*Gamou is the name for the celebration of Mohamed's birthday, which is today.
First of all, I'm sorry that it's been so long since my last post. I'm getting bad at such things, mainly because I can't believe that we've already been here for five weeks. It's a little shocking.
For this post I again bring you a collection of odds and ends.
Language
The greetings in Wolof are kindof fun in translation.
- I pray for peace on your behalf.
- Peace for you, too.
- Are you here?
- I am here still.
- Are your house people (family) there?
- They are there.
- Thank you, God.
- Thank you, God.
We spent last weekend in a village in Futa, the region to the north east where they speak Puular. We had a crash course on Puular the Monday before, but I learned almost nothing. Not only was there a completely new set of weird words, there are consonants in Puular that are just about impossible for us to pronounce properly. It was really weird to come back to Dakar and actually be relieved to hear Wolof again. At least in Wolof I can do the basic greetings and say "Julia laa tudd."
Arthropods
There are a number of interesting arthropods here. For instance, there are at least three different kinds of ants. There are the normal-sized ones, but there are also the ones that are so tiny they are almost invisible, and this evening I just saw one that was about half an inch long. That was slightly disturbing to see crawling across the keyboard.
A couple weekends ago when we were in Toubab Dialao we saw a big, flat, six-legged, speckled sand-colored thing that I think might have been that relative of a scorpion that was in the picture book of dangerous creatures that we had when we were little. Whatever it was, it ran away and hid in a corner. We gave it a wide birth, but it didn't attack anyone. While we were there we also saw a praying mantis, which was cool because I don't think I'd seen one before, at least not in the wild.
I haven't noticed many spiders, though that could be simply because they're unremarkable to me. The exception is the one that I mentioned in a previous entry, the jumping spider. It was pretty cool, particularly since I know that it would have no reason at all to jump on me, except by accident. Kelly and Katie also found a spider on a web on the inside of one of their jambes (sp? it's a type of drum). Maybe it liked vibrations from the drumming.
Last weekend in Mboumba while we were waiting around for stuff to happen (that was a joke. We spent at least 75% of our waking hours waiting for something to happen) at one point, we were all sitting around singing pop songs (or mostly listening in my case. I don't know many pop songs) when Kelly exclaimed that she had seen a scorpion. None of us thought much of it, until someone explained to Gabi (our music... sometimes he teaches us) that a small scorpion had crawled under the mat he was sitting on. To everyone's surprise he jumped up and ripped aside the mat, and nearly shouted that it was not a small scorpion. He shouted to a nearby kid to get a shoe, and smashed the scorpion repeatedly with the flip-flop. It was about two inches long. I don't know enough about scorpions to know if he was over-reacting or not. Given everyone else's reaction, I suppose not. They would know more about how poisonous the local scorpions are than we do.
Names
We have all been given Senegalese names. Mine is Huja, or something like that. Whenever I say it people correct my pronunciation, so I'm not sure about that spelling. I have also decided to create an alternate identity to give to random people on the street if they ask me. If anyone asks, my name is Josephine Grant, and I have a fiancée/husband named James McCrimmon (If you get this reference, laugh hysterically, so that people stare at you as though you are insane. If no one else is around, go somewhere where there are people. If you don't get the reference, be one of the people that stares at me as though I am insane).
Friday, February 26, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Making Up Titles is Hard
I'm sorry it has taken me so long to get around to writing this. The time continues to slip by in odd bursts. Ak! Is that what time it is?
Things I Have Learned About My Housemates
Sanda and Siham are sisters. Sanda's thesis is on meningitis; Siham's is on tuberculosis. Their grandmother is from one of the Berber tribes in the south of Morocco and does not speak any French. Sanda can understand when she speaks, but she does't speak it very well herself. Their first language was French, though today they speak better Arabic and it is the language that they speak at home. School in Morocco is taught in French and Arabic. The dialect that they speak in Morocco is different from the "Classic Arabic" that they learn to write in. In high school they also learn English, but it seems more useful for reading than for speaking. They learn British English spelling and idioms.
When Sanda cuts open her section of baguette at breakfast she pulls out the center and only eats the crust, because she doesn't like the insides.
Siham is much more loose about her attire than Sanda. Sanda always adheres to the rule of being covered everywhere except for her face and below her ankles and wrists, though at home she usually just covers her hair rather than her whole head and neck. Siham never covers her hair, and often wears sleeves only long enough to cover her shoulders. She also wears makeup. I asked her about her lack of headscarf and she said that it was just a personal choice for her, and that maybe someday she will start wearing one.
