Stranger!

I am teaching a grade 12 class when a student informs me that someone has come for me. I ask if it is Fanta Fofana and he says yes. A different student then wants to know the appropriate way to refer to this person. Do we say, “Your stranger has come?”

Glad you asked, I wanted to reply. I explain, no, you only use “stranger” for a person you do not know. She is my friend, I know her, so she is not a stranger to me.

Student: But that boy who came to inform you, he did not know if you knew her or not. He did not know she was your friend.

Me: True. So he could say, ‘your visitor has arrived.’ A visitor can be someone you know already or someone you do not know.

Student:But your friend, does she know Fatoto?

Me: You mean, has she been here before? No.

Student: So then she is a stranger to Fatoto.

Me: Yes…but she is not my stranger. Is everybody finished with the test?


So, I blew it. A golden opportunity to convince students not to refer to visitors as strangers, and they end up more deeply convinced that everyone's a stranger. Even I am slightly convinced. Well, okay, I’m not, but I am at least glad to see that there is some sort of logic at work--that it's not all an error in vocabulary.

Con Man!

I met a con man on the ferry.

As I’m boarding the ferry, I hear a man shouting, “Basse! Basse! Basse!”
I say, “I am going to Basse.”
“Basse, eh?”
“Yes.”

He takes one of my bags and helps me shove through the crowd to the car. It was starting to seem like the best day ever. I had not had a long wait at the ferry terminal and was making excellent time. Now I’d found a car to Basse while still on the ferry. I had heard of other volunteers getting cars on the ferry, which always seemed like the luckiest thing ever because:

• you don’t have to deal with walking to the car park and pushing through the fast-moving crowd
• and worrying about something being snatched from the outside pocket of a bag,
• or about dropping the ferry ticket before you’ve reached the men collecting them at the gate
• and you don’t have to sit waiting in a car in a car park while it fills.

I remained excited even after I saw that the car was a gelle and not a sept-plas, as I’d assumed. The man said to give him the pass. I asked how much; he said 250. I can’t remember how much I’d paid for my last trans-Gambia gelle, but it semed about the same, fifty dalasis cheaper than a sept-plas. This money would make up for the fact that I’d overpaid for a taxi on the way to the ferry. There is a story behind that, too, but it’s boring.

I overhear another passenger being charged only 150 dalasis and that doesn’t seem fair, but I do not care enough to look for the man who collected my pass and confront him about why. It could be one of many reasons, anyway. Maybe for being a toubab, maybe for my bags, maybe it was even something legitimate, maybe that other passenger would dropping at a village much closer than Basse.

Another man comments that it is “not correct” that the pass is being collected now. But I’d been in gelles before where pass was collected before the start of the trip, so I figured the guy didn’t know what he was talking about.

There are a few people in the gelle and I don’t worry too much about it filling because more people are getting on after me. By the time the ferry has reached Barra we have a full car and are ready to go.

After we’ve driven a little past Barra, the man sitting to my right (who I am already a little angry at because he opened up the window more than necessary given how cold it was) says, “Pass. 150 dalasis.”
I reply, “I have already paid” and return to my semi-nap.

A few minutes later I get a tap on my shoulder. “Give me 150 dalasis.”
I’m wondering what is going on because

1. I already paid and
2. I guess I did pay 100 dalasis more than necessary.

“I already paid.”
“No.”
“Yes, I did. I am not going to pay again.”

Back to semi-napping.

A few minutes later: “You did not pay your pass.”
I reply, trying to contain my frustration because I don’t want to speak too quickly and not be understood. “But I did. I do not know if it was you or who, but I paid somebody 250 dalasis for pass.”
“No.”
“Yes. I am not paying two times; that would not be correct.”

I decide to ignore the man.

