I recorded Alphousseyni playing this song late one night last week...he was really tired and actually I had been intending to record one of the other family members that evening, but he (Papis, Alphousseyni's younger brother) left unexpectedly, so Alphousseyni obliged a couple of tunes dispite the fact that he was exhausted from a concert earlier that night. His tiredness lent a sweet softness to his voice, I think, and I really like the way this recording turned out. I haven't had a chance to mix it properly yet, but here is a "rough draft" so you can get a small taste of the music I've been immersed in the past few weeks. Hope you enjoy it.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
The sounds of Bounkiling
I recorded Alphousseyni playing this song late one night last week...he was really tired and actually I had been intending to record one of the other family members that evening, but he (Papis, Alphousseyni's younger brother) left unexpectedly, so Alphousseyni obliged a couple of tunes dispite the fact that he was exhausted from a concert earlier that night. His tiredness lent a sweet softness to his voice, I think, and I really like the way this recording turned out. I haven't had a chance to mix it properly yet, but here is a "rough draft" so you can get a small taste of the music I've been immersed in the past few weeks. Hope you enjoy it.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Wednesday, August 22
Well, it is my last morning in the village of Bounkiling before we head back to the bright lights (and internet connectedness!) of the big city: Dakar. It has been an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experience, the riches of which I think I will be "unpacking" for quite some time, both personally and academically. I think it would be kind of boring to give a long account of the trip, so I’ll tell you briefly what I did and where I was and finish with a short story and some reflections from the trip.
The trip down to Bounkiling was definitely a highlight memorable experience. Before the trip, I was under the impression that I would be traveling with a few musicians (kora master (and warden of Blake for the month of August) Alphousseyni and his band: Cheikh (bass), Omar (drums), Barra (percussion), and the oft-disgruntled Louis (sound technician)) on their short tour of the Casamance region. I discovered on the night of our departure that we were actually traveling with a 40-person delegation of people from Dakar who were born and raised in Bounkiling, venturing down to the village to offer the community support and condolences after four young men from Bounkiling died last winter when an overcrowded boat sunk in the Atlantic en route, illegally, to Spain (this was actually a really major news story in West Africa, and this event is thought to have greatly influenced the Senegalese presidential elections in February). Anyhow, instead of an intimate journey with a small cadre of touring musicians, I found myself packed into a small van (capacity...probably 15 or 20) with 40 people. We left at midnight, and I was literally curled into the fetal position for 10 hours with a backpack and an electric bass in my lap. By the time we reached the Gambian border (the crossing of which involved a series of shady bribes that maybe I will describe later--suffice to say that the Gambia represents everything wrong with post-colonial Africa) I had only distant memories of what it felt like to have legs, and I felt more profoundly dirty than I have ever felt in my life. Still, it was a great time. I sat in the back with a bunch of hilarious, chain-smoking Senegalese guys and laughed my ass off for nearly the entire trip, at least when I wasn’t wincing from the pain of repeatedly kneeing myself in the face. It was great.
Bounkiling is wonderful. I have been staying here with the extended Kouyate family in their compound. There are about 15 people living here of all different ages, from the 100+ year-old grandmother (pictured above) to a toddler who screams with pure, unrestrained terror every time she sees me because she has never seen a white person before (admittedly, I look pretty strange here...I haven’t seen another "toubab" since leaving Dakar). Of everybody here, my favorite is most definitely Ami, who is the wife of Morikeba Kouyate, my kora teacher in Chicago. She has really taken me under her wing--cooking for me and caring for me as if I were her own son (she actually said yesterday that I was her favorite son, which was confusing to everybody, especially to her actual son Sirifo who was standing nearby...awkward). Anyway, Ami is amazing, and our relationship is pretty hilarious. Like nearly everybody here, she speaks no French, and I obviously speak no Mandinka, so the entirety of our relationship revolves around her laughing at everything I do. I learned the phrase "adiata baake" (very good), and I say that to her once every ten minutes or so and every time, without fail, she laughs nearly to the point of tears. It is actually a good thing we’re leaving tomorrow, because once the humor of me saying this phrase loses its luster for Ami, we wouldn’t really have much to talk about. But for the time being, it is great. There are far too many people here whom I now know and love for me to describe here, but Ami is a great example of the incredible hospitality, kindness, and sense of humor that people here have shown me.
