I wake up every morning a white man in black Africa, a Westerner in a developing country. I am a stranger in a place that while completely foreign has felt somehow familiar to me since I arrived a year ago. I am not a tourist. Tourists here are like country club members in a bowling alley. They come to have fun, but only because it’s a novelty they can enjoy and safely escape from. I am not a missionary. The missionaries are much friendlier than I am, immediately your confidant and infinitely interested in you and your story. I am not a foreign aid worker either. They have 4x4s with drivers, houses with guards, budgets to spend and romantic expatriot lifestyles. I don’t live a rich lifestyle, but I do live an exciting one. I am a Peace Corps volunteer, representing the United States and its people and culture to Senegal, West Africa and hers.
My job is different than what most people would label a job because I can show up anytime I choose, and I always wear sandals. Making people laugh at me can be viewed as a good day at work, and not only do I not have a salary, but I am sometimes forced to beg my parents for an extra fifty dollars here and there to support my drinking habit and need for a steak once in a while. I am nearly untouched by deadlines, meetings, or accountability. My phone doesn’t ring, my inbox doesn’t chime with each new message, my ears don’t hear that faint hum of the fluorescent lights overhead. I am in a completely different world, off the grid, under the radar.
I am different than the other toubabs here, the white people. I am different because I speak the same language as the Senegalese people, and I don’t mean French, though I do speak French. I speak Wolof, the most prominent language among the more than 40 ethnicities that make up the country’s diverse population. Imagine 40 languages actually spoken in the US, where Italians would understand German, Mexicans would speak French, and Romanians would speak Mandarin. It’s like that here. You have your own language, be it Mandinka or Pulaar, but you understand many, Wolof being the most likely. Wolof sounds a lot like Clingon from Star Trek, glutteral and gruff, with lots of sounds like you’re hacking a loogey or suddenly getting choked halfway through a sentence.
Like in any other language, I learned the importance of being able to gesture and intone Wolof. The words say a lot, but the way you say them is crucial-- the trailing off of certain phrases, where to put the emphasis in “Thanks Be to God,” how to shake your finger at someone like you are angry at them. The effect is powerful. When you see a foreign traveller in the US, you expect they will speak English. You are not surprised much less impressed.
In Senegal however, a Toubab that speaks Wolof is an african dictator that imposes term limits. Disbelief is followed by laughter, humor is followed by admiration, appreciation is followed by offers of sisters or daughters for prospective wives (I can have up to four), even babies to take back to the US to raise as my own. Perhaps because of the adoption offers, I sometimes think about a chance meeting I might have with a celebrity one day back home, let’s say Brad Pitt. I tell Brad, “man I really know what’s it like for you, being stared at, wanted, offered babies, yet sort of lonely in your immense popularity.” He thinks I am crazy as any star would hearing this, but I really do know what it’s like to be a celebrity.
People here know my name and I have no idea who they are, and not just someone here or there. It happens all the time. “Mansour!” “Diop! Mansour Diop!” They greet me and know that I am the toubab that speaks Wolof. They know that I am different than the other toubabs. My name of course is not Mansour Diop, but in Senegal it is. It is tradition for a family to give you their last name, and as an adopted son in the home of my village host father Adama Diop, he named me after his brother Mansour.
Nobody knows Nat Parker, hell I’m not sure I know him so well anymore myself. But Mansour is prolific. He can dance like the Senegalese, he understands money problems in a way that the Senegalese recognize, he eats the same rice and fish they do every single day. Mansour has parasites just like the Senegalese, he takes bucket baths, and hold your breath for this one: he wipes his ass using water and his left hand, just like the Senegalese, just like the rest of the developing world. Nat Parker is not a bare-handed ass wiper. He never really liked fish either. He enjoyed fine bourbans and scotchs back home, iced and abundant. Here, Mansour reaches for a $3 bottle of Club 7 Whiskey and drinks it straight when he can afford it. Mmm mmm good.
