Senegal, March 2007, #4

So the weekend after I last wrote, our group took a trip to visit some of the interior of Senegal.
We went to a town called Bambey (pronounced like the city in India, which frankly was a little
confusing at first) and we also visited a rural village and a rural NGO that is fighting rural
exodus (It was a weekend in the country, Senegal style). We arrived in Bambey where we took perilous horse cart rides to the local market. The horses were decked out in faded and dirty ribbons and had blinders made from cardboard boxes wedged into whatever would hold them. It was an awkward experience, being part of this long parade of white people on horse carts, and everyone stared as we rolled by. Some smiled at us, some laughed, and some were emotionlessly mesmerized by this strange parade. When we arrived at the market, we got off of our carts and walked through a food market. It was the first time I had seen cherry tomatoes in Senegal! But dont' get excited, because every pile of tomatoes that I saw was at least half rotten. People were selling all kinds of food. There was a row of butcher stands with meat displayed openly hanging off of meat hooks, there were baskets full of vegetables, all kinds of herbs and leaves in various states of decay and freshness, fish under a canopy of flies, the list goes on. Afterwards, we went to visit the group of young people against rural exodus that basically pays artisans to stay and work in the rural villages and then sells their work in Dakar. It was really interesting to see them painting and working with metal, and their cloth was beautiful.

The rural village, called Ngoye, was possibly one of the most fun experiences I've had here! From
the moment we stepped off the bus I knew I would fit in great. And so did they! When we were
learning how to grind millet for couscous, each of us could try our hand at using the enormous
mortar and pestle that the village women use to grind the grain. A few people went ahead of me, and did a pretty good job for tubaabs. But when I went I let gravity do the work and because of that I had a powerful pound when the mortar hit the millet! Then I really got into it, and all the village women starting laughing and cheering and one person said "C'est une vraie villageoise!" which means "She's a real village woman!" I was kind of impressed with myself. But it doesn't end there! When we were done we walked out of the little compound where the women were hanging out fanning millet and grinding it up, and there was a group of old men sitting on a big mat. As I walked out from the path between the two rafia fences, one of the old men said in Sereer (the language they speak in the region) that he wanted me for his wife. He pointed and said he wanted "that one" (All of this was translated for me by our wonderful professor and guide, Professor Pam) and then i went up to him and was told to nod my head, so I guess I've accepted his proposal and have an old Sereer fiance!

The weekend after the village trip was the wedding of my host sister and what a strange and interesting experience it was. The wedding itself was lots of fun. Two housemates and I bought boubous to match all the women in the family, and of course once those drums started playing I couldn't keep myself off the dance floor! (the dance floor consisting of the street outside the
house that had been blocked off with lots of chairs and a big tent that stretched from sidewalk to
sidewalk). There was delicious food, and plenty of absolutely stunning Senegalise women. I danced with my little cousins who are much better than me, even at the tender age of 6! Our maid, Marie, who is also stunning, helped us get dressed, but then when we wanted to wear the head scarves, she looked at us and told us it would be too much, I think appropriately sizing up our tubaabness. But later when I went into the house to see what was going on inside, all the women wearing the same outfit as me got incredibly excited, pulled me into their circle, and worked their magic on my foulard (head scarf). I emerged a new woman with all kinds of confidence and pride walking around with my imposing head piece! It was wonderful! The strange part about the wedding is that it was thrown together in a week, because the family only set the date a week before (the bride and groom had been engaged for a while already). It was also strange because the groom is a white french photographer in his late fourties, and the bride is a gorgeous senegalise woman in her early early twenties. They were not really affectionate at all during the wedding, which I later confirmed was not really normal even at Muslim weddings. Also, the groom spent most of the time trying to get good angles for the constant photographs he was taking of his beautiful bride. We all though she looked like African Wedding Barbie with lots of different fancy outfits. Also, in muslim weddings the groom doesnt go to the mosque for the ceremony, and neither do any women besides the bride. Its more of a contract between families than between the bride and groom. But one thing they do have is a honeymoon, and Ndéye Marie and her new husband spent a lovely week at the beach but only Ndéyé Marie came back! Shes pretty fiesty, I wonder what she did with him...

So I'm sorry this is such a long e mail, but a lot has happened in the past 2 and a half weeks! The
last thing I'm going to write about are the elections that just happened here. We had the incredible opportunity to observe the elections, which in Senegal means that we have an official badge and can go talk to all the election officials to verify that everything goes smoothly and is fair. We went with a group from the Raddho which is an NGO here that works for transparency in the government among other things, and we were distributed throughout Dakar to watch the elections in various polling stations. For the presidential elections, each voter picks up a little piece of paper with a candidates name, party, and symbol, and then they go behind a curtain and put their choice in an envelope and throw the rest of the papers away. There were 15 candidates so they picked up 15 quarter card sized papers to choose from. I tested the indelible ink that they have to dip their finger in when their done, and my pinky is still a little pink around the edges!! It was fun showing my pink pinkie to my Senegalese friends and watching their shocked faces as they asked me if I voted. hehehe.

Another very cool thing that happened is that Lucy and I were in the voting bureau where the president votes, so we got to see him cast his vote! There was sooo much press there and people who crammed themselves into the room to see him vote that mostly what I saw was his little white cap bobbing through the crowd the the voting box (behind the curtain) and then emerging again to put his vote in the official urne. He is this skinny little old man, and its so funny to imagine that he is the president of the country!!! It looks as though he has won the election and will be serving a second term of 5 years, which a lot of the country is not happy about. He's very corrupt and not a particularly good leader, but the other choices were not much better, which I think is part of the reason he won again. The counting of the votes was so interesting as well, because there is no standard way of doing it! I was a recorder when they counted, which meant that I put a little tally each time they called the name of a candidate, and I felt so important when I caught a mistake in the counting that had given an extra vote to one of the candidates! When we finally finished, there were neat little piles of the candidate ballots that had been taken out of the envelopes, and an enormous messy pile of envelopes that had been haphazardly thrown on the floor after each vote was extracted. There were all kinds of math problems also, because they didn't provide a calculator for the officials so everyone was trying to add up the number of people that voted either on their cell phones or by hand!

But overall the day went very smoothly with no violence where I was, and after we were done I had a delightful conversation with the women that had been running my voting bureau about how in the states kids put their elderly parents in depressing retirement homes where they become grumpy and unhappy instead of keeping them in the house with them like people do in Senegal. The women were so nice, and asked me lots of questions about the states and about my stay here. All in all a wonderful and exciting experience!!! And the best part about it? We got official Raddho observer t-shirts! I cannot wait to break that out when I get back to school.