Mail

Hey all, no time for a long post before my class starts, but I wanted to update with my mailing address. It's the address of WARC, not my house. Awa gave me a letter that had safely arrived and I just took the address off of that, so hopefully this is right:

Kiersten Rooke
West African Research Center
c/o WARC/CROA BP 5456
Dakar, Senegal

There's no zip code. The really important part is the boîte postale. I think if that number (5456) plus "Dakar" gets on there, whatever you're sending should get here. Letters will come right to WARC, but if you're sending a package, I'll get a notification and have to go pick it up downtown, which is not a big deal.

In other news, there is no peanut butter to be had in all of Senegal. Peanuts are one of their main crops here, and you can buy bags of peanuts every few yards on the main roads, but no one has decided to mash them up and make sandwiches out of them.

I think I'm going to a SuperBowl party this weekend. One of the girls here is from Pittsburg and is going to die if she doesn't see the game, so she found out where we can watch it. I guess there's a Marine base around here somewhere and they're throwing a big party for Americans in the area. I don't know if they'll be quite prepared for about two dozen extra guests to show up, but my guess is that they're not going to be too bothered to have a flock of 20- to 22-year-old girls joining them to watch sports and drink.

Strike!

Even though the classes at the University proper weren’t really going to work out for me, there was still an opportunity for me to take classes on the UCAD campus, at something called L’Institute de Français pour Etudiants Etragers (IFE). IFE classes are taught at UCAD and are for helping foreign students to learn French. We took a placement test the first weekend we were here to determine what level class we could take and just got our results on Friday. Once I knew my results and knew what I could take, I decided to try out a literature class. That was today at 10 AM.

Turns out, IFE’s not really going to work out either. Class didn’t end up happening today, but I talked to a girl who had been in the class last week, and it’s not really what I’m looking for. I think I’m going to give up on the University entirely and just add African Cinema here at WARC.

Class didn’t end up happening today because the UCAD students have gone on strike. I was in my class for about 40 minutes (just hanging out because the professor hadn’t shown up yet) when a professor came into the classroom and told us that we needed to leave. Apparently, huge groups of students were coming into classrooms, rounding people up and sending them out. Outside, it didn’t really look like a strike was going on. There were tons of people hanging around outside, but it didn’t seem like there was any organized movement happening, either peaceful or violent. No one was chanting or holding signs or throwing rocks or confronting riot police. Still, class was clearly not going to happen today.

I have no idea why the students are going on strike or how long the strike will last. Some of the kids who were here with Wells last year said that the students went on strike about 3 weeks after they arrived in Dakar and stayed on strike for 2 or 3 months. My Lonely Planet guide actually cautions visitors about going into the University area at all because the students are on strike so often.

There were actually whispers about a strike yesterday. I was on the UCAD campus in the afternoon so I could scope it out and make sure I knew where my class this morning was going to be, and it didn’t look like anything was amiss. When I was waiting for the bus outside of WARC later in the evening, however, a woman came by and said the bus wasn’t coming because the university students were on strike. Apparently, the buses won’t drive on the routes that take them near the university area when strikes are happening. When I finally got home after the substantial walk back to Sacre Coeur, I turned on the news to see if there were any reports, but there were none. Today, though, it seems like a sure thing.

On another note, I recently got a facebook message from Jackie, my freshman year RA. She’s a journalism major and has founded an online news service for the Amherst area called amherstwire.com. There’s a blog section on the website. One of the blogs is called Global Beat and has entries from students studying abroad. Jackie is going to republish some of the posts I write here on the Global Beat blog, so if anyone just can’t get enough and would like to read my posts again on another website, or want to read about other UMass students experiences abroad, they can check it out at amherstwire.com!

Food

I've decided that it's too hard to sit down and try and write a post about everything I do in a day, so at least for a while, I'm going to choose one topic and talk about it for a while.  Today, I've chosen food.