In Farafenni, but before we reach the market, we stop in front of some building or something. I think one of the passengers had a delivery to make. The driver turns to face me and says, “The aparante tells me you are refusing to give him the pass.”
“Yes.”
“But…why?”
“Because I already paid. On the ferry, when I got into the car, I paid a man 250 dalasis.”
There is some talking among the men in Wollof, but in English one man confirms that he saw me pay the 250 dalasis. Then the driver asks, with the voice of someone bemoaning a loss, “But why did you pay that man? He was a criminal!”
“But I did not know. I though he was the aparante.”
The man sitting in front of me turns around and says, “Even me, I paid him 150 dalasis, I did not know.”

Whoever had errands to run, or people to greet or whatever, returns, so we drive a couple of minutes up the road to the food vendors. We stop again so that everyone can step out and buy breakfast. I buy an egg sandwich and when I finish eating it I go stand in the shade of the gelle. The aparante approaches me and I worry that he’s going to continue insisting I pay the fare, but instead he says, “Next time, before you pay, you should ask the man, ‘who is the aparante?’ That man was a criminal! You paid 250 and that man paid 150…ay-ay-ay…”
“But you said that man is a criminal, no?”
“Yes, he is a criminal!”
“So even if I ask, ‘Are you the aparante?’ he will say, ‘yes.’ He will not tell the truth.”

The aparante does not seem to be following my logic, but another man does and reassures me, “Yes, it was not your fault.” The aparante says something starting with “Next time” but I ignore it. When he pauses I say, “Maybe next time, if the driver is there or if the aparante is there, in the car, then I would not give the money to the wrong person.” The other man again reassures me that it was not my fault. I glance into the gelle, hoping to see more people returned from breakfast so that I can leave and take a seat.

Nope. So I enjoy some more awkward minutes of standing around in silence until the driver changes the subject: “What is your name?” This is followed by a discussion of how my name is not actually Binta Jallow but is, unbeknownst to me, Binta Touray. The driver's last name was Touray.


A few minutes later all passengers have returned and we continue driving. At the next two or three police checkpoints the driver tells his story, more to hear the officer’s sympathetic clucks than anything else, I think, because as the first policeman told him, there is really nothing they can do without knowing who the man was.


Back at home, I tell the story to Neene. She enjoys it and interjects lots of gasps and “huh?!”s. When I finish she concludes, “There are some bad people in this world.”

It's like America!

Although I, too, agree that sixty degrees Fahrenheit feels like freezing, I'm still amused by others' comments about the cold.

• One science teacher said, “In the extreme cold the liver will go like this, to warm the body” and motioned that liver would expand or something.
• Another said, “My physiology is not created for such conditions.”
•  “Binta, are you among the old generation?” “I do not know what that is.” “The old age people. Matar said all those basking in the sun belong to the old generation.”
• And one morning when I was talking with some students about cold weather here and elsewhere (America, Iceland, Ghana) a student said, in reference to white people, “But for them the coldness will stop only on the outside of the skin.”

Scars!

I feel obligated to write about getting Fula scars, because after all it is not every day you ask a stranger to slice you with a razor blade, but I’m not sure there’ll be much more to say than that. The scars are traditionally done on the face, but I thought they'd look nicer on my feet.

I traveled from Basse to Wassu with Abby and she bought nyankatong in the car park, which is something I hadn’t known was possible, especially in the early morning. She also got us seats in the very front of the gelle, which is also something I hadn’t thought possible unless you were an old man. Other than that, travel was unadventurous.

We met the group in Wassu and drew on our future scars with Sharpie so the lady would know where to cut. The actual cutting hurt less than I'd expected, like a mild version of a paper cut. Rubbing in the peanut ash didn't hurt much, either. Sort of took away the paper cut pain, actually.

She didn’t cut as deeply on one foot as the other, which I’m a little upset about because one set of lines is wider and darker than the other set, but I am trying to convince myself that the imperfection adds to the authenticity.

Then we bandaged it up with gauze pads and Canadian flag hockey tape.


Then I kept it away from water for three days, and that was that.

Told you there wasn't much of a story. 

She kept the peanut ash in a ram’s horn, which was the best.

I have photos of the final result as well, but I did not have them at the time I uploaded these pictures, and I am no longer in uploading-pictures-land.

"Christmas is coming, the pigs are getting thinner..."