Gnagna has some kind of stomach complaint that prevents her from eating raw vegetables and from eating very much food in general. She also has to take some kind of medication, and it is somehow related to the fact that she always goes to bed before 10:30, which is extremely early for here.Khady eats like a bird. She often only pretends to eat, and pushes food onto my section of plate. Last night Gnagna wouldn't let her leave until she ate the food that Gnagna had sectioned off for her.
Gnagna's son, whose name I have yet to remember, is self-employed. He does stuff with computers, though precisely what I'm unsure. He helped Sanda procure a computer, but that may be only part of what he does. Whatever his job is, it keeps him out most of the day and late at night, often after the house has closed down.
Shops
There are several degrees of shops in the streets. There are the people whom I have mentioned before, who walk around selling stuff from their hands or baskets. The most common are the ones who sell Orange credit, the biggest phone carrier here (the one that I have). They carry see-through plastic sheaths that hold the phone cards and wave them at passers-by, or run up to cars or buses when they stop. Every other time that a bus stops women run up to the windows offering bananas, bags of peanuts, or packages of cookies for sale. At beaches women offer necklaces for sale, carried in baskets on their heads. Men sell silver wrapped in clothes that they spread out on the sand by way of display cases. Other men walk around town in populated areas selling sunglasses in elaborately arranged bouquets that completely hide the hands holding them. Other men push around small carts selling nescafé or chilled drinks from coolers.
Other people sit on crumbling sidewalks with rows of shoes for sale next to them. One man always has an assortment of mousetraps and rat poison. Men with larger "shops" sell their wares from large trunks with the lids propped open, brimming with electronics like phone chargers or batteries.
Women sit with small gas stoves making balls of dough and deep-frying them into beignets. Several people in the group are now addicted to them. They are basically bits of doughnut. Other women sell peanuts, either roasted plane or with a crunchy sugar coating. Several people are addicted to those as well.
Vegetable sellers,who are usually women, arrange their wares on wooden tables, open to the sunlight. Fruit sellers--who are mostly men--generally have larger outfits, with awnings to protect the fruit from direct sunlight. Most sellers have bananas (big and small have different prices), oranges (navel and mandarin) and apples (usually two or three varieties). Larger ones have pineapples, melons, and guavas.
Every "block" or so there is a small magasin. These are usually painted blue and have the word Tigo painted on the side in white. Tigo is the name of Orange's rival. The little shops are variety stores, and you can buy all sorts of things from them. The often have refrigerators holding drinks, and sometimes have fruit stalls or peanut sellers attached to them.
Only slightly less common are the shops in converted garages. These are mostly general goods stores, or "hardware" stores like the one across the street from ACI. The shop that I go to most is a general goods store in a garage. The have a counter at the front of the shop, and everything except the refrigerator is behind it. It is assumed that if you are at the shop you know what you are looking for, and chances are they have it. The walls are packed, floor to ceiling, with shelves overflowing with stacks of anything from bottled water to bars of laundry soap to cookies to bouillon to wash buckets, and any number of mysterious packages and cans.
People don't wait in line; you just step up around anyone else who is there, make your order, and give the shopkeep your money. There is always at least one or two young men attending the store. Often there are several, sitting behind the counter and watching soccer on TV.
Other similar shops you can actually walk into. They still usually have a large section of their stock behind the counter (ooh, I just saw a jumping spider on the table! Anyway...) The bigger shops have much the same selection as any other, just with more variety and volume.
Then of course there are the supermarkets, like Casino or MyShop. It was pointed out to me that I forgot to explain that the Casino is a supermarket, not an actual casino. The closest Casino isn't huge, but it's big compared to the home-run magasins. MyShops are like 7-11s, attached to a gas station and with comparable things for sale.
Things I Have Learned About My Housemates
Sanda and Siham are sisters. Sanda's thesis is on meningitis; Siham's is on tuberculosis. Their grandmother is from one of the Berber tribes in the south of Morocco and does not speak any French. Sanda can understand when she speaks, but she does't speak it very well herself. Their first language was French, though today they speak better Arabic and it is the language that they speak at home. School in Morocco is taught in French and Arabic. The dialect that they speak in Morocco is different from the "Classic Arabic" that they learn to write in. In high school they also learn English, but it seems more useful for reading than for speaking. They learn British English spelling and idioms.
