Camping!

Kairaba wants to talk about the fire. He thinks fires for sitting around at night are not in America. I think we had this conversation last year, but I say no, the fires are there. Neene expresses surprise. “Really?” I say, yes, it is there. I feel obligated to explain, but how to explain camping?

Me: Sometimes American people will go to the bush, they will want to sleep there…and they will have a fire.

Puzzled faces.

Me: You know in America there are many houses.

Kairaba: Yes.

Me: And…if the people do not want to look at houses, if they want to look at trees, they will go to the bush and sleep there. They will sleep in something…it is sticks and fabric…The sticks are like this and the fabric is on top…

Puzzled faces. Neene asks if it is something and when I say I do not know what that something is she indicates the large wooden poles that were once used to support a thatched awning between my house and hers. “No, not that.”

Kairaba, sensing we’ve given up, says, “No, let Binta speak until it is clear.” So I repeat basically everything I’d just finished saying, and nothing is any clearer. And what else could I add? What more is camping other than going to the woods and sleeping in a tent and sitting around a fire? Neene is convinced I do not know what I am describing but I say no, in English it is a tent, in Pulaar…I don’t know.

I can’t remember what I said that changed things, and I almost suspect Kairaba had heard me say “tent” but let me struggle a bit before saying, “Ah—camping.”

Me: You know camping??

And he launches into an explanation of how he used to work at the national park in Senegal; there was a hotel there and you could sleep at the hotel for such-and-such a price each night or you could go and sleep in a tent for 100 dalasis for one night, 200 dalasis for two nights, 300 dalasis for three nights. He turns to Neene and explains that the price is so cheap because you are not sleeping in a hotel, you are just sleeping outside. And you will have a bed that you will pump with air. One time a man came and he wanted to camp for three nights and the man and the woman they slept in the tent, three nights, 300 dalasis.