We've been in Bounkiling for most of the past two weeks, except for 4 days we spent playing concerts in Tanaf, which is a village near the Guinea-Bissau border where Alphousseyni grew up. Although Tanaf is incredibly beautiful, I have to say that these 4 days were probably the low point of the trip--it rained a lot and there wasn’t much to do there...and I forgot to bring any books from Bounkiling. It was still fun, but I was glad to get back here to Bounkiling, where I can barely walk across the yard without somebody shoving a plate of delicious food in my face.
So that is basically a nutshell version of where I have been and what I’ve been doing for the past two weeks. I have learned so, so much, both from an academic perspective and, more importantly, personally as well. I would say that perhaps the most vital thing I have learned and reflected on while I’ve been here is the ability of laughter and humor to connect people. As I said, most people here do not speak French, and if they do, it is their third or fourth language (after Mandinka, Wolof, and Fulani), so they are less able to meet me halfway with my feeble French. Thus, communication has been a pretty major challenge and at times I’ve felt pretty frustrated and futile, though I’ve really bonded with the few people who do speak French, some English, and of course, Alphousseyni, who speaks brilliant English and has been a gracious translator on numerous occasions.
Oddly enough, the most effective means I have had to interact with people is...dancing. I never, ever would have predicted this, but it has been the single most valuable tool at my disposal this entire trip. I think it all started back in Dakar at one of the naming ceremonies I attended. At these events (as at most musical events here except the discotheques) the women dance and the men sit at the sides, watching, playing cards, or just generally trying to look cool and nonchalant. Anyhow, at this naming ceremony, during the last song Alphousseyni played, an older woman dancing with the rest of the ladies grabbed my hand, and I eagerly obliged her a dance. I don’t know if it was a backlog of unfulfilled urges to dance earlier in the day or what, but I just kind of decided to...go for it, I guess. I started dancing in the most ridiculous way I possibly could--I have no idea where I was pulling these moves from, I have never danced like that in my life. I went high, I went low, I shook every part of my body with wild abandon, and it actually wasn’t all that bad--it certainly was not good, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was strange enough to be really funny, I think. Anyhow, it caused a huge sensation--there were maybe 50 beautiful Senegalese women chanting "Toubab! Toubab! Toubab!" clapping, and laughing hysterically. Alphousseyni and his band had to stop playing because they were laughing so hard. I am not making this up--it was literally the most overwhelming response I have ever received for anything I have ever done, good or bad. After the ceremony I had 20 women lined up to shake my hand and ask me to do another little jig for them, which I happily obliged. Anyhow, somehow the legend of that fateful afternoon has preceded me wherever I go now--people I have never met before somehow know about the "dancing toubab" and tell me they are looking forward to the next concert so they can see me groove. I danced at the first concert here in Bounkiling and the next morning Alphousseyni told me that the entire village was talking about it, and I have been asked (or nearly forced, on a couple of occasions) to dance almost every time music can be heard. It is actually getting pretty difficult to up the ante every time...I twisted my knee pretty badly during one ambitiously-choreographed maneuver and had to limp around the next day. Of course, however, I gulped down enough Advil to bust a move on the dance floor again that night.
In the midst of all of this silliness, it became clear to me that laughter (and the ability to laugh at myself) was connecting me with the people around me when language could not. My fairly extreme cultural displacement, coupled with my inability to talk to most people here, could have been (and, admittedly, occasionally was) really isolating, alienating, and lonely. My salvation, unexpectedly, came from just making a fool out of myself and showing that I had a sense of humor. Once I started laughing with the people here, our interactions and awkward exchanges solidified into relationships, and this laughter even paved the way for more serious and meaningful engagement. I guess that my most important move so far here in Senegal was that first little shimmy up in Dakar. Travel essentials: malaria pills, sleeping bag, water bottle, and a few choice dance moves.
