Reporting from the Danger Zone: Election 2012

Election Day, the day that many fated to be the beginning or end of Senegal as we know it, has come and gone. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had during the past year about the impending election – or rather, how many have not involved it. Even when I couldn’t understand what people were saying (which means my entire past all the way through the next few months), I would hear the name of Senegal's president peppered angrily or excitedly throughout the conversation. So duh, every conversation was less about Akon and more about POLITICS. Here is my understanding of the Senegalese Presidential Event Timeline during my service:

- March 2011: I arrive in Senegal! Abdoulaye Wade is the President. People say he might run again even though he has been the president for two terms already.

- June 2011: Adoulaye Wade announces some changes to the constitution, such as allowing someone with more than 25% of the vote to win a presidential election, and creating an electable position of Vice President. Wade proposes amendments. Everyone I talk to says he’s crazy, but they do worry that he will make his son the Vice President and then die in office, making his son President without a vote.

- September 2011: The amendments come to a vote before a Constitutional Court that he chose. People worry that the laws will pass! They don’t want them to pass! They have demonstrations! They do not pass.

- January 2012: Adoulaye announces that he is running for a third term fo’ sho! He says he was elected before the constitution included term limits, so he can do what he wants! People are angry. People protest, especially in Dakar!

- February 2012: Continued reports of protests around the country and in Dakar. Photos show the country aflame!

Speaking of flames, if you’ve been paying attention to international news, you have probably been seeing photos like these:

Or these:

Or these:

I know these photos, along with predictions of threats/violence/coups and daily commentary by journalists have been worrying some of you, especially given that I, someone you love (or someone you don’t know whose blog you stumbled upon during web surfing in Turkey), could be stuck in the middle of all of this dangerous mess. While I am not undermining the seriousness of many protests around the country and the ability for danger to happen spontaneously, let me reassure you that the Senegal of the media is very different from my Senegal. As another perspective, here is my personal timeline, supplemented by anecdotes from my Senegalese friends:

- March 2011: I arrive in Senegal. Abdoulaye Wade is President. Everyone I meet talks about how he is too old to be President and might be over 150. Their words, not mine.

- June 2011: I spend days hearing about riots but attending work conferences, eating fatayas and drinking Fanta. I fail to see one dangerously angry person the whole month. At one point, I travel to Tamba and get my first disease, making biological warfare my greatest worry.

- September 2011: The amendments do not pass. The people of Senegal take solace in the rationality of their Constitutional Court. I do things like go to Girls’ Camp and get attacked by bugs.

- January 2012: A strike confines me to my home! But it is a taxi driver strike.

- January 2012: My host mom hosts a very peaceful luncheon in support of her candidate. The guests clean up after themselves and leave me with a good impression.

- January 2012: I wait for riots after Wade announces his candidacy. Instead of being angry, my family brings me a slice of mango after dinner as though it is just another night.

- January 2012: Someone tries to punch me in the face as I ride my bike to work. The next day someone throws dirt at me. I don’t think it is related to the election.

- February 2012: While waiting for a bus, I accidentally find myself at a political rally of 12 people. Everyone is very calm, quiet, and respectful. They support my effort to catch a bus.

- February 2012: I see one burning tire in Kaolack as I drive by in a taxi. The tire is unattended and no one seems to be paying any attention to it. I am not sure if it is the symbol of a protest or just a tire that caught fire.

So despite my personal lack of inflammatory experiences, I still waited with bated breath for election day. Senegal’s election day falls on a Sunday, which makes sense to me. In America, we vote on Tuesday, because everyone is probably working and can hit the local poll by their home. In Senegal, people work in faraway places and return to their homes on the weekend, so Sunday works better. On that note, my usually bustling city was a ghost town on election weekend. Apparently no one is actually FROM Thies. For all of the buildup, Election Day was quite literally the absolute quietest day I have ever experienced in Senegal. But maybe protests would happen after?

