The night of Wednesday, April 14th, the troupe was scheduled to play three shows in a row. Samba called me to say that because we had so much work to do that night, the day’s rehearsal was cancelled. I said I understood, am ul solo, no problem, but then pointed out that I didn’t know where the campement was located, where we were supposed to play the first show. Samba told me to go over to Sow and Maï’s house around six, and that they would take me there. After that we would move on to the hotels Keur Saloum and then Paletuviers, for the usual spectacles.
Still unable to fully embrace the idea of l’heure africaine I only arrived fifteen minutes late to Sow’s house. She and Maïmouna were there, chatting with friends and family, and were of course a little surprised but not at all thrown off to see me a 6:15. I confirmed with them that yes, the first show was to start at six-thirty, and Maï wandered off to take a shower. Sow announced that she was going to tress my hair, right at that moment, so id’ look nice for the shows that night. I pointed out that last time someone did my hair it took three hours, not fifteen minutes, but she gave me a comb and tilted my head forward and insisted that we had time and she’d go quickly. I was fidgeting but figured that she knew what she was doing. After a while my cell phone rang: it was Samba. His stressed voice asked where I was, I told him. He asked where were the other girls. I said they were right here. He told me to tell them that it was time to go, and that the audience was sitting down already.
I hung up the phone and quickly passed the news on to Sow. She started another braid. I repeated Samba’s message, physically taking my hair and putting it back into a ponytail and standing up. It was only then that she walked into the house from the wide courtyard where we had been sitting in the shade, ducking under various laundry lines as she went. As soon as she disappeared inside, Maïmouna appeared from the shower. I told her it was time to go, and she vaguely nodded and passed into the house. Left alone I realized that as long as I have been here in Senegal, I still have a driving need to be on time. I couldn’t sit down, I started pacing, imagining the audience sitting down without a show to watch. I started talking to myself, asking why the girls in the troupe were always the last ones to arrive, the last ones to get dressed, the ones who seemed to care the least about when there was a performance. I wondered what they could be thinking, to take their time like that.
Sow appeared from her room, and calmly walked across the courtyard to take a shower. Maïmouna asked her friend Tzeina to do her makeup and they sat down by a table, asking one of the children to bring out a mirror and comb. I tried to casually ask, “on y va?”. Maïmouna laughed and told me that her phone had five missed calls, all from Samba. I wasn’t sure how that was supposed to answer my question. Finally, after what seemed like, and could very well have been hours, Sow appeared, handed me a bag to carry, shouted to Maï that we were leaving without her since she was taking too long, and I once again heard the standard “On y va” and on we went. As we walked I fell back into my midwestern late-for-class stride and surprisingly Sow matched me step for step, explaining how since we were running late she’d had to rush through her shower, how she’d been rehearsing at another girls’ house all day which was why she had to shower in the first place, how she’d wanted to put on some nice clothes but since she was in a hurry she just threw on what she could find, since we were running late we needed to walk quickly. Did she think this was news to me? I was ready when I arrived, on time or late, to their house. If this was their version of hurrying up I now understood why everyone was always late.
And sure enough, we arrived at the campement at exactly the same time as all the others. Samba and Salif were standing outside talking, but only a few drummers and the bellaphone players were inside the gate, already playing as usual. Samba came and hurried us all along as more people trickled through the gate, but as I was getting dressed I realized that besides the troupe, there was no one else there. No audience was already seated, no audience was even standing around. As we started singing the first song, getting into place, the row of chairs on the porch of the house remained empty. In fact, we sang for twice as long as usual before the first toubabs started timidly walking through the gate. As soon as they had gotten seated, though, Samba explained first to us and then to the audience that because we had two other shows to do that night, we were on a tight schedule, and needed to move on since the hotels were the more regular shows anyway, and we only very occasionally played at the campements.
