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!
4 comments:
I feel like such an expat right now... living in a fairyland where we drink fine wine and fair trade coffee with dinner off of more plates and with more utensils than you know what to do with (except now I *do* know what to do with most of them). And when the food isn't up to par we feel more than entitled to complain. At least we don't speak in French, perfect or imperfect.
I was totally on that Expat/Embassy listserv last year. We got all the WAIST homestay request emails, but sadly Fulbrighters were considered only a step or two removed from PCV... Needless to say, none of us were asked to host you. Or invited to the American Club. Haha.
I loved what you had to say about integration (and nonintegration).
I had one of those awkward "act cultured NOW" moments when the Ambassador came and ate with us halfway through supper. The conversation instantly changed from alham rides and latrines to Senegalese politics... Oh, sorry, do we appear dignified? We're lying.
Plus you're my hero.
I love Matt's expression. Yours isn't so bad either. xoxox
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