One of the teachers warned me about the pigs a week before Christmas. He said Christmas better come soon, or there'd be nothing for Diana and me to eat.

I am in front of the computer right now, by the way, and had an amazing non-Kombo Christmas--maybe I'll tell you about it some day. Anyway, as I am not in Kombo, both my electricity time and internet time are limited, nor will I be able to upload any photos to share.

Now I'll stop wasting time thinking of more to say and start posting some of the stuff I've already typed up.

Happy (almost) New Year!

P.S. I've been advised to give a shout-out to Abby D.'s cousin who supposedly thinks I'm hilarious: Thanks Abby D.'s cousin!

"...so that the middle does not fall out"

A student is working a problem on the board.

Me: Now what do we need to do?
Student: Collect the like terms!
Me: So can you put the 2x and the 8 together?
Student: No!
Me: Why?
Student: Because they are not like terms.
Another student: You can only collect the like terms. Can a school girl sleep on the same bed as a school boy? Can you mix salt and sugar?

Later, the student forgets to close a set of brackets. Several students point this out, and one explains, "We close the brackets so that the middle does not fall out."

When you are preparing food...

A female and a male teacher were jokingly arguing about something. I was not especially paying attention, but I did overhear the following:

Male teacher: Are you saying you know more about woman than me?...When you are preparing food, why is it that you drive the flies away?

Female teacher: Me, I will not drive the flies away. I enjoy eating the flies, in fact.

Basse: photographed (sort of)!

Here are some photos of Basse. I would add them retroactively to that post where I talked about Basse's numerous attractions (below, for instance, is the sign for the London Club Disco) but then nobody would see them. Right before I leave The Gambia for good, I want to wander the town tourist-style and take a thousand pictures. For now, I will satisfy myself with three.

JEM HOTEL BASSE URD LONDON CLUB DISCO HIGH CLASS ACCOMODATION

I can't remember why I took this photo. Oh, wait! Yes I do. No, never mind, I don't.

You should double click on this photo. Then you will be able to see the movie posters painted on the side of that building, which is the only reason I took this photo.

Mecca!

Somebody, Abdulai I think, from Jallow-Kunda-with-the-T.V.-set, went to Mecca. I did not know this until he returned. 

The afternoon of his return, Neene and her friend Umu are chatting outside as they usually do. Then someone comes by and makes an announcement. Both of them jump up and run. This is not something elderly ladies usually do and would've thought someone’s house except they didn't appear panicked.

I have never seen old ladies move so quickly. Umu dashes out of our compound in the direction of her own and Neene speeds into her house. Now it is just me and some kids and Jainabou. I ask Jainabou, where have all the people gone? She tells me Abdoulie Somebody has returned. He went to Maaka. Abdoulie who? Mamadou tells me, Abdoulie from Jallow Kunda, the one with the T.V. set. It takes awhile to learn this information, though, so I decide instead of asking where Maaka is, I will simply bathe, change into a complet, and go over and see for myself.

I assume Maaka is someplace in Europe, but why I assume this I don’t especially know. I remember that Sanna once told me someone from around here plays football in Europe and given how excited the whole village seems to be for the arrival of this Abdoulie, I assume he is some footballer come home. I think it strange that he’d come home after Tobaski, instead of arriving in time to celebrate with his family, but I imagine a scenario in which his flight is delayed.

I walk over to Sinni’s with a deck of cards in my hand. My ultimate goal is to find out what is happening at Jallow-Kunda-with-the-T.V.-set, but I do not want to invite myself over there. Sinni’s compound is just next door, however, so I am hoping if I stay there long enough I’ll overhear something.

Fama and I play cards. After a couple of rounds, we notice a steady stream of people flowing into Jallow-Kunda-with-the-T.V.-set. Fama says she is going to wash and go. Sinni says the same thing, and when they’re both ready, we join the queue. We enter the gates (Jallow-Kunda-with-the-T.V.-set has a concrete wall around their compound and a bright blue gate for entering) and join the people inside, who have gathered in a circle. Inside the circle, from what I can see, is a large mat on which several old men are sitting. Also in the middle is a large bucket of water, from which cups are being dipped into and passed out to the attendees. Some people are being served hot pink juice, but I do not see the source—probably another large bucket. After enough people have been served, there are prayers. I assume they are the opening prayers for some sort of ceremony, but as soon as the prayers finish, most of us leave.

