Africa, Africa

A couple of weeks ago, while in Dakar, I had a chance to visit my former host family for the second time since being back in Senegal. The first time was during training when I was still living in what you would call a city with a family that was pretty well off by Senegalese standards. The house in Mbour was small, with no indoor plumbing and there were farm animals in the front yard, so by comparison my Dakar family’s house was a mansion. But now that I’ve been living the village life for six months, walking into the Diop house is like walking into another world. The fact that these two families live in the same tiny country blows my mind and tempts me into thinking of my two Senegalese experiences as being less and more “African” respectively. I hate thinking this, because it feeds into the stereotypes of Africa and the third world that offer such a narrow view of what life is actually like here and implies that my Diop family is somehow less African than my Mané family.

The fact is that Dakar is still Africa. It’s full of Western amenities (as well as Westerners), is multi-lingual, cosmopolitan and home to the wealthiest of the Senegalese, but the street vendors and car-rapides and balmy evenings give it away. Since being back I sometimes think that the “Africanness” I saw and felt during the four months I lived in Dakar was a function of the city being in a state of flux and chaos; there were numerous large-scale construction projects going on that are mostly all finished now and much of the hectic grunginess I remember is gone. My old neighborhood is full of new apartment buildings and restaurants and even the house I lived in is bigger and fancier than when I left. So, some of the shock of going back has to do with changes to the city itself.

However, I know that a lot of my reaction to visiting my Dakar host family has to do with the huge disparity between life with the Diops and life with the Manés that forces me to address the stereotypes of “the real Africa” that persist somewhere in my mind despite my knowing better. After living in a village with no cars, no plumbing and no electricity and where dirt floors and thatched roofs are standard, things like playstations and couches cease to exist for me. And yet, there they are, chez Diop. The kids speak perfect French and the tile floors are spotless. Even my former host family comments on how brave they think I am to be living in a tiny rural village (the exact same thing I hear from Americans) and tell me that I speak French with a Mandinka accent now. Both times I’ve visited somebody has made some comment about me living like a real African, which makes me wonder what I was doing in Dakar… living like a fake African? What happens when fewer and fewer people live in thatched roof huts and get their water from community wells? Does the “real Africa” disappear?

I could ask these kinds of questions all day, but really that’s just semantics. The truth is, I know what they mean when they say I live in the “real Africa" and I know that there is some amount of admiration and even a little nostalgia in the way they say it. The Diops have traded certain aspects of Senegalese cultural for a comfortable life in the big city. They are still African – one large extended family under one roof, eating on the floor out of communal bowls, and most importantly, living in Africa – but they recognize that for most of the people in their country life hasn’t changed very much from what it was a hundred years ago. In that sense, they give me permission to go ahead and think what I don’t think I should think: that the Manés are more African than the Diops. At the very least their Western ways remind me that I can justify saying that Saré Pathé is more African than Dakar because Dakar is connected to the rest of the world and Saré Pathé is not. Saré Pathé is pure Africa.

I realized upon my return to the African village how much my life there suits me, how much Saré Pathé has become my home in the last six months. I take for granted all of the little daily sites and sounds and routines that are now so normal, and yet are so far removed from my American life or my Dakarois life. Sweeping out my hut every morning, knowing exactly how much water I need for a bucket shower, grimy babies, topless ladies, raw sweet potatoes, moon-shadows. Each day goes by slowly, but the months are flying.