Taximan, Taximan

Because the price on a taxi ride is negotiable, taxi drivers will use any excuse to increase the price of a fare. They say they are raising the price either because of the time of day you are traveling, or what part of the city you are traveling to and the distance it is; as well there are also overall conditions such as the rising gas prices and the traffic, all which factor into their calculations of getting as much as they can from you. Today I got someone talking about the traffic and distance I wanted to go and he even mentioned the sun as a justification for his high price, "Yeah and the heat too." he says. I let that one comment go and we went around and around with the price and he said again how hot it was. I looked at him and said, "Did you say the sun was a factor??" And he said, "Yeah, the sun, it's hot". I said, "Man, what does that have to do with the price of a taxi ride?!" He didn't seem to have a good answer. I continued and said, "Now you can use the rain..." I said, "that is a totally acceptable excuse for raising the fare and that actually affects traffic and difficulty in getting one place to the other... but Sun?! I said, No, I'm not buying into your argument about the sun." He actually relented and say, "Okay, well you're right, but it's hot anyway and there's a lot of traffic". Luckily I finally got him down to my price and I got in the car. We had the usual chit-chat about the US and how he really wants to go to the US to make money to send him to his family. I wished him luck in that and told him how great his own country was in terms of people, the peaceful nature, the ocean, the food... my usual mantra in pumping up Senegalese about their country, which is true... and he said yeah, but we don't have money and its hard to get ahead. There wasn't really anywhere we could go with that conversation so we slipped back into silence. A few minutes later we were on the smooth road that brings us into the city and my taxi guy (a young nipper) was trying to pass another taxi. He gave a friendly honk and started to pass but I realized that even as he was increasing his speed, he wasn't managing to pass the other taxi. I realized that the other taxi guy increased his speed to keep my guy from passing. I don't know why, but that's what he was doing. Of course my driver now thought it was a personal mission to pass the other taxi guy and pushed harder down on his gas pedal too. But the whole situation was completely ridiculous because both of the taxis were practically falling apart so neither of them could really get over 40 MPH--it was clear both of them were at their top speed which I estimated about 35 MPH. I'm sorry, but you can't be a bad-ass driver at 35 MPH...no matter how much you want to be. But there we were--my driver in some of informal race with another taxi driver, as if it were a matter of pride. We were approaching a round point so I finally told my guy that the other driver was just a jerk and to let it go. I had to repeat this a few times as we came closer and closer to this roundabout....Although looking over at his face, he seemed to be having a good time having this little race and seemed reluctant to let his taxi man rival resume his place in first position. Although I wasn't nervous, at the same time I was glad it was over and I came to my final destination in one piece.

Those games we played in the 80's

Did you ever wonder where those games in the 80's we played but gave up to Salvation Army when they lay unused in the closet for several years? No? Well me neither. BUT.... I thought you would be interested to know walking back to the hotel here in Dakar the other day I passed by an informal vendor on the street who had her table out and was selling mangos. Guess what she was using as a table cloth? The Twister game 'board'!.. you remember that plastic sheet with the circles on it and having your head wedged up into someone else arm pit while you had cramps in your legs from turning them backwards just to keep on the red circle (which by the way was a prime reason why you never played more than a couple of times)... Anyway the majority of the vendors plastic sheet was hanging decoratively off the mango table... An attempt at a marketing/publicity lure for curious mango-eating customers (??).. because it is a bright and shiny with those different colored circles with a huge logo at the bottom that says... TWISTER!

What else did I see... ? Oh yes, Brook and I were coming back from dinner the other night and although there aren't a lot of homeless people in Dakar, you get some. We passed by a homeless person by our hotel sleeping outside a row of storefronts and who managed to attach a mosquito net up on to the store window and the other side of the sidewalk overhang.. in the middle of the walkway effectively. Doesn't have a home or a bed, but has a mosquito net--will travel. I'm just impressed how he managed to hang it up; that couldn't have been easy. That would be a good malaria ad actually... "Even homeless people are fighting malaria! Be Smart, Use your Mosquite Net!" ...or maybe not.

