Senegal: Only Peace (cont.)

The village itself is comprised of a series of family compounds that house close to 4000 people.  Water here is drawn from a well in the middle of a group of huts. Two women work together to relay the rope and bring buckets of water up. The well stands idol-like in the middle of the village. The entire Malkalu family lives in a series of concrete rooms that remind me of a castle.  It's a rare fortified structure surrounded on all sides by mud huts, but there isn’t any majesty to it, and inside there are no doors or furniture. A relative of the family made it to Europe where he was able to earn money and send it back for the construction of the house.

We all sit in a narrow corridor on a piece of machine woven matt. The family matrons invite us for coffee and pass red hot wood coals between their hands as if it’s nothing.

“There are only a few cups; so when they give you a coffee, you have to drink it quickly so that they can re-fill it and pass it to someone else,”  says Sara.  The women put the coals on the concrete floor and set a small pot on top of it. They pour water into the small kettle just big enough for one cup.  After allowing it to heat, they pour a small amount of tea from the pot into a glass and mix it in some sugary Nescafé syrup. Then they put the contents of the cup back into the pot and pour it out again. It’s their way of mixing it and it’s common throughout western Africa.

A little old man sitting next to me, one of the family elders, thinks I’m funny for some reason, and we all laugh with the old man not really knowing why. 

*  *  *

The life in the village is relatively straightforward.  The men marry a few wives, and the women prepare the food and do most of the work. In the wet season men grow food, but in the dry season they basically just sit around and talk. Christopher and I shake up the local gender roles by doing our own laundry.

The most charming aspect of the local culture are the greetings. Every Jahanke conversation begins, “Hera doron (peace only).”

“Korta ante (how are you?)”

“Hera (peace).”

“Emfanta (Literally, ‘It’s been too long'— regularly said to strangers).”

“Hera doron (peace only).”

Then the checklist spirals out quickly, “How is your family? How is your village? How are your friends? How are our crops? How are your animals?” They ask these sorts of questions rapid fire back and forth for ten minutes at a time. Because of this, it can take hours to get across town without offending anyone.

The greeting is the only necessity to life here in Misserah, and the constant repetition of greetings go on all day with each and every person you pass. In bicycling from one small village to another, every person I pass and every kid that runs from the fields when they see me says, “Emfanta,” and I say, “Hera doron,” and they yell, “Korta ante,” and I yell, “Hera.” It’s a good feeling to be treated so warmly, and even more so as an American in a predominately Muslim country. It just confirms my belief that people are kind everywhere and will always choose to be when they can. We repeat the word “peace” to each other over and over, and so it is.

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