He's ready for everything, the baby's taking off and that woman ... well, she does what she can to keep up with this hipermasculine man we suppose is the father of her child, but she seems a bit out of it. No wonder: have you seen that guy's abs? Holy Moly!!
Around then, buildings are taking shape and the complex should be ready by April 4th to celebrate Senegal's independence and the glory of Abdulaye Wade -- not necesarily in that order.
I don't know about you, but I could keep looking at this statue in amazement for the next few hours. Gorgui, what exactly is the message, again??
More, here and coming up. I just couldn't help sharing this image!
Cheikh Amadoy Bamba, image from InSenegal.org
Today is a great day for many people in Senegal. It's so, so big, that I can walk on the Plateau without worries and the taxi stand next door is empty: everyone's left Dakar!! I wish I had taken pictures of the Sandaga market today, half of its stands empty; of the streets of the Plateau without traffic jams, of the traffic jam leaving the city on Monday and the coffin (not empty) that was doomed to be exhibited to the passing (and stopped) traffic for the next 15-20 hours on its way to Touba. But I didn't. I felt so overwhelmed by the dimensions of the event and the lines of traffic that I didn't. Plus, I've become very shy with my camera out of a sudden, for no apparent reason.
They say more than a million pilgrims go to Touba each year for the Magal. Touba is a holy city in Senegal (the holiest city, if the number of followers is an indication of holiness), the home of the Mouride islamic brotherhood. The city itself was founded in the late 19th century by the father of the Brotherhood, Cheikh Amadou Bamba; the celebration of the Magal (in Wolof, homage) was also initiated by C.A. Bamba to commemorate the day when he was revealed that his mission bringing back Islam to his people was finished. That day coincided with the day he, the greatest Khalifa of the Mourides, was sent to exile. All this they celebrate.
I was invited to join a family and go to Touba this week, but the 15 hours of traffic jam that have separated Dakar from Touba in the last few days were very discouraging, so I decided to wait for another chance. I definitely have to write more about the Magal, the Mourides and the power that Marabouts have in this country. But today I've lost my opportunity, so I'll leave you with other toubabs' words (and images) of the Magal last year, in that part of the country where everything seems to be happening these days.
Last week I was with my dear Mame Fatou at her place in Guédiawaye. We were comparing boubous: we share tailor, Tafa, but I'm his only White client and he seems confused about the proportions of my body. I had just picked up the fourth boubou that he's made for me this year, and still, everytime the same thing happens: the skirt is enormous around by hips. Mame Fatou calls those extra pieces of fabric "my wings" and can't stop laughing everytime it happens. Then we go back to Tafa's, Mame Fatou says "hey Tafa, sokhna si has no meat yet!", comment to which Tafa's disaproving answer is always the same: "not yet!?!? And your jekker, your husband doesn't mind that you have no meat yet? It's about time you get a big bumb, you know."
It's always like this: I'm given "wings" and then humiliated for not having meat to fill them in. Sigh.
We are in part 1 of the ritual ("Luna tries on her new boubou and finds out it's too big around the hips") when a piercing scream comes from the next room.
"OhmyGod ohmyGod ohmyGod Mame Fatouuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!! Vaidehi is in Dakar, ohmyGod ohmyGod ohmyGodddddddddd!!!!!!!!!
And Mame Fatou runs.
She leaves me there alone with my winged boubou.
I put on my pants and run to the next room, wondering who or what is Vaidehi. Stupid question, they look at me as if I had just came from Mars in a parachute.
[[Silent dialogue: these toubabs definitely are weird. Did you hear she doesn't know Vaidehi? (shaking of heads)]]
They are all standing around the tv, the 11 of them. Even Grandmother has stopped praying to touch the screen, from where a beautiful Indian woman smiles.
"I'm so happy to be visiting Dakar next week", read the subtitles in French. "I can't wait to meet my Senegalese fans in person." A few little excited screams around me.
