A Preliminary Update from Saint-Louis

AH it's been far too long since I last posted. But (sadly) one of my best friend's wallet just got stolen, so we've retreated back to the hotel so that she can call her parents and take a shower... It sucks, she's probably the fifth or sixth person to have a wallet or cell phone stolen (or an iPod one time,) and another one of my closest friends got scammed and accidentally gave away $40 USD (long story...) It's just so hard to figure out the line here between feeling like a tourist and feeling like a local. Especially because the concept of hospitality is so all-encompassing here, there's a strong desire to trust people and feel comfortable. Sometimes (over 50% of the time, I would say!) the Senegalese get offended when you act suspicious or withdrawn; it's a culture (Wolof culture, and then Senegalese culture as Wolof has expanded to be a near-national language in the past 50 years) that believes incredibly fervently in the importance of sharing (money, stories, opinions, food, etc.) so separating yourself by not responding to questions or ignoring people and keeping your distance in any way can be considered rude by the locals. At the same time, occasionally I think I and others forget that we stand out intensely by being white. All the time. Erin and I took out our wallets to buy a piece of sliced coconut and in the five minutes between that interaction and when she was looking at a scarf in a shop a few blocks away, someone reached a hand into her bag and took the wallet. Luckily she didn't lose too much money, but she lost her room key from Dakar and of course it just feels incredibly violating. Anyway, normally I would be out and about in the middle of the day, but we came back to our stunning hotel so that she can regroup her thoughts, which gives me the perfect opportunity to jot down some of my thoughts recently and the many things I've been up to in the past two weeks.

I'll work backwards in time, as that's easier for me. I'm currently in Saint-Louis, which was the capital of Senegal until 1960 when Senegal became independent from the French. In fact, today (April 4) is Independence Day! I spent the morning with two girlfriends at the parade in one of the main squares, Le Place Faidherbe, which is named after the former governor of Saint-Louis under colonialism. There is also a bridge named after him here, but apparently the local sentiments about Faidherbe are somewhat twisted and multi-faceted. On the one hand, he spoke Wolof fluently, took a Senegalese wife, and pushed school construction and infrastructure development, but on the other hand he represents the complete authority and degradation of colonial rule. In Saint-Louis it's even more complicated because of the city's pride about being the former capital, and because under French colonialism citizens of Saint-Louis (as well as Dakar, Goree, and one other region whose name I'm forgetting) were all awarded French citizenship. Of course everyone else in Senegal was not offered this luxury, and I get the impression that even those granted French citizenship were terrified under colonial rule of entering French-dominated areas... There are some that wish to rename Le Place Faidherbe after one of the founders of a Muslim brotherhood prevalent in Senegal, but the municipal committee of Saint-Louis is highly sympathetic to the French legacy, and has not approved the name change. It's certainly hard to avoid the realities of the French presence here -- the small island of Saint-Louis (it takes maybe 45 minutes to walk from the south end to the northern tip, and it's the equivalent of maybe 6 or 8 blocks wide in NYC blocks) is a perfect grid system (unlike Dakar) with houses with balconies and curved iron decorations, painted in Mediterranean pastel colors. It's beautiful. It reminds me of the architecture on l'ile de Goree (check back to an entry in February about the island... I think I mostly wrote on la Maison des Esclaves) which makes sense since that was another key area of French rule. But it's hard to find it beautiful and find it not Senegalese all at once, though that makes me question what "Senegalese" architecture really is, and if I think of Senegalese cities as looking plainer and poorer, is that offensive to deny them of the French culture that in some ways has deeply permeated a modern Senegalese reality? Anyway, the island is beautiful. Our hotel is incredibly fancy and is facing the water, la fleuve du Senegal (the Senegal river.) The island is in the middle of the river, and the city kind of spills onto the banks of either side. If you drive out to the western edge of Saint-Louis, there are incredible beaches on the Atlantic. I've spent a few quality chunks of time on the beach so far, including a morning two days ago where I tempted the fates and really badly sunburned myself... (why must I do this every year??) But it's beautiful, even if the undertow is strong. It's crazy to think that this is the same body of water that I stand in when I go to the beaches off Long Island... In particular, it's breathtaking how many beautiful shells there are all over the beaches here! I feel awful taking them with me, but the American attitude of preserving local natural beauty has certainly not taken hold yet here. (Have I talked about how garbage is everywhere in Dakar? Literally, everywhere.) And the shells are just everywhere, absolutely ubiquitous. Plus we're pretty close to the equator, so the sun looks huge as it sets on the horizon. A favorite past-time of the group is to sing songs from the Lion King as we wait for a huge, red, African sun to sink towards the ocean, as if floating like a huge rubber ball. Anyway.

