Boo.

Happy Halloween, hope I didn't scare you too much.

Top Picture: My new haircut and Jack's molestache.
Bottom: Buzzcut.

Nijitsu - Director

With only a week left until the 2008 Presidential Elections, they’ve been on my mind a lot lately. As a liberal youth, my vote went straight to Barack Obama, the young black political phenom from Chicago. Throughout the electoral campaign, people have criticized Obama for being emotionally inaccessible to the ‘Joe Six Packs’ of America. Instead, these people believe that a presidential candidate should be someone who you’d like to sit down with and have a couple of beers with on your porch or someone who you’d be comfortable inviting over for family dinner. Disturbingly, many Americans probably have never had a black person over for dinner. It is not necessarily racism, but a harsh cultural divide between differing ethnicities in our country.

Sitting in the courtyard at my Senegalese friend Vince’s house, drinking tea and speaking in both French and Wolof, I was completely comfortable and relaxed. I drank my shot-glass sized cup of tea quickly in short sips, slurping each time as I had been taught during orientation and burning my tongue in the process. I looked around me and it was just me and maybe nine other guys—all of whom were black. I quickly came to realize that had I been in a similar situation—at least on the surface—in the United States, I would have felt very different.

I honestly can’t think of a time in the US when it was just me and a group of black people except for maybe some time spent with Randy’s family and his family friends. To be among a group of young black guys who read copies of Vibe magazine imported from the US and love basketball and hip-hop and to have nothing in between us is something I’ve never experienced in the past. These guys are my best guy friends here and without forcing anything, we get along really well. In the United States, where blacks are the minority, a situation where I’d be with only black people is much more unlikely due to sheer numbers, but also I just don’t think I’d naturally find myself in such a situation.

I’m not sure if I will have more black friends when I get back to the US, but it’s made the cultural divide in my life between blacks and whites much more evident.

Waxabaane - Young Man

My dad grew up in Brooklyn. He lived on the same block as Woody Allen. Now, could you imagine Woody Allen in Senegal? Sounds like it might make an entertaining film, but nothing short of a disaster beyond that. Growing up, my dad’s concept of nature went about as far as a crab on the beach at Coney Island and maybe the occasional trip upstate. Then all of a sudden, he found himself here. With this in mind, my mother made sure to make their stay as comfortable as possible. Or at least at first. She had us booked into the nicest suite at the most expensive hotel in Senegal, Le Meridien Président. Complete with a 13,000 CFA (approximately $27) breakfast buffet, an enormous swimming pool but no vacant beach chairs around it, and a bar with a Senegalese band awkwardly running through jazz standards, the hotel appeared to be like much of Senegal—expensive and crowded. However, my mom had done a great job in choosing our room. The suite was heavily air conditioned, modern in its design, had two flat-panel HDTV’s, two bathrooms which both had hot water (an extreme rarity in Senegal), a luxurious living room and a dining table which could easily have doubled as a conference room.

When I arrived at the hotel room, I sat down at the foot of my parents’ bed. Looking around me, out of the blue I started laughing to myself. The contrast from where I had been to where I was felt like I had been stranded in the ocean and then landed upon an island paradise. I took a hot shower, feeling the grime leave my skin and the pollution disappear from my lungs as I inhaled then exhaled the steam. I stepped out of the bathroom wrapped in a clean white towel, anticipating it to get even hotter, but was greeted instead by cold air. I felt eerily clean.


I was already happy with the air-conditioning. The American television—ecstatic. A hot shower—unbelievable. But then…Jan Kay cookies? Really? I’ve honestly never enjoyed a cookie so much in my entire life. Something so simple, but so very very great. I’d like to send out an enormous thank you to Jan for making the cookies, but more for providing me the strength to continue eating fish and oily rice for the next two months. They truly hit the spot like nothing else and I still haven’t decided whether or not I’m going to share the three remaining cookies because I want them too much for myself. (Not completely true, I’m going to share them as these kids have been as deprived as me, but it’ll be difficult to part with them to say the least) It didn’t even end there. Of course, in the little time that my parents had before leaving, they managed to put together a care package—rather, a suitcase—of which the likes have never seen before. In addition to the Jan Kay cookies, imported from New York were goldfish, gummy bears, jellybeans, Gatorade powder, chewy granola bars, honey mustard & onion pretzels, milanos, oatmeal raisin cookies, fruit leather and more. For those of you who have watched Home Alone 2: Lost in New York when Macaughly Culkin has a suitcase filled with cookies and candy from the hotel, it was like that. Only much better. And without Joe Pesci.

