The Many Meanings of a "Fixed Price" in Senegal...

Every Tuesday my mom and I go to the market to buy vegetables. We generally try to arrange for a ride in my dad’s service truck but occasionally are forced to wait on the road for a cab or charette (read donkey cart). This past Tuesday proved to be one of those occasions and it gave my mother an opportunity to see the way I’m treated on a daily basis.

Thinking economically, my mother and I decided to take a charette—which is half the price of a cab—and each pay for one way. Because the charette price is fixed, we hailed one, got on, and were off to the market. It wasn’t until my mom got off and I went to pay the driver that he tried to jack up the price. This incensed my mom who demanded that I pay him the fixed price and get off the cart immediately. She couldn’t believe that he was raising the price because I’m a toubob. Until, of course, we tried to get a charette home.

Standing at the entrance to the market, my mom approached countless empty charettes and asked the price of a ride which was always the fixed price of 200 francs until they saw that we were together. Bystanders watched and laughed as my mom argued with the drivers for hiking up the price when they realized that she was with “the toubob.” At one point, I even tried to hide so that the drivers wouldn’t see me and I could just sneak on after my mom had agreed upon the final price but it didn’t work. Most drivers chose to drive away without any passengers rather than give the toubob a ride for the fixed price.
Thankfully, the ninth or tenth driver was a nice man and brought us home for the fair price.

I genuinely cannot understand why people driving charettes for the purpose of making money would rather ride around without passengers than pick up a white person for the fixed price. It makes absolutely no sense, but I guess I should just get used to it because it’s how life is here for me. Now my Senegalese mom seems to have a little more understanding when I come home from a long day and am extra sensitive about people calling me toubob.

LUCKILY, at the end of last week—which proved to be very long and hard—I got to visit my best friend in Kedougou and relax. While I was there, I tried warthog meat for the first time! It was DELICIOUS!

Some Work I'm Getting Into..

Before coming to Senegal, I remember watching Oprah’s show and listening to heart breaking stories about the lengths some ethnic groups in developing countries go to ensure the purity of their young girls. Atrocities such as female “circumcisions” or genital cutting and forced child marriages seemed like distant tragedies that I would thankfully never have to face. Unfortunately for me and many Senegalese girls and women, my first months here taught me otherwise.

It all started when I was assigned to give a presentation in Wolof about female genital cutting (FGC). This entailed interviewing female staff members at the Peace Corps training center and spending some serious quality time with my Wolof-English dictionary. I learned about the Senegalese ethnic groups that practice FGC, why they feel is it necessary, what affect they feel it has on their communities, and whether or not they feel it is a practice that is good for Senegal. I met women that had been “circumcised” and women that weren’t. I spoke with them about why they are proud to be circumcised and why they aren’t, and whether or not they will do the same to their daughters. I then spoke to some men about how they felt the practice affects development in Senegal. After finishing my interviews, compiling the information I had gathered, and rehearsing in my broken Wolof, I gave my controversial presentation to a sympathetic language class. Luckily, that painful experience is over forever but I must say my interest was sparked.

It just so happens that after this presentation, I learned I would be moving to Tamba—a region with one of the highest percentages of FGC and child marriage in the country—and would have an opportunity to get involved with the campaign to end FGC, child marriage, and other practices jeopardizing the human rights of children in Senegal. It has taken a little longer than I had anticipated but at the end of this month I hope to begin working with Tostan, a nongovernmental organization conveniently located in my neighborhood that works on literacy issues in villages and organizes village declarations to end the practices of FGC and child marriages throughout Senegal. Just yesterday, I attended Tostan’s first ever departmental declaration to end FGC and child marriages with hundreds of villages throughout the Department of Tambacounda attending to declare an end to the practice of FGC and child marriage.

In the coming months, I hope to write more about the Tostan projects and declarations I am assisting with. These are issues I feel need to be addressed and I feel entries like this give you an insight into the kind of work I am and will be doing and the life I’m living here in Senegal.