This turned out to be really long, sorry if it’s boring. I have some time on my hands. Anyway, here’s an example of how slowly things work here:

I haven’t really been homesick yet, but when I first got to site one of the first things I really wanted to do was get a P.O. box. I was really eager to get an address, I guess because it’s a link to home that I really wanted. I got to site on a weekend, so the first Monday I was here my supervisor told me to come to his office in the late afternoon and then we’d go to the post office. The first week or so my family didn’t think I was capable or going anywhere by myself, and I always had to have somebody accompany me. That probably wouldn’t have bothered me if the girl who was always sent to go with, named Hawa, me didn’t annoy the crap out of me. She has no malicious intentions, but she’s the kind of person who always has to have her mouth going. That’s one of my pet peeves anyway, but it was even more annoying because half of what came out of her mouth was an imitation of me. She mocked me constantly. I still don’t understand much, but those first few days all I said was “mi famaani,” which means, “I don’t understand.” Whenever we’d go somewhere together she’d just keep repeating “mi famaani, mi famaaaaaani” in the universal nasal tone that I’m finding out people all over world use when they’re mocking another person. I bet even the African tribes that uses clicks instead of words manage to make a more nasal sounding click when they’re imitating a fellow clicker. Anyway.

Another thing I dislike: close physical proximity to other humans who I don’t know very well. I guess you could say I have a big space bubble. In my opinion, unless you’re a cute boy, a family member or a close friend, there’s no need to get too close to me. There’s especially no need to hold my hand. The Senegalese feel differently. I don’t know if there’s one word I could use to describe Senegalese culture, but if I had to pick one it would be “contradictory.” They haven’t struck me as being particularly sensitive, yet it’s totally fine to hold each other’s hands. Men hold other men’s hands, women hold other women’s hands…holding hands is totally normal. I don’t know when I took my first steps as a baby, but I’m pretty sure I’ve been capable of walking on my own for at least 20 years now. Needless to say, holding hands isn’t my thing, especially when I’m holding hands with somebody who’s constantly mocking me.

Eventually the glorious moment came when I was going to the post office to get an address so my mom and family and friends could send me cards and care packages. Hawa’s mocking and handholding didn’t even bother me too much. We met up with my supervisor and we went to the post office, only to have the guy at the post office say I needed a copy of my i.d. card, and I’d have to come back tomorrow with it. I thought to myself, “OK. That’s reasonable. Where’s the nearest Kinko’s? Even in Africa they should be open this time of day. Oh right, I’m in Africa. I could literally walk to the edge of the Sahara Desert in a few hours. I bet I’m pretty freaking far from the closest Kinko’s. Is there even a photocopy machine in my town? Why would somebody in my town even need a photocopy of something? I’ve never even seen anybody, apart from my supervisor, read anything. So why would they need to copy anything?” Then I realized my supervisor was telling Hawa to take me to some guy’s house to get a photocopy of my i.d. I was excited and surprised at the prospect of getting a photocopy right then and there.

My supervisor left, and Hawa took my hand and started leading me all over the place trying to find Amadou, the guy who could photocopy my i.d. We never found him. Hawa’s handholding got annoying again. I tried to find ways to use my hands so I wouldn’t have to hold her hand. That backfired, however, because another thing the Senegalese like to do is to state what you’re currently doing. I pulled my hand away so I could get my water bottle out and have my hands occupied. I took a sip. Hawa says to me “a yarat?” which means, “you are drinking?” I’m thinking to myself, “no you weird hand holder, I’m putting water in my mouth and swallowing, but I’m not drinking,” but in response I said, “eey, mi yarat” (yes, I am drinking). Well apparently that’s exactly what Hawa needed to add to her repertoire, because all the way home Hawa threw “eeeeh mi yarat” into the mix of “mi famaani’s” when she mimicked me. I took a mental note to keep to smiles and nods around Hawa.

The next morning I went to my supervisor’s office and told him we never got the photocopy. He didn’t seem upset or surprised about it, and we set off to see the elusive Amadou who I thought was an integral part in my quest to get a permanent address in Senegal. Amadou turned out to be a dude with a scanner and a printer/copier, and a dude lacking the ability to recognize a printer’s need for new ink. My supervisor and I sat around for probably 20-30 minutes watching Amadou play with the computer and printer. The first couple of times he tried copying my i.d nothing really turned out, but I hadn’t been paying too much attention cuz I was looking at one of his family photo albums (a past time that seems pretty common here). Then he scanned my i.d. and tried to print it in color. The color showed up, but not the black and grays. Amadou looked pretty stumped, but I have to give him credit for not giving up. He tried at least one more time before admitting that he couldn’t do it. “You just need new ink, buddy.” Too bad I have no idea how to say that in Pulaar.

We left Amadou’s and it was about 11:30. People eat lunch here around 2. My supervisor suggested I spend the day and eat lunch at/around his office. Ok, sure, why not. Sitting at Amadou’s was pretty exhausting, we wouldn’t want to go to another place to try to get a photocopy of my i.d. right away. I wasn’t anxious to get letters from home to make me feel a little more connected, a little less like I was the only normal person on this side of the Atlantic. No biggie, I can wait. The east coast hasn’t even really woken up yet, anyway.