The trip down to Bounkiling was definitely a highlight memorable experience. Before the trip, I was under the impression that I would be traveling with a few musicians (kora master (and warden of Blake for the month of August) Alphousseyni and his band: Cheikh (bass), Omar (drums), Barra (percussion), and the oft-disgruntled Louis (sound technician)) on their short tour of the Casamance region. I discovered on the night of our departure that we were actually traveling with a 40-person delegation of people from Dakar who were born and raised in Bounkiling, venturing down to the village to offer the community support and condolences after four young men from Bounkiling died last winter when an overcrowded boat sunk in the Atlantic en route, illegally, to Spain (this was actually a really major news story in West Africa, and this event is thought to have greatly influenced the Senegalese presidential elections in February). Anyhow, instead of an intimate journey with a small cadre of touring musicians, I found myself packed into a small van (capacity...probably 15 or 20) with 40 people. We left at midnight, and I was literally curled into the fetal position for 10 hours with a backpack and an electric bass in my lap. By the time we reached the Gambian border (the crossing of which involved a series of shady bribes that maybe I will describe later--suffice to say that the Gambia represents everything wrong with post-colonial Africa) I had only distant memories of what it felt like to have legs, and I felt more profoundly dirty than I have ever felt in my life. Still, it was a great time. I sat in the back with a bunch of hilarious, chain-smoking Senegalese guys and laughed my ass off for nearly the entire trip, at least when I wasn’t wincing from the pain of repeatedly kneeing myself in the face. It was great.
Bounkiling is wonderful. I have been staying here with the extended Kouyate family in their compound. There are about 15 people living here of all different ages, from the 100+ year-old grandmother (pictured above) to a toddler who screams with pure, unrestrained terror every time she sees me because she has never seen a white person before (admittedly, I look pretty strange here...I haven’t seen another "toubab" since leaving Dakar). Of everybody here, my favorite is most definitely Ami, who is the wife of Morikeba Kouyate, my kora teacher in Chicago. She has really taken me under her wing--cooking for me and caring for me as if I were her own son (she actually said yesterday that I was her favorite son, which was confusing to everybody, especially to her actual son Sirifo who was standing nearby...awkward). Anyway, Ami is amazing, and our relationship is pretty hilarious. Like nearly everybody here, she speaks no French, and I obviously speak no Mandinka, so the entirety of our relationship revolves around her laughing at everything I do. I learned the phrase "adiata baake" (very good), and I say that to her once every ten minutes or so and every time, without fail, she laughs nearly to the point of tears. It is actually a good thing we’re leaving tomorrow, because once the humor of me saying this phrase loses its luster for Ami, we wouldn’t really have much to talk about. But for the time being, it is great. There are far too many people here whom I now know and love for me to describe here, but Ami is a great example of the incredible hospitality, kindness, and sense of humor that people here have shown me.
We've been in Bounkiling for most of the past two weeks, except for 4 days we spent playing concerts in Tanaf, which is a village near the Guinea-Bissau border where Alphousseyni grew up. Although Tanaf is incredibly beautiful, I have to say that these 4 days were probably the low point of the trip--it rained a lot and there wasn’t much to do there...and I forgot to bring any books from Bounkiling. It was still fun, but I was glad to get back here to Bounkiling, where I can barely walk across the yard without somebody shoving a plate of delicious food in my face.
So that is basically a nutshell version of where I have been and what I’ve been doing for the past two weeks. I have learned so, so much, both from an academic perspective and, more importantly, personally as well. I would say that perhaps the most vital thing I have learned and reflected on while I’ve been here is the ability of laughter and humor to connect people. As I said, most people here do not speak French, and if they do, it is their third or fourth language (after Mandinka, Wolof, and Fulani), so they are less able to meet me halfway with my feeble French. Thus, communication has been a pretty major challenge and at times I’ve felt pretty frustrated and futile, though I’ve really bonded with the few people who do speak French, some English, and of course, Alphousseyni, who speaks brilliant English and has been a gracious translator on numerous occasions.
