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In March 2001, my daughter left for the Peace Corps in Senegal. Now my sister and I are making a pilgrimage to a place that it would never have occurred to us to want to see, the village of Saare Foode, population perhaps 200, a painful 14-hour drive south of Dakar
In March 2001, my daughter left for the Peace Corps in Senegal. Now my sister and I are making a pilgrimage to a place that it would never have occurred to us to want to see, the village of Saare Foode, population perhaps 200, a painful 14-hour drive south of Dakar
Sojourn in Senegal
By Linda Taylor
Special to The Advertiser
Caption: Landscapes are not the only beauty in Senegal; the children, dressed Western-style but still living African-style, made the visit memorable. Photos courtesy Linda Taylor
DAKAR, Senegal — The market is a labyrinth of narrow, littered streets, tiny shops, sidewalk vendors, curious children, beggars, and thousands of determined shoppers and sellers, and we are white people surrounded by a jostling, cheerful crowd of deep black faces.
"Lady, you come my shop!" "Madame, ici!" "Sister, for you, special price!"
It is our first day in Senegal, and we have spent the morning shopping in the market in Dakar, the capital of this West African nation, population 2 million.
Once we turn a corner and a small man shouts in delight at my daughter, "Sona Diamanka!" — her village name (we know her as Betsy Polhemus). He is her favorite fabric vendor. He balances a stack of a dozen indigo pieces on his head, his arms draped with rugs.
We admire and compare, study the patterns, while he and my daughter haggle over price in pulaar, one of the country's languages. My daughter is a practiced bargainer. We saw this last night when we spilled out of the airport, jet-lagged and laden with our gear and gifts for the village. Surrounded by shouting cab drivers, she coolly and fluently exchanges insults, her eyebrows feigning shock at the asking prices. As my sister and I watch in bemused exhaustion, my daughter's boyfriend leans over to us and says, "she's the best."
One driver, finally throwing up his hands in disgust, agreed to a much-reduced fare to our hotel. The cab was ancient, battered, all insulation gone from the inside doors. But the price was right.
Today, she banters price with the fabric vendor, buying at half his first asking price two rugs and a fine piece of deep indigo. He glares as he exchanges goods for money, then smiles widely as we turn away, shouting his last blessing.
My sister and I, babes in these woods, have read the travelers' cautions and are determined that no cunning amoebae will invade our digestive systems. We're about to put all that information to the test.
'Stomach' and 'other' mother
In March 2001, my daughter left for the Peace Corps in Senegal. Now my sister and I are making a pilgrimage to a place that it would never have occurred to us to want to see, the village of Saare Foode, population perhaps 200, a painful 14-hour drive south of Dakar. I am drawn by the stories of her village family.
My daughter's "other mother" — I am the "stomach mother" — is a tiny, durable woman, barely past my armpit when we stand arm in arm. When we arrive, I hug her bird bones. She sits next to me on a bed, speaking to me through our daughter. This is why I came to Senegal — to meet her. We are both frustrated that we cannot talk easily. My daughter has an entire village family here.
The "other mother" darts out of the round, thatched hut and comes back cradling her son's new baby, barely a month old. We admire the child. Perfect fingers and toes.
Later, in my daughter's hut, my sister and I lower the mosquito netting and stretch out on the foam mattress. There are no pillows — my daughter said she once had some, but people kept borrowing them, and they came back with head lice. Never mind. We roll up clothes. I read for a very little by the light of a small, white candle stuck to the edge of a trunk. Louis L'Amour was good for the dirt streets of Kaolack. Isabel Allende finally makes sense to me in a small tropical village.
We wake to the sound of millet pounding. Amoebae have gotten past my sister's defenses, and she looks a little queasy when the breakfast bowl of millet porridge is set on the floor before us. We are lucky. Guests may eat alone in my daughter's hut, sparing us the embarrassment of not eating a meal that has taken so long to prepare. Guests also get to use spoons instead of fingers.
The porridge has a slightly bitter, earthy taste, so we devise a plan. My daughter will eat from three sides of our communal bowl and perhaps they will just think us light eaters. This works except when my daughter forgets to use all three spoons. Her village brother comes in and admonishes her, shaking his head. He worries that we will starve. This is unlikely. My sister and I carry twice the weight of anyone in the village.
Barefoot in the mud
Later in the village, a boy passes on an old bicycle with a cooler lashed to the back. He is ringing a bell to drum up trade, a local Good Humor man. He sells bessop juice, frozen in small plastic bags or chilled in plastic bottles. The juice tastes like grape cranberry with mint. I like the frozen best, like biting just the right size hole in the corner of the bag to slurp out the crystals without dripping sticky purple on my khakis.
It is late afternoon, cooler. We are going to the rice fields, my daughter's other mother leading the way as we slog barefoot through ankle-deep mud. I believe this is another of those activities the traveler health guide suggests is unwise. I pause and pull one foot out of the muck — my toe ring has been sucked off. Gone! My precious!
