The Terminator

Just as Now and I were passing a very nice afternoon of bicycle maintenance outside the house, along came this man in a peaked hat carrying a display case of poisons. He must be the exterminator I had spent Friday waiting at home for, but who never came.

Naomi and I have a cockroach problem, which I think is quite normal here, but even I, who has a pretty high tolerance to cockroaches, feel a bit squeamish when I come into the kitchen at night and turn the light on and find a hundred little cockroaches scuttling out of the just-washed-up washing up.

So with the help of Now and £7.50, we called in the terminator.



We established that we should take all the plates and cups out onto the balcony, and then left him to his work. When I had to come back in for a screwdriver, I couldn't breath, and when I tried, my heart raced uncontrolably.

But we seem to be free-ish of the little mites, and we had a lovely evening of cooking fish for friends and, joy of all joy, eating steamed chocolate pudding.

I have become something of a master at steamed pudding, mostly because we don't have an oven and as an ex-baker, I feel I have to get some kind of rising action in my life every now and then. Last night I made a cracker. First I took it out when it was only half cooked and watched ut collapse onto a plate. Then I tried to put it back in the steamer but ripped the tin-foil so that all the steam could get in and water soaked through the pudding which it was on its second bake. The result was a slightly wonky but incredibly moist and gooey pudding which we all agreed was the best I have made yet.

I had brought some Bird's Custard Powder back from England and Cecilia and I spent 15 minutes lovingly stirring it in the kitchen, watching it thicken up, talking about how it made us think of home and all things good. Went to taste it. Spat it out. I'd mixed up the sugar with the salt. It's been a long bloody week.

Some bicycle maintenance

Sparks alive

My last post was a bit desolate. Right after posting that, stuck on the floor in a corner of Casablanca airport, the only place I could find a plug to charge the computer, I met John, a Canadian reporter who I took under my wing and showed around Dakar. So my first weekend back was actually filled with: swimming in the warm waters of the Piscine Olympique, my second home; music- a whole night of music on Gorere Island plus another gig the next night; good food in roof-top Ethiopean restaurants; and best of all, wall to wall electricity. No hint of "what am I doing here?" at all.

Thanks to the comment made by a regular Senegalese reader about the issues of racism on the last posting, I was going to reply about that and what I am doing here (since he/she asked). This post was going to be full of all the great things about Senegal. But right now, at one in the morning, all I can think to write about is how great, how truely wonderful, magical and glorious, is electricity.

The reason I am sitting here at one in the morning, still writing (I started at 8.30 this morning but have only just produced anything of substance), is because today, my first day back at writing since September, I got up early to prepare for the productive day ahead, only to find at 11am that the power had cut. It didn't come back until 7 this evening. But did I go to the swimming pool and wait patiently for it to return like someone sensible? No, I went about town looking for a generator, then having found one and negotiated a taxi to bring it back home, went off in the other direction to my friend's bar where they have power and internet so that I could charge the computer and get my emails. It took me 1.5 hours to travel the 3 miles there and back because of traffic, and by the time the electricity had come back at 7, I had written a grand total of 9 words (which I later lost when my Word programme crashed).

However, I now have electricity and have had for 5 hours. So, I was able to listen to the Archers while I cooked, eat under the cool breeze of a fan, then retreat to my desk, print things, email, Skype my family, sort out my council tax in London, listen to excellent music, upload photos of my holiday for my sister-in-law, listen to more music, check out what time my friend's flight gets in tonight, write an article and a CD review for a magazine, find a flight for my mum, and eventually write my blog. I can also drink cold water, see one foot infront of the other, find the matches to light insect coils. I can do whatever I like, damn it, because we have power.

When I lived in Ziguinchor, I never even noticed when the electricity was cut. It went out very rarely, Zig being a small town and the system needing only to support a small number of people, and I was always outside anyway, and there was never much in our fridge. Music came from drums and guitars, not iTunes.

But now that I live in Dakar, that I have to be on-line most of the time, that my job and income rely on having battery and internet, I just can't survive when it goes out. And it goes out every day (but not on weekends, apparently). And in our neighbourhood, it stays out for most of the day. It is the most futile feeling- there is nothing I can do anymore, workwise, which doesn't involve my computer. My interviews are transcribed onto Word, my radio production is done on the computer, my camera is digital, even my phone numbers are stored on my computer's address book. When it goes out, I simply can't function.

