An International Weekend

This picture shows my weekend hosts, Dubby and Anna Rodda (left) and missionary friends from neighboring villages, eating a Saafi meal from a common platter. (If we were really traditional, we would have set the platter on the floor and sat around it.) The meal consisted of a thick layer of millet (much like couscous) flavored with boabob leaves, topped with a smorgasbord of vegetables, including squash, tomotoes, carrots, and a kale-like leafy something whose name sounded like "never-die."

This weekend, I took my first solo trip outside of Dakar since moving here four years ago. I drove an hour and a half to visit Dubby and Anna Rodda and their son Charlton, who live in Mbayar, a Saafi (SAH-fee) village southeast of Dakar. The Saafis are a Senegalese tribe of about 100,000, related to the larger tribal group Serer (see sidebar under the heading "EVERY TRIBE AND TONGUE"). My friends are working to develop a written version of their language using both Roman and Arabic scripts.

It was good to be out of Dakar. It was very quiet and peaceful (except Saturday night, when a village festival included the blaring of recorded African pop music into the early morning). It's not what I would call a pretty area. There is no ground cover of any sort. The view is barren brown from horizon to horizon, broken only by the brown cinderblock huts and a few dusty trees and shrubs. The rainy season wasn't rainy this year, so the villagers' farming efforts largely failed.

Yesterday marked the end of the mourning period for two elderly women whose husband died 4 months ago, and I could have accompanied Dubby to the, the -- well, I don't know if it was a ceremony or a celebration or just what -- at which the women were to learn of their current re-marriage options. (Hmm. Was this connected with the village festival last night? I didn't think to ask.) Alas, I didn't have the energy, physically (I had a fever most of the weekend) or emotionally (it's almost the end of a long semester) to venture into the village. I'm not sure this is the sort of event I'd feel comfortable crashing anyway!

I did meet several villagers, as they dropped by frequently. One, I was surprised to learn, was the village chief. Why was I surprised? Because he looked to be between 25 and 35, too young to be the chief. It turns out he is 57, the father of 13 children!

So, my weekend cross-cultural foray was not a matter of black and white, but of various genres of blond and blue-eyed. Of the six missionaries pictured above...

• three are British (Dubby's family produces the exclusive Rodda's Cornish Clotted Cream)


• one is Faroese (Anna is from one of the 18 Faroe Islands located in the North Atlantic between Scotland, Norway, and Iceland, largely independent, but with political ties to Denmark)


• one is Dutch, and


• one is Norwegian

I was the token blond-blue-eyed Yankee (British-German-American).

Despite our various backgrounds, we talked together, laughed together, listened to music together (in English, German, Fareoese, and Bulgarian), sang Christmas carols together (including one I wrote, and a "new" one from England), prayed together (in English), we all ate Saaafi.

I've been emailing and blogging ever since I got back to Dakar hours ago. It's time for bed!

Post of a Thanksgiving Past

A friend emailed me this photo (copyright status unknown). It seems a fitting accompaniment to the following story.

My best--and favorite--college professor was my choral director. An excellent teacher and a skilled conductor, Dr. Marsh provided us with practical wisdom gained from years in the classroom; he was emminently approachable, and had an excellent sense of humor.

He was also my advisor. One day, I stopped him in the hall and asked to set up an appointment with him. We settled on 10 am the following Thursday as a time amenable to us both.

When we passed each other in the hall again later, Dr. Marsh stopped me and said, "Jay, I realized after we talked that next Thursday is Thanksgiving; I can't meet with you then."

"Hmph!" I exclaimed with feigned indignation, "I see where your priorities lie!"

"Well," he replied without skipping a beat, "it was a choice of one turkey or another."

On the town

I rarely travel alone. I prefer to be with people. Especially when traveling--even short distances--in a country whose languages and customs I don't know.

This past Saturday, I spent much of the day downtown by myself. In the morning I visited a Senegalese friend in the hospital. Then I went shopping alone, followed by a long walk and a stop at a small Senegalese restraurant, all time spent "processing" the hospital visit, which included some new cultural experiences and perspectives I had to mull over, in addition to normal emotions associated with facing friends' medical difficulties with them. I decided I need more of these solo trips to begin to really live "in Senegal."

A True Story

A few weekends ago, I went to dinner with a new Canadian friend (we'll call him Dan) who was "batching it" for the weekend while his wife (who we'll call Angie) was at a retreat. Knowing that Angie is American, and that Dan had attended graduate school in the US, I risked asking him a potentially sensitive question: what stereotypes of Americans he had found to be generally accurate--and annoying. He thought a bit and said, "I wish Americans knew more about Canada."

Fair enough, I thought. And, hoping to be the beginning of the change he wanted, I asked him, "What do you wish Americans knew about Canada?" He paused for a long time, and finally said, "I don't know."

A Bird in the Bush

Last Sunday, I spent an exceedingly pleasant afternoon with a group of old and new friends (not counting the birds) at a nearby technology park / golf course / nature preserve. A golfer leaving the park saw us carting binoculars and cameras, and alerted us to the presence of flamingos in a distant corner of the golf course. By the time we got there, the flamingos had left, but just learning about this secluded and pretty part of the park--with open water, brushy trees, and open fields attracting a terrific mix of birds--was worth the trip.

This was also a "get back on the horse" experience for me. I've barely touched my camera since losing literally thousands of photos last spring (see my September 8, 2007 post). Though I didn't take my long zoom and tripod with me, I'm still happy to have begun replenishing my photo collection with this plain but clear shot of a red-billed hornbill. The hornbill, which also comes in a gray-billed variety, is an active, noisy bird with amusing flight patterns. It is perhaps 2 feet long from tip of its bill to the end of its long tail.