Dinner at the Cartiers'

We have a voluntary home-stay program in Dakar for the week of the All-Volunteer conference and WAIST. This is when our PC superiors plead and cajole with their expat circle to let us dirty crazy PCVs stay in their huge houses. They promise we won't be too belligerent, but remind the hosts that we've been living in villages... In short, the hosts are brave saviors for agreeing to put us up. For the most part, they are amused by our enthusiasm for their washing machines and it makes them happy to feel like they're pampering us with what is a regular meal to them. Homestays are the greatest thing ever.

The only slight discord comes from our two worlds colliding. Expats form a strange air-tight community based around the swimming pool, imported peanut butter, and hired help. I don't want to sound too judgmental about this because I do think it must be incredibly hard to eschew this bubble once you've been automatically placed into it as soon as you landed in the country. It's not like they get all the language and culture trainings that we do. When they break through the barriers of worlds apart, it shows truly impressive resolve.

PCVs make up just as much of a microcosm. We strut around in our african prints, greeting people we recognize loudly, and complaining to each other about being called "toubab." "Can you believe they still call me 'white person?' Don't they know I LIVE here?" Haha, what do we expect? We also severely look down on tourists-- I'm certainly at fault for this. I suppose it's because of what we had to go through to delegate the bright-eyed pale-faced versions of ourselves to our pasts. Tourists remind us that we're not really as local as we feel; we're just crashing the party.

So anyway, when these two walks of toubab life meet in Dakar, we expect it to be like a meeting of members of the same tribe. But I at least am always surprised at how different we are.
The Cartiers were wonderful even beyond their washing machine, hot water, the best steak I can remember having, and a stock of french wine. They were a whole new class of worldly. From different continents, with their kids and kids-in-laws from different continents, they spoke more languages than I would remember to list right now. One of my favorite awe-inspiring moments was when I showed them a list from an article my mother sent. It was an annual Economist survey to find the "World's Most Liveable City." Based on things like health care, education, safety, and infrastructure, they rated 100-something cities. The top city was Vancouver and most of the other top 10's here also in Canada, or in Australia. The list I showed the Cartiers, however, was the "bottom ten." Dakar was #10. We were all slightly insulted. They scanned up the other bottoms, and kept saying, "Hey, we've lived there! And there! And there!" They had lived in or visited almost all of the bottom 10. And the top ten? "No, I don't think we've even visited any of these... Oh, I suppose we had a few days in Toronto.."

This of course made me love them. They have so many stories about lions outside their tents and fighting malaria. Except for the malaria bit, I kept thinking, "Can I BE you?" But then they'd make a comment about how bad the potato au gratin was or how all the chocolate at the huge real ridiculous grocery store is crap and it kept jolting my idea of them. I have to remember that expats living for years and years in Africa just don't live like PCVs forever. It's not a bad thing-- I don't want to either! It's just weird to take such ownership of a place but live completely differently and even removed from its people. There's no real answer to that though. They can either dish out their brie and imported duck to everyone around them, do without it at all, or go home? That doesn't seem right either. I guess it's just people like me that need to get over it. People will always have different lifestyles. It may not be fair, but as long as expats don't flaunt it in begger-kids' faces, I guess c'est la vie. We all have different personal criteria for how much we need to reach out, and that's OK too.

OK, enough of this verbosity. I meant to just describe my own ridiculousness on one (of many) occassion(s). The Cartier's dinner party.

The party consisted of expats of course. I think I've already introduced this group as fascinating people with habits that seem extravagant in context. Within their bubble, they have a whole order of social rules which I haven't even figured out yet. I know there are at least standard questions whenever you meet them: Are you on vacation/ how long have you been here (to establish seniority), what do you do (to establish superiority)... and on to check status and familiarity. I have a feeling it cuts out early for PCVs. I think we set off some alarm that shouts, "Oops! Not one of us! Looked it from the outside, but nope! Abort!"

I'm being over-analytical, but only because I'm trying to figure out how I can feel so much more comfortable squatting in the dirt around a bowl of mush and leaf sauce with 15 villagers than at a dinner party with a carpet and a table and napkins and delicious food.

It started with the impeccable french tossed back and forth, high over my head. None of the senegalese lazy, "Et les affaires quoi?" here! I felt like a Texan in the Queen's tea-room. Then I became extremely aware of my flipflops which I had not known were completely gross until then. Then I couldn't think of anything to talk about besides food. What do I do here? Uhhh... do you know what a latrine is? Well, uh, you know toilets?.. Oh did you want to talk about something else before dinner?

