Today there was like a freaking baay fall convention on the car rapide. I usually don't see very many of them in Oukam; generally I see a bunch in downtown. Wouln't you know it but one of them said "indil ma xaalis" to me on the freakin bus. That means "give me money." For fucks sake I understand that some baay fall beg and pray instead of working but usually I don't get bothered if I'm riding a car rapide, even if I am white. I'm not a stingy fuck either, I give money or food to peeps every day but there are usually social rules about where it is appropriate to beg..hm. Then as usual some dude decided to ask me if I was hollandaise (Dutch) and tried to tell me that he makes African masks and I should come see his shop. Then when I said I was American he got all excited (everyone just loves Americans here; mostly they want to marry you and get a passport to America where they can find a job, which is understandable) and asked me if I was from Michigan. I get that question a lot; I don't know but maybe there are a shit-ton of Michiganers chilling in Senegal for some reason?
Everyone here thinks all the white people want all this shit that is supposedly "genuinely African;" but as far as I can tell a lot of it isn't really traditional and instead is made to look like what white people think is traditional because it sells because it's "exotic." This is one of those things I would never have understood if I hadn't lived here.
And the vendors are right, I'm sure there are a ton of clueless tuubabs wandering around Senegal looking to buy some "genuinely African" souvenir to take home with them so they can feel cultured, feeling smart cuz they bought their wooden African statue here for forty-five dollars instead of at some New York boutique for one thousand dollars...it is of course "genuinely african" in that it was made in Africa; but so is Fab laundry detergent and I dont see tuubabs running home to display those plastic packages in their living rooms.
Something seems a little off about the colonial image of this region of the world getting further propegated in the minds of developed country citizens; but I suppose it puts food on the plates of the vendors children and gives them a good laugh. Capitalizing on the ignorance of the rich, fair enough--even if I wonder about how that in turn affects stereotypes and modernization-theory camp notions about linear progression and the value of one human which in turn can affect international policies of the great (as in powerful) monetary institutions.
Lala la, what else. It's Ramadan, maa ngi woor. That means "I am fasting." I really didn't know anything about Ramadan before I came here, but here is how it plays out in Senegal: for one lunar month (appx 28 days) you do not let anything corporal affect you from dawn to dusk. That means no water, no food, no looking at jaay fondes (womens asses), no touching your significant other, you are not even supposed to swallow your own spit to excess.
Well, I am swallowing just as much of my own spit as I want but I am trying out all the other stuff. Although I have to say the women here have such great asses and the men are all so fit that I have a hard time not eye-candying. The no touching your other for 28 days means the day before ramadan starts everyone pretty much gets it on as much as possible; Ponge and I no exception. It's good that I'm going to be in Keur Momar Sarr for the rest of Ramadan.
So. It's really not that hard to resist food and drink, the only thing is that you get sort of irritable or tired at certain points in the day. It's best to either keep busy or sleep. Then at dusk you break the fast by eating a date and bread and butter and drinking kinkiliba tea or milk and sugar or something, and that shit never tasted so good. A few hours later you eat and then drink attayya tea. How this part of the night plays out depends on who you are--some people act like its not Ramadan at all and do whatever they want and some are very devout and try to keep the same non-corporeal deal going on. Then you go to bed and maybe wake up at 5am to pray and drink tea and eat bread, maybe not depending. The idea is that you are supposed to try all year long to be a good Muslim, but you are human and fuck up sometimes. So during Ramadan you try extra hard and then god forgives some of your other indiscretions.
There are some people here, of course, that don't fast or pray. My host father, for example. I'm not sure he's even Muslim despite how devout his wife and son are. Then there are the baay fall. From what I understand, they are a sub-group of Maurides which are a specific type of Muslim. They believe that Touba, Senegal is the place to pilgram to, rather than Mecca (or if you can't get to Mecca?).
This is because of a non-violent religious leader who died there in the early 1900's. He is sort of like Senegal's version of Martin Luther King Junior in that he was a religious leader and also a people's hero. He struggled non-violently against the colonial regime and in some peoples beliefs is the latest prophet (there is some ambiguity there because as Muslims they also believe Mohammud was the last prophet - but there are stories of miracles Serigne Touba performed that people believe literally happened). Some baay fall don't have to pray or fast cause they give money to the poor instead or because they are such devout persons that it's redundant or some such thing.
Ponge is baay fall, but he prays and is fasting. He is poor himself so giving to the poor is out of the question; he and his friends are trying to convert me because it's forbidden for a baay fall to go out with someone who isnt also baay fall. I doubt they will succeed, although my host brother got me to pray for the first time in years the other day after the 5am tea. I was laying in my bed, about to go back to sleep. The prayer went the way it always went in my childhood, dissolving into nothing since I don't know who I'm praying to or what to pray for.
It went something like this:
If there is a You...and if there is, I would like You to send blessings to so and so, um; but is it bad to send them to just one person and not everyone? Okay so I pray for the whole of humanity, no, the whole of the universe; wait thats too vague, to pray for general goodness for everything. If there even is a You that is listening.
And if there is I don't believe that you are a man, I will not call you Father - it's something people made up to satisfy their egos, no, something "men" made up..if there is a You I don't think you resemble anything human no matter what the Bible says about being made in your image. That's that ego again...and if there is a You who knows all what is the point of praying? Doesn't that mean things are how they should be or something; which I can hardly agree with without some skepticism.
And then there's the question that I could never quite get an answer to that satisfied: if everything in the universe had to be created by something because it can't have come from nowhere, and the answer is that god created it, well then who created god? The answer is that god is eternal, usually. But isn't it more plausible to believe that a few simple atoms were eternal and always there than a being so complex that it could create something from nothing?
If there is a hell, I can't believe that I'd be sent to it for questioning these things.
Anyway. This cyber cafe is freezing and I need to go pack.
