i stare blanklymind adrift,
as usual
half understood conversations
clutter the air around me
my mind dull from disuse
my face reflects this, ugly
body, slumped
back aching
...more attaya...
j�r�j�f, mumbled under bored breath
suddenly everyone laughs,
looks around the room in confirmation
catch my eye
i am smiling slightly
from the atmospheric change
but i havent understood.
connection lost,
we look away from each other.
*****
sigh.. wolof is hard. no matter how many people think, mais wolof, ce n'est pas difficile, eh? d�ed�et, dafe meti! (wolof, its easy, eh? no, its hard)
...i like the ones who are impressed i understand anything at all. i dont like the ones who cant get why i dont speak wolof fluently after five months of living here and tell me i must faire un bon effort. i want to scream when i hear that. i am the fuck trying! they tell me to write things down and i show them the little notebook i carry with me everywhere.
wolof is almost nothing like the two other languages i know - the words, pronounciation, and grammar are totally different. there are grammar structures in wolof that simply dont exist in french or english, and vice versa. there are a lot of words that sound almost exactly the same but mean totally different things - such as to laugh, to kill, to stroke, and to be impolite (ray, raay, riy, reeyl). its exhausting, and humbling. someone asks you a question that everyone else in the room has understood and you blink dumb-ly.. lan? d�gguma. (what? i didnt understand) or worse, i sort of catch some words and guess out of context but guess wrong. blahblah gis nga ko blah fofou rekk? ok, right did i see something that is singular that is neither me or the speaker over there only? see what where and what about it?
lately my mind has felt dull from the effort. and its not like im perfect in french either, but at least i can both understand and construct complicated sentences and my grammar and vocab are relatively advanced, such that hearing and speaking french is a break.
progress is painfully slow and i really hate people telling me i should be more advanced than i am. thats why i like talking with lamine, he gets that its hard and agrees wolof is complicated.
and actually i can say a lot now, its just that none of it ever seems to be useful. i wish our wolof classes had concentrated less on memorizing dialogues and more on vocab and grammar. being able to say mel ak tapha nu ngi �uyu �it ni and b�gg nga bu bulo bi walla bi wecc bi? (mel and tapha are greeting everyone and do you want this blue one or this white one?) are hardly useful in most conversations.
*****
other that that, life is pretty swell. everyone here knows that bombing iraq is bullshit. everyone i talk to is like, hey that president of yours, he is crazy. to which i joyously declare that he is a monkey and doesnt know anything(il est un singe! il ne sais rien!) and he isnt my president coz i sure didnt vote for him. a lot of people here also know about how the elections went and believe he stole the presidency. the actuality of government corruption is not something people are in denial about here. (obviously i speak in general terms, there are always exceptions to that which i say).
i still havent started any sort of internship. im getting a little tired of not being challenged. i like to be involved and active and busy. when i just sit around with my senegalese and american friends and do nothing my brain feels dull; and its worse when its just my senegalese friends coz they just go off in wolof and i dont get most of it. most of them speak french but they just forget and speak wolof a lot, since they were raised with wolof.
so my internship..what a joke. i might just give up on the organization i was hoping to work with and switch to something else. i want to study a group that does broad level societal change, organizing. that group looked perfect. most of the internships in the past have been direct service. but i know exactly what i want to do for my research project, and it has to be a group like the one i was going to study.
um, what else? oh, tabaski was on wednesday the 12th. for yous who dont know, its the biggest muslim religious event/holiday of the year; in which families are required to sacrifice a sheep. over 500,000 sheep were killed in senegal alone. two of them were killed at my house, sheep i'd known since i moved in there. oh well, i cut em up and ate em. tabaski was a lot like korite (the feast at the end of ramadan); the men go to pray in the morning and then you ask for forgiveness and such and then we killed sheep in the yard. the men skinned and separated parts (we eat every part, including guts, eyes, brains, kidneys, etc) and the women chopped everything up into smaller parts and cooked it. i really hate the taste of freshly killed and grilled sheep. i actually dont like sheep much at all, except maybe the ribs. so i ate a lot of bread and had a banana later.
had some problems again with the host dad, but i talked with adji about it and she was a big help. she understood completely that he is unreasonable and gets angry over really wierd shit and makes things up in his head to be mad about. after the last time he decided to ream me out i was so pissed all i could do was go in my room and draw and say fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou under my breath. i decided i didnt have to pay someone to treat me badly, i was going to move; but then i thought about how much i like the rest of my family and talked to adji and we decided it wasnt worth it, and his poor treatment of me isnt even like how he treats her. apparently he hadnt even talked to her in two weeks, lord only knows why. his kids are really good; theyre kind and honest and work hard and uphold their family obligations and dont smoke or drink.
i have no idea what ive ever really done; but i think that perhaps he begrudges that i can do what i want and dont have to ask him permission; so i go out way more than he ever lets his own daughter go out. its not like im even doing anything bad - i dont even drink. but all he ever says is how are you in this really gruff voice like he begrudges even talking to me but has to out of politeness. except when he decides to ream me out for something random.
but fuck it, i do what adji does; say hello and thats it. theres no reason to let him spoil my stay there. she told me when she was little she used to wish he would take a second wife so that he wouldnt be in the house as much. he also has two children with another woman who have moved out and never come visit. i feel kind of bad for him; he has everything one could want - a home, a wife that is really kind and patient and pretty and isnt going to leave him (divorce doesnt really happen for women her age), health, food, free time, etc. but hes this little angry man who cant do anything for himself.
other life news; ponge and i are swell, celebrated his 24th birthday together last weekend. i hadnt really planned on being attached to anyone while i was here, and i certainly never thought my casual dating of this boy would have progressed the way it has. life is too strange. ...my brother asked me if i was going to marry him.
i told him that i think if i held traditional ideas about marriage and gender roles i would seriously consider it - ponge is kind and respectful and good and considerate and very good with children (like most senegalese men) our life philosophies are very similar, although mine is based in the eightfold path/life experiences and his is based in baay fall/life experiences. but im not really into being anybody's wife, i just think life isnt stable enough to presume a partnership will work for the rest of your lives, not to mention the roles that that would entail and that i havent told him im queer and a whole host of other things that would mean i would have to stop being who i am in some major ways in order to feel totally happy as his wife.
as is im happy as his short-term girlfriend. i told him it would be over when i moved back, senegal is just too far to try and keep anything going. i hope he believed me.
take care of yourselves and each other. send news about the political climate in the us and about your lives and such.
lots of love*k
