Ramadan: A Gift of Time

This year, Ramadan began with a hearty laugh. There I was, returning from the Marché Yoff (my neighborhood market) at dusk, when a funny thing happened. As I passed, first the row of tailor shops, then the stalls of hardware and vegetable vendors, I noticed that I was moving against the flow of foot traffic. Everyone seemed to be turning to walk in the opposite direction. I continued to make my way towards my house however, and it was only when I broke even with the Mausoleum of the Layène brotherhood that I decided to take stock of what was taking place around me in the streets.

Indeed, young and old alike were stopping in their tracks to look west towards the sky above the market. Adolescent boys to my left were jumping up and down, a group of women hoisting babies on their backs were gesticulating excitedly, all arms pointing west to show others around them what they had so cleverly devised upon the horizon. I however, hard as I might try, could not see a thing! Squinting my eyes, I searched in vain for a plane or some strange thing in the sky. Finally a young girl, accompanied by her grandfather, approached to show me what I had been unable to see amid the mesh of electricity lines. “Le soleil, le soleil!”, she yelped, as her grandpa lead my eye with his pointer finger to the new crescent moon, a faint sliver of light resting just above the rooftops. He bopped her on the head playfully, reminding her that the month of Ramadan begins, not with a sighting of the sun, but of the new crescent moon, and went on to solemnly explain to me that this important sighting opens the holy month of Ramadan.

As Korité (or the celebration that marks the end of Ramadan) approaches, I feel a deep gratitude this year for the pause that the fast gives us. Though I was only able to fast for a portion of the month due to sickness, I feel lucky to say that, even so, over these 30-some days I was witness to many special moments, ranging from the peaceful to the downright convivial. At home in Yoff, we celebrated the passing of the sun with dates, juice made from the bissap flower, and (sinfully) late night meals. At work at ANAFA, some paid courtesy to the fast by cutting cigarettes from the routine, while others inaugurated a new routine, that of a sleepy head or foot on the work desk. And then on a trip south to the Saloum Delta, I watched delighted as a group of young boys whiled away the daytime hours in the delta, belting out reggaeton tunes as they swum and staged play fights in the shallow river water.

Different, but no less considerable, were those moments spent quietly. Idle hours passed with a hair pick, undoing a sister’s tresses. Or with a Koran resting open on one’s lap, sitting under a window sill in a mosaic courtyard. Or in the tailor’s laboratory, as he takes your measures for the outfit you will wear on Korité day. All these moments, to which I have either been privy or participated, constitute a mini universe it seeems, a container of time. All together, these moments –the nights and then their days– remind us the length of an hour, an afternoon, a day, a week, or even a month. How long is a month? How long is a year? How long is ten years? And, of course, how much longer they all seem without our family about us and food in our tummies. These 30 days have been anything but empty, as some like to say. Ramadan is not time lost, time unproductive, time idled, but time to remember, time to quiet down, time to spend with those you love. Je vous souhaite une très bonne Korité à tous!

Les Terraces : l’infini chez soi

J’ai toujours bien aimer les terraces. Ce dernier étage d’un bâtiment où, en franchissant l’escalier le plus haut, une porte s’ouvre sur un monde caché, voir magique.

Immédiatement je suis atteint par un panorama singulier : un boubou bleu ciel effleurée par le vent, un carrelage ad hoc qui reflète le mosaïque de toits qui se répand sur l’horizon, et le refrain du muezzin, qui se dissimule à la nuit imminente.

Je pense que, dans tous les temps et dans toutes les villes, les terraces occupent une place spéciale dans l’univers des êtres humains. Non seulement celles-ci démarquent la séparation entre l’espace terrénal que nous habitons et le au-delà, mais aussi elles livrent une perspective sur une ville et sur les gens qu’ils y habitent.