And so, without further ado, we packed up and moved on to the first hotel, Keur Saloum, skipping the first show as soon as the audience showed up. Only in Senegal, I thought to myself, can the performers arrive an hour and a half late, and the audience arrive even later than that. Luckily, when we got to Keur Saloum the bar/pool area was already packed with people, and as soon as the bellaphone started playing they congregated around the makeshift stage by the pool. Before we even started singing, a group of girls (funny how I instantly pegged them as Americans) stood up and started dancing behind the row of chairs. After each song they cheered and clapped, so when we started dancing I was already in a good mood. We danced Penille, which is the dance I know the best, and I was able to finally stop watching the other dancers and smile at the audience. The Americans were so responsive it was an absolute treat to perform for them- especially during the solo dances, it was the first time I walked to the middle of the floor with pride, wanting to show off how this toubab could dance instead of trying desperately to pretend I was one of the other girls, hiding my lack of confidence with a smile as I usually did. Needless to say, the fire-show during l’Animation was also a big hit, as was Salif’s razorblade-eating act.
For the last dance it was no problem getting the audience up and dancing, and afterwards I started talking with the group. I found out that it was a group of students and teachers from a boarding school in Connecticut, where apparently there is a huge Senegalese population. They told me how impressed they were with the troupe, explaining that there was a music festival every year in their town and that should Allah Laké ever come to the United States, they’d be interested in sponsoring a few shows around New England. They were also very interested to find out about MSID, and I got one of the teacher’s business cards to email her later. I explained that since I was doing a project here from the University of Minnesota, and I saw them taking video, I would be grateful if they could send me a DVD perhaps of the performances, or any photos. Later, in an email, I asked if I could interview them for my internship report to get their impressions of the troupe as well as the town and their experience in Senegal.
And then on to Paletuviers, the usual performance spot. We arrived and started getting ready, setting up the flag between two wooden poles and getting the ice-water bucket and cups for the performers. The first dance we did was Sacrifice, another dance I know and feel comfortable performing, and at this point the solo dance was easy since I figured out exactly how to toss around my ponytail to the music (I was pretty proud of myself). After that though, Samba told me we were going to do a wedding. I thought I mis-heard. No, he pointed out two toubabs, Germans I think, in the audience, who I’m guessing were on their honeymoon here and wanted to have a traditional Senegalese ceremony to celebrate their marriage.
As I am now accustomed to doing, I simply followed along when the girls walked out singing, imitating as best I could and pretending I was perfectly prepared for the occasion. The drummers were all playing, but softly, as the dancers paraded around for a while- Salife and Ibou and the one with the long dreds whose name I always forget (or never learned) in front were pretending to be old for some reason, and we all sat down on the ground as Samba walked out. He introduced himself as the town griot, Long Dreds was the chef du village, Ibou the town Imam, and Salif the father of the groom. Sow was introduced as the mother of the bride, and Abdoulaye (the dancer Abdoulaye, not one of the two drummers named Abdoulaye) was the assistant. I’m not sure what the rest of us girls were supposed to be. They brought out the couple who were dressed in big flowing traditional Senegalese costumes, and sat them down in front of us. Speeches were made in at least Wolof, French, and German by various members of the “wedding party” about how they had known this couple since they were children, how so-and-so had raised the man to be brave, how they wished the woman to have fifty children and enough money and food to feed them all. The couple laughed and grinned as the bride received the white veil and the groom the beaded calabash to put on his head. They were given kola nuts, which they timidly nibbled at but had to be pushed into actually eating. Once the rest of us got some I understood why- as Maïmouna later put it “they’re bitter, but good!” I agree with the part about them being bitter. After the ceremony we did another dance, and on the way back to the campement to finish the first show I asked Samba if the newlywed couple were friends of his. He said no, no one here knew them, they’d just asked the hotel if they could arrange a Senegalese wedding and the troupe had complied.
