Senegalese culture, Islamic prayers

After two months of grammar lessons, I manage to get Mme Diagne to agree to spend an hour on conversation practice, and we start talking about social issues in Senegal. We get straight onto polygamy – which is legal and common here, as I already knew. The article we begin with claims that a lot of women are very keen on it, and our conversation turns to women’s place in society here. Whatever I’ve thought about the liberal culture it looks like the differences between appearance and reality are even bigger than I’d guessed. I don’t think there’s anything I can add to the ‘fact’ (according to Mme Diagne, anyway – who isn’t a Muslim and maybe exaggerates) that the Wolof word for an unmarried woman above a certain age is the same as the word for prostitute.


To add to that, I’ve been wondering for a while whether Muslim women pray in the same way Muslim men do. It should be a ridiculous question, because I’ve always assumed they do: it’s such an integral part of the religion that to leave out women would seem extraordinarily divisive. But although I see men praying nearly every day here, sometimes in their dozens, I’ve not seen a single woman praying. At least I hadn’t until this week when a young woman from the office came out to the quiet back area where I was having a meeting and prayed next to us. So now I know that women here definitely do pray, I’m trying to understand why I never see them do so in public, even though women don’t seem to have any problem being in public spaces, and Islamic prayers are generally a very public thing here (yesterday, I watched a man praying on his roof, silhouetted against the setting sun and spent the time wishing I’d brought my camera). Again, the liberalism of this place seems not to be all it’s cracked up to be.


Barely two months here, and already I’m back into spending so much of my time job hunting. It’s possible it may all get sorted out quickly, as I’ve got an interview this week for a job based in Oxford, but if not, I’ll be back to looking at everything and trying to work out what I should do. It takes so much energy, and one of the most likely outcomes is another round of short term placements, which would mean yet more job hunting in another couple of months. I suppose at least as time goes on and I get more experience, it will take a bit less work to find each new position. Maybe.


Assuming that I will be leaving in less than four weeks – it’s not exactly fixed – it’s occurred to me that I’ve still seen so little of the country, let alone the region. But I don’t think I’ve been particularly bad at taking opportunities to see places: I would certainly have had to take time off work to do any exploring. It makes me realise that just having a job that takes you places isn’t enough to guarantee seeing the world. To add to it, Michel spends Friday night regaling us with anecdotes of his 18 months backpacking around Asia, then finishes by saying that he didn’t really feel like he got to know the places he went to. So if that’s not enough, what can an outside ever do to become an insider?


Yet another taxi ride adds to my conviction that I don’t want to drive a car here. It’s not because the other vehicles are badly driven – although they are – and I’d be scared for my own safety, but because of the fear of hitting someone else. Every time I’m in a taxi following a public minibus, I’m worried that one of the young guys holding onto the back - one foot on the platform, the other in the air, one hand on the inside of the open back door, the other free – will lose his grip and fall onto the road in front of us. Equally, the pedestrians – black skin, dark clothes – are often inches away from us, stumbling on the rough ground and crossing in narrow gaps between cars. At night, I can barely look out of the front of the taxi with driving so nerve-racking.