Stories about animals and TV

Animals are a reality in Dakar in a way that they certainly are not in American cities. In places like Boston and New York, the fauna is pretty much limited to pigeons and squirrels. My very first day in Dakar, I was woken up to the sounds of roosters crowing, and not long after that, I saw a man drive two dozen cattle down the street past the hotel we were staying in. I haven’t seen that since then, but on a daily basis I can definitely count on seeing horses, goats, and chickens, in addition to innumerable stray cats and dogs. Sometimes these animals clearly belong to a person, but sometimes, especially in the case of the cats, dogs, and goats, they just wander in the streets, eating trash.

I’ve come to understand just how pampered and spoiled American pet animals are. I realized several weeks ago that I had never really been in the presence of an ugly cat before. The cats that I have experienced at home have usually been selected to live among people expressly because they were almost painfully adorable, and they’ve always been well fed and cared for. Here, the cats fend for themselves and no one is taking pains to breed cute kittens to sell to suburban families, so the cats are all basically just . . . ugly.

City people here live a lot closer to their food than American city people do. Sometimes it feels sort of like a bunch of farmers got dropped off here and no one bothered to tell them that this was an urban center, where meat comes shrink-wrapped and labeled. There is a story that goes something like this:

Once upon a time, there was an American exchange student living with a Senegalese family in Dakar. This family had a goat or a sheep that just sort of hung out behind the house. The student was surprised in the beginning, but got used to it, and maybe even came to think of it as a plaything or a pet. Then, one night at dinnertime when the student was eating with his/her family, the student realized that he/she hadn’t seen the goat at all that day. The student asked his/her family, “What happened to the goat, my lovely little pet goat?” The family members smile, laugh, and say, “It’s right here in front of you.”

I’ve heard this story, or variations of it, at least two or three times. It’s not a super common experience, but I guess it happens to about one kid a semester. This semester, it was Andrew, a guy on the MSID program that lives across the street from me. Thanks for taking that one for the team, buddy.

I have learned, however, that not every goat becomes food when it disappears. Not far from my house there’s a little hardware shop that always had a goat tied up outside it. I used to walk by it everyday on my way to and from school, and I would notice it all the time because it was always bleating. It was a very vocal goat. One day I didn’t hear the bleating as I approached, and sure enough, the goat was no longer there. Having heard the goat story several times by this point, I was sure that this goat was now chilling atop some rice and onion sauce on someone’s dinner table. I resigned myself to the fact that the goat was no longer going to be a presence in my life. Several days later, however, the goat was back! And it, or I should say, she had a little baby goat with her! It was adorable, and I’m pleased to say that the two of them have been there every day since then. Let’s hear it for the good, happy parts of the circle of life.

Even without the realization that you’re eating something that you used to feed and pet like a golden retriever, there can be some moments where the connection between what you’ve just learned and what you know you’ve been eating or will soon be eating are pretty shocking. For instance, I was waiting for someone one day across the street from a stall where a guy was setting up shop for the day. I watched as a taxi pulled up and another guy got out and started helping him set up. The second guy then went over, opened the trunk of the taxi, and started unloading pieces of butchered animal from the trunk onto the stall table. At appeared that a mat had been put down between the floor of the trunk and the raw meat, but that was as far as the “packaging” went. At no point did anyone wear gloves. Once all the animal parts had been taken out of his taxi, the driver left and the guys at the stall started butchering the meat into smaller pieces to get it ready for sale. I watched and laughed and tried really hard not to think about the fact that the meat I had eaten the night before could very likely have come out of the back of a taxi. Similarly, it only takes one trip to a market to realize that there is not a single space on the exterior of the fish that you eat that has not had a fly land on it.

I don’t think I’ve ever eaten chicken with my family, so I don’t really know the condition in which they would a purchase a chicken to cook for dinner, but I do know that if you’re looking for a live ‘un, you can certainly get it. My guess would be either that most Mamans and maids here know how to get a chicken from clucking to cooking themselves, or that you bring your live specimen to the neighborhood butcher to get it ready to go. Guys sell live chicken off of blankets on the side of the road as if they were shoes, and once or twice I’ve seen a dude strolling nonchalantly down the street with a wheelbarrow full of feathery squawking merchandise. I was on a bus in a traffic jam this weekend and after several minutes of looking out the window, completely spaced out, I realized that I was staring into the back seat of a station wagon that had probably about forty chickens in it. I averted my eyes so that I wouldn’t burst out laughing, but I averted them onto the roof of the car, where, as it turns it out, it’s a good place to put the other twenty or thirty chickens that won’t fit in your trunk. Just tie a net over them so you don’t leave a trail of McNuggets behind you, and you’re good to go. Awesome.




Decent American TV

Most of the TV shows here are Spanish and Brazilian soap operas, but every now and then one of the networks manages to get a hold of an American show. The few that have managed to get through include Kyle XY, Supernatural, and Cold Case. Not exactly regulars at the Emmy’s, but I’m not going to lie, I’ve become a little bit invested in Kyle XY. It’s shameful, but it’s better than becoming invested in Les Deux Visages d’Ana. (Okay, so I’m a little bit invested in that one too).

Thankfully, my brother Danny is saving me from total television poverty. He has some sort of media device that he loads up with episodes of 24, brings home, and plugs into the DVD player. The picture quality is great, and best of all, it’s in English with French subtitles. It is sooo nice to sit down, turn off the translation center in my brain, and enjoy some good ole violent American TV. I haven’t watched 24 in about four years, but now I look forward to it every week. And Tony Almeida’s not dead!

I thought that I was lucky to be getting 24, but about a week ago, Danny started coming home with a show that I actually watch: Heroes. I must have some awesome karma coming back to me or something, because not only am I getting to watch Heroes while I am in Africa, but so far, it’s not a train wreck. I’ve only seen the first three episodes since it came back after mid-season break, but it seems to be recuperating nicely after the disaster that was the fall. Sylar is killing people again, as he should be, Bennet is abducting people again, as he should be, and Claire and Peter are being all let’s-fight-back, as they should be. Back to basics.

I do have two complaints to register, though. Number 1: Who invited what’s-her-name-PR-girl from the first season of the West Wing? Number 2: Why, why, why, why can we not write a decent story for Hiro? It is possible for him to be endearingly geeky and naive without being obnoxiously childish and stupid. Bring back whoever was writing for him in season 1.