Les Parfums de Sénégal

Not long after I came to Senegal I was in a car with a few other PCVs, and we got to talking about what scents a Senegal-themed scented candle set would include. (I think it was April's idea.) In any case, I still think about that when I catch whiffs of  Senegal-specific odors. As best I can recall, here are some of the odors we identified as being the iconic smells of PCV life in Senegal: 

• Café Touba: at pretty much every bean sandwich lady's stand in the whole country you can buy hot, sugary little cups of Café Touba to go with your breakfast. (Many PCVs love it; I am not so much a fan.) It smells over-boiled and slightly peppery, like cloves and leaves and instant coffee.
• Fish Market: in most markets there's a section devoted to selling all kinds of fish - big, small, fresh, dried, semi-spoiled - and it always reeks of fish guts turning rancid under the most powerful heat lamp in the world. 
• Trash Fire: one of the least-lovely smells to wake up to. 
• Tea Time: the singed-sugar smell that comes from cooking up the scalding, hyper-sweet ataaya tea that many Senegalese like to drink int eh afternoons (and mornings... and evenings...) 
• Dust: it's subtle, just a light, hot, dry smell, but it's also everywhere, especially on transport. It cakes up on clothes and in sinuses and gets way down into the seams and cracks of everything, from books to keyboards to skin and hair. 
• Mango: fresh, sweet, sun-warmed and lovely, mangoes right from the tree are one of the few silver linings to hot season. 

Other suggestions were Overpowering Body Odor (particularly while crammed in a crowded bus or a station wagon with nine other people), Sewage Puddles (a rainy season fixture in all cities), and Adji (the bullion packets that are the base flavoring for nearly all Senegalese dishes we eat on a regular basis).

Maybe the candle set would look like this. 

Sadly, for me (and the other people in the room with me right now) Trash Fire would have to be the smell that I most strongly associate with living here. While away on vacation I stepped out of the car after being picked up from the airport and the first things I thought was "Oh wow, it smells so nice here." I've heard that repeated - unprompted and almost verbatim - from several other volunteers.

There are many other smells that spring to mind when I think of my life here in Senegal, many of them quite pleasant - babies all freshly washed and lathered in warm, nutty-smelling shea butter; sweet, floral "chourie" incense paste; the fresh-baked bread smell of tapalpa village baguettes. But really, Trash Fire tends to overwhelm them all. 

My First 100 Days

A few weeks ago I was listening to a podcast about a lady who wrote a book about Obama's mom, and it occurred to me that I was about to complete my first one hundred days in Senegal. Here are a few of the my early in-country achievements:

My language has advanced to the point where I can say "Hello Mother! I am going to with lunch Taki's friend here. There. There. I am going to lunch. Is not here, me, lunching. Lunch? To eat. With Taki from Etiolo. Friend of Taki house here. Ok? Thank you! Thank you much much much! At afternoon ok!"

All of the little kids in my neighborhood have stopped calling me "Toubab!" and started calling me "Adama!"

I built a little barrier at the base of my hut's back door so that the rat who has been digging a hole in my wall can't scamper in while I'm trying to enjoy my morning coffee.

I have established myself as the Resident Facepainter at the Regional House.

Diabou, the ten-month-old who was initially extremely suspicious about me as a person, has finally warmed up to me and now calls me "Ada!" and waves and gives me brisk little handshakes.

I new have a faint Chacos foot-tan and approximately two dozen new freckles, most of them on my ankles. 

Language Seminar

I just got back into Kédougou from a language seminar in Bandafassi, a village about 60 km from where I live in Salémata. Houssey, my Peace Corps Pulaar teacher, came down from Thiès, the other people from my training group came in from their villages, and we all had three days of semi-formal language class. PCV Patrick hosted us, (and he really was a very, very gracious host) we went on a nice hike up to a Bedik village in the hills above Bandafassi and his host sister cooked some fantastic lunches.

Just to give you an idea of where all things are happening, Salémata is the "A" on this map, and Bandafassi is the "B," the city of Kédougou is "C," and Dakar (where all the political protests and everything were happening last week) is "D."

In case you were wondering, it takes about two days to get from Salémata to Dakar, so I'm a long ways off from any of the protests, and even when things get hectic in Dakar nothing really happens in the village, which is nice.

PHOTOS: Bandafassi Language Seminar 

I Love Panoramas.

This is the view of the main cooking/eating/lounging area of the Souaré compound. My hut is off to the right. I spend a lot of time sitting around under this mango tree, smiling at people and trying to keep up with conversations. (Which is still really hard, and pretty tiring mentally, so I also tend to spend a lot of time zoning out and watching the chickens and goats running around getting into things.) For the first week or so I would sit around here with my host moms and drink the super-sweet tea that is so popular in Senegal, but I started to worry about my teeth melting from so much exposure to what is basically hot sugar syrup (also it kinda gives me a stomachache most of the time) so now I just sit around, shelling peanuts and pointing at the goats and saying goats! and so on.

Below is the closest well to my house. I am not so great at sloshing the bucket around to get it to fill up in an efficient way (also I don't have my own bucket on a rope and don't like having to go around asking to borrow one even though no one would mind at all) so I walk to the forage pump on other side of the field, at the elementary school, and pump my water there.

I generally pump one or two 15-liter buckets of water every day in village. I use a bucket with a lid, and I fill it up, strap it to the back of my bike, and ride/walk it back across the field and up the little hill to my hut. Even though most women (and many children) pull and haul a lot more water than that, a lot farther than that, and without the assistance of a bike, everyone clucks and says I am très brave to be fetching water all by myself.

Tokora An

In Senegal I am named after my host mother's mother, Adama Diallo. In Pulaar the word for someone with the same name is "tokora," so she is tokora an, my name-twin. She doesn't live in Darou, but this past week she came to visit, and my host aunt took a photo of the two of us together.

 

Adama Diallo I and most of Adama Diallo II

It turns out that it's easier to make myself shorter than it is to explain zooming, so this is the best photo we got:

Bineta, Adama Diallo, and Adama Diallo

 

This is me drinking sugary, sugary tea with Houssey, my LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator) She is fantastic; she's very, very patient with us, even when we're being ridiculous. (On a side note, most days it is really, really hot and I stay out of the sun as much as possible. Which may be why I have been living in Africa for almost six weeks now and only seem to be getting paler.)

Houssey and Adama (aka me)

And this is little Aminata, "studying" under the mango tree in the side yard where we have language and culture class most afternoons. She is adorable.

 

Aminata, my 18-month-old host cousin.