We wound up staying in and around the hotel for the first day, giving them some time to adjust to the climate and time difference and me the chance to indulge in the luxury of it all. This involved having a piña colada and greek salad by the ocean, a nap on the couch wrapped in pillows, floating around in the absurdly warm swimming pool and a family-style dinner at a Moroccan restaurant. On their second day in Dakar, I was hesitant to take my parents to around the city. It is definitely not a pleasant place to be a tourist and can be very overwhelming. We went to Marché HLM, a market known for its incredible fabrics and its talented pickpockets. I walked behind as we made our way through the market, taking them through the areas I’d been through and telling off any salesmen who approached. My father bought a couple pieces of fabric to be used as backgrounds in paintings and it was pretty quickly time to leave. Taking a cab through downtown Dakar on the way to lunch at L’Institut Français was enough for my parents to get a better understanding my life here but also to have had enough of Dakar. After a nice lunch, we retreated to the hotel, spending the rest of the day by the pool and having dinner at a fantastic Thai restaurant nearby. (Interesting side bit, the Senegalese soccer team was staying on our floor. I didn’t know who any of them were but evidently they’re a big deal as you’ll find out in another post about the game I went to)


The next morning, we left for our second destination, Le Lodge Les Collines de Niassam, a small eco-lodge run by a French couple in the Sine-Saloum Delta. The ride there was slow. As we got further out from Dakar the roads deteriorated. Driving on the dirt roads with enormous potholes and mudpits, our driver weaved his way through them as best he could, making the ride feel like going through moguls and gave new meaning to car sickness. However, as the roads got worse, our surroundings became more beautiful. Massive baobabs popped up on both sides of the road, with their branches twisting in different directions and looking unbelievably grand. Out of my window, I struggled to take pictures of the birds flying by. We arrived at the lodge in the early evening. It was absolutely beautiful with treehouses built into the baobabs, a picturesque pool and houses built on stilts overlooking the river delta.

Our first night there was actually rather miserable. My parents hadn’t gotten acclimated to the hot weather (made infinitely worse by the fact that we were essentially sleeping outside with only one fan for the hut) and the mosquito nets provided, albeit aesthetically pleasing, were not all that effective. After a rough night, in the morning, breakfast was brought out to our hut. With a refreshing breeze after a night spent sweating underneath a mosquito net, even though the meal was only tea, orange juice and bread with jam & butter, it was one of the most pleasant breakfasts I’ve ever had. Early in the morning is when all the birds are out on the delta. Perfectly quiet, except for the laughing sound the birds made. The dogs came to keep us company. Tranquil, as the Senegalese would say.


Normally on our family vacations, I’ve detested the absolute isolation my mother always seems to seek out in choosing our destination. But after my time spent in Dakar, it was incredibly nice to just get away from all of it. We honestly didn’t really do much while we were there. We had our happy hour drinks at sunset, a bottle of wine with dinner and a taste of apple brandy or their home-made flavored rums for dessert. As we were the only ones at the hotel at the time, we got to spend a good amount of time with the owner, a quirky French man with a white beard and who always wore his white linen shirts open-chested. He smoked more than enough cigarettes and had his caipirinha at the same time at the same picnic table set out in the river each day. The man knew how to live well. He and my dad shared their tastes in music and my mom practiced her French a bit. We ate well, slept well our third night and simply relaxed. On our last full day there, we rented a pirogue to take us around delta. Surrounded by mangroves it felt a bit like Florida. But then you’d see a woman with her newborn resting on the curve of her back as she bent down to harvest oysters from the ground and you remembered you were still in Africa. Our guide prepared a lunch of Yassa Poisson, fresh fish with an onion sauce, which we ate under the shade of a tree on an island among the mangroves.


Our guide thought my dad looked like John McCain, and he had a point (my mom and I had actually been saying the same thing for a while.) My dad had been sweating non-stop since arriving in Senegal. He must have hit his head about fifteen times. The one handkerchief he brought was perpetually damp with sweat. On his side, back, arms and legs were bright red bug bites (still not sure if they were bed bugs, mosquitoes or spiders who had bit him) that were more painful than itchy. But he made it all the way to the end and with only a manageable amount of complaining and arguing that my mother was trying to kill him with all these vacations.

When my parents left, I was sad to see them go. It didn’t feel like saying goodbye to them at Middlebury, nor from home. I truly wish I had gotten to show them more because even though as a tourist there is not that much to see here, there is so much more that goes on, so much more that I’ve seen and done than I can photograph or write about. You just need to be here to simply live in it for a while.

