Tamara had a lesson in seduction over lunch the other day. What began with an innocent invitation from our legume lady to eat at her place ended with dance lessons, jewelry and aphrodisiac incense.
In the preceding entry you were briefly introduced to the Legume Lady. She stands at the corner of the busiest road in Ouakam, across from the Total gas station, selling a variety of vegetables: bright red tomatoes with the little ridges around the side proof of their organic state, cucumbers, manioc, onions, lettuce, carrots, green and red peppers and other produce, depending on the day. Well I guess we made a good impression on her, with all of our earnest attempts at speaking Wolof, greeting with a salaam aleikum, asking na nga def and na ka sa wa keur (how are you, how is your family) saying jayrai jeff (thank you) and leaving with a bo bhenin yon (see you later). Tamara is always especially cute, turning as red as the tomatoes she had picked out each time she used a mix of French and Wolof. So one day, using her daughter to translate into clear French, she invited us to lunch at her home. We agreed and a couple days later we were at her home, eating with her son, daughter and their children.
We ate the national plate thieboudienne, which is an assortment of vegetables and fish served on top of red, lightly spiced rice. When we first got here we couldn’t get enough of the stuff. You can buy it for every lunch for 400 CFA (1$) at little kiosks set up alongside the road. Tamara would trek out under the scorching sun every day at around 2pm to get her fill. That is until we noticed that we were having “problems” disposing of the starch-laden meal; once it was in our guts it tended to stay there. Needless to say, we have included a lot of fibre and fruit into our diet… but I digress.
So we were eating thieboudienne with the Legume Lady’s son Malick and her daughter Royhaya. Malick and I were having some interesting conversations about politics, healthcare and schools in Senegal when Royhaya all of a sudden caught a glimmer in her eye and decided to spice things up a bit. As an aside, Royhaya has been married for at least 11 years and has three children. Unfortunately her husband is seldom home and is currently in Morocco with the Senegalese military. She explained that it is a good job, seeing that it is reliable and well-paid, but it keeps him away from the family for very long periods of time. Keeping that fact that Royhaya doesn’t see her husband all that often you can begin to understand why she was excited to give us some advice on love-life Senegalese style.
After having spent the first 45 minutes of our conversation lying on her side with a sleepy look on her face, Royhaya all of a sudden sat up and basically asked Tamara how we were doing… in the biblical sense. As an experienced wife Royhaya had a lot of tips she could teach to Tamara. It turns out that Senegalese woman are known for their mysterious ways and tantalizing techniques used to keep their men at home. In a country where there are more women than men and men are allowed to marry up to four wives, a lady has to stay competitive to keep ahead of the curve. Royhaya explained this to Tamara and I and said that Tamara would have to be careful, because the Senegalese women would try to steal me away given the chance. She said that Senegalese women were sneaky like that. Of course it was all delivered with a smile and a wink. Personally I figured it was more the onslaught of men always blatantly looking Tamara up and down and approaching her when I wasn’t around that should keep me on my toes. Thankfully marriage is respected institution in predominantly Muslim Senegal, so each time a man asked Tamara if she was married (which by the way happened all the time, seeing it was usually the first or second question she gets asked) and Tamara said yes, the interest of the potential suitor diminished rapidly. But in the eyes of Royhaya, it was Tamara’s task to make sure I wasn’t stolen away. To do so she would teach Tamara the Senegalese arts of seduction.
They began with the bin-bins. These are colourful waist beads of varying sizes. The smaller beads are worn by unmarried women, the large cylindrical ones, the ones that really make all the noise, are worn by married women. Seeing that Tamara was a married women Royhaya presented her with a string of large bin-bins. She explained that the women can wear bin-bins throughout the day, so that when she is walking around town all the men can hear the rustling of beads, a little reminder of her fertility. The next step was the petit pang. This little waist sash was used for the bedroom only. Royhaya found a light blue one with slits cut across it, all in order to leave little to the imagination of the husband, who by this time would be struck dumb with desire. The coup de grace was the churrai incense. Before the husband came home his wife would place the incense in the bedroom and keep it heated. By the time her man arrived in the warm, softly lit confines of their love shack a tantalizing scent would already permeate the room. The combination of bin-bins, petit pang and churrai would leave any hot-blooded husband enchanted by the charms of his beautiful, seductive wife… thus giving him no incentive to go out and find another one.
