And all I had was toilet paper

By Thomas Gilchrist

Written: September 17, 2008

I woke up early this morning so I had time to eat some breakfast, which is usually coffee or tea with bread, whose most popular topping is usually Nutella.

We don’t have Nutella, however, we have Chocomoose, which is like Nutella, if nutella made chocolate syrup. There not much to say about what happened next other than that the lid on our month-old jar of Chocomoose is notoriously hard to open, and I just started playing Superfly on my itunes. So I took this jar in one hand and summoned up all of my masculine strength in the other and I grabbed the Chocomoose by its antlers and I squeezed and turned with all my might, and much to my suprise off came the lid and out came the Chocomoose. There was a poop on the floor and a poop on the couch and a poop on the white cloth covering the coffee table where we ate and I said “figures.”

Now in the more upperclass homes such as the one in which I live, it is customary for the house hands to do all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc, so should I have been with my host famiily, all I could have done would be to have sat there as the mother screamed ‘Aimmeeee Aimeeee,” the name of the maid, echoed by the daughter as the mother was not often well heard. But I was alone, as it was Ramadan, the fast, and the mother, who did not fast for medical reasons was already at work.

Now it important to understand what liquid Nutella looks like, and it is best to say like lukewarm hot fudge, or, that is to say, your toilette boil after consuming nothing but dark chocolate and laxatives for three consecutive weeks. There was shit. Everywhere. Shit on the linens, shit on the couch, and a big plop of shit on the floor.

I sat there for a moment, contemplating the fate of my sociocultural relationship with my host family and greater Senegal, and decided that of course, I should wipe my own ass of the Chocomoose.

Now usually in this situation, I would go and get some papertowels, wet them, wipe, throw them in the garbage can, and be done with it, but in Senegal, they have neither paper towels nor garbage cans, so I was forced to improvise, and what better way to clean up shit than toilette paper.

You’re probably thinking, “Oh, the poor clutz, I know what’s going to happen next. His host mother is going to stumble in the room, and find him cleaning up his mess instead of her house keeper, with toilette paper, nonetheless, and she’s going to flip.” Actually this never took place. Instead, I had to make trip after trip back and fourth between the family dining table, and my bathroom with wad after wad of toilette paper. Lord knows why I just didn’t bring out the damn roll with me. You’ll never believe how much toilette paper it takes to clean up Chocoshit all over everything, but I can tell you: nearly an entire roll.

Although there are no visible trash cans in Senegal, I, the Creator of Waste, had jerry-rigged one out of an old cleaning bucket in my bathroom, which is currently full of what appears to be shit-covered piles of toilette paper. They don’t even use toilette paper in Senegal; they find it dirty. They use bidées. I can only imagine what it must be like for the poor maid right now, as she is in my bathroom cleaning as I write this, to find an entire trash can that shouldn’t be there full of shit stained toilette paper generated by the sole user of the bathroom, the American Me.

To Nativize? To not Nativize?

By Thomas Gilchrist

They actually do call it “going native.” It describes when a foreigner such as myself, living in Senegal, decides to pick up on certain societal structures such as dress, language, mode of transportation, location of goods purchasing, etc. To go native is to become as Senegalese (or whatever-ese, depending on where you are) as you can throughout the duration of your sejour.

If you consider culture, you have to consider culture as a whole, not just in parts like clothes, sports, communication, etc, but as the collective idea to which a specific group of people subscribe. Your identity, of course, is organic by nature extrinsically, but intrinsically, your nature is your nature and your identity is your identity. Even if you buy Senegalese clothes, ride on a car rapide, play soccer in the dirt, take a nap on the street at three o’clock, drink tea and speak wolof, ultimately you are still you, whoever you consider yourself to be.

The saying is that when in Rome… do as the Romans do, but the key to consider here is the use of “when” When in Rome…. which infers that at other times you are in other places, possibly New York, London, Tokyo, New Delhi, etc, which infers that when in New Delhi….

