December in Review, or... COUNTDOWN TO THE FRITSCHENING 2014

It is with bated breath we await the imminent arrival of Team Fritsche.  As referenced in our last post, on December 26th, tomorrow, at the crack of dawn, they’ll be arriving in this great country.  Six people in total, making our total number when traveling come to eight.  You know what they call eight tall, white people in Senegal?  The center of attention.  We’ll be walking entertainment for just about everyone.  It’s possible that we’ll be able to convince people that John is a Naar, which is what Mauritanians are called, current facial hair situation pending.

In celebration of their visit, and also to spice things up on this here blog, we’ll be peer pressuring one of our visitors to guest write a blog post chronicling their time here.

Although we probably lead into every blog with this, I feel compelled to write it again… It’s crazy how fast this month has flown by! (this perception is likely fueled in the blog-arena, by the fact that I posted “November in Review” at least a week late, and "December in Review" is going up a few days early... Merry Christmas, by the way!)

This photo has nothing to do with the text, it just makes me smile.  Note Kait's beautiful braids. I was behind the camera making a horrifyingly ugly face, and perhaps even pretending to fart.

Some of you may have recalled that about a year ago, Kait and I went with our baay on the HUGE religious pilgrimage to Touba and Mbacké.  Fastidious readers with good memories may recall that, although it was a really interesting experience last year, it wasn’t without its challenges, dangers, and near emotional breakdowns.  This year was like last year in every way, except all the bad ones.  We were able to get all the fun stuff, and none of the bad stuff for many reasons.  We speak decent Wolof now.  We avoided Touba proper, being satisfied to just stay in Mbacké and do Baay Fall Maggal.  Our chauffeur was an adult and didn’t throw a last minute tantrum resulting in us driving 100km after dark with no headlights.  Although Mbacké is busy, it’s nothing compared to Touba.

Also different this year was the participation of our dear friend and sitemate Kathryn Harrawood. 

We’re with Kathryn so much that we’ve taken to affectionately calling her my ñaareel, which literally means “second,” but actually means “second wife.”  If memory serves it may have begun as a way to get her out of unwanted male attention, but now it has a life all its own.  I refer to her as my second wife far more often than I refer to her as Kathryn and perhaps even Arame (her Senegalese name).  This caused a hilarious stir amongst Baay’s family in Mbacké.  In PCV circles, I can refer to “my second wife” in my most earnest voice, but people still know I’m joking.  In Senegalese circles, in which some conversation participants know second wives, have a second wife, or even are a second wife, it’s not inherently obvious that I’m joking.  In short, the majority of Baay’s family was under the impression that Kathryn was legitimately looking to become my ñaareel. They were, without exception, deeply concerned.  Their concern was not that we’re from a culture where second (not to mention third or fourth) marriages are pretty darn culturally foreign (and technically illegal) but rather that first and second wives cannot be friends.  Only an idiot would marry her friend’s husband, because that can’t do anything but destroy the friendship.  Kathryn, for her part, fueled the furor, insisting that she loved me so much that she and Kait could work it out and their friendship would be fine.  Thanks to none of us playing along the gossip (and Baay not stepping in with his deep knowledge of all participant, as well as Western culture) we were able to get hours of entertainment out of this.  Even as we were wrapping up our time in Mbacké, random family members, with whom we’d not discussed our Shakespearean tragedy were coming up to Kathryn, and in hushed tones saying, “I hear you love Idi…” 

This year, partially because we didn’t go into crazy, crazy Touba the night before Maggal, we were able to have a more in-depth, fun experience in Mbacké.  Like last year we put on our finest clothes and spent the majority of the day at our father’s Maribout’s house. 

Fancy Maggal clothes.  Bottom right is Kait and Awa Gueye, her new friend and VP of the Senegales National Assembly.

Taking a standard, somber-faced, Senegalese photo.

