I’ve taught Boubacar many things, mostly about the differences between his image of America and reality. Boubacar has also given me many lessons in his country, Senegal, the most striking of which concerned their communal eating habits. Apparently, life in the “Peanut Basin” (the name of Boubacar’s region) is one big circuit-system potluck. On local feast days, which are both frequent and anticipated, Boubacar takes his trusty spoon, goes next door, and has a huge plateful of his neighbour’s best fare. When that’s done, he takes the same spoon, goes to the next house, and eats an equally gigantic meal. And so the routine continues until he and his spoon have completed their rounds, at which point he goes home and collapses on his bed, felled by the mother of all food comas. Now that is community.
It sounds like Boubacar just hoovers everything he sees in a fit of unstoppable gluttony, but it’s worth noting that every family gives as much as it gets. So actually, it's a brilliant system. When everybody donates 60% of his or her food to the neighbours, everybody gets full on a very diverse dinner.
At ALA, I do a lot of peer editing, so I see how a fair few students develop linguistically over their time here. Boubacar has quite possibly come the furthest. I put this down to both his work ethic, and his desire to practice through every possible medium. Recently, he started listening to English songs, and, astonishingly, Martin Luther King, Jr. I have heard the “I Have A Dream Speech” every night for the past ten days. When I asked Boubacar about his sudden passion for civil rights, he gave me a gorgeously logical answer: MLK spoke slowly. Ah yes, Mr. King might have focussed on the red hills of Georgia back in 1963, but little did he know just how instrumental he would be to the Anglophone development of one Senegalese man, 48 years later. It is also unlikely that he knew how much impact he would have on my sleep schedule, because Boubacar likes his daily dose of self-evident truths at about 11pm. Martin Luther King, Jr. might have had a dream, but he delays mine almost every day.
Boubacar and I also had a great moment of cultural bonding when he heard that I’d once been on a swim team (albeit a very slow one), and tried to tell me about his favorite swimmer, “Yantop”. Before you continue, try to guess who “Yantop” is.
Points for everyone who guessed “Ian Thorpe”!
Lastly (and unfortunately), there is one area in which I fear Boubacar and I may never see eye to eye: music. I think the chasm between us can be summarized with one sentence: “Liam, piano is for babies.”
Granted, Boubacar meant it as a joke, but classical music is definitely lost on him. He listens to hip-hop, rap, and R&B for variety. 50 Cent’s face is on his belt. In Boubacar’s opinion, if it can’t be blasted through a subwoofer and breakdanced to, it’s not music.
I live at the other end of the scale. I went to an Anglican music school for most of my childhood, and Schubert is my favorite composer. I gave a one-hour piano recital last spring. In fact, much of my iTunes library was written before Senegal’s president was even born, back in 1832 (okay that’s an exaggeration…more like 1895).
Just as I grew tired of Boubacar’s music at the beginning of the year, he frequently tells me to replace my “noise” with “real music”. The first time he told me that Akon was one thousand times better than Mozart, I was deeply affronted; I didn’t even consider them a part of the same species. It was like comparing pigeons to peregrine falcons, or Sodexo to Gordon Ramsay.
I have since learned to the see the funny side of it all though. As much as I love Rachmaninov, I also like rap. Plus, Boubacar and his music did something truly hilarious. I often have to work to find the comedy in ALA, but not this time. My roommate is funny enough.
All I will say is that Boubacar clearly started listening to the Black Eyed Peas before his English vocabularly had reached its current and expanded glory.
ROFL!
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