February 2010
2 posts
Best of...
Hi all,
So my travels are over. I’m officially stateside again, settled snugly in my old life as a frantic college student.
But this blog will stay up, so you’re always free to poke around and see what I’ve been up to these past eight months. In that vein, here are a few of my favorite posts from the RyaninAfrica archives:
Out of Africa: I try to learn French and Wolof....
Goodbye to All That
to Dakar, to dust, to Wolof, to rice and fish, to sheep living (and dying) on my roof, to marriage proposals, to malaria medicine, to car rapides, to bargaining for cab rides, to my race affording me celebrity status, to fabrics covered in dollar signs or Obama faces or portraits of the baby jesus, to five times daily calls to prayer, to mountains of trash, to the Atlantic crashing up against the...
December 2009
16 posts
Weird things about America, Part 1
hot water
snow
dollar bills
anglophones
grocery stores
no marriage proposals
domesticated animals
I’m here
Just a note...
I’m on the road.
Dakar to Casablanca to New York to Denver.
See you all in 24 hours, inshallah [God willing]
Tailor-Made: The Continuing Saga
These dresses began in the sensory overload that is a Dakar market—Shacks and stands spilling over with fabrics, vendors calling out prices and marriage proposals, women weaving through with trays of bananas on their heads, street children grabbing your hands, taxis sneezing exhaust and kicking up dust on the cracked roads, all of it enough to simultaneously suck you in and make you want to...
Samedi, featuring...
being woken up by a plane flying so low over my house that it shook the windows
massive room cleaning/packing adventure
one of my new senegalese dresses
an epic lunch chez moi
a senegalese wrestling match
dinner and a movie at the french institute (may I add that the film was a musical comedy about people taking a sept-place taxi from Dakar to St. Louis. And one of them was a white guy who...
Joal, Senegal: December 11 - 12, 2009
All semester long, my friends and I have been talking about taking a trip to Joal, the coastal city that is the hometown of Senegal’s first president, Leopold Senghor. The trip has gone into the planning stages several times (unsuccessfully), but this weekend Shannon, Allison, and I finally made the trek.
I’m not usually one for recapitulating the entire contents of a weekend in...
“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a...”
– Walter “Red” Smith (via measart) (via gilliansees) (via thesoundingbored)
Tuesday, 4 p.m., My Last "Senegal Today" Class
You might think I’m joking, but seriously, could I make up something this ridiculous? I don’t think so.
My impending temperature shock
Right now it is 80 degrees in Dakar and -14 degrees in Denver.
WHAT???
Saint Louis, Senegal
Seven hour voyage in a sept-place, a beat-up old station wagon with a cracked windshield that you can hire (along with a driver) for long distance travel in Senegal. The car broke down outside of Tivaoune. Add another couple of hours for repair. But we finally made it. In Saint Louis there were cows and buildings and an ocean meeting a river. You could see Mauritania from our hotel. The city was...
I think I have isolated an important distinction...
My French Professor: Are there differences between your classes in Senegal and your classes in the U.S.?
Me: Well, in the U.S. our professors give us work every time the class meets to do at home and bring to the next class.
My French Professor: Every class?
Me: Yes. Sometimes they give us something to read, or a paper to write.
My French Professor: For each time you have class?
Me: Yes.
My French Professor: So every time you have class, you do work in advance to prepare for it?
Me: Yes.
My French Professor: Every time?
Me: Yes.
My French Professor: [silent confusion]
Family reunion
My dad and step-mom in Senegal, November 21-28, 2009.
One of the best weeks of my semester :-)
On Language, Part 3.5
I live my life in Senegal in the present tense.
This is not a metaphor. I’m not explaining my personal philosophy or trying to give an inspirational speech about experiencing each and every day to its fullest.
No, when I say I live in the present tense, I mean the actual present tense. You know:
I study abroad in West Africa. I eat baguettes. I talk in bumbling, awkward French and employ the...