Boroom Ngathie Fall aka Serigne Bacc was even more on point in his hospitality this year.  After the hours of sitting indoors in a comfy, cool living room, punctuated by several short audiences with Serigne Bacc, we were ushered into a back bedroom, for VIPs only, for the outlandish lunch.  For lack of a better way of presenting the information, I’m just going to list the courses… Course 1: Grilled beef with fries and onion sauce.  Course 2: Meat (sheep?) and rice with pickled vegetables.  Course 3: Chicken and Guinea Fowl (about 6 total, for a room with 15ish people in it).  Course 4: Fruit.  (Each person given two apples, and two oranges).  Course 5: Sheep. (An entire grilled sheep, minus only the back legs, that was way, way bigger than the platter trying futilely to contain it).

All of the glorious meat, and its accoutrements, were prepared in the Serigne's kitchen (i.e. side yard). 

As a pretty enthusiastic meat fan I don’t say this lightly, but that may have been the single day in which I consumed the most meat in all of my 27 years.  It was certainly the day in which I consumed the widest variety of types of meat, especially if something in there was goat, which it very well may have been.  Last year we only got two meat courses and the fruit, so I was not prepared for the extra two meat courses.  When the bowl filled with only chickens and guinea fowls came out, I assumed that it had to be the last meat course, so I ate myself beyond physical discomfort. 

MEEEEEEAAAAAT!

This wouldn’t have been a problem had the two thirds of a goat not had some ceremonial significance.  We’re unclear on exactly what was going on, but after politely declining a piece or two, I begrudgingly accepted after seeing that everyone else in the room had taken and eaten a piece.  I had the foul luck of getting a piece that was mainly fat and connective tissue, which didn’t jive particularly well with my nausea from overeating.  I knew, without any doubt, that if I put that meat chunk in my mouth, all four previous courses would be making a return trip up the esophageal highway and be deposited very unceremoniously on the bedroom floor of a living saint.  Faux pas city.  Courtesy of admittedly ham-fisted (pun?) sleight of hand skills, I was able to dupe everyone when they looked at Serigne Bacc as he exited the room, by casually dropping the meat on the floor next to the bowl.  Yalla baax na (God is good).

Some of you may recall from last year that we do Maggal VIP style.  This year we were even bigger stuff.  In addition to Baay’s cousin, “The Captain,” who is not only a captain in the Senegalese army but also the big boss of the HUGE main fish market in Dakar, we were joined by the vice-president of the Senegalese National Assembly (analogous to US House of Representatives) who is, surprisingly, a woman, (way to go Senegal!) and some guy from TV, who performed a weird song and dance for Serigne Bacc.

Serigne Bacc’s Daara (Qur’anic school) and primary residence is in the village of Ngath, about 7km away from Guinguineo, so a lot of the people at his Mbacké house came from Guinguineo.  Included in this Guinguineo delegation were some people there representing Géo FM and Géo TV, our local stations, recording audio and video for late broadcast.  Obviously, because we tend to stand out wherever we go, they wanted to interview us.  After confirming that we speak Wolof, they interviewed me, and then Kathryn, and then Kait.  I have to admit, despite our facility with Wolof, the interviews were nonsensical.  This was partly because immediately after inquiring after our Wolof skills, the radio guy asked us questions in this approximate structure… "FRENCH French French FRENCH wolof wolof FRENCH French?"  Furthermore, this was going on outside…

So even if we could hear the questions, which we couldn’t, they were mostly in a language we don’t really understand.  We each assumed they were asking how Maggal was and what we thought about it.  We responded to the imagined question, saying that Maggal was great, Serigne Bacc was great, everyone was very happy and in peace, and our hearts were very cold (i.e. very happy).  I’m glad I don’t listen to Géo FM, because I would be embarrassed to hear how dumb I sounded.

As usual, a healthy portion of our smiles and laughs were brought to us by the animals in our life.  Happy Cat, Lady Obama, and Greta are all wonderful, wacky and weird.  Coming home is made even more special by the excited pack of animals leaping at, woofing at, mewing at, and tongue-bathing us upon our return.