I arrived home after the polls closed at 6pm to find my teenage sisters with their ears feverishly set against the radio, pen and notebooks in hand, writing down the results. I was surprised that the results seemed to be coming in so quickly... until I realized which results were on the radio. Stations were reading off EVERY. SINGLE. POLLING. STATION. IN SENEGAL. Which meant for about 12 hours, on every radio and television channel, we heard things like this:

Abdoulaye Wade – 42

Macky Sall – 56

Moustapha Niasse – 23

Idy Seck – 17

10 other candidates, read off one by one – 0-2

I had originally thought these were percentages. But no. They were specific votes. All eventually adding up to about 5 million, without anyone ever interjecting things like running totals or general trends. It all made me a little nostalgic for the fancy graphics and tickers of America, the color coding, the projections, the drama of Florida et all. Also, for 12 hours, the theme song for Chariots of Fire played in the background of every mass media outlet. That's what happens when people don't police faraway countries about licensing rights. Entire countries use your orchestral, 80s movie score as the theme song not for a candidate, not for an election, but for THE FEELING OF DEMOCRACY FOR AN ENTIRE COUNTRY.

So yes, as of now, results are still being tabulated, but by all accounts, it looks like no one hit 50% to win outright. Instead, the drama will continue for 3 more weeks until a run-off election between President Wade (who led the primary with somewhere around 30%) and Macky Sall (who had about 25% from what I can gather). Some people think that this second election will be what sets it off. Maybe Wade will win and the people will protest, accusing him of fraud or bribing voters. Maybe Macky will win, but Wade will refuse to give up his position, leading to craziness. Or maybe the election results will be respected much in the way they were this past Sunday. Time will tell.

The press will continue to theorize about impending disaster or success, trying to account for all of the conflicting viewpoints around Senegal: the angry mobs and demonstrations, but also the people in the faraway places who seldom vote and see the election as inconsequential. As for me, as for the moment, I find myself agreeing – and wanting to agree – with the words of my most trusted Senegalese confidante here:

“Will we turn into Cote d’Ivoire? Will there be uprisings like Guinea? It could happen. But Senegal loves peace more than democracy. Even if things do not go well, the people prefer their lives to violence.”

And as for her voting prediction?

“Anyone but Wade. Every single person who voted for a candidate other than Wade or Macky will now vote for Macky. No one will swing to Wade. No one.”

So while the images you see and the reports you hear about uprisings and violence are undoubtedly true, also know that my reality is true too: it is quiet, it is rational, and it just hopes it all works out. Also know that Peace Corps is willing to do anything to save me, including the use of helicopters if need be.

Senegal: An Exercise in Feeling Meta

I’m not the first to say it: you can’t pin this country, let alone this continent, down. I remember having a big debate in college with one of my European professors about America. She argued that you can go anywhere in America and things are basically the same – you’ll have McDonalds and Taco Bell and the same music plays at barbecues. But my classmates were offended -- we adamantly defended the fact that America had local flavor and less uniformity than she suggested. I’m not sure we convinced her. But similarly, people tend to think of Africa as one, basic place. And yes, many things are consistent across the continent, just like many things are the same across Europe or North America. But there are also insane differences. And likewise, even Senegal, a country the size of a Dakota, hosts a multitude of different lives... and in the past week, I’ve gotten to see a few of them, up close and personal.

First of all, I have a new host brother. I didn’t realize he had moved into our house until he just kept not being gone every morning. Bemba is 14, and I thought he had been visiting from France for the baptism... turns out, he is here for good. This blows my mind for a few reasons. First of all, when most people leave Senegal, they don’t come back. Second of all, if people manage to get their children out of Senegal, and furthermore, if those kids have say, French citizenship, they usually try to educate their children... not in Senegal. The things that usually bring people back to Senegal are deportation, love, or some randomly, insanely fabulous job. The shining school system is normally not a factor.

Bemba lived in Paris, with his mother and four siblings. When his family rolled up to the baptism, they were by far the richest family members that I had met thus far, and my family is pretty well-off. They came in flaunting fancy sneakers, bedazzled complets, and an endless stream of gifts for everyone... all from a salary that his mother makes as a hotel housekeeper. It was amazing to see how that minute amount of money could go so far here.

