Classes

I’m learning Wolof. It’s hard. It makes my head spin. I have class on Thursday afternoons, and I leave feeling exhausted, as if I’ve been running laps for 3 hours instead of just taking notes. It wasn’t like this when I was learning French, though admittedly, I didn’t have marathon 3-hour classes in seventh grade.

The whole program is taking Wolof, but we’ve been split into two different groups. The teacher for my group is named Sidy Gueye, and he is probably the skinniest man I have ever seen. He always wears long, voluminous African robes instead of European clothing, which sort of makes him look like the pole sticking out of the center of a circus tent. He’s very animated and very funny, which is hugely important. It means that even though our class is draining, it’s not boring. He likes to go around the room and have us repeat phrases and words so he can make sure our pronunciation is right. The Wolof word for “yes” is “waaw,” and Sidy says it every time someone says something right. This cracks me up, because “waaw” is pronounced the same as the English “wow,” and that sound combined with his overexcited mannerisms makes it seem like he is bowled over by our brilliance every single time.

I’ve never before had a class that’s been taught in 3 languages. Sidy’s not very consistent as to which language he translates into from Wolof. He was trying to tell us what the Wolof “fan” meant, and I spent several minutes trying to figure out if I’d ever heard the French word “wère” before I realized that he was going for the English “where.”

For now, we’re mostly just learning useful phrases, like greetings, questions, and words about food. Wolof grammar is very different from English or French grammar (for example: verbs aren’t as complicated, but there are more than enough pronouns to make up for that), so we’re not really working on that yet. For now, its just “things you’re going to here a lot and what you should say back.”

And now, for your bemusement, I present a simple Wolof conversation.

Asalaam Maalekum! Hello!
Maalekum salaam, nanga def? Hello, how are you?
Maangi fi rekk, yow nak? I’m fine, and you?
Maangi fi. Noo tudd? I’m fine. What’s your name?
Maangi tudd Aminata, ci Wolof. My name is Aminata, in Wolof.
Fanga dëkk? Where do you live?
Maangi dëkk Sacré Coeur I live in Sacré Coeur.
Naka waa kër ga? How’s your family.
Nunga fa. They’re fine.
Kaay lekk! Come eat!
De-det, lekk naa ba fii. No, I’ve eaten enough.
Ba beenen yoon. See you another time.

My other classes are going well enough. In African Literature, we’re reading Le monde s’effondre, better known as Things Fall Apart, which means that I have now read this book for class on three separate occasions. It also means that I’m a little bit frustrated at the level of our class discussion. Few people in the class are language or literature majors and we’re all a little bit handicapped by having to discuss in French. We spent a lot of time this week talking about how Okokwo is governed by fear despite his role as a warrior because that’s really obvious and we all knew how to say “fear” in French. Hopefully, when we move on to something I haven’t read before, I’ll be a little less bored.

I really like History of Islam in Senegal and Resolutions of Conflicts in West Africa. I’m learning about things that I’ve never learned about before, or at least not in this detail. I’m finding that what I learned in International Law last semester is really helpful for Conflicts. Also, these classes are going to be great because we’re going on some rockin’ field trips. For Islam, we’re going to visit some mosques in the city, and for Conflicts, we’re going to a Red Cross center and, I think I understood this correctly, a refugee camp somewhere. That’s something I couldn’t do at UMass.

I signed up for my last class, African Cinema, once I realized that IFE wasn’t going to work out, so I’ve only been to one meeting. This class is nice because it’s not 3 hours of straight lecture. We get to stop and watch a movie in the middle, which is particularly good for this class because the professor doesn’t write anything down as he talks and he doesn’t seem to have planned lectures. I can handle that when the class is in English, but when I have to strain to understand what he’s saying in the first place and then decide on top of that what’s important, my notes tend to be a little sparse.

I have very little reading and very little homework that’s due every day. Most of my classes have one big project or presentation or paper, which means that, for the time being, I have a lot of downtime that I don’t really know what to do with, and I’m actually a little bit bored. I have heard things about people adding internships or volunteer work to their schedules while they’ve been here, so that might be something for me to look into.