying illegally fishing near the island.

We were alone on this empty island for a couple of hours. Feeling like I was in paradise I decided to lay down in the water while resting my head on the sand beyond where the waves were reaching. It was idyllic until I felt something bite my knee and then when I tried to get up I felt another two or three bites. Startled I quickly rose to my feet and looked through the invisibly clear water to see a large school of tiny “vulture” fish. These fish attacked me every time I tried entering the water and effectively impeded my plan to cool off by getting in the water. Subsequently, when it hit noon and I finally conceded that the tiny evil fish had won, I was forced to discover that the island had no shade cover. It was hot as fuck, but I got a nice tan though.

Mobil is the Spot

People here hang out at gas stations. There are a couple of Mobil On-The-Run stations that have some fast-food restaurants serving pizza (Nando’s) and hamburgers along with a small convenience store where you can buy stuff like milk, yogurt, chips, soda and oatmeal. For some reason this means that the ExxonMobil Corporation in addition to recording the two highest corporate profits ever (setting the record in 2005 only to break it in 2006, will 2007 be a three-peat?) also owns the coolest places to hang out in Dakar on a Friday night. In the US, the gas station is somewhere you go get gas or stop by (quickly) to pick up cigarettes or a Snapple. You don’t chill there, but here people come and hang. There are various theories as to why this happens: 1. they serve as good meeting locations in a city with few landmarks (what are you supposed to say stop at the dusty road by the mosque?) 2. they are air-conditioned 3. you can sit there and they won’t harass you to buy anything 4. you can drink alcohol all day long far from your family in a country where everyone drinks but no one does so where they might get “caught.” People here treat alcohol like Americans do marijuana. It’s publicly condemned and widely available; some will flaunt their use while most who do it try to hide it from their families. 5. They have an internet connection and items like yogurt that the boutique doesn’t have.

The story of how Caitlin and I went to the dunes in the north starts at the Mobil station by where she was staying. Although we went on Saturday morning and were back by Sunday night it felt like several days in two. When I got to the Mobil station mad early, the crazy French dude was already there. Even though it was time for bread and cheese he asked me if I had a lighter and when I replied that I didn’t he looked at me like I was the crazy one. Smoking cigarettes is one of the Senegalese learned very well from the French. It’s impossible to go out here and not come home smelling like an ashtray. That Mobil station is also probably the only place on Earth where the women’s bathroom stinks more than the men’s. Which reminds me of reason number for why people go there: they actually have soap in the bathroom.

Not Quite Chinatown

The Chinatown Bus between NYC and Boston would be luxury travel in Senegal. Like many poor countries here the public transportation system is best (i.e. euphemistically) called “informal.” At the Garotiere, the inter-city shared taxi depot downtown, we were able to avoid most of the men that shout and tug at you and your bags trying to get you in their car even if they are going south and you want to go north. We paid US$6 each for the right to grab one of the seven seats in a sept-place. We got lucky that the car only needed us to have seven passengers so we didn’t have to wait for more customers going our direction to show up before leaving. I had the honor of sitting in the back between two friends who had each claimed one of the corners. I had to lean forward as they tried to talk behind me, meaning I got screamed at in loud Wolof from alternating sides for the first hour and a half of the trip. Finally they had to get up to pee or buy something at which point I got to sit back as each both of them leaned on me and now the screaming was in front of me. Every time the car stopped we would get swarmed with vendors selling mangoes, cheap cookies, cold water in plastic bags and calling cards. When we got off at Kebemer, the small town we had to switch to another car, we got more dudes trying to take us places for outrageous prices although the worse was definitely to come.

Caravan of Peace

We were hungry and decided to leave the gare and walk to the town to get some lunch before moving to our next destination. We started walking down the road not knowing how far the town was, but less than five minutes later we saw a busload of white folks getting off in front of a modern looking building randomly built by the side of the road. Figuring that where there were white people there was food we walked in to what we saw was a Ministry of Youth and Employment building. There were some drummers and we could see that it was some kind of event for a group of French people. After some welcoming remarks they started placing bandanas around each other’s necks like they were crowning people. Then to our disappointment they all headed back to the bus without eating. We were getting ready to leave as we were approached by who seemed to be their leader. He looked upset we crashed his peace party, but was nice enough to get one of the local hosts to help us find a restaurant. Consequently, three teenage boys led us into town. Two of them even help hands part of the way; it was really cute. In town they took us the kind of place where the food is so cheap it’s almost the same price as a can of coke but where you also need to keep the thought of food poisoning and diarrhea out of your mind and just eat.

Car Rapide, mentira!