As for Bemba, he told me that his grades were fine, but he had problems with his “comportment,” so maybe he was just a little troublemaker. Maybe he was involved in one of those banlieue gangs they make documentaries about, I don’t know, except that this kid is like 4’11” and seems like more of a ham than anything: I can’t see him being within 200 feet of a hard drug, gun, graffiti, or whatever it is that Parisian banlieue kids do. It's also pretty probably that his banlieue school was below the standard of a Senegalese private school, which opens up a whole other can of worms. But whatever, he's here now.

And what that means is that I’ve had a front-row seat at watching an ethnically Senegalese kid experience the ultimate culture shock.

It’s been insanely interesting and entertaining! He knows even less than me! Bemba showed up with his Puma bag and asked why we aren’t sitting at the table to eat dinner. He mentions singers that none of us have ever heard of. He keeps asking my host dad when he can take his driver’s test and buy a car. And also, through all of this, he speaks no Wolof. I have become his role model, I think: an example of a Westerner who knows how to sit at the bowl, who can greet in Wolof, and who knows better than to ask dumb questions about driving non-existent cars in Senegal. And, with my ragtag French, I am one of the few family members who can talk to him. Chatting with him gives a completely different understanding of Senegal: he knows it's his heritage and what not, but he actually knows very little about the day to day life here, even in the fanciest Senegalese cities.

So watching Bemba has been fun for me. But then I went, myself, to the other end of the spectrum and put myself in a completely different Senegal: I took a mini-trip to my friend Aimee’s village. Aimee doesn’t live in the boonies – I have friends who live 50k from civilization on mountaintops, or 30k in the bush, accessible only by one sandy path – but she does live about 5k from any main roads. And when you walk that 5k sandy trail with a back full of baggage, computers, on a mild cold under the hot sun, you realize you are not in your Senegalese city life any more.

Aimee presents... her village!

Aimee’s village is what I expected Senegal to be before I came. She lives with the village chief, his three wives, and assorted family members. When she enters her village, children chase her, excitedly yelling her name, and women stop what they’re doing to come over and say hi. Her mosque is about 1/16^th the size of the one in my neighborhood, and her daara (an Islamic school) looks like a thatched hut for midgets compared to mine. People pull water from a well, have access to vegetables once a week, and coexist with all sorts of friendly creatures in their homes. The people were quieter, the babies were smaller, the electric company had never visited, and the dialects were different. It sounds cheesy, but it really felt like a different world. It also made me realize just how much I’d adapted to my Senegal – in the urban areas, I take for granted that people understand my broken French, that anyone can buy cookies around the corner, and finding transportation is just a matter of waving your hand and haggling well. In the village, my French was worthless, the cookies were missing, and we waited on the side of the road for an hour before a crowded bus charitably stopped and picked us up (for a fee).

Village women have strong arms from pulling water. Recently, a friend tried to find muscles in my arms and found nothing.

We took a charrette out of the village... a special treat. During our ride, we saw two monkeys! This was very exciting because the last time Aimee saw monkeys near her village, the town banded together and shot them. So it was good that we were on the charrette, because apparently the monkeys near Aimee's village are vicious killers. It was also exciting to see monkeys.

People talk about how America has a huge gap between the rich and the poor – the truth is that we’re far from the only country like that. I actually read an article recently that said the global rich/elite have more in common with each other than their countrymen. That’s not to say that my family is anywhere near that global elite, but still, for a lot of Senegalese city-dwellers, the rural areas are an alien, backward place that they can’t comprehend and probably literally could not survive in. I’ve heard African cities called bastions of poverty, places that suck people in with dreams of wealth and education and better lives. But you know what? Those promises aren’t empty for a lot of people, especially here. Almost everyone I encounter in Thies is more educated, wealthier, and lives more comfortably than any person in a village. The cities are moving forward so much faster than the rest of the country. But at the same time, there’s a huge disconnect, and I don’t know if the city progress will really necessarily trickle down to other parts of Senegal, at least not for a while.