The food was good enough that I didn't really care about how out of place I felt. Why yes, I WILL have some more! Mr. Cartier takes it upon himself to ensure that no wine glass is ever empty, so this also helped. I found myself staring, though, at the multiple plates and utensils spread like an army before me, and I wanted to giggle. The kicker though, was the committee of beverages before me: water, the jug the water came from, wine, AND coffee (on its own plate). I really wanted to crack up. I tried to catch M's eye from across the table, but he was too busy contributing in perfect french to the conversation on genetic engineering (I'm not joking).

Why do we drink wine and coffee at dinner? The wine depresses your energy and the coffee brings it back to equilibrium to bring us back to the desired state that is as if we'd never had either. Then why do we? Not that I would turn either down; I'm just saying. When I drank the coffee out of the espresso shot glass, I slurped it loudly. Oops! This is polite to so with ataaya, but as you know, not with coffee. I couldn't stop, though. Even as I was putting it up to my lips, thinking, "Don't slurp, don't slurp," my mouth was preprogrammed to do so anyway. It was sort of fascinating and did not help my laughter suppression.

I think my favorite part was when Mr. Cartier had just topped off my wine and was stepping around me. Shifting my foot kind of opened this crack in it, so I looked down from the side of my chair. He came back and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, did I spill some wine on you?" And I started to answer, "No, you know when your foot cracks and splits open and dirt gets inside and it gets kind of sore and could get infected..." DON'T WORRY, I stopped myself early on after, "Non." But I couldn't help chuckling a bit to myself wondering how they'd react.

In conclusion, bless the homestays for all they put up with, and get this girl back in the village!

Dirty Pictures (not really. don't get excited)

from journal:

1/13, Sold soul to devil.

When I first started working on the mosquito net distributions here, I felt like we were killing our bodies, all getting dengue, skipping meals, and biking hundreds of nets over the toughest terrain... to give nets. I remember thinking that if anyone in America had any inkling of what we were doing, we'd have no trouble raising money for nets and transportation in 30 seconds flat.

Today looked very different. We had a camera crew, a twitter team, and phrases like "starbucks sponsership" floating around. Good, right?

I just went to give nets. It can be hard all-day work to do thoroughly, but we know how to do it, and do it pretty well. Enter internationally renowned camerawoman, who I'm hoping is too busy being successful to ever see this... She is INSANE! Within two minutes in her presence (LITERALLY less that 120 seconds, honestly), everyone starts to back away with wide terrified eyes.

We had to get up at 4 so we could get to the village in good camera light. Since they brought starbucks, I let that go, although I must say, no one should have to get up before the morning call to prayer. As soon as we got there, she started right in with her insanity, wiping off bewildered kids' faces with wipes (one ran off crying). Since she couldn't speak any language and was used to having a team of assistants and translators, she just didn't worry about explaining anything. She did anything to make them smile as quickly as possible.

"Tell that man he needs to move; his shadow's getting in the shot!"

"Um, hello, sir," I said. "We're all very happy to be here and thank you for coming to greet us. Thank you for helping the cause to photograph advertisements so we can raise the money to bring more nets to Senegal. We're all happy to meet you today. Also, could you just step a little over here?"

She was tapping her foot and glaring at me impatiently. Then gave me a great fake smile.

The whole thing felt so WRONG. The opposite of Peace Corps. We barely knew any names, didn't make connections, didn't joke or share our stories. We just zoomed in and stole shots of them that only made it look like a sweet and fair exchange. "Dance! I want them to dance!" Oh. My. God.

I must say, she didn't actually steal shots; she made sure her temporary assistant got everyone's official consent on paper (after the shots were taken). And the kids did seem to be having fun even if they had no idea what was going on. We did our best to convey politeness in every interaction. And it IS a good cause... OUR cause...

Maybe she sensed our discomfort, or maybe she's just used to trying to make up for her abrasive working style. Either way, she bought us dinner! I sat next to her at the end of the table because I'm very brave. She asked almost immediately if I wanted to use the shower in her room. Well... YES, actually-- I'd been hoping to do so ever since I learned where they were staying. [This was in cold season, and as we finished working well after dark, our heatless outdoor shower got kind of painful. Heating up water for a bucket bath was equally as painful... It is no longer cold season or cold at any time.] ..But I wanted to EAT first! During dinner, though, she said it three more times! "Don't you want to shower now? I think you should..." pushing her room key towards me. "Um, yeah, thanks! I think I'd prefer to wait until after dinner, if that's OK. I mean, unless I smell too bad! Haha!... I don't, do I?"

