The Land of Teranga

Teranga is a word that the Senegalese use to capture the sense of hospitality embedded in their culture. I'm more than halfway through my time in this country and I have been fortunate to have experienced several instances of Teranga.

When I first arrived in Kolda I found myself to be very much deprived and displaced. 'Depaysee' was the word my colleague used for it. Imagine being yanked away from a country or place you're familiar and comfortable with and placed far far away from home. But I can never express my gratitude for my colleagues who invited me to their homes, ventured with me into the market to pick out new sandals, pots and pans for cooking, who showed me how to cook, and shared their stories and jokes with me, etc.

Another proof of kindness in Kolda was when I dropped my cellphone at the hotel we were staying at. It took hours before I realized it was gone but the guy who found it did not give me a hard time getting it back.

The night before I left Kolda, I had a bike accident (which is a long story altogether and I'd like to say it was a motorbike I was on because it would sound cooler but it was actually just an ordinary bicycle) and fell hard on the dirt road in the dark in front of this house. Immediately, people from inside the house came out and helped me clean my cuts, offered to call me a nurse, made sure I was all right and then escorted me back to the main road.

More recently I was supposed to travel from Senegal (Ile de Karaibe) to the Gambia in a day but because of travel delays, it was too late to cross the border or travel in the Casamance and I was forced to spend the night in Ziguinchor. Luckily for me, one of my colleagues at the office in Ziguinchor invited me to have dinner and spend the night at her house and I also met her daughter who was very sweet.

I finally broke down and got teary-eyed in the 'sept-place' (a bush taxi that literally means 'seven places') to the Gambia when a Senegalese man, a complete stranger who was sitting beside me, saw that I was having a hard time trying to retie my little bag of cashew nuts and he spent what must have been 5 minutes trying to tie it for me before he finally succeeded.

These are just a few things that I will always remember for having moved me so much and this is how I would always like to remember Senegal, the land of Teranga.