Growing Pains

This isn't culture shock, so much as culture fatigue. Every single day is a new discovery, and a new experience, and something unexpected and completely from left-field appears just when I thought I was getting the hang of it. It is very exciting. It is very educational. It is very very interesting and I love it and I am exhausted. Not (always) in a bad-tired way. I don't want to stop, I don't want to stop learning or living or being here, not at all. But it is exhausting to every day adjust not a little, but a lot more. And if I expect today to bring one Unexpected Cultural Lesson, maybe at dinner, there will be two at lunch. And if I decide to dive in and have a great French conversation with my family tonight, they will insist that I practice my Wolof. There is an active effort that has to be made every day to Personally Grow a little bit more than is Personally Comfortable, but even further too.

Saturday was my first excursion to the Sandaga market. It was my first excursion anywhere other than the neighborhood around WARC where I have class and around Liberté 3 where I live. I took a taxi to Centre Ville and ate shrimp beignets my mom prepared for me while waiting for the other girls to arrive so we could explore the market. I'm not there five minutes before Raymonde shows up. I find out later his name is Raymonde. He finds out later that my name is Gisa and I'm from southern England but living in Paris and that this is my second-to-last-day here in Dakar and I've already seen all the sights and I'm waiting for my boyfriend to arrive with our Senegalais friends who are going to take us around the market before we go back to our house in Baobab neighborhood to prepare for the trip home. To Paris. I also told him I was majoring in Global Studies. I also told him a lot of things. Then I spent the next I don't know how long pretending to talk on my cell phone while he sat next to me and waited. I talked to my mom, my boyfriend, my teacher, my friends, I recited poetry and lines of Shakespeare and Medea and tried to convince my friend that she didn't have an STD, that she should ask my aunt because my aunt knows all about health issues.

All of this was in English, of course. On the phone, I mean. The entire situation I took as an exercise in creativity and patience. I forgot that patience was invented in Africa. When my friends finally arrived Raymonde was still there. We ignored him. He was still there. He showed us where his shop was, and there we acquired a guide that no one knew and no one invited but he acted as if we were old friends, telling us which places to go to and what to avoid, waiting outside the fabric shop as we looked over tissues/fabriques for dresses, then ushering us onward when we were done. Everyone was shouting and hissing and clucking and assuring us that their shop, the next one over, was tranquile, very tranquile, we could find exactly what we were looking for, what did we want to see? Shaking handfuls of sandals and jerseys and necklaces and cell phone chargers in our faces, checking our fingers for engagement rings, pinching my friend on the shoulder so he could follow her for blocks apologizing. Raymonde was still there.

I tried to help out one of my friends, trying to scold a vendor in French for flirting with ma soeur. The words jaay-fundé and sai-sai came up, and we were all laughing and when I heard him say serpent noir it was time to go on to the next stall, the next I-have-a-husband I-don't-want-a-husband, after a while I got tired and started snapping at any guy who tried to talk to us pleading a headache, a toothache, a stomachache that yes I already had meds for, no a new bracelet would not help, I'm sure your shop, that one over there, is more tranquile, moins cher, laissez-mes-soeurs let go of my sisters and let us get out of this pushy maze. No I am not angry, I am not angry at you, I am tired, I don't want to talk to you anymore. I'm not angry I just don't want to talk anymore. I'm not angry I just don't want to talk anymore.

We went back to the N'Ice cream which is run by a French lady and filled with rich tourists and has gelatto that is overpriced but with flavors like oatmeal-honey or mocha-cherry or chewing-gum or "Obama" which was sadly sold out. Next time, because I'm sure there'll be a next time. Ice cream is the perfect way to recover from le marché. We also found the Centre Culturelle Française which has a library and a stage and a concert/danse/theatre/cinema series and a garden and a restaurant (and a bathroom) and is absolutely beautiful.

And when I got home the water was turned back on. (when I left there was no water, the whole quartier was sans water for the day, including flushing toilets or boiling tea, my mom was very very upset it was not a good thing at all)




Sunday we slept until ten, and sat around doing absolutely nothing until one. Then Raïssa got dressed up and took me over to grandma's house in Baobab where there was a party. Apparently some cousin's baby just got baptized (this is the Catholic side of the family- Mama Binta didn't come) and all day was a party. My sister ran off immediately to start chatting with her cousins and this looked pretty similar to the last Gorman gathering I'd been to, if you added the WHOLE family and had them speak Wolof. I was ushered into one room, then ushered into the next, then handed a plate and pointed in the direction of some kind of couscous or chicken or bissap and I insisted I was fine standing up eating but ended up in a chair while the aunt/cousin/someone next to me stood, and balanced a toddler and a pregnant belly and chatted away with a few other women.

Luckily a little girl ran up to me and demanded that I "faire le cheval" and even more luckily I have since I was little known a French kids game and was bouncing toddlers on my knees for a good while. There's a girl in striped tights and a boy with the cutest thickest glasses and the boy who whenever he sees me grins right in my face like I've got a camera and the little boy who was then attached to me for most of the rest of the day. After a lot of following children into rooms that they were then scolded for being in or sitting down and realizing I was in the middle of great-aunts and great-uncles' conversations, I pretty much ended up standing against a wall trying to look less obviously white, and failing.

