My favorite experience of Senegal was daily interactions with people in the house and on the block. Greeting all the members of the Doumbia house first thing in the morning. Going over to Fahjop and Amijops house for cafe touba. Their house had an open air courtyard in the middle, which was paved with tile and used as a clothes washing area. They ran a clothes washing business, and employed their daughters who apparently didn't go to school. As fun as it was to be there with them, laughing and hanging out, it saddened me that the girls were missing school and all the opportunities a school education brings. They wash clothes by hand in big buckets and hang it all to dry on the roof. Then they iron the clothes using a non electric iron that is filled with red hot coals. Yeah, COALS. Another style is to heat up two cast iron irons (so THAT'S how the iron got its name, duh!) on a metal plate sitting on top of a fire and rotate them as they cool. (The iron filled with coal has a wood handle, the solid cast iron iron needs to be held with an oven mitt). Sometimes i did my own laundry and hung it on the roof...but on our roof there is no clothes lines so we had to hang it over the roof side walls using sandy stones to hold the clothes down...which reminds me of the sheep. Our house had a resident sheep. Not a goat, a sheep. Odd how singular and plural are the same for sheep. One sheep, 54 sheep. Seems like it should be one ship, 54 sheep, or something like that. So this ship/sheep was tied up under the outdoor back stairs leading up to the second floor. Once a week Salif took the ship sheep to the ocean for a bath. Right into the waves you go, and then a detergent scrub to clean all the dried shit and stuff in your hair, and then a nice salt water rinse and yer good to go, back under the stairs with ya. Ken said the sheep serves as a repository for all the negative energy that enters the house. Plus, when Tabaski rolls around you don't have to pay a premium for a sheep to slaughter, you already got one. Tabaski is a Muslim holiday that commemorates the willingness of the Hebrew patriarch Abraham to slaughter his son Issac, and God replacing Issac with a sheep. Btw, Saddam Hussein was hanged on Tabaski. That's called sending a message. The sheep eventually got shipped to the roof where it was tied up in a corner. So when i hung my clothes i made sure to place them out of the reach of the sheep's mouth because sheep will eat clothes. One day someone moved the sheep and tied it up next to my clothes, and the sheep ate some of my clothes. Nasty. After that i just paid Fahjop and Amijop whatever totally underpaid overworked fee that they charged for their clothes cleaning labors.
With a cuppa cafe touba in my hand i got to shoot the Wolof breeze with the neighbors who always seemed to be on the street with me. I mean, think about it. When you go outside of your house in America you are lucky to see a neighbor, and luckier still if they wave to you, and its a miracle if you know their names. Here it was like a daily street party. So i would entertain the kids, laugh with the folks...but it was easy for me because i knew i was leaving so i could experience all that on a superficial level. After awhile i noticed that in fact people were interacting in very, how should i say, structured and conventional ways. Sort of like the way high school is. You know how it be: The white kids hang out on the steps, the black kids hang out over by the C building, the latinos meet by the cafeteria, the asians go to the library, the punkers find some dark hole, the hippies climb the fence to go smoke weed in the park, the jocks all eat at Mickey D's...etc. To break that model is practically impossible, unless like me you just breeze in like a visitor from mars and do whatever the freak you feel like doing. Don't even KNOW the rules to know what to break and not to. I noticed that many neighbors didn't greet each other, or if they did it was perfunctory...they have to live together for years. Maybe they don't even speak the same language. Maybe they are different religions. Its a minefield of potential conflicts and miscommunication. Best to move slowly, cautiously, avoid problems, feel out the situation, be guarded and respectful of each others space. But not THIS cowboy. I was like, ya HOO-HOO...just my god given job. Shake shit up. Sing Hallelujah with the Muslim children, you know, the Leonard Cohen version. As Jesus said, i am respecter of NO MAN. I used to be one of these people that said
"i respect all religions."
One day in the garage someone asked me what was my religion and i said i have no religion and Ken said
"He respects all religions" and i snorted
"No, actually i respect NO religions" and Ken gave me a look like "Whaaaaaaaaaat???"
I used to wonder: if all the religions claim to be the truth, then SOMEONE is lying. The question, i thought, must be, which one is telling the truth? Which one is right? Like a quiz, like the show "who wants to be a millionaire." Remember that South Park episode where everyone is in hell and satan says
"Right. Welcome to Hell" and everybody starts shouting out
"Wait i'm not supposed to be here i'm christian/muslim/jewish/buddist/hindu/native american/pagan/wiccan etc.?" and Satan says
"Oh yeah...the answer to that question. Let me look in my guidebook here...it says, lessee, oh, MORMON was the right answer. Sorry! Now right this way..."
So then i figured out, wait, they are ALL lying! Or as the great Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji said
"the truth is like a post rooted deep in the ground, and everybody is trying to pull it towards themselves..."
That's my story and i'm sticking to it.