November 2009
33 posts
Tabaski: Feast of the Sacrifice
alternate title: “Remember When I Was a Vegan?”
Okay, so let me just say by way of introduction…if you’re going to be a member of an Abrahamic faith, I think that Christianity is far and away the simplest. No fasts. No forbidden foods (most of the time). No five-times-daily prayers. No pilgrimage. No requirement of almsgiving. No need to learn a dense, difficult language...
Les Baobabs
- C’est bien vrai, n’est-ce pas, que les moutons mangent les arbustes ?
- Oui. C’est vrai.
- Ah! Je suis content.
Je ne compris pas pourquoi il était si important que les moutons mangeassent les arbustes. Mais le petit prince ajouta:
- Par conséquent ils mangent aussi les baobabs ?
Je fis remarquer au petit prince que les baobabs ne sont pas des arbustes, mais...
Two 'only in Senegal' moments from the opening...
1.
We are going to an artists’ workshop at the edge of the city (Le Village Des Arts). I hail a cab and ask him if he knows the place. He nods gruffly, not looking me in the eye, so I ask again. He insists he knows. I negotiate the price, the three of us get into his cab, and he begins to drive. And drive. And drive. Suddenly I see us approaching the Dakar airport.
“We’re not...
I love
my dad and step-mom
seeing Dakar from their perspective
getting out of my homestay for a weekend
how much the employees of the radisson love it when you speak to them in wolof
having wine with dinner
hot showers
supersupersuperfast internet
breakfasts that are not baguette + butter
alternate realities
Another well-spent Friday
Hopped on a car-rapide, zipped over to Allison’s house, sat on her roof looking at the views of Dakar, ate copious, ridiculous, incredible amounts of chebujin—an incredible rice and fish dish that Senegal is known for, pretended to study, ate some more, looked at Wolof flashcards, ate some more, car-rapide-ed it home.
All in all an excellent day.
The goats Allison’s family...
On Language, the third installment
Hello, dearest people of the RyanBlog, and welcome to my semi-regular State of the Language Learning address.
As you’ve all heard me explain approximately 133,459,769 times by now, a big part of the reason I came to Senegal was because I wanted to finally attain some mastery of French. I’d been stumbling along for about a year and a half in beginner language classes at Duke and I...
Awesome things about university classes in the...
there is a syllabus
assignments are determined in advance
classes are generally not three hours long
classes are generally not in french
when they are in french, you’re also being taught things about the french language and not merely expected to be able to discuss the historical implications of islam in Senegalese society after having taken three semesters of beginner french.
at...
Type two fun
The summer before my freshman year of college, I went on an orientation trip with the other students in my scholarship program. It was basically a wilderness expedition for wimps—a little hiking, a little rafting, lots of sitting around talking about how hiking and rafting taught us about being the next leaders of the free world. Over all, it was silly and unnecessarily pedantic. But one...
The greatest thing you will ever hear
I just started reading Harry Potter in French and I’m already picking up a slew of awesome vocabulary words like la chouette (owl), menacer (to threaten), la cicatrice (scar) and malodorant (foul-smelling).
But far and away the best of these, and perhaps my favorite word I have ever encountered in the French language, is the word for magic wand.
Are you ready for this?
It’s LA...
Today
After yet another conversation with my host mother this morning in which she reminded me that my French is about ten steps beyond terrible, I took my sorrows and my Wolof flashcards to a café for a plate of fries and a giant bowl of praline ice cream.
And you know what, it worked pretty well.
It’s like the old saying goes: when life gives you lemons, take a car rapide through Dakar and...
By the figures
83 days since I left the US
36 days until I return
6 days until my dad and stepmom come to Dakar
11 days until my first Thanksgiving outside of America
65 days I spent in South Africa this summer
172 days I will have spent in Africa in the year 2009 by the time I leave Senegal in December
73: percentage of the last six months that I have spent on the continent of Africa
0: number of keys...