When Sanda cuts open her section of baguette at breakfast she pulls out the center and only eats the crust, because she doesn't like the insides.
Siham is much more loose about her attire than Sanda. Sanda always adheres to the rule of being covered everywhere except for her face and below her ankles and wrists, though at home she usually just covers her hair rather than her whole head and neck. Siham never covers her hair, and often wears sleeves only long enough to cover her shoulders. She also wears makeup. I asked her about her lack of headscarf and she said that it was just a personal choice for her, and that maybe someday she will start wearing one.
Gnagna has some kind of stomach complaint that prevents her from eating raw vegetables and from eating very much food in general. She also has to take some kind of medication, and it is somehow related to the fact that she always goes to bed before 10:30, which is extremely early for here.Khady eats like a bird. She often only pretends to eat, and pushes food onto my section of plate. Last night Gnagna wouldn't let her leave until she ate the food that Gnagna had sectioned off for her.
Gnagna's son, whose name I have yet to remember, is self-employed. He does stuff with computers, though precisely what I'm unsure. He helped Sanda procure a computer, but that may be only part of what he does. Whatever his job is, it keeps him out most of the day and late at night, often after the house has closed down.
Shops
There are several degrees of shops in the streets. There are the people whom I have mentioned before, who walk around selling stuff from their hands or baskets. The most common are the ones who sell Orange credit, the biggest phone carrier here (the one that I have). They carry see-through plastic sheaths that hold the phone cards and wave them at passers-by, or run up to cars or buses when they stop. Every other time that a bus stops women run up to the windows offering bananas, bags of peanuts, or packages of cookies for sale. At beaches women offer necklaces for sale, carried in baskets on their heads. Men sell silver wrapped in clothes that they spread out on the sand by way of display cases. Other men walk around town in populated areas selling sunglasses in elaborately arranged bouquets that completely hide the hands holding them. Other men push around small carts selling nescafé or chilled drinks from coolers.
Other people sit on crumbling sidewalks with rows of shoes for sale next to them. One man always has an assortment of mousetraps and rat poison. Men with larger "shops" sell their wares from large trunks with the lids propped open, brimming with electronics like phone chargers or batteries.
Women sit with small gas stoves making balls of dough and deep-frying them into beignets. Several people in the group are now addicted to them. They are basically bits of doughnut. Other women sell peanuts, either roasted plane or with a crunchy sugar coating. Several people are addicted to those as well.
Vegetable sellers,who are usually women, arrange their wares on wooden tables, open to the sunlight. Fruit sellers--who are mostly men--generally have larger outfits, with awnings to protect the fruit from direct sunlight. Most sellers have bananas (big and small have different prices), oranges (navel and mandarin) and apples (usually two or three varieties). Larger ones have pineapples, melons, and guavas.
Every "block" or so there is a small magasin. These are usually painted blue and have the word Tigo painted on the side in white. Tigo is the name of Orange's rival. The little shops are variety stores, and you can buy all sorts of things from them. The often have refrigerators holding drinks, and sometimes have fruit stalls or peanut sellers attached to them.
Only slightly less common are the shops in converted garages. These are mostly general goods stores, or "hardware" stores like the one across the street from ACI. The shop that I go to most is a general goods store in a garage. The have a counter at the front of the shop, and everything except the refrigerator is behind it. It is assumed that if you are at the shop you know what you are looking for, and chances are they have it. The walls are packed, floor to ceiling, with shelves overflowing with stacks of anything from bottled water to bars of laundry soap to cookies to bouillon to wash buckets, and any number of mysterious packages and cans.
People don't wait in line; you just step up around anyone else who is there, make your order, and give the shopkeep your money. There is always at least one or two young men attending the store. Often there are several, sitting behind the counter and watching soccer on TV.
Other similar shops you can actually walk into. They still usually have a large section of their stock behind the counter (ooh, I just saw a jumping spider on the table! Anyway...) The bigger shops have much the same selection as any other, just with more variety and volume.
Then of course there are the supermarkets, like Casino or MyShop. It was pointed out to me that I forgot to explain that the Casino is a supermarket, not an actual casino. The closest Casino isn't huge, but it's big compared to the home-run magasins. MyShops are like 7-11s, attached to a gas station and with comparable things for sale.
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