Already, I am deeply in need of American food.  They told us not to hide in our rooms and eat by ourselves because that would offend our families, but I’m secreted away in my chambre eating Zapos (admittedly Australian, not American) because I simply must.  My uncle bought me a  Coke and a hamburger this weekend, and although it was in slightly bizarre circumstances, I almost wept with joy and gratitude.

The problem I’m having with the food is not the one that I thought I would have.  Turns out, the food isn’t that spicy here and I’m not having to battle my way through intense flavors.  The problem is the lack of variety in what we eat here together with the physical manner in which we eat it.

Every meal is accompanied by a baguette.  Breakfast is a baguette, sliced in half and spread with jam, Nutella, Laughing Cow-type cheese, or butter.  This is what zee French would call a tartine.  Every now and then Kiki will produce some clandestine cornflakes and Coco Krispies from his bedroom, but that’s only if no one has gone out to buy baguettes.  We wash down our tartines with cups of hot milk, which is made not by heating fresh milk, but by heating water and adding powdered milk.  The Senegalese don’t really do fresh milk at all.  Even at WARC, if you get a coffee from the kitchen ladies, you get a sachet of milk powder to add to it instead of cream.

Lunch and dinner are similar affairs at home.  Sometimes we’ll eat lunch at the table in the living room, each with our own plate and silverware. Usually, though, we sit on little stools and white plastic deck chairs around a small, low table (read: one of those huge spools that telephone wire and electricity cable come on), with one huge plate for all of us.  “Us” is me, however many of my siblings are around (usually no fewer than 3 and often all 5), the maid, and any other young people that might be around (often Moussouba’s boyfriend, Habibou, or a neighbor).  Mama never eats with us, although her friend Hélène, who lives in the house with us and wears the same clothes everyday, often does.  Everyone gets a large spoon and is responsible for cleaning their wedge-shaped portion of the plate.  Before I came here, I was taught how to eat with just my bare right hand, in case my family was really traditional.  From talking to the other girls, most families eat with spoons, but not all.  Even in my own family, if there are not enough clean spoons, the maid will eat with her hand, something she’s clearly comfortable with and practiced at, and sometimes even the kids will set the spoon down towards the end and finish the rest of their wedge with their fingers.

It’s hard for me to tell how much I actually eat at any given meal.  I can’t visualize what my wedge would look like on a dinner plate, so I don’t know if I’m eating more or less than what I’m used to.  I do know that I eat less than everyone else.  I am never capable of eating my whole wedge, whereas everyone else picks his or hers clean without fail.  I think this might be partly due to the fact that the people on either side of me usually give me an awfully large wedge.  Maybe I just don’t have a decent understanding of proper wedge proportions yet, but there are always banks of rice separating the dent I’m making from the wedges on either side of me.  No one else ends up with rice buffers like that.  I think they’re trying to make sure I eat enough, but I’m always/usually too full to eat my buffers.  When I put my spoon down and lean back from the table, one of my siblings usually says, in a shocked voice, “Tu n’as pas fini? (You’re not done, are you?)”  To which I reply, “Oui, oui, j’ai bien mangé (Yes, I’ve eaten enough).”  Sometimes they try to make me eat more, but by now they don’t really push it any more.  And I really am always full.  I eat to the point where the thought of taking another bite totally grosses me out, but I am always the last one finished and I always eat the least.  Everyone else takes HUGE bites and finishes in about 8 minutes.