Unfortunately, in our corner of Senegal, almost all of the wild animals have been killed, either directly (for food, like gazelle, or for perceived threat, like snakes) or through habitat loss, primarily in the form of aggressive deforestation.  One wild animal we do see pretty frequently is, surprising to some, hedgehogs.  We’re pretty sure that there’s a family of them that lives under Lady’s house, as the place we usually find them is inside Lady’s food bowl eating the leftover rice, fish and veggies.  This month we stumbled upon a little baby hedgehog, which was far too adorable to not pick up and go show the family.

In addition to Maggal, the other main event of our pre-Fritsche December was the Master Farmer Conference, in which all of the Peace Corps Sponsored master farmers (see previous blog post on Master Farmer program if interested) and the volunteers they work with all convene in one place to share ideas and compare results. There were about 40 master farmers and over 20 PCVs (the PCVs who recently swore in have only been in site for a couple weeks, so they weren’t invited).  All of the PCVs were ag volunteers from our stage, many of whom we hadn’t seen since PST2 and wouldn’t otherwise have had an excuse to see, so it was really great to cross paths with all of them.  My one reservation about the whole thing was that our master farmer was going to have to be away from his field for a full week at this critical time, when we’re trying to prepare him for having his first ever open field day (where we invite the community to come see all of the awesome best practices he is demonstrating on his farm, like mulching, intercropping, alley cropping, live fencing, etc). 

Master Farm snaps from before the conference.

I was scared that everything would shrivel and die in his absence, setting us back an unrecoverable distance and preventing us from having an open field day to exhibit his gardening techniques before the hot season comes around again.  Thanks to Cheikh’s hardworking wives and sons, my fears were completely assuaged.  When I went back out to Saxañ after the conference, everything was progressing well.  We remain hopeful that we’ll be able to have an open field day in early February.

Master Farm snaps from after the conference!

On our way to collecting Team Fritsche, we’ve been lucky enough to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas in Thies, with our good friend Jonathan.  It’s been 36 hours of extravagant food consumption and wonderfully comfortable (also free) accommodations.  We’re extremely grateful to have been able to spend Christmas with him, although we do miss Happy Cat.

In December...

The Biggest Challenge We Faced:  Christmas without Happy Cat.  We miss that little purrrrrmachinesnugglemonster pretty much every second we’re not with him.

The Most Exciting/Best Experience:  Since this post doesn’t include the Fritsche visit, I’m gonna say Maggal 2014.  It was a much less overwhelming time this year.  All the good things, and just about none of the bad. 

The Thing We Are Most Grateful For:  Our families' abilities to come visit us.  We’re very grateful that our families are physically, financially, and chronologically able to come see how we’re living, and to experience Senegal for themselves.  After the Fritsche visit, the Hammersleys will be joining us in February (and now it looks like even Annah and Will will be coming).

Language Factoid: Socc (pronounced “sohtch”) means “to have a cold.”  Sacc (pronounced “satch”) means to steal.  These two words came up in a semi-racist, though pretty light-hearted, joke that our father shared with us.  The gist is that a Naar (Mauritanian) goes into a store and says, “Dama socc!” meaning, “I have a cold!”  But Naars, not dissimilar from us Americans, sometimes nasalize their speech more than is ideal, so the store owner thinks he says “Dama sacc!” meaning, “I stole!”  Anyway, what results is a “Who’s on First, What’s on Second”-caliber exchange in which the Naar says repeatedly that he has a cold, and the shop owner  say repeatedly that he understands, the Naar is a thief.  The happy ending is that the Gendarme gets called and the Naar gets taken away. Get it?  Aesop’s Moral: Naars talk funny and are thieves.

In the end of December and January, we are looking forward to:

THE FRITSCHES! (and John and Miles)

Our cool season garden.  We’ve started a new vegetable peppiñeer, and excitedly anticipate what will manage to grow.  This time we’re watering half of it with well water and half with robiné water.  We want to see how founded in fact people’s belief that the robiné water is so chemical-laden (chloride, fluoride, sodium, etc) that it destroys plants is.  We’re hoping the difference is negligible, because getting well water is a pain in the butt when the water table is from 50-90 meters deep.

Other things probably, but with the Fritsche visit so imminent, it’s a bit hard to see past it!

Jamm Rekk ak Joyeaux Nöel,

Peter/Idrissa