the electricity is out again…

Every day I’m here I feel like I’m being tested in different ways, and I’ve slowly come to realize that I need to develop coping strategies now, early on, before the incessant pressure builds to a breaking point. Patience and flexibility are two of my biggest challenges here, and I can feel that I am changing, gradually, but noticeably, because of my constant efforts towards a greater capacity for both.

I don’t think I’ve written about the “toubab” issue yet, but it is probably the toughest obstacle I feel like I’m facing in the process of integration into my community. A “toubab”, as I may have mentioned in previous posts, is the Senegalese word for foreigner, but more specifically it refers to “white person”. My site is a small city, and as such it unfortunately makes it impossible for me to stop and greet every small child who yells “Toubab!” at me as I pass. This wasn’t an issue in the village I lived in during training, because it was small enough that everyone very soon knew my name. Here though, the situation is different. I often walk to get where I’m going, but I also ride my Peace Corps-issue bike, including regulation helmet, and that provokes just as much public attention, though I can get out of earshot faster on bike than on foot.

I have come to terms with the fact that although the children on my street now know my name, most of the city children will continue to call “Toubab, toubab, toubab, toubab, toubab!” whenever I pass, on foot or on bike, every day of every month for the rest of the two years that I am here. I am therefore determined not to hear each mocking, accusatory call of “Toubab!” but will pretend instead to hear “Lexie!” as if each child were greeting me by my most real name. Hopefully this will ease my frustration at the accumulation of deriding exclamations. I’ll let you know how it goes.

As for flexibility, I’m learning that here more than anywhere else I’ve been it pays to go with the flow, and have a plan B. Perhaps you were planning on going to the internet café and just as you were ready to leave the electricity cut out again all over town. Or maybe you thought your whole day was going to be devoted to working on a school project but all the schools are on strike and no one is around to participate. Yesterday I had no plans for the afternoon at all, and when I asked my sister in the morning why she wasn’t at school and she answered that there was a “physical education day,” I decided to go see what that was about, feeling sorry that I had missed the previous week’s race at her middle school.

So after lunch we walked over to the fields (a.k.a. big sandy expanses) behind the lycée (the high school), and there I discovered all of the girls in troisième (9th grade) from all three of the local middle schools gathered to do their end-of-year P.E. tests. These consisted of shot put, 100-meter dash, high jump, and something they termed “roulade” - which was kind of a short gymnastic/balance routine, including tumbling and cartwheels. From 3:30 until after 7pm I watched, cheered, and laughed along with the girls, as each took her turn, and all encouraged the rest.

I could have left at any time, but I stayed along with my sister until the last jump had been attempted, and all the scores reported. It took me back to my days of middle school gym class, running “in-and-out” laps, and made me laugh to remember who I was over 10 years ago. So I may not have started out my day planning to stand in the sun for four hours watching teenage strangers try to jump a 4-foot-high rope… but it was honestly one of the best afternoons I’ve spent here so far.