My Weekend at Sin Fest

Muslim Sin Fest, ie a big Catholic pilgrimage/party!

Story to follow...

So this weekend was perhaps one of the best weekends I've had in Senegal in a very long time and definitely one of the best since I arrived. Saturday, feeling stressed and annoyed at the people around me, I boarded a bus with 10 other PCVs headed to the beach to celebrate some birthdays. I was along for the ride only, as I was not in the mood for a big crazy beach trip of that nature, asking the bus driver to drop me off in Sindia, a small crossroads town known for it's towering bowls of mangoes available for around $1 each. I found a bench in the shade, greeted the men sitting nearby, and pulled out my latest reading book, expecting nothing but non-stop "hey, let's annoy the toubab" games as I waited for Jen, another PCV from my Stage coming from Dakar to meet me. Amazingly, apart from some general questioning and people finding out I speak Serere Sine/Saloum (and thus making other friends who spoke to me in Serere), I was allowed to read my book in peace. No probing questions about my marital status or "Hey Toubab!" or anything. It was such a pleasant wait!

When Jen arrived, we bought a few bowls of mangoes and hopped in a car headed to Popenguine with one of my new Serere buddies, a quiet Serere (Serere Safen, very different from Serere Sine/Saloum, so I don't understand it...) beach town to meet up with the PCV who lives there.

Popenguine, a small town of perhaps 2,000-some inhabitants is a popular spot for PC Trainees to visit for a weekend during PST, but this weekend would be anything but quiet as over 100,000 people descended on it for Pentecost. In the late 19th Century, some missionaries in the area were walking along the beach and saw an image of the Black Madonna--an African Virgin Mary--and Infant Jesus. Ever since then, the Catholics of Senegal have celebrated this apparition and this was the 121st celebration.

Some information on Senegal: Senegal is something like 90% Muslim, 8% Christian (mostly Catholic), and 2% indigenous beliefs, and that's being generous to the Christians. Popenguine itself is really only like 10-20% Christian, but it boasts a beautiful church in the heart of town and beautiful grounds for its priests and brothers, and hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year. In Senegal, Christians are most likely members of either the Serere or the Diola (Casamance) ethnic groups--major generalization, but true. These groups, especially the Sereres (who fought slavery by hiding in the islands and were some of the last to conform to Islam), converted to Christianity and found favor with the French, and thus have a history of generally being wealthier, better educated, more powerful (2 former presidents, etc), and with smaller families (imagine, Catholics known for small families?!?!) than their Muslim counterparts. Again, I am overgeneralizing, but I'm trying to paint a picture of one aspect of Senegalese society. In my own (Serere) village, myself and a teacher (not from the area) are the only Christians, but there is a handful in the roadtown 4km away and a scattering of others in various villages. That is all to say that there were a lot of Sereres (of all dialects) around this weekend, which was awesome!

Anyway, we arrived in Popenguine on a Saturday afternoon only to find it quite transformed from the sleepy beach town we knew and loved. A few thousand people had already arrived, camping at relatives' homes or setting up tents in random patches of grass or gravel across town. Street food vendors were beginning to set up shop in a way that was strangely reminiscent of the Taste of Crystal Lake (or any other similar event), selling sandwiches with chicken, eggs, onions, fish, you name it--plus pork! (An obvious rarity in a mostly Muslim country) All 3 Senegalese phone companies were around, promoting their products, plus cooking oil companies, Coca Cola, tea companies, Obama Rice (a new brand), and many other companies had signs and tents, giving away free hats or shirts to people around. Ankith, the PCV there, showed us around to all of his "hot spots" and introduced us to his friends and "village" family while at the same time being totally astounded by the transformation that was taking place in his village and would only get crazier the next few days.

