At home, closed doors are acceptable, alone time is a real thing and people do not assume that you are sleeping or sick if you are in your room alone for an afternoon. In Senegal, most people have a lack of regard for privacy, that or Americans have way too much regard for privacy. This privacy includes time alone, sharing and trash.
Today, I took the day to give my hut a major cleaning in preparation for the Frankel-Moriartys do Senegal 2011 (Debby and Liz & Bill get to meet Debby and Liz babies!). I took everything out of my room and went through every corner and made three big trash bags of things to throw away that included old plastic bottles, expired demonstration condoms, old thermometers and what have you.
I took the bags and threw them in the garbage area meant to go to the Saraya dump which is really just a huge trash pile. As I was walking over there the children in my compound follow me over, so excited to go through it all. 30 minutes later, I see these thermometers bottles and such all around my compound. Now this is embarrassing because my family probably thinks I am a wasteful crazy person for purging these things out of my room and throwing them away like that. Secondly, who knows what those kids do with those expired condoms!
Additionally, I have a habit at home of closing my door while doing such things, putting on music (often show tunes or diva tunes) and sing along (sometimes quite loudly) while I clean. Today, I decided, after a year and a half I decided to put on some tunes and sing along, why should the idea of people hearing me belt out Dream Girls make me suppress my joy of singing? Two hours later, my host sister Ndandine, said she heard my singing and laughed for a good two minutes. Awesome. I’ll tell you, love the sharing, love the family and in most ways think that it is better than cold alone America as I am quite the social butterfly, but sometimes I just dream of closing that door.
