Saturday, June 26, 2010

Letters

Dear Samba, and Abdoulaye, and Salif, and Maimouna, and Ibou, and Mamadou, and everyone in Allah Laké,

I'm sorry I haven't been able to call recently. Abdoulaye's beeped me a few times but Skype isn't working the way it should so I can't get credit to call him back. And besides that, I've been busy.

I want to tell you that I just finished teaching my friend all the steps to Zowlin, and I can even sing the beat while we dance. Two days a week I teach her, or I said she could just call whenever and we'd walk to campus and dance. It's the closest thing I've got to taking two djembes down to the beach after a hotel show.

(I'm typing like a crab, it sounds like, scurrying across the keyboard. No wonder emails are only a few sentences long, and misspelled. You all hunt and peck it takes hours. Another reason I never email. You'll have to get to the internet café and it'll take the full hour slot just to open a browser window. Doesnt' help that some of the keyboards are english and some are french, so the keys are always switched around. If you all saw how much I write on this blog you wouldn't believe it was all me)

And these last two weeks I've been busy, what I'll tell you on the phone is that I'm helping with a program of interns who are younger than I am, where I learn dancing from older artists in the morning and teach the younger ones in the evening. I won't try to explain that I'm taking west african dance steps from all different ballets and mixing them together to represent a scene from the play Romeo and Juliet. I won't tell you that I was effectively a T.A. for a high school summer intensive program where we introduced twenty high school juniors and seniors to college life, and I got to sit in on all their sessions and try to create a piece on my own. I'll tell you the important part- I'm learning from other artists and teachers with much more experience, and also teaching my friends what i learned from you.

And in the evenings I write songs. That's what I'll say. I have rehearsal every night, and I won't need to mention how sometimes rehearsal gets canceled, you'll understand that as part of the deal. Maybe when I visit again I'll try and translate the epic of Gilgamesh into French or Wolof, I may have some songs to sing you, but what you want to hear is that I'm part of a theater troupe and I'm creating songs to perform during shows.

And of course, my family is here, my mother and father and sister are all here, all doing well, they say hello to you all and your families of course. Aisha is doing fine, and Marie says hello, and all my friends do too. I'll remind you that I haven't been living with my family, I've been living with some friends at the university, my family is far away, and no it isn't sad. I'm going to see them soon, and I'll tell them all you say hello. And you tell everyone in Toubacouta I say hello back. Yes I'm going to live at home with my family for another two months before I go back to the university.

My friend is arriving tomorrow, you'll already assume she's staying with me, the one I told you all about, who can walk on stilts. The one who I'm teaching all the songs. And some dances, too, hopefully. She will be my guest for a few days, and then we're going to a Grand Fete, a huge festival where I will teach more classes in singing and learn from many many artists, it's at a cultural center like the one you're trying to raise money to build. It'll be the closest I'll have come to seeing stars like i know them now. I'm going to teach them "un elephant", the children's handclapping rhyme all the kids know- my two year old niece could have taught it to me. Yes, when you have a cultural center built in Toubacouta, that's when I'll come back. I'll come with an American troupe, and perform there. I'll teach you all my own songs and dances, and come back for another internship with you. When you've got it built. Just let me know.

It's been raining here, very hard. I waited three hours for the rain to stop before I took a bus home yesterday. You won't think anything of it, besides maybe the fact that I counted the hours. I'd love to show you around our bus system, how they arrive faithfully every fifteen minutes. But as I was waiting I was talking to this museum guard, he was from Ghana, his name is Anthony. An entire wedding party walked by into their air conditioned catered party room, and Anthony talked to me about his family and how hard it is to find a job. We talked about how weddings are so fancy here, and you have to be invited to come, and you have to order food in advance and everyone gets just the food they ordered. And how the band is told not to play too loud, not to disturb the neighbors that no one knows and aren't invited. The last wedding I was at I was performing. It was nice, I wasn't alone while I waited for the rain to stop, and his accent reminded me of this girl from WARC.

But it's still hot. Not *as* hot, no. But I'm sitting in my pagne, the one I got my first day in Dakar for orientation, when they tried to teach us to dance on Honorine's roof, and my roommate is wearing a pagne too, she's wearing the one I gave her with the fabric I bought at the market. It's too hot to wear anything else. And I still wear the pendant, my "gris gris" that I always wore in Senegal, and now most days I wear my "petite afrique" on the silver chain that you gave me. It's easy to point out where I was when people ask about Senegal. Some days I wear the bracelet I bought in St. Louis, and some days the bracelet Maimouna gave me before my very first performance at Hotel Paletuviers.