So yes, that was my week. I got to watch Bemba be dismayed by the primitive ways of his new home, and then I got to see, close up, an even more simplified version of my Senegalese life. Senegal, and the Senegalese, just like all places and people, somehow manage to have everything and nothing in common all at the same time.

The Baptism isn't a Track Meet, it's a Marathon.

So as many of you have heard, we have a new baby in our house! Many of you have probably wondered why I have been continuously dehumanizing said baby by only calling it “BABY” or “IT.” Well, ladies and gentlemen, there is a reason for my cruelty: the baby was born on January 13^th, but until the baptism party on February 11^th, the baby remained nameless. Some families have no qualms broadcasting the baby’s name before a baptism, but my family kept it on lockdown. I continuously tried to trick them into telling me, but to their credit, they kept the name a secret until the special day.

I’ve written about baptisms before, but I was really excited about this one because it was MY family. Not only did I want to see how this party would be different from the village baptisms I’d been to before, but I was really curious about the family dynamics that would unfold.

The baby’s mother is my host sister Mame Sumari, who is 18 and does all of the cooking in our house. She’s lived here since last January when she married my uncle, and while I think she is one of the sweetest people in the house, she’s kind of the resident scapegoat. In Senegal, it’s pretty standard for the older women to lounge and berate the younger women for not working hard enough or moving fast enough. I can only imagine that the younger ones only absorb this abuse because they know that someday, it’ll be them running the show and yelling at everyone. But yes, Mame Sumari is often criticized for sleeping too much and acting tired, which makes perfect sense to me since she works all day doing manual labor and has been pregnant for the past 9 months. I was interested to see how everyone was going to treat her on her special day, what many people had told me is the crowning achievement in a young woman’s life: the baptism of her first baby.

In the morning, everyone woke up super early to eat laarj, an oatmeal-like dish with raisins, sugar, and yogurt. My family had excitedly told me that I had to get up because the imam from the local mosque was coming. I was into that. But yeah, then he showed up and I remembered that I was a lady and aka would not get to hang out with him. So the imam and the men hung out and prayed to spirits of dead, male relatives, asking for blessings and forgiveness for the new baby. Most of the women cooked, but Mame Sumari went to the neighbor’s house to get her hair and makeup done. Because I am lazy and wanted to watch her transformation, I followed her there.

What happened next was this:

It took 3 hours. And as I watched, I remembered that she had not one, but two outfits for the day. So they dolled her up for 3 hours, only to wash it all off and reapply completely different colors a few hours later. The process was crazy! It involved tar-like black paint that worked as hair gel, hair dye, and glue, glitter painted into the parts of her hair and as a faux nose ring, and enough fake hair to hide a small terrier. But I loved the hair at the end. It looked good.

Senegalese special occasion make-up, on the other hand, is something I have trouble getting into. I am quite aware that different cultures have different standards of beauty, and maybe if I stayed here long enough, I would start to like the beauty regimen of Senegalese women. But if that day came, it would mean that I did things like shave off my eyebrows and color them in purple, wear hot pink eyeshadow and fake lashes to match my outfit, accentuate my lips with colors like purple and green to further accentuate my outfit, and bring it all home by powdering my face so heavily that I resembled a person from another race. But this was not my baptism party, and every one else, including Mame herself, was beyond satisfied with the makeup. When she was finished, all of the ladies at the party escorted her around the house, singing, clapping, and chanting things like, “Come look at the beautiful lady! Come watch the beautiful lady! She is a mother!”, even taking off their shawls and lying them on the ground in a gesture to show how humbling her beauty was.

After lunch finished at 5pm, I was exhausted, so I took a little nap. I figured by about 9pm, the party would be wrapping up and I’d be home free. But little did I know... the party hadn’t even started yet. Silly toubab! At 8:30pm, Mame’s entire extended family rolled up to the compound in two giant, 40 person vans. I’d been sitting quietly in the corner of the living room, and the crowd soon enveloped me. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by about 80 women, on chairs, couches, and the ground, ready for the REAL baptism ceremony.

