Viviane Ndour

• Saturday night I went to Yengoulene, a “cultural complex” in Dakar where one of my host sisters, Sophie, works. As we approached the place, the pattern for the neon lights made it look more like Chucky Cheese’s than a nightclub, or sorry “cultural complex.” I half expected to see a bunch of sugared up children playing arcade games chased by a man in a creepy-looking mouse outfit, and was disappointed that inside it just looked like a regular pretentious nightclub. We were there because Viviane Ndour performs there regularly on Saturdays. Viviane is the most famous female pop star in Senegal right now, and as you can guess is related to King of Senegalese Pop Youssou Ndour (see entry below, she recently divorced Youssou’s brother). She is like the Beyonce of Senegal. I usually hate it when people describe others as the “whatever of wherever” but in this case I think it’s apt because at least to me it is obvious that she is deliberately imitating Beyonce. She sings and dresses like American R&B singers. She wears a lot of fake hair like Beyonce, although I must admit that she had the best wig I have yet to see in Senegal, and considering that I see a good 25 wigs a day that is quite the accomplishment. Viviane has a Lebanese father and is therefore light-skinned like Beyonce. Granted she wouldn’t be light-skinned in the US but in Senegal she is positively “redbone.” She is lightest-skinned Senegalese-born woman I have seen so far. That the biggest female pop star in Senegal look nothing like the people of the country is scary, but don’t worry my fellow Dominicans our title as the “Most Self-Hating Group of Black People on the Planet” is still secure. One light-skinned female pop star in a country that is nearly uniformly black cannot beat centuries of self-hatred, anti-Haitianism and racial delusions.
• Unlike Beyonce, however, I got to see Viviane perform for US$6 (I imagine that the last time Beyonce performed for that little money it must have been a school play or something) and even got a chance to bump into her as she ran out of the restaurant after the show. The show itself consisted of the kind of pop mbalax songs that all sound the same (I don’t speak Wolof well enough yet to understand what the songs are about but they don’t sound much deeper than most of Beyonce’s catalog), only made interesting by the wildly energetic and acrobatic dancing. Viviane has a dancer that performs with her regularly, but about halfway through the show they started inviting people from the audience to come on stage and flash their stuff. There was also a brief interlude where various young women tried to sing some of Viviane’s songs, with some of them getting booed off-stage and one of them singing better than even Viviane. Check out her latest music video below.

Pac, Che and Bob

• On Friday I visited some of the dorms of Cheikh Anta Diop University, the main—and until recently, the only—public university in Senegal. Much of what I saw was typical of students everywhere: posters of Ronaldinho, El-Hadji Diouf (the best Senegalese footballer ever, pictured above. He led the Senegalese national team, “The Lions of Teranga,” in its epic victory over the then-defending world champion French team in the inaugural match of the 2002 World Cup. It was 5 years ago and Senegal didn’t even qualify for the 2006 World Cup but they still talk about how they defeated the colonizers, even though the French team was all black and Arab. In fact, I remember my father asking me in 1998 if there were any French players on the French team; I had to assure him that there are people of color of France. He didn’t believe me until Univision showed him images of some pissed-off ghetto youth burning Paris down in 2005. The Senegalese also swear that the Brazilian team was terrified of having to play The Lions in 2002, something I highly doubt, and that they didn’t qualify for the last World Cup because the refs stole it from them. Nationalism can be a funny thing when it is not being used to exploit or murder enemies of the nation, internal and external.) and other footballers or of the Holy Trinity of Tupac Shakur, Che Guevara and Bob Marley, in addition to other accruements of student life like small refrigerators, empty trays of food on the floor, computers, unmade twin size beds, and piles of textbooks lying everywhere. But that is where the similarities ended; the beds were made of foam, the computers were ancient—nor did everyone have one—the clothes were washed by hand and there were clotheslines tied between the trees and windows in front of the dorm building (I can only imagine what the quad would look like crisscrossed by clotheslines), and there were mosquito nets knotted in bundles above the beds. The students complained about the difficult conditions. In fact, days before I came to Senegal the New York Times published a story on the poor state of African universities focusing primarily on Cheikh Anta Diop (I would link it, but the bastards make you pay).
• The school is also a lively center for politics, and I saw a lot of graffiti advertising different slates of candidates for the student union. The elections are a big deal and the national parties have proxy organizations on campus with many student leaders going on to careers as successful politicians. In general, however, the students are an anti-establishment group and are more often warring with the government than joining it. And I say warring literally, like violent armed clashes with police where people die on a frequent basis. The relationship between the government and the students has gotten so bad that on two occasions (1968, a good year for revolution, and 1984, I think) the government declared an annee blanche, or a blank year, where the schools were shut down, and the government basically “locked out” the students like an employer might do a militant union. And Republicans think that American universities are centers for left-wing indoctrination and activism.
  