I talked to Salif's family, to his father in Atlanta, Georgia. It's very far away to visit, but I hope one day I can meet him and his family. If he ever comes to the midwest to perform, he said he'd give me a call.

I've made ceeb u jenn once, and attaya a few times. Of course I can do that! I had good teachers. My friends all prefer the third cup. I still prefer the second. Sweet like life. Love is too sugary for me, in the third cup of attaya.

I haven't forgotten Wolof. Or the songs. Or the dances. I go over the steps in the shower, on my bike to the west bank, as I fall asleep. Of course I'm coming back to learn more. Awww, no, it's me who misses all of you. Yes, it is nice to hear your voice again. I'm very happy to talk to you. Yes, of course I'll continue dancing and teaching. No, how could you even think I'd forget? I'll keep practicing Wolof and dancing and singing. And you say hello to Ibou for me, and Ice-T, and Khadi, and Maimouna. And your sisters, and mother, and grandmother- are you still teasing her? Shouldn't do that. And Maimouna, how's your son? And clever Ndeye Sirra? And your mother all the women at Garderie Baobab? Yes, next time you take a group of toubabs to visit say hello to Sonko and the rest. And don't let my cousin Mamadou grow his hair too long, or Fatou will throw a fit. There's a reason Croco doesn't have rastas like the rest of the drummers. And Ibou, take care of your fingers! Don't stain another drum. And Mamadou, give my regards to la princesse, I hope she's not still jealous. No, I haven't told Aisha about her.

yes. I'm coming back. When I finish university and find a good job, and make enough money to come back and share it with you all. When the cultural center's finished, I'll be there for the grand opening. When Fatou's new house is finished, I'll come and stay in the guest room. Or if you come on tour here to America, I'll find you places to perform. I'll be host and guide then, how about that? We'll drink attaya and play djembe. And yeah, Ibou, I'll tell Alicia Keyes you said hi.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Spring Break! (Part Four)

Part Four
We also ate dinner at the campement the second night- a tiny hostel-like place in teh village I’d walked to the day before. We got directions from the guys at the visitor’s center- they said to basically follow the road until we got to the trees, and it’d be there. The village was pretty small anyway, we’d be sure to find it. We let them know ahead of time how many of us there were so they could prepare for eleven hungry tourists- they said to show up around eight or nine.

“Eight or nine” is after dark, a detail that had been worrying me but not too much until we actually started walking down the road. The same dark road without any light at all that allowed us to see the stars so beautifully the night before. We used our cell phones as flashlights to see the ground. The problem is that when the road is made of sand and the ground is made of sand, you can’t tell where to turn off- we’d almost passed the village entirely before a man caught up with us with a flashlight lamp-torche telling us toubabs we’d missed the road. We thanked him and started walking straight across what could have been someone’s yard, aiming for what few lights we could see before the same man and his friend caught up to us and said they’d show us the way. It was kind of embarrassing, but we were all frustrated from a long day at the bird park and then arguing about prices and then trying to find our way to this campement, so we ended up just following the men. The same few girls who had been the “coordinators” of this entire trip went first, politely chatting with our guides.
I could barely see when we finally made it to the campement- the pale flourescent lights were so harsh it took a while for our eyes to adjust. We ended up in what looked to me like a grey concrete room with two long tables- the first table was occupied by a bunch of French people who might as well have been on a picnic in a park- next to their table was a cooler which contained I assumed some wine because already consumed what looked like most of a bottle and were being raucous and jolly. It threw us off. We’re in the middle of nowhere, and there’s a group of French seniors having a picnic. As we sat and waited for our dinner, one of the guys picked up a shell from the table and pretended it was a telephone to call me, and as we had a conversation his friend pretended to remonte-control drive the cockroach that was crawling across the floor. The two women were taking lots of flash photos. It was very surreal. Dinner was good too- I don’t think any of us had eaten lunch, and only a few had paid the overexpensive hotel breakfast, a few others I know had eaten fruit from St. Louis, so we were able to all finish our dinners. And our guide came back to lead us to the main road where we stargazed our way back to the hotel.


The next morning we played the Celebrities Game on the way to the Dunes.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Hair (or, Mayday Part One)

I took out my braids yesterday. Fifty tiny little braids, each with its own yellow or red or blue or green elastic- or one of my sister's braces elastics- or without since they'd been breaking recently. After all, I'd had them in since May first. A month and almost two weeks later I tried not to think too hard about the day I got my hair braided. Snipping off each one right above the elastic, my hair's all nice and layered now, hopefully less split ends, and after a shower and some shampoo it's back to normal.

