Shannon's Queerest Space
Promoting Genderqueer, Transgender, Youth Rights, Social Justice, and Other Radicalness Since 1999
At Mamelles in Dakar, Sénégal, December 5, 1993
I spent my junior year in college in Sénégal on a program sponsored by Kalamazoo College. From September 1993 through May 1994, i and around a dozen other US American college students lived and studied (kind of) in Dakar. We lived in a beautiful house in a lower upper-class neighborhood and attended classes at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop (a.k.a., the University of Dakar). Junior Year Abroad (as Vassar calls it) was not, however, an academic experience. Classes at the Université were generally pretty lacking in any true intellectual stimulation. As with most higher education in Africa, students are expected to write down, verbatim, what the professor says and give it back on an exam. (This unchallenging academic exercise is what one of my high school teachers eloquently called, "barf-back.") Questioning what a professor says or engaging hir in any sort of meaningful debate is just not done. Plus, the Sénégalese students went on strike a couple times when we were there (giving me my first experience tasting and smelling tear gas), so classes were often not in session. While the US Americans did have a couple tutorials set up specifically for us by our program, these classes weren't nearly as good as my classes in the States, although they were better than those at the Université.
What made my time in Dakar the most valuable to me was the other stuff i did while there. I traveled to a couple different places in the country, including my hometown's "sister city," Saint-Louis. I got to stay with two families outside of the capital, and i did lots of running around Dakar itself. I became relatively proficient in everyday Wolof, and my French improved. I gained a deeper understanding of life in a country that is predominantly Muslim, and i marveled at how difficult it would be to survive as queer in a society that continues to deny the existence of homosexuality and bisexuality. (Wolof has no word for lesbianism. And gay men are referred to as "goor-jigeen" -- "men-women".) I definitely grew in a way that i hadn't in the US, in Haďti, or in any of the other countries i'd been to. I learned a tremendous amount about myself (like how much of a Western feminist i am and how important my queerness is to my identity) and became more independent and joyously self-reliant and self-assured than i had ever been before. Learning how to navigate through a completely different cultural terrain also made me more appreciative of the ease with which i live in and navigate through the US -- and of exactly how unconscious my US cultural learning has been.
Being from the midwest, where the nearest ocean (the Gulf of Mexico) is probably at least 800 miles away, i also really enjoyed living in Dakar, which is situated on the peninsula on the westernmost point of the African continent. Our house was a 15 minute walk (at a Sénégalese pace) from the Corniche, a series of beautiful cliffs dropping off into the waters of the eastern Atlantic. And we could get to a nice local beach in about 20 minutes on the car-rapides, Dakar’s cheapest public transportation. I had never seen the sun set over the water before, and i had never lived in a place where the ocean was so accessible. So i was bound & determined to head to the beach on Christmas day, just so i could say i’d done so. Below is the journal entry i wrote about my Christmas in Sénégal.
[Initials are substituted for the names of everyone who has not given me express permission to talk about them on my website. I've numbered some of the initials in an attempt to distinguish people from each other. Ponderous, but it's the only ethical thing to do.]
Sunday, December 26, 1993, 10:20am
Well, at least today isn't a huge let-down like the day after Christmas usually is (on those years i'm not going to Haiti [since those departure dates are always December 26th]). (God, i can't believe it's been 3 years since my 1st trip to Haiti; a year ago, we were getting ready to leave again. I wish i'd be going again. I wonder how [Bridget]'s doing today. She didn't call yesterday -- probably couldn't get thru or didn't have time. I wasn't really disappointed merely because i know she'll call when she can. And it'll be easier to talk to her today.)
A1. and i made banana akra yesterday. A1. actually did the majority of the work, though. I crushed sugar cubes with our mortar and pestle (first time i've used one of those), and i crushed up one batch of bananas. A1., however, did all of the mixing of flour and sugar and all the frying. They turned out well.
