Sa ndey jaay fondé.

Saturday I helped with fataya again- it beats just sitting. And Yacine and Amas and I are really getting along, Yacine's teaching me more Wolof, and Amas is acting as a translator- we were working on numbers this weekend, and the names of various kitchen tools (spoon- kuddu) and food (chicken- ginaar) and I was teasing her about her Valentine and she was teasing me, asking for a present, asking for chocolate.

We stopped laughing when a far-off crying child started screaming. The neighborhood's so echoey I couldn't tell where it was coming from, but this was not just the usual bustling city noise. This was a child screaming. It sounded frightened and in pain, and Mama Binta told me to stay here, and she and Pascal left. After a while I heard the screaming mix with raised voices, all women, and after a while it stopped, or calmed down, or went inside I'm not sure which. But Mama Binta came back mad. And Pascal told me that it was one of his friends, a boy that had a bloody arm, from his shoulder to his elbow, and Mama Binta started telling me that his mother shouldn't let the uncle do that, not in the street at least, that she's not going to tell anyone how to raise their child but you just don't hit a boy like that. If he plays too much, she says, you take him inside maybe, to "tappe" and to teach them a lesson, but then once they've learned their lesson you let them go back outside to play. This was too much, it isn't natural, it isn't right, she says. Mama Binta says you know Pascal, I'll shout at him, I always shout at him and I have a loud voice but I don't touch him and he knows that. And other families "tappe" their children but not like that, and not in the street. It isn't natural.

I'm glad I stayed inside. I'm very glad I stayed inside. Because I don't know what I would do if I had seen an uncle beating a child in the street. I have no idea what I would do, because I'd like to think that I couldn't just stand there and let it happen. But I'd also like to think that a group of mothers, of neighbors, couldn't just stand there and let it happen. But I don't think I could stop it from happening, and it would be very wrong in this society to get between a parent/uncle and child. And at first I disagreed with how as far as I can tell what my mother was complaining about was as much the fact that it was out in the open in the street- that was as big a problem as the act itself. But now? In a culture where you can't do anything I can see how a mother who lived next door would want to avoid the fact that she can't do anything. I'm glad I stayed inside.

When the fatayas were done I went with my mom to get ingredients for dinner tonight, potatoes and carrots and onions and black pepper and eggs- it's my night to cook and I'm making latkes. After all, we only cook on gas stoves and there's no end of oil. The carrots here are bigger than the potatoes. I hope I got enough.

And then I meet up with some friends and we go to la Plage Ngor which is much more touristy than the Mermoz beach, this one has expensive restaurants and people selling trinkets and blue water and smooth sand and lots of trash just underwater where you can't see it. And this group of musicians that plopped down their instruments right in front of us and started chatting. I was the only one in my group who would talk to them, I said we were students, we weren't in town for long, and then I made the mistake of telling them my name. As soon as I did, they launched into song, of course I have no idea what the hell they were singing, they could have been saying "here's Johanna/Jwanna, she'll give you money, she's such a toubab, we're not leaving until she gives us money" but at least it was a nice tune. And I tipped them the average of a dime. And they were nice and eventually left, so I took it as a nice touristy event.

And we did our best to ignore the man in the windbreaker and running pants, who shuffled up to us, with three empty cigarrette boxes in one hand and an empty bottle of booze in the other, he was limping and I think there was something not quite right in the brainpan and he didn't say anything he just stared at us but in a way that made me think he wasn't really seeing us, just staring, and occasionally he'd wander off to look at the ocean, and he always stayed at least ten feet away, but it was a very very long time and he didn't really leave. Eventually we got used to him. It made me miss Felix, though.


Before we left I realized that my phone, my new cell phone, that I had bought from my sister exactly a week earlier, was gone. I couldn't find it. It wasn't in anyone's bag, or under anyone's towel, or anywhere. And this was the one I had just gotten. Darnit. In the taxi though Kaela called my cell, and someone picked up, I talked to her saying "I think you found my cell phone" and she replied that yeah, this morning her mom found my phone near a pile of trash in the street, she lives in Liberté 1, do I know the Casino supermarché? Of course I do, I walk past it every single day, so she met me and Kaela in front of the Casino and we walked to her house a few blocks away. I met the family, the whole family, sat down in the living room, and we chatted about school and one of the men said he recognized me since I walk by every day on my way to school. The old grandmother brought out my cellphone, scolding me for having lost it, asking for un cadeau before she'd give it back to me. I felt like an idiot, and took out the 2000 CFA bill I had with me- of course I was willing to pay, and of course I was thankful- see, I was expecting to have to pay lots and lots of money to get my phone back, or maybe just have to buy a new phone. The entire family, though, laughed, and explained that she was joking, they didn't want any money. I insisted, I wanted to thank her, but stopped when she refused again because I didn't want to insult anyone... again, feeling like an idiot. How Embarrassing. And then we thanked them, said goodbye, maybe see you next time, be sure to keep hold of that phone, thank you so much, ba beneen yoon.