Good timing, too, another week and I would've had rasta dreads. It was getting manky and matting together but I'd gotten so used to the braids, so attached to them (haha). It was something else I was holding onto for no reason, but when am I ever gonna get my hair done like that again? I'm not just referring to the braids. I'm referring to the experience.

May day was they day I was looking forward to the least, right from the start. I thought I'd get super homesick, since it's the only holiday during spring semester that I really get into. It's funny how holidays line up, though- I called my family to say "happy independence day" and had forgotten they'd be celebrating Easter on April 4th. When I was thinking about my Minneapolis family and the May Day parade this year, my Toubacouta family was planning for the Labor Day parade. Samba told me the night before that there'd be a huge gathering right in front of the school where I worked (or had just finished working the day before) and then there'd be a parade, and the whole town would be there. I couldn't wait! We hadn't had rehearsal or a show since that Wednesday for the troupe, so Saturday would be a good chance to see everyone and say goodbye since I was leaving Sunday morning. He said the parade would start around eight in the morning.

So I wake up at seven as usual. And I eat breakfast as usual, and I'm humming Hal-An-Tow and my family laughs at me for singing in English and asks me to sing the Mandinka songs I learned instead, they want to hear *this* one or *that* one and then they want to see me dance, because it's oh-so-funny to hear me sing and watch me dance, never mind that it's seven in the morning, I must want to entertain them, why wouldn't I? And because it's my last day I pretend to be so elated to sing for them right after waking up, do they notice I'm still wearing my pajama top no of course not. Concentrate on how much you'll miss them tomorrow not on how you feel like a performing dog in a circus. And when they get tired of requesting songs and dance moves, Fatou asks me to help her fold laundry. No, not the clean laundry that just came off the line. The laundry from the closet- ALL of the clothes my family owns, apparently needed to be re-folded and re-organized, right away. And since I can fold laundry, I was goign to help. And I did. I figured since Samba told me the parade would start at 8, I could wait a few hours and go at 9. I told Fatou I'd help with the clothes. She said "Good" and went to go give Grand-mère her breakfast, leaving me alone in the house, feeling like I was about to try and spin straw into gold.


Luckily Fatou came back after about an hour. I asked her if there was going to be a parade. She said "oh, yeah, I think I hear music from that side of town... I guess there must be" and after an awkward silence I asked if I could go. She said yes of course I could go if I wanted to. After another awkward silence I asked if I could go *now*. She said yes, of course, why wouldn't I? (the huge house-cleaning thing for one... but I didn't argue) So I take my camera and rush (okay, walk.) down to the Garderie where there's a HUGE sound system all set up playing bad pop music that you can hear all over town (literally). Sitting directly in front of the speakers is Khadi and Maimouna and this guy from the troupe who I assume is Khadi's husband but I never can tell 'cause they don't really talk but she's always sitting next to him and I'm always too shy to ask in case they're siblings or something. No one else is there. I ask what's going on and they shrug. I wait for a bit, but then leave to take one more picture-tour of the neighborhood, snapping pictures of all the places I see/saw every day. Almost no one's around, it's weird. I finally see Samba talking to Ice-T, and as I get closer Ibou shows up too. Samba asks if I'm on my way to the "manifestation" so I guess it's a protest parade, and Ibou offers to walk me there, and since I've been fighting off tears since I woke up and realized that it was gonna be a long day of "lasts", there is nothing I'd rather do.

So we walk back to the school, and sit and wait. By this time though I'm used to sitting and waiting. It's what this town does- it's what this country does. Sit and wait. And at this point I can do that too. It's hot out, and I'm with my friends. We don't talk, hardly even look at each other, but we're sitting near each other which here counts as hanging out. The music's too loud anyway. Abdoulaye Sarr shows up, and some kids run through who were in my class. It's my last day in Toubacouta and I'm sitting and waiting for something to happen. As people start to gather though I see my cousin Sali standing at the edge of the road, just sort of staring at me. Which would be odd, if I weren't used to odd by now. I get the feeling though, that I should go over and see what's up.

So I walk over and she asks why I'm there. Which I don't answer. And she asks when I want her to do my hair. I say whenever she wants to, I'm free. After another awkward pause, I say "so would now work?" and she says no, she's got to go to a neighbor's to see if they're ready to start cooking the huge lunch for the manifestation. But she doesn't move. After another awkward pause I ask if I could go with her. She shrugs and turns and walks away, which I know means I should follow. We walk to a compound I recognize as Salif's , where she pulls up a chair on the porch of one of the houses and tells me to sit down. I do. She then tells me to tilt my head forward. As soon as I do, she starts RIPPING my hair into sections and braiding it. Just like that.

