what is weird about this?

Lots of big news recently and still I can think to write about is work stuff-- maybe the biggest rollercoaster I've been on in my life. First things first. Jonathan arrives in less than one week, and I think pretty much everyone within 11 miles of me has been alerted. The women are all trying to get me ready for this mysterious male guest, telling me what kind of incense to burn in my room, the best kind of plastic beads to wear around my waist (the bine-bine is a classic Wolof trick-- every girl from 2 days to 52 years is wearing them), how I should do my makeup, my hair, etc. Anyway, the excitement when (and if) jonathan actually makes it to Louga should be worth the wait. My Louga host family has been debating for months whether they should kill a lamb, a camel or a goat for the occasion. can't wait

In other news I got a cat. a little kitten, a boy. and I named him Scout, pronounced "Scoot" in Senegalese fashion. At first he was great... we played, we cuddled, he scratched the hell out of my hands in a sweet loving way... but then i started to realize, scoot has a real mean streak which is primarily played out in his peeing on my bed several times a day and throughout the night. even when I finally get peace (although sleeping in a bed that stinks of kitten urine) I am awoken at 5:30 am. why? while I have learned to sleep through the call to prayer, Scoot has not, and Scoot is a morning cat, who likes to play, leap and pounce as soon as he wakes up, a pattern which often brings his path right across my face.

Work stuff too is amusing. I had a meeting the other day with a representative of the mayor of Louga, who also happens to somehow work with a branch of an NGO out of Dakar. he came to my office and we discussed his plan, which while constructive and ambitious, is also nebulous, undefined and unrealistic. When I began to inquire as to the detailed functioning of the project, or even of his knowledge of the different themes he was quite taken aback. Keep in mind that this is our third meeting... It was now that he chose to ask me who I was, where I was from, what kind of education I had, etc. Already he is seriously doubting my ability to assess his project validilty... but here is the real kicker,... his questions had been going on for a while and I knew something was weird and then there it was "when you were in the united states did you know anyone with black skin? did you ever work with anyone with black skin?" wow. the part that is even scarier.... is that he was not talking about racism-- that whole concept wasn't even part of his thinking. Instead, the point he was trying to get at was that in his opinion no person with black skin would worry about financial details or business plans. It was not the culture of planning that separated us, but just simply the color of our skin. Blown away, I didn't even know how to respond. Anyway, he was soon out of my office, blank business plan guide forms tucked under his arm, probably never to be seen again.

Bifall Gamou April 16

so we killed a cow two nights ago. It was pretty gory and also kind of cool since when it was done there was an enormous dismembered bull head and horns sitting in our courtyard area for hours. They started late at night so that by the end the old man charged with directing the operation was crouched under a flickering spotlight using his machete to chop the last parts into manageable pieces. It is a distinct image in my mind still and its too bad that I couldn't photo it to share with you-- or maybe that would be worse, since then the image in my mind would clash with the reality. Anyway-- the gentleman, Aliou Gueye is a wiry, thin man with bits of white in a scraggly beard and even at night under the spotlight he wore his sunglasses, a second-hand pair of gold-rimmed aviators. the sheath for his machete pushed aside and the dulled blade covered in blood, his crouch brought him close to the middle of the animal skin spread in the packed sand of our kitchen courtyard. Each leg of the animal retained its distinct shape, even skinned down to the bone, they stacked one on another behind Gueye while he worked down to the end, finally hacking the hooves and tail loose from the skin and dropping them into the pit of water and refuse my brothers had dug into the ground before the slaughter.

anyone who is as familiar with large mammal anatomy as I now am knows a cow is a hell of a lot of meat. and considering the practice here of eating everything that is edible, I was sure we'd have a lot of food ahead of us. And we ate the whole thing (I think) yesterday. It was the Bifall Gamou in Tivaouane. Which I know doesn't mean anything-- but what is important is that it is a religious pilgrimage to a town called tivaouane, made by members of the Bifall sect (a sub-sect of a Senegalese Muslim brotherhood called Mouride). I think that most people would agree that Bifalls tend to be somewhat more radical (in a religious sense, not a crazy militant sense) of the senegalese sects. they have their own marabouts (or religious leaders) just like the rest of the sects, but they worship them with a fanaticism that is not as fanatic in some of the other groups. In any case, I certainly felt that when I was in Tivaouane.

Which brings me to broach a topic that I would rather just avoid, but I think it is kind of necessary-- and that is racism and intolerance. I can't even pretend to know what it feels like to experience it every day for one's entire life, but I also never thought I would experience it to the extent that I have here. even at this religious event, for Islam, which invokes peace and tolerance in every aspect, I experienced it even more deeply than I do on a normal day in my life in Louga. Of course, it isn't everyone, it is not even a majority, but there is no denying that it exists here and that it is a very strong sentiment. it would seem unthinkable, unimaginable that racism like this still exists, particularly considering the fact that I live with Wolofs, speak their language, and have come here to help-- but to be honest, i can hardly blame them. For many reasons, the first being that many have never met a white person who doesn't treat them with disrespect and anger, or one that bothered to learn their language. Second is the harboring of this jealousy of the wealth that white people have and does not reach this country or its people. Third is the fact that popular belief leads many to blame the west for the "continuing evils" of slavery. No matter what the real story is, the over-arching image of slavery has endured and doesn't leave a pleasant trail behind. Fourth is that the white person embodies a western culture that many do not want to see pollute their traditions-- and sometimes tradition is everything. I was recently speaking with an American family living nearby, and as reluctant as we were to acknowledge it, we were all feeling frustrated with the same trend-- most things that are different here are immediately seen as "bad" okay, we all know this old paradigm, but imagine how this affects a culture when it isn't just people being afraid of change, but it is in ev-ery-thing... there is no innovation, no individualism, excrutiatingly slow social change, virtually no leadership and certainly no one who is willing to stand up and disagree--- such disaccord simply does not exist. When people want to say no, they won't even say that-- it is too harsh. Instead they will find a roundabout way of averting your eyes or changing the subject so that you might get the message without having to hazard a confrontation. I better stop myself there, but you get the idea?