A little Wolof lesson

“Nice na.” In Wolof, you indicate the past tense by adding na onto the end of a verb (or noun or adjective — there’s really no distinction between the parts of speech). Modern, hip “city Wolof” has started to bastardize integrate English words into the vernacular and as such lots of out-of-context sayings pop up all over the place. My personal favorite is “Nice na,” which has become an acceptable answer to the question “How are things?” I try to use it as often as possible, since people don’t understand that, being American, I’m basically mocking them to their faces. See also: “Cool na.”

“Benn _____, ñaata la?” This handy little phrase will get you the price of any single item available for purchase in Dakar’s boutiques, markets, and (most importantly) bars. Replace the blank with banane, orange, Fanta Orange, Gazelle, or bouteille de gin and you will being living the life of an American student in Senegal.

“Sour na. Baax na. Neex na.” Three different ways of saying that you’re full after a meal. Usually, such a statement will be disregarded by your host mama and papa, who will then proceed to push more rice, fish, mutton, beef, cabbage, or whatever is left in the bowl in front of you. You will then continue to gorge yourself on non-nutritious but still delicious food, and be disgustingly full for two to three hours.

“Am nga weccitu dix mille?” One of the more frustrating aspects of living in Senegal is the country’s absolute lack of change. The central bank seems to have no problem printing 5,000 CFA and 10,000 CFA bills, but small-denomination change just doesn’t exist. So you go from boutique to boutique, gas station to gas station, asking this question and praying that someone will have change for you. Usually you give up and buy some unnecessary but sufficiently expensive product — American cereal, extra cell-phone credit, things like that. Or you go to the bar and drink Gazelles until they can break your 10,000.

“Maa ngi dem ci école.” “I am going to school.” I do this too often.

“Maa ngi dem ci plage.” “I am going to the beach.” I don’t do this enough.

I hope this has been an enjoyable and educational experience. Stay tuned for more Wolof lessons that have absolutely no application to your daily lives!

Touba or Bust

Let me start off by staying that today is probably the hottest day since we’ve been here. I wanted to make sure I said that, since it was my justification for skipping my 3:30 class and coming to use the Internet, write a blog, and continue my painful download of Lost.

On Saturday I woke up an hour and half before dawn to go to Touba, the largest mosque in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the religious center of Mouridism, the sect of Islam practiced by Muslims in Senegal. The ride there was pretty depressing and desolate — lots of dusty huts, ancient baobab trees, solitary figures walking through the desert, bumpy roads, stray goats and ponies, dead goats and ponies rotting on the side of road. Your typical African road trip, I guess.

Touba was a moderately developed city, probably because of all the business that comes with pilgrims and visitors to the mosque. The founder of Mouridism was a man named Chiekh Amadou Bamba, a mysterious fellow who was a theological genius. He spent a lot of time in Mauritania, where all of the Arabs couldn’t believe that a black man could know so much about the Koran and the ways of Allah. Judging by the extremely extensive library of his writings, this dude was really smart: apparently he would dissect the Koran word by word, writing an acrostic poem using the letters from each word. Yeah, he’s better than you. Anyway, the mosque was really impressive and imposing, as I expected. Lots of marble and travertine and praying. All of the ladies had to veil (don’t you dare reveal your hair, you fucking whores!) and no one is allowed to wear shoes inside the mosque. (See my photos on Flickr for more hot mosque shots.) We also got to visit the source of the holy water that people come to Touba to drink. I had some; it was really salty and probably contaminated with many, many parasites. Let’s hope I don’t get me a Touba tapeworm. The ride back was equally depressing and desolate, although we stopped for chicken, French fries, and Fanta in Diourbel, a medium-sized city; and on the road outside of Dakar we pulled over to buy some extremely cheap bags of fruit. For $2.50 I got 10 tangerines and six heifer grapefruits to give to the family.

Saturday night we returned to the Gin Bar, where much whiskey and gin was drank. When that place shut down (read: we got kicked out) at midnight, we braved the darkness of Dakar’s streets and went over to Baobab 4, where we braved the awkwardness of Dakar’s drunk barflys. I went home relatively early to enjoy my Sunday not being tied or hungover.

