I See White People

April 5, 2006

I can’t say I have been looked after this well before, at least not for along time. While I’m 23 years old, being in Senegal right now, I feel like I still wear a diaper. Learning the language is going to take a lot of time as well as understanding my surroundings. Fortunately, I have an awesome family here that looks after me and protects me to some extent.

Monday night, I went out with my brothers and sister to the Place de France here in Thies for Independence Day Eve rally. It involved kids marching with torches. It was pretty cool to see. We ended up meeting up with some other volunteers and their host siblings. When I say we met up, I really mean that we stand out like a sore thumb. Pretty much, I know about half of the "white people" I see. Because of this, at one point Monday night, a crowd of people kind of crowded around us and started talking to us. While not knowing exactly what they were saying, I don’t think it was the nicest of talk and it got alittle scary, I’m not gonna lie. My sister, who could hold her own anywhere, told them to f’off and got all of us Peace Corps people out of there. Pretty much all the trainees that have met her love her because, yes, she is awesome. It is kinda neat though, I feel like when I go out with my brothers and sisters, I have bodyguards. Its pretty cool. One day I plan on busting out a sharpie and start signing autographs.

Another example of how my family has looked after me occurred today. When I returned home from class, I went to a corner shop with one of my brothers and sister to buy ingredients for beignets. While there, all I could here was "toubab, toubab, toubab, toubab." This is a term that supposedly means all non-resident, but really is said to any white person. I don’t think it is the most respectful of terms, but you hear it all the time, mostly from kids. I heard it more when I was in Kedegou than here in Thies, but regardless, it gets old. Well, my brother Omar told the kids to shut up, then chased them, and then got the novel idea to throw a few rocks at them. Omar is probably about 12 or 13 and the kids that were calling me toubab were probably 5. Well, one of the rocks hit one of the kids in the head pretty hard. Whether he deserved it or not, that is a different story. He ran into his house crying and out came three of his bigger brothers/cousins/friends (relationships aren’t easy to figure out here). My sister started yelling at my brother and smacked the crap out of him on the face and yelled at the little kid’s entourage as well. We ended up leaving the store and while I condone hitting 5 year olds in the head with rocks, I did give my brother a hug and high five because of the principle of it. Its an amazing feeling when you know somebody is going to stand up for you like that. In a sense, I’m not a toubab, I’m here to live and work amongst the Senegelese people for the next two years. I’m glad my family has taken me in as much as they have. So we get back in, and the first thing out of my sisters mouth is "Papa, Omar hit a kid in the head with a rock." So Omar and Papa had a talk. Then the little kid’s mom/sister and the kid came over to figure out the situation. So here we go again. Fortunately, the two families know each other well and my dad set things straight I believe. Unfortunately, everything was in really fast wolof, which I’m not at the stage yet where I can understand a lot of even slow wolof. Then mamma came home…so I heard everything again. Finally, I just had to get out of the house for a bit, because I really wish I had known what they were saying partially because it was in a sense about me, and my family’s view on the concept of the ‘toubab’, so I walked two houses down to tell my story to another volunteer.

The moral of the story is that I have a family here in Senegal that looks after me and isn’t afraid to stand up for me, especially right now, when I’m not at a level to do it on my own. Laughing and playing dumb only gets you so far on the streets, so its nice to have a strong crutch to lean on right now.