The Routine

Yay! Laura, I can't believe you saw an exhibit on Tabaski at the Snite! How exciting! What you described sounds really accurate-- I just participated in our Tabaski celebration in January and as soon as I get my computer back I will post photos with more detail for you-- but you are completely right-- Tabaski is the major holiday in the Muslim calendar here in Senegal and it celebrates the story (very similar to the Bible story) of Ibrahima and Ismaillah. I am not terribly good with the story (all that I understood in the Wolof communication was spotty) but Ismaillah was supposed to sacrifice his son, Ibrahima and just as he was about to bring the knife to his throat Allah replaced him with a sheep so that a sheep was sacrificed instead. Again, I am foggy on all this but you get the idea. So now, every single family kills a sheep on Tabaski and then visits family and friends asking their forgiveness and friendship for the year to come. My experience with this was interesting--- my Wolof still had a long way to go and I ended up just standing in awe as my family slaughtered 5 sheep; drained their blood into a pit next to my room and promptly cooked up the liver to serve to me. Then I put on my fancy Wolof traditional outfit and paraded around the neighborhood -- clearly I felt a little silly, but being their most important holiday I was happy to do it-- and more than that, I was honored to take such a special part in their celebration. Here in my town you can really see how important it is-- family members from all over the country and even abroad come home just for this holiday.

SO, hopefully I will get those sweet photos up for you soon.

The routine I want to talk about today is the questioning... normally this routine ensues every time I enter a boutique or a business or a vehicle. I greet in Wolof, everyone responds. An older man says "oh, the tubab speaks Wolof!" I say yes. Everyone laughs. The man begins the onslaught. DO you have a husband (known as the borom ker "house manager", which is culturally a lie, the women rule the house) Where is he? I don't believe you. Where do you live? How long have you been here? How did you get that name? Can you cook? Why not? How much water do you put in the rice to cook for your borom ker? Can you dance? Why not? Come over to my house and I will show you how to dance. You don't want a black boyfriend? Why not? You don't want him to bring you to paradise? What's better a black boyfriend or an American? ( people know that there are african americans, but don't really believe that they exist-- say that a black person could not live with snow). And thus the questioning continues. I've gotten so adept at responding-- telling people that I have 4 husbands so I can't have another or that I only want to be the 4th wife, so they should come find me again after they already have 3-- but until just a few days ago I had never seen it happen to anyone but me; the token tubab.

So there I was; in the car coming back from Thies with 7 other passengers, all male except for one 18 year old, air'headed girl. I couldnt believe it, she got all the questions (except for the ones about a black boyfriend of course) so that's when it really really clicked. The problem here is just a lack of creativity. every senegalese man has the same routine tucked away in his memory, to be showed off for everyone to see at the earliest opportunity.

A couple quick work stories now... For the most part work is actually going extremely well-- the Embassy has agreed to finance the work on and English corner here in Louga so they are coming through next week, and I am preparing a couple classes to start within the next couple weeks, as well as consulting individually for a few entrepreneurs and community organizations and schools. but still, there are some things that are just laughable.

First business plan I took home to review-- very well done, just needs to be updated, a few holes to fill in, then it is all ready to go. I met with the entrepreneur; we went over the sections to fix up, meeting was going great-- when we finished he handed it back to me and said, "so when you"re done with it we can take it to the bank?" wow, was the idea of "entrepreneurship" lost on him. It took me 40 minutes to convince him that I couldn't possibly know his business well enough to write his plan for him.

Then, in the neighborhood I met with some men who said they have a community organization that disbanded but now they are getting back together and they want to work with me. Great, so what's your project? Well, we need you to find an NGO with a project and money and then we will write the project and send it to them.

lordy lordy

thanks!