The other thing I saw actually was on the trip down to Dakar. I saw a big transporter truck. Across the top of the cabin truck were the words, "Too much is too much!" You know a lot of times people will paint prayers across the top of their vehicle, or the name of their favorite religious leader or a quote like, "A good deed is never forgotten". You know something sort of meaningful and you can sort of nod your head and say to yourself, "yes, that's true, God is Great... or "Yes, a good deal is never forgotten" I've just never seen the quote "Too much is too much"---I wonder who that was directed to... Us, the general public as some sort of blanket warning? Or perhaps themselves, the drivers, who have a tendency to excess in one area or another? I suppose I'll never know. I just know that too much is just too much.

So what is a cheeseburger anyway?

There are varying thoughts about what a cheeseburger actually is. Granted I'm sure you saw the post where in Tamba, the sign says Humburger... which may be another matter entirely... but what is a hamburger?

I just had another recent post with Senegalese 'variations upon the theme' in food. Onion soup with some potato and a cordon bleu with some mixed vegetables inside (umm-ummm!!).

One of my favorite stories is when Brook and I were traveling from Dakar to Tamba and we stopped at a tourist town to eat lunch (one we never stop at). We go to the fast food restaurant there and Brook orders a hamburger and I want to "have it all" so I order a cheeseburger. We get our burgers and start to eat. I get about 1/3 of the way in and I hadn't hit any meat yet. I was thinking, man that sure is a small burger. Now a little warning too about local burgers. You don't really put lettuce or tomatoes on your burger. What you do here is put french fries on top of your burger and then you put a lot of ketchup and maybe mayonnaise on to of that and smoosh down the bun on top. Anyway, I just want to say for the record that there is a lot of stuff in the burgers here. I'm not sure if it's the lebanese influence or what, but I've seen it in Mali too, where they stick french fries on your burger. guess it's the 'one-stop shop' for burger and fries. Anyway so I get in about 1/3 way into my burger and hadn't hit any meat. I get curious, pull off the bun and guess what? There isn't any meat. Hmm. I think to myself, well somehow (God knows how) they forgot to put the meat on. So I shuffle up to the counter and say, um, yeah... Um I ordered this cheeseburger here and somehow there is no meat on it.

The cook looks down at my 'burger' and says, oh, well you ordered the cheeseburger. Cheeseburgers come with cheese. I say, yeah, but where's the meat? And he said, You ordered the Cheeseburger (like duh, he's thinking). He explains to me patiently... see the cheeseburger comes with Cheese... not meat. He says, if you wanted the meat you should have ordered the hamburger. I stand there, unable to think of a response.

Well I finally answer, I'm not sure if you know this, but the word "burger" in English actually means meat. He looks at me. No kidding he says. I say, yeah, interesting isn't it? He says, "Well yeah here it means you get the cheese." As if that is the end of the story. And I suppose it was. I couldn't really say anything to that. I sit down and finish my cheesebuur... my cheese bun with a bunch of french fries, cheese and ketchup. Yummy. I hardly missed the burger

So given this in mind, we're coming down to Dakar the other day... I took 2 PCVs with me in the car I rented and we stop at the Blue Bird. That is Brook's favorite stop as he's not a rice and sauce fan and they have decent... you know, hamburgers. So I explain to the PCVs that their hamburgers are pretty good. I said, you know as usual, they come with french fries on them... and I said here they come with a fried egg too on top of the burger. I told them that this place takes the "Everything but the kitchen sink" approach to their burgers. But I said, if you don't want the egg, like me, you can order it without the egg. They say okay. So two of us wanted no egg, one wanted the egg (why not attitude). So off they shuffle to the bathroom and I am left with the server to order the burgers. I say, I'd like two burgers without the egg and one with the egg. And the server says so you want a cheeseburger? And I say, oh and the hamburger doesn't come with the egg? She says, no, all the burgers come with cheese. She says the hamburger comes with the egg and the Cheeseburger doesn't come with the egg. I sit there. I say, Okay, so both the cheeseburger and the hamburger come with cheese... (I want to make sure I heard correctly) and the hamburger comes with the egg. Cheeseburgers don't have egg. The server nods. Yes, she says. ...Okay... I said, alright. Then I want two cheeseburgers and one hamburger.

