Any Westerner dropped into this neighborhood, near the mosque in Cite Assemblee, in the Oakam district of Dakar, has to be stunned by the foreigness—the "African-ness"—of the place. The novelty of sights, sounds, smells, architecture and landscape scream out that the visitor is on a different planet. All one's prior understanding of the world means little. It is fabulously exciting—or it makes you retreat into a primal defensive posture! How could you be farther from Western culture?
I've been lucky to stay here for a whole month this time rather than for the 10 days of my previous visits, for I've gained insights that those briefer visits didn't allow me time to absorb. What I gathered then was all about Africa. What I'm finding not too deeply beneath the African skin this time, though, is France.
Senegal was only one of the current countries that composed French West Africa until 1960. It stretched as far north as Mauritania; as far west as French Sudan and Niger, and south to Ivory Coast, Togo, and Dahomey on the Gulf of Guinea. French is still the common language through this enormous part of Africa. All business, governmental, educational, and governmental affairs are conducted in French.
Turn on the TV and the local stations have Senegalese production values (low) and trappings, but the language is bound to be French. But more often, cable subscribers, like in this household—receive only foreign programming in French. The daily influx of programs are French films, dramas, and comedies, and French news programs both straight up and hilariously sharp and satirical. I've become a fan of French TV, in fact. It's chic, depends more on smart graphics and less on computer-generated effects, and its speed is due to wit, not to the leveling, old-boy humor so typical in the US.
There are plenty of American shows and movies, always dubbed. The big favorite is Criminal Minds, followed by Person of Interest. There are also French versions of familiar reality shows, like Dancing with the Stars and The Voice. The latter two are virtually grotesque in an evening's scheduling for being so American, with every part of the production being hyperbolic.
The most surprising and sobering lack of American presence, though, is on the counters in the stores. I'd expected the shelves of the markets and pharmacies to be stocked with relabeled American products, but it simply isn't so. Certainly at Casino, the French grocery chain, their house brand and most of their products are French. But even the day-to-day items we buy more cheaply at the boutique or the local mini-market are rarely American. Vegetable oil comes from Morocco; honey, yogurt, grains and most day-to-day vegetables are local (carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, nuts). The after-school or lunch-box treats comparable to Hostess or Little Debbie in the US are various brands from Turkey. But just about everything else is from France, including medications, soaps, lotions, and personal products for sale at the pharmacy. (Well, Huggies has that market cornered.)
If you want to celebrate anything, you go to the patisserie and purchase a cake. Cakes here are unmistakably French. There is no baked good that faintly resembles an American cookie or pie or crumbly cake with butter cream icing. Everything is filled with mousse, made with next to no flour, and decorated with impossible butter or meringue fantasies. Every bakery is a trip to Paris.
I've mentioned alcoholic products before. American beers are available but they buy no means corner the market. African, Chinese, and beers from Western Europe fill the shelves. I have found a new favorite, in fact, from Portugal: Sagres, canned in 250 cl cans—about half a pint.
So, no, the US doesn't have hegemony over the consumer economy of Senegal. This has implications for my family that I'm only now digesting. I'm delighted to find that there is a world out there not entirely under American influence; Yves, who deals in international distribution, even shrugs and confirms that America has little day-to-day effect here.
But the implications inside this house are that though Phillipe will grow up in a bilingual household, the emphasis will always be on the French. It's a French-speaking culture and it will be up to his mother to insure that he speaks, reads, and writes English like the American citizen he is. Yves, of course, knows English, but he's not fluent, and husband and wife usually speak French between them. Wherever the child goes, he'll hear French and communicate in French.
In short, West Africa remains not only Francophone, but profoundly Eurocentric.
Which raises the question of where little Phillipe will go to school. Though Lucy teaches at one of the best private bilingual schools in the city, there's always the American School at the top of the list, with education entirely in English along American pedagogical principles. Diplomats, the vast UNESCO community, corporate officers send their children there.
But American and European models of education are very different, forming students for further study in very particular university systems. If you go to the American School, you're not preparing yourself for the Sorbonne. So making that decision about secondary education is making a decision about which world one's child will live in.
Lucy's students are among the brightest Dakar has to offer, and they come from the wealthiest, most cosmopolitan families. But there are parents among them who tell their children that an American university will not be an option because of the enormous expense compared to European and African universities, and because they believe that the value of an American education isn't what it once was.
At this point, Lucy and Yves think the European route is the better one; that the secondary school is more rigorous and that university in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, England or Portugal can be both excellent and economical.