After our deliciously cheap lunch we tried getting a cab to Lompoul the next leg in our trip. We asked for a cab and a guy told us he would take us for 10,000 F CFA (about US$22) which was so obviously ridiculous that when we asked the next person and they said 400 F CFA we both heard 4,000 and Caitlin was about to start screaming before she started laughing. The first guy had quoted us 25 the normal price! When we got to the car we realized why it was only 400. It wasn’t a car but a car rapide which in Senegal means a beat-up old van outfitted to fit as many people with as few amenities as possible and painted very colorfully with mostly religious quotes and symbols like “God is Great,” and “Thank You God” although the best one I ever saw passed by once when I was at the Mobil station. Instead of a quote from the Koran dedicating the car to God, this one was a vehicle of praise for Al Pacino. The owner must be a real fan of the

Godfather and Scarface. The car rapide we rode that day had two benches along the sides and one freestanding one down the middle. After the lady breastfeeding her child on the bus got off to let us on, I had the pleasure of sitting with my knees almost to my chest and someone else’s knees knocking on the back of my shoulders. Then of course the guy wanted to be slick with us and charge us more money than he had told us. After some of the hottest 45 minutes of my life we got off at Lompoul Village.

Meet the Chief

Lompoul Village has a sign that announces who its chief is that is almost as big as the village. After getting dropped off we were welcomed to the village by one of the women who lives there, who I guess is the unofficial guide. She spoke decent French and encouraged us to say hi to the chief. The chief was a regular-looking old Senegalese man who was lying on a matt on the floor wearing an inexpensive boubou and holding a chapelet in his hands. When we tried to greet him and his people in Wolof he got really upset and told us he was Peul. “Sow” couldn’t I see the family name printed in big letters on the sign welcoming us to the village. That is a Peul last name; until that moment I had never heard of it. After sitting awkwardly for a few minutes I remembered that the Lonely Planet guide has some brief section with phrases in each of the major native languages of Senegal. Caitlin and them had a great time when we tried to pronounce simple phrases like “Thank you,” “How are you?” “Good morning” and “Hello” in Peul. After this we had some attaya or traditional Senegalese tea (of course it comes from China). They make it super sweet and hot, and then they want you to drink it quickly so they use the same shotglass to pass tea back to the others. Although you drink it fast, they spend forever making it which turns it into more elaborate ritual than your typical morning tea. Our ride was so long in getting there that we were actually able to finish our tea.

dunes dude, dunes

Dunes are cool. A large 4WD truck came to pick us up and take us into the dunes. The driver was a maniac who ran through the dirt roads in this huge truck at a ridiculous speed. But the most disorienting thing was that we were driving toward the dunes but everything was nice and green. Where was the desert? And then all of the sudden we saw some tents and a lot of sand. I spent the next 24 hours barefoot and getting over my phobia of sand. It was beautiful. I sat and contemplated life while the sun set over the sand mountains as Caitlin sprayed herself head to toe in bug spray.

Dancing with White Folks

We were late to that evening’s festivities. Some of the male employees (we only saw one woman on staff) were drumming and dancing for all of the Spanish tourists staying there (and I don’t mean Spanish in the ghetto sense, they weren’t Puerto Rican, they were actually from Spain). Then of course they started pulling all of us to dance. So we danced and made fools of ourselves like all the others. It’s one of those moments when you are making fun of people for doing something that you too could easily be accused of, i.e. hypocrisy. Afterward our lovely drummers and dancers served us dinner (people in Africa are so nice!) Over dinner I met the other guide. The first guide was the one dancing super flashy. He spoke Spanish poorly but tried to make up for it with enthusiasm like when we were waiting for the bathroom and he congratulated my dancing by exclaiming that “Bailar es muy bueno!” I got the feeling he was the kind of gregarious dude that figured out that if he just danced and smiled for white folks he could get them to give him a lot of money. On the other hand, the other guide spoke great Spanish using words like “transgredido” that I don’t think I have ever spoken, and explaining concepts like a comparison between the Sereer’s more egalitarian social structure and the Wolof’s rigid caste system in Spanish, something that I could never do. I got the feeling he would rather have been studying Cervantes, but had to reconcile himself to the demeaning reality that he could make more money leading groups of middle-aged Spanish folks through his country. Dinner was good though.

