We are in Africa Now, Baby!

November 12, 2007

“On est en Afrique.”
Loosely translated as “we’re in Africa now, baby,” it is hard to describe the humorous kind of shrug accompanying this wry statement. Used frequently by locals, it is the standard response to every conceivable question:

HOW many children did you say they have?!

Shrug: “On est en Afrique.”

Why is all this trash piled up along the side of the road?

Shrug: “On est en Afrique.”

I went to the bank to cash my check and the clerk who was talking on the phone let me stand there for 20 minutes as he finished his conversation.

Shrug: “On est en Afrique.”

(Come to think of it, this happened on more than one occasion in NY too, so never mind).

The taxi keeps following me, honking, even though it is clear I have no interest whatsoever in taking a taxi.

Shrug: “On est en Afrique.”

How is it that everyone I see has time to sit around and drink tea all day?

Shrug: “On est en Afrique.”

What do you mean there’s a power cut? I have deadlines to meet!

Shrug: “On est en Afrique.”

I went to the proper government office to straighten out my status with all my papers in hand and they told me no, I have to go back and send them a letter instead.

Shrug: “On est en Afrique.”

I come from a place where they have SIDEWALKS.

Shrug: “Oui, mais on est en Afrique.”

Needless to say, it is taking some time for me to adjust, because none, and I mean NONE of the usual rules apply. For example, back when I was working in NYC, business meetings were seldom interrupted for any reason. During my first week here, the director was filling me in on some important information and I was distracted by a curious, persistent noise between a moan and a cry coming from just outside the window. I found it so distracting after a while that I excused myself to go see if it was a human being in pain, or what. As it turns out, it was the noise made by a goat tethered to a post just outside the school, on a main street (we are located in the embassy district, right near the Club Med, so I am NOT talking remote bush village here). Needless to say, I was shocked, and that is when I genuinely realized with a start: “Ah oui, on est en Afrique.”

When I took my first taxi ride into the center of Dakar, I was astonished to see barefoot children, goats and chickens all running around unconcernedly in the midst of quite heavy traffic. Unless you’ve been, you cannot imagine how colorful it is in downtown Dakar – the gorgeous boubous and extravagant head ties (women tend to keep their hair covered, whether it is for reasons of fashion or religion I am not entirely sure), the street vendors with their mangoes and peanuts (a major crop here in Senegal), and bottles of red palm oil as well as household goods (hangers, glasses, brooms, you name it and someone, somewhere is walking alongside the cars selling it).

Walking alongside the cars? Yes, indeed, and this brings us to the next important word in our Dakar lexicon: embouteillages, known to NYC drivers as traffic jams. Let me put it simply: roads are not what they could be. Neither are drivers. The resulting combination is quite simply scary (see first column), as when, for example, a driver of a tin can on wheels swerves sharply into the path of oncoming traffic to avoid a really deep pothole. The first time I was seated in a car and this happened my heart almost stopped, and I attempted to register my concern with the driver. He laughed, saying this was nothing: “Mais ce n’est rien du tout. On est en Afrique.”

When one day over a long weekend I hired a car to take me to a reserve and see rhinos, giraffes and the like, the driver came over an hour after our appointed time because he had been ‘cleaning the car’. Early planning is not the norm here, I should add; it only occurred to him to clean it just as he should have been leaving to get his passenger, apparently. (What he should have been doing instead was checking the air in his tires, as we had to stop en route for a tire change. I tried to register my discontent, but of course you know by now what his response was…)

Astonishingly enough though, things here actually do work after their own haphazard fashion. People get to their jobs more or less on time, as they do in other countries, I don’t think that traffic fatalities are much higher here than anywhere else (my subjective perception notwithstanding!), goods are transported from one end of the country to the other or even exported abroad, children grow and thrive, as they do in other countries, there are cars and computers and even air conditioning for a privileged few, there is delicious cuisine, buoyant music as well as laughter and joy, so finalement, oui, on est en Afrique.

About the Author : Tamara-Diana Braunstein brings us her stories from Senegal every week. She was born in Brooklyn, New York. She is a restless wanderer who earned an MA from the University of Freiburg and has worked in a youth hostel in the French Alps, a law firm in Montreal, the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as in university press publishing. At the moment her home base is Dakar, Senegal, where she is supposed to be teaching but is doing far more learning, as you will see by reading her blog at www.senegalschoolmarm.blogspot.com