I'd never thought about any of this. My American daughter, becoming part-Congolese and living in Senegal and raising a son who is culturally largely French and could end up going to university anywhere in Europe where he can study in French or English or both.
In a week I return to Ohio. It's a little further away than it was when I came. But it's where John will someday improve his English as he learns about the western part of the world with wonders untold. And he will help me keep improving my French as I try—forever!—to wrap my mind around his world, going east.
I've been lucky to stay here for a whole month this time rather than for the 10 days of my previous visits, for I've gained insights that those briefer visits didn't allow me time to absorb. What I gathered then was all about Africa. What I'm finding not too deeply beneath the African skin this time, though, is France.
Senegal was only one of the current countries that composed French West Africa until 1960. It stretched as far north as Mauritania; as far west as French Sudan and Niger, and south to Ivory Coast, Togo, and Dahomey on the Gulf of Guinea. French is still the common language through this enormous part of Africa. All business, governmental, educational, and governmental affairs are conducted in French.
Turn on the TV and the local stations have Senegalese production values (low) and trappings, but the language is bound to be French. But more often, cable subscribers, like in this household—receive only foreign programming in French. The daily influx of programs are French films, dramas, and comedies, and French news programs both straight up and hilariously sharp and satirical. I've become a fan of French TV, in fact. It's chic, depends more on smart graphics and less on computer-generated effects, and its speed is due to wit, not to the leveling, old-boy humor so typical in the US.
There are plenty of American shows and movies, always dubbed. The big favorite is Criminal Minds, followed by Person of Interest. There are also French versions of familiar reality shows, like Dancing with the Stars and The Voice. The latter two are virtually grotesque in an evening's scheduling for being so American, with every part of the production being hyperbolic.
 |
| local honey, very earthy! |
 |
| brown sugar from France |
 |
| Senegalese "Nutella" |
If you want to celebrate anything, you go to the patisserie and purchase a cake. Cakes here are unmistakably French. There is no baked good that faintly resembles an American cookie or pie or crumbly cake with butter cream icing. Everything is filled with mousse, made with next to no flour, and decorated with impossible butter or meringue fantasies. Every bakery is a trip to Paris.
I've mentioned alcoholic products before. American beers are available but they buy no means corner the market. African, Chinese, and beers from Western Europe fill the shelves. I have found a new favorite, in fact, from Portugal: Sagres, canned in 250 cl cans—about half a pint.So, no, the US doesn't have hegemony over the consumer economy of Senegal. This has implications for my family that I'm only now digesting. I'm delighted to find that there is a world out there not entirely under American influence; Yves, who deals in international distribution, even shrugs and confirms that America has little day-to-day effect here.
But the implications inside this house are that though Phillipe will grow up in a bilingual household, the emphasis will always be on the French. It's a French-speaking culture and it will be up to his mother to insure that he speaks, reads, and writes English like the American citizen he is. Yves, of course, knows English, but he's not fluent, and husband and wife usually speak French between them. Wherever the child goes, he'll hear French and communicate in French.
 |
| French pharmaceuticals, eyedrops and headache redlief |
In short, West Africa remains not only Francophone, but profoundly Eurocentric.
Which raises the question of where little Phillipe will go to school. Though Lucy teaches at one of the best private bilingual schools in the city, there's always the American School at the top of the list, with education entirely in English along American pedagogical principles. Diplomats, the vast UNESCO community, corporate officers send their children there.
But American and European models of education are very different, forming students for further study in very particular university systems. If you go to the American School, you're not preparing yourself for the Sorbonne. So making that decision about secondary education is making a decision about which world one's child will live in.
Lucy's students are among the brightest Dakar has to offer, and they come from the wealthiest, most cosmopolitan families. But there are parents among them who tell their children that an American university will not be an option because of the enormous expense compared to European and African universities, and because they believe that the value of an American education isn't what it once was.
At this point, Lucy and Yves think the European route is the better one; that the secondary school is more rigorous and that university in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, England or Portugal can be both excellent and economical.
I'd never thought about any of this. My American daughter, becoming part-Congolese and living in Senegal and raising a son who is culturally largely French and could end up going to university anywhere in Europe where he can study in French or English or both.
In a week I return to Ohio. It's a little further away than it was when I came. But it's where John will someday improve his English as he learns about the western part of the world with wonders untold. And he will help me keep improving my French as I try—forever!—to wrap my mind around his world, going east.
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