Then Raïssa told me to go with her into the yard, where three guys were preparing moules. I have had moules frites, which is delicious, which is a french dish. I realize now it is delicious because of A) all the butter in the sauce and B) the fact that you never stop to look closely at what a mussel is all about. The three guys were all-too-eager to explain not-so-innocently the difference in size between a French moule and an African moule, before another cousin instructed me not to talk to those guys, and handed me my own shell, so I could eat in peace. I had to timidly ask my sister if I was supposed to eat the whole thing. And I did! I really did. They say you should try everything once (except incest, and folk dancing), and I do agree, and I'm always up for trying new things... but I probably wouldn't hunt down a second opportunity. The problem is that a cooked African mussel is about three inches long, and has absolutely no kind of sauce or garnish to hide its overwhelmingly-anatomical appearance. It doesn't look disgusting, it just looks like something that should be dissected instead of ingested. I'd describe it more as "yonic" than "edible", and while it tastes just fine, is more interesting than appetizing. In summary, you could have much the same effect trying to eat your biology notes.

http://www.museum.state.il.us/ismdepts/zoology/mussels/images/musselinter.jpg

I escaped to walk with my sister to her school, I later realized to act as her wingman. See, she's got this "boyfriend" (I later found out for the last two weeks, not longer as I had originally thought) that she chats with every night. But Mama Binta says that at fifteen she's too young to have a boyfriend. So a few people know, I'm assuming, considering that as we were leaving the party a few cousins were teasing her... but I'm not sure. So I, the toubab, was brought along perhaps as an excuse to leave the party, to show me around the neighborhood? At any rate, Raïssa and I walked to the schoolyard which like any schoolyard on a Sunday late afternoon just looks like the scene of clandestine affairs and evokes a certain sense of "not supposed to be there" anyway, and my sister was (adorably) getting very nervous and jittery and grinning and asking if she looked okay and should she have worn a different shirt and we waited by a certain predetermined classroom and saw two guys walking toward us.

Now, before, when my sister told me about the plan, she mentioned "mon p'tit copain" and "Papis". She said she'd talked to her copain, Papis, who had seen my facebook and since she said I was nice, he wanted to meet me. From this, I was lead to believe that her "petit copain", whose name was Papis, wanted to meet his girlfriend's guest-sister because I seemed nice and he was taking an interest in her life.

What I realized at this point was that her "petit copain" (boyfriend) and her "copain, Papis" were two different people, and that Papis was brought along to chat with me outside the classroom while Raïssa and her boyfriend were chatting inside the classroom. And judging from the fact that they were fifteen, and that it was a classroom, and that the door had a window in it, and we were sitting right outside the door, which they didn't close all the way, and that her cousins knew about this boyfriend and kept the secret, I didn't feel the need to object.

I did however spend a most lovely awkward time chatting about travel and school with a boy who was just starting that awkward chin-growth that is trying so hard to be a beard but lacks the experience to actually be any kind of legit facial hair. He was very nice, and didn't try and hit on me. And when Raïssa and her boyfriend finally emerged, we pretty much immediately went our separate ways. She was very very happy, of course, and I told her that as her big sister it was my job to make sure she was being smart about the whole thing, and safe, and she assured me she was and I let it rest for the moment.

We caught up to a few of her other friends from school, and took a shortcut through the churchyard back to the party. Walking under the trees, you could hear the choir singing inside the chapel. It was the kind of singing that is immediately recognizable as religious music, but the harmonies and rhythms were unlike anything I've ever heard- which is saying a lot. I wanted to run into the church and stand in the middle of that sound, or better yet find a bunch of Vermonters to sing with and mimic that sound, I felt such a need (bügg bügg) for Village Harmony right then. Instead we walked slowly under the windows, in the shade, and I was very glad to be right there right then.

By the time we got back to the party it was dark and just enough beers had been passed around that some of the cousins would actually chat with me. Of course, those cousins were Jean-Luc and Gabi. You could tell they were the favorite cousins, the cool grown-up-still-cool cousins all the little kids want to play with and all the teenagers want to hang with. They're also the ones that you can tell are prone to having just one beer more than is wise, and getting gregarious enough to ask the toubab girl how long she's staying. I was just glad for the chance to talk to anyone at all, and I was among family, after all, and was sure I'd seen both Gabi and Jean-Luc's girlfriends there at the party not realizing that there are of course different cultural norms about physical contact. I knew that, I really did, I just didn't put two and two together until Raïssa walked into the room and proceeded to inform Jean-Luc (who was talking about eye color at the time, of course) that I was married.

The extreme shock he displayed was flirtatious at best. I fished my ring out of my purse (luckily I'd brought it) and slipped it on my finger behind my back, smooth as Saffron. After that the conversation was much more friendly, and joking, and I was able to relax and have fun. (for some reason, probably la bière, Gabi kept looking at me and just shouting out "JWANNA!", and laughing as if it was the funniest thing ever. Actually, everyone laughed at that. Although I'm almost sure they were laughing at him.) It was a great time! And after what I think was the season finale of Vaidehi, we went back home.

The great thing about parties is that even though there's lots of food and everyone keeps telling you to eat more food, no one actually keeps track of how much you're eating. So I spent the day telling everyone that yes, I was full, I couldn't possibly eat more, when really I hadn't eaten anything. On purpose. Because when, at ten thirty, we finally ate fundé- millet cereal with yogurt and sweetened milk, I was able to chow down and even get seconds! Which was delicious but I am most certainly developing a jaayfundé, not just on my toogalukay, too. And as soon as I hit that three-inch-foam mattress, I fell asleep.