On Sunday afternoon, THOUSANDS of marchers converged on Popenguine--walking from Dakar, Thies, and Mbour (distances of 30-60km, if not more). Groups were divided by parishes, coming from each of those cities, and farther regions such as Kolda and Zuiginchore (below the Gambia) and even from a few neighboring countries such as Cape Verde. It was an awesome site to watch: exhausted marchers walking/running/skipping in, singing fabulous songs, spraying water from bottles and branches, and wearing matching white march tshirts and matching brightly patterned wax pants. There was so much energy in the air, I couldn't help but clap and dance along (only a little, I did have to restrain myself from really busting it out!). It was a hot day and reminded me of Toronto in 2002 when I was a pilgrim along with 800,000+ other people to World Youth Day in Toronto. There was one super energetic group that sang, ran forward, and then turned around, ran backwards thus confusing people behind them, danced, and then ran forward again that totally reminded me of any one of the St Elizabeth Ann Seton mission teams I had been a part of over my high school years.

Earlier that morning, Jen, Ankith, and I visited an American girl one village over, who is in Senegal on a university fellowship--she is basically doing her own Peace Corps thing, but without all of the benefits of healthcare, support, etc--named Brittany (she is awesome and super brave, I couldn't do what she did!). She joined us as we welcomed the pilgrims into Popenguine, climbed around, and explored the enormous and beautiful stage area and greater Popenguine that was all abuzz with the event. In Senegal, religious events such as this (or similar Muslim equivalents Gamou and Magal), are basically GINORMOUS shopping events as well. Vendors appeared out of nowhere (ie Dakar, Kaolack, Thies, all of the roads from Podor to Zuiginchore and everywhere in between), peddling tshirts with the Virgin Mary and Jesus, glow in the dark crucifixes, laminated prayer cards, plastic church hats, rosaries, Bibles, and other "religious items," not to mention hats, used clothing, shoes, purses, dvds (not real, of course), beaded bracelets and shells, etc, AND all types of street snack food and drink, including kinkiliba (a type of tea--I purchased a HUGE bag of leaves for my vil fam), homemade popsicles, cookies, gum, local juices, fried foods, mangoes, water, beignets (Senegalese donuts), and so MUCH more! As always, prices were only "kind of" set and thus up for negotiation (except on food), but amazingly, since this was a Senegalese celebration and not a Western one, we were mostly given fair prices and treated like everyone else, AMAZING!

So Sunday evening, there was a big mass for the youth while everyone else took private prayer time and later that night was a big mass. It started an hour + later than it should have, and for obvious reasons (the heat and walking 30+ km that day), most people were practically asleep during the mass or out in the village eating and drinking up. The mass (what we saw before we left 2+ hours into it) included an interpretive dance segment and a (long) theater piece about the life of Paul. The mood around town was one of excitement, friendship, and celebration of the Catholic faith. It was cool, and there were so many freakin' people!

Monday morning was the big mass of the weekend, and I mean BIG! Seriously, well over 100,000 people crammed into the large space, specially created for this event each year. And, there were probably another 20,000+ people not at mass--either sleeping, standing around, selling things, or helping with crowd control (military, police, firefighters, Red Cross, etc). The picture to the side is taken during mass. We were standing on the grass behind the alter and thus couldn't really see anything except Red Cross officials and military people carrying people who passed out due to the heat, out on stretchers every two or three minutes. The music was pretty good, but the mass was hard to follow since they kept turning off the speaker nearest us every time the priest spoke. This was mass meets Senegal in the fact that people were standing, sitting, squeezing past other people into tiny spaces, and the heat made it necessary for people to drink water and suck on popsicles and frozen juices in the midst of mass. However, everyone that wanted to, received Holy Communion, which was pretty incredible. It was done similar to the World Youth Day I attended back in 2002: teams of priests, nuns, alter servers, and boy/girl scouts (scouts and "guides" are run through the Catholic Church in France and Senegal), were dispersed to various locations across the entire grounds to give out the Eucharist. It was really cool. The music was also, as it should be here in West Africa, pretty rockin'.