I came to Africa to discover a new place and people, to adventure before a mortgage or marriage could hold me down. I chose to join the Peace Corps because I thought that I could do a better job of representing the United States to the world than the Bush Administration. The problem is that I work for Mr. Bush, and he decided that I would best represent the US to an unelectrified village of mostly illiterate and highly religious Senegalese farmers and fisherman. Not to be unhinged by such a post, I am over halfway through, and just ask anyone in Mouit, my little village on the Senegal River, what they think of the United States and they will say “I love America. Will you help me get to America? Can you get me a visa?” Of course I can’t take all the credit. Ironically, and the Bush Administration will be loathe to admit it, the Black rap community in the US may be one of our most effective diplomats in Senegal.
Just the other day my boss at the national park where I work called me into his office for what I had thought would be an assignment, maybe a translation request. Instead, he wanted me to watch “Clips,” a CD filled with video clips from American rappers. Each clip got progressively more American; the number of hot women dancing half naked multiplied, Beamers became Bentleys, and diamond encrusted necklaces were lost in crisp wads of hundred dollar bills. My boss, Sidibe, sat transfixed with a smile on his face. “I have to go to the US Mansour. If there is one thing I do in this life, it’s to go to the US.”
My approach for spreading democracy and American culture by contrast, is a little short on bling. I talk about America all the time, but my goal has been to demonstrate that Americans are just as interested in Senegal as Senegalese are taken with America. So I do my best at integrating into the Senegalese culture by attending baptisms, funerals, and all night Koranic chanting sessions with as much enthusiasm as my boss watching clips. I haven’t converted to Islam or married four wives (my host father Adama has three), but I live at least five days a week in my little village doing as they do, drinking tea, praising God, and training my counterparts in the national park in basic business skills. I knew I was doing something right when my village family stopped referring to me as a toubab and began calling me a white Wolof.
The other two days of the week, Friday and Saturday, I go to the city and drink cold beer, Club 7, and load up on protein. The four dollar steak and fries at one of my favorite restaurants speaks to me in a way that rice and fish never will. I am still Mansour when I go to town, but I am the city version of my village persona, rolling out phrases like “What up dog?” or “How’s your sex life?” to my city buddies just as easily as “The Lord be praised” or “God willing” in the village.
What I really like about this experience is that it allows me to play all kinds of different roles depending on my mood. I can talk about the onion harvest or daily catch with the people of my village in Wolof and the next day speak to French hotel owners about excessive taxes on tourism and government graft. I like debating development with NGO workers, what works better grassroots organizing or addressing systemic change? I enjoy arguing American politics with my Mauritanian jeweler friend who is a faithful follower of the BBC in Arabic. “It was your CIA that trained Osama Bin Laden Mansour, why do you think you can’t catch him?”
I keep up with my friends back home who are becoming rich, buying their first house, wondering where to spend their two week vacation this year. They seem envious of my unique lifestyle while I worry that I am falling behind the curve in advancing my career and saving for the future. I am all too certain that the American routine will catch up with me, but will it ever let them go?
My family worries about me unnecessarily, partly because that’s what families do, but also because they are just as ignorant to the realities of Africa as most Americans. They are intelligent people but will ask things like “What do people wear over there? Animal skins?” “You’re not near any cannibals are you?” or “Do you want me to send you peanut butter?” The last question may not be so dumb come to think of it.
My experience has been that Americans are only slightly more ignorant to the colonial history of French West Africa than we are to our own colonial history of western expansion and imperialism. People recognize with Sally Struthers like sympathy the rampant poverty of this place, the incessant violence and corruption that do exist. That we care about these issues greatly there is no question.
What we don’t realize I think, is how our own lifestyles and ignorance are in many ways responsible for the situation. How many Americans know what the World Trade Organization or International Monetary Fund really do? Most of us don’t realize that these American led groups maintain and perpetuate insurmountable debt in developing nations, debt that forms one of the primary obstacles to their very advancement out of poverty. The WTO and IMF give countries giant payday loans in the name of bolstering their economies and we wonder why the situation doesn’t get better. How does that happen?
