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| my mother contemplating her reflection |
Senegalese social affairs are designed as full-on assualts of all five senses. The big three of Senegalese social events are: weddings, baptisms, and funerals. Baptisms, called ngentes, are by far the most prevalent. A typical ngente is an all day affair that begins with the typical kind of religious activity you would expect. In the morning, the village’s imam comes to the home of the newborn and shaves its head, proclaims its name, and blesses its newly formed life. Once that business is done, the baby is promptly stashed away somewhere safe, not to be seen for the rest of the day. The mother is rushed off to the salon for a truly remarkable hair and make-up ordeal and I honestly could not tell you anything about the father's day because men and women exist in such separate spheres socially.
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| let the sitting begin! |
The afternoon is when the real fun starts! All of the men, women, and children in the village and neighboring villages dress to the nines and flock to the house of the new baby. Then the main activity of Senegalese parties commences: sitting. Don't get me wrong, sitting is plenty of entertainment because you get to stare at everyone's fancy outfits. The hosts usually erect a tent so everyone can squeeze into the shade. Ladies and men sit separately and most kids run wild and crazy. We sit. We talk. And after a few hours, we earn the excitement of: food!
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| a portion of the dirty dishes - yikes |
Lunch is obviously a highlight, not only because food is always a highlight of my day, but especially because party day food means - meat! After eating rice and fish every single day for lunch, nothing beats a nice hunk of goat in the lunch bowl. The party food hierarchy is as follows: goat with rice for ngentes, goat spaghetti for weddings, and beef for funerals. Yum! But I enjoy lunch for more than the simple satiation of my own gluttonous appetites - I love watching the prep of lunch because it's done in such mass quantities! Imagine cooking lunch for hundreds of people with no kitchen - it's a cooperative effort between the men, who kill the goats, and the women, who do everything else. My favorite part of the process is after the food is plated (or bowled, in this case) when the men hoist all the bowls above their heads and march out in a line, rice and goat held high to be delivered to a group of hungry guests.
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| traditional ngente/ceet make-up |
After everyone's bellies are full and fingers licked clean, the real fun begins. The mother arrives back at home, usually by automobile (!) and everyone admires her beautiful transformation. Suffice it so say make up is utilized quite differently in Senegal than the United States. Then, finally, the music and dancing begins! In my village they favor metal bowls and plastic buckets for percussion and boy, can the women sing! It starts out pretty tame with a few women dancing in front of the mother but before you know it, the drummers are worked up into a frenzy. Women are dancing like crazy, kicking sand up everywhere, and absolutely everyone is making a ruckus and dripping in sweat. I can not do justice to the style of dance I've seen in village, nor am I sure I should divulge the particulars to the internet world at large. Here is my best attempt: skilled, rhythmic, raunchy, and filled with stomping. Everyone, and I mean everyone, in my village can dance and its a wonderful experience to see the women let loose and have fun.
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| some kids dropping a beat |
But back to the full-on assault. At this point in the ngente, your eyes are not only overwhelmed by the bright colors and lively patterns of Wolof women's wear, they forever have the vision of some crazy dance moves imprinted on them. Due to the heat, the stiff fancy fabric you're wearing, and the proximity of other sweaty bodies, you're covered in sweat and probably sand as well. Women are grabbing your hands, falling over you and themselves, and in general having less than none private space. You've still got the taste of goat and hot pepper mingling on you're tongue and you're absolutely parched. You can smell the lunch leftovers, the wood fires burning under coffee pots, and the cows that just so happen to live in the compound that's hosting the party. But the noise is by far the most vicious part of the attack - the clang of metal bowls, the high pitched singing, the ladies shrieking in joy and mock scandal around the dancefloor. Not to mention the fact that everyone is yelling at you in a language you still only sometimes understand - oh and the rooster is crowing and the goats are screaming next door and babies are crying after their moms drop them like hot potatoes to get to the dance floor.
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| a colorful and crowded affair |
One of my favorite pastimes at Senegalese social events is to play the game of how-many-seconds-does-it-take-to-find-all-the-colors-in-the-rainbow-in-my-current-line-of-sight. Usually it takes between 7 and 17 seconds, I reckon. My first chunk of time in village was sandwiched between an ngente on my third day and a ceet (wedding) on my thirty ninth day. Ceets are in the same vein as ngentes but require more endurance, as they are two day affairs with many more rituals and late night goat spaghetti. Despite the endurance test, it was a nice progress report to see how I could handle myself at the ceet - what a skill set I had developed since that first assault of my first ngente! And in the past month there have been two more ceets, three more ngentes, and one funeral, aka plenty of time for me to acclimate to the Senegalese social scene and maybe even thrive in the midst of the chaos.
