Story Time

The First African Story I was told:

Once upon a time there was a girl. She wanted to find a husband and decided she would marry a man who did not have any scars. Her mother warned her that this was not normal and that she should be careful about desiring this. A man overheard the conversation and wanted to marry the girl, so he took the heart of the baobab tree, a tree that has no wounds or scars, all for himself. Now when the girl saw this man, he was flawless and didn’t have one single scar. Right away they were married and he took her far far away, so he could spend all his time with his wife and no one else. After the husband and wife travelled to where no one else lived, the man turned into a snake. When the wife saw this she began to run. She ran and ran but the serpent was right behind her. For days she ran and passed all the villages until she reached her own. When she found her mother, her mother reminded her that she had warned her about wanting to marry a man with no scars.

This is a song in Wolof explained to me by Prince and translated into English by myself. I’ll let you all extract the many morals for yourselves.

Yesterday was a great day. After work I went running with Arona, who I found out is a soccer player hoping to go to South Africa to play for a team there. He took me to the stadium, which isn’t too far from where I live and introduced me to the Track coach for the Dakar club team. I’m going to start training today… I have no idea what I’m in for. The practice times interfere with my work schedule most days, so I’m not sure how it will all work out, but I’m excited to do a workout with others.

I went over to Jazz’s house with Prince, Balakey, Idi and Pap last night. I learned how to make the Senegalese tea, which is simply tea with lots of sugar, but it has to be made in a certain overly complicated way or else the drinking tea-scene would loose some of its character. I was slightly pressured into dancing to the beat of the tumtums… we all had a good laugh at this and I learned to be sans complexe. We spent the rest of the evening talking, mostly about religion and how there are many similarities between Islam and Christianity. One of the founding principles of Islam is living peacefully and forgiving others, which is easily observed in the Senegalese culture. Another thing I discovered was the reason for women to be covered (this is a practice that some Muslims follow and others don’t, personal preference). The idea is that this allows women to be valued for their person and not just for their physical appearance, along with preventing men from thinking of less-than-holy thoughts. In the U.S. I think we tend to view the Muslim practice of covering women as oppressive, but how much more oppressive is U.S.’s culture of objectifying women as only beautiful bodies? It’s interesting to ponder.

Alright I’m going to begin work. This weekend I have a full program. I’ll be filling you all in on Monday!

ROOMY- HAPPY BE-EARLY BIRTHDAY! I'll be thinking of you on Sunday!