Bakar Jeng

Written on March 25th, 2010

So a few days ago I came home from a brief trip to my friend Wells' village. We were doing a CDDP sensitization and VDC training there for three days so I decided to spend the night with Wells rather than biking back and forth. As always in KJJ, where things are usually moving at less than a snails pace, when I leave a ton of changes suddenly and inexplicably take palce. ie. Baay Waly finally built my shade structure outside my house and surprise I have a new sort of pseudo host brother.
He is about 3 and his name is Baboucar "Bakar" Jeng and through him I am seeing KJJ and the Joof clan in a new light tuned by almost three months of calling this place home. As Bakar and the rest of my family navigate how to integrate him into my family I find myself wondering, "Is this what they felt like with me too?"
Granted I can wash my own hands and use the bathroom by myself but other than that my negotiation of the Joof's and my place within the family is much the same. My language skills are better than his, if I do say so myself (yes I can speak more Wolof than a 3 year old). But a lot of the family culture stuff I was just as lost on as little Bakar. Where to sit around the food bowl, when it's acceptable to take a nap, who to take seriously (Yaay Amie) and who to joke with (Baay Waly), and where you fit in in the fracas of it all.
So if you had to sum it up it's taken the presence of a slightly developmentally impaired three year old Senegalese/Gambian with a slight pot belly and a great smile to show me how far I have really come as Ramatoulie Joof. I know where I'm expected to sit around the food bowl, who to seek out for different information/conversation, how to peel the vegetables for our staple dish "chew" and where to put my mat around the fire. Not to say that I'm funny integrated or 100 percent sure of what's going on but at least I've learned to live with the uncertainty.