Sunday I woke up late and went to the beach at Ngor. Usually we take the canoe-ferries across the bay to the island because the mainland beach is usually covered in goat’s blood, but this weekend it was very clean and full of white people. One gentleman was over 6′5″ and had the largest potbelly I’ve seen outside of America; so naturally he was in a skin-tight Speedo maybe five or six sizes too small for him. Thus the picturesque view was often marred by his enormous Scandinavian ass-crack. Another highlight was when this same Ass-Crack Man, playfully throwing his naked toddler up and down on the beach, chucked her into the air at least three feet above his head, only to have her fall straight down and almost break her neck. That was fun to watch. Then a rowdy gaggle of French children got into an intense mud-fight with a group of Senegalese children. Suffice to say it got violent; kids were hurt and nearly drowned, almost like colonialism in miniature unfolding right before our eyes. But at least I got a tan, right?

Last night I stayed in, napped, finished my book (The Shipping News, very good) and drank some tea. Today we had class in the morning and were supposed to go visit political parties to conduct some interviews, but instead we drank coffee and then went home for lunch. The verdict is still out as far as getting our schedule and/or credit allotment modified, which is really frustrating but not surprising. I think now I will venture out into the sweltering heat and go to the gas station to indulge in an American ice cream sandwich. God dammit, that country knows its ice cream.

UPDATE: The ice cream was not American, but Turkish. It was banana with a hard melted-chocolate shell. So delicious. Also, the vanilla-chocolate one was called “Mulato.” Pictures of it soon.

Silly rabbit, gin is for kids!

This has been an exhausting and frustrating week.  We’ve had class pretty much constantly, from 9 AM to 5 PM or later every day.  Not like there’s homework or any kind of exams, but it’s so tiring to just be sitting in classrooms all day, especially since the weather has been so nice.  It’s even more frustrating to know that for 20+ hours of class a week and full Georgetown tuition we’re getting 15 lousy credits.  Plus the people the Baobab Center and OIP are equally incompetent and unwilling to take any responsibility for what is quickly becoming a really horrible academic situation.

So that’s my rant, and one of the reasons I wanted to get very drunk last night.  Luckily Emily did too, so we went to the Gin Bar near our house — basically a liquor store with chairs and unemployed stoned-drunk men — and bought plastic flasks of super-cheap Old Man gin (that’s the name of the brand, even though we are indeed senior citizens).  Four flasks, too many cigarettes, and an indeterminate number of vomiting incidents later, we bought some heavily buttered alcohol-sponge brioche and headed home to fall asleep in our slowly spinning beds.  Moral of the story: beer requires too much effort; gin is the new drink of choice.

So my dull hangover headache this morning was only made worse by five hours of boring-ass class.  The class is Economic Sociology, and the professor preaches a thinly-veiled form of communism he calls “alter-globalisation” or “solidarity economics” — Western capitalism is evil, dependency theory, blah blah blah. And lots more blah.

On the brighter side: I got another episode of 24 finished during lunch and started the painful five-day process of downloading the new episode of Lost.  Plus I had a Chicken Madness-esque sandwich, which was delicious and cheap. (How pathetic is it that the highlight of my day was the successful download of a 42-minute TV show from iTunes?)

Tomorrow I have to get up at 6:30 AM to go to Touba, the holy city of Mouridism, which is the main sect of Islam practiced in Senegal.  I have to wear pants and long sleeves, which should be pretty uncomfortable, but then again I don’t want to mess with Shari’a law, now do I?

Sunday will hopefully be a beach day, wherein I do nothing but sleep, eat, and read all afternoon.

Well, this blog post has been sufficiently bitter and jaded. I hope the coming days will be more interesting (or at least less frustrating) than this past week. Keep an eye out for some hot mosque shots, and remember kids, capitalism kills.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that I had TWO substantial and satisfying bowel movements this morning, which officially replaces the downloading of 24 as the aforementioned highlight of the day.

Born in the U.S.A.

Saturday was a Georgetown-caliber night. We went to Le Bon Samaritain (The Good Samaritan), a really sketchy bar with plastic patio furniture covered (literally covered) in empty beer bottles, and the requisite shitfaced Senegalese men dancing and smoking rat-poison-filled cigarettes. The bar is moving to a new location, so all their beer was on sale ($1.10 for Gazelles!) and as such we hit the booze hard. We stayed there until 3:30 AM or so, leaving only for a few minutes to find some bread to soak up the alcohol in our stomachs. Then we went on a search for fast-food, wandering into the so-called “bad neighborhood,” but eventually stumbling across what could be called the Senegalese version of an 24-hour diner. I got fatayas (meat-filled pastries, like Indian samosas), French fries, and a Coke for $1 and devoured it accordingly.