I didn’t really have much time to think about what the significance of that mock-wedding was, as I found myself in the middle of yet another conversation with Mamadou and Ice-T (Moustafa) about why I don’t want to marry a Senegalese man. I finally told them that I would travel the world and meet everyone, and only after that would I get married to anyone. Mamadou replied that that would cost too much money- instead he’d buy me a house here in Toubacouta where I could live. It’s all right though- I know Mamadou, and I’ve spoken to his Belgian girlfriend on the phone before. We’re friends, and I feel perfectly comfortable joking around with him. Ice-T was the one who kept pushing the topic of marriage, and finally Mamadou interrupted, saying he’d make me tired with all his questions. I replied that after three shows tonight and the possibility of spending the next morning at the Garderie Baobab with thirty-five five-year-old children, it wasn’t Ice-T who was going to make me tired. The guys seemed to take that as a challenge, asking had I seen their muscles? Ice-T had once made five djembes in one day, that’s how strong he was, of course he had more energy than I did. Luckily, it was at that point that we arrived at the campement where we all had started the evening.
This time the courtyard was filled with people- Belgians and Senegalese alike, all locals who lived right in town, or their friends who were there on vacation. We performed all three of the dances I know- Penille, Sacrifice, and l’Animation. The wind was so strong the fire-breather had to nearly bend over backwards to avoid burning himself, and the audience was a bit close for comfort, but during one of the solo dances a woman from the audience came up and started dancing as everyone cheered her on. Still more locals came up to dance as well, some of them giving money to the drummers or dancers before going back to their seats. And during the last dance, which is always audience-participation, I pulled up an old Belgian man who danced with more energy than I had at that point, a huge grin on his face the whole time.
After the show was over, we stuck around for a while gathering up the costumes and counting the donations from that night. Samba announced that the next day we’d be doing a show in a neighboring village, so rehearsal was cancelled for tomorrow. By that point half the troupe had left, and soon I helped the girls carry the costume bag back to Samba’s before walking home with Salif and Samba who had persuaded me to let them accompany me since it was late at night. They were surprised when I suggested the shorter pathways in between houses instead of the huge main road, and I pointed out that I’d already been in Toubacouta for three and a half weeks, of course I knew the shortcuts. I neglected to also add that I’d walked those pathways alone, the nights when there was no electricity in the whole town, just to get a clear view of the stars. After all, the most dangerous thing they were worried about was me getting lost- which had already happened enough that I knew how to find my way back to a main road from anywhere by now.
Samba said he’d call me the next day about the show. I bid them goodnight and walked inside my house- Fatou had set my dinner and a bag of water on the small table by my bed, and I could have woken her up and thanked her for making me an omelette with onions and laughing cow cheese, and fries, and even ketchup! That, with the wonderfully soft Toubacouta bread I eat with every meal, and the still-cold back of filtered water, was the perfect dinner. I even managed to finish all of it, which would not have been possible without having just performed three shows. Then I snuck out back to use the bathroom before setting up the mosquito net and crawling into bed. I tried to run through the steps to Zaolin or Lamba in my head, but fell asleep too quickly.
The next day I spent nursing my various wounds. My entire neck and shoulders were stiff from tossing my hair around so much the night before, and the poolside pebbly concrete at Keur Saloum always tears up my feet when we dance there. This time the blister on the pad of my right big toe had been ripped open, and I hadn’t noticed because of all the adrenaline the night before. That, and the fact that the dusty sand from Paletuviers had packed into my skin so I didn’t feel it- a blessing and a worry, at the same time. I slept through most of the morning since no one was around the house, and when I called Samba that afternoon he told me that the show had been cancelled, but since we already cancelled rehearsal for that day I could rest, and he’d see me tomorrow. However “tomorrow” was Friday, the day of rest, so it would be a full two days before I’d have anything at all to do. As much as I wanted to rehearse, though, it was probably better to rest and take care of my aching muscles and try to disinfect my throbbing toe.
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