Oddly enough, the most effective means I have had to interact with people is...dancing. I never, ever would have predicted this, but it has been the single most valuable tool at my disposal this entire trip. I think it all started back in Dakar at one of the naming ceremonies I attended. At these events (as at most musical events here except the discotheques) the women dance and the men sit at the sides, watching, playing cards, or just generally trying to look cool and nonchalant. Anyhow, at this naming ceremony, during the last song Alphousseyni played, an older woman dancing with the rest of the ladies grabbed my hand, and I eagerly obliged her a dance. I don’t know if it was a backlog of unfulfilled urges to dance earlier in the day or what, but I just kind of decided to...go for it, I guess. I started dancing in the most ridiculous way I possibly could--I have no idea where I was pulling these moves from, I have never danced like that in my life. I went high, I went low, I shook every part of my body with wild abandon, and it actually wasn’t all that bad--it certainly was not good, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was strange enough to be really funny, I think. Anyhow, it caused a huge sensation--there were maybe 50 beautiful Senegalese women chanting "Toubab! Toubab! Toubab!" clapping, and laughing hysterically. Alphousseyni and his band had to stop playing because they were laughing so hard. I am not making this up--it was literally the most overwhelming response I have ever received for anything I have ever done, good or bad. After the ceremony I had 20 women lined up to shake my hand and ask me to do another little jig for them, which I happily obliged. Anyhow, somehow the legend of that fateful afternoon has preceded me wherever I go now--people I have never met before somehow know about the "dancing toubab" and tell me they are looking forward to the next concert so they can see me groove. I danced at the first concert here in Bounkiling and the next morning Alphousseyni told me that the entire village was talking about it, and I have been asked (or nearly forced, on a couple of occasions) to dance almost every time music can be heard. It is actually getting pretty difficult to up the ante every time...I twisted my knee pretty badly during one ambitiously-choreographed maneuver and had to limp around the next day. Of course, however, I gulped down enough Advil to bust a move on the dance floor again that night.
In the midst of all of this silliness, it became clear to me that laughter (and the ability to laugh at myself) was connecting me with the people around me when language could not. My fairly extreme cultural displacement, coupled with my inability to talk to most people here, could have been (and, admittedly, occasionally was) really isolating, alienating, and lonely. My salvation, unexpectedly, came from just making a fool out of myself and showing that I had a sense of humor. Once I started laughing with the people here, our interactions and awkward exchanges solidified into relationships, and this laughter even paved the way for more serious and meaningful engagement. I guess that my most important move so far here in Senegal was that first little shimmy up in Dakar. Travel essentials: malaria pills, sleeping bag, water bottle, and a few choice dance moves.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Off to Casamance!
Today is the last day in Pekine/Dakar before we take off for a ten-day journey through the southern part of the country, a region called Casamance. The most important destination is Bounkiling, the village where the Kouyate family is from. To get to this area, we will take a huge bus in the middle of the night, which must stop midway to cross the Gambian border—twice, actually: we will cut straight through the middle of this tiny, narrow country which divides Senegal into two parts.
The past few days have been really great, but I have barely had a moment to myself to reflect on all of the new sights, sounds, tastes, and smells. On the other hand, it is probably best to think about the smells as little as possible…
The highlights so far have definitely been the Mandinka music festival on Saturday and the naming ceremony on Sunday. The music festival was organized by Alphousseyni, along with a committee of other individuals in the Mande ethnic community in Pekine. As with everything in Senegal (at least that I have seen so far), the festival was a lengthy, drawn-out affair—the music didn’t even commence until around 8:00 PM. Alphousseyni told me that music would start immediately after lunch, at about 3 PM, which brings to mind another characteristic I’m beginning to apprehend about life in Senegal: everything takes much longer than you expect, and thus everything happens much later than you say it will. Dinner, which occurs at “9 PM,” is actually eaten at midnight. If you say you will go to a relative’s house for lunch you might show up in the early evening. An appointment for 10 AM might be actualized at noon or 1 PM, and EVERYTHING is put on hold for a conversation, especially a conversation over the thick, frothy “Ataff” (delicious Senegalese tea—I’m learning how to make it right now, but it is harder than it looks and usually people just laugh at me when I try to pour it). It takes some getting used to, but it reflects the friendliness and generous hospitality of people here—consideration for your family, friends, and neighbors takes precedence over the trifling commitments that I am used to taking so seriously (although I am prone to being late myself…just ask my Mom). “Time waits for time,” Alphousseyni says, and in Senegal, at least, he seems to be correct.
Anyhow, the music festival was great—a famous female singer was present and sang some songs, but I wasn’t nearly as impressed with her as I was with Alphousseyni’s band, which is huge (admittedly, probably too big: even Alphousseyni says “There are too many people on the stage…I need to kick some of these people out of my band.”), loud, and awesome.
The naming ceremony was incredible, and I am beginning to realize that the things I am so privileged to be experiencing are really unique—there would have been no way for me to see this kind of celebration—especially in this neighborhood—if Alphousseyni hadn’t taken me there. I already described the unique way he played kora at the naming ceremony, but I can’t get that sound out of my head. Hopefully I’ll be able to make some good recordings of him playing with the two “boys” (I think they’re actually my age) furiously smacking the sides and top of his beautiful instrument with sticks. I guess koras aren’t really that fragile after all!