For more photos from my break, please follow these links.
Vacation with Rents I
Vacation with the Rents II
Vacation with the Rents III

Bët - Eyes

It’s simple. They come up to you, start talking with you, attempt to distract you, then reach for your wallet while you’re not looking. Tonight, a man tried to do that to me as I walked with my parents down an unlit street in downtown Dakar. At first he came up to us, trying to sell us something. I stepped in between him and my parents, telling him off politely in Wolof. It worked, he drifted off behind us for a while but then reappeared as we crossed through the market area which had closed down for the day on the way to dinner. He was explaining to me that you could buy anything here, and that if I wanted some new shorts—which he said as he pulled slightly on the pocket of my shorts, pretending as if I didn’t understand the word in French, and slipped his hand into my left pocket—he could help me.

At first I didn’t realize what was happening. I’ve gotten so accustomed to people walking alongside me, trying to sell me something or asking for something else, that the only part that alarmed me was that he had touched me. I instantly grabbed his wrist tightly, pulling it out of my pocket after feeling him sift through the keys and ferry time schedule that were in there. I still didn’t completely know what was going on but let go of his hand once I made him show me there was nothing in it and I had checked to see if everything was still there. I only really figured out he had been attempting to mug me by how quickly he disappeared into the shadows after I let his hand go.

Without question, my confidence has been shaken. After almost two months here, I’ve finally begun to feel like a part of the Senegalese community. Albeit as an outsider, but accepted nonetheless. When I speak in Wolof, it always makes people smile as they’re delighted that a ‘toubab’ has taken to learn their language instead them learning the language of the people who colonized their nation centuries ago. When I walk around my neighborhood, the children ask me how I am. On my way home, I sit down underneath the tree to simply talk with my Senegalese friends. While I don’t think that the attempted mugging is going to change my perspective of the Senegalese, it has made me appreciate my neighborhood and how I’ve become a part of the community.

Foo dëkk? - Where do you live?

My room smells funky. In fact, I’m pretty sure I smell funky. After having electricity for all of Korité (which was a big deal to have electricity for a whole day), we have not had any for the past two days. My bed is stained with sweat in the shape of my body. It sort of looks like a crime scene.

Since arriving here, I’ve wondered whether or not I could ever actually live here for an extended period of time. The answer is resoundingly no. While you may think it might be the lack of infrastructure and luxuries, imbalanced diet, incessant humid heat, decrepit transportation system, overwhelming amounts of pollution, segregation of the ex-pat community or the Muslim-dominated society, all those really are manageable and are more than made up for by the beauty of the country, culture and people. Rather, what I’ve realized over time is that no matter how long I live here, no matter how good my Wolof gets, no matter how well I learn to dance to Senegalese music, no matter how I dress, no matter how tan I get, I will always be treated as a stranger.

Would I ever really feel at home? I don’t think so.

Nyool ak Weeh - Black and white

Since arriving here, there's been a sense of it being 'us and them'. Which is to say that as a result of Ramadan, when going around during the afternoon to a bakery or a restaurant, no one besides maybe a handful of french ex-pats and us would be there. This was felt even more so when going out at night to a bar, night club, jazz club or buying beer. You felt guilty and exposed while drinking or going out. All of that changed last night.

Places which had been all but left for dead were completely revived past their capacities. Caesar's, a quasi-fast-food restaurant nearby, had hundreds of Senegalese teenagers still dressed in their brightly colored boubous and dresses standing outside. Most seemed drunk, telling by the number of beer cans and whiskey bottles on the ground. At the store where we had been the only ones buying beer from for quite a while, the Senegalese pushed and shoved their way up to the register to buy their whiskey and cokes. It was very bizarre. All this time I'd had an impression of the Senegalese as reserved and those who simply like to let the time pass while drinking tea. Now, as it turns out, that's not quite correct. Drunk men barked in wolof at each other as a group of curious onlookers formed around them. The taxis were lined up around the block, honking and calling out for passengers. A number of people were pushing their cars down the street (supposedly because no one in Senegal ever checks how much fuel they have and everyone decided to drive that night) and both pedestrians and taxis made their way around where a car had hit a motorcycle. Both of the drivers were probably drunk.

What difference a day makes.

Wax - A thick pooridge dish served with yogurt sauce

It's the end of Ramadan, a day known as Eid in the rest of the world but as Korité in Senegal. The chants coming from the Mosque today seem louder and more joyous. It is forbidden or impolite to talk about any difficulty you might be having with fasting during Ramadan. In spite of the responses of "ça va bien" (I'm fine), as the month went on people got tired. As the majority of my time spent in Senegal has been during Ramadan, I'm very curious to see how life changes after Koritè. Even last night while walking around, I could immediately see things changing. This morning my family donned their new boubous, custom tailored from fine fabrics in rich colors, in celebration of the day. Sort of like christmas sweaters but a lot nicer. I want one. Enter the second chapter of my time in Senegal.