The news with Leo Barasi

Mme Diagne’s on holiday, so my French lessons at the moment are being taken by a friend of hers, M Sarr. By a mile, he’s the best French teacher I’ve ever had, somehow discovering an desire within me to want to learn the language, which none of the teachers I’ve had over the previous 12 years ever managed to uncover. Last lesson with him is tomorrow.


Our lesson on Monday was riveting. Turns out there’s a rigid caste system operating in Senegal, transmitted not by ethnicity, but by surname. Traditionally, surnames were based on occupation: Baker, Cook, Smith, nothing unusual in that. But it’s solidified into the basis of a hierarchy that still exists, entirely regardless of the occupation of the bearer of that surname. The hierarchy is only manifested in marriage: so someone with a high caste surname wouldn’t marry someone with a lower caste surname, even if the lower caste one was prime minister of the republic (as is actually the case). Surprisingly, it’s also true in the opposite direction: people are so suspicious about marrying out of their caste that they generally won’t marry upwards if ever they have the chance. Another facet is that some surnames are ambiguous, so a potential fiancé/e would have to go to the trouble of finding out what their partner’s great grandfather did, in order to decide whether they could get married. (Incidentally, Mme Diagne told me pretty much all of this as well, but I wasn’t sure it was true until I also heard it from the more matter-of-fact M Sarr).


Interview for the advocacy job is by videoconference, which is far less scary than I’d expected. In fact, it makes things easier, as all my tension is defused in the 25 minutes I spend trying to connect the call before we can get started. It also allows for a little moment of surrealism, as one of the interviewers (whom I already know fairly well) pauses after one of my first answers to say how weird it is seeing me on tv: “and now, the ten o’clock news, with Leo Barasi”. Probably wasn’t helped by the way I set up the room so my head and shoulders filled up most of the screen


With Chris back in Britain, my being back in Oxford is seeming that bit more imminent. Since I didn’t get the advocacy job, and there’s now pretty much no chance that my communications job is going to be extended here, I assume I’ll be back to my old job in just three weeks. I’m looking forward to getting back to the life I was living before I came here: among the best few months of my life. And with George as a likely new housemate, and a few new AC people in Oxford as well, it should be better still. But while it all seems another world, I’ve not yet managed to reach the point of quite imagining that it’s going to happen or begun to work out the practicalities.


Going to Mauritania tomorrow, for what feels like the last hurrah of this job before I get into wrapping up and handing over. I’m sure I’ve never felt under such pressure to enjoy and learn from a bit of work. Probably having just worked a 60 hour week (which seems ludicrously long to me – how does anyone manage 80+ as their norm?), as well as not really having had a day off since the weekend before last (and next one will probably be the Saturday after next) has meant that work’s been pretty much the only thing in my life lately.