Numa demee? What's up?

How is this for a pick-up line? :

The other day I was walking to school and since the Senegalese greet each other on the street sometimes, someone on the street said "Asalaamaalekum" (Hello, peace be with you) to me, and came up to me, and the next thing out of his mouth was, "Tu as les boutons sur le visage." Translation: "You have pimples on your face."

Merci, monsieur.

We then continued the conversation and soon of course he asked if I was married and asked for my phone number. I talked to my host brother last night, and he says that the Senegalese love to date and that most of the marriage questions on the street aren't really seriously wanting a "yes" on the spot, but they are mostly said in jest or to just express a little interest. We have talked about this concept in class a bit, and quite a few of these Senegalese men who ask if you are married are attracted to foreigners because they want to come to the US or Europe where they think they can get a job and a lot of money. Frequently (although not always) these may be men that are not very proud of Senegal and don't have much of a future here for themselves. And I think another aspect of these encounters is seeing someone different than oneself-- aren't we all, to an extent, attracted to the "exotic" or the unknown in other people? Understandable.

Here in Senegal we have also been talking about how people will freely tell you if you have pimples on your face, or make comments about your weight. I am not kidding-- in our program orientation handbook, it warned us that overweight students might face this.

I am not quite sure of the reasons for these comments, but I do know that the Senegalese put a lot of effort into looking good. It is very important for clothes and the body to be very clean. People wear boubous and traditional Senegalese clothing a lot around here, but you will also see typical western clothing. A lot of men wear nice collared shirts and women wear nice western clothing as well. I would definitely say that the Senegalese dress better than Americans.

To think that when I was preparing to leave for Senegal, my dermatologist said: "You won't care what you look like in Senegal." That statement is almost laughable now-- I feel underdressed in a ton of situations here, and since my face (obviously) isn't the clearest, I don't even feel like I am that clean according to Senegalese standards. I also remember someone else saying that I "almost look to cute to go to Senegal." Wow, totally untrue.

Granted, I am living in a huge city right now, but like I just mentioned, in my experience, a lot of these types of presumptions are false. Perhaps some stereotypes are true, but only for certain areas or for certain groups of people--not for the entire country of Senegal. So far I can see that there is a lot of variance with income and economic distribution. Like some families will have wireless internet in their house, multiple cars, etc., and then you will see people begging on the street.

Miss you~
Beth