Category Archives: Senegalese culture

April 14, 2011 · 8:20 pm

Help Me, Emily Post!

Early on in Dakar, I made it clear to my Senegalese friends that no subject was off limits. An innocent victim of cultural ignorance and sheer naiveté, I hadn’t the foggiest idea that over the next two years, I would spend countless hours fielding invasive, intensely personal questions about my love life that Emily Post herself would be unable to handle gracefully.

The baffled expression of sheer horror on a Senegalese woman’s face when I tell her that I’m unmarried is something akin to what I imagine my Mother would look like if I sat her down and told her I’d decided to grow my hair to my feet and become a Moonie.

It doesn’t make sense to the western mind, but in a culture where ten year old girls are betrothed to men that they marry as soon as they hit puberty, a twenty-three year old woman who’s working and unmarried is somewhat of a anomaly. The assumption is that there must be something dreadfully wrong with me-as seen in the pitying looks of Muslim friends that have, in an attempt to rectify my unfortunate marital status, offered to cornrow my hair,  slim me down, dress me up, teach me to cook,  and help me master the subtle art of flirting.

Personally, I think I would be much too irresistible with cornrows. The world is not ready-it simply wouldn’t be fair to the male population at large.

Given that I apparently passed my expiration date years ago, well intentioned friends have sweetly offered to marry me off to their brothers, uncles and cousins. Lucky old maid that I am, I have my pick of the litter! Never mind that I have a boyfriend back home-because goodness, this is an emergency! A select, hopeless few have involuntarily committed me to a life of celibacy, and are of the rather dismal opinion that it’s time for me to buy a pair of overalls, saw off a shotgun, settle into a back-country rocking chair and start picking off pigeons from the porch.

…or the Senegalese equivalent.

Miriam, however, isn’t buying me cats quite yet. As one of the few women I know that is more tolerant of my “alternative lifestyle”, her big question for me this week was not when I’m getting married-but how many babies I want to have.

Help me, Emily Post!

It’s a question that I’m intimately familiar with-and the ramifications of answering it truthfully are always the same. You see, my African counterparts come from families that make Mike and Carol Brady look just lazy. Enormous families are expected and lauded-many of the women I interact with ardently believe that my life will be utterly wasted and devoid of all meaning if I have fewer than seven.

[Hamsters eat their young. I’m not sure how that’s relevant-but it needed to be said.]

I hemmed and hawed for a moment, and without missing a beat that charming girl stared straight into my soul with a startling air of assured finality and proclaimed:

Bon. You will have many twins!

*cricket

…many twins?

She was being thoughtful. After all, in Senegal, twins are considered to be good luck! In Ashley’s world, however, twins are considered to guarantee stretch marks and dark circles under ones eyes for no less than five years.

Twins. The very word made my ears bleed.

Miriam, I don’t want twins.

 Yes you do! I will pray for it every day.

 This was about when the color started draining from my face and into my trembling toes.

Miriam, seriously! Don’t pray for that!

With a confused look about her, Miriam paused for the briefest moment before a slow understanding brightened her brown eyes.

Ah bon! I will pray for triplets.

I surrender. Somebody tell me where I can get a shotgun.

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Filed under Cross cultural hilarity, My ghetto-fab life, Senegalese culture, The daily grind

May 21, 2010 · 10:37 pm

In Which I Hit a Man.

At Magdalena last night.

It all started when our SP landed in Dakar this past Sunday morning. Suffice it to say, though having them here is great fun, they’ve been wreaking absolute havoc with my REM cycle. In between working a couple of consecutive sixteen hour days, not having any time off in about two weeks and not sleeping well at night, I woke up this morning feeling like the “before” lady on that Prozac commercial. You know, the one who sits dolefully in her ragged, defeated blue bathrobe at the breakfast table staring listlessly into her coffee mug while a monsoon rages outside of her kitchen window? Me. A thousand times me.

Unfortunately, I didn’t even have time to finish caffeinating before it was time to dash out the door to meet the SP at their hotel and sort through contact cards from the movie last night. [And unhappily enough, I’m fresh out of Prozac.] Bleary eyed and quickly fading, my team and I spent an hour translating sloppy, hastily written French comment cards, after which Christy and I headed off to meet Bineta [a favorite!] who was very excited to take us to an alfresco fruit market.

Sorting contact cards with Cash this morning.

 After the typical harrowing taxi ride downtown, Bineta, Christy and I hopped out of the car onto the bustling sidewalk, where stand after stand of mangos in every conceivable shade of green and a myriad of exotic fruits you’ll never find in Harris Teeter all vied for my attention. As eager vendors anxiously urged me to buy their oranges, Christy and I were very suddenly surrounded by a group of Marabou [Talibe] men. [Religious cult leaders in training-more on the Talibe system another time.]

 Impatient, insistent hands suddenly reached towards us from every side, as men demanded our money with the practiced ease of those who are all-too familiar with getting their way. This is not uncommon-I am almost continually asked for money in Dakar. What is a bit more uncommon is for men to touch me while they’re doing it. When a Muslim man touches a woman that is not his wife, it communicates an utter disrespect unparalleled by anything in the Western world. As those men demandingly continued to grab Christy and I this afternoon, they might as well have screamed “give me your money, whore!”