Suffice to say I was tired the next day, but was woken up early for the dead-grandma commemoration party. The fête was a good time, if really overwhelming. Lots of people, lots of incomprehensible Wolof. I was pretty wiped out from the previous night’s binge, so I spent a lot of time avoiding relatives, napping, and reading in my room. Every room was filled with people, and we even had some spillover into the street. Dead Nana must have been a popular old lady. The food was also really delicious: fish and rice (surprise!) but with lots of relatively expensive vegetables and a good onion sauce.

Last night we went to the U.S. Marines’ house near the beach to watch the Super Bowl, stopping at the gin bar first to drink some cheap gin and tonics. The Marines place was really surreal: lots of drunk white people eating pizza and drinking beer, but it was a good time, especially when one girl became unconscious and a Marine tried to shove a pen down her throat to make her throw up. God Bless America! These Colors Don’t Run! Good to know where our tax dollars are going. Disappointingly, we watched the game on the Armed Forces channel, so instead of funny Super Bowl commericals we got military propaganda and public service announcements: “War Trophies Are Prohibited Unless Authorized” and “Be Sure To Not Sexually Harass Local Nationals” were some of my favorites. In the end, though, I managed to steal a full pizza, and that’s all that really matters. (Hopefully I won’t be prosecuted for theft of U.S. Government property, or, in the words of George Bluth, Sr., “minor treason.”)

Today I was supposed to have class from 12:30 to 2:30 but the professor never showed, so I decided to attempt downloading some more 24 and to write this here blog. Now I have class again, after which I will go home (buying sugar-peanuts on the way, of course) and nap to my heart’s content, and watch Jack Bauer tear out some more jugulars with his teeth. And remember kids, the taking of war trophies is not allowed unless directly authorized by your commanding officer.

Mmm chicken

These last few days have a been a blur of relaxation and indigestion. My stomach has been really upset lately, with heartburn and all that. However, I think I’ve discovered the culprit: the super-hot dried “piment” pepper that I, being the badass that I am, like to put on my rice at every meal. I normally can handle and actually really enjoy spicy food, but I think eating super-hot two meals a day has done a number on the ole estomac. I’ve been chompin’ on the Tums, which has helped a little, but the best cure for an upset stomach seems to be carbonated beverages, specifically beer. So I’ve been drinking a lot of beer… for my health.

Yesterday was an awesome food day. For breakfast I had banana and peanut butter on a baguette, which was heaven in every bite. Last night I went to Baobab 4 with TJ (a newcomer from Suffolk University) and ordered their famous grilled chicken. I had been dreaming of this meal for days. It is, no lie, the best chicken I have ever tasted. Tomatoes, onions, parsley, mustard, and juicy juicy meat. We just sat there in complete silence and ripped flesh from bone like famished cavemen. Awkward when the Lewis & Clark College kids came into the bar, since 75% are strict vegetarians and we had chicken grease dripping from our faces.

After my feast, I went to Sennett’s house with Phelan and Molly, since her family sells beers out of their fridge for 550 CFA ($1.10) each, which is cheaper than the 900 CFA ($1.80) we normally pay. We sat in her room and drank Gazelles and theorized about which member of her host family stole $300 out of her wallet! I walked home around 1:30, ready to snuggle up, only to find a motherfuckin’ STRAY CAT sleeping in my suitcase. It scared the hell out of me, and now my suitcase smells like cat. No feces, though, thank God.

Today I finally moved back into my newly renovated room. It feels good to be home, to have a desk, and to sleep on a new fluffy mattress which I stole from another room. I also somehow found the motivation and energy to go for a run (first non-walking exercise in 28 days). It was intense and I was panting pretty hard at the end, probably a combination of me being ridiculously out of shape and the horrible pitch-black cancer-causing fumes that emanate from every single car, bus, and moped in this city. You also run a lot faster than normal when every single person you pass gives you a death glare or yells out “FOREIGNER!!!!”

Tomorrow marks one month in Senegal, and coincidentally should be a fun-filled day. The host fam is having a party to commemorate the one-year anniversary of a grandmother’s death. There should be lots of food, and they may even be sacrificing a sheep in our courtyard!!! Don’t let the exclamation marks fool you: I don’t want this to happen, for a variety of reasons. First, I hear sheep die hard, and make lots of horrible gurgling noises and shit. Gross. Second, judging by the fast that they ate sheep’s head last night (I was enjoying the chicken at BB4), I think we’re finally running low on mutton. One more sheep killed means another month of my least favorite of meats. I can only hope Allah intervenes.

The other reason tomorrow promises to be fun is the Super Bowl. The U.S. Marines posted at the American Embassy here are hosting a Super Bowl party at their residence, starting tomorrow night at 11 PM our time. There should be American snacks (I’m hoping for popcorn and/or Doritos) and possibly free drinks… Again, I can only hope Allah intervenes.