Later, we bathe behind my daughter's hut, sluicing off with water she carries from the well in bright plastic buckets. I use the leftover water for laundry, scrubbing out rice-paddy mud with my knuckles. Clothes drip from the fence surrounding her small backyard garden facility (a concrete hole in the ground that serves as a toilet). I hate it. My sister is battling diarrhea, I am constipated. We both whimper when we head to the back yard.
Still, it has been a good day, and for dinner there is rice and chicken and a special small dish of potatoes and black-eyed peas cooked in tomato sauce and spices. We eat our share, and my daughter's brother looks relieved when he comes to survey our bowl. I lie under the mosquito net, sunburned and content.
The next day is the day of the naming ceremony for the new baby — it has been postponed until we arrive. The pounding of millet and rice begins early, and my daughter's brother walks past us carrying the goat that will be dinner. My sister and I are careful not to look — we prefer goat in the abstract. Breakfast is sketchy. The dirt of the compound is swept clean, the laundry taken in.
My daughter's village sister-in-law emerges from her hut dressed in new clothing, her ears gleaming with jewelry purchased the day before. The rest of the family is still in working clothes. Another sister rides into the compound on the back of a motorbike. The baby will be named after her, and she has come many miles for the celebration. She hops off the bike and shakes the dust from her bright clothing. The family was not sure her husband would allow her to come, and they hurry to greet her.
Women begin to gather, coming from the neighboring compounds and a nearby village. They are dazzling in their fine clothes and head wraps. Children trail after the women, some so shy they hide behind their mother's skirts. Others march up and stare at my sister and me. White people. I think my daughter is not quite a white person any longer, but we two are a novelty. Men drift into the compound and settle near the chief's hut. The greetings are unhurried, a formal ritual carefully observed.
A large mat is placed in front of the chief's hut. This is his granddaughter being named today, taking the name of his only daughter. The family members take their places on the mat, the baby held by her aunt and her mother sitting next to them. Four women hold the corners of a sheet over the mat, for shade and to hold gifts of money.
My daughter has told us the ceremony is simple. After prayers, an elder male will shave the baby's head and say her name publicly for the first time. Then the guests will throw money in the sheet and the party will begin.
My sister and I watch the chief begin to sharpen a large kitchen knife. Our eyes slide sideways as we look at each other. I think we are both resolving not to watch, but before I can snap my eyes shut, the elder lifts a yellow disposable safety razor and draws it carefully over that tiny fuzzy head. Done. My sister and I are giddy with relief until my daughter tells us the elder was sharpening the knife to kill the goat.
The gathering splits in two — the men stay around the chief's hut and the women crowd into his wife's. My daughter's mother is a practiced hostess, urging us to eat balls of sweet, sticky rice and millet for good luck. We must take some home; she insists it will keep for months. Women and the babies are tucked on every available surface of the two full-size beds and a few small chairs. Their cheerful chatter fills the hut; I am almost dizzy with the noise and heat.
Village in grief
Suddenly a woman bursts into the hut and shouts something, quick and brittle. There is a brief moment of stunned silence, broken by a single wail that chills the soul. The wail is echoed by every woman in the room; they rush to the door. It is a young woman in the next compound; pregnant, she has just died in hospital.
The rest of the day is a haze of distant wailing and hushed conversations as people drift in and out of our compound. Only one of the guests has a vehicle, and he is dispatched to pick up the body. Later, he drives past the compound with the body wrapped in plastic, strapped to his truck. Burials must take place within a day, and we see a group of men walking away from the village with shovels. The graves are not marked; the mother will not know where her daughter is buried.
The baby's mother changes from her new clothes and starts a cooking fire — there is so much food and people will still eat. But the women who would have prepared the naming dinner are instead preparing the dead woman for burial. One of the women guests returns to help with the food, tying an old pareu over her clothes. Later she tells my daughter wryly, "I came to party, and now I'm cooking."
It is a bright moonlit night. We sit outside and listen to the renewed wailing as the burial party passes by. There is some shrugging of shoulders; she did not take care of herself, refused the free prenatal care available in the next village. My daughter translates bitter stories of family members enraged that the doctors could not save her, of fights over clothing as they dressed her for burial.
My daughter's mother is worried. A woman who dies with her unborn child brings bad luck to the family, and this is a relative. Clouds blot out the moon, and we rush inside to avoid a sudden downpour. The next day my daughter hears that it rained only here, only over these few huts.
When we leave, it is such a quiet leaving — nothing as I had imagined. I have come to Senegal to meet my daughter's mother. I am curious about this woman who is as much a mother to my child as I am — who advises her and scolds her and worries over her and loves her, and who now I can see will miss this shared daughter as fiercely when she leaves the village as I do when my daughter leaves me.
Barely an hour later, my sister, daughter and I are floating in the hotel pool in Kolda, the main city in this region. Joe Cocker blasts from the bar's sound system. We are perhaps four miles from the village — in another world.
Later, my sister asks me what is most memorable about this journey, and I tell her — my daughter. Somewhere on some rutted road I realized in surprise that my entire well-being, safety, pleasure and day-to-day life was in the hands of my daughter. Next I realized that did not worry me in the least.