Once I’m back at Sinni’s compound, a girl comes over with a metal tumbler of the hot pink juice. She says Mariama, who lives at Jallow-Kunda-with-the-T.V.-set and who is also one of my students, said to give it to Miss Jallow. I love being a teacher!

At this point I have gathered that Abdoulie Somebody is not a famous footballer and I am suspecting that perhaps he is returning from Mecca. It certainly sounds a lot like Maaka, and it would also explain why he would spend Tobaski away from his family. Later I ask Amadou and he confirms my suspicion. I decide not to confess I thought the man returning from the hajj was a footballer.

What is...?

One morning I walked into a grade nine classroom to find the following questions and answers written on the blackboard:

“What is maths? We have 5 maths classes every week. What is love? i love him and m going to marry him.”

Creepy-crawlies continued!

Wah!

WAH!

I finally saw that animal Sinni described as "you will think it is a snake but it has legs." Now I am even more convinced it is a skink, but I am also certain she has forgotten that conversation by now.

A for-real frog! Every other frog I've seen is some blobbish, bumpy, toad-like creation. And although blobbish, bumpy, toad-like creations are amusing, the repetition is tiresome.

One day I returned from school and found two Escher-esque lizards in my bucket.

One day I returned from school and found a beetle and a lizard engaged in a battle to the death. Except they weren't engaged in a battle to the death. I only wished they were. In reality, they didn't even notice each other.

A golden bug landed on a shirt I'd hung out to dry!

Kuri had puppies!

And Levi, looking just slightly bewildered.

WHO!

I love maths. I do not love in-house sporting competitions, Assumption Day, teacher workshops, thunderstorms, or the World Health Organization, all of which have succeeded--unfairly--in keeping students away from maths. 

One Monday a science teacher told me he needed my help in setting up a computer in the library. The previous week, WHO had dropped off surveys and that morning they'd called to inform him they would be back on Friday to collect the completed surveys. The senior secondary students were to answer a couple of pages of health-related multiple-choice questions, watch three videos, then answer the same multiple-choice questions again. There were many problems with this situation:

1. The school has 200 senior secondary students
2. The school has one computer with working speakers
3. The school has no projector
4. Power is unreliable
5. The students were supposed to be learning maths

Luckily, we were able to use Julia's laptop and divided the students into two groups; 100 in the library, 100 in the computer lab.

The three videos were awful. They weren't even videos, but interactive computer games, that weren't really interactive computer games so much as PowerPoint-esque presentations with too much writing on each slide.

The video about health and fitness taught students such important and relevant facts as “golfing, either walking or in a cart” is a low-level activity. It suggested they instead practice skipping. They could practice skipping on the balls of their feet, or practice skipping listening to the radio. The video also suggested "taking the dog for an evening walk" as a means of achieving their thirty minutes of daily exercise. Also, it warned students about “osteo-arthritis” and “high-density lipoproteins." 

The video about food safety instructed students to drink only pasteurized milk, not to thaw frozen foods at room temperature, and to wash bowls used for pets' food separately from those people will eat from.

In the video about malaria the students learned nothing they did not already know. I was proud of the fact that I knew which strain of malaria is most common in The Gambia, so after the video listed the four main types I paused it to ask the students if they also knew. Several bored voices replied, “P. falciparum.”

Oh, but perhaps the students did not know the history of malaria beginning with the evolution of the mosquito.

Perhaps they did not need to know.

Soft-serve ice cream!

There is a soft-serve ice cream shop in Basse. Equally exciting, the store also sells ice blocks, allowing the possibility of ice-cold lemonade, for example. The ice cream shop has been around for many months, probably close to a year, but only this past October did I actually make a visit. I am not sure why it took me so long, given that soft-serve ice cream is my favorite. I probably suspected the experience would be less than spectacular.  

