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.