The Gamou is a Muslim holiday for Mohammad’s birthday. Every year thousands of Muslims get together in Tivaouane to celebrate by praying all night and teaching/speaking/learning about his life. It’s one of the two big pilgrimages the Senegalese Muslims partake in- the other one was a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t go.
We were slated to leave Sunday evening at 5pm but, as this is Senegal, we didn’t actually pull out until after 7pm. My host-sister, Fatimata, and I had put all our stuff in one small duffle, and Thierno had his backpack. I went with my host-siblings’ Dahira, which is a sort of Muslim youth-group. The two-hour delay was spent standing around and waiting for people to show up, for the luggage to be loaded, for snacks to be bought. The Senegalese don’t get stressed about deadlines like Americans do; things happen when they happen and it’s all a part of God’s plan. I’m getting used to it; Senegal has forced me to be patient in a way I never thought possible… I wonder if it will stick when I get home?
Anyway, we left at 7 PM and got to Tivaouane around 3 AM. It is important to understand that Tivaouane is a city about 56 miles away from Dakar. 56 MILES. Also, we took a car rapide. I sat in a church-van-bush taxi, crammed in with 30 other people for 8 hours. My butt fell asleep immediately. Pretty much the entire city of Dakar was going to Tivaouane, and they had all decided to go the night before – to avoid the rush – and consequently, we all spent hours suffering through a never-ending traffic jam on the only road that leads in and out of Dakar. (Later, we learned that my host-mom had come the next day and it had only taken 3 hours). Vendors walked up and down the road throughout the trip offering peanuts, beignets and oranges. Crowds of people lined the streets waiting for taxis and car rapides heading to Tivaouane. Someone bought mandarins for everyone, and we shoved the peels through the many holes in the floor or tossed them out the window. I had to pee about 2 hours in and then for the rest of the trip. We pulled over once because one of the other girls decided she wasn’t going to make it – and everyone jumped out to pee in the bushes. I debated too long about the possibility of me peeing all over myself or getting pickers/bug bites on my ass in the dark and missed my chance.
We arrived outside the city around 2 AM and sat for an hour in a parking lot waiting for someone to get paperwork that would allow us into the city. Got to our destination at 3 AM; a large unfinished concrete house that a friend of a friend of a friend was letting the youth-group use for free. They led us onto the open roof and into some concrete rooms without doors. The girls and boys were separated, and we put down mats and some thin foam mattresses before I passed out with Fatimata on a twin-sized mat we shared. I was exhausted, cold and starving, though I’d been able to pee in the squat-toilet downstairs, which relieved my most urgent discomfort. I got up once to run downstairs thinking I had to throw up, but after some unsuccessful attempts, laid back down and tried to will the nausea away. I hadn’t eaten more than a tiny Clementine and a few crackers in the past 12 hours. At 4:30am I was awakened to Fatimata telling me it was time for dinner. Wha? I struggled to open my eyes in the harsh light. Sure enough, a few women were bringing in platters of food. There was goat or sheep meat in onion sauce and fries with mayonnaise. The girls gathered round the trays and we sluggishly picked at the cold fries. Looking at the piles of mayonnaise made me gag, but I ate some fries, and some meat- still feeling sick but my body wanted the food. I finished all the food in my designated area of the platter and pretended I wasn’t still starving until the other girls asked and then insisted and pushed more food towards me. I started giggling and then laughed pretty hard. “It’s 4:30 am,” I said. “We’re having dinner.” I was pretty crazy at this point- and laughed some more, not caring that they didn’t think it was funny. Possibly this is a normal occurrence at Gamou. I passed out again. They woke us up at 7:30 AM to start the day.
We had breakfast of bread and butter or chocolate and powdered milk and Nescafe. I never drink Nescafé because I’m not a coffee fan, but all of my coffee-drinking American friends have assured me that, whatever it’s called, it’s not coffee. No amount of sugar makes it drinkable, and most of them have switched to exclusively soft-drinks for their caffeine fix in Senegal. We were not by any stretch the only people staying in this house (easily over 100), and everyone waited in line for bucket showers in one of the two bathrooms. I left with Fatimata and 4 of the other girls to explore the city and visit the Mosques.
