A rare site: Evangelical Protestant Church in St. Louis, Senegal

95% of the country is Muslim. Most of the rest are Catholic. Evangelicals are growing rapidly in other places but no so much here.

 

 

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.