Tabaski in four parts

Day one of Tabaski; 1:00 PM. Yesterday was all preparation. I got my hair did a couple days ago. Yes, I’m rockin’ corn rows. It looks surprisingly good on me, I think. I did some fuddan on my hands, painted my nails, shaved my legs, ready to party! I got up late today because last night the whole neighborhood was up ‘til two to welcome a new bride next door (we ate “dinner” at 1:00 AM). Did my morning stuff, put on a fancy outfit and did my makeup only to walk outside and be chastised for not getting out earlier to cut up potatoes and onions. Also, there was a goat hanging from the tree, being skinned. Well, so I changed out of my fancy clothes and jumped in to help.

I think I just consumed about 1,000 calories. First lunch was served. Apparently there’s a second. First lunch was rough cuts of meat without the fat trimmed off and surprisingly delicious liver, swimming in oil and caramelized onions. Sooooooo good. My standards for meat have changed. The meat is freaking delicious; I mean, this sheep was killed a few hours ago and immediately cleaned, butchered and cooked. I helped. With the butchering part. And it was in the midst of that activity, sitting surprisingly like an amazed child while I looked at the surprising texture and color of the lungs, felt the hardness of the heart muscle and stuck my finger in the aorta, that I was called to eat. So, I washed my hands. With water. With water only. See, I really, really wanted to use soap, but I was offered freshly poured water, and beyond that I would have had to contaminate a clean water source to get water to rinse the soap off with… What to do when faced with this dilemma? I’m sure my dad and brother, and probably everyone else are squirming while reading this, but… As it is I was sitting next to my brother as he chopped through leg bones. I just saw the seven-month-old Aida grab and bite a chunk of raw meat. Oh, God, I hope I don’t get sick. Part of me is screaming to bathe in and clean everything I own with straight bleach, but… I won’t.

Day 2: Sheep Head Soup, it’s what’s for dinner. Literally. You know that whole bit about no matter what the waitress brings? Well, I tried, man. I really did. I ate brain. I ATE BRAIN! And I’m pretty sure some tongue, and at least one gland-looking thing… I did not vomit. But I did not eat until full. Tropical trail mix chaser, thank you Very much Grandma and Grandpa Striley. Otherwise, food has been gooood good. Macaroni, potatoes and meat, actually enough to go around, cooked in onion sauce for lunch.

In other news, Tabaski seems to be the fete of doing nothing all day other than cooking, eating, and dressing up at night. Which is fun, for sure. But for me it’s been a sort-of bi-polar experience, slinging me between being a star and an outsider. When I wear Wolof clothes, they love it. When I carry the lunch Seynabou cooked to the neighborhood lunch spot on my head, they love it. But for most of the day, it’s just nothing to do, not sure where to go, not sure who it’s appropriate to go spend time with. And now, the big event for the day is a Jang. The word means to learn and also to read. So, it’s some guys with a microphone singing religious songs, or reading the Koran. I’m not sure which. But it’s so loud it literally hurts my ears, and it’s actually pretty cold to just be sitting outside until midnight. Hence, here I am. I’m about to go back, just needed a break. So Tabaski. Hmm. I can definitely see why they love it. Its great food and no working (except for the women who still have to cook, get water, clean the house, etc.) Again. Hmm. No seriously, I had a lot of fun yesterday. And today my emotional state is definitely questionable. So, this is NOT a scientific account of the experience. Just me… talking…