I confirm one more time when she comes back... I say the non-egg cheeseburgers? and she places them in front of us... and then the eggy hamburger (with cheese) goes to the other one. That's logical, isn't it?

Prelude to the next post: Mailing a letter

Although I was going to write about mailing a letter, I realized I shoudl probably give you the background of Kunaba before you could understand the context. since this post is getting long, I will break it up in two.

See I get a call from my village friend Kunaba. She says she's in Bamako, which was surprising since Kunaba doesn't travel. But she says she's staying with a friend. She told me that she had brought some things down from the village for me--(some peanuts and a letter from my good friend Siaka) ... dot dot dot. Now I know when she visited in 2003 she had said that we would trade off visits... one year she would visit me (fully subsidized by yours truly) and then another year I would visit Mali, but frankly, after her one visit I think we can say that I've had my fill of the cultural exchange.

I thought when I had invited her in the first place from Mali, since she was my best Malian friend in Peace Corps, that Senegal was practically the same thing as Mali, including a majority of people speaking Bambara here, and that she would make the efforts that I did to 'roll with the punches' in terms of toubab cultural differences. Guess who was wrong on both accounts? lalalala

Yeah, so although I woudn't say her visit was a disaster, it was highly painful. Not for her, for us. I think she had a great time. But we were dealing with several cultural differences. The first noticeable one was that in these cultures when you visit someone you can stay up to several months with someone, but the average visit is from one month to two months. Already right there we have an issue. You know Americans... our visits are maximum 2 weeks. It's just what we do. It's for everyone involved really, not just the host. Everyone enjoys a good visit and then you go away. It's what we do. Not here. My theory on that is because it's expensive and hard to travel to places, that locals just stay for awhile. Plus they do not have 'hosting' as we do really. You instantly just become a part of the household and poke around. No one hosts here, you just blend right in. All you need really need is a place to sleep and everythign else just seems to work itself out. There are usually so many people in a household anyway that there is usually someone to talk to or be 'hosted by' (in our terms) that it's no big whoop. So that was our first misunderstanding, when I asked Kunaba after her arrival how long she was staying, she said the dreaded words, "I don't know". aaaaggh. After the second week dragged on she did manage to say that 1-2 months was usually a good time for a visit.

Another issue was language. Although a lot of people speak Bambara here, not everyone does. So that freaked Kunaba out and she sat mute most of the time when people came to visit and during her time didn't really make any effort to at least greet someone in Wolof. And believe me, everyone bugged her to learn Wolof (just as I was bugged incessantly in Peace Corps as to why everyone who came from America to visit me didn't speak Bambara), but she didn't. So she was mute-face in front of company, which is fine, but that pretty much meant she didn't communicate with anyone except me.

Culturally there was the eating and socializing. Because in the village we ate out of the food bowl with our hands, that is naturally what Kunaba knows. She has never used a spoon or utinsel in her life. So that was a small issue when you had things that kind of required more than a hand, plus Senegalese always use spoons in their food bowls and were slightly freaked out to see a villager just eat with her hands. But that was their problem... but it was slightly awkward given some food choices. Now rice and millet are good things. We like them, but Brook and I don't eat it every day (especially rice... we're just not big fans). so the dinner thing posed problems. So basically Kunaba got used to (over) cookiing spaghetti and putting a maggi cube as the sauce. Yummy. And I don't know.. we figured out a few other thigns she could eat.

And she couldn't get the whole maid thing. She kept trying to include our maid into all our activities, which was sweet in one way but totally awkward in another (for both binta the maid and myself) of going to the market or hanging out. And when trying to explain that I paid Binta to work, that really didn't translate well. Kunaba said, well we'll help her finish her work and then we will all go to the market together. Awkward silence.... ummmmm, right.

