When my host sister Maimuna told me that she played the flute and would be performing on June 18, I of course said COUNT ME IN I WILL BE THERE! The opportunity seemed too great to pass up: good times with the family, Senegalese children playing flutes... what is not to love?! However, as the date of the concert grew nearer, my image of this “flute performance” began to change. It seemed like each day, my family would throw another unexpected random fact about it at me.
For instance, Monday: “It’s not a show, it’s a party.”
Tuesday: “There will be a lot of dancing and music.”
Wednesday: “No one else in the family is going.”
Thursday: “It is a middle school dance and you are now a chaperone and maybe there will be a song with a flute.”
Armed with this knowledge, I bravely counted down the hours to the flute performance –turned middle school dance. I made plans to meet my sister at our house at 4pm so that we could go to her school together before the party started at 4:30. So when I roll up to the house at 3:30 and then at 4pm my host mom goes, “Mame Diowma? Did you talk to Maimuna?” and it turns out my host sister had left at like 3 because the party started at 4, I was not pleased. Again, plans, failing, always. After a moment of silent anger, I decided to swallow my pride and try to find the school on my own. Because I just really wanted to see what was going to happen.
What happened is that I found the school at 4:15 and no one was there, save for my sister and one of her sassy friends. When I walked up, my sister said, “Oh yeah, and I forgot my flute, so oh well!” I asked where everyone was and she said the party started at 4:30. I went and sat down to watch the scene unfold. What unfolded was… a whole bunch of French ladies started arriving … and it turns out that my sister’s French private school has about half Senegalese students and half French ex-pats. But these women… were carrying platters of pastries. Homebaked pastries! Like homebaked cookies, and cakes! Note: I had resigned myself to the possibility of never having a homebaked cookie during my two years in Senegal. Ovens are hard to come by here, and while there are ways to make haphazard baked goods over a gas stove or buy packaged cookies in a boutique, I know better than to set my sights high. UNTIL NOW! So once I saw the baked goods, I knew that no matter what happened, I was not leaving this party, ever.
Eventually this random judge sat next to me and explained that I was about to watch an end-of-the-year pageant with an environmental theme, which is strangely what I had expected three weeks ago, before the whole middle school dance idea was introduced. AND PAGEANT DID I SEE!
The program opened with the lower classes wandering around the stage, then forming a circle and clapping along to an English version of “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” The second performance involved children covered in newspaper with scrawled messages like “PROTECT TREES!” and “WE LOVE THE AIR!” singing French songs. But the show was mostly centered around an elaborate skit that involved dream sequences/hallucinations with Indian dances (for those of you who understand these references, the dances were a cross between my Ariel dances in The Tempest and Teresa’s zombie walk), human trees being chopped down, human birds experiencing dramatic Shakespearean deaths after breathing dirty air, and the sassiest sun in the UNIVERSE chasing airplanes and cars and telling them how much she hated them. There was also a moment when all of the kids formed a giant improvised machine and stared blankly into the audience, which I think was meant to say something about technological doom. In a word, it was fantastic, and the perfect mix of avant-garde French art with sassy, theatrical Senegalese performance.
There was no flute component.
But in the end, I got to eat so much cake, and it was awesome. The French aspect of the party ended up being hilarious, as all of the French teachers/parents busted out beers and cigarettes and just wandered around, smoking and drinking. In a strange way, it was like an American tailgate? I danced in a corner to Kanye and Rihanna with 13 year old girls while people kept coming over and asking if I was from Canada.
But I think my favorite part of the night was the ride home. Night had fallen, so my sister and I stood outside and tried to hail a cab. When we finally found one, the driver kept trying to overcharge us. And hilariously, I could see that me and my sister were both drawing strength from the other: she was high off of the excitement of a middle school party, needing to take taxi after dark, and showing off for me. I was riding the wave of good dancing and being adamant about not being ripped off since I had a Senegalese person with me. Consequently, we were quite the fighting pair, and we just berated our driver into submission for a good price. My Wolof had never been better, and my little sister had never been so confident. When we got home, I heard my sister retelling the story of the cab over and over for our whole family, like it was already a legend.
Also, it should be noted that my sister had told all of her friends at school about my Lil Wayne poster, which prompted all of them to ask me if I knew Lil Wayne. I tried explaining how I ended up with the poster to no avail. And so the population in Senegal that believes I am in love with Lil Wayne continues to grow.
No comments:
Post a Comment