The food itself is always a starchy base (rice, couscous, millet, French fries, potatoes, spaghetti, etc) with a little pile of meat, chicken, fish in the middle.  Usually there are vegetables too, usually cooked.  Onions are the most frequent, but carrots, peppers, cabbage, yams, eggplant, and cassava often appear as well.  In those cases, there will be one large chunk of each vegetable and each person will get a bite or two of each one.  Same thing with the protein.  7 people will share one fish, meaning each person will get enough to constitute maybe 1 American fish stick.  Either everyone will pinch of their bites with their own spoon or one of the more senior members of the dining party will pinch pieces off and distribute them to everyone’s wedge.  Sometimes there is a sauce that the meat/veggies were cooked in that’s poured over the whole plate, and sometimes the spices are mixed in with the rice.  Fish is hands down the most frequent source of protein.  Chicken comes in third, after viande, or “meat”.  When I asked what kind of meat is was, Fatima said mouton, or sheep.  And it’s definitely sheep and not lamb.  Actually, it’s not definitely sheep.  I’ve heard that mouton might be a broad term that includes goat as well as sheep.  I haven’t really tried that hard to find out if this is true, mostly because I don’t much care what mouton or viande are; I’m usually just delighted that it’s not fish again.  Apart from eating it all the time, they eat their fish whole here, which means a lot of careful chewing and spitting out of little bones.

The national dish of Senegal is thiéboudienne.  That’s the spelling I found in my Lonely Planet guide.  It’s obviously a French-ified spelling of the Wolof, which is pronounced tche-boo-djenn, and which just means “rice and fish.”  We eat classic thiéboudienne at least 2 times a week and other variations on rice and fish probably 6 more times.  Whenever you meet a new Senegalese person and they realize that you’re not from around here, they will inevitable ask you two questions: 1) Did you vote for Barack Obama? and 2) Do you like thiéboudienne?  The answer to both of these questions is always Bien sûr!

The only thing that I’ve eaten here that I’ve really never had before in any incarnation is millet.  The first night we had it, I sat down to what looked like a plate of slightly congealed hamburger meat.  It was lumpy, grey-ish brown, and totally unappetizing looking.  I don’t really know what millet looks like in the first place, so I don’t know what had been done to it to make it look like that.  Once we all sat down, Moussouba poured a warm, sweetened milk sauce over the top of it.  Everyone sort of mixed the sauce in with the millet, which made a kind of porridge.  I don’t think there was any form of protein in it at all.  That’s probably been my least favorite meal so far.  We had millet couscous a few nights later, which was better than the porridge, but I don’t think millet is going to make the list of my favorite things about Senegal.

Breakfast happens whenever you wake up.  Lunch in our house is usually between 2 and 3, though I think most people in Dakar eat it earlier than that.  Businesses often close from about 12 till 2:30 so people can go home for lunch.  Dinner is usually between 9 and 10, which has consequences for Senegalese nightlife.  No one goes out until after dinner, and no one is ever in a rush to get anywhere, so nightclubs and bars don’t usually heat up until about midnight or 1 AM, and a rockin’ time in Dakar doesn’t end until the imam’s start calling their faithful around 5 or 6 in the morning (so I hear.  I still haven’t gone out much yet).

So that’s dining in Dakar.  It’s not that bad, but I am craving respite from the never-ending rice and feeling like I need to keep eating until I’m bursting.  In particular, I want beef, Raisin Bran, peanut butter, ice cream, and chocolate.  I’ve been plotting how to get some of each of those.  Our program director, André, took us out to lunch on Thursday before he headed back to the states and I had a skewer of beef and roasted vegetables that was heavenly.  I’ve been making a note of the European supermarkets on my way to and from school, and the chances that I will buy peanut butter before the week is over are very high.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to get Raisin Bran, but I might be able to get something similar or equally not a baguette for breakfast.  The supermarkets are expensive, but at this point, it will be worth it.  I know I can get ice cream at the interestingly-named “Creamy Inn” down the street from WARC, and chocolate cookies and things are widely available from fruit stands on the side of the road or the little closet-sized boutiques tucked between the houses.  Those are the kinds of places where there are no set prices and you have to haggle in order to not be taken advantage of.  I haven’t really done that yet, mostly because I don’t know what a good price is and I don’t want to insult anyone by offering too little.  Also, I’m shy.  That’s my goal for the week, to get a feel for how this works.  I think the lure of chocolate will be a strong enough incentive.

