Thursday, November 15, 2007

Vraiment a Love-Hate, Sweet-Sour kind of day

Alright, I'll admit it, today was the first day a little lap of homesickness washed over me. I wiped my face with a tissue this afternoon after a morning of marketing, bargainging, and committing scenes to memory, only to rub off sandy dirt and more sandy dirt. This time, the feeling was not so satisfying.

Yesterday I spent the morning cooking Le Plat National with my homestay sister, Khadie, who is sweet and shy as she is gorgeous. Along with one of the SIT study abroad students who is doing a project on Senegalese food, we crowded into the kitchen to note the entire process of washing the vegetables, mashing the spices in the tall mortal and pestal, frying the onions, adding the tomatoe paste, tucking the parsley and garlic paste into the fish, washing the rice in the couscousier(something like a shallow collander that I swear I must buy and find a way to bring home), and finally waiting for the proper amount of time to let the whole mess stew. When it was all said and done, the rice was arranged on a large plate and carried up to the roof where we spread a blanket, set the plate, then arranged ourselves on the floor to mange en ensemble in the style Senegalese. I took photo after photo after photo, and when I get a chance and a good computer, I'll upload the images here. About photos...I'm not suppposed to take pictures of people, because the national superstition is that the photos will be sold by the foreigners as post cards once they return home. This is really unfortunate, because I long to film the cars rapide, the marvelous blue and yellow buses that take you around with the windows open, and the boy on the back banging on the roof with a coin...This morning Khadie took me to the market with her to buy vegetables and I managed three photos, very quickly, at the express direction of the vendors to only photograph les legumes. I then showed the image on my camera to the vendor, who invariably smiled and had absolutely no idea why a goofy white girl would want a picture of dried fish. The market I will have to remember, and it was unlike any other I've been to-- boys carving through slabs of meet longer than they were tall with saws I might use to cut down a Christmas tree. Tables and tables of fish, dried fish stacked in neat piles, buckets of peanut butter, roots of ginger, neat little piles of all sorts of peppers, arranged on a burlap sack, a small boy with a round tray of tomatoes on his head, the stalls that just sold greens-- shallots next to parsley, next to basil-- all displayed like jewelery in small portions with neat spaces between each. Every now and then Khady would look behind her to make sure I was still there, and invariably I'd be not far behind, jostling between the pushing and babies and batik fabric that made the most fantastic contrast to les legumes. There was a grand hall that we entered first, with a high cieling, and windows up close to the roof, old fans whirred gently keeping a rythem that was ignored by everyone and everything else underfoot. After choosing some dried fish pieces, we went out through a door to the stalls with umbrellas overhead...we bought some henna to paint our nails, mint to make tea. Finally, after drinking in as much as I could, we made it back outside. We piled into the back of a car rapide, and every time someone new got on, we'd lift up our feet to tuck their box of bananas underneath the seat, or rearrange ourselves so as to make room for autre chose.

Traffic made it impossible to get home, and by the time we got out in our neighborhood I could see why Khady tells me she hates cars rapide-- they take forever, the fumes from the street seem to cover you in dirt, des gens yell, there's toujours commotion...our street to the house seemed suddenly silent by the time we hopped off and walked through the sand (which was so much cleaner than the floor of the market by the fish stalls!!).

I made the mistake of searching out another market directly after we got home, but more on that later...I exhausted myself almost to the point of no return and had to take refuge in the Bavarian pastry shop where I indulged in an omlette for lunch, and willed my body to stand up to more activity, but en fait, the heat and the city takes a toll on you quickly, and by the time I made it back to the house I fell into the routine deep, deep sleep of the necessary afternoon nap.

My homestay mother is waiting worried at home I'm sure since I'm not there, and it's gotten dark...I'm having such an amazing time with this family-- at every turn they are even more gentle and giving and protective. It will be hard to leave on Sunday, but I'm also in need of some other travelers, and a tranquil rooftop, and some local beer in a cold bottle.

1 comment:

Margaret Parker said...

Oh, market day is really something. What a great telling. Too bad about not being able to take pictures of the people. But pictures of batik and vegetables might be just fine.