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
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!
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