People need to fit in, no matter where they are, but while culture and the individual extrinsically appear very elastic, intrinsically, they are extremely concrete. I don’t know the philosophy or the psychology or the sociology or the anthropology of the matter, but you identify with whomever, whatever, and wherever you choose, and it takes a hell of lot more than just living someplace in that someplace’s certain kind of way for it to alter your identity.

My name is Thomas. I was born in California, but I grew up in the Midwest. I like things slow, but when I feel incomplete, I become anxious. I like Vernor’s. I go to Kalamazoo College because I wanted to be a little different. This has both worked and failed. I am an American, damn it, and proud of it. I love hockey. Steve Yzerman is my hero.

And so on….

Perhaps this will all change. It probably will. I may grow tired of Vernor’s and move on to Shweppes. Maybe I will live the remainder of my life on the East Coast, and after a while, I will consider New York my adopted home. Steve Yzerman will always be my hero, but maybe I will add others. But for now, this is who I am.

I am an American, living in Senegal. I am not Senegalese. I live in Dakar, but I am not from Dakar. But when in Rome, regardless of what you do, if you give it enough time, you will begin to appreciate the Romans for who they are, and you will care for them. You may even love them, and you will cry when it is time to leave to go home. You probably were doing what the Romans do without even knowing it, and it probably served you well.

You may even live in Rome for the remainder of your days, and naturalize as a citizen, but who you are will forever remain a self-perception. If you view yourself as Roman, than you are Roman. If you consider yourself being from Rome, than you are from Rome. It depends on your identity qualifications, which can be whatever you want, from the source of water from which you are currently drinking, to an un-waivering sense that your roots run deeper than even the deepest well.

Short Showers, Long Nights

By Thomas Gilchrist

Written:September 15, 2008

They told us to bring a year’s supply of condoms. So I brought three. I brought close to the equivelent of one liter of hand sanitizer, a bottle of shaving cream with twenty eight percent more, free, five sticks of deoderant, two tubes of toothpaste, two containers of bandaids, a loofa, a family-sized bottle of shampoo and three bars of irish spring soap. They said that we did NOT want to overpack for our six month trip to Senegal. I figure I brought the bare minimum.

We set the all-time record for most guys going to Senegal in one year from our school: two (although there are four of us in all). I don’t know why only girls seemingly go to Senegal, for Senegal seems like a very hard place for a woman to live. They do all the work, and raise all the children, and they have to share their husbands. I said two guys, and there are two, me and Matt, or Matt and I as my english teachers would tell me, though I never understood why. I like the word me.

Matt and I spent the better part of the night drinking Gazelle beer and smoking Marlboro Lights at a table in a bar nearby called The Palmtree. At least that’s what their match books say is their name, but around here, nobody knows for sure. We sat there and talked about our past relationships with women who were and still are in many ways, very close and dear to us, so much so that you may even say that we love them. But all we could decide is that we love women, and you can’t love them all and still be able to reproduce. Someone will cut your balls off.

All I read about on the news is that wall street is in trouble, whatever that means. I don’t know. I don’t necessarily understand the transactions involved with money that people hope will exist in the future. I’ve always said that if I had any money to invest, I would put it in Apple because they always seem to be doing OK.

As we sat there at our table with our cigarettes and our beers, a Senegalese air-conditioning salesman named Babacar we had met a couple of nights ago and had since lent us his lighter came over to talk English. He asked where our girls were. We said they were waiting. He said in a mix of French and English and Wolof that communication was everything, and in effect, he summed up our entire discussion of relationships, and every discussion of relationships that has ever occurred, is currently occurring, or will occur in the future. We thanked him.

A man just got out of bed, and took a massive leak.

I love senegal. I love the freedom. I love the sand in the streets and the bagged water. I love how my showers are short and my days and nights are long. I love the smell of death and rot and moldy fish and diesel in the morning. I love the look on my teacher’s face as he speaks to us in Wolof. I do not, however, like Nescafe, but maybe it will grow on me.