Au revoir Omar
It’s tough for a guy from Burkina Fasso with no family to come here to get a job. It’s tough from Mali, from the Gambia. Dakar is full of young men like Omar. Lillian has said that this has changed Dakar the most in the thirty years she’s lived here. Used to be that the families and neighbors kept everyone accountable and cared for, but there is a growing mass of people, like in any big city, who are etrangers. Omar is a little unusual. He works on his English. We’ve employed him chez nous as our guard/gardener from early on. From the first day, he made it clear that he wasn’t a gardener, and it has proved to be so. What he does have is ideas…. for himself. His previous employer gave him their old SLR camera as a parting gesture. To them it was probably an ancient relic, to be put in a drawer with the sextant and slide rule. To Omar, it was a prize. We spent some afternoons together with me trying to translate the manual for him. Soon after, he realized how much film and processing costs. I haven’t seen the camera since. Instead of going in the slide rule drawer, it probably went in the pile of things that no African can afford the accessories for. I imagine a pile of sewing machines with no needles, copy machines with no toner. Maybe they are being used the same way we use all of our home fitness machines- as something to drape something else over. Anyway…. He’s moved on now. He’s managed to find the real prize- a full time job at another American’s house. His departure from our employment seemed too sudden. I only had time to pack a small bag of clothes and food.
I hope the cardboard from all of our packing boxes holds tight on his house, at least until the rainy season. I hope someone comes up with a bicycle that he can have for the money he’s saved up. Bonne chance, Omar.

Tabaski
A while back, Allison asked us, “Mommy, why are we afraid of goats?” as we passed another herd. “That’s ‘ghosts’ not ‘goats’ Sweetie. We’re not afraid of goats. Actually they’re not goats, they’re sheep, although they look like goats to us.”
Happy Tabaski…. I whisper to Bronwyn on waking. It doesn’t have nearly the appeal as “Merry Christmas” for us. Having just gotten back from our trip, we hadn’t researched Tabaski ahead of time. We just returned in time to give Astou two week’s salary for a mouton and a bag stuffed with all the leftover Christmas goodies that we’d vowed off of for New Year’s. Just the day before, I’d gotten my only word on Tabaski . As the Charity Committee was assembling, Jane said that she was excited because she’d scored an invitation to a Senegalese family’s home for the celebration. All of the old-timers gasped and began to tell their tales of having a similar “cultural experience” in previous years. All described a six to eight hour long eating frenzy that they were obliged to reste pour tout les temps. One’s husband got ill from something he ate, requiring a trip to the hospital. Another complained of the stench of blood everywhere. Susan, the professional pastry chef amoung us, had taken it to a culinary extreme. While her husband was away on a trip, she arranged with her guard’s help, to procure, sacrifice, skin, grill, and partager for the surrounding neighbors a medium sized mouton. The meat was tough she said, and the sheep was nothing you’d have wanted to get to know better before its depart. Unlike Mary’s little lamb, these Senegalese sheep have not wool, but straight, thin hair like a teenager. It’s not a cheery little “bah” that you hear on the streets, but a raspy, threatening “Bleeeeeh”, from an animal with squinty eyes looking out of big black eye patches, carrying long twisted horns. Allison has since asked if she can have a goat to live in our yard when she gets older…. like everyone else on the block here. We’ll see, I reply. We missed our opportunity for culture this Tabaski, but maybe next year.