Just for your information (all three of you who read this blog), after tomorrow I will be pretty out of touch…there are no “cybers” in the rural area we will be traveling in for the next ten days, so I will not have access to email or the “lime green wonder” until I get back. My phone will still work, but other than that I’ll be cut off from the outside world…I will probably be a changed person—much wiser, with even more remarkably high levels of consciousness and self-actualization—after ten days of forced separation between me and technological sophistication. Kind of like Thoreau, only in Senegal, which is much cooler than New England. Actually, I will probably miss whining on this blog and having the opportunity to check scores on ESPN.com.
Hope you are doing well and miss you all!
The past few days have been really great, but I have barely had a moment to myself to reflect on all of the new sights, sounds, tastes, and smells. On the other hand, it is probably best to think about the smells as little as possible…
The highlights so far have definitely been the Mandinka music festival on Saturday and the naming ceremony on Sunday. The music festival was organized by Alphousseyni, along with a committee of other individuals in the Mande ethnic community in Pekine. As with everything in Senegal (at least that I have seen so far), the festival was a lengthy, drawn-out affair—the music didn’t even commence until around 8:00 PM. Alphousseyni told me that music would start immediately after lunch, at about 3 PM, which brings to mind another characteristic I’m beginning to apprehend about life in Senegal: everything takes much longer than you expect, and thus everything happens much later than you say it will. Dinner, which occurs at “9 PM,” is actually eaten at midnight. If you say you will go to a relative’s house for lunch you might show up in the early evening. An appointment for 10 AM might be actualized at noon or 1 PM, and EVERYTHING is put on hold for a conversation, especially a conversation over the thick, frothy “Ataff” (delicious Senegalese tea—I’m learning how to make it right now, but it is harder than it looks and usually people just laugh at me when I try to pour it). It takes some getting used to, but it reflects the friendliness and generous hospitality of people here—consideration for your family, friends, and neighbors takes precedence over the trifling commitments that I am used to taking so seriously (although I am prone to being late myself…just ask my Mom). “Time waits for time,” Alphousseyni says, and in Senegal, at least, he seems to be correct.
Anyhow, the music festival was great—a famous female singer was present and sang some songs, but I wasn’t nearly as impressed with her as I was with Alphousseyni’s band, which is huge (admittedly, probably too big: even Alphousseyni says “There are too many people on the stage…I need to kick some of these people out of my band.”), loud, and awesome.
The naming ceremony was incredible, and I am beginning to realize that the things I am so privileged to be experiencing are really unique—there would have been no way for me to see this kind of celebration—especially in this neighborhood—if Alphousseyni hadn’t taken me there. I already described the unique way he played kora at the naming ceremony, but I can’t get that sound out of my head. Hopefully I’ll be able to make some good recordings of him playing with the two “boys” (I think they’re actually my age) furiously smacking the sides and top of his beautiful instrument with sticks. I guess koras aren’t really that fragile after all!
Just for your information (all three of you who read this blog), after tomorrow I will be pretty out of touch…there are no “cybers” in the rural area we will be traveling in for the next ten days, so I will not have access to email or the “lime green wonder” until I get back. My phone will still work, but other than that I’ll be cut off from the outside world…I will probably be a changed person—much wiser, with even more remarkably high levels of consciousness and self-actualization—after ten days of forced separation between me and technological sophistication. Kind of like Thoreau, only in Senegal, which is much cooler than New England. Actually, I will probably miss whining on this blog and having the opportunity to check scores on ESPN.com.
Hope you are doing well and miss you all!
Monday, August 6, 2007
First few days in Senegal...
Well, I've been in Senegal for four days now, and already I've seen so much. I apologize for the infrequent postings; for the month of August, at least, my internet access is pretty restricted. Right now I'm in a swelteringly hot little "cyber" in the neighborhood (Alphousseyni says, "This cyber is too hot.....and it is bad heat: the kind of heat that is from people.") and the connection is pretty slow, so I'm not going to be able to get online very often. I do have one modern amenity, however: a Senegalese cell phone! If you feel like giving me a call, my number is +011 221 236 56 87 and you can find pretty cheap international phone cards at speedypin.com (I think that it's around $5 for 40 minutes).