Ok, so who is Vaidehi? I ask once everyone had calmed down. Awa looks at Ami, who looks at Rama, who looks at Mame Fatou, who says rolling her eyes: "Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuna, it's the famous actress!!"
Oh, yes. I think I saw her once in one of those soap operas where White people (this woman looks very white) do stupid things. She dances really well.
To be honest, I still don't really know who Vaidehi is. But I'm certain that if Michael Jackson got up from his grave he'd be jealous to see the excitement she's created in the capital. And here goes the reason why I wanted to share this story with you: a very funny cartoon I found in today's printed version of Le Quotidien :o)
PS Where's Wade? XD
Greetings in Senegal are long, very long. Mame Fatou and Rama have kindly acted a common greeting scene so that I can practice at home. Any volunteer translators? :o)
PD. Gracias Javi!! :o)
In response to Elia's comment ...
Every moment of the day has its charm in Ndar. Walking around the city is like opening your grandma's box of youth memories: things don't always look (or smell) all that good, but they're full of charm.
A bit of history here: although Ndar (name in Wolof) apparently existed well before Europeans arrived to this part of the Globe, the city was officially founded in 1659. It was then the first toubab-city of Western Africa, and became a very important node for the exportation of African gold, ivory, arabic gum and slaves. Due to its geopolitical importance in the colonization in the subregion, St Louis became the capital of French Western Africa and continued to occupy a key economic role until the late 1950s (more info in Wikipedia). Among other curiosities, the city hosts a mosque with a clock (apparently, to avoid bothering French settlers with the call for prayer), the Faidherbe bridge (wrongfully attributed to Eiffel in some tourist guides), and the Hotel de la Poste, where Mermoz spent some time before disappearing in one of his trans-Atlantic flights. This intense relationship with the colonial history in the region is written in each brick of the island, which was declared World Cultural Centre by the UNESCO in 2000 and is now undergoing an intense renovation of its built environment, slowly but surely.
And well, not all that is good here is a piece of the past: I was tempted to write an entry about the quality of the research work they do at the Université Gastón Berguer, but then I thought nobody would read it :o)
In any case: St Louis is full of pleasant surprises. And to answer Elia's comment, from my window, in the morning, I see ...
... the light coming to Guet-Ndar, after the call for prayer wakes up people and roosters (see sound clip below) ...
... children inventing ways to float in the water, where they avoid all kinds of other floating things ...
... goats that eat can't keep up with the accumulated trash collection in the city ...
... and a most inspiring little piece of landscape.
Here, the tiny little bit I could get from the call for prayer at around 5 am. I was too sleepy to get anything else.
When in St Louis I usually stay at the Didier Marie School. The school guard, a very nice Serer man whose name is Bernard Tine (say I sent you if you have the chance to visit), receives eveyone with the broadest smile you can ever imagine. Sometimes he shows me around and in our walks, every now and then, he throws a question he's obviously been thinking about for quite a while like the one who drops a bomb: "So, chez vous, a man can marry another man and that's it? Weird." "And you say that you get paid for travelling around the world asking people about their personal lives? Weird." I don't think Bernard could ever say anything in a way that annoyed another human being. I really hope to go back often to watch soccer matches / Venezuelan soap operas on his tv, share his thiéboudienne and see him get a family of his own.
From the window of "my" room, which is two floors over and two rooms left of Bernard's, I see the river. I hear the children play soccer a home-made ball big as a tennis ball and hard like a stone, listen to the boats come and go, wake up when is still very dark with the call to prayer from the fishermen's neighbourhood. I also try to avoid the mosquito population that thrives in the many little ponds and puddles around the school.
Above all, I look through the window and enjoy the priviledge of being there any time of the day and night, despite those little flying devils.