The ice cream was swirled pink and white and it looked prettier than it tasted. I had been warned the ice cream would taste like powdered milk. I wish it would have. Instead, it tasted like essence of artificial banana. But still, it was pretty to look at.

The ice cream shop, with bread-delivery trucks parked outside.

Visa!

Kairaba: I would like to go to America. Binta, do you think I will?
Me: I don’t know.
Kairaba: You know!
Me: A visa will be a problem. America's government will not give a visa to many people.
Kairaba: Why?
Me: I do not know.
Kairaba: You know!
Me: I do not know.
Kairaba: Binta, do not say "I don't know!"
Me: If I will give visas, I will give them to many people.

Then I thought a bit and possibly managed to explain that America is afraid people will say they are just coming to look at America and then leave but actually they will stay a long time. They will lie. They will be in America and they will work, but they will not pay the government.

Kairaba agreed that it is true, that it is the government who does not want to give a lot of visas. “And Binta, even if you were giving the visas, the government would not accept.” But surely, surely Kairaba has had these conversations with these answers from at least one of the family’s four or five previous volunteers?

Gaye joined our conversation and talked about how Americans do not want the blacks to come and how Americans think they are al alike. He wasn’t relly talking to me, which I was glad about, because I wouldn’t have known what to say.

D.I.Y: Transmogrification!

Materials: Bananas, boiling water

Step 1: Place the bananas in the boiling water.

Step 2: Leave the bananas in the boiling water for awhile.

Step 3: Remove the bananas from the boiling water.

The bananas will end up with the taste and texture of something close to baked potatoes. You will want to eat them with butter, or better yet, a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of bacon.

Look!

One morning a slew of boys was playing by our compound. Some were messing around in the dirt, some were rolling an old car tire around. Then Hairuna arrives and everyone but Alagie and Musa, who cannot walk yet, stop what they are doing to follow Hairuna to the field where the sheeps and goats graze.

They soon return. Hairuna is holding a puppy. It is small, but fat. One of the boys says, “Look, Binta!” Hairuna starts walking towards me with the puppy but Neene yells at the boys and so instead they continue along the road into Sinni’s compound. Maybe Neene was afraid I would want to keep the puppy. I wouldn’t have, but I do wish I could have petted it. I bet it’s fur was really soft.

A little later the group of boys returns. This time Ous is holding the puppy. He is holding it out in front of him, with both his hands around its middle. He trips over a rusted tomato-paste can and bumps the puppy against the bench. An older boy takes the puppy from Ous and places it on the ground. The boys gather around and watch as the puppy wobbles to its feet. “Look! It can stand!”

Abruptly, one of the boys picks the puppy back up again and the other boys follow as he walks back in the direction they came from, presumably to return the puppy.

Landscapes!

Someone in Sweden told me photos of people were "American photos." I thought people of all nationalities enjoyed photographing each other, but I guess not. Anywhere, here are some non-American photos--not a person in sight! Unfortunately, the photos are horribly outdated as they were all taken during the rainy season, which ended months ago.

In the distance is a lake, if lakes can dry up,which I have heard this one occasionally does. Maybe it's just a really large puddle.

On the road to the market. Note the puddle to the right. Note the vegetation on the left.

The road to Basse (one of the nice stretches)

Somewhere on the way to Basse.

Also somewhere on the way to Basse. As are all these photos, actually, except the first two.

Dr.-Seuss trees!

Termites!

It kind of looks like there might be mountains in the far distance, but that is just an illusion.

Just outside of Basse.

Act film!

Hajawa asks if I can “act film.” I say I cannot.

A pause, and she asks if my mother has a telly. I say she does. Hajawa wants to know if we have watched the Michael Jackson film.

"Which one? Thriller?"
"Yes."
"Yes, I have seen it."

Hajawa is pleased.

A pause, and she asks if I know "Leonard."