And to those you who are eating pizza and DC soft serve this week, please make note of the fact that you are currently in heaven.

Added later:

Haha, okay, I think I just watched a Senegalese cooking show.  It was all in Wolof, so I don’t know for sure what was going on, but it wasn’t a soap opera, a music video, or the news, which is what’s usually on.  It looked like it was filmed on some guy’s camcorder and just showed video of a woman cooking with mbalax (Senegalese pop music) playing over it.  Every now and then the music would cut out and it would break to a segment where the woman cooking would stand and talk to another, much more glamorous woman, who I assume is the host of the show.  Then it would go right back to boiling pots of rice and mbalax.  It was awesome.

Internet woes

The wireless internet at the WARC, where I have classes, does not work all the time, so I am having a lot of trouble staying in contact with the rest of the world. Right now I am in the WARC computer lab, using an ancient computer with a French keyboard, which is an exercise in patience. I have several blog entries saved on my laptop in Word files, but until the wireless is back up here, I can't post them. I'll keep checking every day. Hopefully we'll be back in business soon. I'd love to write you all a nice long entry now, but this keyboard is driving me nuts!

I do want to let people know that I have a cell phone now. It's pricy for me to make international calls, but free for me to receive them. Sykpe calls to Senegal are $.21, so if anyone wants to say a quick hello, they can do it. My number is 70 10 212 66.

Alright, I'm going mental with this keyboard, so I'm going to leave it at that. Hopefully I'll be back later this week with more. Caio!

First week

Alright, so I started writing about my first week in a Word Document, so that I could post it to my blog later on when I was connected to the Internet.  I ended up writing 4 single-spaced pages about Saturday alone.  I figured no one wants to read that much, so I'll try and give a briefer overview of my first week in Dakar.

It's been good.  Not easy, but not totally awful either.  NOTHING is the same here as it is at home, so it's almost impossible to pick one thing to start with.

The house I'm living in is about a 40 minute walk from my school, but most days so far, I've taken a bus to get here.  My family is not really what I expected, but they're great, especially my siblings.  The blurb that Wells sent me has a few errors in it - the father, Jean Baptiste, is not around.  I don't think he lives in the house anymore.  I've heard a rumor from people who have been around that there's been some drama in my host family, but I don't really know what exactly.  My mother is around, but she's not exactly overwhelming my with African hospitality the way I had been lead to believe that she would.  She's not around the house very often, and when she is around, she's sort of distant with me.  It seems to me that if some stranger was going to be living in your house for 4 months, you'd take an interest, but not so with her.  She's not unfriendly or mean to me.  She just doesn't really seem to care that I'm there.

On the other hand, my siblings are great.  I've met all five of them, though Caroline goes by Moussouba and Stephane goes by Kiki.  The oldest, Daniel, is usually out at work or with his friends, but when he's around, he talks to me about American TV shows.  He's a fan of Prison Break, 24, and Kyle XY (or Kyl Eeks-Eegreck).  The girls who's my age, Anita, is at school a lot and, by some strange division of labor, does most of the cooking and cleaning in the house, so she's often busy.  She also speaks really fast and sort of mumbles, so I have no idea what she's saying when she talks to me.  I think she thinks I can't understand her, so she doesn't really bother talking to me.

That's all okay though, because I have Moussouba, Kiki, and Fatima to take care of me.  They're around nearly all the time (I guess school is sort of optional here, for Kiki and Fatima.  Either that, or I just can't figure out the schedule) and they seem really excited for me to be here.  The first few days, Kiki took me and Ryaunté, another Wells girl who lives around the corner from her, back and forth to school, and Moussouba takes me out to run errands with her all the time.  Fatima talks to me about American music that I don't really know anything about (Akon is huge here.  I should have boned up on my R&B and hip-hop before I left home).  Actually, she'll talk to me about pretty much anything.  I've also met a whole bunch of friends and neighbors.  The other night, I went to a party with the three of them.  It was at Moussouba's boyfriend's house, and I think all the people there were friends of his from church (they're definitely Catholic).  I didn't understand hardly anything anyone said, but we ate a lot of food and listened to music and danced, so I had a good time.