After mass, we wandered around, amazed by all of the vendors (and all of the ridiculous junk they had to sell) and the crowd. At one point as we walked by, an obnoxious person selling tshirt from the back of a truck and using a loud speaker called out "I miss you!" a phrase that made me think "typical Senegalese...finding the white girls in the crowd and calling out to them," until it was followed by "Khady Diouf, I miss you! Khady Fall (Jen), I miss you!" I looked up and saw that loud speaker man was in fact my good friend Bartholomew from Thies (he is the best waiter in Senegal and thus Jen and I became good friends with him)! He proceeded to chat with us, while leaving the loudspeaker turned on, and I couldn't stop laughing for a good half hour after. Oh what a small world! While shopping around, we found a Serere Bible (which I now own), a partially translated Wolof Bible for Jen, and a fabulously ridiculous and horribly-printed muscle tank (Mary on one side, Jesus on the other). As we worked our way through the crowd, Brittany unfortunately became the victim of a pickpocket (lame!) who snagged her phone, but fortunately Jen had just received a freebe phone from a Dakar expat, so Brittany wasn't out too much (just a bunch of numbers). It was unfortunate, but could have been worse. And then we ate delicious cashew fruits on our way to the make-shift garage set up for all of the thousands of people.

I rode with Jen back to Mbour, rather than head straight to Kaolack, which was a good decision. We talked about the fun weekend, how good it was to get away, and generally catch up over delicious PIZZA!

So back to the whole "Sin Fest," which I am sure that you are all wondering about... first off, ANY Catholic event here in Senegal comes complete with cheap Senegalese alcohol--beer, wine, hard liquor, as well as palm wine--and these things were in the plenty as make-shift bars and palm wine vendors littered the roads everywhere the eye could look, and people were definitely partaking. Islam does not allow followers to drink alcohol (many do, but they aren't supposed to), so both alcohol and pork (which was being grilled up everywhere as well) are big defining characteristics of Catholic events. The authorities actually had the good forwarning to close down the beach, since there aren't any lifeguards, to prevent any intoxicated people from doing anything stupid. Another big thing was all of the couples everywhere--like seriously! In Senegal, it is rare to see a guy and girl hold hands or display any affection in public, with the exception of male/female prostitues and Westerners, while it is very common to see groups of men only touching each other and holding hands or groups of women doing the same. This weekend was a different story. Young guy/girl couples were talking together, holding hands, hugging, and generally interacting together in a positive way. We were all kind of, admittedly, shocked to see such a change, not realizing that the lack of handholding, etc, was probably a result of Islam's influence on local culture. And finally, there was the fact that for the better part of the weekend, no one harassed us at all. As a group of four foreigners, we were large enough to watch out for each other but small enough not to draw too much attention to ourselves. People just let us be, rather than saying "Toubab! TOUBAB!!!!!!!!!" over and over, which was just incredible. Catholics, go figure!

I also want to express my surprise and appreciation towards the planning committee who put the entire event together. There were tons of military people, police, firefighters, and general security people, plus ambulances, Red Cross volunteers, and several make-shift hospital areas for people who got sick/dehydrated/injured/otherwise ill. There were tons of port-o-potties all around town so people wouldn't relieve themselves in public, which is the first time we had seen such things in this country. There was a lot of water, though people didn't drink as much of it as they should have, and things were generally clean (no cholera, unlike Touba). The people of Popenguine will have a good amount of cleanup to do, but nothing compared with how bad it could have been. The local TV station had been showing public logistic meetings for the two weeks before the pilgrimage, so they had definitely been planning ahead. Things were as orderly and organized as they get in Senegal and we were genuinely impressed.

Thank you Ankith and your Popenguine family for being such kind and generous hosts for us for the weekend. Ankith kindly gave Jen and I his double bed for the weekend and his family kept us fed (when we weren't indulging in delicious street food).

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Tomorrow I am headed back to site. This weekend was the first time in over a month where I went two whole days without doing any work, which was incredible. It wasn't the type of spiritual retreat that I had hoped for, for various reasons (in many ways I was more of a spectator than a pilgrim, or so it felt), but it was a great psychological break from everything. I have to remind myself that it's ok and actually quite good to do that once in awhile rather than work myself to exhaustion. This week will be more latrines, scholarship follow-up (hopefully more on that in a future post), maybe some garden work/planning ahead, and spending time with friends and family in the village because I haven't done that in awhile. My APCD (boss) is coming to visit my site in a week and a half (Inchallah) and I need to plan ahead the next three weeks before life gets really crazy for 2 months straight. Love you and miss you all!

Btw, pictures are updated on my Picasa website, so check them out!