Fair & Lovely

• I woke up on Thursday and as I reached for the knife to cut the French bread (every time I have breakfast I can just imagine the priest at my Church in New York reciting “Our Fateher” somberly in that sing-songy voice priests always use “y danos hoy nuestro pan de cada dia…”) I tipped over a tall orange spray can. Thinking it might be some bug spray I turned it over slowly only to discover to my horror that it was a can of skin bleaching spray. I demanded angrily who it belonged to, but my host mom told calmly that it was hers with no hint of guilt or shame. I figured that I shouldn’t lecture a 50 year-old woman, especially since here I am white, so I just ate buttered my bread and grit my teeth.


• Then last night Alphonse came out to me begging me “Maikel, Maikel” and after he listened to “Bad” another five times he told me he wanted to be Michael Jackson. That seems normal enough—children often want to be like famous artists and athletes, that’s why many people want them to be role models—but then he told me that he wanted to become white like Michael Jackson too. I told him Michael Jackson was an evil, crazy man, and that while he used to make great music he should be in jail now. He asked why, but how do I explain internalized racism and child molestation to a nine-year-old boy? Chimaobi, any more suggestions?


• As fucked up as all of that is though, I think the Senegalese would have to do much worse before they could even begin to compete with Dominicans for the title of “Most Self-Hating Group of Black People on the Planet.”

La Lutte

• This is an aspect of Senegalese culture that I don’t understand well yet, so anything I say here is preliminary but I just had to comment on it. From what I understand, this form of wrestling is a traditional practice of many West African societies. (yall remember the first episode of “Roots,” right? When Kunta Kinte is learning to be a man by wrestling and OJ Simpson makes a random cameo?) The rules are either the same or similar to Olympic-style Greco-Roman wrestling. There is always a match on TV here, and they are always announcing international tournaments. It reminds me of boxing in the US, including the ridiculous hype leading up to major matches. Four weeks ago there was a huge fight here, and everyone was talking about it. There was a two-hour long pre-match show and each of the wrestlers came in with large entourages of hype men, “witch doctors” and rappers. There were some pre-match rituals that definitely looked like ceddo (the pre-Islamic, “animist” belief system of the Wolof) where they smashed some fruits, the wrestlers wash themselves with milk, and then they sprinkled some salt on the floor (when I asked why I was told that it was to literally to spice up the match, in Senegal even wrestling has flavor). Then dancing and drumming. Supposedly, other ethnic groups in West Africa have different sets of pre-match rituals. I don’t know what it was all about but it definitely seemed a lot more fun and interesting than walking into the ring after 50 Cent and then making your meanest mug possible when facing the camera. But just like 95% of major boxing fights the match was a completely disappointment, ending in less than a minute. I missed the whole thing cause I was trying to find a good angle among the throng of people watching the match in our living room. Luckily they replayed it (all 40 seconds of it) several times. This is not the match but it should give yall an impression.



• Talking about West African traditions, the women here are used to walking around topless at home. You can be topless in front of women and male family members which means that at home you are topless most of the time, covering up only when a man visits. This has made for many awkward moments; because I am not family I get the visitor treatment and they cover up in front of me, but I also live in the house which they seem to forget. Therefore often when I wake up in the morning or just from a nap, or come back from the internet spot (or like today from the barber) they will just all be out there titties hanging. I never know how to react; if I should act offended, or smooth or embarrassed. I usually just try not to stare and act like I have not seen anything. Either way, I have seen more titties here in the last six weeks than I had in all of my life before coming here. So for those keeping count, I have now had more fish, ate more bread, met more Europeans, seen more titties and seen more fake hair in six weeks here than I had in my lifetime previous to coming. I am also fast approaching my lifetime benchmarks for butter, black folks and peanuts.