Anyhow, Senegal is amazing. I'm living in a district called Pekine, which is on the outskirts of Dakar. My neighborhood is called Pekine Ginaw-Rail, which means "Pekine Past the Train Tracks," and it is a really colorful community full of very kind, hospitable people. The fact of the matter is that Pekine is a slum--it is the most overcrowded district in the entire country--and the living accomodations here have taken some...getting used to. I dodge horse-drawn carts driven at maniacal speeds through the streets...there are more horses than cars here, actually. One becomes acclimated pretty quickly, though, and I am very comfortable. Alphousseyni and his family have been extremely kind to me and go to great, even sometimes embarassing lengths to make me feel at home; I really can't express how humbled and grateful I feel for the generousity of this family.
On Sunday, I went to a festival in the neighborhood that Alphousseyni organized. He played with his band, and the festivities lasted late into the evening. Yesterday, I saw a naming ceremony, which is one of the most important life-cycle rituals here. Alphousseyni played kora at this ceremony as well, and two boys sat on either side of him and just beat the hell out of his kora as he played! I had never heard anything like it before: it was awesome, really propulsive rhythms at a disorientingly loud volume. I loved it. The music at both events was awesome, and I wish I had more than five minutes left at this cyber to describe the experience in detail...I will try to write my posts ahead of time in the future, but I haven't had much down time since I've been here.
Ok, hope you're all doing well...all I can say is enjoy your hot showers!
Anyhow, Senegal is amazing. I'm living in a district called Pekine, which is on the outskirts of Dakar. My neighborhood is called Pekine Ginaw-Rail, which means "Pekine Past the Train Tracks," and it is a really colorful community full of very kind, hospitable people. The fact of the matter is that Pekine is a slum--it is the most overcrowded district in the entire country--and the living accomodations here have taken some...getting used to. I dodge horse-drawn carts driven at maniacal speeds through the streets...there are more horses than cars here, actually. One becomes acclimated pretty quickly, though, and I am very comfortable. Alphousseyni and his family have been extremely kind to me and go to great, even sometimes embarassing lengths to make me feel at home; I really can't express how humbled and grateful I feel for the generousity of this family.
On Sunday, I went to a festival in the neighborhood that Alphousseyni organized. He played with his band, and the festivities lasted late into the evening. Yesterday, I saw a naming ceremony, which is one of the most important life-cycle rituals here. Alphousseyni played kora at this ceremony as well, and two boys sat on either side of him and just beat the hell out of his kora as he played! I had never heard anything like it before: it was awesome, really propulsive rhythms at a disorientingly loud volume. I loved it. The music at both events was awesome, and I wish I had more than five minutes left at this cyber to describe the experience in detail...I will try to write my posts ahead of time in the future, but I haven't had much down time since I've been here.
Ok, hope you're all doing well...all I can say is enjoy your hot showers!
Sunday, August 5, 2007
On my way...
NOTE: This posting is a few days old already; I wrote it on the plane from New York to Casablanca.
I’m typing this entry from a cruising altitude of 32,000 feet, high above the Atlantic Ocean on my way from New York to Casablanca, where I’ll have a twelve-hour layover before the final leg of my journey—five planes over the course of three days from Spokane to Dakar: yuck. My current airline, Royal Air Maroc, is tri-lingual (Arabic, French, and English), which seemed novel and exciting at the beginning of the flight, but now that it is the middle of the night it just means annoying announcements take thrice as long.
I’m sitting next to a really sweet middle-aged Moroccan woman named Nadia, who lives and works in upstate New York and is going home to visit her family in Rabat. She has some really interesting perspectives as an immigrant working in the US—as an unmarried daughter in a strictly religious family, she faced the choice between living with her parents indefinitely or setting out on her own. Job availability in Morocco is extremely low—even college-educated men can’t find work—so her opportunities there were extremely limited, and she didn’t want to burden her parents financially, so she obtained a US work visa.
Nadia is what many Americans would like to think of as an example of the unmitigated success of the American dream—supporting herself independently as a cashier, striving to assimilate as much as possible into a new culture, basically living a modest working-class life in a way that would have been impossible for her in Morocco. The reality, as Nadia tells it, is a lot more complicated: the social and spiritual isolation she feels as an immigrant in a small town make life very difficult. She says she doesn’t have friends, has no prospects of having a family of her own because there aren’t any single Muslim men within an hour’s drive of her house: “All I want is a phone call, every once in a while,” she told me, “I never thought it would be a problem before I came, I was just happy to be approved for the visa. But it is very hard not to have anybody, no friends to go out with, it’s not a real life.” She seems like an extremely optimistic person overall, not looking for pity at all, but it was pretty sobering.