Ces jours-ci je peux dire que j’ai le privilège d’assister, dès ma terrace, à la routine quotidienne d’un peuple extrêmement consistant. Un peuple pour qui, par exemple, l’accouchement de la femme du boutiquier du coin demande la présence collective du quartier au ngénte, ou baptême.

Par contre il va de soi que, ce qui paraît être de ma terrace la simple cuisson d’un couscous matinale entre femmes, vu d’un œil expérimenté, représentera beaucoup plus. C'est-à-dire que la perspective d’en haut n’assure pas la compréhension basique. Car c’est ce couscous la, préparé soigneusement par les voisines avec du lait caillé, qui fourrera les ventres de ceux qui viendront témoigner ce rite de passage.

Je profite de ce moment pour partager un passage, partagé avec moi récemment par un collègue, de l’auteur Italo Calvino. Il nous rappelle dans son livre Les Villes invisibles que, « Les villes sont un ensemble de beaucoup de choses: de mémoires, de désirs, de signes d’un langage; les villes sont des lieux d’échanges, comme l’expliquent tous les livres d’histoire économique, mais ce ne sont pas seulement des échanges de marchandises, ce sont des échanges de mots, de désirs, de souvenirs. »

Ici j’ajouterai seulement que les terraces peuvent servir de dictionnaire à l’observateur d’une ville. Chaque crépuscule, je consulte à partir de ma terrace. Je discerne des éléments dissociés et je tente de les rassembler dans un syntaxe urbain : ces mots, ces désirs, et ces événements (qui bientôt deviendront des souvenirs) représentent les noms, les adjectifs, et les verbes du jour à jour de cette ville, Dakar. Il suffit de les combiner de bonne volonté pour en faire un panorama possible. Voilà l’infini chez soi!

The Stomach: Window to the Soul?

What better place to start, than by commenting on food, drink, and all manner of innocuous ingestions! Indeed, my stay here began with good old-fashioned tap water, and has been peppered with interesting tidbits ever since... On my first morning here, I padded down the hall to the kitchen, where my roommate was brewing coffee, and asked how he felt about Dakar tap water. It took very little convincing -an anecdote about his American wife, Carmen, who was quickly weaned onto the tap, and perhaps a waft or two of coffee- for me to reconcile myself to this new source of hydration. Only tap water delivers!

Strangely, it seems that my fellow toubaabs (or foreigners) believe that tap water delivers more than just a coffee buzz. They say it delivers a fabulous rumble in the lower tummy. I say they have but to observe any food preparation to see that the restaurant food they eat also contains tap water; that is, realistically they cannot avoid it. Moutarou, my roommate, attributes this water anxiety to "la peur de l'Afrique." This of course, refers to an ensemble of symptoms, that climb on board your imagination when you disembark on African territory...

Then again, now that his wife is sick in a New York hospital, my roommate has resorted to the marabout's recommendations for her well-being. The recipe is as follows: buy 9 kilos of raw meat; mix it with onions and beans; entrust a third of this mixture to a blind person, another third to a leper, and the remainder to a person with a physical handicap. As Moutarou ventures out to identify a leper colony, I think I will cozy up on the couch and continue to sip at my tap water coffee. Perhaps the recipe will be of more interest to you? The main ingredient is a pepper called "le poivre de Sélim." Ground with coffee beans and ginger, it makes for an aromatic and spicy cup of coffee, best served hot!

Café Touba (Sénégal)
INGREDIENTS : (4 personnes)
PREPARATION :

- 60 gr.de café moulu- 5 dl d'eau- 10 poivre de Sélim concassé finement- 1/2 cuil. à café de gingembre concassé- 1/2 cuil. à café de coriandre concassé- 80 gr. de sucre

- Préparez un mélange avec le café et les épices.
- Faire cuire l'eau.
- Préparez un filtre à café sur une cafetière.
- Déposez le café dans le filtre et versez l'eau dessus.
- Sucrez et servir très chaud.

Ba beneen, InShaaAllah! C'est à dire, si Dieu le veut, à très bientôt!