GBU Professor Mamadou BA

Dr. BA lectured today(Sunday) on "Peaceful Coexistence between Muslims, Christians, and Animists in Senegal". He went to school at GBU with our Professor Ngom. He laughingly mentioned that there were some stories he could not tell. Fallou then mentioned that his nickname was now "snow" for the patches of white hair he now sports. He focused on a variety of things, most interestingly, the Senegalese "joking relationships"---complicated needling between specific ethnic groups and even between specific family surnames. These family to family "jokes" are often about food and/or eating. The ethnic group jokes can often involve calling each other "slave", injecting a rather dark humor into the talk.

 

The lecture was interrupted by what is now the standard Powerpoint malfunction, in my view the scourge of teaching everywhere.

 

Dr. BA told a very poignant story to demonstrate the real existence of interfaith trust and goodwill. When he(a Muslim) was at GBU, there was a point where his mother could not pay his fees(his father died in 1985). He was distraught, reading "Devil on the Cross" at a bus stop here in St. Louis. A priest happened to be at the corner, noticed the book and engaged him in conversation and asked him why he was not in school that day. Mamadou told him. The priest said---"come to visit me in Kaolack on Sunday". He did. On the visit, the priest paid for his next four months of school and did so for the rest of his schooling. That is what defines interfaith harmony in Senegal. Nice story.

 

 

Tea on a propane tank. This is how everyone cooks here in West Africa. The propane business might be a good one..

 

 

 

Flier at GBU

 

 

 

One of the Sow brothers and our Saturday evening feast---Thieoboudienne---fish with rice---He is a former teacher and now an employee with the government's outreach to foreign and domestic investment partners.

I told him I liked his hat, a really cool knit cap called a "cabral", named for the Guinea Bissau revolutionary and intellectual who gave his life in a revolution in that country. He then in a demonstration of Senegalese "terranga"---hospitality and open-mindedness you see everywhere here---GAVE it to me!

 

 

This is Ida Sow and her daughter Adima. She is also the mother of the infamous Ousmane.

 

 

 

Our dear friend Clarisse Sow pouring tea on Saturday evening. Her upstairs apartment in the family compound is very nice.

 

 

Pile of cow horns near St. Louis, Senegal. I guess it is not so good to be a cow here.

 

 

 

Bulletin board at GBU

 

 

 

Flier at GBU, St. Louis, Senegal

 

 

 

The Business School at GBU

 

 

 

The gardens at UGB. There are now 9,000 students here. In Professor Fallou Ngom's time here there were 400.

 

 

The students are on a protest strike here at UGB...a symptom of overcrowded dorms.

 

 

 

We visited the Universite Gaston Berger of St. Louis on Saturday

This was where Professor Fallou Ngom got his post secondary education. He was one of only 400 Senegalese who got full scholarships---very exclusive, very prestigious. Ablei was his classmate. They apparently worked very hard but had a lot of fun. It is very apparent that he is the "big man on campus". He taught there on a post graduate Fulbright in the 90s.

 

We were to meet with the college President who was a no-show. Fallou at one point told someone to tell him "that we were here". As he says, it is always important to "register your presence". He also jokes that it is also sometimes necessary to register your absence. We then toured the campus. The campus seemed relatively deserted. The students were doing what the post-colonial French educational system calls a strike--(registering their absence!)---cutting classes en-masse to protest the deplorable condition and overcrowding of dorms---they are in a state of decay, with 4-5 to a room. many are now in pods with what appears to be no air-conditioning. To demonstrate this, Fallou casually mentions that when he was here he had a room to himself.

 

We had a relatively moribund lecture later that morning on the people and culture of Northern Senegal. At one point after some anecdotal veneration of motherhood, a female member of our group asked about recommendations for female writers. The all male academic VIPs hemmed and hawed and were basically unable to do so. Very quickly the discussion took on gender and male hegemony. Tension in the group became palpable. I maintain that these experiences are what we came here for. We have some fairly large differences here. Hopefully I'll continue to report on this....

 

Lunch is at a restaurant in interior St. Louis and is a kind of beef stew with rice. There is no meal without rice in Senegal. Today, one of our seminar leaders mentioned in an aside that dinner tonight would be non-Senegalese for a change. I think we might be looking forward to this!

 

 

The matriarch when she last visited Mecca.

 

 

 

Dr. Longman of BU meeting the Sow family matriarch

 

 

 

Plush carpeting in the Mosque at Jurbel

 

 

 

Breaking the fast of Ramadan on Saturday evening at the home of the Dow family

We broke the Ramadan fast again at the home of the Dow family. This is the extended family of teachers we'd visited the evening before. We spent some more time with the matriarch this time. She is funny---and does speak some English. Professor Tim Longman from BU accompanies us for the first few minutes to lend the event some additional gravitas and importance. The leaders are keen to explain our presence to people---emphasizing our scholarly interest in the extraordinarily tolerant Senegalese society.

We bring some coffee this time as well as some "swag" from our colleges. I give the matriarch a NOVA umbrella---which she loves(hopefully). This is one of those little things we teachers get as a reward for attending the week long professional development orgy that is now required for NVCC employees at the beginning of the semesters. Since it is like going to the dentist to appropriate any "swag" for endeavors like this, I often squirrel these things away for times like this. The matriarch explains that this umbrella can be used for her next trip to Mecca. She has been twice in her life, an extraordinarily expensive thing for the Senegalese. She shows a photo on the wall of her in her Hadj finery when she was much younger.

I also give the son, Babacar, some NOVA earbuds. The boy, Ousmane, gets some lollipops which result in a symphony of sound.

Interior of the Mosque at Jurbel

There is no metal at all in the structure of this huge building. There are lots of clocks on the wall, many of them gifts. At one point I see a mouse scamper across the floor. Only a couple of people see this.

 

 

Caretakers of the Mosque in Jurbel

The one on the left is a specific kind of Sufi Mouride-- a Bai Fall---Dr. Fallou Ngom is something of an expert on this sub-order. They do not fast or pray. Instead they focus on good deeds---building or repairing Mosques and feeding the poorer members of the community when the Ramadan fast ends in the evening. While in the bigger Mosque at Touba, we saw them unloading heavy bags of cement, carrying them on their heads. Many are dreadlocked with interesting costumes. They are unsmiling. Very interesting.

 

Street scene in Jurbel, Senegal.

 

 

 

The honorable Imam of Jurbel Mbaye Ngirane. We spent 2 hours with him in his home and his Mosque. This was a big deal

Imam Ngirane is the head of the Sufi Mouride order in Senegal. He was a warm, funny, and generous man. We sat on the floor in his home and asked questions. He showed us how to sharpen a pen with a knife and gave us an example of Ajami calligraphy. Hopefully more to come on this. He seemed to have a large family. While we were there the phone rang a couple of times--he answered. Fallou explained that he is always on call---as the foremost expert on the Mouride founder(Sheikh Amadou Bamba)---these are often important spiritual questions. At one point his wife enters, points at the scores of pictures on the wall, and indicates a younger picture of him, laughing and saying he was much more handsome then.

 

 

The Mosque at Jurbel, near the holy city of Touba. We had a meeting for about an hour with the Imam.