I came home and started making latkes, grating everything by hand- I asked Mama Binta to help me chop onions since I'm scared to use the huge knife without a cutting board. The power went out three times while I was grating the potatoes. It took forever to cook, though, since I could only do one at a time on the burner. My sister was sent out to help me but it's not like she could have made the process go faster, and I could hear them all inside talking in Wolof, and I do now know the words "Kañ" (when) and "Lekk" (eat) and even though at home I normally make waaaaay too much, I forgot that this is Senegal and therefore I made not nearly enough. But I left them in the pan outside to warm up while I went to get some bread at the boutique, when I get back my mom has them on the plate on the table, she told me that I can't leave food outside, the cats will get it. Which is a phrase I'd never heard before, made me think of the sphinxes from Mirrormask, they're everywhere.

But the latkes were a hit. Gone in no time, I ate mostly bread and applesauce since I already know what they taste like. My dad wants to learn how to make them, he wants to watch me next time so he can see how. My mom wants to make some for her own mother, thinks she'll like them (Grandma, by the way, is blind and bedridden and always sitting on the same couch, she moves herself into a chair that faces Mecca to pray several times every day, she does this herself and without any help and it looks like the most painstakingly slow process ever. Her name is Aminata, and my family calls me Aminata too, I'm named after her while I'm here.) They said it would make a good appetizer, and asked why I didn't make more. I said it was because they take so long to cook, I couldn't make more and have them be done in time. Not so smooth, Jwanna, but they let it rest.

At midnight I met some friends, we took a taxi to this club, Just4You, (http://www.just4udakar.com/) which is the favorite of all the students here. We'd never been before, but Omar Penn was playing and I guess he's really famous, the Lonely Planet guidebook had him as one of the 3 listed must-sees at this club. We payed 5000 CFA to get in, and it's a really really swanky place as it turns out. Everyone there was dressed up and sitting at tables listening to the opening act, which I don't know who it was but the music sounded very traditional, and it was an open-air place so we sat down at a table where we could look up at the stars through the leaves of the palm trees that were growing right out of the middle of the floor... we're in Senegal, you guys. It was slightly chilly so I had a sweatshirt and jeans and flipflops, the music was great and we ordered the girliest drinks we could find on the menu- between the four of us there was a ti punch, a daiquiri, a gin fizz and a piña colada. When they arrived the only one we could recognize was the piña colada because it looked like it had milk in it. Everything else was in a glass you'd expect to be used for some sort of gin and tonic, and each glass was filled with about three shots of booze, two ice cubes, and a slice of lime. And what they tasted like was death, that might have been scared by a sugar cube and sent on its way. We didn't finish them. Kenta's Long Island Iced Tea (I'm not sure he knew what he ordered in the first place) was, needless to say, untouched.

But the music was amazing and we found a cab ride home no problem and I called my mom to let me in at about a quarter past three, and the next morning was Sunday so I could sleep in!

And I did. I slept in and when I woke up I looked at my feet and thought I had chicken pox. My groggy mind was trying to figure out what these (34, I counted) tiny red bumps were that covered my feet. It wasn't until they registered as "mosquito bites" that they started to itch. And then yes, they started to itch. I've been trying to ignore them ever since. See, I'm used to midwestern mosquitoes that are the size of small birds and sound like motorboats and when they bite you, you know right away. Dakar mosquitoes are tiny and silent and leave tiny silent bites that can kill you but I've been taking my huge blue malaria pills so we'll see, I feel fine so far. And, after all, it was Valentine's day. Which means Yacine teased me even more about giving her presents, and I teased her even more about being Amas's Valentine and because it was Sunday, Mama Binta taught me how to make another traditional Senegalese dish- and it's the best thing I've eaten here so far.

CEBB U YAPP (Rice and Meat)

Cut up small pieces of meat, even smaller pieces of onions and green pepper, and cook them in a pot with salt and oil.

Cut up more green pepper and onion, and mash that with a little bit of piment (hot pepper) and a few Maggi (bullion cubes), we used the huge wooden dëbb (mortar and pestle), the idea is to make a sauce-ish mixture, that you add to the meat when it's done cooking.

In that same pot you cooked the meat in, and put the sauce in, you add some water to let it cook like a stew (this might be a good crock pot recipe), and then a little while later add rice and enough water to cook the rice, right in with the meat so it all cooks together, with a few bay leaves and thyme as well.

The rice should turn brown from cooking with the spices and meat and vegetables, and leave it still a little wet so it's easier to eat with your hand, shaping it into little balls (I'm so good at this now!)

Serve with piment sauce and/or squeezed lime.

Oh! and when you're almost done, scrape the almost-burnt bits from the bottom of the pot- apparently that's the best part of the whole thing.



PS- if I'm being unclear about anything, feel free to email me with questions... I'm probably not explaining some things that I take for granted here...