This country is amazing. Leopold Sedar Senghor, famed poet and founder of the Negritude movement, was Senegal's first president. Despite the fact that he was Catholic, he held office for twenty years. He was raised in Joal, where if your name is something like Marie-Louise or Pierre you get a white cross over your grave, and if your name is Ousmane or Fatou you get a metal post, maybe a star and crescent.
Everything is controlled by religion and tradition - government, policy, life. 95% of people are muslim, 5% are christian, and 100% are animist, and the results are these crazy paradoxes - Like how in some cities I have to cover my knees but prostitution is legal everywhere. And since there is absolutely no possibility of anyone ever being gay, men feel comfortable walking down the street holding hands.
and there are all those other paradoxes we haven't quite grasped yet:
#092039 gender roles - Don't get me wrong, I'm very much expected to wait calmly inside the car while the men fix the flat tire, but some things have switched around.
"I mean, when people come up to talk to me I can't ever tell if they want something from me."
-- JG
"Good for you, Josh, welcome to being a girl."
-- BK
Also, girls with their senegalese boyfriends pay for everything if they ever want to do more than just walk around the neighborhood. Even if they don't want to! Case and point, my roommate and I were stuck with the cab fare despite the three senegalese men we were sharing the cab with.
#890548 - You flag down buses. Taxis hail you.
#304983 - it took three months of no work to make me a good student and third world prices to make me moneywise. now i'm burning through the books and not spending a dime. by the way, A heartbreaking work of staggering genius was a waste of my time. Now I'm really into steppenwolfe.
#783209 - Starving, filthy dogs roam the streets of Dakar. Goats get leashes and regular baths!
#375893 - The goats get bathed in sewagey harbor. How they keep their coats so white, I'll never know.
#567209 - there are five types of fanta at this restaurant and NO DIET COKE
#328490 - If Chris Duffy's muslim family knows he's going to a church party, they know to expect some trouble. Because where there's going to be Christians, there's going to be booze.
#234890 - women insist on bending over 180 degrees to mop the floor with a rag in their hands, while daily i am accosted by men trying to sell me mops, pushbrooms and rainbow dusters. they also spend backbreaking hours raking the sand in front of house to make sure it is spotless and pebble-free.
#389039 - instead of the trash man picking up your trash, he'll ride through your neighbhorhood repeatedly blowing his stupid whistle and you have to chase down his horsedrawn cart if you wanna get your trash into it. better hurry up and catch him!
#489028 - Let's face it, French is as foreign a language to senegalese people (except for my host family) as it is to us, they're just way better at it. But still, they insist on using it when addressing animals, children, teachers and foreign exchange students.
God I love every minute of it.
On an unrelated note, after school I can climb a hill to a lighthouse!
this is LANI OSHIMA, this is NOT ME.
coming up - ST LOUIS, LAMPOUL, CASAMANCE, and of course more cross cultural moments and years of unposted pictures.
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