I'm getting by with the language well enough.  I usually can make myself understood, and I usually can understand when people talk to me, at least after they've repeated themselves once or twice.  If two of my family members are having a conversation with each other, though, forget about it.  They mix French and Wolof together and speak very fast, so I don't have a prayer of understanding.  I am getting better at understanding French on TV though.  We watch a lot of dubbed American and Spanish soap operas.  And, of course, Kyle XY.

I have my own room, but I think that's because I've displaced someone, which makes me feel a little guilty.  Actually, there are a lot of things that make me feel a little guilty.  The other day, Fatima did my laundry (by hand), and every morning either Kiki or my mother heats water on a gas canister so I can wash with warm water.  I sit in the living room and read or watch TV while Anita sweeps and mops the floor or makes dinner.  I've offered to help, but they tell me they don't need any.  It still makes me feel like a burden.

The house is kind of strange.  It's in this weird halfway place between finished an unfinished.  All the houses here are made of cinderblocks, faced with plaster or concrete, and then painted.  The outside of my house is faced, but not painted, and there are some rooms, especially upstairs, that are not tiled or, seemingly, inhabited.  Everything is very open and airy, but everyone keeps the doors to their rooms closed and locked, which is sort of weird.

The weather is colder than I thought it was going to be, but not as cold as all the Senegalese think it is.  They're amazed when I leave the house in a t-shirt or sandals because they all think it's freezing out.  It has been unseasonably cold and windy, but its certainly nothing like a winter at home.

I'm doing good with the food.  More often then not, it is really spicy, which is something that I struggle with but am getting over.  Baguettes are a staple; we eat them at every meal, so that's awesome.  As far as I can tell, there's no fresh milk here.  At breakfast, we drink hot milk made from a powder, which is not the same at all, but which isn't that bad.  They like to put tons of sugar in their milk too, which is not something that I'm into.   We eat lots of fish, rice and, sort of surprisingly, French fries.

I started classes this week.  Through a complicated set of circumstances, I'm not going to be taking classes at the University, which is kind of a shame.  But at the research center, I'm taking Wolof, History of Islam, African Literature, and a class with a long title about conflicts in West Africa.  Classes are 3 or 4 hours long each and meet once a week.  I have one on Monday, none on Tuesday, one Wednesday, two Thursday, and maybe a French class on Friday.  I'm not sure about that though.

Alright, the battery on my laptop is about to die and I have no idea where to plug it in here at the research center so I'm going to sign off.  Let me know if there's anything specific you want to hear about!

Oh, and for Adam: the tea here is very strong and viscous.  I suspect that it would be really bitter, but they put SO much sugar in it that it isn't really at all.  They only give you like a shot-glass-sized amount at once, but will refill it for you.  Serving tea is a long process that involves pouring the tea from one cup to another from a heigh of about 18 inches over and over and over again.  My best guess as to why they do this is so that the tea works up a froth.  Once every cup has some froth in it, they pour it from the teapot.  I've only had tea like this once, though, at my orientation.  My family doesn't seem to drink it at all.

Au Senegal, sain et sauf.

I'm here! I'm exhausted and a little overstimulated and my feet are dirty, but I'm fed and hydrated and comfortable and can understand people when they speak to me.

We, those of us on the group flight from New York, including André, our program director, and myself, got into Dakar around 6 AM this morning. It blows my mind that that was just this morning. Josephine, Waly, and Awa, the WARC staff, met us with a bus and took us to a hotel where we had breakfast, showers and naps. After that, we headed to the home of a woman who used to/sort of still does work at WARC and spent the rest of the day doing orientation kind of things. Here's how to eat properly, this is some Senegalese music, this is how you tie a skirt properly, this is what tea tastes like with TONS of sugar in it, these are the things that you should do with your host family (greet everyone in the morning even if you're grouchy and tell them where you're going when you're not going to be home), these are the things that you shouldn't do with your host family (let them see your underwear and eat by yourself in your room). We also took a walk to the beach.