But I don’t blame Americans for not fully understanding the situation over here. We are too busy trying to pay our own bills and take care of our own troubles to get personally involved in problems a continent away. Iraq has been a testament to that. I just want America to realize how much the Senegalese respect us and look up to us. We should guard that respect and try to earn more of it around the world. Maybe we could send more Peace Corps volunteers armed with “Clips” to other developing nations.
After over a year in this country battling the heat, the flies, and the runs, I realize that Senegal can teach America incredible lessons about what it means to be human. These people are poor, undereducated, and without real opportunities to better their lives. They carve out a living from the land, they sell cheap wares between row after row of cars stuck in traffic in Dakar, they work hard knowing it won’t be enough. Thousands of hopeful Senegalese are risking their lives every year by crowding into small fishing boats to brave the Atlantic and sneak into Spain to find work-- in the fields, cleaning office buildings, selling African masks and necklaces in weekend markets; basically anything. Senegal has become Spain’s Mexico, though so far there is no 700 mile wall planned for the border.
But amidst these struggles and in spite of them, the Senegalese are some of the happiest and friendliest people I have ever encountered. They have a great sense of dignity and take care of one another without question or condition. You always have a place to stay in Senegal, you are never without a bowl of rice at lunchtime. Strangers are always invited. The most important Senegalese value, teranga, translated roughly (remember Clingon) means hospitality. Clearly this is more than an ethos, it is a survival mechanism.
Before I left the US I had the distinct impression that there was a silent suffering among so many people I saw commuting to work, buying groceries, or watching their kids. They have homes, cars, education, healthcare, and most importantly opportunity, but something seems to be missing. I love the US, which is after all why I am in the Peace Corps, but is it possible that the American dream has gotten away from us? Could it be that as we acquire more and more we are growing somehow emptier? Maybe it’s possible that Senegalese teranga could be the answer to a disaffected America. Perhaps the wealth in community and kindness so abundant in this country could truly make our own that much richer.
My job is different than what most people would label a job because I can show up anytime I choose, and I always wear sandals. Making people laugh at me can be viewed as a good day at work, and not only do I not have a salary, but I am sometimes forced to beg my parents for an extra fifty dollars here and there to support my drinking habit and need for a steak once in a while. I am nearly untouched by deadlines, meetings, or accountability. My phone doesn’t ring, my inbox doesn’t chime with each new message, my ears don’t hear that faint hum of the fluorescent lights overhead. I am in a completely different world, off the grid, under the radar.
I am different than the other toubabs here, the white people. I am different because I speak the same language as the Senegalese people, and I don’t mean French, though I do speak French. I speak Wolof, the most prominent language among the more than 40 ethnicities that make up the country’s diverse population. Imagine 40 languages actually spoken in the US, where Italians would understand German, Mexicans would speak French, and Romanians would speak Mandarin. It’s like that here. You have your own language, be it Mandinka or Pulaar, but you understand many, Wolof being the most likely. Wolof sounds a lot like Clingon from Star Trek, glutteral and gruff, with lots of sounds like you’re hacking a loogey or suddenly getting choked halfway through a sentence.
Like in any other language, I learned the importance of being able to gesture and intone Wolof. The words say a lot, but the way you say them is crucial-- the trailing off of certain phrases, where to put the emphasis in “Thanks Be to God,” how to shake your finger at someone like you are angry at them. The effect is powerful. When you see a foreign traveller in the US, you expect they will speak English. You are not surprised much less impressed.
In Senegal however, a Toubab that speaks Wolof is an african dictator that imposes term limits. Disbelief is followed by laughter, humor is followed by admiration, appreciation is followed by offers of sisters or daughters for prospective wives (I can have up to four), even babies to take back to the US to raise as my own. Perhaps because of the adoption offers, I sometimes think about a chance meeting I might have with a celebrity one day back home, let’s say Brad Pitt. I tell Brad, “man I really know what’s it like for you, being stared at, wanted, offered babies, yet sort of lonely in your immense popularity.” He thinks I am crazy as any star would hearing this, but I really do know what it’s like to be a celebrity.