Here’s how it went down: A select group of older aunts ran the show. I was a little confused to see how basically none of this ceremony/show focused on Mame, the baby, the grandmother, or even my host mom, who threw the party and will probably be like a de-facto grandma. No. A random group of aunts that seem to have very little connection to anyone dominated the group, dancing, flashing their vaginas at each other (this is something older women love to do here... hard to explain, but the entertainment value seems to be similar as to when a group of 50 year old women get drunk on wine and talk about sex in America... you know, just good times!), and displaying all of the presents. The aunts went through the presents one by one, announcing what they were, singing a song about them, demanding money from people, and then, occasionally, just giving the presents away to other people. I found it all incredibly confusing. There were also griots there, Senegalese men who attend celebratory functions for certain families specifically to sing traditionally songs. One of the griots yelled at me when I tried to take a photo of him, despite the fact that the women next to me was filming him with a CAMCORDER. So on top of my confusion, I was also dealing with prejudice.

The gift extravaganza went on for hours. I started hallucinating that it would continue all night. But in my unfocused dizziness, I couldn’t get over how different this party was than ones in America. Other than her makeover, it seemed to me that Mame was mostly ignored. Personally, as someone from an ego-centric culture, I felt offended for her. But I wondered if she even though anything of it. Maybe she even liked the fact that it was her party but everyone ignored her. Senegal: the ideal place for people who hate being the center of attention! Because the spotlight will always be stolen by your loud, singing, overbearing aunt!

But once I was able to safely escape to my room and sleep with my earplugs (necessary since they all ate dinner at 1am and partied into the night), I was able to appreciate a lot of what I’d seen. The dancing and singing was fun, and all of my sisters clearly had a ball visiting their cousins and friends and dressing up together. And in the morning, when everyone had finally left and the compound was quiet, I went to see Mame and her baby – who I finally discovered was named Astou, a beautiful name – and she had the baby dressed in the outfit and hat I’d given her, wrapped in the blanket I had given. Out of all of those presents, mine was the one she chose to use first. I couldn’t help but feel really happy about that. I don’t know how to do any of the dances or songs, but I think I am part of this family.

Food for Thought

Today I will attempt to elaborate on an issue very near to my heart: food. And when I say “near to my heart,” what I mean is “in the vicinity of my stomach.” But I must warn you – I am notoriously awful when it comes to remembering the names of foods. It never seemed like much of a problem until I went to France, where I was constantly being served new delicious dishes (mostly cheeses). I’m a visual learner. So the fact that all of these foreign cheese names were being thrown in my ears without my eyes seeing how to spell them – on top of the fact that who can pay attention to anything when their mouth is experiencing a multi-ring circus of amazingness and non-pasteurized dairy products – meant that I left France with a great appreciation for the cuisine, but little idea of how to replicate it at my local Trader Joe’s or for the rest of my life.

This same problem has struck me in Senegal. Other volunteers seem to have no problem rattling off obscure Wolof and Pulaar words for what we eat. But if I didn’t learn it in my first two weeks in Senegal, when I had my workbook of Wolof phrases matched with pictures, chances are, I have no idea what they are talking about. Hence, my life is full of me saying things like, “Oh I love that thing with the red sauce and the potatoes!” and “How do you say couscous in Wolof? I thought that was millet? How do I say couscous? It’s the same word? It’s not the same word? How do I say I love this thing with couscous? You don’t understand me? Damnit.”

Anyway, here is how the day often breaks down:

BREAKFAST

Most volunteers find comfort y in a hearty bean sandwich on tapalapa bread in the mornings. They’ll tell you cute stories about their relationships with local bean sellers and how no one can satisfy their protein deficiency quite like good old Khady on the laterite road. But I was raised on boxes of sugary, sugary cereal, so while I can appreciate a solid bean sandwich, in the morning, I need to feed my pancreas. For this reason, I start my days off with various cereals and powdered milk/baby formula. I try to eat a piece of fruit and usually fail. It’s been cold lately, so I’ve been indulging in a morning tea. If I’m feeling crazy and want to contribute to the local economy, I buy four beignets for 10 cents and let the sugar burn into my blood.