I guess it’s easy to take for granted the ability to socialize and have relatively normal, effortless relationships with people. Add in the cultural, religious, and language displacement she deals with, and her day-to-day life sounds like a pretty alienating—but, in America, incredibly common—experience. I was thinking a lot about my Swedish great-grandmother, and what a relief it must have been to meet my great-grandfather, who was also a young immigrant Swede.
Anyhow, Nadia is wonderful—really charming and fun. She told me what to see in Morocco if I ever make it for a legitimate visit and we talked about food and religion a little bit. Not a bad way to spend an evening, jetlag be damned.
But back to me, the rightful occupant of this narcissistic blog’s spotlight! It was really fun to have a few hours in New York, and I got to see one of my favorite people, the inimitable Malena Amusa. She’s a friend from Northwestern who is writing for a awesome newsmagazine called Colorlines, and she works in a nice office…with an 18th-story window view…just off of Wall Street. For some reason, she doesn’t get it that this is impressive. We had lunch at a busy cafeteria (my last American meal was fried chicken, mashed potatoes, pineapple, and a bunch of gravy covering everything…amazing) and had a great time catching up. Afterwards, we had some New Yorkers take our picture…somehow the “zany” pose we were going for turned out looking like “we’re dippy tourists.”
Maybe it’s my dorky hat and oversized sunglasses, maybe it’s the fact that we’re posing for a photo in front of a nondescript sidewalk, or maybe it’s the fact that Malena looks like she’s bearing down on the next pedestrian she sees for an overly-enthusiastic high-five…I’m not sure, but we look like nerds. Nevertheless, the exuberance (over-exuberance?) of the photo was very authentic—it was great to see Malena.
I suppose that it might be informative if I laid out my plans for the next five months in case I haven’t told you yet. The only problem is…I’m not really sure what my plans are. For the moment, I do know that I get to Dakar at 10:45 on Thursday evening, where I will be greeted by a man named Alphoussayni Kouyate. Alphoussayni is the nephew of my kora teacher in Chicago, Morikeba Kouyate, and he has kindly offered to take me under his wing for the first couple of weeks I’m there, before Morikeba shows up. Right now, I think that Alphoussayni’s band is playing at a music festival in Dakar on Saturday, then they’re going on a short tour of the southern part of the country, including Bounkiling, the Kouyate’s home village. I’m basically following the band for the first week, “Almost Famous”-style (including the part where I try to coax an acid-tripping Senegalese singer off of a rooftop), then staying in Bounkiling with the Kouyates (where Morikeba told me “all there is to do is play kora and soccer,” which actually sounds amazing). Around the middle of August, I’m coming back up to Dakar to meet Morikeba at the airport, then I have no idea what we’re doing. As you can tell, I’m just along for the ride with these guys for the first few weeks, which is honestly just the way I want it. The “unknown (mis)adventure” part of my stay ends September 2, the day my study abroad program commences. From then on, I’ll be staying mostly in Dakar and living with a family. Should be interesting…
This post is already indefensibly lengthy—chalk it up to having nothing to do on this plane. If you’re still reading at this point, you probably have a lime-green-induced migraine. To be fair, for the past hour my choices of activities have been:
1) Watch the dumb movie they’re showing (something involving a road trip and Ice Cube in the leading role…and it’s a sequel)
2) Read (my eyes already hurt from writing this vapid, uninteresting epistle)
3) Listen to music (I loaned my headphones to Nadia, so scratch that)
Clearly, none of these three options will cut it, which leaves me with a final choice between:
4) Writing this post
5) Sleeping
What can I say…I’m too excited for sleep.
I’m sitting next to a really sweet middle-aged Moroccan woman named Nadia, who lives and works in upstate New York and is going home to visit her family in Rabat. She has some really interesting perspectives as an immigrant working in the US—as an unmarried daughter in a strictly religious family, she faced the choice between living with her parents indefinitely or setting out on her own. Job availability in Morocco is extremely low—even college-educated men can’t find work—so her opportunities there were extremely limited, and she didn’t want to burden her parents financially, so she obtained a US work visa.
