The author is a college student who wrote this note last month for the first class of a course he’s taking during a term abroad in Senegal…
I hope this course will amplify my experience of daily life here in Dakar. I’m half-Senegalese. My mom is from Kaolack, a smaller city in the center of Senegal. My grandmother and cousin now, however, live in Dakar. My mom also made the trip across the Atlantic with me. She’ll be living in Senegal for the next month. Before the program started, I spent a couple days with my family living in the neighboring city Pikine, in the Technopole. I hadn’t seen my grandmother Mame Aida, cousin Fallou, and Uncle Djibi in ten years.
Pikine is poor. Even before I left America, a friend who had lived in Dakar last year warned me about the area—his stolen phone had ended up geo-locating in the neighborhood. He told me this story without realizing my family had lived in the area. But his sense of Pikine isn’t off base: going between my upper middle-class homestay and my family in Pikine has been jarring. I catch my host mother’s emphasis as she introduces me to her husband: “Khadim est d’origine Pikine.” She lets the caste/class shibboleth sit on her tongue.
Pikine, Tecnopole doesn’t have paved roads. The quarter is labyrinthine. My uncle moves his car slowly as he makes his way through. My grandmother takes me to the market, stalls jammed next to each other on the sides of a dusty throughfare. Cars jostle with horse-drawn vehicles. My uncle squeezes by vendors and pedestrians. In Pikine, you’d have no idea the wide-open sea is just a mile away. My grandmother negotiates the price of a sandbag filled with red onions. She buys fresh eggs. Chickens, lambs, goats, cows, donkeys, and stray cats with wild eyes claim their own space on the street. A gathering of laundry women plunge their hands in and out of soapy buckets. Two surprisingly long jugs jut out behind the goats. I have never seen goat’s balls before. Twin black boys play next to the goats. Toddlers who are still getting used to what their bodies can do. One of the twins finds a whipping stick. He puts it to use terrorizing his brother. The peaceful twin clambers down steps to escape. He kneels slowly, going down backward. He hasn’t unlocked front-stepping yet. In our orientation meeting, WARC staff told us that 43% of Senegal’s population is aged fifteen or under. I see kids and teens selling goods of all sorts. There are young electrician apprentices. Mechanics my age fixing cars. Carpenters’ fine furniture takes up blocks of the road/market. School friends dawdle on their way home from school.
At home, at my grandmother’s house, we break Iftar. Chocolate spread and butter on bread. Tea and coffee with heaps of sugar. I understand now, why my mom spoons and whips sugar into her coffee, impulsively ruining American baristas’ careful latte art. A lot of things make sense, now. I realize my mother’s quirks are tied to cultural norms. Three or more showers a day isn’t strange here. The thin, quite unpillowy, pillows my mom gives me at home that my girlfriend from Denver can’t sleep on—are standard issue here. I’m learning about what it means to have a grandmother. Mame Aida grabs my hand. She holds on firmly. It’s my first day and she sees I’m jet lagged. Like the way little kids hold on tight, she takes me to her shaded room and tells me to lie down in her bed. I like Mame Aida’s hair. She has corn rows that turn into short braids. You can see her protective style through the loose veil she wears.
My cousin Fallou and I stumble through French. He shows me his camera roll: a video of him pasting mortar, brushing a house’s wall with his hands, and an image of his friends on the beach. His crew is intergenerational. The young men have children. I grab my phone. He scrolls through my favorited pictures. This is my girlfriend, this is my friend, this is a painting, this is Florence, this is another friend, another friend, a friend from high school. My favorites folder has 500 photos. He has twenty saved photos, total. I have 6000. Fallou shows me YouTube clips of his favorite Senegalese wrestler, Oumeu Zen. Oumeu Zen wins again and again in bouts where he’s the underdog. I ask Fallou if Oumeu Zen is a crafty fighter. He nods. I ask Fallou about the dance and music ceremony that happens before traditional Senegalese wrestling fights. It’s called a “touss.” Let me show you how Siteu does it, he tells me. Siteu, strapped with grigris and doused with protective waters, performs for ten minutes with his coordinated dance crew. He jumps, kicks, flinging his hands to keep pace to the drum ensemble in front. In the clip Fallou shows me, a coffee vendor from the crowd jumps into the dance. I have to go back to my homestay because school is starting. Fallou comes with me in the car, bringing his phone close to my ear. New Senegalese drill, he wants me to hear. I put him onto JUL. Out the window, it’s 10:00 but the city is full of action. I see little kids on light-up roller blades gripping the back of a delivery bus as it pulls them through the streets. The playground under the highway is busy. It’s not the muezzin, but local religious folks taking to a corner blasting Islamic hymns. My new digital camera is aching to be unleashed from my bag.
Since arriving in Senegal, I’ve been cramming my notebook full of observations. I’m thinking a lot about the privilege/weird social position of tourists and expats. I’m worried I won’t get my Wolof to where I could be able to communicate with my grandmother when my mom leaves. I want to explore this city without taking cabs everywhere, like WARC recommends. I want to seize the life of the city. I hope our course will help us navigate Dakar—socially, culturally, historically, and physically.