Day 3: (actually written on day 4) Spent the day in Mpal at my turrando’s house. Her daughter got married yesterday, and a good part of my neighborhood was there. It was a tedious, boring, and emotionally chaotic day for me. So, sorry, but I’m gonna just leave that alone. After the event, we rode home, a 25 minute charette ride through the dark, which was actually lovely. And I saw that there was a tent set up in the village clearing with a DJ playing music. The young people were having a party. After eating dinner I decided to find some friends. I needed the comfort. It’s been a surprisingly lonely couple of days for being a holiday. I found them, and they immediately cheered me up with a slap on the butt, and grappling moment of dancing that almost landed two of us on the floor. These were my grown-up women friends. Not invited to the party. See, here, I don’t really have peers. I’m not a “xalee” (young) or a “mag” (old). I’m not a man (duh), but I’m not quite a woman here. When attaya is served, there’s a hierarchy and it’s always interesting to see where I fall. After the older men, before the younger men, always before the other women. Which bothers me. It’s also because they still consider me a guest (after six months, right?). I get invited to the tours which are only for the married or older-than-me single women, and I don’t get invited to the tours of the xalee, except once when I really just accidentally showed up at the one my good friend was hosting. And the young people claim me sometimes, like for this party, or to go to the final football match (soccer), but not always, obviously. So, yeah… usually this doesn’t bother me, but I was told on the first day of tabaski that the entire afternoon was for going to drink attaya with whoever invites you. Well, no one invited me. I know. Start the sad violin music. It’s kind of exhausting being excluded and not knowing what to do with yourself. I want to participate fully in this community, in this event, but I can’t be an attaya crasher, right? Mmmm… Anyway, back to the story. I went to the dance party, and my young friends claimed me (thank GOD. I needed it.) Dancing felt amazing for about 2 minutes at which point it was just too akward to have all the young people stop dancing to watch how the American dances. So, I went and lingered outside where a good number of my friends were milling around. It was 11:20 by this point, but they all assured me the party had yet to begin. So, I stood and talked with them.

Day 4: This is a false break in my stream of consciousness. We just finished lunch which I helped cook. The tabaski stable here: macaroni, potatoes and sheep cooked in onion sauce. Yum. I’ll eat anything with onion sauce. And, apparently when I help cook, they want me to eat more. It’s kind of a beautiful thing, because I haven’t (surprisingly) eaten much the last couple of days. Yesterday lunch was waaay late, and due to my really weird emotional state, I didn’t have much of an appetite. Going to buy bread for breakfast hasn’t been possible (it doesn’t come during tabaski) and I’m out of oatmeal, so I’m going on a handful of trail mix for breakfast. And then dinner, well, the brain stew thing happened, then last night was a small cup of ceere (millet). So, man, I just at the **** out of some tabaski yumminess, despite the meat being cut three days ago, hung on a line to dry, then cooked for a long time in lots of water today. Is that safe? We’ll see!

Note: I know I keep hinting at this emotional weirdness, and it provides me the opportunity to add what I consider to be an interesting footnote to my blogging experience. It is necessary (right?) to somewhat censor what I write. Why? Well, that’s the thing that interests me. The whole point is to share my experience, but due to some arbitrary cultural boundries (American culture, Senegalese culture, Peace Corps culture, my personal self-viewing-windows), what I write is censored. I haven’t told you that [some content removed] or that […] is great, but it’s super […]. So, I will say this about this current emotional stuff. I did a stupid thing that started as an accident and then sunk it’s hooks into me. I watched a horror movie in village, at night, alone at my house. STUPID!! I didn’t know it was a horror movie until it was too late. So, yeah, I’ll never do that again. But, it strangely has given me a gift. It raised a lot of fear issues in other areas of my brain to be looked at and let go of. Associatively, the idea of having a large, winged guardian at my beck and call to keep me safe came up, and I had this strange realization that I AM that large winged guardian, that energy is a part of me, and there is nothing at all to be afraid of ever. Just a twist on an old meme, still a thought, I know, but the point is, I’ve been having a lot of movement, and no one to talk to about it. So, a lot of that came to a head yesterday and due to my lack of invitations to attaya, I intend to ascend a lot today. Wanna hear the coolest part? Yesterday I was sitting with people but totally isolated in my head crochet to pass the time, just really wanting the day to end, when I started beating myself up for that desire. I was irritated with myself for not making the most of those moments. But, I thought, how can I possibly be happy and chatty and dancey right now, like I should be to make the most of a wedding party? Well, that’s when I was hit with this beautiful re-understanding of surrender. To make the most of the moment, you just dive in to whatever that moment carries. So, if it carries depressive, lonely, heart-breaking confusion, so be it. And it continued to do so, but the word carries is perfect. Because under or around that emotional energy was just still peace tinged with a hint of the strangest bliss. And I began to ENJOY exactly what was happening. On that note, I’m gonna go close my eyes for an hour.

P.S. My dear ascenders, I miss your company terribly, your presence, your direct words, everything, but it’s a huge comfort to remember that the thing we experience when we dive in is INSEPARABLE, and to know that what I’m doing here, what I’m keeping as my first goal in life (sorry Peace Corps, but even you are secondary), that you are doing that too over there across the water. And all you other spiritual seekers, dreamers, creators, lovers, everyone. Nothing is separable from THAT. OOOoooooh what a tingly gift that is to re-realize over and over and over.

