Cultural Confusion

Yesterday we returned from our first home stay. I am staying with a family in Ngeexoox (pronounced N-Geh-Hoh), who will be my cultural and language immersion for the next 2 months. My family consists of my father, 2 mothers (polygamy is very common in Senegal---sidenote: I am very interested to learn how these household dynamics work), my grandma (on father’s side) and 4 children. I haven’t clarified ages concretely, but sisters probably 10 and 5, and brothers around 9 and 1. My Senegalese name is Hawa, and my family is Sy. It is common for the Senegalese to give you a new name, and it is after someone in the family. Slightly unfortunately, mine is after my younger sister... who they call to do everything in the house. I’m still training myself to respond to Hawa, but it’s hard because I have to respond to a specific intonation as well (not the piercing get-over-here tone my sister gets). An additional hindrance to this whole new language/name situation is that “Alaa” is the Pular word for “no”, which you hear often in a household of children... And Ala is my Polish nickname/what my family calls me/what I’ve been responding to my entire life... so on top of the communication barrier, there’s that whole confusion. My father speaks a bit of French and English, so when I really need to say something I’m able to get my point across. One of my moms speaks French and English very well, but she doesn’t speak Pulaar so I’m “not supposed” to talk to her because I can’t practice language. My other mom is Pulaar, and she is the home-maker (the other one works) so luckily she is around the house the most. It’s an interesting dynamic because I’m probably closer in age to her than the children, but she’s a caring woman and we have definitely gotten along. My grandma is is always laughing at me, but she always uses Pulaar so she’s very helpful to learn from.

The greeting, a very important part of the Senegalese culture, is all we’ve really mastered in language classes thus far, and I’m still learning new questions/responses in this process every day. Every morning I am to greet all family members in the house, especially my grandma. I go to her room, shake her hand, and greet her. I don’t always understand what she says, but usually saying “mawdum” (good) or “alhumdulila” (praise god) does the trick.

On Sunday my next door neighbors had a baptism, so the night before and morning of, everything was abuzz with preparations. It was an interesting experience, everyone was dressed so nicely in their formal African complets, sitting around and eating delicious food. The dancing was good fun, they taught me how to do a few of their moves.

The food at the homestay has been quite different from the food we’ve had at the training center. Lunch is definitely the largest/most elaborate meal of the day, and is similar to what we have at the training center-- community bowl of rice, veggies and fish. The hardest part is eating dinner at around 9:30, and it’s usually a random combination of grains/wheat and milk and possible sugar.

Sanitation is definitely the biggest issue at my home stay. Soap is nowhere to be found in the compound. Everything is rinsed with water (non-sanitized). Washing occurs via bucket bath. Flies are EVERYWHERE. There is a lot of adjustment.

Our time at home stay time is primarily spent at language classes and practicing our gardening skills. There are 3 of us in my language group, and we spend a lot of time together learning and gardening.. but we’ve had a lot of fun so far.

I’m off for another 2 weeks to my home stay. Election runoffs are this weekend, hopefully things remain peaceful in-country.