My supervisor eats lunch with a family who lives right next to his office, and that’s where he left me until lunch. I was totally fine with that, there were some cute kids I got to play with. Lunch finally happened around 2. We finished eating and the men went to pray. I figured when they were done praying we’d go get the stupid photocopy. Nope. My supervisor comes back and says that we should rest. He goes into the TV room that has two beds, lays down and was snoring in under 3 minutes. No joke. I figured, “when in Rome….” So I laid down on the other bed and tried to ignore the snores. About an hour later the mom of the household came in and turned the TV on. She sifted through a pile of DVD’s, and decided on some awful Kung Fu movie that was dubbed in French. It was awful, but it was so awful it was funny. Some other people came in to watch it, and their reactions to the movie were more entertaining than the movie itself. The movie was one bad fight scene after another. Every scene was painfully fake, but everybody else winced at every punch, gave a sympathetic “ooooo” with every kick or a shocked “eeeee” with every explosion. The best was when the father figure in the movie got his hand cut off and everybody clutched their own hand, even though the actor’s nub was the exact same length as arm that still had a hand. I think everybody else was convinced it was real.

The movie ended happily, and my supervisor disappeared for a little while. I was pleasantly surprised when he came back with a photocopy of my i.d.! I was really excited to go back to the post office and get my address, but when we got there they guy gave us some b.s. about not having the proper forms. I had to come back again the next day. As we left I told my supervisor I didn’t understand what was going on, and he replied “c’est comme ca.” “It’s like that.” I walked back home muttering “it’s like that” to myself. I felt like a pouting 3 year old-I just wanted a letter from my mommy! Is that so much to ask?!

The guy at the post office had told me to come back the next day around 4 or 5. I waited around all day, and when the late afternoon rolled around I wasn’t even excited about going to the post office. I was over it. I kinda figured it wouldn’t happen for another couple of days. When I got to the post office the guy started talking about not having forms or something again. I just let him talk while I stared at the scraggly mustache he was trying to grow. The wannabe mustache didn’t even look like it needed shaving-the hairs were too few and far between. I was sure I could fix it up with a pair of tweezers. I decided that’s what his upper lip needed-a good pluck. Don’t bother with shaving cream. They probably don’t even have that here. I dragged myself out my thoughts about a makeover for the post office guy, and realized that he was telling me I could still have letters sent to me without the paper work. I almost didn’t believe him. I asked him what my address was and he was and he said “B.P. 2, my town, Senegal.” I was sure I hadn’t gotten that right. He repeated it again. “B.P. 2, my town, Senegal.” One word kept going through my head, “seriously?? SERIOUSLY!? Seriously. Ser-I-ous-ly? I went through all kinds of mocking and handholding, Amadou’s ink-less printer, snores, a ridiculously bad kung fu movie, and even more waiting…..for B.P. TWO!!! There’s only one address I can think of that would be easier than that: B.P. 1. Seriously? B.P. 2? That’s it??” The words of my supervisor came back to me, “C’est comme ca.” I guess it is. I was grateful to have an address.

And I’m even more grateful to have gotten letters from friends and family! It makes me really really happy, and I appreciate it! Keep them coming! I hope everybody has a wonderful Christmas and fun New Year celebrations!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I hope everyone is doing well. I typed up a long post on my laptop and had it ready to load, but this computers usb port apparently isnt working. Hopefully Ill have another chance to update soon. But i dont have much time left, so just wanted to say merry christmas and i miss everybody!! hope all is well at home!

Think back to when you were a kid and you used to drink milk through a straw. Remember blowing bubbles in the milk? Close your eyes and imagine the sound the bubbles made……got it? Can you hear it? Now imagine that sound coming from a bunch of Senegalese peoples’ mouths. That’s about how Pulaar sounds to me right now. I’ve been at my site for about two weeks, and a lot of days I feel like I’m never going to speak or even understand Pulaar. Here’s why: it’s a totally ridiculous language!!

Examples:
First major difference: there are verbs for everything. There’s a verb “to eat” (in general), but there’s a verb “to eat breakfast,” a different verb “to eat lunch” and a different verb “to eat dinner.” I’m looking at a list of verbs that my language trainer gave me, and here are some of my favorites: to draw a line, to smell bad, to smell good, to be dizzy, to wash dishes, to wash clothes, to dry clothes, to dry something, to protect against, to separate liquids, so separate solids, to be intelligent, to be clever, to be ‘unclever’. All different verbs.

