A Thousand and Five Little Stories

Refoona onjac. So recently, on a few occasions, I have been getting into conversations about 'when you were young', with my old men friends in the village. They say some of the most amazing things. They talk of animals- various types of antelope and giraffe, on hunting big cats, the commoness of monkeys, jackals and hyennas. They talk about the landscape difference- the abundance of trees in the village, the different kinds of trees that they have not seen for years. And so many other really intersting things- modes of transportation, how they dug wells, the names of places before the French decided that they needed a different name, and how life was so much different, often so much harder without things like plough animals, reliable shoes, cement. I really want to learn so much more, I want to ask about food and religion, and other village history in general, the people the language. So facinating, so much lost culture.

Horse. Next door we had a horse born about a month ago now. It is so cute. They even had a baptism for it, just for any ole excuse to sit around for a day and eat and drink tea. They named it Xemes, cause it was born on a Thursday, from the Seereer-ized arabic word, Arxemes. I just thought that that was interesting, he is cute.

Story time. I also have had other random conversations with the old men. This included the fact that America in fact lies on the other side of the ocean. They knew that man has walked around on the moon, this is because, they say, Americans are hard headed and just want to know and do everything that can be known and done. Americans canot walk on the sun because they would catch on fire. I also think I did a decent job explaining, quite vaguly and with many examples, the US economic crisis. Though, its not like i really have any idea of what is going on...

More story time. My brothers and sisters were sitting around one night after dinner talking. We stayed up way late with them telling jokes and stories and me teaching them english and reading a textbook by flashlight. I also translated 'the boy who cried wolf' story. They thought my rendition was hilarious and said that teasing people was bad. True.

Types. Walking around the village last week I came across a baobab with a ceramic bowl half buried next to it. It was spontaneously explained to me that this was a sacrifcing deal, where, paticularly if you are sick for example, you can be brought here, a sacrifice is made of a chicken, goat, or millet is offered, or sour milk, and you will get better. In asking about this i stumbled upon an odd fact that Seereers have types. These types are not exactly a religion, not exactly a class, not exactly anything and i am not really sure at this point what the point is. Fathers pass their type to their sons, so I am a Soos, like my host father. Mothers pass their types to their daughters. The women who I was with named off nearly a dozen different types, some that we dont have in the village, most that we do. Everyone in my family that can be different seems to be, moms, aunt, both grandmothers and father are all different. I suppose it must be a kind of symbolic tribe, but then i dont know why it would be so diffused when all other aspects of Seereers are so segregated. Definitly need to ask more questions.