I feel for you, Angelina

I’ve had it with this superstardom business.
Being the biggest fish in this cramped pond. Feeling like Miss America on parade on a good day, or on a bad one, a Ripley’s Believe It or Not attraction.
Having everyone know my name, everyone always wanting to talk to me, wanting a piece of me. Having my every move scrutinized, commented upon, and more often than not, laughed at. It is not exaggerating to say that of the Senegalese I interact with here, in general, men are desirous of me, women are critical of me, children laugh at me and most babies cry if I so much as look at them.

Put this way, you can see how it becomes difficult to feel accepted into a community when at any one time I am simultaneously being rejected by three-quarters of the society, and the other one quarter doesn’t actually take me seriously.

You’d think maybe I would feel better about my integration after almost 2 years here, after being in constant contact with locals and even living with a Senegalese family. After learning the local language (and becoming better than conversational), learning local customs and adjusting to the heat, wind, and frequent cuts in power and water. And yet, as I look ahead to returning to the States in a few short months, I have come to realize that as much as I have done to integrate into this country, there is still only so much respect that can be gained here by a single, young, white female.

I knew relatively early on in this venture that my youth would not be something working in my favor in this culture that reveres age as equal to wisdom, but I underestimated how much my femininity would make my time here not only difficult but fraught with daily battles. In this male-dominated country, in my work I have to constantly be on edge. How to work with men without anyone getting the wrong idea? To do my job it is necessary for me to approach men outside of my host family, to talk to them, telephone them, interact with them; all things that would make a young Senegalese woman seem audacious, bold, risqué. Yet the majority of motivated teachers are men, as well as school directors, city hall workers, national park agents… essentially every important post in town is occupied by a man. Add in the unfavorable media portrayal of Western women as sex-crazed and easy... and every single day I work here I get hit on, stared at, ogled, teased, pestered and generally abused, when all I want to do is my job.

The added factor of being white, “Toubab”, has not added to my credibility with most of the population, especially in my own site, since it is a fairly touristy city that sees a good number of white people but who never spend more than a day in town, meaning that tourists (99% white, of Western European origin) have gotten a bad reputation as people who simply use the town, never give back, and never stick around long enough for the locals to get to know them as real people. Anyone else who comes into town and happens to be white gets subjected to the same treatment as a tourist. So considering the size of town, (around 40,000) it is impossible for everyone coming and going to know that I am not, in fact, a tourist. Every day I cross someone new who thinks I am just a money-spending foreigner come on holiday to “see some local flavor”. Oh, and I forgot to mention the small percentage of white female tourists who come to do more than just “see” the local flavor, if you get what I mean. The locals’ common knowledge of that practice also doesn’t help my reputation with the 90% of my city’s population who doesn’t know me.

So, despite all the months I have spent here, I can count on any given day going out into this town where I live and being treated like a foolish youth, a circus clown, a sex object or a whore.

It’s a bit hard to find stability in that.
And yet people here wonder why I am less than enthusiastic when they suggest I stay another two years.