#wollof

my design for the follower/wollof because i've been hyperfixating on 123 sms...again. i think i prioritized his fluff too much but that's okay i guess.

La nostra intervista a San Diego x In Winter Time

         It’s my first real day in Dakar. Anna took me to her mother’s house, a typical Arabic style house with a courtyard inside. A style I haven't seen in the non-Muslim world. It’s airy with several stories and intricate patterns of tiles. The house is filled with extended family and at least twice while I was there, groups of women visited wearing their Thursday best. No, really though, they were extremely decked out in the brightest fabrics. The same cloth is used to make the bubu, the under skirt and the head wrap. Their fingers, necks, wrist and ears are weighed down with gold jewelery. Faces done up entirely in makeup never dark enough to look natural. They were a glorious sight.

          We all ate lunch from the same big round dish. It quickly became clear to me that people speak a lot of Wollof. All of the women were fluent in French and knew basically no English at all. I asked Anna where the ladies were going after this. Nowhere, she said, they’re just dressed up. “You’re never over dressed in Dakar.” This immediately inspired me. Tomorrow we must go to the market.

         I took a much-needed midday nap and woke up just in time for dinner, a huge plate of rice and Supu Kanja (a spicy okra stew with fish). The sun didn’t go down till past seven when Anna and I lazily walked out to catch a cab back to our apartment. I was filled to the brim with happiness and okra. But as we drove in the dimly lit streets, I couldn’t help but wonder what things were in front of me that I was not yet seeing. I wondered about the sweaty men hustling to get into the local buses and about the women pulling carts and sacks from their fruit stalls, did they have Supu Kanja brought to them in cool living rooms? Come to think of it. where was all the food coming from? Because all the decorated women sat in the living room the whole day or napped. And the food would appear as if by magic. I wondered where the men were and why Anna’s mother and one of the cousins had fairer but blotchier skin than everyone else.