Impromptu Astronomy

                Last night was one of the greatest nights of my time in Africa thus far. I did what I consider to be important work, teaching a valuable subject, in a way that inspires further discussion and hopefully a nice dose of awe, in a completely casual and spontaneous context. I truly think some of my most valuable contributions occur in this exact way. So, what happened? At about 10:30 I decided to go find people to sit with. As the nights are getting “cold” (what? It’s like, cool enough that my skin is cool to the touch, but only occasionally light-sweater-cold), fewer and fewer people are out this late. But I found a group of young men from my neighborhood and sat with them. They’re lovely boys, and this may be pushing a cultural boundary, but, well, ::shrug::. For whatever reason, my friend Pape Gaye asked me “do they have the moon in America?” This led me to explain that the earth is a ball that the moon spins around, so yes, they have the moon everywhere. Rather than simply “ahh”-ing and shrugging it off, it peaked their interest. Which got me all excited. So I explained how the moon reflects the light of the  sun, and sometimes the earth gets in the way and casts a shadow, which accounts for the phases of the moon, approximately once per month. They talked amongst themselves, and I picked up “So, the earth doesn’t move, but the moon goes around it.” Oh, but wait! I thought. So, We got into the whole solar system. The sun is the only one that doesn’t move. I needed another friend to give me his hand to be the sun while I used my two hands as the earth and the moon to explain. Having taken all this knowledge for granted for so long it was amazing to realize how complicated it was to explain. The earth has two kinds of rotation: around the sun, and once every day around its axis, which is why we have day and night. For this my hand was the earth, my thumb Senegal to indicate day (facing the sun) and night (facing away.) Lovely! Oh my gosh, I was having such fun, and they were so into it!! They asked about the stars, I explained they were all like the sun, some bigger, some smaller. So, why are some brighter than others they asked? Well, ‘cause they’re all much much further away than the sun, but some are closer and bigger than others. And SOME, I continued, are NOT like the sun, and are much closer than other stars, and these are other planets. Try explaining that in a language you aren’t yet fluent in… But I think they got the jist. They even started their own conversation about it, like, oh, I think there’s one you can see just after the morning prayer call (5 am) in the eastern sky.  So, they must have heard something like this before, or just be making somewhat educated guesses? I dunno, I’m never up that early, and frankly can rarely tell the difference myself.

Again, for whatever reason, Pape then asked me, what’s with the water than falls on the grass at night when it gets cold? So I got explain the different states of water! That when it’s hot, it has more energy and is lighter, and when it gets cold it loses that energy and gets heavier (waaaay oversimplification, I know, but my Wolof vocab does not include particle bonding and such.) I used boiling water as an example, that it bubble because of that extra energy, and wonder of wonders, another of the young men (my sun-hand-helper) took over and added his own so awesome bit: you know when you boil water and it rises up and then when it cools it gathers on the lid and falls back down. YES! That. Exactly that.

Next question? Y’all ready for this? Why doesn’t the sky all just fall down on us? WAAAAHH!! Gravity. My cell phone took a beating on this one as I explained that smaller, less heavy things are drawn to bigger, heavier ones. That’s why my phone falls to the earth, and why the earth circles the sun and the moon circles us. Even our air, here on earth, is full of stuff like oxygen and nitrogen (didn’t get into the atmosphere that keeps it here…), but way out there, all that black and dark blue space out there, has NOTHING. It’s completely empty. So there’s nothing to fall. Gravity and mass. Oh man, we should do a basic astrophysics course here! They’re so into it!!

Okay, so, obviously, it was really really fun to explain all this stuff, to challenge my Wolof, challenge my own ability to teach about things I take for granted as known. However, the greatest joy of this experience was their interest! They listened so intently to everything I said, helped explain it to each other, asked each other questions related to what I had said to further understand and relate it to their everyday experience. Oh man, oh man, it was frickin’ delicious.

So, why do I think these are some of the best contributions I can make in my time here? Because I’m realizing something about this work. And it’s something that I think get’s a lot of volunteers down, because it’s somewhat disillusioning. Here it is (it’s kind-of a duh): I am not going to stop the Sahara from spreading or this land from drying up. I am not going to be able to mitigate the interaction of modernization in the cities and traditional country life. I can’t solve their water problems. There are a lot of things I cannot do. BUT maybe I can broaden their horizons a little. Inspire a little awe for the environment here and the world at large that will encourage a greater persistence in pursuing education. Because, frankly, the world is changing, and it seems that the people who are able to interact with the forces that shape that change are educated. And in my opinion the most important change that could be made in the whole development scheme would be for the people affected by “development” to have some say in what it looks like.

