from the mass email archives

This week is finally over... thank goodness. And so begins my weeklydispatch from Peace Corps Sevice in Senegal.Pulaar... I've decided that this language most probably originated inthe firey pits of Hell sometime around the fall of the Tower of Babel.That or with some rather drunk Dada poets who had met the green fairyone too many times... They have a verb which roughly translates as"the sensation which the first small wave of the ocean makes when youwalk on the beach, which is beautiful and inspiring yes, and thenyou're in class and you have to memorize completely different verbsfor things like washing your feet and washing yourself or washing thedishes or washing your clothes. At least there is no femine ormasculine, or so I remind myself in moments of great trial. They alsoinsist of things rhyming, so they have these weird articles andpronouns they just throw in at what can only be random, in so far as Ican tell, places in the sentences just because they like the sound...let me try to translate this, it would be like saying "The tree ree isbeautiful dul" AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWFamily life is revealing itself to be an even more complex,fascinating and integral part of Senegalese society than I possiblycould have imagined before arriving. I call it Family Communism.People here (ideally) share everything. What little possessionspeople do have belong to the entire family for the most part. Thisgoes for money as well. If you make more money than your brother thanyou have to give more money to your sisters and mother and wife andyounger brother... it's like taxes. They don't really have a word todesignate your sister or your brother, everything is about in whatorder you were born and whether you are female or male. To ask if youhave sisters you have to say do you have older and or younger femalerelatives?The eldest have it the best in some respects, but at the same time areresponsible for the youngest. I'm the third oldest, after my sisterMame and brother Abdulai in my family. I'm also still kind of a guest,and I'm a toubob (whitey) So when I come into a room, whoever is inTHE chair gets up to give it to me. I also get first dibbs on thefish in the when were around the bowl. I also get a spoon. I havenever even been in the kitchen. And I have to fight with my sister tolet me carry of my bucket of water to the shower... if she sees me getmy towel and soap ready she'll do it for me. It's a littleoverwhelming for my sensibilites... they don't let me do anything buteat and sit down. Sit down, lamine. Eat, lamine. Then again thismight also be because these are the only words that I reallyunderstand...Yeah, so bascially anyone who is your fathers age, you're supposed tocall father. All of your father's brothers are your father. All ofyour mother's sister are you mothers. You're cousins are yourbrothers and sister. Your neighbors are usually too. Everyone isfamily, and that means everyone is welcome at any time for as long asthey want. As a support unit, they've really got Marx running for hismoney. My one sister makes and sells fish wontons out of the house.Two of my brothers work at a gas station. My biggest brother (whosethe eldest and as my father is dead is the head of the household) is aconstrucition foreman. But he's my dad's first wife's son and not mydad's second wife's son, which I am and the rest of my family thatlive in my house in the family compound. My other brother is acarpenter. I have another brother that sells... it's still verymysterious as to what he sells, but I think it must be somethingsmall. A lot of people are in 'sales' here which mostly consists insaving up to buy in bulk and then dividing it into baggies and sellingthese little baggies in your front yard. My other sister sellsluggage, I think? There's a lot of smiling and excited gesturing whenI ask about what people do but I'm really rather confused as to thewhole affair. I don't think they pay rent on the compound, but I knowelectricity is very expensive here. Food is very cheap. Some of mysisters are just the cinderellas and take charge of the laundry,sisphysean task of sweeping, which is kind of like trying to sweep inthe sahara, and they cook alot. They also talk a lot. All day. Allnight. Talk talk talk talk talk talk. They usually forget my name islamine and call me Abdulai which is what they called the lastvolunteer that stayed with them. Us white people, we all look thesame. The kids in the street around my house all pretty much call mehis name too. I find the cross cultural irony delicious!In our Islamic culture lecture this week I learned that whosoeverhears the prayer call is obliged to come to the mosque for prayers.These begins to explain the amplification system which is I am slowlybut surely growing to love and depend on for my morning reveille. Butmy question is this, what if they ampflication makes obligation forpeople who are actually still to far way to get to the mosque in timeto pray? Apparently if you have a triumvarite of prayees then youcan make your own mini mosque experience, but this is where I gotlost.There's been some pretty amazing coverage of the Pope's death here.They've basically suspended all but the most popular televisionprogramming (on the one channel that we get on our tv, the nationalone) and have been showing coverage of the pope's funeral or oldfootage of his past televised events... last night I watched adocumentary about him. It's kind of weird because this is a muslimcountry, but at least its in French so I can understand it.Oh yeah. There's been the teeny tiny iest little outbreak of cholerasweeping through the country... oops. We visited the Regionalhospital to talk with the staff about education and preventionefforts. The only way you can get cholera is Oral Fecalcontamination, so it's pretty easy to avoid as long as everybody usesS. O. A. P. and washes their veggies. No one has died yet in thecity, because it is relatively response to rehydration therapy andantibiotics. I still like to repeat it to myself silently sometimesand thrill from the doctor quinn medicine woman ness of it all. Ifonly my french host mother Christine Ghigo could see me now. She isafter all the one who got me watching "Dr Quinn Femme Medecin" when Ilived in France.Lets see, what else is new. I went to a traditional wrestlingmatch... Wow. It's was pretty amazing. These girls got in a fightbehind me and I have never in my life seen someone so enraged, I triedto take a picture but then though twice about enciting violencetowards my own person. I don't know why they were fighting exactly,but I think it was over a few choice words about somebodies momma.Then this large gaggle of elderly women descended on the fightinggirls and swept them away in a flurry of brightly colored orange andgreen head scarves and everything was back to normal. It has so farbeen the only outward sign of aggression I've witnessed here, soneedless to say I was riveted.The wrestling match mostly consisited of a very involved type ofstomping around in a large circle, each wrestler being proceed by alarge entourage of uniformed men who at first I though were thewrestlers but were really there just for emotional support. When thewrestlers finally appeared on the scene, some hour later, you couldtell immediately. They were huge. Giants! Monsters. Mon Dieu!These men were enormous. Our Pulaar fighter lost to the Mandinkafighter so my sister was rather disappointed. The match itself wasmaybe ten minutes long and was rather cermonial. It's kind of likesumo wrestiling except the men are black and muscular and have theseleather cords all over their body but bascially the first one down orout of the circle a certain number of times is the loser.Tomorrow the tailor is coming to our house and I'm having mymeasurements taken for my first Grand BouBou. Ah Joy! Who knewhappiness could be as simple as four meters of blue fabric soon tobecome my first Senegalese outfit. There's a mystery 'grande fete'looming on the horizon so my family is very excited about my gettingmy outfit made.I've also had my first romantic entaglement. I'm an innocentbystandard I assure you. Her name is Bijou (yes, as in Jewel) andshe's my volunteer friend Amira's Senegalese homestay sister. Shekeeps dropping by my house to see me 'when she is in the neighborhood'but amira says that she is just making that up as an excuse for her tocome around. Amira also says she talks about me constantly and hopesthat one day Billy might even ask her to 'sortir en boite ensemble'(which means to go out clubbing). Help!I also recieved a delicious packages of treats from beloved Valerie...thank you!!! Look for my letter in the mail, Val.A la prochaine... oh yeah, next weekend we're allowed to leave Thiesfor the first time so we're going to the beach. I cannot wait.Write me! Write me!
--Bj aka Lamine aka Billy aka Abdulai