Biggest Penis in Senegal

Our serenity was rudely interrupted when we had to pay for our stay. Caitlin had gotten one price on the phone when she booked the room and now we were being charged more money. What was worse is that the guy we had to deal was the most intransigent negotiator I have encountered out here. He acted like he had the biggest penis in Senegal. He kept saying that, that was the price, as if anything has a fixed price in this country. Eventually Caitlin busted out some French battle rhymes on him and he agreed to cut the price. By then it was noon, and my fall into love with the desert abruptly hit the floor. It was hot as fuck. There was no shade. There was no cooler ocean water to enter. There was no breeze. Instead there were strong gusts that blew sand sprinkles everywhere. There was nowhere to be but inside the tents where it was even hotter. I was done with the desert.

Teranga my ass

We got dropped back off at the village the following afternoon. We had some tea as we waited for a bus or cab to pass by. As it became increasingly clear that no bus or cab would be coming we were forced to negotiate with the second biggest penis in Senegal. It was the most one-sided negotiation I have had here. We tried every trick short of begging. We walked away, acted angry, acted reasonable, and he did not budge at all from his price. I didn’t feel like spending a night in the middle of carajoland so we grudgingly paid to several times the normal price to ride a car that was being repaired as we negotiated.

Tourism is a major industry in Senegal. Even though it is the rainy season (and therefore low season for tourism) the country is overrun by white people. Teranga is the Wolof term for the traditional value of hospitality. Seemingly everyone here prides themselves in their country’s hospitality. Umm, I am sorry to inform them but their country can be downright hostile to tourists. I am cynical about the whole idea of “welcoming” cultures as mere marketing. Maybe Senegal is as kind to strangers as they say it is, and we just got caught on a bad day or in a bad region or dealing with a bad bunch of Senegalese, but I doubt it. I guess it could be worse, like they could have kidnapped us for ransom, but it could have also been better.

Back in Kebemer we got mobbed as soon as we got out of the car. We asked for a car to Dakar and started getting quoted ridiculous prices ($40, $50, $60 when the price getting there was $6). Then at one point I negotiated with this guy who didn’t even have a car. Often people here will make deal with clients and then cut a cheaper deal with the real driver or vendor, so it isn’t weird to see someone negotiate on someone else’s behalf. But who was this guy negotiating on behalf of? We were lucky to run into another group of toubabs, four French university students who were traveling around Senegal. The problem then was that we were eight foreigners and the cars are only supposed to fit seven. The drivers wanted more money so that they could bribe the police in case they stopped. We in turn argued that we would bribe the police if there were any problems and insisted on a lower price (that the police could be bribed was taken for granted). So we overpaid and got in a sept-place to Dakar, or so I thought until we got dropped off in Thies. We were again forced to deal with the same harassment, ridiculous prices and general confusion in Thies. So after overpaying a third time we were finally on our way to Dakar. Once in the city I got off near my house and Caitlin and I performed our fifth and final round of transportation negotiation. My odyssey was over shortly thereafter, but Caitlin had to deal with even more shit before getting home. The cab driver—as they tend to do here—lied about knowing where he was going and when Caitlin attempted to direct him he got angry because he thought that they were going further than agreed to. Then it just gets bizarre. Fearing that Cailtin wouldn’t pay, the cabdriver grabbed her bag and wouldn’t let go until a random stranger intervened. Even then she didn’t get dropped off at home. Now I know that I can never let a woman go home alone in this city. I had a great time in Lompoul, and the ride in retrospect was not as bad as it could have been. Looking at the events positively, at least we did get home (didn’t have to spend the night in some way-out-there village), we had the money, the roads were decent, the cars didn’t break down, etc. It could have been worse, but it was also the first time in three months here when I questioned whether I really wanted to stay in Senegal for so long.

It’s Kinda Efficient

The traffic out here is pretty bad. Dakar is the kind of city where you find yourself in a traffic jam on a Wednesday night at 3 AM and you wonder just where the fuck it is that people are going. Last Tuesday morning I was heading toward the Mobil station. Even though it was after the morning rush hour (yall know I wouldn’t get up that early) there was still a lot of gridlock. If you have negotiated a good price with the cabdriver and he really can’t afford to sit there in traffic your driver will instantly transform into a Dakar Rally driver and veer off-road to try to skip ahead of the traffic jam. I have seen them do this many times (including once when we drove through a construction zone) but this is the first time the driver got caught. A crossing-guard with large white gloves whistled us down. And in less time than it took to me write Caitlin a text message to tell her that I would be late cause my cab was getting a ticket, we were off.

It’s common sense that corruption and inefficiency are synonymous. Except that instead of sitting there for several minutes as the officer wrote a ticket, the driver and officer were able to strike a bargain that worked for both of them that seems quite efficient to me. The driver got to pay less than he would have paid for the ticket, the officer was able to get augment his pitifully low salary with some tax-free income, the driver was penalized for his infraction and traffic kept moving.