Right Location, Right Time

Tanti Amina and her four children live in Keur Massar, a community on the outskirts of Dakar.  To look at it, Keur Massar could be extraordinarily old, a ruin of some forgotten war, with crumbs of concrete being swallowed and regurgitated by slithering mounds of ochre sand.  On the contrary, Tanti Amina's neighborhood is very new, under development for only about three or four years.  In fact, Tanti Amina's house—sparkling-clean, ornamented with various succulents in pots of seashells behind the front gate—is under construction, too, with workmen piling concrete bricks on top of the roof and hammering at all hours.



She tells me one morning that she plans to turn the extension into a location, another apartment for vacationers to rent for a week at a time.  I tell her about AirBnB, and she seems interested.



Inside, meanwhile, it is cozy, tastefully decorated (not that I'd know, of course), with comfortable, new-looking couches—the kind without obvious butt grooves, that tend to have tablets left on them (best to check before you sit down).  As Mohamed, my self-professed guide (he pronounces it "gweed"), shows me in, Tanti Amina and her children greet me warmly, excusing their lack of English.  I thank them profusely, promising to try my best with French for the next week.  Considering the type of houseguest I am, it gets much easier once Tanti Amina reminds me of the phrase n'importe quoi, "it doesn't matter."



After a few fits and starts, mostly due to faux pas or fear of committing one on my part, we sit to eat dinner.  It's late, after 9:30, and I apologize for seemingly having kept the family waiting.  I assume my poor French is what causes their confused looks, though it becomes clear over the next few days that dinner in Senegal rarely happens before nine, nor lunch before two.  We eat our couscous and chicken in a rich red sauce from a common dish while sitting on the floor, and though Tanti Amina's questions lead me to believe this isn't an everyday affair, the family's evident comfort with eating in this style make me marvel at its authentic exoticism or exotic authenticity.

Before going to sleep, I fret for awhile about eating before the young woman who cooked our food ate her own dinner—am I profiting from some misogynistic tradition where the younger daughter eats after the rest of the family?  My mind is put at rest the next day when Mohamed tells me that that girl is the family's hired help (giving rise to anxiety about having committed another faux pas by being unable to tell apart family and employees).




It's a long, dusty walk to anything from Tanti Amina's house.  No taxis come anywhere closer than ten minutes away, to the Shell station near the highway.  As Mohamed walks me that way in the morning, I note several horses and donkeys lashed to strange two-wheeled carts, as well as dozens of big golden eagles wheeling over the unfinished, brightly-colored houses.  Later, in a crowded city bus painted brightly like the Jeepneys of Manila, we ride past bald vultures clashing on what looks like an abandoned playground.  It's relatively quiet between Mohamed and me on the bus, and before that on the walk, as well as on the taxi rides downtown, across town, and back home.

Mohamed and I hadn't gotten off on a very good foot, unfortunately.  But that's a story for another day.