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A First for Marame and Me
March 2, 2010 @ 1:15 PM | Permalink
It is rare in life that we genuinely witness a first—your first friend to get married, your nephew’s first steps, your friend’s first time seeing snow—which is likely what makes all firsts so special. Today, while working from home, I was lucky enough to observe one.
Initially everything about living in Senegal was a first, but like all things in life the novelty—even of such a different culture from the one I was born into—wears off. Now, firsts tend to break the norm when you least expect it.
I had just finished snacking on some fresh cucumber sticks when a faint chorus of men’s voices roused me from my concentration on a paper I was editing. There is always some sort of hustle and bustle going on in the streets of Saint-Louis, but it was clear that this call-and-response chanting was something more organized than the habitual chaos. Unable to quell my curiosity, I peaked out my screen door and over my rusted balcony railing. Fifty feet from my apartment, I noticed that the freshly painted, multicolor fishing pirogue on the nearby riverbank was surrounded by a troupe of men. There must have been nearly thirty of them, arms extended, muscles taught, attempting to shimmy this massive pirogue into the water.
Their song was clearly a way of organizing the effort. One man would call out directions and the rest would respond with verbal and physical acknowledgement of his command. The working song reminded me of a passage in a book I read the last time I was in Senegal called, The Land Where the Blues Began, which described how American slaves in the South used to sing a song to coordinate their movements and make their work more effective and efficient—it also helped them pass the time and covertly express their grievances. Sure enough, this collection of men managed to rock this boat into the water after thirty minutes of synchronized, sequential movements—no machinery, no tools, just muscles and sweat. It was fascinating to watch them as they moved from bow to stern and port to starboard, placing their manpower in strategic places that they knew would give them the leverage they needed. They even had five men inside the boat that walked around the balance-beam edges, providing their weight at crucial pivot points.
As the men had the pirogue in its final maneuver, I saw its name for the first time in bold black letters: Marame Diaw. Moments later, the Marame Diaw was successfully surrounded by water and a few lucky helpers got to go along for the first ride. As the 2:00pm call to prayer rang out, Marame Diaw set sail, leaving behind a cluster of tired men and one happy observer, tickled by her first first in a long time.
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