During her whole production of explaining and presenting the carefully guarded secrets of Senegalese wives Royhaya was smiling gleefully, getting a kick out of making Tamara try on the bin bins and pang and showing her how to dance for a man in the bedroom. By the time we left Tamara was stocked and trained to keep her man satisfied for a long time to come… I had no objections.
A few days later when we went by the Legume Lady’s stall to buy some more veggies Royhaya was there. She jumped up with a gleeful smile on her face when she saw Tamara and asked her how “things” were working. Before Tamara could give a response Royhaya was already grabbing for her shirt and flipping it up to take a look and see if the bin-bins were there. They were, which resulted in laughing, high-fives and a little booty jiggle from the Senegalese momma.
Friday 19 December 2008
Street Spirit
If you want a better picture of what the community is like that we live in, or if you are holding onto the fading hope that my writing might one day be more interesting or at least grammatically correct and today might be the day for that long awaited metamorphosis, then read on.
The area of Dakar that we live in is called “Ouakam”. Tamara teases me that I spell it differently every time, but the altered spellings seem to fit the theme of this trip; random wanderings in a continent where nothing is as formalized, as set in stone or as transparent as home… at least from our point of view. Who knows, probably for the folks here everything does have a rhythm and a sense, it’s just harder for us Canadians to see. Of course when it gets down to it, I don’t really know how Oukam (or Ouakham) is supposed to be spelled. In any case, that is where we live.
Ouakam is north of downtown, not too far from the airport, tucked in between the Senegalese and French army bases and the Atlantic Ocean. The closest beach is about a fifteen minute walk away, lined with colourfully painted pirogue fishing boats and home to a very cool mosque that has rounded turrets on top akin to the Cloud City-esque architecture of Bespin. Five times a day we hear the call to prayer that is amplified from the topmost tower of the mosque across the whole neighbourhood. The highway Cheikh Anta Diop runs through Ouakam right to the N’Gor, which is the westernmost point in all of Africa. The few blocks of red dirt and black tarmac that we would consider our hood is full of the goings on of city life. For one, there is constant traffic. There are the flowery-painted Car Rapides and white Ndiage Ndiayes, which are basically big vans that can carry up to 30 people. They go downtown for 150F CFA (about $.40) There are also the big blue Dakar Dem Dikk (‘Dakar return trip’ in Wolof) buses that have routes all over the city at the rate of 200F CFA per ride. More than half the cars on the road are taxis in various states of disrepair and they constantly pass by honking at anyone who doesn’t even look half interested in a ride. Taxi fares are negotiable, which can be a lot of fun once you know what the prices should be and you develop a knack for tough negotiations. The toubab (white folk) price for a taxi to downtown from Ouakam is 2000F CFA (about $5), while the price for Senegalese people is about 1500F CFA ($3.75). However, the taxi drivers usually have the audacity to ask for 4000F right off the bat and are always a little put out when you explain that you live here and thus know that ‘deux mille c’est bon!’
Our house is in a walled courtyard about 25 m from the main road. Walking onto Cheik Anta Diop, right across the street, is the first fruit vendor that we meet in Dakar. For the first month or so we bought oranges, mangos and grape fruit off of him. Usually 2 kg of the latter was 1400 CFA ($3.50), which usually resulted in 5 plump little pamplemousse in our bag. But then we tried out the competition up the road and found that we could get six for 1200 CFA, so we’ve switched suppliers. A little further north you would come across the Total gas station. It is a very modern looking station, with all the European amenities you would expect from such an establishment (overpriced gas ($2/litre), chocolate bars ($1.50), pop, juice and wine. Across the street form the Total is our favorite street vendor of all, the “Legume Lady”, or the vegetable lady. We’ve been going to her for our greens since we arrived and although the prices fluctuate wildly (from $3.75-$6.25 for the same produce), the service is always with a smile. In any case, if we pretend not to have more than $5 she will still sell us a good bag full. The Legume Lady is Peoul, which is an ethnicity in West Africa that can be found all over the region. I first heard about the Peoul when I was watching the five-part National Geographic series Africa. It showed the young men herding their cattle over thousands of kilometers of Sahel and the Peoul girls with their elaborate and beautiful dresses and jewelry. The average girl wore enough amber in her hair and gold around her neck to stock a full Spence Diamonds. The girls also henna around their mouths, making a large black outline of their lips reaching down to just above their chins. I noticed that the Legume Lady had the faint tracings of henna in the same place. When we got to know her and her family better they told us that they were Peoul and that they had originally moved from the countryside to Dakar.
