Halloween—Senegalese Style!

The whole Gambia gang!

So I completely retract what I had said about Halloween being nonexistent here in Senegal!  In between classes I headed to a local mini-mart, where I bought for the first time of the semester (believe it or not) a few bags of overpriced M&Ms.  People in general just don’t seem to buy much chocolate here, so when all four of the cashiers started jokingly giving me a hard time about my purchase I gave them a crash-course on the holiday and left with their promises to all eat some candy before the day was up.  Thus armed with my treats, I returned home for lunch on a mission.  I pounced on Ibou and Chekna first, who, though they found the general idea of trick-or-treating absurd, were only too happy to comply with my orders when they saw my bag of chocolate.  And so it was that my 19 and 21 year-old Senegalese brothers came pounding on my door with tentative cries of “Joyeux Halloween!”  After a few rounds of our miniature trick-or-treating, the Halloween spirit caught on, and soon they were bouncing around the house, shouting “I tricks and treats!  I tricks and treats!”  Even Papy Jo got in on the game, and before I knew it the entire bag of chocolate had disappeared.  For the evening fête, with a bit of cajoling I convinced Papy Jo to let me borrow his prayer cap to complete my last-minute Aladdin costume (definitely my first time to be a Disney prince), and by the time I was ready to leave the house he was proudly declaring to anyone who would listen, “I have no more daughters!  She is gone, gone, gone, and now I have this strange son!” 



Jasmine and Aladdin



And, while on the topic of Halloween, I would be remiss not to mention the fact that we got the day following, All Saints Day or Toussaint, off from class, in spite of the fact that the country is 96% Muslim!  Needless to say, this holiday was just as new to me as was Halloween to my family, and so it was after much confusion that I convinced my family that no, I do not usually spend this day going between the church and cemetery back in the States.  With that established, I persuaded the boys to take me to the beach, and so by around 5:30 that evening they were ready to go—fedoras and Prada knock-offs and all!  Definitely my most stylish trip to the beach yet and a most wonderful first Jour de Toussaint!  As my brothers don’t really swim, perhaps the funniest part of the day, however, was the affectionate lecture I received from Papy Jo when we got back that evening, “Amy Diallo, don’t you know?  Good girls do not drown their brothers!”

Ciao,

Janelle