Ken and his sister, the one sibling who lives outside of Dakar, in the village...
My good bud Boubacar with the newest baby in the Doumbia household...
Yes, my days in Parcelles… Most of the people around me spoke no English, and I speak no French and hardly any Wolof, so I tried to learn a bit of Wolof to get by. Ken was around quite a bit so he was able to translate, and two of Kens friends spoke good English so that helped this mono-lingual American get by. Joke: What do they call a person who speaks three or more languages? Polyglot (poly-many, glot-languages). What do they call a person who speaks two languages? Bi-lingual. What do they call a person who speaks only one language? American.
For Ken in Dakar it was a nice reunion. He and Naomi arrived only two days before me, after having been out of the country for 2.5 years while travelling and living all over the world including California, Las Vegas, Southeast Asia and India. Here is a link to their website and the interesting work they do...
So Kens buddies were over all the time, and he had many visitors stopping by to say hi. There is a wonderful emphasis placed on greetings in West Africa. It’s a bit formalized and ritualistic actually. I guess it’s like that everywhere in it’s own way…”Hi how are you? Fine thanx. And you? Why just great, thanx for asking!” There is one particular habit of greeting in Senegal that always I get a kick out of. A person will start the greeting by saying “Ali, nanga def” (How are you). Ali will answer “mangi fi” (I am here) and they begin the conversation. After a lull, the same person will ask again, with the same tone of voice, “Ali, nanga def” and Ali will answer with the same tone of voice “mangi fi”, as if the question had just been asked for the first time. This can be repeated 3, 4, 5 times! In America if I asked you “how are you” 5 times with the same tone of voice, as if asking for the first time, all in the span of ten minutes, you would look at me funny…
Most of the guys who were over every day, hanging out in the garage and upstairs on the balcony, drinking tea and smoking and conversing, were friends of Kens from the old days…from close to 20 years ago when Ken returned from Mali to Dakar and they all lived in an area of the city called Gran Dakar…the parallel in the bay area might be some of the rougher/more crowded areas of East Oakland, or the mission district in San Francisco: lively, loud, edgy. Those were the days when they were all young artists and students…having fun, chasing girls…like young men the world over…Now some married, some single, some with jobs, some without, some with kids, some without, but all, always, with dreams of love…speaking of love, and dreams…here is a poem…
By e.e. cummings
i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
I quickly bonded with one of Kens friends named Boubacar, initially because he spoke the best English after having lived in The Gambia for ten years. His last name is Keita, which is one of the royal names in the Mande culture, his father having immigrated to Senegal from Guinea. One of the first things I realized about Dakar is that almost everyone’s family comes from somewhere else. And not just from the countryside, which is to be expected, considering that arguably the biggest social upheaval in modern world history was the 20th century migration of the human race from primarily rural village agricultural life to urban dwelling wage earning working class poor (and that’s in the first world, second world, third world, etc.). No, many of the people I met in Dakar had immediate family roots outside of the country, primarily Mali and Guinea. Dakar being the biggest city in the area, it makes sense. In fact, one of the really remarkable things about the neighbourhood in which resided the Doumbia household was the sheer ethnic and national diversity. Starting with our house, which is Bamana in a primarily Wolof culture. Across the street was a young family of Fulani immigrants from Guinea. One house down was a group of young men from the Congo who were working in Dakar. One was a judo instructor who found more opportunity in Dakar than his own country. And around the corner was an internet café full of young Nigerian men. When I saw that I said to myself, “Self, so that’s where all those scam Nigerian emails are coming from! Internet cafes in the suburbs of Dakar!” You know the emails, they start with “My father is the oil minister of Nigeria and he has 25 million dollars but he has to leave the country because the president wants to kill him but he cant take the money so please send me your bank account info so I can put the money in your account and we will meet outside the country and you can keep half and give me back the rest.” Yeah, right.
Kens sister Marietou had a young woman staying in her room with her. Her name was Fatoumata and she was Susu from Guinea, or Guinea CONAKRY (which is the capital city) as they proudly like to say, to distinguish their country from the neighboring Guinea Bissau. Guinea (CONAKRY) is interesting because the first post-colonial president (Sekou Toure) virtually closed the country to the outside world for decades in an attempt to preserve, protect and develop indigenous African cultures without foreign influence. To hear people discuss the wisdom and effectiveness of this strategy is a fascinating glimpse into the African world view...some say it was brilliant, others say it was repressive and retarded the development of the country…So this young woman had moved to Dakar to start a career as a beauty technician, with an emphasis on hair care. Senegal is known for having developed the most intricate and beautiful hair styles for women. Weaves, micro braids, you name it. Fatoumata was a vivacious and sweet young woman who really captured for me the essence of modern young Africa. The Africa that is NOW, not the images westerners have from the media. “Perception is always five years (or more) behind reality” they say…and its true. If the last image I have of Africa is a picture of Masai young people in Kenya all dressed up in traditional clothes, jumping up and down with spears in the village for the National Geographic magazine, then that’s what I will ALWAYS think of when I think of Africa. Never mind that when the tourists and their cameras leave after paying the Masai for the right to take the photos, those very same Masai change back into jeans and tee shirts, grab a cigarette and a cell phone, hop into the car for the ride back to Nairobi, and party in their friends apartment that night while watching CNN report the war in Iraq!
Fatoumata had left her family in Guinea to make a whole new life in another country! She had made a friend (Marietou) and was staying with the family as if it was no biggie. In the Doumbia house people come and go quite frequently. There is always a bed to sleep on and a spare spoon with which to eat when the big bowl full of food arrives…just the way it is. Of course, like everywhere, when guests overstay or take advantage, people feel put out and grumble to themselves, but what I noticed is that in Africa people are simply more TOLERANT. More tolerant of each other in traffic, on the street, in the home. It's not that the pace of life is slower, it's just more tolerant. One night I stayed up with Marietou and Fatoumata and the three of us just relaxed and talked and laughed about life, the universe, and everything…and it just struck me how stereotypes and preconceived notions are so limiting. Our minds want to understand things, so we tend to put borders around an idea and call it “understood”. Better to say “I have no idea what that is! It’s full of diversity and surprises and nuances, so let me just empty my mind and let it reveal itself to me….”
On my third day in Dakar we went back to the airport and I retrieved my two duffel bags which had finally arrived. One of the bags had a broken zipper and had been taped back together…amazingly not one single thing went missing. One of my first tasks was to give Yai Fanta my gift of two large coffee table picture books of America…I figured it would be nice to have them lying around the house so people could see life in America through hundreds of photos. I find that just as Americans have a limited idea of Africa, so do Africans about America…although that is changing for the simple fact of the internet and satellite television. Americans still don’t pay much attention to anything east of DC, west of SF, or south of the border (although that too is changing fast), but the rest of the world is sho nuff paying attention to US. Good idea, considering the USA has an army base in roughly half the countries on the planet, and is planning (hate to break it to you) on starting a small tactical NUCLEAR war in Iran (after, of course, they engineer another 9-11 style inside job, war pre-text, “terrorist attack”, this time sponsored, of course, by IRAN. G dubs parting gift to the world.
As for being an American in a 90 per cent Muslim country, considering the world situation, i never felt one iota of ill ease. Only one time, in a barber shop, did i see posters lionizing Osama Bin Laden as the Muslim messiah. I saw more references to soccer stars in Europe and hip hop music from America spray painted around town than anything considered "radical Islam".
Well, thats enuf for today. Soon i will start a section called Senegal A to Z...full of little descriptive anecdotes and ramblings. Peace ya'll.