Walking through the city was insane. It was hot and sandy- without the nice ocean breeze I was used to in Dakar – and there were people everywhere. Vendors had set up booths all along the streets, taking advantage of the influx of people to the city. I followed the girls, and for the first half an hour was terrified of losing them in the crowds. Fatimata grabbed my hand several times to keep from losing me. It was packed in such a way that I almost fell a few times when my top half got pushed faster than my bottom half could move. As we neared one of the Mosques, a little girl tugged on my tunic and motioned that I should cover my head. Two seconds later, Fatimata was pulling her scarf around her head and told me to make sure that my bangs weren’t peeking out. Easier said than done- my hair was slippery and the scarf kept sliding back. I hadn’t brought any pins, so it was a constant battle throughout the day that ended with me holding it by my neck. We found the line for the women’s entrance to the first Mosque and waited, pressed close together. Beggers walked/hobbled up and down the lines asking for money. Twice, Fatimata told me to give some change- once for a woman with triplet toddlers, and once for a guy without a nose. As we neared the entrance, I began to worry. There were coordinators everywhere- were they going to let me in? I asked her if I should wait outside and she said yes, probably, but we were getting pushed closer, and someone was making us take off our shoes and before I realized it I was inside. Fatimata couldn’t pray because she was on her period, so she waited with me off to the side as the other girls kneeled. The men were at the front, the women in the back and it was pretty chaotic with everyone coming and going. I figured I already looked out of place and so I didn’t risk taking pictures and making a scene.
We left and walked for a bit, until we came to another Mosque. The line for this one was even longer and circled around a smaller building before heading in to the women’s entrance. We found the end and waited. I was starting to sweat a lot. More beggars. We were almost in when Fatimata and I got pulled out of line by a coordinator. He said something to her and pointed to her legs. She was wearing pants. We were both wearing long dress-length tunics with slits up the sides and loose matching pants. She was understandably upset- this was her first time at Tivaouane and she’d been looking forward to going to the Mosques. She pleaded with the guy but he was firm. Then she pointed to me, and reached for my headscarf. As soon as it slid from my head, a little boy ran up to me frowning, motioning that I should cover it. I grabbed it back, while she kept talking. Then she took it again and wrapped it around her waist like a skirt. “I’ll be right back,” she said, “Stay here.” I stood there. That little boy was back, frowning, pointing, talking in Wolof. I indicated that I didn’t have anything to cover it with. And I couldn’t very well distance myself from the Mosque because I would never find Fatimata again, and I didn’t know where the house was. I looked around- everyone was staring. More people pointed, undoubtedly wondering who was the stupid foreign girl who’s disrespecting God by shamelessly displaying her hair. Well they were wrong, there was shame. I felt exposed. Finally the boy went to talk to a coordinator who then had me stand with another girl waiting for her friends to get out; she gave me part of her scarf so we could both huddle underneath. I was pretty annoyed at Fatimata for leaving me and I snatched back my headscarf when she came out, but she didn’t say anything.
We walked around a little more, stopped at a friend’s house to drink bags of water, and then headed back for lunch. I kept my head covered for the rest of the walk and then any time we went out after that because 1) I’d forgotten sunblock and was starting to feel crispy and 2) it was a little harder to tell I was white and I was tired of hearing “Toubab! Toubab!” everywhere I went.
Everyone napped in the afternoon and we ate some coconut, which was a popular food throughout the weekend. I talked to a girl staying in the house who boasted that she had American boyfriend. Later in the conversation it became clear that this “boyfriend” is older, married, has children her age, and lives in D.C. “But he calls me almost everyday,” she insisted. Hope springs eternal.
The evening of the Gamou, most people go to the Mosques and sit outside praying all night, listening to the Marabouts talk. Fatimata had been planning to do this, and I was debating whether I cared about observing this cultural event enough to be miserable all night. I really just wanted to sleep, but I had come so far, I felt I should take advantage of the opportunity. I struggled to make a decision while she was dressing (warm – it’s cold at night!) and the other girls were telling me how cold it was, and how I would have to be there until 5 am praying. Ugh. They were going to stay there. I wavered. Then Fatimata said, “I was only joking, we’re not going to go all the way to the Mosque.” “What?” I swear, I still don’t get some of these Senegalese ‘jokes.’