I spent the time before [we started] cleaning up the kitchen since i knew we'd need it clean to start with for another day of cooking. I washed dishes while singing Christmas carols and feeling excited that it was Christmas. I was the only one up and kept wanting to bounce people out of bed -- "Come on, everybody! Get up! It's Christmas!" Later, L., M1., A1., and i sang more Christmas carols in the kitchen while cooking, and it was a lot of fun. L. does a hilarious operatic version of "Deck the Halls."
A1. finished the banana akra at 2:30. We then headed to Mamelles [an area of Dakar along the coast]. It wasn't as great as i thought it would be [to be on the beach on Christmas day], but it was still fun. It was definitely hot -- the hottest day we've had in a while. We walked to the beach S. and K. and i had been to a few months or so ago, but there was absolutely no one there. So we judged it safer, if less desirable, to go to the other beach where all the toubabs [Wolof for "white people" or "foreigners"] were. We climbed over lots of rocks and sat down among them not quite as far [down the beach] as the other toubabs. We eventually walked to the other side of the beach (not a [long] hike at all) and sat down on some rocks there. The water felt great on our feet walking over there because it was so hot and the water was quite chilly. A Sénégalese man came over and tried to talk to us. He wasn't terribly obnoxious or anything, but we didn't exactly want company. As A1. and i discussed, it's amazing how someone here will have no qualms about approaching 2 people sitting together on a beach, whereas no one [sic] in the States would even think of doing that. There's just no concept here of privacy, personal space, or whatever. He eventually left when i told him we were going to leave soon and had to "waxtaan" [Wolof for "have a conversation"] alone. I wondered if i was being rude, but he took the hint. We left shortly after that and came back here.
So we got back here, and i took a shower. We all hung out for a few hours waiting for dinner to be ready. The Family called at 7 or 7:30pm. I even got to talk to Gram, which was interesting. It's so hard to communicate with her at all on any honest level because she worries so much and has so little concept of what i'm doing here and can't hear very well anyway, much less over the phone. But she was only on for a couple minutes. (Alxamdulilay! [Arabic/Wolof for "Thank God!"]) I always feel like i'm searching for things to talk to Mark about, too. Our conversations don't flow yet. But i had a good time talking to Mom, Dad, and Colleen. I was only minimally depressed when i got off the phone with them. I miss them very very much. And it's just so hard to talk about all this [everything i'm experiencing] over the phone. Phone calls are always difficult here.
We sat down to a fancy dinner at around 8:30 or so. M1. had set up a candlelite dinner thing, and she even got people to serve our plates for us. It was pretty impressive. There was an enormous amount of food and we were all stuffed by the time we went to bed. H. and A1. were particularly amazed, i think [since they were visiting us from their foreign study program in Freetown, Sierra Leone, which is much more impoverished than Sénégal]. (I sat at the 4-person table with them and M2. --- and later C1. and R. joined us.) At the round table were C2., D., L., M3., M1., Pape D1., Pape D2. (who left after course #1), C2., and A2. (I don't think i forgot anyone.) It was definitely the fanciest and most memorable Christmas i've ever had. Course #1 was L.'s homemade pasta with M1.'s wine-based veggie sauce. Then we had course #2: turkey, stuffing, gravy, 3 kinds of potatoes, veggies, and Yorkshire pudding. Desert was cookies, tea, some peanut stuff that Pape D1. brought, and C2.'s chocolate mousse. Our akra came in during courses #1 and #3. Dinner took until about midnight because we stopped in between courses so M1. and her helpers could wash dishes and people could have cigarettes and we all could have a little time to digest. Personally, i was full after course #1 but it all tasted really good.
After dinner, L., H., and A1. went to bed, C1. and R. (who'd shown up for a little while) left, and the rest of us gathered up here on the roof [a second-floor terrace over the front porch of our house] to sing more Christmas carols. (The French man [our temperamental neighbor] must've loved it....) M2. set off some bottle rockets a little while later and i went to bed [...].
I wonder what i'll think looking back on this Christmas next year when i'm with my family again....