 As [normally] mild-mannered Christy vehemently told them to “ne touche pas!” [Don’t touch us!], with rapidly increasing irritation I angrily insisted that they “go away”. Indifferent to our demands, the men pressed in closer, shaking hands full of silver coins in our exhausted faces with a resilient confidence that suggested that particular tactic had garnered some measure of success in the past. “Cinq francs! Cinq francs!”

 Something inside of my tired little body simply snapped. I get spit on, groped, and pushed into traffic on a weekly basis in Senegal on my runs. I have the occasional bottle thrown at me from cars full of men that think it’s amusing to use white girl as target practice-and the other day some man even yanked my pony tail. I have never retaliated. I jerk away, wipe the spit off, and sometimes I yell-but I always keep running.

 Until today.

 Out of the corner of my furious eyes, I saw one of the Talibe men reach towards Christy and grab her arm again. And that was it. I reached over and slugged him. Twice.

 With a sort of morbid fascination, Christy stared at me looking for all the world as though I’d just grown an extra head. Fuming, I lividly declared that I was going to “do it again!” as the man I’d just hit followed me down the sidewalk, loudly chastising me for hitting him. I vividly remember pondering the distinct possibility that Christy and I were about to engage in our first Senegalese fist fight-but my level-headed sidekick stuffed me into a taxi before I could hit anyone else.

 It was during the taxi ride home when a doubled over Christy pointed out, through incredulous gasps of laughter, that I’d just decked a “Marabou-in-training”, that I decided it was time for a nap.

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Filed under Cross cultural hilarity, My ghetto-fab life, Senegalese culture

May 14, 2010 · 12:50 pm

Aya [Of Luck and Love.]

Aya and I.

Aya probably looks rather reserved and demure to you-but you might be intrigued to learn that for a Senegalese Muslim woman, she is every inch a spit-fire! Several years ago she fell in love with her cousin [neither an atypical nor unacceptable phenomenon in Senegal], and he spent great amounts of time going to greater lengths to desperately try to steal her heart for a lifetime, and persuade her to marry him. Aya had higher aspirations than to simply be his wife, and that sweet, headstrong Muslim woman told him with admirable bluntness that she knew if she were to marry him, he would prevent her from getting an education. After three years of consistently refusing his impassioned advances and pleas, Aya at long last consented to marry her cousin with his ardent promise that he would allow her to finish her time at university. Thus, Aya spends her weeks at UCAD [the university at which I work], and some of her weekends back in her village with her husband.

The first time that I met Aya, I asked her what it was like to be married. She hesitantly smiled and told me that she enjoys it, but then confessed that she is terrified that her husband will “take another wife”. Apparently “Prince Charmant” is anything but-Aya’s husband has informed her that as long as she is a “good wife” he won’t marry anyone else. And so Aya throws herself into desperately trying to be an excellent Muslim wife-keeping an immaculate house, taking care of her husband’s family, spending long, hot hours bent over a small Bunsen burner cooking all of his favorite foods…and she lives in perpetual fear that one day she’ll walk through her front door and find her husband holding another woman.

Aya’s days are saturated by anxious fear that she will lose the conditional love of her husband. Yesterday over lunch, she began to ask me questions about conditional love and death. I explained to her how the gospel beautifully, perfectly speaks to both of those things-and she became very quiet. With wistful, haunting eyes that suddenly seemed very far away and the faintest shadow of a very sad smile, Aya looked at me and sighed, “You are very lucky.” Confused, I asked Aya to explain herself, and she very simply replied: “Because Jesus died for you.”

Oh Aya. Jesus died for you too! It was with unspeakable joy that I was able to explain that the gospel is not only for the white Western woman that was sitting across the table from Aya yesterday afternoon-it is for the veiled black woman enslaved by fear and doubt. Aya’s husband may never learn to love her well, but the God of the Universe passionately, recklessly, sacrifically, unconditionally adores Aya and is relentlessly pursuing her heart.

Pray that as Aya begins to understand this, that Jesus would sweep her up into the divine romance that is walking with Him.

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Filed under Joy, Ministry moments, Senegalese culture

February 23, 2010 · 10:57 am

The God-shaped Vacuum [Faith is a Romance.]

 One of the fascinating things about life as an American in Africa, is that I have the unique opportunity to define the finer points of American culture for my students. For instance: as of November 26, 2009, there are approximately fifteen Senegalese students wandering around Dakar that believe that a traditional American Thanksgiving consists of unusually dry rotisserie chicken, lumpy mashed potatoes and a viewing of The Passion of the Christ. [Butterball Turkey and the Macy’s day parade have nothing on us!]

Yesterday, I got to share one of my favorite aspects of American culture: coffee! Clearly, Americans do not have the market cornered on coffee, but the Senegalese are even farther off than we are. Their preferred coffee drink [café touba] can be purchased at rusty little rolling stands that precariously teeter down the side of the road. Café touba is served in tiny, brown plastic cups, and is the equivalent of a shot of grainy Nescafe sludge with enough sugar in it to throw you into immediate diabetic shock. It is positively undrinkable even in the direst of circumstances. I went my first two weeks in-country without even a sip of coffee, which will put this in perspective for anyone that knows me! I digress.