Instead, I dressed up in the Bubu Khady had lent me, wrapped my head and followed Fatimata and the other girls into another room of the house to pray. They all had their prayer beads, and I noted different types. The boys all had larger ones, most of them made of wood and in dark colors, while many of the girls had small white or pale colored beads made of plastic. They sat on opposite sides of the small concrete room, with the leader in the middle of the men. A woman brought in a pot of coals and added incense. A man in the corner was making some sort of drink in a teapot on a burner. The leader told them to do X prayers X number of times and they all muttered, flicking through the beads, keeping count. They seemed to be going too fast to churn out a full 200 prayers in the few minutes it took, but what did I know? They did this for different prayers for about an hour, and I tried to pray or meditate for a while but then got sleepy and bored and started reciting Shell Silverstein poems in my head. We took a break for dinner (more meat), but I had choked down cold gritty couscous earlier when I thought we were going out all night without dinner, and now I wasn’t hungry anymore. Then more praying. The leader started talking about Mohammed in Wolof and I stayed until 2 AM, but then I was so tired I couldn’t stand it. I figured I was allowed to leave when a few of the other girls left to go to bed.
Back in the room, I was just about to pass out when one of the leaders came in with warm milk (the drink that man had been preparing on the gas stove). It was slightly green, and tasted vaguely of sweet toothpaste-flavored cream, but he said it would help me sleep.
The next morning I woke up around 9 AM because they were serving breakfast. It was Lakh and I was a little apprehensive as I had heard more than a few horror stories about this concoction from friends. Turns out, millet-lait caillé (literally: curdled milk)-sugar isn’t all that bad; it’s the slimy appearance and texture that’s the tricky part; I tried not to look at it.
A few hours at 11:30 AM they served us breakfast again; bread and butter or chocolate spread and powdered milk. I stopped trying to understand what was going on and just ate. People were saying that the return trip to Dakar was going to take even longer than the 8-hour trek to Tivaouane, and I was scarfing all the food available to me in an effort to stave off starvation this time around. I was told we were going to leave before noon but in true Senegalese fashion, we didn’t take off until around 5 PM.
In the meantime I talked to some more youth group members. The people on the trip with us were all very nice; I didn’t get a marriage proposal all weekend and it was refreshing to be around boys who weren’t all asking me if I had a husband. One of the guys refused to speak to me in French, which was good Wolof practice on the one hand, but also embarrassing. No matter how much Wolof I understood and could respond to, there always came a point where I would get lost and end up staring blankly wondering if what he was saying were actual words. My face got red, I started sweating (which was not cool at the time because I had been wearing the same clothes for 3 days and they already stank) and would finish by saying “Xam uma” or “Dégg uma” (I don’t know, I don’t understand). It’s worse when there are a bunch of fluent Wolof speakers sitting around watching our [failed] conversation. He tried to get me to explain the plot of the book I was reading (The Princess Bride) in Wolof, and I laughed. It would be hard enough to do in English. Later he practiced his English, and for a minute, I was content to relax in the comfort of my native language. He said he’s trying to get a Visa to go to the US to be a summer camp counselor. I wished him good luck- Visas to the US are absurdly difficult to obtain in Senegal.
Around 4 PM I went with a few girls to a friend of a friend’s house (it’s all about who you know!) to eat some “lunch” before we left because at this point we still didn’t know when the bush taxi was going to show up. I had some spicy chebujën (fish and rice). No really, I choked on my first bite because of all the pepper. But I kept shoveling rice in my mouth; it’s all there was and I wasn’t about to be hungry later. We sucked on bags of water on the way back and returned to find the car rapide loaded up and waiting for us in front of the house.
They sang prayers all the way home and I pretended they were to keep the roads clear. It seemed to work – the ride took about 4 hours. But it was loud. It was loud, and crazy, and Fatimata kept hitting my leg when she laughed. I was so tired, sunburned, sweaty and stressed; all my people-filters were down and I stared straight ahead for all 4 hours, thinking about my clean room at home, about a shower, about how I was never, ever going to have to do this again. Dakar has never been so comforting than when we entered the city and I started recognizing landmarks. I think somewhere in the back of my mind there had been a genuine fear that I’d never see it again. I gave everyone a big kiss at home; I felt like I’d survived a month lost in the desert, not 3 days camping 56 miles away from Dakar. Dibor had asked me to bring her back a coconut and I’d found her a pretty big one. She was so pleased, though she was concerned that it was so big. “How much did it cost?!” (350CFA = approx. 70 cents). Khady whined that I hadn’t brought her anything and I almost flipped; Dibor had specifically asked me for something and I hadn’t even thought to bring Khady anything. It took several minutes explaining with Maman Ndiaye’s help for her to accept that I didn’t do it on purpose. She decided that she had been joking and that she really didn’t care. Ugh. Whatever. I went to bed.
Two days later I left for a weekend trip with WARC to St. Louis, 4 hours north of Dakar. It has been fantastic to be able to see different parts of Senegal and I don’t regret any of these adventures, but I’m still making up sleep from the first one.