"Umm... no...." I asked this a few times, once with, "Do I have any dirt on me or something?" And she responded with, "Yeah, actually, right here"-- my neck.

This had been a weird rapport with her all along. She would look at me and laugh in an aww-you-poor-thing way and once even said, "Haha! I like what you're doing with the dirt all over your face! That's great!" "Um, what? Do I really h-" "No, no, I'm just teasin'! Haha!" And she walked away.

I'd been assuming I'm only as dirty as everyone else. I wash my clothes, bathe daily, brush my hair, keep the dust-wrestling to a minimum. But now I'm doubting that assumption. Was she making a weird but effective joke or am I really that dirty?

HOW DIRTY AM I?

Poo Party

Making 50 latrines happen in the village didn't sound like a hard thing. It's a pretty common project. I didn't know that it would take FOREVER and literally make me a stalker. (It's hard to explain to anyone who's not here, but basically if you want to get anyone to do their job here, you have to call them non-stop and stop by every single day. Nothing will ever happen otherwise. It was hard for me to do at first because I really would have a restraining order against me if I acted like this in the states. But we got our materials and transportation in the end! Yay for stalking!)

My counterpart, Daby, digging his douche-hole. I don't think I would have been able to do this project if he and my dad weren't so great at yelling at people to dig their holes and pay already! And they kept great records (I think... I don't read arabic...)

Probably my favorite part about the project was that I named a "Commite de Douche" complete with a President Douche and all. It was fun to write meetings on the calendar.

Now we can stop pooing right outside the kitchen hut!
Aren't they beautiful?

Pictures of my diarrhea/ latrine use causerie to come (aka Poo Party/ Fete Fecale)...

Thank you Woodrow Wilson School!

So my lovely childhood friend Heather is a 4th grade teacher. We've been doing a pen-pal program throughout my service. It's been sort of frustrating trying to do it from this end with school NEVER being in session (we were three months late in starting and then the teachers decided to extend their vacation on top of that...) Heather's been fabulous though, and the bulletin board of ME is the greatest ego-boost I'll ever come across. She's got her kids thrilled about the program, (one girl wrote to me that "this is the best thing I ever done") and even raised $600 for books and school supplies for my little village school! Unfortunately I was only just able to coordinate the giving-ceremony, due to afore-mentioned lateness. It's really exciting because they had no books and the kids don't even really get the concept of books. They see me reading all the time and are baffled by how much I "study." It's a completely unknown concept for someone to read because they enjoy it and in order to wind down. Hopefully we'll be able to make these books come alive; I've started planning a play of one of them to show them that it's fun.

Of course, once the kids saw the books filled with pictures, they were anything BUT turned-off. They were thrilled-- it was like I had boxes of money or cookies or something. They were fighting over them and shouting at each other to come look at this! Amazing...

taking the supplies to school

The penpal class all got their own pouches of American-quality supplies. If you think back-to-school shopping was exciting for us, this was a whole new level! They've never owned anything like this before... I think it puts great exciting emphasis on school-work!

Some of them had never seen a book; none of them have one of their own.

They kept holding them backwards and upside-down at first...

A book on Senegal! Heather picked out some really great ones.

What's a dinosaur? They also didn't know about other animals, planets, and the human body. They kept asking if the body system pictures were of dead people. They said the Skeletal system profile picture looked like my favorite brother, Balla. Sadly, it's quite true...

This is what a teaching tool is like!

MY BEAUTIFUL WORLD MAP, THANK YOU VERY MUCH

Where do our penpals at Woodrow Wilson school live?

Drawing pictures to send back to Heather's class.

Note the Obama buttons I also gave them (courtesy of my [real] father)

My counterpart celebrating with our cross-culturally shared pastime. (This is one of my favorite guys; I don't think I could have gotten through my peace corps service without him. I DEFINITELY wouldn't have gotten as much done!)

One of the teachers. They are all in love with Heather.

I forgot to get a photo of myself with the kids before they went home...

Giving sincere thanks. It's an amazing thing that Heather's done, getting all her kids excited about fundraising for kids in Africa. They aren't the rich Americans my village kids might imagine they are, but brought in their pennies and pulled so much together only because of the enthusiasm she inspired in them. This was definitely one of my favorite projects from my entire service. Thanks to my best friend for doing so much across the ocean!