Teranga

(I wrote this a few days ago but haven't been able to post due to constant blackouts.) Teranga means hospitality, but it’s so much more than that. Senegal is the land of teranga. Here, some families leave a portion of their meal aside in case of an unexpected visitor. The guest is given the best of everything, no matter how minimal it may be. In the afternoon after our host mother picked my roommate Cecilia and I up from the dorms we had been living in we sat and talked to her in the ‘salon’ (living room) for a while and she asked us what we like for breakfast. We mentioned that we like tea so she went out that night and bought us a box of tea. My host family is exactly what I wanted it to be when I filled out the questionnaire back in the spring. There are three families under one roof and a grandmother on the first floor. There are at least eight children (that I’ve met/seen) under the age of eight. This is great because they speak French and they’ll sit and talk to my roommate Cecilia and I for hours at a time. They also try to teach us Wolof…rather unsuccessfully. I’m still trying to figure out who belongs to who and what their names are. I don’t feel very guilty about the name part because ‘Brooke’ seems incredibly hard for them to grasp so a few of the children ask me my name every time they see me. Our house is nice by Senegalese standards, but very minimal by American standards. We aren’t having too much trouble adjusting to the physical space, more the lifestyle. As Americans, we get antsy when we just sit around the house but here it’s common for people to just stay indoors during the day, even during the day-long power outages. Some students have said they are planned by the government to reduce energy-usage and are on a rotating neighborhood by neighborhood basis…I have my doubts because it seems inconsistent. The Senegalese have an attitude that when anything happens, such as a power outage or the public transportation being completely off schedule it’s best to just laugh and move on. While this is completely necessary for living in the country (we’re all still adjusting) it also seems that there is no real motivation to fix anything. Cecilia equated the Senegalese lifestyle to smoking weed, you lack motivation and just become indifferent and lazy. I think it’s mostly due to the intense heat. One thing I have not really enjoyed about living with my host family is the rooster they have on the roof. If the call to prayer doesn’t wake me at 5:00am then the rooster will. I told Cecilia that I hoped we would eat it for dinner rather soon. Instead, we have mostly been eating goat meat. This family has had a lot of students before so they’re great about letting us go out and do what we want while still taking an interest and being there if we have any questions or concerns. I’m excited about learning from out host mother, Aby, because she is an anthropology professor and does a lot of work with the stigma that Africans have about AIDs. She’s smart and easy to talk to and helps us with our French when we get stuck. She’s so eager to please us, she has shown us what they really mean by the word teranga.