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?