relations

As previewed in the last entry, I met my family on Sunday. There is Maman, who is a trader (according to the information I received), and Aziz, who is my host brother. They are both very nice, and around the dinner table there is always an intriguing mix of English, French and Wolof. Aziz wants to practice his English, while I've wanted to use French-- and I started my Wolof lessons yesterday, so I want to practice that too. Hopefully, we'll all get better at these various languages by speaking them over the course of the semester.

My house is in a neighborhood that's quite far away from the research center (where I will be taking some of my classes, to be determined tomorrow); it's about a one-hour fairly-brisk walk from there to here. Aziz will be showing us how to use the bus and the transport commun on Saturday, but until then we'll be getting quite a lot of exercise to and from home.

In any case, I'm working on soaking in as much local culture as possible. Traffic here is... interesting, to say the least. I don't think I'd ever want to drive a car in Senegal. Just as I'm pretty positive people have to get trained from a very young age to balance eggs on their head (and we're talking 10 or 12 cartons with no problem), I think they also have to start learning to drive at age 10. It's a very strange experience, where cars and buses essentially have to bully their way into traffic, and pedestrians are just expected to get out of the way. If I'm going to die here, it will probably be by taxi, bus, car, or possibly horse cart.

I've decided that the easiest way to share a few things about my experience is to create a list. The following are things that bug me, but are an integral part of the culture:

- The appel, or Muslim call to prayer, which occurs throughout the day but most annoyingly at 5AM, often continuing until 7AM. As a result, I'm extremely fatigued. However, as Senegal is 90% Muslim (and also due to where my house is relative to the mosque), it's difficult to escape.

- Being stared at, talked about, begged at and sold things to by shocked Senegalese people. Because of the association of the Western world with lots of cash, it's natural for vendors to flock to me with random carvings, pictures, T-shirts and other touristy things. I decided to learn the Wolof phrase "am uma xaalis. Etudiante Laa." ["I have no money. I am a student."] in order to stave off the sellers. I suspect it won't work too well, but one can always try.

That's all for now. We have our second Wolof class in about half an hour. If anyone wants to hear my wondrous Wolof renditions of phrases such as "how are you" and "my name is Claire," feel free to drop me a line.