I've spent most of my time in Saint-Louis wandering around. We had a few morning lectures, but basically the week has felt like Spring Break. Of course then we had historical group presentations in French yesterday, so there are certainly moments of real school, but it feels different to conduct research through interviewing and mapmaking, using maybe one or two books or websites. It's starting to sink in that my independent study will be just that -- lots of interviewing, lots of participant observation... I've never felt more like an anthropology major. Anyway the presentations went fine (my French is getting pretty strong! Not fluent, but I can say anything I want if I allow myself to talk around the occasional word I don't remember;) sadly next week I'll have to seriously settle back into an academic mind-set. Besides my formal independent study proposal, I have a paper on my last village stay (more about that in a moment,) a French presentation on a super-challenging Senegalese book called L'Aventure Ambigue, and a final Wolof exam. It's like midterms, seriously. But yes, we've had lots of spare time to explore and shop and go to the beach. We spent an afternoon taking pirogue rides (traditional Senegalese boats that look like canoes painted with geometric designs in primary colors... Have I talked about them at some point? I just love them,) and bird-watching, mostly pelicans. One evening we went to a beach about 20 minutes from Saint-Louis where you can walk along the beach until you're actually in Mauritania, which was exactly the same as the Saint-Louis beach by the hydrobase that we frequent except that we could make jokes about being in Mauritania and speculate on sweeping national differences (Mauritania is cleaner, there are fewer people, the men are less sketchy and assertive...) Saint-Louis is much calmer than Dakar, though much more touristy. It's hard to have time to shop and at the same time know that we are getting initial price offers that are twice as high as we would get in Dakar, just because tourists don't necessarily know. The pricing here still fascinates me, and even as I buy more and more I still have little sense of when I'm suggesting a truly unrealistically low price. For example, the other day I bought two thin silver bracelets for 5.000 CFA ($10) but the original price offer was 15.000 CFA. But it took two days and an accumulative hour plus to negotiate that down. I'll look at a necklace, decide that I like it and ask the price, and then decide whether or not I'm willing to argue it down from the $8 USD starting price... Adjusting back to pricing in the States might be awful, though I do miss the concept of having a set price, of knowing that I'm not getting ripped off. Though I guess you can get ripped-off in the States, it just feels different here. There have been a few days in Saint-Louis where I've felt like I'm in a strange sort of funk -- not because anything happened or I'm stressed or upset, but as if I'm defaulting at one notch below my normal energy level. Feeling less bubbly. Does that make sense? It's pretty much faded by now, but I'm again finding that it's awkward to live in such an exciting place where I feel my time here racing by but I also know that I can't be as excited as a new traveller for three and a half months. And having 24 hour internet access in the hotel is allowing me to be more connected to my "other" life, which is wonderful and a little awkward all at once. I had forgotten how often I am tempted to check my email and facebook!

I'm going to post this now with a promise that I will write more later... I want to talk about my second village stay for a while, and my brief time in Thies which is near where I will be during my independent study project (ISP.) I'm pretty hungry at this point, and Saint-Louis is famous for cebu jen, a rice and fish dish with a tomato/oil sauce and vegetables. Cebu jen is the national dish of Senegal, and it originated here. The fish here is absolutely phenomenal -- comparable to Seattle for sure, which makes me happier than I could possibly describe quickly. In the mornings, you can stand on the south end of the island and watch across on the western section of mainland where gigantic refrigerated trucks pick up fresh fish and drive it all around the country. And unlike in Dakar, more of the fish in Saint-Louis is baked (as opposed to fried) which is delicious. A perfect eating afternoon here for me consists of Saint-Louis cebu jen, sugar-coated peanuts off the street which come in small packets for 25 CFA each (5 cents?) and a banana from a local fruit cart at 100 CFA (25 cents-ish.) But I promise once I am well-fed, I will come back and talk about Keur Sedaro and more. Apologies that I am not proof-reading this entry.

OH and tangentially, but it's short and I don't want to forget (plus just in case you've forgotten that this is still Africa and not an idyllic spring break in Cancun,) yesterday I was approached by a small boy, maybe age 7, begging for money. This happens to me a few times a day for sure, sometimes more, and especially when I'm with other white people or toubabs as we're called. What jarred me about this encounter was that the boy was wearing a Sonics t-shirt. Forgetting about the incredible amounts of money that were spent trying to keep the Sonics in Seattle, this boy was wearing a former symbol of pride for my hometown, a place that he has for sure never heard of. To make matters worse, I had just purchased maybe 100 CFA worth of peanuts because I needed a snack, and I was eating them in front of this poor and hungry child, telling him that I wouldn't give him any money. It's always incredibly conflicting trying to decide whether to give money or not, but many of the children especially are sent by their koranic school type instructors to beg on the streets, and only sometimes does that money go to food for the children as opposed to the instructor's pockets. Moreover, it's exhausting being asked for money all the time, even more so when I already feel conflicted about being a "poor student" on what feels like a budget, while by Senegalese standards I have (both in my bank account personally and in terms of broader access) lots of money -- I'm a walking dollar sign as a white person at times. Hence Erin's wallet. Anyway, it's moments like that which keep me from slipping into any sort of comfortable life here, as so much of Senegal (and I extrapolate so much of West-Africa as well, given the strong regional culture and pride) is riddled with contradictions and paradoxes: rich and poor in the same place, a religion that preaches peace and respect above all else but frequently denies women all kinds of rights, garbage everywhere but stunning natural beauty, more to be sure... I'll try and make a list sometime. It is hard to be comfortable here, to ever be entirely at peace with the strange reality of being more in-touch with the culture than a tourist but not accustomed to the melange of development and historic practices the way Bashir or Aby would feel... I'm rambling and becoming inarticulate, I'm sure a cause de my hunger. A tout a l'heure!