I ask if he is someone at the market. No, he is in America. He is her brother, but he is light like me. She will show me a picture. They have the same mother, but not the same father.

Amusingness!

The only theme connecting these photos is that I find them all amusing.

The wrapper to a MAGGI cube, which flavors every meal-- from peanut sauces to egg sandwiches.
MAGGI cubes are also the reason every single neighborhood child remembers that I have a Cousin Maggie and can pronounce her name without difficulty.

I covered the back of my phone with stickers and sealed it with clear packing tape I'd brought with me from America. One day, after we'd been without power for several days, I brought the phone to be charged at a bitik with a generator. When I dropped off the phone, the shopkeeper asked my name. I guess he wanted to make sure my phone wouldn't get confused for someone else's.

This is a baobab fruit. I found it on the road to the market. It had been abandoned on the road, and not smashed open and eaten, because it was very unripe. I brought it home so I could photograph it.

And by "photograph" I mean "dissect."

Before I biked back from Basse I wanted something cold to drink. I had never tried CEREAL MILK before, but the packaging intrigued me.

Particularly this part of the packaging.

Witch!

I thought Kumba was calling Little Adama “poop,” but Hajawa translated the word as “witch.” Even though Hajawa’s English is very good, I still thought she'd made a mistake until Little Adama agreed and said, “At night I will jump  into people’s houses.”

“Even if I lock the door you will enter?”

“Yes. And I will chew people.”

The desire of witches to "chew people" also explains something Fatou Bobo had told me during our conversation about Pateh spilling the sour milk. She said people had been blaming her, calling her a person who ate people. I had been really confused. I’d once asked about a Pulaar word for cannibal (I think this was around the time I’d been reading the cannibalism chapter of the anthropology textbook) and gotten no answer, but here Fatou was talking about a person who ate people...

I'd forgotten about the cannibalistic side to witches. Or rather, I had not known that Gambian witches, like the Hansel-and-Gretel witch, are also cannibals.

I was also able to resolve my poop/witch confusion. The girls had been speaking a lot of Mandinka, so later that day I tried looking up a word in the Mandinka dictionary. I didn’t find the word I was looking for, but I did learn that “buuwa” is “witch” and “buu” is “defecate.” I really should look through this Mandinka dictionary more often; I didn’t realize how many words the Fulas were taking from the Mandinkas.


A couple of days later a child I pass on the way to Julia's house says, “Your dog is a witch.”

“My dog?”

“Yes. And Mamadou’s dog too.”

Hajawa

Spilled milk!

Don’t cry over spilled milk--beat your child soundly!

One afternoon Fatou Bobo asked if I would give her money to buy sour milk. She said she would cook something sweet and share it with me. I love sour milk, so I said sure.

I waited and waited until nightfall... the sweet sour milk never arrived.

A few weeks later, Fatou and I are walking along, talking about her son Pateh. She says, "You did not forget you gave me money for sour milk? I did buy sour milk, but I put it on top of the table and Pateh saw it and grabbed it and all of the sour milk spilled. I kept quiet, I did not want to tell you, but that is the reason I never gave you the sour milk. I beat Pateh! But I could not beat him very much. You know, Pateh is not strong. If you beat him, he will fall."

Then she continued and described how Pateh is not well. He is pretty small, but I'd never realized just how small he was for his age until Fatou tells me he is older than Ous. When Pateh was born, Ous still had seven months to go. Fatou says Pateh has many papers from the hospital; she has even taken him to MRC in Basse.

"MRC did not say what was grabbing him?"

"Yes, they said. They said he was well now, but...he is not."

Then Fatou describes how she was very sick before Pateh was born and that is the reason why he is not well. Do I know jinnis? It is a jinni that is making Pateh to be this way.

Program!

A few months before Tobaski, Sinni informed me that we would have a Tobaski program and wear asobi: her, me, Toulay, Fatou Bobo, Ma Debbo, Jainabou, and Fama. Just us. So if the other women ask me to buy their asobi, I am to tell them sorry, but I do not have the money.