Always Someone Else to Shit On

• I am always amazed by how people everywhere are willing to blame all of their society’s problems on whoever is from some place else. Scapegoating and xenophobia seem like human universals. Here in Senegal, for example, any idea of Pan-Africanist unity goes out the window when you hear folks talk about les ñaks, the Wolof term for non-Senegalese Africans. The immigrants are mostly from other francophone African countries like Mali, Guinea-Conakry, and Niger, but also come from as far away as Gabon and some Anglophone countries, particularly Nigeria. I mention Nigerians because every day I have to hear from my French teacher about how Nigerians have taken over the internet spots in his neighborhood in order to carry out their online scams (hating on Nigerians also seems to be a human universal). But it’s not only the online scams that are blamed on the ñaks, whenever I ask Senegalese about the street children here they all say that the children are all from Mali or Niger and that the government is doing its best to deport them (cause of course, that solves everything).
• Last week I was feeling especially guilty about being so white and so rich here. It felt wrong to sit around reading a book about the oppression of women in the peripheral countries as all around me there were a bunch of poor, African women working really hard (like maybe I should have put the book down and done some of the arduous household labor, including washing everything by hand, ironing with charcoal, cooking with only one BURNER, sweeping, dusting, etc. It’s not like I don’t wear the clothes or eat the food.) Then apparently they got some ideas from me about the value of paying others below you on the global socioeconomic hierarchy to do all of your necessary labor for you and decided to get themselves a maid. Here I was feeling all bad about having my host mom and sisters be my maids and they went out and hired a TEAM of maids. So now we have two young women that come to the house who for pennies (US$55 per month plus breakfast and lunch) do all the work, while the women in the house are—like the men—free to do nothing now. I don’t want to imply that my host family is ballin’ by any means. If they did we might have a regular electrical supply, and they would have fixed the faucet or installed some lighting in the toilet or have bought a closet instead of packing all of their clothes into boxes and suitcases. They all sleep on the couches and floor in the living room in order to be able to host two whiteys that can pay bills as well as for the new cabinets in the kitchen and (hopefully) a telephone line. Their new found wealth, however, is like all African economies dependent on how whitey feels and how he is doing economically. No whiteys to host, no money. Still, the moral of the story is no matter how low you go (and, let’s admit it people it doesn’t get any lower on the global hierarchy than broke sub-Saharan African women) under global capitalism there will always be someone lower than you that you can exploit in turn (an even broker African woman).

Awadi

• Last Thursday night I went with a group of American volunteers to the Centre Cultural Francais for dinner and a concert. The food itself was decent if over-priced. I ordered Thai beef curry and instead got beef maffe (a Senegalese peanut sauce) but, it’s all good I like maffe. The service was horrendous. In countries where you don’t tip that is usually the case, but this time the waitress acted like we stank. She stayed away from our table the whole time, only to stand by the table after she brought the check looking annoyed as we tried to divvy up the bill.