There are about 80 million things that I could write about here (staircases to no where on the side of the road, stray goats, boys nonchalantly urinating in public, Wolof greetings, printed waxed fabric, calls to prayer, the weather . . .) but I am going to go to bed instead. Tomorrow we sign up for our classes and move in with our host families, so it's going to be a big day. I'm not sure when I'll be back to update, but my guess is that it's not going to be until next week. Until then, au revoir.

10 Days Left!

Hello everybody, and welcome to my brand new travel blog! I don't have anything to write in it yet because I haven't started traveling, but with only 10 days left to go, I figured that I should get this set up and ready to roll. My plan is to update as frequently as I can with all my doings and add a few pictures here and there as well. I have no idea if I will actually be able to do this. First, because I don't know what my Internet access will be like and second, because I might be too busy/lazy/forgetful. Hopefully it won't be the last one. My mother will have a nervous breakdown if she doesn't hear from me often enough.

Right know, I don't know too many of the specifics of where I am going and what I'm doing when I get there. I know a little bit about my host family but not about where they live or what their house is like or anything. The father, Jean Baptiste, is 58 and retired, but he was a human resources director at a bank when he was working. The mother, Marie Aimé, is my mom's age and is a director at a school. They have two children, Stephane and Fatima, who are about the same ages as my brothers. There are three other children from Jean Baptiste's first marriage who live in the house also: Daniel, 26, an accountant, Caroline, 24, a seamstress, and Anita, my age, who is still in school. I'm excited to be with a big family with lots of older kids and am especially thankful to have someone my own age in the house.

I don't know any more about them than that. I suspect that they might be Catholic (with a name like Jean Baptiste . . . ) despite the fact that nearly everyone in Senegal is Muslim. Maybe 5% of the population is Catholic (there are few or no Protestants), but I've heard that lots of Catholic families volunteer to be host families. I was sort of looking forward to living with a Muslim family and seeing what that was like, but I am certainly not disappointed. This family sounds great. The Catholic thing is only a hunch anyway.

There are 16 people going on my program. Strangely enough, they're all girls. One of them is from UMass. I've met her, she's very nice, but I don't know anyone else who's going and I don't know if any of them will be living near me. All, or nearly all, of us are going to be flying to Dakar on the same flight, so that's good. There are probably 5 or 7 other students going to Senegal from UMass, but they're all on other programs so I probably won't be seeing them much if at all when I'm there.

I haven't been able to sign up for classes yet. That's something that I will do when I get there. The Wells College program that I am going with offers classes at the West African Research Center (WARC) and the Université Cheik Anta Diop (UCAD). UCAD is the main university in Dakar (in all of Senegal, really), and WARC is like a mini-university where several different study abroad programs offer classes. Most, or many, of the WARC teachers are professors from UCAD. I've gotten a course listing, so I do have some idea of what I want to take. Best case scenario, I would take Intro to Wolof (the local ethnic language, very useful for bargaining in the markets) and another class on Senegalese culture or literature at WARC, and then History of Islam and something called the Unity of Traditional African Religions at UCAD. I have no idea if I can get into these classes, but that's the hope. My main academic goal for this semester is to get some religious studies education that I would not be able to get from the Five Colleges back in Amherst. Classes at UCAD will be with other Senegalese students and classes at WARC will be with students from exchange programs. I'm pretty sure that all my classes will be in French. Some of the WARC classes might be in English, but for the most part, French it is.

That's about the entirety of my knowledge at this point. My next post will probably be after I get there, since I don't think much is going to happen between now and then. Donc, au revoir! Ba beneen! And for my monolingual readers, good bye!