Anyways… that was a bit of a diversion. The following entry will go into our deepening relationship with the Legume Lady and her family.
The area of Dakar that we live in is called “Ouakam”. Tamara teases me that I spell it differently every time, but the altered spellings seem to fit the theme of this trip; random wanderings in a continent where nothing is as formalized, as set in stone or as transparent as home… at least from our point of view. Who knows, probably for the folks here everything does have a rhythm and a sense, it’s just harder for us Canadians to see. Of course when it gets down to it, I don’t really know how Oukam (or Ouakham) is supposed to be spelled. In any case, that is where we live.
Ouakam is north of downtown, not too far from the airport, tucked in between the Senegalese and French army bases and the Atlantic Ocean. The closest beach is about a fifteen minute walk away, lined with colourfully painted pirogue fishing boats and home to a very cool mosque that has rounded turrets on top akin to the Cloud City-esque architecture of Bespin. Five times a day we hear the call to prayer that is amplified from the topmost tower of the mosque across the whole neighbourhood. The highway Cheikh Anta Diop runs through Ouakam right to the N’Gor, which is the westernmost point in all of Africa. The few blocks of red dirt and black tarmac that we would consider our hood is full of the goings on of city life. For one, there is constant traffic. There are the flowery-painted Car Rapides and white Ndiage Ndiayes, which are basically big vans that can carry up to 30 people. They go downtown for 150F CFA (about $.40) There are also the big blue Dakar Dem Dikk (‘Dakar return trip’ in Wolof) buses that have routes all over the city at the rate of 200F CFA per ride. More than half the cars on the road are taxis in various states of disrepair and they constantly pass by honking at anyone who doesn’t even look half interested in a ride. Taxi fares are negotiable, which can be a lot of fun once you know what the prices should be and you develop a knack for tough negotiations. The toubab (white folk) price for a taxi to downtown from Ouakam is 2000F CFA (about $5), while the price for Senegalese people is about 1500F CFA ($3.75). However, the taxi drivers usually have the audacity to ask for 4000F right off the bat and are always a little put out when you explain that you live here and thus know that ‘deux mille c’est bon!’
Our house is in a walled courtyard about 25 m from the main road. Walking onto Cheik Anta Diop, right across the street, is the first fruit vendor that we meet in Dakar. For the first month or so we bought oranges, mangos and grape fruit off of him. Usually 2 kg of the latter was 1400 CFA ($3.50), which usually resulted in 5 plump little pamplemousse in our bag. But then we tried out the competition up the road and found that we could get six for 1200 CFA, so we’ve switched suppliers. A little further north you would come across the Total gas station. It is a very modern looking station, with all the European amenities you would expect from such an establishment (overpriced gas ($2/litre), chocolate bars ($1.50), pop, juice and wine. Across the street form the Total is our favorite street vendor of all, the “Legume Lady”, or the vegetable lady. We’ve been going to her for our greens since we arrived and although the prices fluctuate wildly (from $3.75-$6.25 for the same produce), the service is always with a smile. In any case, if we pretend not to have more than $5 she will still sell us a good bag full. The Legume Lady is Peoul, which is an ethnicity in West Africa that can be found all over the region. I first heard about the Peoul when I was watching the five-part National Geographic series Africa. It showed the young men herding their cattle over thousands of kilometers of Sahel and the Peoul girls with their elaborate and beautiful dresses and jewelry. The average girl wore enough amber in her hair and gold around her neck to stock a full Spence Diamonds. The girls also henna around their mouths, making a large black outline of their lips reaching down to just above their chins. I noticed that the Legume Lady had the faint tracings of henna in the same place. When we got to know her and her family better they told us that they were Peoul and that they had originally moved from the countryside to Dakar.
Anyways… that was a bit of a diversion. The following entry will go into our deepening relationship with the Legume Lady and her family.
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