Village of Toukar

On Saturday we went out to the village of Toukar where Professor Dennis Galvan has been conducting his research for over thirteen years. He focuses on the socio-cultural and political aspects of the rural life, specifically a farming community's struggle to "keep up" in the ever modernizing world. It is very interesting, and it's great to see someone working with such passion and fire that has held his intense interest for so long. I had the opportunity to go a day early because of an outing with my internship position, and arrived at my host family's house late Friday night. This allowed me to spend two days and two nights in the village, soaking up all the different experiences around me.
Since I am comfortable with French and I have taken a few months of Wolof, the village stay went pretty well. I stayed in the house of the family that Prof. Galvan stayed with when he lived in the village, and the neighborhood was the oldest in the village, founded 800 years ago. It was great!



When you enter the "compound" of the family, there is a fence made from sticks and millet stalks around their home and yard. There is a main building made from bricks with four rooms, while the huts outside are individual sleeping rooms. The family that lived there had a mom, a dad, and four kids. Yet during the day everyone stopped by to say hello and hang out for a while, including aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors, so it was a little difficult to tell who actually lived there and who were simply friends. The food was awesome, the company was great, and I even got to try some new things. I helped a little with the cooking, meaning I helped stir the rice and clean a little of the chicken. Mostly the family wanted me to just hang out and talk to people because I was a guest. There were a few women who spoke French, but most of them spoke Serer, which is another large ethnic group in Senegal. It is a pretty language, but I had no background in it, so we found ways to communicate.


The kids were great fun, and I even got to carry a baby on my back with a cloth the way the Senegalese women do! The baby was fine while it was asleep, but as soon as it woke up about 10 minutes later and realized that I was not his mother, he started to cry. Yep, and we all know what Adriane does when babies start to cry. Yeah, I get all awkward and anxiously give the kid back before I cause any more harm to it. ;-)
His name was Abdoulai, and he had very pretty eyes . . . when he wasn't crying.



These pictures were mainly taken around the village. The trees in the first few photos are Baobabs, just like in the movie The Lion King. I never realized how big they were in real life. It's truly amazing to stand next to something that is so much bigger (literally) and older than I am. Many of the baobabs out there were more than a hundred years old. Our guide told us that the inside of the trees are hollow, and people used to bury dead bodies inside. We didn't believe him, so my friend walked up to the tree and stick her camera into one of the holes and took a picture with the flash. Sure enough, we could see a few bones at the center of the tree. Creepy.

As part of our weekend events, the village threw a little party for us and Prof. Galvan, welcoming him back into their hearts along with his family. We got all dressed up and were given special traditional scarves and necklaces to wear to the event. I felt a little strange, because I am a total Toubab wearing African clothes, but everyone kept telling me that I looked great. We sat at the front of the "stage", which was normally the town square, while the whole village circled around us.
We even got to sit under the tent. Special us.



Six Serer griots entered the circle and began singing traditional songs about the legacies of the families that were in the village. Griots are the keepers of the oral traditions, and use song and dance to tell the history of their people. It was very cool to see them performing, and my heart started racing when the drummers came out and started pounding out amazing layered rhythms. The way the circle works is anyone can jump in and dance to show off for however long they want, and then they exit and pass off the stage to someone else.


After a few village women strutted out and shook all they had, I decided to jump in and show them that a Toubab girl can dance too! I took two African dance courses this past year, so I just did a few moves with the music, and the circle went crazy! They were whistling, hollering, and laughing so hard all at the same time. My professor explained to me later that they love seeing toubabs learning their culture, whether it be through learning the language, playing an instrument, or through dance. Every time one of my friends got up to dance, the crowd would do the same thing. It was so funny. I was even asked to dance by a man who was one of the performers, which I had a great time attempting to follow him. So far, this has been my favorite event of the whole trip. Soon I will try to post videos of the event as well, so be looking forward to those!