People here know my name and I have no idea who they are, and not just someone here or there. It happens all the time. “Mansour!” “Diop! Mansour Diop!” They greet me and know that I am the toubab that speaks Wolof. They know that I am different than the other toubabs. My name of course is not Mansour Diop, but in Senegal it is. It is tradition for a family to give you their last name, and as an adopted son in the home of my village host father Adama Diop, he named me after his brother Mansour.
Nobody knows Nat Parker, hell I’m not sure I know him so well anymore myself. But Mansour is prolific. He can dance like the Senegalese, he understands money problems in a way that the Senegalese recognize, he eats the same rice and fish they do every single day. Mansour has parasites just like the Senegalese, he takes bucket baths, and hold your breath for this one: he wipes his ass using water and his left hand, just like the Senegalese, just like the rest of the developing world. Nat Parker is not a bare-handed ass wiper. He never really liked fish either. He enjoyed fine bourbans and scotchs back home, iced and abundant. Here, Mansour reaches for a $3 bottle of Club 7 Whiskey and drinks it straight when he can afford it. Mmm mmm good.
I came to Africa to discover a new place and people, to adventure before a mortgage or marriage could hold me down. I chose to join the Peace Corps because I thought that I could do a better job of representing the United States to the world than the Bush Administration. The problem is that I work for Mr. Bush, and he decided that I would best represent the US to an unelectrified village of mostly illiterate and highly religious Senegalese farmers and fisherman. Not to be unhinged by such a post, I am over halfway through, and just ask anyone in Mouit, my little village on the Senegal River, what they think of the United States and they will say “I love America. Will you help me get to America? Can you get me a visa?” Of course I can’t take all the credit. Ironically, and the Bush Administration will be loathe to admit it, the Black rap community in the US may be one of our most effective diplomats in Senegal.
Just the other day my boss at the national park where I work called me into his office for what I had thought would be an assignment, maybe a translation request. Instead, he wanted me to watch “Clips,” a CD filled with video clips from American rappers. Each clip got progressively more American; the number of hot women dancing half naked multiplied, Beamers became Bentleys, and diamond encrusted necklaces were lost in crisp wads of hundred dollar bills. My boss, Sidibe, sat transfixed with a smile on his face. “I have to go to the US Mansour. If there is one thing I do in this life, it’s to go to the US.”
My approach for spreading democracy and American culture by contrast, is a little short on bling. I talk about America all the time, but my goal has been to demonstrate that Americans are just as interested in Senegal as Senegalese are taken with America. So I do my best at integrating into the Senegalese culture by attending baptisms, funerals, and all night Koranic chanting sessions with as much enthusiasm as my boss watching clips. I haven’t converted to Islam or married four wives (my host father Adama has three), but I live at least five days a week in my little village doing as they do, drinking tea, praising God, and training my counterparts in the national park in basic business skills. I knew I was doing something right when my village family stopped referring to me as a toubab and began calling me a white Wolof.
The other two days of the week, Friday and Saturday, I go to the city and drink cold beer, Club 7, and load up on protein. The four dollar steak and fries at one of my favorite restaurants speaks to me in a way that rice and fish never will. I am still Mansour when I go to town, but I am the city version of my village persona, rolling out phrases like “What up dog?” or “How’s your sex life?” to my city buddies just as easily as “The Lord be praised” or “God willing” in the village.
What I really like about this experience is that it allows me to play all kinds of different roles depending on my mood. I can talk about the onion harvest or daily catch with the people of my village in Wolof and the next day speak to French hotel owners about excessive taxes on tourism and government graft. I like debating development with NGO workers, what works better grassroots organizing or addressing systemic change? I enjoy arguing American politics with my Mauritanian jeweler friend who is a faithful follower of the BBC in Arabic. “It was your CIA that trained Osama Bin Laden Mansour, why do you think you can’t catch him?”
I keep up with my friends back home who are becoming rich, buying their first house, wondering where to spend their two week vacation this year. They seem envious of my unique lifestyle while I worry that I am falling behind the curve in advancing my career and saving for the future. I am all too certain that the American routine will catch up with me, but will it ever let them go?