Like many other languages, the end of the verbs change when you conjugate them. “Yahde” is the verb “to go.” “I went” in Pulaar is “Mi yahii.” That’s fine and dandy, I can handle that. However, when the subject is plural, or when the subject comes after the verb (which happens when you ask questions) you also conjugate the front of the verb. For example, “we went” turns into “min njahii.” (And by the way, that’s ‘we’ exclusive-there’s two kinds of 'we,' inclusive and exclusive. The exclusive is used most of the time, but it’s another fun thing to be confused about). If I want to ask, “where are you going?” that’s “holto njahataa?” Now I’m no math expert, but the way I count it, there’s only two letters that stayed the same from the infinitive of “yahde” and “njahataa.” When a lot of the infinitives sound pretty similar to each other, such as yebde, yobde, yeeyde, yeewde, yeewnude, yeywude, only having two letters to recognize a verb is a little tricky. Especially when there are verbs for everything!

As if conjugating the front and end of a verb isn’t enough, Pulaars like stick letters into the middle of the verb as well. They’re called ‘infixes.’ For example, there isn’t really a word for “with” in Pulaar. Instead you add a “d” or “du” in the middle of the verb to say that you’re doing something with somebody/something. If I want to say “I went with Megan” I say “Mi yahdii e Megan.” That doesn’t sound too different, but there’s infixes for a lot of things! Another example:
Hangaade = to be crazy
O hangoto = he is crazy
Be kangoto = they are crazy
Be kangiima = they were crazy
Be kanginkiniima = they were pretending to be crazy

Yep, just throw in an “inkin” and that means you’re pretending to do something.
Hangaade --> kanginkiniima. At least there are three letters that stay the same for that verb. Piece of cake.


Anyway. Next topic.

I think I need to change the title of my blog to “The Life of Sandy: Adventures in a Palace Surrounded by Mud Huts with Thatched Roofs.” That would pretty much sum it up. My host family has a large compound with a couple of buildings, complete with a front (concrete) yard that has a big shade structure and stick beds, and a back yard big enough for about twenty cows and several sheep and goats. The house has electricity and running water. They have two tv’s and a dvd player. My bedroom has a white tile floor and two electrical outlets. My bathroom has a shower. The water from the shower even gets warm after a couple minutes (usually). The bathroom also has a western toilet. But here’s the clincher: the toilet flushes! I couldn’t believe it. I am incredibly spoiled. Most volunteers just have a hole in the ground. Probably the best part of my house is the roof. It’ big and nobody really uses it, so it’s a good place to go if I don’t want to be bothered. Most nights I sit on the roof and watch the sunset and watch the stars and moon come out, and I start every morning by going on the roof and doing some push ups and crunches and stretches and stuff. It’s neat to see the village getting started in the morning and then later seeing it getting settled in for the night.

I was wrong about living with my counterpart, she lives in another compound not far from mine. I was also wrong about my dad being the village chief. Bummer. But! It turns out that my grand-father (who’s deceased) was the village chief for 36 years or something crazy like that. So that’s pretty cool. My dad is also deceased, so it’s basically just my mom and two sisters who live in this big ‘ol compound. I have one other sibling who lives in another house in my town, and the remaining siblings (I think there are 3 others) live in other cities, so I havn’t met them yet. My mom’s name is Fatimata, and my sisters’ names are Fatima, Banal and Mariem. I live with Fatima and Banal. Fatima has a 3 year old named Kagel, who’s absolutely adorable. She was scared of me until recently. I guess white people are pretty scary looking if you’ve never really seen one before. I mean, I’d probably be scared of me if I was three years old and had only ever seen black people.

Ok I’m starting to ramble, so I think I’m going to wrap it up with a Random Africa Moment (Warning: this one is kind of on the gross side): My supervisor eats lunch at the vet’s house, and the other day I ate there with my supervisor, the vet and the vet’s family. I’d just finished eating and I heard a goat making a lot of noise (which is an incredibly common thing, but it was particularly loud this day). I looked out the door and saw a goat lying on the ground with something coming out of its rear end. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out what was going on, but my first thought was “Good Lord! That’s the gnarliest looking terd I’ve ever seen, no wonder that goat looks like it’s in so much pain. What are they feeding this thing?” Then, it lifted up its tail a bit more and a bunch of dark little pellets came out of another hole above where the gnarliness was coming out. My next thought was “now that’s what goat poo normally looks like.” Then I took another look at what I thought was a really gnarly terd and realized that there was a hoof inside it. Then I thought “I’m pretty sure goats don’t eat other goats…..so that must mean…!!!” Yep, you guessed it, the goat was giving birth. After I figured that out, I saw the vet casually go into his room and come back out with a pair of rubber gloves. I got up to watch the rest of the birth, and as I got up I was kinda fixing my skirt. The vet’s wife intercepted me as I was walking out the door, and she stopped me and taught me how to properly tie my skirt. I pretty much felt like a 5 year old, but hey, now I know how the Senegalese wear their wrap-around skirts. Anyway, by the time I stepped outside the goat had finished delivering and all the narstiness was spread all over the ground, but it was neat to see the mom taking care of her newborn. I expected the process to be a lot longer. Who knew a goat could give birth in the time it takes a toubab to learn how to wear a wrap-around skirt? And who knew a goat could poo and give birth at the same time?