Week 2 The first Homestay

Blog 2
I am so so happy here all the time. I am also really sweaty here. I haven't stopped sweating since we landed in Dakar. Showers at the center have become my best friend and I miss them tremendously. Last week we spent our first week at our first homestays. So far it has been great and exciting and difficult. We have such a limited language base but it's improving every day and very quickly. I have been purposely trying to forget my Wolof because I'm already mixing it up too much with my limited Hindi and Tibetan and French. My homestay is an interesting can of worms. Each volunteer lives with a different family that speaks their respective languages and everyone's living conditions are so different. My household is more of a compound with a few homes and a courtyard and my host family and the extended family all live there. There are a ton of kids in my family but it is hard for me to know which kids belong to MY Neenee (Mother) specifically. They named me Adama, after Adam from the Garden of Eden but half the time they call me Adalai. (I find it amusing that I have two Hebrew names that are so similar in nature... Ilana = Tree and Adama = Earth). The kids are raised communally and the women of the households share the responsibility of bathing and caring for them. One of the things I love about Senegalese communities is this sense of shared... umm.... everything.... even food. For our meals, they are pretty much all rice based dishes with sauces and maybe fish and usually some vegetables. We all sit on the floor around a giant metal bowl and we all just dig in. Most of the women in my family use their hands but my family gives me a spoon to use. I'm very glad of this for several reasons... I'm sure you can use your imagination to understand why (hint... we don't have toilet paper). Two of my baby siblings are sick with fevers but luckily, I'm strong and healthy and I can supplement my diet with multivitamins (and medicine if necessary). Unfortunately, my baby siblings cannot so I'm very worried about them.

I have not had problems living with the culture and family nor have I had (too many) issues with homesickness... yet.... but I had a bit of a breakdown about language. I have to keep reminding myself that no one speaks a new language after only one week but it's hard to take it to heart when your Neenee is yelling at you about something and you have no idea what she's saying and there is no french or english to translate. It's really difficult. I spoke to my language teacher (our LCF whose name is Hussey) and she is going to have some one on one sessions with me. Languages have always been easy for me and I'm emotionally having a hard time swallowing how difficult this language has been. I think if there weren't pressure to master it in 2 months, I think it would be different. But I'm determined and I'm going to do what it takes!

A few days into our homestay the 3 other volunteers in my village and I had a really amazing experience. There was a street that was blocked off and there was music and all kinds of craziness. Hussey asked us in the evening after our language class if we wanted to go. Of course we had to go! Who would turn down music and a fun new experience!!??? The wide and sandy street where the event was taking place was blocked off on either side with a large curtain. It was 200 CFAs to get in (about 50cents). We paid and went in and sat in the plastic chairs that lined the street. There were mats on the ground too on which people would sit. There was a group of around 7 men standing at the tom-tom drums banging away. There were two guys with mics singing as well. It was so fantastic. After about 10 minutes or so of watching this music, there was a very tall man dressed in a crazy traditional costume with feathers and loin cloth and bright crazy colors and I have no idea how else to describe it. His entire face was covered in black and red facepaint, he had sharp pointy costume teeth and had his tongue sticking out with a leaf on it. He walked very slowly and intimidatingly with scary knives in each hand. As he walked by, he would turn his head slowly back and forth staring people down then leave. Soon I realized that there were four men in similar costumes to his and they would walk back and forth patrolling the audience. As time went on, the audience grew and it was almost entirely comprised of young kids most without parents there. (Senegalese raise free range children). The men in scary costumes gradually increased the frequency of their visits and would stay in the "arena" for longer and longer periods of time. They also began dancing in spurts interchanging dance and scaring and hissing at the kids and getting them (the kids) all riled up. There were two mounds of sand in the middle and a bucket of water. Someone splashed a little water out of the bucket near the mounds and the guys in costumes took their knives and stuck them into the mounds. Soon they were all dancing and it was so beautiful and amazing and the guys would go around to the different groups of kids and dance and get them to shout and clap and cheer. There was also a man on stilts dressed in the shiniest brightest clothes you could imagine and was walking and dancing on stilts over and through the crowd. It was truly amazing. I had 3 Senegalese children literally sitting on my lap and another little girl was playing with my hair. The girl who was playing with my hair was chewing on a stick (which is a very common thing here.... they call them chew sticks) and one of the guys came up to her, hissed and glared at her, grabbed the stick out of her mouth and put it in the sand mounds. It was really very funny. A little bit later, another one of the guys in costume was parading a little boy around the arena. He looked about 8 or 9 years old. The “actor” was making him shake everyone's hand an apologize to everyone individually. They took him over to where the bucket of water is and pretended to beat him and then made him dance in front of everyone. Afterwards they made him wash his head in the bucket of water. Then they let him go. I asked Hussey what was going on and she said that this is what they do when children don't pay the 200CFA to get in. It was so fun and such a great event for the kids of the village. Everyone was laughing and having a great time and then everything just stopped very suddenly. It was prayer time. After about 5 minutes, they resumed their dancing and singing and drumming and this time there were 4 more really tall Senegalese men dressed as women. They were dancing too and it was so fun and so great. It ended finally around 8:45.
Until next time...