Nadia is what many Americans would like to think of as an example of the unmitigated success of the American dream—supporting herself independently as a cashier, striving to assimilate as much as possible into a new culture, basically living a modest working-class life in a way that would have been impossible for her in Morocco. The reality, as Nadia tells it, is a lot more complicated: the social and spiritual isolation she feels as an immigrant in a small town make life very difficult. She says she doesn’t have friends, has no prospects of having a family of her own because there aren’t any single Muslim men within an hour’s drive of her house: “All I want is a phone call, every once in a while,” she told me, “I never thought it would be a problem before I came, I was just happy to be approved for the visa. But it is very hard not to have anybody, no friends to go out with, it’s not a real life.” She seems like an extremely optimistic person overall, not looking for pity at all, but it was pretty sobering.
I guess it’s easy to take for granted the ability to socialize and have relatively normal, effortless relationships with people. Add in the cultural, religious, and language displacement she deals with, and her day-to-day life sounds like a pretty alienating—but, in America, incredibly common—experience. I was thinking a lot about my Swedish great-grandmother, and what a relief it must have been to meet my great-grandfather, who was also a young immigrant Swede.
Anyhow, Nadia is wonderful—really charming and fun. She told me what to see in Morocco if I ever make it for a legitimate visit and we talked about food and religion a little bit. Not a bad way to spend an evening, jetlag be damned.
But back to me, the rightful occupant of this narcissistic blog’s spotlight! It was really fun to have a few hours in New York, and I got to see one of my favorite people, the inimitable Malena Amusa. She’s a friend from Northwestern who is writing for a awesome newsmagazine called Colorlines, and she works in a nice office…with an 18th-story window view…just off of Wall Street. For some reason, she doesn’t get it that this is impressive. We had lunch at a busy cafeteria (my last American meal was fried chicken, mashed potatoes, pineapple, and a bunch of gravy covering everything…amazing) and had a great time catching up. Afterwards, we had some New Yorkers take our picture…somehow the “zany” pose we were going for turned out looking like “we’re dippy tourists.”
Maybe it’s my dorky hat and oversized sunglasses, maybe it’s the fact that we’re posing for a photo in front of a nondescript sidewalk, or maybe it’s the fact that Malena looks like she’s bearing down on the next pedestrian she sees for an overly-enthusiastic high-five…I’m not sure, but we look like nerds. Nevertheless, the exuberance (over-exuberance?) of the photo was very authentic—it was great to see Malena.
I suppose that it might be informative if I laid out my plans for the next five months in case I haven’t told you yet. The only problem is…I’m not really sure what my plans are. For the moment, I do know that I get to Dakar at 10:45 on Thursday evening, where I will be greeted by a man named Alphoussayni Kouyate. Alphoussayni is the nephew of my kora teacher in Chicago, Morikeba Kouyate, and he has kindly offered to take me under his wing for the first couple of weeks I’m there, before Morikeba shows up. Right now, I think that Alphoussayni’s band is playing at a music festival in Dakar on Saturday, then they’re going on a short tour of the southern part of the country, including Bounkiling, the Kouyate’s home village. I’m basically following the band for the first week, “Almost Famous”-style (including the part where I try to coax an acid-tripping Senegalese singer off of a rooftop), then staying in Bounkiling with the Kouyates (where Morikeba told me “all there is to do is play kora and soccer,” which actually sounds amazing). Around the middle of August, I’m coming back up to Dakar to meet Morikeba at the airport, then I have no idea what we’re doing. As you can tell, I’m just along for the ride with these guys for the first few weeks, which is honestly just the way I want it. The “unknown (mis)adventure” part of my stay ends September 2, the day my study abroad program commences. From then on, I’ll be staying mostly in Dakar and living with a family. Should be interesting…
This post is already indefensibly lengthy—chalk it up to having nothing to do on this plane. If you’re still reading at this point, you probably have a lime-green-induced migraine. To be fair, for the past hour my choices of activities have been:
1) Watch the dumb movie they’re showing (something involving a road trip and Ice Cube in the leading role…and it’s a sequel)
2) Read (my eyes already hurt from writing this vapid, uninteresting epistle)
3) Listen to music (I loaned my headphones to Nadia, so scratch that)
Clearly, none of these three options will cut it, which leaves me with a final choice between:
4) Writing this post
5) Sleeping
What can I say…I’m too excited for sleep.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