So I'm sitting on a stranger's porch getting my hair done because Sali's waiting to hear news of when she's supposed to help cook lunch for the protest/parade that is of now four hours late in happening, and my hair which hasn't really been brushed that day is getting ripped all sorts of directions because she's used to dealing with FAKE hair that doesn't hurt when you pull it. Also, they start from the back of your head, which happens to be the most painful, as I found out. My head is down so I can't see anything and they can't see the faces I'm making, and I can hear people gathering about thirty feet away by the school where I'd much rather be but I get the feeling Sali wanted to do my hair today and didn't have any other time to do it. She acted like she was bored out of her mind, but that's how she always is. She's fifteen, I kept forgetting, and the classic teenager.

So two hours later after I was getting a crick in my neck and ready to scream from the pain, she casually mentioned "so anytime you want to go, we should". As if she was waiting for me. As if we were there because I wanted to stay. We just spent at least two hours sitting on someone's porch for no reason other than both of us thought the other one wanted to be there. Story of my life. Cousin Sali in a nutshell. So I suggested we go back to our house where I could BRUSH MY HAIR so it wouldn't hurt as much. As we leave, though, she mentions that the parade just left, if I "wanted to go see it". I didn't think anyone would be there, so I said it was okay if she just wanted to go home. She stood there and pointed out lazily that all my friends would be in the parade by now, we could hear the drums from there.

So with half my hair (the underside) in braids and the other (top) half down over it, we walked to catch up with the parade. For the comedy of this situation to really hit home, you need to understand the speed at which most people here walk. Imagine you're late for the bus but have to walk behind a very sleepy three-year-old. And it's hot out. And the roads are made of sand. The parade was three blocks ahead of us, and Sali kept saying things like "don't you want to see your friends" one minute and "Why are you in a hurry? they're right over there" the next. She has a way of making me feel like I'm dragging her along everywhere, even though usually she's the one who tells me to get up and go (though she doesn't say "where") or insists on coming along. But I do my best to walk as quickly as is polite to catch up with my friends. Good thing I brought along my camera.

There's a pickup truck with speakers in teh back, and a microphone, and some of the drummers are chanting "Respectez, les artistes, respectez, les contracts!" it's a protest march, there are all these women in brilliantly colored dresses holding big signs (that I only see the back of) and the truck's got at least ten guys standing/sitting/clinging to it, and there are drums and people are waving from their houses as we make a tour of the town. As soon as I reach the tail end of parade, Sali pulls at my arm and informs me that we're caught up now, and I shouldn't rush, I should stay with my family (a few cousins, some ten-year-old girls, have found me). I'm literally two yards from Ibou and Abdoulaye and they couldn't hear me if I shouted. But this is my last day as Aminata Sylla, and Sali's being so nice to braid my hair and it's family and she doesn't realize how frustrating she's being. I need to spend time with my family. So I stay with her. Until she points to Fatou and Khadi and says "look, your friends, the girls from the troupe. They'll miss you when you're gone. Go say hi to them" So with the permission of my fifteen year old cousin I go say hi to the two girls.

I realize how little my family knows about my troupe. Everyone assumes that I'd be friends with the female dancers and have no connection to any of the guys. Even the guys in the troupe assume I'll only be friends with the girls. And I am, I really am friends with Maimouna and Khadi and Fatou and Sw and Maimouna. But for some reason it's less stressful to hang out with Mamadou and Ibou. And Abdoulaye's the one who teaches me dancing and drumming. And I realized that my family knows none of that when we passed by Abdoulaye's house and Sali mentioned "someone from your troupe lives there. You know Abdoulaye Ndong? (she points to him, three feet away, who I've been trying to catch up to this whole time) He lives here. He's not married, though."

Thanks for the info, Sali. I've been there at least once every day for the last three weeks. It's where everyone hangs out after a show. Or before a show. I waved at his sister.

We kept moving, and eventually I got to say hi to more people. I took photos, too. Salif made funny faces, and Wayne tried to get me to jump on the truck with them, but I knew Sali wouldn't like that. For some reason my family gets weird around the troupe. Eventually though she pulled me aside to go talk to her friends who were sitting by the side of the main road. I stood while she chatted for a while, then told her I was going home. "Then when am I going to finish your hair?" I said whenever she wanted, since I'd be home. She got up and walked with me then back to the house.

