Dancer in the Dark

The time has come to try to start settling into a routine; to find a new normal. While we are far from the end of the process of learning a new language, we, unlike Bjork's character in the title film, are slowly gaining our vision. Our eyes are slowly being opened to the language and culture around them. Every day things make a little more sense than they did the day before. Every day, you learn a new word or phrase. Every day, we're slowly coming out of the darkness of ignorance we were thrown into. As I said, though, there's still a long, long way to go. For now, we continue to be mild spectacles in the town. Kids (and some adults) will speak to us for their own enjoyment, taking a Schadenfreude-esque delight in watching us flop around in Wolof like fish out of water. I have a feeling, though, that among all those people, there are several, many even, who are genuinely interested in who we are and why we're here. I've said this before, but it's worth mentioning again. The community has been extremely welcoming and patient with all of us. I've probably had one or two bad experiences during my entire stay here so far and they were with teenagers, who, let's face it, can be jerks in any culture. Senegal as a nation has its problems, but hospitality is not one of them. Today, I feel confident that I will make it; that one day I'll cease to be ignorant of everything going on around me and become just a normal guy on the street again. Until then, I have to show the same patience that Bayakh has showed me and meet the challenge that each new day brings.

On second thought, there is one member of the community that has been extremely unpleasant and has gone as far as to physically threaten me.  There is a mother hen with about 10 babies in our back yard who is about the meanest animal that I have ever encountered.  Her maternal instinct has simultaneously earned my utmost respect and never-ending fear.  Each trip to the bathroom (which is a separate room in the back yard) is a trip through the lair of my most feared enemy.  Also, "back yard" is a word that has certain connotations to American readers that I have to dispell.  In the Wolof language, the word for sand and the word for ground are exactly the same, so that should tell you something right there.  Also, the back yard could have come out of an episode of Hoarders with its piles of gas cans, glass bottles, and roofing tiles on top of plain old trash.  There's not much of a waste management infrastucture here so trash is pretty much everywhere, including my back yard.  Anyway, that's where that monster lives; in a pile of trash.  Luckily, I'm going back to Thies tomorrow and we learn our permanent sites on Tuesday evening, so I'll be free from her tyranny before long.