Local Lingo

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Dear Family and Friends

Hello all, I am guilty of neglecting my blog, alas life has been a bit of a rollercoaster here. I have had clashes with personalities and Senegalese culture here, learnt some things about Sénégal and myself and that I have hopefully grown from my mistakes. I have passed the halfway mark in my trip and the balance and momentum has begun to slowly change. My perception and goals here are changing and I am realizing that before I know it I will be back in Canada unemployed without a future. Aside from my oblique references to the turbulence of my life in Sénégal things are on the rise again. My internship with Caritas is almost becoming satisfying, in the sense that they have enough work to keep my busy for half a day or so with the usual paper work or bizarre trips into the countryside of Sénégal. As for my pet project with the Talibé, it has been having some fits and starts. The mapping itself has become a victim of African time and some culture clash as I try and impose some kind rigidity of schedule and planning onto the fluid morass of Sénégalese society, which is the conflict I have alluded to. In short the research is progressing yet not at an even pace.

Besides taking up surfing (this involves me and a Swiss German to enthusiastically throw ourselves recklessly into the pounding, churning, frothing, fifty meters of white water that constitutes the Saint-Lousian coastline in a futile, yet exhilarating effort to catch a wave, which I can proudly say, after two days of pummeling, that between the two of us we have caught 5 waves in tota and alas took no photos ofl) have not done much else in the way of noteworthy blog material. In this absence I am going to go into another digression, which this week is on some of the nuances around language in Sénégal.

In Senegal Wolof is the defacto langua franca with about 40% speaking it as their mother tongue while the rest of the nation uses it as the principle language of intercommunication and small scale commerce. This is in contrast to the official language which is technically French. All of the government operations, school, large business and press are conducted in French. This stubborn diligence to adhere to the French has manifested itself to instances where statements in Wolof at courts are translated and transcribed in French even though everyone speaks wolof. Thus in Sénégal French has taken on a multitude of social significances.

One of the things that I have noted is that there is a deep seeded resentment of the French language. This animosity naturally stems back to the not so distant colonial period. The anti-colonial sentiment has been, I would argue, maintained through a constant stream of obnoxious, insufferable, arrogant French tourists parading around the country, which has not done the French language any favors. In this context Wolof in the past and present has served as a defiant linguistic symbol for Senegalese to gather around to fight the culture war with France. A nascent nationalism is growing around Wolof, for example there is a growing body of vernacular literature and a few local TV shows are shot in vernacular. Yet despite these budding flowers of local culture the Senegalese government continues to persistently emphasize French as the principle language. This policy is linked to the urban elite of Senegal; who are the power base of the Senegalese government. These elites have become another factor since only the wealthy and often arrogant, locals speak fluent French and do so to flaunt their higher status. Most everyone here can speak some level of French, but the use of it dramitically decreases outside Dakar. Here is Saint Louis mostly the international organisations and tourist industry that uses French.

Due to these factors and others that I have missed or not noted, locals have an ardent love for wolof and will take every opportunity to expound upon the almost endless merits of learning such a noble language. They will all claim that is very easy, and I have been told that for learning a language it is not particularly difficult. When you speak any marginal amount of wolof locals exclaim with joy at your feeble efforts to partake in their culture and will proclaim that you are fluent in wolof when you have just barely managed to say hello and how are you. Everyone on the street will eagerly give you free wolof lessons and financial transactions go much smoother when a bit of wolof is used.

Where does Jan fit in all this? Well he has floundered into this post-colonial environment with unfortunately the wrong set of perceptions and circumstances. I academically see the merit in learning the local language and fully support their efforts to carve their own culturally African centric linguistic identity, however after 6 years of postsecondary education, a second language, Danish, that sits in the closet of my cranium covered in cobwebs wasting away, a general dislike of actually learning languages (I become easily frustrated since I cannot communicate in the beginning, obviously, and I just don’t think I am good at learning languages for example you would think that I would be able to properly write without spelling mistakes and incomplete sentences, yet this blog is a testament to my failure to master English sentence structure) and finally an entire summer learning French as well as coming here to continue those studies; all contribute my resistance to learning Wolof. As a side not, I have contracted some private French lessons to continue that goal, which were startling inexpensive.

This disposition that I have has unfortunately earned me few friends and closed many doors. For the volunteers who stay with a Sénégalese family they are forced to learn wolof and everyone adores them like the favorite child that can do no wrong while I sulk in the corner glaring at them with envy like the unflavored child that I am.

In short all is well, I am hoping to catch some waves later this week if I get some free time and Friday morning with some of the boys we are going to walk on the beach to Mauritania, the neighboring nation for some fun.

Thanks for all the support and hope all is well on your guys end of the ocean.

Love
Jan

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Comments

[Richard T]

I continue to...
...find these posts fascinating--keep 'em coming. I wonder if Africa Time is the most significant deterrent from bootstrapping... --Rich, friend of your Mom & Dad's

[Amadou M. Sall]

OK, Jan :-)
Very good, Jan. You're now beginning to sound more or less like a human being! Amadou M. Sall (a St-Louis "local" :-)