17. News of the village

24 August, 2015. Mecca.  

My host dad, who is also my Toxoma/namesake left Dar Salaam this morning to go to Mecca. He's going to Mecca! (!) 

L ro R: Village Chief Mamadou Minté, my toxoma Ousmane Minté, and his newest baby girl, Aminata Minté.

Pretty incredible thing for someone from such a small village, and such humble beginnings to make the trip. This trip is clearly an inspiration for people here. I am inspired too, largely because here is this man, who lives every moment of his waking life in total devotion to his beliefs, and who is now accomplishing what is probably his oldest, highest aspiration. The funding for the trip is coming from a Jaxanké woman who immigrated to France. He was selected out of all of the other hopeful imams in Kédougou because he is widely respected, with a reputation for being a hard worker and pious Muslim. I would obviously concur here. He also, along with 9 other Kédougou imams, met with president Mackey Sall when he visited Kédougou last year. They chatted in Pulaar.

Writing a speech in Jaxanké transliterated using the Arabic script onto a wooden tablet known as a walaa. The ink he is using is made by pounding and boiling the pulp of mango tree wood.  

Mecca! I can only imagine that he must be nervous. This will be his first time on an airplane and his first time out of this corner of West Africa.  I still get butterflies when I travel internationally despite having done it more than a dozen times. Yet he seemed as cool as a cucumber, as usual, albeit cheerful to the point of glee. I watched him motor down the road through Kédougou from his dad's house, where he ate lunch, towards the bus station. People, mostly old ones, came out of practically every compound in the neighborhood to shake his hand and whisper blessings. Before he left I gave him my best attempt at a string of Jaxanké blessings/prayers and handed him an American twenty-dollar bill, asking him to get me something, anything in Mecca. We will see what happens. I am thrilled for this man who has shown me nothing but generosity and goodness since I arrived, almost 2 years ago now. 
Allah mu siila diyala!

This picture has appeared on here before. Tigida, Hawa, Ousmane ( my toxoma), and little Youssoupha, with Boubacar and Omar Standing. All part of my host family. 

More news.

It has been raining raining raining. Look at how full the well next to my demo garden is. This well was bone dry from March to June this year. 

This has left many of my little eggplants underwater, as there is basically nowhere for the water to go. 

Other big news is my parents sent me a package with, among other things, a big bottle of Siracha in it. I presented it to my host dad, describing it as a pepper sauce. Ok, he said. 'Is it spicy?'

'A little bit,' I said. A man faati kendé

He tried some.

'I think you got the wrong one, this is tomato sauce.'

Not spicy but still widely enjoyed. We KO'ed the bottle in about 5 days. 

Now. Here are some thoughts:

Life in an Unceasingly Social, mostly Non-Literate Society.

I find myself experiencing certain social conventions living in a small, traditional African village that I can only describe as, and ascribe to, the title of this short essay.

One example is in regards to meal times. Eating meals has an inverse social function as we mostly experience in the 'west.' (I don't want to be punctilious here, you know what I mean; developed world, rich countries.)

When someone in Marin says something like, "Hey, lets get lunch," or, "How about we get a cup of coffee," the implication is a social exchange, the food or beverage is a vehicle for an encounter. Also, dinner, I would argue, is in American culture an inherently social time; dad is home from work, kids are getting a bite to eat before diving back into homework or social networking. The family gathers together around a table and there is at least some degree of ceremoniousness about it. There are obviously plenty of exceptions to this. I can think of many American families that have all but abandoned group, sit down dinners, but this is still the ideal, if not the norm. The importance of dedicated mealtimes is even more intact in Europe.

A meal in American or Europe might even be seen as a break from an otherwise a-social, work oriented life. You get together to talk, and the act of eating together catalyzes this encounter.

Conversely, in Dar Salaam, mealtimes are one of the only times when people are silent. All day, conversation, family life, work, rest, gossip, and leisure seamlessly flow together. The chatter is truly non-stop. But not during meals. They bear little resemblance to the American, or especially European experience of a drawn out, social experience.

In Dar Salaam you don't sit casually at a table, sipping a beer and nibbling on a salad, talking and laughing, telling stories, sipping wine. Nobody lingers at the table (or around the bowl for that matter) after the meal has finished, chatting.

Dining in the shade of a termite mound. 

Nope. For one thing the setting of a meal can be basically anywhere. There is no social pretense regarding the location where a meal will occur. There is no 'dining room' in any household here. There is not even any single space that is preordained with the equivalent social-eating function as a 'dining room.' A meal can occur almost anywhere. More often than not it is simply a piece of ground; perhaps an open space in a field if work is underway, perhaps under a tree, perhaps a doorstep, or if it is raining, a crowded hallway. The place where you eat is purely incidental, because that is all you are doing; eating.

You crouch at the bowl, extend your right hand and, along with 10 or more other hungry people, hurriedly extract handfuls of rice, coos coos, or some other kind of mush, mixed with a splash of extremely hot leaf or peanut sauce. If you are particularly hungry that day, you can't ask for a bigger portion. You just eat faster. On some days the bowl is clean in about a minute. Often times, as the food is nearing depletion, each person fills their mouth (squirreling away globs of rice in their cheeks), then grabs a last handful as the bowl empties and stands up, finishing that last handful of food on their own and licking their hand clean.

Eating is a quick interlude in a village life that is otherwise ceaselessly social. It is a silent endeavor, with all eyes raptly attentive to the rapidly depleting food in the bowl. When the meal is over a young talibé (Koranic student/farm laborer) will grab the bowl and lick it completely clean while bringing it back to the women to be washed.  Any pretense that the meal's location may have had as a specific space intended for eating disappears instantly, and it reverts to a hallway or a soccer field or a courtyard. Life regains its ceaseless sociality as people gather after the meal in the shade of the mosque to linger and chat, or convene under a tree next to their cornfields.