Now I’ll be headed home to perhaps watch some New-York District (also known as old-school Law & Order with Benjamin Bratt and Jerry Orbach) and snack on the teeth-rotting sugar-coated peanuts that are my newest roadside snack obsession.

Revenge of the mutton

When I last left you, I had just gotten my haircut for a mere 500 CFA which is actually less than a dollar.

The last couple of days have been really stress-free, as Monday night was a Muslim holiday, meaning today was a day off. The holiday is called Tam Xarit, which is some sort of untranslatable Wolof play on words. Suffice to say it had been built up as a really fun Halloween-esque party, with people dressed up in drag and kids going from door to door asking for money and couscous and CHICKEN, which deserves to be capitalized since chicken is expensive here and is never eaten in my host family.

(I still don’t understand the point of the holiday. Someone said it was when Noah’s Ark reached Paradise, someone else said it was when Moses was born, someone else said it was when Mohammed’s cousin was killed in battle. Who knows.)

The actual festive meal was really disappointing, as its turned that Senegalese couscous (as opposed to Moroccan couscous) is really gritty and dry, and we had… you guessed it… mutton instead of chicken. But regardless it was nice to experience some sort of non-Judeo-Christian holiday, and Mama had been cooking for 12 hours so I ate way too much to make her happy.

After the couscous meal, I went with some of the group to Baobab 4 (which, in case you haven’t figured out already, is our favorite bar) and had a beer but was so disgustingly full that I left after just one. Then I met Tico at his friend DJ Mactar’s house. All of his friends are called DJs for some reason; one of them calls himself DJ DJ. It was a bunch of Senegalese teenagers looking at each other’s cell phones, listening to unfortunate Senegalese dance music, and speaking really in Wolof so I left after 20 minutes and went home to drift off to sleep while listening to the new Andrew Bird album.

This morning I woke up, had some of the bran cereal that I found at the gas station for $2 (to help with the digestion), and then helped do the massive amount of dishes resulting from the previous night’s “feast.” Then I met some Americans and we walked to the beach, where I listened to my iPod and watched a group of Senegalese teenagers strip down to their Speedo underwear and have a pick-up wrestling competition on the beach. After watching them beat the shit out of each other on the sand, we went to Caesar’s again for some delicious chicken nuggets and ketchup. Then home to shower, watch a few episodes of Arrested Development, then to the bar (at 5:30 PM) with my housemate Emily and her friend to drink Gazelles and eat a grapefruit.

Now I’m here in the Baobab Center trying desperately to download episodes of 24 and/or the new Arcade Fire album before I have to go home for dinner.

Oh, and I forgot to mention I had a class in there. This place is so unbelievably laid back. I feel like I’ve had a six day weekend. We also just found out our academic advisor has to go to France to “recover” from his mysterious illness, which should hopefully throw our program into chaos and allow us to continue our beach-to-bar lifestyle.

This Sunday marks one month in Senegal, which is very, very hard to believ. We are 20% done. I can only hope that the next weeks go a little more slowly… or at least that I get to go to the beach more often.

Get a pedicure, get your hair did

I don’t have too much time to write because I have to go home for a Muslim holiday (which I will explain later), but I just wanted to say that I got my haircut today… for a dollar.

You give me white wife yes?

First off, excuse any typos as I’m currenly slummin’ it in the local “cybercafé,” which I place in quotations due to its lack of post-1992 desktop computers and barely functioning French-language keyboards.

Thursday night we went to Baobab Quatre as usual, and got Gazelles as usual.  It was pretty dead, as I don’t think the concept of the Thirsty Thursday has made it to Dakar yet.  I had 2.5 beers, which gave me a nice African buzz and made for a peaceful night’s sleep in which I did not wake up once because of mosquitoes, goats, or calls to prayer.  Plus there was this psycho guy at the bar with a bloody gauze patch on his head covering what seemed to be a lobotomy scar.  He was funny.

Friday we stepped even further outside of our comfort zones and tried a new beach (adventurous, I know).  We had heard good things about Grandes Mamelles, which translates as “Large Breasts” and is named after two big hills that funnily enough do not resemble breasts.  The beach was pretty stunning, with a massive cliff on the western side, lots of cave formations, and motherfuckin’ HUGE waves with tons of fun undertow.  Also, I had one of the most awkward cross-cultural interactions with a Senegalese soldier patrolling the beach.  I forget his name, but that’s not important.  What is important is the fact that he asked if I could “offer” him a white woman as a wife.  He’s been in the army for going on 16 years now, and he thinks it’s time to settle down… with a white woman.  So when I get back to the States I’m supposed to tell all the womenfolk that I met this great guy in Senegal who’s looking for some sweet interracial matrimony.