PS, because I’ve talked so much about it over the last few months, it’s 8:40 AM, I’m wearing a sweater and wrap skirt over my pajamas and am still comfortably cool. I woke up cold in the night, wrapped tightly in my sheet and curled in the fetal position. This, my friends, happened without a fan. Lovely things are happening to the climate here J

Reply...

As you cannot comment on other people's comments on Blogger, I will comment here in response to my mom's comment to my last blog post. I hear you. This information web is totally valuable, and sometimes numbingly overwhelming. I also think it's an admirable goal to put laptops, particularly with internet access, in the hands of children in developing countries. However, before this could possibly do any good, we must ensure that these children can read and encourage them to be the principal actors in the development of their own lives and communities. That is, we must do these things in order to further my personal agenda of having their lives be lovely in one of the ways my life has been lovely. In other words, you are also completely correct that this is not implicity necessary to having a beautiful and full life. However, I believe that there is no stopping the change of the world. No stopping the "development" of the world. I would love it if the directors of that development were the people it affected rather than the people profiting from those it affects, and for that reason, I would like the people of my small village to be able to read and access the network of information so widely shared in the world in the form of books and internet sites like wikipedia.

The Inexorable March of Technological Advancement

As the economic gap widens, leaving the poor relatively poorer and the rich relatively richer, with a shrinking middle class, and as technology leaps forward at an ever increasing rate, where does that leave people like my Senegalese village friends?

Most of them Literally do not have the means to complete anything beyond an elementary education, and even that has only been available for about a decade. Many of them cannot read or write, and the basic mathematical skill of addition is a struggle. Though nearly every family has one television and at least one cell phone between them, they get two channels on a good night (reception of whatever-waves is sketchy at best), and frequently can’t afford to put credit on their phones (yes, they’re pay-as-you-go). So, while in America we’re discussing whether we should save up for a new flat-screen real-color display television, and if we’ll be able to buy a new iPad when the prices go down just a little bit, here, most people have never touched a computer and don't even own any books other than the Koran.

What, then, are the implications of this lag in technology? As the speed of technological improvement advances, the developing world lags ever further behind in their ability to share in our world of rapid information exchange. What impact does this have on their ability to self-determine their development, or to experience development at all? I can only speculate, and all speculation comes from a firmly grounded culturally instilled belief that knowledge is power and there is no greater human gift than that of new insight. I’m scared of Kindles because I believe the printing press was the greatest invention of all time, and books are a divine gift to humankind. So, please, give a moment’s thought to what it actually means to be illiterate—to be unable to share in the vast amounts of information exchanged through the printed (or typed) word.

...(This is a pause for you to stop reading, clear your mind, and Really think about what that would be like.)...

...(Seriously, take a minute :) )...

What can we do about it? I’m not sure. Part of my mind is screaming “HEY AMERICA! SLOW DOWN!!! Give people a minute to catch up!” But of course, slowing the progress of technology won’t happen, nor is this a reasonable solution. What is?? Promoting literacy, promoting education, promoting the exchange of new ideas (if you’ve never heard of it, check out TED. Google it. Great stuff). How will this impact my work here? Stuff’s-a-cookin’. It’s hard enough to work with the local kids to encourage them to fight for their right to be educated, but to convince the older members of society who have rarely left the village in their lives that the world IS changing, and for Senegal to be a part of that they MUST be proactive in seeking to increase their literacy and education opportunities… See, what they see is that in America and France, everybody has a computer, everybody has more money than them (I know, its not true, but its the media image they receive), and when development forces have come to their village before Peace Corps, it has been to dump some money to build something-or-other (needed stuff, mind you), the get the * out of dodge (dodge is a hot, buggy place, of course), nowhere in that schema has the idea been conveyed that you must BE the change you wish to see in the world. That no one can help you until you help yourself. And if you don’t know how to help yourself, you look into it. You learn about how other people have gone about helping themselves. You SEEK KNOWLEDGE. But where do they have to look?

Mmmm… I fear this is a self-centered view point, and obviously just a baby idea that has not been so well thought through as to be entirely coherent, but I think there’s some serious seed of truth here.