It was a little after one in the afternoon.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Amazing Grace

It's been one month since I left Senegal. A little over a month since I left Toubacouta. A little under a month since I left Dakar. In one month I have changed cities, houses, and families four times. I've been packing, unpacking, saying hello and goodbye and promising to keep in touch and promising to meet soon for tea or coffee or attaya. From small town to big city to small town to big city. Three different pairs of flip flops, two different ways to cook ceeb u jenn. Two five-hour drives and one eight-hour plane ride. Three or four languages. Two dance troupes, several songs.

I still haven't taken out my braids, that Sali and Roky gave me on May 1st, my last full day in Toubacouta. I'm still finishing up the bright blue pills that keep away malaria, and while I'm at it the vitamin supplements because let's face it, a college student's diet is probably just as healthy is four months of maffé and fried-egg-cheeseburgers. I still say "am ul solo" and walk down the street singing in Mandinka. I walk a lot slower now, too.

Abdoulaye called me today- I said I'd call him back. It's cheaper for me to call Senegal than it is for any of them to call me, and even if it weren't I'm the one that can afford it. It's still hard to understand phone French. I was shopping when he called, at Target. In the middle of the office supplies, picking out pens. Bic's. Said I was at the market because I don't know the word for "department store" in french. Picked up some froot loops and hot dogs, blank CDs, a notebook, a toothbrush. Walking down Nicollet all the people asking for money had written their own signs and didn't talk to anyone. It was drizzling. The busses that went by were nearly empty.

At Target I also bought this book "Boundless Grace", because it was the sequel to one of my favorite books when I was little- "Amazing Grace", all about this little girl who loves stories and wants to be Peter Pan in the class play even though she's a girl and she's black. The year I got that book I was Peter Pan for Halloween, and I remember feeling distinctly superior and more liberated than all the Tinkerbells I saw. I still remember some of the illustrations in that picture book, so seeing my favorite character, Grace, years later at Target pulled me up short. In this book, though, Grace likes stories about fathers because her dad left when she was a baby. Turns out Grace goes to visit him where he lives with his new family in the Gambia. The watercolor illustrations are gorgeous. She goes to the airport and is greeted by this costumed guy on stilts (http://www.biantouo.com/pic6.jpg) and then goes to her father's compound where she meets her Papa and his new wife and her kids, they go to the market where people carry their shopping on their heads. She goes to a fabric store and gets measured for a traditional Gambian outfit.

And this is how I know that the illustrator had to at least know someone who had been to west Africa. Because how else would Caroline Binch know that the green glass Sprite bottles have a different shape from the clear glass Fanta bottles when she paints Grace having a Fanta and her Nana having a Sprite, right in front of a hibiscus/bissap plant. And how the family's dog would wander through the yard licking out the calabash bowl stacked next to the big metal bowls under the mango tree. And in the meantime Mary Hoffman writes about how Grace realizes that her family isn't like the one in stories. It isn't a mom and a dad and a sister and a brother and a cat and a dog. Grace learns that her family includes a Nana, and a stepmother who isn't mean, and two younger siblings named Bakary and Jatou who have never even heard of Cinderella.

"Sometimes Ma called from home and her voice made Grace feel homesick. 'I feel like gum, stretched out all thin in a bubble,' she told Nana. 'As if there isn't enough of me to go around. I can't manage two families. What if I burst?' 'Seems to me there IS enough of you, Grace,' said Nana. 'Plenty to go around. And remember, families are what you make them."


I was ready to leave Senegal by the time I left. It was just enough time to be there, and I am glad to be back. I really am. It just doesn't seem like it. But I promise, I'm here. I missed being here and yes this is my home and yes this is my family and I love you all more than anything. If anything, I appreciate what I have here a hundred times more than I ever did. It just doens't seem like it.


I didn't really get culture shock when I got back. I didn't really get culture shock when I left. See, when you hear the term "culture shock" what you expect is just that- a shock. The instant surprise of something being different, more different than you expected. No one says that sometimes it takes longer than that. That it isn't the fact that things are different, or that things are the same, it's the fact that you have two ideas of what "market" means now. It's that when you say "family" you always feel the need to be more specific. That even though you spent four months craving English slang words and someone who would Just Understand What I Effing Mean When I Talk, it's a good thing you got used to it over there 'cause being back is just as frustrating. I forget who I told what about my trip and feel almost guilty talking about it.

See, I'm used to call and response now. "Nangadeff" is always followed by "Maangi fii rekk". You hear "Assalaam Malekum" and you say "Malekum Salaam". I get back and I say "hey how are you?" and they say "good, how've you been?" and I say "good" and it's just fine. But what's the culturally appropriate response, how do I answer according to social normal expectation, to the question, "So, how was Senegal?"

I miss the shooting stars.