Bineta and I with our coffee. ...clearly, I had already had some and she had not.

Bineta came over yesterday for a “traditional American lunch” [read: egg salad sandwiches and French fries.] and help deciphering Shakespeare’s Othello [which she is reading in English]. Can you imagine reading Shakespeare in a foreign language? I love theatre, and it was fun getting to explain some of the themes and translate old English words for her over a cup of vanilla hazelnut crème coffee. One of the weightier themes in Othello is betrayal-a topic that sadly resonates with almost every single one of my girls.As Bineta and I began to discuss betrayal [specifically in regards to romantic relationships], something in her demeanor changed. You see, my girls grow up expecting betrayal in a way that you and I do not. There is an odd tension when you discuss romantic relationships with a Senegalese woman like Bineta. They really love talking about romantic relationships-partially because they all want one, and partially because they’re all afraid of them in light of what they’ve seen their mothers endure. Almost without exception, my girls expects to be abused, cheated on, and eventually left. They live with the reality that if their husbands can afford more than one wife, they will be one of many. A girl named Sophie articulated the general sentiment well when she confided that she would “never give her whole heart to a man, because he would only break it.”

It might sound simplistic, but to a Muslim woman, the idea that God treasures her, delights in her, rejoices over her with singing and is passionately, relentlessly pursuing her, is entirely new. It stands in breathtaking contrast with the graceless, fear-based, legalistic religion that she has known since she was a little girl-and with the romantic relationships that she has both observed and experienced. Faith is a romance-I am Christ’s bride, not His captive.

Yesterday, as I began to describe my walk with Jesus as a reaction to a torrent of unconditional love that I could never begin to deserve, I saw Bineta’s eyes visibly brighten. That’s a love that she has never experienced-or even seen-and just like you and I, she was created for it. 

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man, which cannot be satisfied by any created thing.” –Blaise Pascal

Pray that Bineta comes to understand this.

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Filed under Cross cultural moments, Epiphanies, God's faithfulness, Ministry moments, Senegalese culture

February 20, 2010 · 12:36 am

Out to Lunch

As the days march on in Senegal, I find myself looking at things a lot differently than I did during my first several weeks in Dakar. I remember stepping off of the airplane into what felt like a giant vat of pea soup (read: Dakar is hotter than hell), and within minutes feeling entirely overwhelmed. Cash and I were almost thrown out of the country before they ever let us through customs! (Note: the next time you fly into Senegal, make sure you have the address for where you’ll be staying in the city. If all else fails, make one up—thank goodness this worked for us on October 25th, 2009!) Once we DID get through customs, my bags were immediately grabbed by burly Senegalese men that proceeded to demand that I give them twenty dollars for spending thirty seconds grabbing bags that I never wanted them to touch. (Even then, I was aware enough to barter. More on my love of getting a deal in Senegal later!) I hesitantly stepped out of the decrepit airport into a world that was nothing like the one I had just come from. Pristine, preppy Chapel Hill was nothing like the city that suddenly surrounded me. Desperate hands eagerly shook refurbished odds and ends for sale in front of my very confused face, as cries of “Taxi? Taxi?” lingered in the air. And there, amidst the filth and refuse that I would soon find to be a hallmark of Dakar, I stood in my cowgirl boots, holding on to my royal blue, monogrammed duffle bag for dear life and desperately wishing I could find an iced caramel latte. We have a word for that girl in Senegal-natives would call her a “Toubob”-literally meaning “You’re white” in wolof. The past four months of my life have been a wildly entertaining and sometimes excruciatingly painful process of having the “Toubob” beaten out of me. And as the weeks have turned into months, the city has changed to me. Things that were once shocking and disgusting have become normal, and even fun.

 Today, Christy and I took three of our girls to get Senegalese food at a Mom and Pop place that we probably hit three times a week. (If the pictures surprise you, you might be interested to learn that this is one of the nicer Senegalese places to eat in our neighborhood.) A sweet little old lady named Michelle spends every morning cooking up several enormous pots of food, and then serves it until it runs out. I don’t care how hard you try, you can’t spend more than $2.50 on your meal. My favorite Senegalese dish is called “Tiébou Yopp”-take a look.

Tiébou Yopp

If Michelle has made Tiébou Yopp, when she sees me walk in she brings it to me without ever taking my order. (Not that there are any menus available anyhow. :))

 These sweet girls are new friends of mine-between them and another girl that Christy and I met with today, we got to share the gospel in three different languages! (English, Spanish and French.) The Spanish was all Christy-I can’t speak a word of it. I should note that the Spanish was a first–we work exclusively in English and French.

(From left to right) meet Oumy, Thioro, and Amy Faye.

Outside of the "resturaunt".

Not all of the toubob has been beaten out of me yet…I’d still kill for that iced caramel latte. ;)

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Filed under Cross cultural hilarity, Ministry moments, My ghetto-fab life, Senegalese culture, Team