But when it comes back on, it is the most glorious and exciting feeling. There is radio and work and emails and friends and cold, cold water in the fridge. There is music. I try not to let the almost constant fear that it will cut again get in the way of enjoying one of the most wonderful inventions ever.

Back to Dakar, once more

This week I was on the 295 bus, Fulham-bound. I was going to have my teeth drilled. Just as the red double-decker turned down towards Battersea, two Somalian women dressed in long head coverings got on the bus, showed their bus passes, and went to walk towards the seats at the back of the bus. I heard the bus driver say something to the women which made them stop by the driver’s cab and say, “What?”, “Are you alright? I don’t think so”, “What’s you problem?”. The women sat down infront of me and grumbled about what the driver had said, apparently something like “Go and sit down” but with a hint of sarcasm. Whatever he said and in whatever way he said it, there was a tension- and it was colour-driven.

I sympathised with the women, smiled to let them know that the bus driver shouldn’t talk to them any differently than he did to me (he just ignored me). I was embaressed that he should be mocking them, felt ashamed even that people can’t get on the bus in London without having comments made about them.

And then I had a flash of what it’s like getting on the bus in Dakar. It’s the same thing. Toubabs (that’s me, white people) are treated differently, sometimes we are charged more, sometimes we get special treatment, sometimes we are teased, sometimes abused, sometimes proposed to. But rarely treated as everyone else is.

I am used to it and I excuse it to myself by saying “I’m a white person (or a foreigner) in someone else’s country, of course I will be treated differently.” Other people, Senegalese people, excuse it saying that it’s not racist, it’s not malicious, it’s just that the Senegalese are used to identifying foreigners as somehow different, whatever their colour and wherever they come from. If I say I don’t like people calling me Toubab as a name (“Oi! Toubab, pass the bus fare”), I am told, “but, it doesn’t mean anything…”. In short, I am, as a white person, never allowed to voice the fact that I am treated differently because of my skin colour. And the reason? Because I am white.

While I was in Europe this Autumn, I had some interesting experiences and conversations with black people about prejudice and racism. During one conversation, in which I was sympathising with a black friend about racist treatment he had received in Europe, I tried to express what it was like being a white person in a black country. I made it quite clear that I didn’t feel our experiences were the same (as one Senegalese friend says, “the difference between you and I is that people treat you differently in Senegal because they think you’re rich, and people treat me differently in France because they think I’m a thief!”). But the fact is that I am judged and treated differently, sometimes negatively, because of my skin colour. The response of my friend shocked me. He refused to let me speak, to let me voice the fact that I too experience racism daily. Because apparently, being white, I wouldn’t know anything about it.

But it seems to me that in England, political correctness is so strong that in general, most white people I know would be scared to even say the word ‘black’ to describe someone. It’s ‘Black-British’, ‘of Nigerian extraction’, ‘with Jamaican parents but brought up in England’, but rarely ‘Black’. If someone says anything that might be perceived as a judgement or assumption on someone’s ethnic origin, a hush will fall. But watch a white person get on a bus in Dakar and watch her be called ‘White’ and told she must pay twice the price because of the fact that she is white, and then watch her be told by her black friends that she’s not even allowed to feel anything about it, because of the fact that she is white, and well, it doesn’t make sense. For centuries, white people have been in control of much of the world’s resources and ruled over much of the world’s population, and done so with brutality, but that has nothing to do with me. I just want to have the freedom to feel something about it when I, too, am judged by the colour of my skin.

*****

A lighter part of my trip to Europe, a walking holiday with my brother in the Appenine Mountains of Italy.



*****

I am on my way back to Dakar. I feel suddenly afraid, desperately wishing a friend was picking me up from the airport, wishing I had something steady and stable to go back, to like a job where I am expected to be from nine till five, under the watchful eye of someone. As it is, I am going back to the freefall of my work, where I am the boss and the worker, and I only work as hard as I make myself.

I’m afraid of the darkness of my street, memories of my mugging coming back. I’m afraid to be so far from my family, from my dog who is sick and I may not see again, afraid that the people I love I may not see again. When I went to London, I didn’t marvel at much. The choice in the shops was exciting for a day or so but that then became commonplace. What surprised me was how much I rely on, and love, my family and friends, and how unhealthy I now feel it is for me to be far from them. I feel like distance is so fragile- so much can happen and so quickly, and it’s best to be close by.