Songs of a Disco Hut

(I don't know why, but we have meeting huts in Thies and Kedougou dubbed The Disco Hut. I think this is probably just a PC thing, but I kind of hope not. This is about the Disco Hut of the Gou.)

Track 1: RESPECT- Aretha Franklin
Girls' Leadership Camp 7/26

Awa, probably my favorite Senegalese woman, descended upon the Hut to run this shindig. We invited about 20 middle and high school girls from a scholarship contest in the Gou to participate. Some had scholarships, some were married, all could benefit. Awa transformed a whispering self-conscious gaggle of girls into smiling and loud women. By using examples from her own life of things she'd gone through like them, she could empower these girls way better than any toubab could. She's survived a young arranged marriage, sexual assauls, and roadblocks all along the way when she just wanted to go to school and make her own choices. Now she's happy and successful (not that PC pays that well..) and chose her own husband in the end. Awa is an example of amazing triumph with a light about her that makes you love her right away because you subliminally know this all about her.

The girls were great participaters and acted out fabulous skits and everything. They broached all manner of subjects: family obligation, how to stay in school, harassment from anyone but especially teachers (who are infamous for shopping for their female students), available life choices, supporting each other, feminism in Senegal... Many things of course don't have solutions, but it's just as important to Start these conversations.

Track 2: IT'S RAINING MEN- Weather Girls
House Meeting and Farewell Party for COSers 7/27

After a feast of freshly slaughtered pig (in which I have yet to participate but am Truly on the brink) in every form, we lay around holding our shocked and overstuffed distended village-bellies, moaning, and happy. A bunch of Guinean PCVs were visiting as well. We were about to call it a quiet night... but this Allah did not will. Thirty seconds of wind and we were up from our candlelit hammocks, running to grab sheets off the clothesline and bring beds into the Disco Hut (because it has more rain coverage than the other structure.) We moved like frenzied ants and impressed ourselves by actually making it before the hard rains came. Then the dark and stormy night raged outside while we had a slumber party in the hut of soggy satisfied volunteers, 2-per-ill-equipped-beds and no space in between. Once in a while, Gujo (our dog whose name is Pulaar for "theif") or Henry (our new dog) came in to wet-dog-shake or drop off a pile of bloody pig skin. Perhaps not your average sleep-over. Better!

Track 3: LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX- Salt n' Peppa
AIDS NGO meeting 7/28

Senegal's AIDS count: 1%. Kedougou's: 8%. We have an apparently energetic migrant population and sizeable prostitute community. Now, we have grant $ to do our best to combat these forces. The meeting, run by Matt, hosted NGO's and anyone doing anything to teach about AIDS- to see who to train more, what they're doing now, who could/would use more funds, what methods would work... It was the preliminary meeting of many to come, but it went well. I just tried to understand as much as I could while mostly thinking of slogans we could use in the future. "Wataa Sodu SIDA!' = 'Don't Buy AIDS" (re: prostitution). "Voulez-vous transmitter avec moi?" "Preserve ta sensation? Preserve ta sense! Preservatifs: Pour Preserver La Vie." ... Unfortunately I don't think everything translates, like: "Wear a condom: Everyone's Doing It" or "Don't Have Sex with Miners" --meaning someone who MINES since they're major carriers in the area, but also because of the baby-bride phenomenon. Clearly, it was an eventful meeting for me.

Track 4: HELLO, GOODBYE- Beatles
COS Discussion of floor of a gutted Disco Hut 7/29

The room was Alexa's Opium Den... and it was Robyn's and Amy's. They're all leaving. We looked up past our knees at the haphazard hatch ceiling. Alexa noticed for the first time her old friend's name graffitied on a beam. It was his hut too. Now it's mine. For a while, at least. Usually, it seems like it will be for an eternity, but someone also a flash.

Dorm rooms, streets, and restaurants you leave... You know the feeling of unintentionally leaving something of yourself in them... The sad fact of the invisibility of this piece drives into you like a stake that won't stop until it's gone all the way through you and come out on the other side. That place was YOU, your pain, your thoughts, your LIFE, it held so much, you held each other... It boggles your mind that it could exist in a similar capacity for someone else. You can't admit it's like an old love being with someone else. It's just a place, after all.

I think this dischord must multiply fanatically for places, for example, in Africa. They're not recyclable dorm rooms but tiny unique pieces of a corner of the world untouched by anyone you know in your previous lives. Stakes are higher. They hold more sweat, tears, soaring passion.

It's two years and many tracks away, but I'm a little afraid to leave this place of extremities, this room, this Disco Hut.