Update

Hey! I'm back on campus in Vermont after a 2 am flight from Dakar...I still need to update about vacation in the Gambia and the conclusion of my work at Tostan, but I have to run off to training right now, so I'll conclude here and I'll update about those two things in the next few days!

True, no?

Portraits

Angry chicken. Very angry chicken.

Attaya

Attaya isn't so much a tea ceremony as something to do when there's nothing to do. In the villages, there would be up to 5 attaya brewings a day in the compound courtyards, which is surprising since it takes about 2 hours total for the necessary 3 rounds. It is almost always brewed by men, and both the brewing and distribution of the tea follows a hierarchy.

Water is first heated in a tiny teapot on coals, then a small glass of green tea leaves is added (the tea is from China, bizarrely enough). A similar amount of sugar is added, then the laborious mixing and frothing process begins. First, the tea is poured back and forth from pot to glass to pot. Then, tea is poured back and fourth between glasses from gradually increasing heights to create forth.
Next, the liquid tea is poured back into the pot to reheat, leaving the tea foam in the glass. The brewer washes the tray and outside of the glass, being careful to leave the foam be. Finally, a small amount of tea is poured into the glasses and the glasses begin to cycle around the gathered people by their place in the unspoken hierarchy--guests, men, sometimes women, and occasionally children, in that order. After someone has drunk their tea--as quickly as possible, slurping if possible to show that it's good--the glass is refilled and passed to the next person. As a result, the first people to drink get the most foam, while those at the bottom of the hierarchy get more dredges.

The same tea leaves are used to make three rounds, each round weaker and sweeter than the last. This is supposed to symbolize how the longer people are together, the sweeter it is--and indeed, the tea making is very social. Attaya also ties into the idea of manliness--first, because it is a symbol of manly skill, and good attaya brewers are respected for it, and second, because the increasing weakness of the tea means it's suitable for weaker people--real men go for the first round, women and children are included in the second and third rounds. (This is the paragraph that makes it really obvious that I'm a Sociology/Anthropology major.)

Attaya is not something you can order in a restaurant, because it's a social process. It has a high sugar and caffeine content. If you're looking to make your own, there's an exhaustive but interesting article on the step-by-step process here.

Saint-Louis

I went to Saint-Louis this weekend, a small colonial city next to the Mauritanian border that was the first permanent French settlement in Senegal, settled in 1659. The central part of the city is on an island in the middle of the broad brown Senegal River.
Saint-Louis is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, like Goree Island, but unlike Goree, it isn't kept up very well. Many of the buildings are crumbling and the sidewalks are covered with piles of trash, which attract flies and goats.
After a few hours in the city I had seen enough of the trash and decided to go to the Zebrabar, a popular campground located on the river 20k south of town, just within the Langue de Bararie National Park. They have an observation tower that looks over the river and the thin strip of peninsula (on the left) that separates the river from the ocean. I stayed in a small cabin made from the converted back of a truck; it was cozy and surprisingly comfortable.
The Zebrabar had a small menagerie of animals: 5 cats, 4 happy dogs, and a donkey named Piano.They had a dock out onto the river. Guests could take out the Zebrabar's kayaks for free and go across the river to land on the opposite peninsula, then walk across to the Atlantic-side beach.
There were tons of fiddler crabs. They came up to the campground at night, so you had to be careful where you were walking.
They had pirogues, of course. They also had herons, pelicans, and other waterbirds.
Coming back, I ended up hitching a ride with two British rally drivers who were also camping at the Zebrabar. There are a surprising number of rallies that come through Senegal; teams who drive overland from Europe to an endpoint in Africa, either for prizes or charity. I squeezed into the back of their packed little car for the ride. It was a good time.

Jellyfish!

People have been complaining about the numbers of jellyfish that have been cropping up along the Senegalese coast, and apparently it's a worldwide occurance. I just read an article in the New York Times that was talking about how widespread the problem is becoming, and how it's tied in with overfishing and global warming. I've gotten at least 3 stings--minor--from the irritating little red jellyfish that have been appearing on the coast. Always interesting to see a local annoyance intersect with a worldwide problem. Worrying, too.

Bartering, and Why the Walk-Away Works

I spent the weekend up in Saint-Louis, a small city near the border of Mauritania (more on that next post). I needed to take a taxi at one point and asked a street vendor where I could find one, but of course he immediately tried to start selling me his jewelry. I asked the price of a necklace that had small chunks of jade, tiger eye, and Mauritanian beads on it. (This is, of course, all in French.)

"Oh that, Madame, that's a very beautiful piece, with many precious gems on it, I will give it to you for 30,000 CFA."

That's about $70. Um, no. I smile, say thank you, and start to walk away.

"No, madame, but how much will you give me for it? It's a very beautiful piece!"

"Yes, it is a beautiful piece, but I am a poor student and a volunteer and I cannot spend that much money."

"How much will you give me? How much, maximum, will you give me?"

"Oh, Monsieur, I would never spend more than 3000 on a necklace."

"3000! Oh oh oh no no, but it is such a beautiful piece, it is worth much more than that!"

"I agree, Monsieur, but I cannot pay that so I am going to take that taxi now."

I go over to the taxi and say I'm going to the Zebrabar campground and I will pay 3000 CFA. The taxi driver, who obviously has no idea where I want to go and will be asking me for directions as soon as we get over the bridge, nevertheless tries to up the price.

"Oh no Madame, that is 4000. The price of gas is so so high right now, this much per liter..."

"I know it's high, I work in Dakar, it is very expensive there as well, but I tell you the fare to the Zebrabar is always 3000."

The taxi driver agrees, still not knowing where I'm asking to go, and I'm about to get in when a young man runs up with the aforementioned necklace in hand. He and a few other men had congregated around the vendor and they had been arguing, I now realize, over whether the man should sell the toubab that necklace for 3000.

"The man, he says OK, 3000 is OK madame."

I nod, a bit startled--it's 10% of what he asked--and give him 3000 for the necklace, why not. I get in the taxi and we drive across the bridge, away from Saint-Louis. As soon as we are driving, the driver asks me if I'm familiar with the Zebrabar, a sure sign that he does not know where it is. It's astonishing how little taxi drivers know their own cities; this happens all the time.

"Monsieur, I asked you if you knew it and you said yes, that is not good, but OK--" I pull out my Lonely Planet guide, which I mainly use for this purpose, and rattle off the directions for him, then point out the signs to him as we get closer. The campground is 20k from Saint-Louis, half of it on dirt roads, and as we get closer the driver (who has already asked me if I was married--yes, of course I am--and told me that it would be good if I took him to the United States with me) starts grumbling.

"Ooh, it's so far...Ah, what a big speed bump...Oh look, here's the entrance to the park, are you sure you don't want to be dropped off here? You know, I have to drive ALL the way back now..."

I smile and agree; yes, it is a long way, and yes, he does have to drive all the way back. When we get to the campsite, I hand him a 5000 CFA note and wait for 2000 in change.

"OK, so that's good?" he says chipperly, hoping I will just leave him with the extra.

"No, monsieur, I need change. We said 3000." He starts making noises about not having change, so I dig through my change to find 3000 and trade that for the 5000.

"What, no present for me?"

"No, monsieur." I know that he already has another customer; a man in the last village asked him to stop on the way back. He assumes I don't know since they spoke in Wolof, but they bartered using French numbers so it was pretty obvious.

"OK, bye bye!" I say. He shrugs and waves back.