Every week we each contributed ten dalasis, so that when it came time to buy the fabric we would have nearly enough. Two weeks before Tobaski we counted the money. This was a more complicated process than it would seem, because most of the women had missed a week or two or seven and we needed to know how much each person still owed before we went to the market. Sinni had a paper with names and the amount of each person's contribution, but she was not the one who'd written it and I was the only one who could read it. After the money had been counted and recounted and recounted a few more times, we agreed to meet tomorrow morning to go and buy the fabric.

Late afternoon the next day, the whole group of us goes to the market. It is a luumo day, so there are many fabric vendors and numerous possibilities. Fortunately, our choices were limited to those under 120 dalasis. Unfortunately, we were seven people who needed to agree on one fabric. "That one will not grab black skin." "That one will not grab light skin." "Do you like this one?" "Where did Toulay go?"

Eventually, a fabric is agreed upon, tailors are talked to, earring displays are admired, vegetables are purchased, fried dough is eaten and we all go home.

Our Tobaski program was two days long. The first day, we did not wear the asobi, but I'd been informed ahead of time, so no repeat of last year's awkwardness. That evening, we gathered in the cleared off space between Toulay's compound and Fatou Bobo's house. We drank attaya, lait (sweetened condensed milk brewed like attaya so it's warm and frothy) and juice. We chewed gumballs. We waited.

We were waiting for the "dance" to arrive. Amadou owns something I can only refer to as a magic-music-machine because I've never seen anything like it and I really don't know what one would call it. The children call it the "dance," using the English word, and it's true that no dance would be complete without it. I will try to describe it: it is a shoebox-sized mP3 player connected to a suitcase-sized speaker, connected to a device that causes red and green laser lights to move and swirl and burst like firecrackers.

I danced until my arms hurt from tossing too many kids in the air and my feet ached from stomping too much. Okay, I'm exaggerating, nothing ached until the next day; I just wrote that because it sounded more poetic than the truth. The truth: I danced until most people were not dancing. This happened at 2 am.

For the second day of our program, we wore our asobi. A table was brought out and covered with a table cloth. Fish cakes were fried and placed on fancy plates (plastic plates with a floral pattern). Instead of scooping cupfuls of juice from a bucket, it poured from a cooler. The magic-music-machine was turned on. After only an hour or so, however, it turned off. It had run out of battery. Amadou called a friend who said he could bring a battery. He was already riding his motorcycle here.

I thought the friend would be bringing the battery on his motorcycle. Instead, they took the battery from the motorcycle. "Now if the battery finishes he will not be able to ride home."

The dance floor.

I wanted to take a picture of the table-clothed table. The children wanted me to take a picture of them.

Ous and Levi

Jainabou and Ma Debbo (also known as my-formerly-pregnant-tokara, also known as Binta) organizing the cups for the juice (in the cooler. The nice part about not having enough cups for everyone is you never have to worry "which cup is mine??" because none of them are yours personally. You just have to hope no one you're sharing with has an upper respiratory infection or something.

Toulay is cooking fish cakes. What is a fish cake? Imagine a calzone. Now shrink it so it's only half the size of your palm. Next, take out all the cheese. Take out all the filling, in fact. Replace with a filling of mashed-up fish mixed with some spices. Now drop it in a pot of hot oil. Remove it when it's golden.

Yup--it's Musa! Old enough to stand and almost-walk!

Everyone's wearing the asobi!

I wanted to get a photo of the children dancing, but I wasn't fast enough.

Give me salibo!

In the late afternoon of Tobaski, the children dress up in their finest and wander the village collecting candies and dalasis, trick-or-treat style. The next day, they do the same thing. The next day, they do the same thing. Then they stop, maybe.

Mariama and Rugi.

Pippi Isatou and Buba.

Adama and Hajawa.

Why does Pateh appear seconds away from shooting laser beams from his eyes? I would've asked, but I don't know how to say "laser beams" in Pulaar.

Maimuna and her mom have matching complets!

You're never too old for salibo!

I decided I needed to include a more flattering picture of Pateh. Ous is standing behind him.