My family worries about me unnecessarily, partly because that’s what families do, but also because they are just as ignorant to the realities of Africa as most Americans. They are intelligent people but will ask things like “What do people wear over there? Animal skins?” “You’re not near any cannibals are you?” or “Do you want me to send you peanut butter?” The last question may not be so dumb come to think of it.
My experience has been that Americans are only slightly more ignorant to the colonial history of French West Africa than we are to our own colonial history of western expansion and imperialism. People recognize with Sally Struthers like sympathy the rampant poverty of this place, the incessant violence and corruption that do exist. That we care about these issues greatly there is no question.
What we don’t realize I think, is how our own lifestyles and ignorance are in many ways responsible for the situation. How many Americans know what the World Trade Organization or International Monetary Fund really do? Most of us don’t realize that these American led groups maintain and perpetuate insurmountable debt in developing nations, debt that forms one of the primary obstacles to their very advancement out of poverty. The WTO and IMF give countries giant payday loans in the name of bolstering their economies and we wonder why the situation doesn’t get better. How does that happen?
But I don’t blame Americans for not fully understanding the situation over here. We are too busy trying to pay our own bills and take care of our own troubles to get personally involved in problems a continent away. Iraq has been a testament to that. I just want America to realize how much the Senegalese respect us and look up to us. We should guard that respect and try to earn more of it around the world. Maybe we could send more Peace Corps volunteers armed with “Clips” to other developing nations.
After over a year in this country battling the heat, the flies, and the runs, I realize that Senegal can teach America incredible lessons about what it means to be human. These people are poor, undereducated, and without real opportunities to better their lives. They carve out a living from the land, they sell cheap wares between row after row of cars stuck in traffic in Dakar, they work hard knowing it won’t be enough. Thousands of hopeful Senegalese are risking their lives every year by crowding into small fishing boats to brave the Atlantic and sneak into Spain to find work-- in the fields, cleaning office buildings, selling African masks and necklaces in weekend markets; basically anything. Senegal has become Spain’s Mexico, though so far there is no 700 mile wall planned for the border.
But amidst these struggles and in spite of them, the Senegalese are some of the happiest and friendliest people I have ever encountered. They have a great sense of dignity and take care of one another without question or condition. You always have a place to stay in Senegal, you are never without a bowl of rice at lunchtime. Strangers are always invited. The most important Senegalese value, teranga, translated roughly (remember Clingon) means hospitality. Clearly this is more than an ethos, it is a survival mechanism.
Before I left the US I had the distinct impression that there was a silent suffering among so many people I saw commuting to work, buying groceries, or watching their kids. They have homes, cars, education, healthcare, and most importantly opportunity, but something seems to be missing. I love the US, which is after all why I am in the Peace Corps, but is it possible that the American dream has gotten away from us? Could it be that as we acquire more and more we are growing somehow emptier? Maybe it’s possible that Senegalese teranga could be the answer to a disaffected America. Perhaps the wealth in community and kindness so abundant in this country could truly make our own that much richer.
posted by Nat Parker | 8:54 AM
1 Comments:
I am inspired by the truth in your words my friend. Your recollection of the silent suffering is not dulled by time abroad, and your prescription for a healthy American soul is equally sharp.
I have spent the past two years chasing my career and earning potential and the cycle feels endless. And as you can imagine, or rather as I am sure you have experienced, the payoff never comes unless you are in love with the day. It is hard to love one's email inbox, florescent lights, and two week vacation.
But you and I, I assume, are different in some way. The work that graces your past, my present, and potentially your future is gratifying in another way. Building the skills, relationships, and grassroots power amongst friends with whom you share common cause is a unique human interaction. Uniquely personal, compassionate, and born out of trust.
In this context the means of an overhyped American-office work ethic, justify the ends of true community building for positive change.
At least I hope they do. I am left to try and justify some the daily grind that goes on here in Portland when I read such visceral accounts of life in West Africa.
Ultimately I am happy to read about your experiences, had a great time viewing Paul's photos from his trip, and I look forward to a conversation with Mansour Diop.
'Oregonized'
Gerik
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