Teasers
I’m writing an article for Towerview, the Chronicle’s news magazine, about my study abroad experience. I can’t give it away just yet, but I will tell you that I’ve been away from Real Journalism for far too long and the result is that I now think/hope I can get away with sentences like this:
But if English and French are like distant cousins, vaguely related and meeting...
La Plage
“I’m going to the beach,” I announced this morning to my host mother.
“Oh no,” she said, “it’s too cold to go to the beach.”
It was 85 degrees.
Needless to say, I went anyway.
View of Dakar
With my friend Shannon
That's my name and don't you ever forget it...
Random man on the street: Bonjour Madame jolie. ça va? [hello mrs. pretty. How are you?]
Zakat in the Morning
On Friday my host mom unexpectedly offered to drive me to school. She’s never done that before, but with the temperature hovering around 85 degrees at 9 a.m., and I wasn’t about to say no. So I jumped into her old, black BMW (yes, my senegalese host mother drives a BMW) and we took off. About halfway there, she said, “est-ce que tu es pressée?” Are you in a hurry? I shook...
Exam = Trainwreck
But a trainwreck that is now finished. Over. Complete. Never to be worried about or spoken of again.
THANK GOD.
The Last five words I have translated on...
Negrification
Jihad*
proselytize
Peanut basin
To convert
Welcome to my study party. It’s really exciting.
*Same word, but I had to know if it was male or female, you see.
Here is a photo essay...
…depicting my emotional state regarding the two-hour essay exam I will take tomorrow in my islamic history class. For which I was given no guidelines and which I will write in the French language. Using French words. And French sentences. And French paragraphs.
Did I mention that this exam will be in French? Not yet? Well just so you know, L’EXAMEN EST EN FRANCAIS.
Face, meet...
Sometimes even my wildly simplistic French gets...
French professor: What do you think of the health care bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives this weekend?
Me: I am very happy. I am glad to have a president who understands that health care is necessary and that it is important for all people to have medical insurance, even if they cannot pay. This is one of the reasons that I voted for Obama. This new law is very good for America.
Homesick Sundays
I miss crisp, cold fall weather. I miss scarves and sweaters and jeans. I miss crunchy leaves. I miss clouds. I miss drinking hot coffee on a cold day. I miss hot showers. I miss sleeping under piles of blankets and waking up perfectly warm when the air all around you is freezing cold. I miss wearing shoes that are not flip-flops.
When I’m gone from here I will probably want nothing more...
C'est magique
In a country where dogs sleep in gutters and cats slink through back-alley trash heaps, I’d all but given up hope of meeting anyone with a real pet here. I definitely know people who own animals, but those animals are almost always on an unalterable path to becoming dinner.
Then I met Magique.
Who, you ask, is Magique?
Magique is my friend Shannon’s host brother’s sheep....
Mr. President
Want to see some propaganda for the Senegalese president, Abdoulaye Wade?
I thought so.
One man, one country, one people, one destiny
Presidents Wade and Sarkozy looking cool
President Wade always listens to women! (P.S. it takes a while to find him in this picture, doesn’t it?)
An engaged man — look! he plants trees!
THE END
The ups and downs of the 'study' in study abroad
Up:
Yesterday in my Senegalese culture class, the topic of discussion was “the history of Senegalese politics.” One hour into the three-hour class, the professor finished his lecture, closed his notebook, and said “let’s go.” Then he shuttled us out to his beat-up white Renault and drove into Dakar. We stopped at the grave of Senegal’s first deputy to the...
Au revoir to the Dakar of Europe
Well, I have been out of France for less than 24 hours and already the entire experience is compressing into a jumble of epic churches, delicious meals, and an endless series of improbably ancient places. I say improbably because I am American and European cities checkered with medieval fortresses and 14th century buildings will never stop impressing me simply for being there in the middle of an...