So, thoughts? I plan to talk to other PCV’s about this at our Summit, starting tomorrow, and perhaps organize literacy classes in my village, perhaps even try to organize a literacy campaign in the north with other volunteers culminating in a book distribution funded by YOU GUYS (that’s how Peace Corps money actually works, turns out) through Books For Africa. For more information about that aspect, google Books for Africa or Peace Corps Partnership funds. I'll keep you guys posted.

Sending Love to my waa Amerik, always.

Happy Birthday to me!

In a week, I will have lived in village for five months. As of now, I’ve been in country for seven. Wolof comes more easily now, though I am still far from fluent. I can carry a pan of water on my head at a quicker pace now, without spilling. And the coolest thing to me, right now, is that I’ve seen baby Aida learn to sit-up and now to crawl (walking unaided doesn’t seem far away), and a few days ago little Djibi said his first full, clear sentence to me. I brought candy back for the kids (this is a fun diversion, occasionally), and he said to me, “Rama, may ma tangal” (literally, Rama, offer me candy). I flipped a little, and told everyone. It’s also nice to see everyone putting a little weight back on after slimming down during Ramadan. It was a gradual but noticeable change, and everyone already looks much healthier after a month of eating.

So, two days ago was my birthday. I think a totally of five people wished me a happy birthday, two young students at the high-school in the city, and one friend who I told literally four times, “just say the words ‘happy birthday.’” It’s not that they don’t care about me, it’s just a foreign concept to even know your birthday past a certain (young) age. In fact, a lot of people don’t even know what year they were born, or if they do they aren’t sure how old that makes them. So, despite all that, my good friends Ami Kole and Maguette decided I should have a party. I went along with it, cause hey, why not. After changing the date/time twice, it was set for yesterday at five. Here’s a little story about time in a Senegalese village. At five, I closed my door to take a shower, just after one woman came by to say she had to go to her field, but would come later. At about 5:15 I opened my door and Seynabou was getting ready to help by cooking the shrimp chips I bought (surprisingly a common party food here). I went to buy ice to make kool-aid-like stuff. When I got back, Ami Kole and Maguette were here along with my community counterpart who was cooking the shrimp chips. We made the drinks, they finished the chips, we put them all in my room, and then they all left again—to get ready for the party. People started showing up at about 6:00, and the party began about a half hour later. Maguette and Ami drummed beats on overturned metal bowls while the women took turns dancing. Senegalese dancing, which is like, keeping your core strong and still at a 45 degree angle to the ground while flailing (in time to the complex beat) all four limbs, and getting a good butt-jiggle going on. In the company of friends, I humiliated myself trying to learn. It was a blast! After pretty much everyone had shown up, kids and women only (none of my male friends came, not sure if that’s a cultural thing I’m not clear on…?), and after much Amazing dancing on their parts, I showed them my American dance moves. They loved it! I loved it! Cannot express how much I’ve come to love dancing… Funny that for all those years through middle and high schools (even some into college) I convinced myself that I wasn’t into it, to ignore the fact that I was too shy. Well, ::shrug:: now it’s now, and Man! Mmmm… So, just at sunset, we served the shrimp chips and boissons, under the condition that if you don’t dance (or, okay, drum), you don’t get snacks (my rule, lovingly enforced by my lovely party hostesses). Fun fun fun J

Now it’s down to work. The school has just opened, and I met with the teachers and director this morning. They’re lovely people, and I consider a couple genuine friends, and I think the meeting went well. It gave me an opportunity to teach them the three goals of the Peace Corps (for those of you who don’t know, 1.Send people to teach people to teach their countrymen/women things, 2.Learn about another culture and share what you know with Americans, and 3.Share American culture abroad), and emphasize that giving them money to buy things is not on the list. However, as it is a possibility, and some good things can be done that way, I will (inshalla) be doing some of that. BUT the most important work I think I can do has nothing to do with money. For example, yeah, it would be cool to have a computer room at the school. But in a community where not everyone even finishes elementary school, is it a priority? I’d rather focus on ways to teach people the importance of an education so they can prioritize spending 100 cfa on a pen rather than on four pieces of candy. This is obviously a VAST oversimplification of development, but ya dig? Anyway, I’m really excited to start working with the kids here, particularly with a group of girls to encourage self-confidence and creative problem solving through crafts like crochet and design. So, as always, onward!

