Sights in Senegal

Introduction to the Five Senses of Senegal:

Since I did a post awhile back on the smells of Senegal I thought, (along with some discussion with that certain father and a certain mother as well) that I would go through all of the senses and try and give you, as a reader, a better sense of what life is like in Senegal.  These sights, smells, touches, tastes, and sounds are a part of my life in Senegal.  They are not unique really to one day or one celebration, most often they are things that I experience frequently.

Termite mounds are abundant throughout Senegal.  When I first saw them I thought they were ancient ruins, much like the Mayan pyramids that you can see still hidden in the "bush" of Mexico but before I actual spoke about those thoughts to anyone I asked.  Turns out they are termite mounds, disgusting, bad for the trees, mounds of termites.  Kids.  Kids are everywhere in Senegal.  But the most interesting difference about the kids here is that they go to the bathroom wherever they please.  Most often in my compound it is on the ground and one of the mothers or an older sibling scoops up some sand and cleans it all away.  There was the one time this week when my little sister, Tene, decided to go on my front porch, but just like everywhere else it is now spotless!  Whenever I bike to Tamba I always love seeing the mile-markers.  It isn't that far, 10km, but knowing which dilapidated mile marker is about to show up on my bike trip is a terrific motivator when the wind is blowing in my face and my backpack is loaded down with vegetables.  Coming to Tamba is the time when we get to see BACON!  And by this I mean the wild pigs that roam around, particularly in the trash river.  Biking into Tamba provides me with lots of sights (and smells and tastes for that matter but that comes later).  I always bike into Tamba in the morning, leaving Botou at 7am and as I arrive in Tamba I see many women walking with baskets and buckets to the daily fish market that is just on the outskirts of Tamba.  Men shave their heads at what seem to be random periods of the year.  One moment my uncles or host dad will have a modest head of hair, the next moment, bald!  Babies are also bald.  At birth, most babies come with some hair but a week after they are born before the naming ceremony they shave off all their hairs, even the baby girls!  It is quite distressing actually to see them take a razor to a tiny baby's head.  They also cut dogs ears and donkeys tails.  I'm not really sure why they do either.  I've heard that it is to keep the bugs/flies away, but it seems counterproductive to me when there are gobs of blood coming out of their ears and rear ends, a perfect habitat for blood thirsty insects.  Dust is everywhere in my hut!  I can't get rid of it.  Things are no longer clean or sponged off, they are dusty.  It's just a fact and I've gotten over my OCD about cleaning it 24/7.  Now I just clean everything only once a day.  Whenever cars come into the village it is a sight for the whole village.  A car, in our village?  Whatever are they doing here?  Nobody owns a car in Botou so seeing one is a pretty big deal.  Again when I bike into Tamba I see lots of truck drivers, many from Mali with their trucks parked on the side of the road.  Most of them have pulled out mats and blankets and are sleeping or praying underneath or beside their trucks.  UN trucks.  On December 29, 2014 there was an attack on a UN refugee camp in northern Mali and because of the presence of the camp and the attack in particular there are always (and sometimes more frequently) trucks with UN posted on the side going past Botou on their way to Mali.  Baobab trees, a tree many think of as a "typical African tree" are de-leafed in my village.  All their leaves stripped and eventually they will grow back during the hot/rainy season.  And finally, the sight of my host siblings watering the garden as I come back from Tamba is a true delight!

Babies and New Year's Eve

It isn’t every day that you come back from a skype session with your parents and its announced that there will be a brand new baby in your compound the next day.  Last weekened, after my rough week in general, my uncle, Daouda, announced that his wife had another baby and that the next day she would be at our compound for the baby naming ceremony.  I was thrilled!  As many of you know I love babies.  I had heard so much about naming ceremonies that I was excited to witness one.  I asked Bouna if it was all right if I took pictures, he said yes of course.  A bunch of women were cooking in the morning, some sort of corn mash with sugar that they made into balls.  When I got up, my host sisters ushered me into Daouda’s hut, where his wife was there with a teeny little baby.  They were about to shave his head.  I would learn later that this is what happens to every baby, boy or girl before they get their names.  The naming happens a week after they are born.   At around 10am, all the village elders, meaning old men, came into our compound and sat down on mats.  The iman, almami, was there front and center.  Then a younger man came out and seemed to be speaking with the Iman, I think it was more that the iman was speaking to him, telling him the name of the new baby, Djibie.  They passed around the corn balls with kola nuts inside (a very caffeinated nut that I think tastes very strong and bitter) and gave it to everyone that was there.  They sat and prayed, holding their hands in front of them and then praying, in Arabic.  It was quite charming and calming to watch.  After a certain short time, less than half an hour they all left, filing out slowly.  The older women were at my compound the whole day, cooking, and many family members from Tamba and neighboring villages came to see the new baby and to see the family.  Then later in the evening I walked out of my hut and my uncle was slaughtering a sheep, I thought it was in celebration for the baby but then it turned out that he was selling most of the meat, maybe the money goes to the baby, as I’ve said before, I think, I still don’t quite understand the money matters here in Senegal.  

Holding a tiny baby was pretty much a terrific treat.  The next day I went around the village and ended up finding two more small babies, both under two weeks old.  One that had been named, and the other that was supposed to be named the next day.  Everyone seemed to want to name it after me, Halima, which was I was at first okay with.  I told them I would go back and take pictures the next day.  I went back and spent a couple hours or so.  I watched the iman bless her, whisper prayers and I guess get or give her her name.  I asked her mother if her name was in fact Halima and she replied in the affirmative.  It wasn’t until later that I learned from my host sister Setou that in fact her name was Maimouna, not Halima.  Kind of a relief, just because it seems like a lot of pressure to have a kid named after you and on top of that the family isn’t related to my family, I’m not sure what the practices are.  But I got to spend a few hours with a number of babies and that was pretty cool. 

On New Years Eve my host sisters came back from picking cotton and told me that they were going to get together with some other kids from the village and cook spaghetti and eggs. I decided to help them out so I have them 300cfa and decided to go along with whatever they were doing.  After we watered the garden we went over to another compound and started peeling onions and potatoes and cooking beef.  My uncle earlier had slaughtered a cow, it was pretty amazing to watch them kill something that big with a dull knife.  All of my uncle and neighbors were holding the cows legs, tied with ropes and they had the dull blade of a knife that they sharpened by scraping it on the well.  Then they called Kooli (my other uncle) over and he took a pole of wood and laid it across the belly of the cow to hold it down so that the cow couldn’t move.  It’s amazing to watch them kill animals with the slip of a knife, they drain the blood and then begin the the butchering.  But back to the cooking.  I was with a bunch of 14 year old girls who were all chattering away cooking up a storm; beignets, beef with onions and mustard and spaghetti.  The irony of the whole thing was that the dish we were cooking was supposedly called couscous marocain (Moroccan CousCous).  I just think that is pretty crazy.  I helped out with the peeling and cutting of potatoes and onions.  At one point, about three hours later I was getting tired and bored, and they began to notice.  So they took a bowl as they were beginning to get ready to eat and my Tupperware container that they had collected peanuts in and they packed up my part of the dinner that I thought we were going to eat together and walked me back to my compound.  I thought we were going to eat all together but I guess that wasn’t the case.  I sat down with my own bowl of “marrocain couscous” and invited my host siblings and my aunt to join me.  They of course did and then we sat down and had our New Year’s Eve meal.  Pasta with onions, mustard and beef.