Ma Famille D'Acceuil

I was confronted by Fatou, the 14 year old girl who comes into my room quite often, about whether or not I knew her name. "Est-ce que tu sais mon nom?" She demanded. Luckily I knew it. It was Fatou and I told her so as though I knew everyone's name. In reality at that point I had a list of all the names of the people in my house, I just didn't know to whom they belonged.

Fatou had invaded my room with 3 other children, and so I thought I would make use of their time by having them walk me through all the names, and tell me also to whom each of the children belonged. Being a geek I wrote all them down and took to task making up for lost time by learning the names as best I could.

So here goes:

Mme Dieye is the head of the household. She is supposedly some sort of trader but I really can't fathom what exactly that means, especially since she told me she works in a restaurant and doesn't start till Monday. Mme Dieye is the 3rd wife of her husband Mr Medoune Niang who does something that makes him a lot of money, evidenced by his flashy car and demeanor. By my estimation there are up to 31 people who could be living in this house (and of course I am curious about Mr Niang's other households!). Otherwise in the short time I have been here it is hard to say if he even knows all the names either.

Mme Dieye has 8 kids that Fatou would admit to: Serigne, Fatou (14), Moustaffa, Awa Cheickh, Cheuh Oumar and Matabarra, Salimata and Abi. I had asked Fatou another day about how many kids Mme Dieye had, purely out of interest, and her response had been a guarded "beaucoup", which indicated to me that I had crossed a cultural line.
Serigne is married to Salimata and their children are Babacar, Mohammed, Aisha and Moussa, the 2nd fattest cutest baby in the house.

There is also Awa Cheickh with Mame Diewo, Awa, Sokhna Oumo, Mama Di and Bintou (Bintou is very sweet but evidently oppressed). I have no idea who the baby daddy is.

Anta, who has Mouna and I think her husband is a skinny creeper.

Khady who has Fatou Kinne (first cutest baby in the house), Mohammed and Babacar. So, not only are there repeats in the names BUT the names are also crazy hard to remember!

And of course there's Mme Dieye Sr. who I cannot tell a lie she is a little scary, but friendly.

Family has a fluid meaning, so who's kid is who's doesn't really matter, they all get loved and chastised equally as rigourously by everyone. The men seem to be here and not here and the main constants at the food bowl are the women and children.
Other volunteers have large families but seemingly not to this extent. There are also a few people who live with Catholics, where they usually eat a a table with knives and forks. About 5% of Senegal is of a Catholic (or Baptist, etc.) religion.

So, this weekend we are off for an excursion into the desert. I imagine my next post will happen on Sunday or thereabouts.

Happy Friday and thanks for reading!