Two-fer shorties

9/26/11

This is a day that deserves a party! This is a day that deserves a new outfit and a feast of yapp! But I’ll settle for a pint of orange juice and a bag of cheetos in a pair of jeans and a ¾ length sleeve tee. Hence the party! Its fricking COOL!! It rained from about 5 yesterday ‘til about 11 this morning, and it looks like it’s not done. Having not rained for ALL of September until now, the heat had become exhausting. I was so excited to get back home from the University and have my fan to keep me cool while I slept (note, I got bedbugs somewhere along the way, so am itchy Everywhere, and it was so hot there, with no air movement, that I barely slept for the week) but last night, it was so cool having the fan on required a sheet and pants!! Freaking AMAZING!! I passed out at about 9 while “ascending” in bed, and slept until 9:30 this morning. No joke.

Being back in village is lovely as usual. It’s impossible to keep the grin off my face as I walk around greeting people, seeing the smiles on the kids who still call me “Rama toubab” ::shrug::. Yesterday I told a few women about my bed bugs and showed them my riddled sides. Strangely enough, they seem to think that when I get bit by bugs it’s hilarious… This began when some kind of small ant wasp bit my inner thigh while we were sitting on mats during Ramadan. It hurt! Aaaand they were keeled over in laughter, unable to catch their breath.  Of course, in that case, I think the humor was more from the location of the bite… Then, last week when we were standing around at night something bit me on the butt. Yet again, location related humor… especially as I shook out my skirts violently and spent the next five minutes rubbing my butt where it burned to a radius of five inches. This bed bug situation however has nothing to do with location. They’re Everywhere! And itch like fire. This is so much worse than mosquito bites…  Maybe not… maybe it’s just like having hundreds of mosquito bites all over your entire body… Yeah. It’s awesome.  ANYWAY, Bintu has decided I’m a comedienne of bug bites. Awesome. And true to the warning that everyone in village knows everything about me, as I walked around this morning, random people requested to pull my shirt up and look at and touch my bites, which, duh, makes them itch!  Yikes. Silly. Fun morning…

9/29/11

Today I had a realization of how magical this job is. I’m still doing my baseline research in order to develop an action plan that will actually be valuable to my community. Last night I realized I have yet to reach out to the local Imam’s (religious leaders), so I made that my goal for today. I go to one of the imams houses regularly because his daughter-in-law sells ice (chyeeeaaaaaahhh…), but have yet to talk to him for any length of time. Right now, pretty much everyone spends their mornings in the field unless engaged in some other form of labor, so I wasn’t sure I’d find anyone there when I went. But sure enough, as I approached his neighborhood, out paths crossed. He was just returning from the field with a large pile of bissap leaves perched on his head, somehow balanced on top of a “pulaar hat” (like a Chinese straw hat, woven to a point). We did the whole formal greeting thing, he asked where I was headed, so I just told him: actually I was headed to your house. He gave me the single chair in the compound and sat on a plastic brick (insisted upon it), and the conversation began as 10 or so other family members crowded around to listen. Turns out he’s a totally nice guy. Aside from the chair thing, he was all smiles, all “as long as you try, whatever you do will be great.” So, he approved of my plans, mentioned that it might be nice to have a well added, as there isn’t one near their house, and that was that! This was an overdue visit, and I’m grateful that I finally had the realization that I needed to spend some time there.

Here’s where Peace Corps, working here in Senegal, is soooo much cooler than a similar job in America. In America, if for my work I had to meet with a higher-up in the institution within which I was working, it would have likely been talk, get the business over-with, maybe offer a glass of water or coffee, then out and on to the next piece of business. But not here. Next they brought out the beans! Where in America, people often offer to share while internally hoping you will politely decline, which you often do even if you’d rather take them up on their offer, because it’s the “nice” thing to do, it’s the opposite here. The polite thing to do is eat, even if you’re already full, you’re supposed to eat at least something to show appreciation of the teranga (hospitality. Senegal is, remember, the Land of Teranga). So I ate. And ate. And when I considered stopping, I was told that I had to eat until the bowl was empty.  YIKES. But yummy… Fortunately this was before lunch. Once I went to visit a friend’s house after dinner, and literally ate beans until I hurt. Ooooh Senegal.

P.S.

After spending an hour trying to fix my background, trying to use a picture of Khatete, unsucessfully, I resorted to this.