Senegal, April 2007 - #5

Im later than my usual 2 week update, but so many things have happened that I havent had
time to sit down and write! But I will try to give you a taste of the past three exciting weeks. First exciting addition to my life (sarcasm) - the family has acquired two more mouton! They are louder than the two other ones, and today they were chillin out in the courtyard for a little break from their pen. They're more infuriating than ever, but one of them is a cute baby and shakes its tale like crazy when its nursing which is kind of adorable. Now there is one momma sheep with her baby (the two new ones) and the two baby sheep from before who are slowly getting bigger and growing little horns! The kittens that were born in the courtyard are also getting bigger!
There's so much life and growing going on around me!

Also, I have been so lucky that in the past three weeks, my dad came to visit, and now Alia (my friend from high school and BU) is here right now about to embark on a Toucolour adventure with my program to the northern villages of Senegal! I warned her that she would be roughing it, and aside from some slight discomfort at the many large cockroaches that inhabit these parts, she seems to be having a great time (i hope?) and turns out to drive a hard bargain in the markets.

So, the first major adventure of the past three weeks was my trip to Touba, the Mecca of Senegal, for the Senegalise Muslim holiday Magal. The holiday is celebrated by the Mourid brotherhood, which is a religous group of Muslims in Senegal that believe in complete submission. As my islam professor says, their motto is that the religious follower must be like a corps to his master (aka do whatever he says). I went with some friends from my program and my neigbor named Saliou who is an incredible kind and caring Senegalese student at the University and also a Bifall, which is a smaller sect of the Mourid brotherhood. We stayed at his family's house in Touba and the weekend was spent walking around in the 114° heat to visit his various religious guides. During Magal, the town grows from a population of hundreds of thousands to a population of 2-3 million people, and there are cholera outbreaks every year! Dont worry, I am cholera free, we successfully forded the river, and no one got bit by a snake (the Oregon trail analogies never fail). We arrived at night and immediately saw a cow being slaughtered and taken apart. That was the cow we ate for the rest of the meals during the trip, and I have to admit I couldnt take my eyes away from it while they were taking it apart, even though I was eating at the same time! It was sureal! I ate a bite of meat and then saw them take out the four stomachs and squish them around a little before putting them in a big plastic bucket and moving on to the next part of the body. Hummmm (yummm in Senegal).

So, I will try and summarize the weekend, but it was the most challenging thing Ive done here and one of my favorite experiences. Im so glad I went, and I would never ever go again. The first night after we ate dinner, we went to visit Saliou's religous guide. When we got there, the girls
covered their heads with the scarves that we brought and the boys were already there sitting on the ground with their heads bowed talking with the guide.When we entered the room, we had to bow and say "Fall" which is the last name of the Bifall founder and how everyone addresses everyone else during Magal. Then, we had to all sit in a circle on the floor while the guide say on a bench/bed type thing and we talked with him about our trip there and things like that. I was looking him in the eye and following everything he said with interest, but I noticed that he wouldn't look at me and that the boys were never looking him in the eye but kept their eyes on the ground the whole time. After we had talked for a little bit about Islam and his trips to the states, he left and we were served dinner (number 2, with more to come- we were force fed the whole weekend!) and I was informed that it is disrespectful to look him in the eye! Oooops! Saliou also scolded me for giggling when I bowed and said Fall, but I felt so ridiculous i could'nt help it! We ate what we could of dinner, and then he came back in and we sat in our circle and had some Fanta and sprite and talked some more. I had just had an Islam class about women, and so I asked the guide what he thought about gender equality in Islam, and he proceeded to give a long and ultimately unsatisfying but eloquent opinion of the issue. He said women are inherently superior because they can have children, and that really they hold the power in the
house when it comes down to it (which seems to be a common argument that men make for women's situations here). However, he then proceeded to say that God created Islam for societal stability, and if there was really equality everything would be chaos! I did not know how to respond to that, and decided that the whole weekend I would just take things in and save my
reactions for later. The rest of the weekend was spent visiting other guides in front of whom we always had to be on the floor and crawl to in order to greet them. Then they would ask us the most banal things, like how are trip was and where we were from in the States. It was such a
strange experience. What was so incredibly terrifying to me was the complete submission to another man's words that the Mourid brotherhood and especially the Bifalls practice. They believe that intelligence destroys, and that one must not question what the Marabout (religious leader) says under any circumstances because his words are the translation of Gods words. I have never in my life been immersed in such pure and unquestioning faith and subservience, and I am still trying to wrap my head around it. I was so thankful that the Islam practiced in Senegal values Peace so much, and that they are constantly told to accept others and promote peace and happiness. If they were told the opposite, they would certainly do it. It was as if I was seeing the opposite end of thespectrum of Islam that demands violence. One of the most eerie and intriguing experiences of my life.

After that my dad came to visit and we went to the Gambia with another visiting father and a bunch of friends from my program. Boy were they in for a surprise when we got on an old Barcelona City bus to make the 6 hour drive to the captial, Banjul. Steph I coulnd't stop thinking about how you probably rode tons of fancy new models of the bus I was taking!! The Gambia was so refreshing because there was grass and lots of nature and it was wonderful to be out of Dakar and walking around nature reserves feeding peanuts to Green Colobus monkeys. We found lots of differences in the Gambia from Senegal, stemming from the differences between British and
French colonialism. The most important were that instead of pastries and fried dough, there was pound cake, muffins, and cup cakes for sale everywhere, and the second was that instead of being asked for our hands in marriage by men on the street, we were asked for our e-mail addresses to begin a correspondance. How very civilized. We spent the first night at a bed and breakfast across from the first nature reserve and it was run by two cousins who had escaped Siera Leone and ended up in the Gambia. It was incredible to hear their stories, and one of them spoke so poignently about war and violence and the things he had seen. It was incredible. We
also went to a second nature reserve in the mangrove forests farther into the country, and took a pirogue ride around the mangroves and saw a HUGE crocodile!

So in an effort to keep this shorter than it could be, I'll end here. The rural village trips were wonderful, but Ill try and fit them into the next e-mail. Tomorrow i head off for Cape Verde with friends from my program, and we're going to hike a live volcano! I can't wait!!!