After the beach we went to a super-Americanized restaurant called Caesar’s (home of the Famous Caesar Fried Chicken Since 1954!).  I had a Shish-Ta-Wook, and some of everyone else’s nuggets, pizza, and paninis.  Mmm.

After gorging on chicken, I went home and continued reading my awesome book (Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow, it’s so good) and took a hardcore three-hour nap before dinner.  I woke up with some intense sunburns on my legs and knees, but I think that’s inevitable in the equatorial sun.  After dinner there was a power outage, so I sort of just bummed around the ‘hood with the host brother before returning home to watch Cellular with Kim Basinger, that horrible actor from Fantastic Four, and, surprisingly, William H. Macy.  It wasn’t so good, but it was either that or Big Momma’s House 2.  Seriously.

Today has been really uneventful.  There is a ton of construction happening at the homestead, with lots of cement being poured and chisels chiselling away.  Hopefully this will be done soon, because it’s pretty loud and the construction workers smoke a lot.  It will be nice to have new flooring, though, and I’m getting a new mattress which should help me sleep better.

So now I’ll go home and read more Ragtime before lunch, then there is a remote chance I will exercise for the first time in three weeks, or, if not, there’s always Big Momma.

Man, dégg naa wolof tuuti rekk.

Just got out of a long, long Wolof class wherein we learned to count! And measurements of time! Counting in Wolof just might be the most convoluted thing ever. They base everything on five, as in: one, two, three, four, five, five-one, five-two, five-three, five-four, ten, ten-one, and so stupidly on.

To say, for example, someone is 99 years old, you say: “Juróom ñent fukki at ak juróom ñent la am,” which translates as “Five four ten years and nine has he.” And to make things even more complicated, the same goes for money. You have to divide all prices in CFA (the West African franc) by five to say them in the correct Wolof form, the dërëm, which equals 5 CFA. So if something costs 170 CFA, that’s 34 dërëm. I mean, seriously people… a base-five system? No wonder you were colonized.

But despite the tediousness of Wolof counting, my ability to understand the language is slowly progressing, and I’m starting to be able to pick up words in my family’s rapid-fire discussions over the dinner bowl and on the street with my host brother’s sketchy, sketchy friends. There’s nothing more satisfying than when I’m able to put together a coherent Wolof sentence and not have my host family mock my grammar (or lack thereof).

Later this afternoon we’re going to a town hall meeting on the political situation at the American ambassador’s residence, which should be mildly interesting (especially if there are hors d’oeuvres). The president just pushed back the elections in what seems to be an unsurprising attempt to not relinquish his huge amount of power. I’m secretly hoping that there is going to be some election-related “disturbances.” I just think that would be cool to experience. Most of the violence in America is not election-related, but rather drug- or money-related. A new kind of violence might be enlightening.

The outlook for this weekend is good. Tonight we’re planning to get as close to “Georgetown drunk” as safely possible. Tomorrow we don’t have class and as such will be on the beach from 11 AM until the sun sets. Plus my room at home is getting slightly renovated… goodbye disgusting 1970s linoleum, hello shiny new tiled floor! And, depending on the moon (I still don’t understand how we don’t know what the moon is going to do…), the Muslim New Year holiday of Tam Xarit is going to be Sunday or Monday night, in which case we’ll have the following day off of school and a glorious feast of couscous and chicken. Mmm, delicious on both counts.

Speaking of food, dama xiif (I’m hungry), so I have to go and lekk (eat). L8R HOMESLICES (that’s Wolof for “goodbye”).

Things that Senegalese people like too much

Sugar. I have yet to see a Senegalese person make a cup of coffee using anything less than five sugar cubes. People suck on sugar cubes as a snack.

Knock-off designer clothing. Not that I have anything against fake clothing, but it brings a smile to my face to see people wearing shirts with misspelled designer names: Dolcee & Gabbanna, or Tomy Hilfigger.

Mutton. Seriously, mutton is disgusting.

Chocoleca. This one is related to the sugar observation. Chocoleca is advertised as the “Delight of Champions,” a super-sweet chocolate spread. Take the nuts out of Nutella and replace them with some sort of gravelly chalk-like material, and you would get Chocoleca.

“Psst.” This is both a verb and a noun, a way of getting someone’s attention. For instance: you’re walking down the street and someone “Psst”s at you to come into their shop and purchase Chocoleca.