So eating is not a social occasion. I am tempted to theorize about why this is the case, and an inversion of our western practice of socializing-eating.
One guess would be to ascribe it to the reality of agricultural scarcity, which has born a fairly limited culture of food. I mean the food is good, but it is repetitive and sometimes not particularly plentiful.
 It is also possible that the Jaxanké culture of religious piety emphasizes simple meals. Either way, we don't linger over meals here, because there is little to linger over. There are no hors d'oeuvres or aperitifs. You eat quickly and silently. I try to remember that it's just food; it's not going to change my life. And you whisper Bismillaih, ('Bon appetit,' but with a religious  significance) every time you are about to start eating, and Allhumdililai, 'thanks be to God,' every time you've eaten, even if you are not totally full, because there are always people with less.

I've also been thinking about the act of being alone. Of taking time to be by one's self, with one's own thoughts. Hanging out and reading or writing or even just zoning out. This is not something that people here generally do. And like the title of this essay might imply I think it has a lot to do with the general condition of non-literate life. 
And non-literate life is another thing I am trying to think about. It is kind of hard to imagine. For one thing, not knowing how to read means that you don't really even understand the concept of sitting and reading, and letting your mind be absorbed by a subject matter that is neither here nor now, but essentially a diversion into a realm of abstract, far off thoughts. 
Ok, so if you were a villager in Dar Salaam you wouldn't understand what reading is like. But it is even deeper than that. You also wouldn't understand what a book is. 
What?
OK I know that this sounds extreme, but bear with me. Obviously people can identify a physical book. But in this context it is just an object. There is no concept of the (potential for) contents of such a book and what realms of thought and imagination it may lead to. It then follows that you don't really understand what people are doing when they sit alone and read or write for a couple hours.

I try sometimes to explain what I am reading about, but it is really incredible how much cultural knowledge goes into the reading and understanding of almost any book. I reread A Confederacy of Dunces a little while ago. My host mom inquired what it was about. I realized how ridiculous it would be to try to explain: "Well it's set in the french quarter of New Orleans, quite a scene. Ignatious J. Reilly is an overweight, blundering, unemployed guy in his mid 30's who's philosophical guide is the Medieval philosopher Beotheus. He is given the imperative to find a job, and the situations that ensue are some of the funniest in American literature. " 

Even if I can find the vocabulary to literally express these things, there is so much to explain: What is New Orleans? What does Medieval Mean? Why doesn't he just farm like everyone else?  And honestly A Confederacy of Dunces would be one of the easier stories to explain to my village, at least in simple terms: "A fat guy who isn't good at doing stuff tries to find a job because his mom needs him to."
The point is I have never been more aware of the vast array of things that are more or less baseline knowledge in western education, and how this basic knowledge allows us to enjoy so much interesting culture.

There is, of course, a school in Dar Salaam, where students do gain some degree of literacy in the Arabic of the Koran. However, studying in this context is almost never a solitary undertaking. The Koranic reading sessions take place with all the students together around a fire, or in the pale light of a solar charged lantern while it's raining. All the students are together, and each one reads aloud to his/her self passages of the Koran from worn out copies of the book, or from verses written on wooden tablets called waalas. 

Studying the Koran is necessarily done in a group, and necessarily done aloud. Not verbalizing your reading is grounds for disciplinary action in these study sessions.  The effect is a high-pitched multilayered drone. Very different from the sound of a library in the US. It is exceedingly rare to see an individual sitting by themselves reading silently except in the case of my host dad/toxoma (namesake), who is the premier scholar in the village. But even in his case it is a fairly public act, people come by to watch him work, and most of what he is doing is translating Koranic verses into Jaxanké, which, transcribed via the Arabic script, he writes on a waala and reads during group prayer sessions at the mosque.

When I sit in my room and read (which I must admit I do a rather lot) people often think it is strange. They assume I am sick, or lonely, or perhaps tired or angry. I sometimes hear these conversations taking place outside of my hut, no matter how often I explain that I am studying.

I could easily imagine that this cultural attitude, of a constantly social work-life blend, originates structurally: If there is a shortage of labor you can't justify sitting around alone. 

This could partially explain it. I represent a previously unknown entity in Dar Salaam, as a westerner, and the first Peace Corps volunteer the village has hosted. What I mean to say is that (SPOILER WARNING) I am not actually a farmer. I really enjoy working with farmers, and I do regularly engage in farming labor, but it is not actually my job to toil in the fields from dawn till dusk, nor do I undertake this of my own volition. 

I would probably be a better person if I had the heart to rise at 5: 15 every morning and work till 12 weeding rice and corn, but I just don't have the heart. I work a lot, but at the end of the day (or morning) it is not my responsibility to toil in the fields. This kind of puts me in an awkward place, being in a village where everybody else is doing so. But I have a lot of Peace Corps projects that I keep up with. A lot of my job is communication with people who are implementing projects based on advice and resources that I am helping to provide. If everything is up to speed, I give myself some down time.

So questions of labor may be the origin of there being little place for solitude in villages like Dar Salaam... But solitary time is even estranged when there is basically nothing happening, and nobody needs to be anywhere. During the dry season for example, when there is very little agricultural labor to be done,  there remains a strong social impulse. The default is to regroup in social settings, and the idea of sitting and studying is just a little foreign.   

So, yo. Thanks for reading! I was in a store today and saw some quaint post cards with nice pictures of 'Scènes de vie quotidienne.' I'm going to be honest, they really are portraits of what I experience on a daily basis here. I have three months left in Senegal. (More on that later.) I wish I had more time. I would love to send you one of these post cards while I am still here. So facebook me or email me your address! jgandrews4@gmail.com