• The concert, however, was excellent. The main act was Awadi, a Senegalese rapper and one-half of the eponymous Senegalese hip hop group, PBS (or Positive Black Soul). He was backed by a live band and had several guest artists share the stage with him. The band didn’t limit itself to hip hop either, Awadi sang as well as rapped to funk, coupe decale and mbalax backdrops. They even ended their set with a punk rock song criticizing political corruption in Senegal. There was a even a kora player/djembe drummer/rapper who was wearing one of those caps with a big, shiny dollar sign. Even though it was technically a Senegalese hip hop concert, with all of the locks, fatigues, and Red, Green & Gold on stage I could have sworn I was at a roots reggae concert in Brooklyn. The only give away was that Awadi had a white drummer and two white dudes on guitar (and the air was too clear for it to have been a reggae jam). The guests included a bunch of Senegalese rappers rapping in both French and Wolof, a couple of R&B-style singers, and even a singer from Congo-Brazzaville who sang whatever the music of Congo-Brazzaville is (someone please enlighten me, the music was good, I don’t mean to clown the Congolese) and who then played this instrument that looked like two small, glass milk bottles glued together. He sang beautifully and the bottles worked too, although it definitely looked like something bored schoolchildren would do during lunch than a professional instrument. My favorite part of the night was when Awadi criticized France, Belgium, the CIA, George Bush, Tony Blair, and Senegalese politicians of various crimes (my French is not good enough to know what exactly) and at some point he said something particularly incendiary that drove all the young Senegalese men in the crowd wild, but made all the French in the audience just squirm in embarrassment. Of course he finished his left-wing hip hop attack by thanking the concert’s corporate sponsors, Nokia, Orange, etc.
  Awadi was the rapper who made the great song protesting the terrible conditions that lead many Senegalese to risk dangerous sea voyages in fishing boats in order emigrate illegally to Europe. Some of you may have already seen the slide show that goes along with the song, but for those of you that haven’t click here for the song and here for the story.

Michael Jackson

• Forget Youssou Ndour, my host family has a nine-year-old boy named Alphonse (pictured above, and no I couldn't get a nicer picture of him) who just LOVES Michael Jackson. When he saw that my laptop played music he asked me for two artists. First of all, Akon, and after he hummed along to “I Wanna Fuck You” he asked to listen to Michael Sanders. Eventually I figured out he wanted to listen to Michael Jackson. So I played some songs for him and then he started describing music videos he has seen and asking me to play the song where Michael reaches out his hand and then yelps. Of course that is every Michael Jackson song, so I played him every Michael song in my collection. Next, he surprised me by coming back with a copy of the “The Essential Michael Jackson” a two-disc set of his greatest hits. Then he pulled out the CD booklet with song information and pictures and started pointing to various snapshots of Michael form his most famous music videos and demanding that I play “that” song. I, of course, would have preferred song titles rather than random gesticulations and him pointing insistently to the pictures hoping I would know what song that was.


• Then when I woke up last Saturday and walked into the living room for my daily bread, butter and tea, and it all made perfect sense. The TV was on and the whole family was watching a showing of all of Michael Jackson’s most famous music videos, “Thriller,” “Bad,” “Billie Jean,” “Smooth Criminal,” “Black or White,” “Do You Remember the Time,” etc. They just sat there for an hour (no commercial interruptions) and watched Michael Jackson. Could this happen with any other artist? Does any other human being on the planet have the kind of global reach Michael Jackson has? Michael Jordan? Bob Marley? Tupac? 50 Cent? I just wonder what would have happened if Michael hadn’t started fondling little boys and had instead continued churning out hits for the last decade. Would he have been crowned King of the World by now?


• Alphonse also asks me all kinds of random "little boy" questions. Today he asked me if where I was from we had trees and taxis. I had to assure him that we certainly did. He then reenacts movie scenes for me—complete with saliva-spewing sound effects—and asks me if I have seen the movie. Only once had I actually seen the film. The conversation went something like this:
  Alphonse: Do you know who the first president of Senegal was?
  Me: Of course, Leopold Sedhar Senghor.
  A: Why did they kill him?
  M: Senghor wasn’t killed. He died of natural causes in France like all the other sell-out African political leaders. (Ok, I don’t really speak enough French to say, “sell-out political leaders” but I did say that he died in France.)
  A: But I saw them kill him. Then they burned him.
  M: Are you sure it was Senghor?
  A: Yes, he had glasses like yours.
  M: They burned him right? Did they chop him up first?
  A: Yes.
  M: That was Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Congo. (I was hoping it was the film biography of Lumumba. I would feel happier knowing that between the crazy music videos and Latin American soap operas they actually show some educational content on Senegalese television.)
  A: Why did they do that?
  M: Uhhh…It was a coup d’etat. It is when they change the president violently because they don’t like him.
  A: Why didn’t they like him?
  M: Umm…where’s your ball?
  I felt bad for ducking the question, but how do I explain the CIA and imperialism to a nine-year-old African child in French? Any suggestions? Chimaobi?