And then there was the whole socializing thing. Even in Mali one does not sit and talk with someone all the time.you can hang out with someone while they are working, but it's mostly you sitting there while someone does something. and unfortunately for toubab's lives, much of the stuff that we do is not really social at all... checking email, making some phone calls, writing and reading. They're pretty solitary activities and require no assistance or interaction whatsoever--in fact that is preferable that way. So I did manage to sneak off and do some things but she really couldn't take care of herself at all. She usually would go into her room and take a nap. Actually that is what you do in the culture. If you're not with another person or working, you sleep. It's what you do. I noticed that with Brook's village brother who has come to visit too. Anyway so Kunaba slept a lot more than she was used to. Then Brook woudl come home and want to hang out but there was Kunaba and Brook can't communicate with Kunaba so both were vying for attention and there I was, sort of pooped out. Anyway, this was the situation and by the end of 2 solid weeks day after day, little Mamou (my local name) was feeling sort of psycho. I start mentioning the trip back to Mali but of course Kunaba isn't even beginning to think of leaving... Finally Brook and I devise a plan, a trip, that we both have to take so Kunaba unfortunately has to cut her visit short. We give her gifts (I had bought her cloth and other stuff) and send her on her way after 17 days. I felt every day. Luckily Kunaba had a great time, and didn't know that I was about to strangle myself and die a slow death. It was a lessons learned for me. Anyway so she goes back to the village and actually makes up all this stuff about me and how we live, etc etc. Part of it is based on truth but it just really skewed.

So when I go back to the village last year, I hear Kunaba going on and on (which I know she has been doing for the last 2 years too) about how rich I am and how I do this or that, or throw this away or don't like this or that. Her favorite one was tellign eveyrone how I hate kids (a big cultural no-no)... so all of this....her verbally flaunting my wealth to everyone and seemingly bad habits (some of which were true and many wasn't), was absolutely horrifying to me. Really. I mean the village thought I was rich when I was a Peace Corps volunteer... to have someone continually tell made-up stories about me and my wealth around town... really I was so embarrased. And a lot of times as I mentioned, the facts were not even true. It's like she took a basic fact and completely twisted it around to be something else. She is not a malacious person at all, I really think she believed what she was saying but it was so off-base. I think in many ways she was bragging about me and her being my friend, which was so not a part of her or her personality in the village, and obviously did not mean to be embarrasing, but I never really can get over it. Mostly because I know it's still going on... hearing her tell story after story about me to those who know me and strangers, just gives me the willies. I will say as a side note that one thing she made up was absolutely brilliant. She thought my brother named my nephew after my village brother, Sanie. How Joshua or Sanie is the same name is beyond me and where she got this information is beyond me, but that is brilliant. I have really banked on that lie. Sanie was just tickled pink that my brother's son was named after him, so I suppose there is one happy lie that came out of it.

So imagine, if you will, all these images from a previous visit (and those are just generalities) and how in my own mind I did not do Kunaba a service by inviting her here the first time, when Kunaba is leaving that dot dot dot open for her invitation to come to Tamba, what my reaction is. What would yours be? I feel bad for Kunaba and I do think it's mostly my fault. I think I put a taste for travel and eating 'good food' (maggi questionable) and buying cloth in the market, sleeping, etc etc in her mind. And I think (perhaps I am wrong) I made her slightly more discontent with village life. Made her want more. And who wouldn't. But I think i also helped show her somethign else and although it was meant only to spoil and relax her, I think she became aware that not everyone slaves like a dog with no days off like she does. And she has something outside of her life to want. And I think that is partly my fault because I can't give it to her on a long term. These are issues that I have to deal with. Brook said, and you wanted to bring her to America with you... I said yeah, can you imagine if she thought Senegal was the othe side of the moon in terms of culture (which obviously it is virtually the same in many ways), then she would have freaked out in the states. I guess you learn these things afterwards and can't do anything about it.

So anyway, keep this in mind for the next post when I discuss how Kunaba mails (or doesnt) me my letter.