SNACK TIME

Snack time is critical in Senegal. I always find myself getting hungry around 11am and think, “I can’t eat now! I’ll spoil my lunch!” This thought is ridiculous and should always be ignored, because lunch will fall anywhere from 1:30pm to as late as 3:45pm. And on days when you’re really hungry, it’s always 3:45pm. For this reason, I usually buy a bag of sugared peanuts, a bag of roasted peanuts, and a piece of fruit to eat and feel healthy and good about myself. But if I’m working in my room that day, I usually just stuff my face with the generous supply of Cheetos donated by so many of you.

LUNCH

Many volunteers opt to eat lunch and dinner with their families, but from the very beginning, I’ve told my family that I’ll eat one meal a day with them and fend for myself at the others. This creates a complex situation that inevitably defines my life. If I lunch with my family, then I better have a plan for dinner – crashing a friend’s house, rounding up vegetables at the market, or breaking into my backup stock of food. It also creates an aura of gambling. It’s rude to ask what’s on the menu, so taking lunch means sacrificing dinner, which sometimes means giving up the chance to eat something marvelous like chicken and couscous. Lunches are usually pretty dependable though – ceeb u jen (rice, fish, and a whole bunch of vegetables.) Sometimes my host mom makes fish balls with red sauce, which is exciting. The same surprises happen in my office – I’ll think I have their weekly menu decoded (fish on Mondays, supakanja on Wednesdays, always chicken on Fridays), but then on a random Tuesday, they’ll serve me chicken, fries, salad, and a Coke. Needless to say, I’ve become very attached to my Senegalese lunches, and look forward to almost all of them, except supakaanja, which was once accurately described to me as eating phlegm (it’s a beloved dish involving palm oil.) I've also picked up the Senegalese habit of chugging an entire glass of cold water in one gulp after my meal. Almost all Senegalese do this, except for my host mother, who is currently on a strict Asiatic diet that only allows her to drink water two hours after her meal. Yes. Fad diets have made it all corners of the world.

AFTERNOON SNACK

For most Senegalese, after lunch is tea time. Tea is not tea in the sense that Americans often consider it, with a fancy tea bag, herbs, and grandmothers. Senegalese tea involves bags and bags of sugar in tiny, tiny glasses. As a self-identified pre-diabetic, I think it’s delicious, but I try to limit myself. I have to admit that tea is the closest thing Senegal has to dessert, and I really miss dessert. Just that taste... of sugar... to finish off a meal... is so... GOOD. So I usually end up eating sugar in some form after lunch. And yes, I admit that sometimes “some form” means eating straight sugar cubes. I’m not ashamed.

DINNER

As I mentioned earlier, my lunch-dinner game is always a gamble. If I eat lunch with my family and find myself needing to whip up a dinner, I usually just do something simple like fresh spring rolls, bruschetta, a peanut butter and banana sandwich, or macaroni and cheese. Sometimes I meet up with other volunteers and cook dinner, or I hit up one of Thies’ fine restaurant establishments (they really are quite lovely). Sometimes I eat cookies and take a vitamin. But on those days when I eat with my family and hit the jackpot – such as the previously mentioned (and today’s reality) couscous and chicken – I just feel on top of the world. I get similar feelings from omelette night, chicken and noodles night, egg salad night, and soup night. For many months, our most common meal was salad with fried fish, which for some reason just doesn’t do it for me. But lately... I’ll have bad days at work, bad encounters on the street, nothing will seem to be going right... and then all of my meals will just fall perfectly into place. We haven’t had salad with fried fish in weeks, and for that, I am grateful.

So there you have it. My culinary experiences in Senegal are far from typical – I live with a decently wealthy family in a decently wealthy area with plenty of farm and garden output. But still, my reality is my reality, and this is what Senegalese is to me. And it is... delicious.