Hi everyone! Hope all is well back in
the USA. Several things to report on since my last blog post...
I wanted to announce that I placed into
Advanced French 2!! Wooot! I'm very excited about that fact because I
was able to sign up for as many French classes as I wanted too. I
have a couple of my friends in that class as well so it happened to
work out very well.
As of now I'm trying to get over a
stomach problem. It can best be explained as follows:
Yesterday half of the CIEE students and I took a
trip to the Baoba center (a cultural center here in Dakar) and we had
the opportunity to learn a lot about Senegalese culture including how
to “eat around the bowl.” It happened to be the first time I
tried “eating around the bowl” and I found it to be quite
challenging. Although eating around the bowl may sound like an easy
task, there are actually several rules/techniques that should be
followed in order to have an enjoyable eating experience. These were
all explained to us before we actually sat down to eat and just in
case sometime in the future a Senegalese family offers you a place
around the bowl, here are some things you should keep in mind:
- The bowl is usually placed on a mat on the floor; avoid walking on the mat with your shoes on.
- Wash you hands before eating (a bowl of water will usually be provided)
- Use only your right hand for eating
- Wait until he host gives the signal to start eating
- Eat from a pie-shaped area right in front of you, starting from the outside and working in towards the center of the bowl. This is your territory. Don't invade other people's territory!
- Don't go right for the meat, fish or vegetables; begin with asimple handful of rice, then help yourself to what yourself to what's in the middle on the second handful.
- Don't smell food before putting it in your mouth. This gives the impression that you expected it to be rotten.
- Don't say how good the food is after the first bite. It's as though you did not expect it to be. Wiat until you have almost finished to compliment the cook.
- If a vegetable is in your pie-shape, take a piece and push it towards the center of the bowl for others to eat.
- Don't stare at people while they're eating
- If someone comes in while you are eating, invite them to join you.
- Lick all the rice off your hand before washing up with soap and water.
- Get up and leave the bowl when you have finished.
- Don't step over people lying on the mat or step over the bowl.
If you follow all of these rules, I'm
sure your Senegalese host will be utterly impressed by your knowledge
of Senegalese eating. Nevertheless, I'd suggest practicing a bit
before attending a dinner as it is quite difficult to remember all of
these rules at once when you're trying to remember how to say “The
food is delicious and I'm full” in wolof at the same time. Leaving
the bowl is quite a process, and it is necessary to master how to do
so before a meal unless you plan on eating all day lol.
After you have been eating for awhile
and start feeling full, you announce your intention to leave the bowl
by saying that the food is delicious. The host will then try to
convince you to eat more, and will say something like “Mange Mange
or Lekkal waay.” If you want to leave the bowl, you will say “I'm
full” in Wolof, (Suurnaa/Doyna). Saying “Doyna” is very
important because it is the polite way to leave the bowl. Also, if
you do not announce you are full, the senegalese host will continue
to insist you eat no matter how much you've already eaten. Thus, it
is very important to not take a Senegalese host seriously in this
matter, and to stop when full. Otherwise, they will keep insisting
and you will keep eating and in the words of our host director
“You'll die” lol. Let's avoid that outcome.
As for my personal experience, I was
hesitant to eat around the bowl at first because there was a huge
fish torso in the middle of the bowl. I asked if I could eat the
dish, and the guy assured me other than the fish the dish was
vegetarian. At this point I'm pretty sure there had to be some kind
of chicken or beef bouillon in the rice because my insides are
tearing each other apart like mexican luchadores. I also woke up with
a bit of a sore throat this morning so I'm hoping I'm not catching
something serious. I have to admit though, I'm pretty glad these seem
to be the only side effects of my meal because another girl in my
room is suffering from vomiting and diarrhea from something she ate
earlier that day and my whole room has been worried sick.
I suppose something a bit more
lighthearted should follow that bit of information.
On Wed, I
actually had the wonderful opportunity to see the Atlantic ocean from
the Dakar coastline...and it was magnificent. I was definitely taken
aback by two things:
- The scene, as it was very beautiful.
- The fact there were no women on the beach, only men, and that everyone (and when I say everyone I mean everyone) on the beach happened to be exercising.
This of course, has a lot to do with
something I mentioned in an earlier post, but I'll mention it again
just in case you forgot-- a women is looked down upon if she goes out
too much, especially at night. Just for the record, this is the main
problem I face with Senegalese culture. The blatant inequality
between women and men, and how it is accepted as tradition. I understand that it is important to not judge, and that all
belief systems have some sense of logic working behind them that it
is important to try to understand, but I will not compromise my own
belief in saying that I agree with the lack of women's rights in Senegal. Don't
get me wrong, women are well respected here, but there are a lot of
liberties that are not afforded to them simply because they are women
and they are expected to be modest and pious. I have no problem with
a society that wants its youth to be pious and modest, that makes
perfect sense; however, it becomes a problem when only women are held
to this standard and men are allowed to act and dress however they
wish (generalization). If Senegal held the same standards for men as it did for women, I would have no problem with the value of
piousness. I'm just saying, it's a double standard because it takes
two to tango. There are several other things related to this topic
that bother me, so you might be reading a lot about those in other
blogs but for now I'll move on.
The beach itself was unlike any other
beach I've seen because the shoreline was covered with black
cobblestones. The water was terribly cold too but apparently warmer
than the pacific (as I was informed by USA northerners). I dipped my
feet in and after they numbed, the feeling became rather pleasant. The
group I came with only stayed for a moment and on our way back,
Rosie, Tasha, and I walked through an artist's village. There was a
german girl there and since we were curious about what she was doing
amongst all the artists we stopped and talked to them. The german
girl turned out to be a german architect who was constructing a
building for the artists. Eventually the conversation switched back
and forth between a sales pitch, and an introduction to the history
of the Mouride brotherhood (Amadou Bamaba happened to be the prophet they were
following). One artist who was sporting some dreadlocks, told us a
couple of stories about the prophet and showed us pictures of him and
his descendants. Afterwards he walked us back to the CIEE study
center and we promised we'd come by on a Sunday when the village
would be active with artists trying to sell their paintings.
I apologize for the lack of detail in the last paragraph, but I was getting tired of writing lol. Have a nice day everyone!
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