Earlier this week I made the mistake of taking the minibus (ndiaga ndiaye) to go from Dakar to St Louis / Ndar. I say it was a mistake because we had to wait 4 1/2 hours until the bus was full. In the end I enjoyed the experience though thanks to Mamadou (the guy who was sitting by my side) and the two hilarious Spanish women who were the very last ones to get on before we left and who happened to be from my hometown!
I recorded this small sample during the trip.
The human body is an interesting thing: a complex machine, a stubborn engine that keeps on going despite our constants attacks on it, almost a miracle that far too often we take for granted. We, as societies, have also given bodies the task to identify, classify, and place them in space. We have insisted in creating spaces for young people separated from spaces for old people; spaces for men, spaces for women; spaces for one language and not others; spaces for Black people and spaces for White people. Behind these barriers we will always find a history of elites fighting to accumulate more power: to follow the traces that separate one colourful space from the next in a map is to track the nervous channels of a global system of exploitation that has created race, private property and governments of different kind for its own benefit. That is the case regardless of the map that we're talking about, from that published by the National Geographic to the one that a woman carries as she goes on in her daily business anywhere in the world, trying to stay in the place that "belongs" to her due to her gender, nationality, phenotype and so on.
That's a very complicated way to introduce an apparently simple story that is nagging me these days. It's a story of two White people out of place, a man and a woman in a village of Casamance on, let's say, a Saturday afternoon, at around 5pm. They were with a friend of a friend (a local as dark as a moonless night) who was showing them around. It was hot, very hot, right before the rainy season. The woman, who suffered from low blood pressure and thus had a headache, walked into a store to get a Coke (which sometimes helps if there's nothing better at hand). It was a store like any other: behind a set of iron bars with an aperture in the middle was a man surrounded by cookies boxes, soap bars, bread and other things she can't remember. As his eyes travelled from the counter to the woman's hands, and from then to her face, her eyes and her hair, and back again, from his lips came three Alhamdullillahs and other words only two of the four people there could understand.
"My sister: this man here wants to say he gives thanks, this morning he felt a smell in the air as he prayed, and now he understands it was the smell of the White people."
I don't know if this store tender was using a common formula or one of his own invention, but I certainly didn't appreciate such comment. Two things came to my mind: one, that in the smashing heat it felt like ages since she had showered her body with a bucket that morning. In fact, it's very likely I stink, she thought. Two, that one of the arguments that some White people use to express their dislike for Black people appealing to nature (which is less racist than "race") is their body odour. Was I being insulted? I certainly hasn't been raised to appreciate (and less make public comments about) any substance that comes out of any of the orifices of the human body. Was that man telling me to go "fry my mother" (a common insult pronounced something like "kata san yai") far away from his store? Did he find my White and smelly body disgusting? What does one reply to "I've smelled you from miles away"?
He saw my hesitation. "Ma soeur, this is Casamance, you're in the bush. In the last 10 years I've seen war, I've seen poverty, but what I haven't seen are Alulums (White people). I hope the wind brings more of the smell of your people, which means that Casamance is finally in peace again. This is why I say that White people smell good."
To this day, I often think about that moment when my body was so out of place it seemed to be in a good place. Being in Senegal is a constant transgression of the rule of ordering bodies in space. Sometimes (particularly in Dakar) my presence is not appretiated at all. I'm like a walking lighthouse, and although I take this as a learning experience of what it is to have a giant sign on the forehead that says "foreigner" I know the implications of my Whiteness here have nothing to do with the implications of Blackness in Europe -- or maybe it is just the reverse of a very nasty coin. When that happens I try to untangle the many layers of that sentence pronounced so long ago: "White people smell good." It seems to me this sentence is a condensed pill that contains a bit of history of colonialism, the reason and consequences of the war in Casamance, the political interest in mantaining the region isolated and in poverty, the endless hope that keeps its inhabitants going despite everything else, the meaning of Whiteness right here right now and the tentacles of global capitalism which, incarnated in a bottle of Coke, manages to be in place everywhere. In short, I think of how many things we've written on a body.
