Life Unplugged

I uncrossed my legs as a squirming toddler was flung into my lap. She gave me the classic wide-eyed stare of both fear and intrigue at my newness. I turned her around so we could both watch her mother run to join the other women dancing on the plastic tarp. We clapped in time to the tam-tam drums. Each of the four drummers played a different beat which created a complex sound one would never think could come from just a few men.

I bounced my new friend on my lap, feeling her plump body relax while she became more comfortable in my pale arms. Her mother came back to her adjacent seat, out of breath and smiling. I praised her bravery, and skill, as I handed back her daughter.

I was enjoying a Friday night out in Nioro. Although it was almost midnight, this open section of the dusty road was full of young children, teenagers, and families coming to enjoy the Sabba dance party. A group of men provided the music while girls, women, and some boys spontaneously provided the dancing entertainment. A bright, outdoor light was hooked up to a nearby house and an extension cord running out of another outlet provided a microphone to narrate the festivities.

As soon as Sally and I had walked up we were called over by a group of teachers from Adja Penda Ba. Pushing their older children off the plastic chairs, they hurried to make room for us. I now sat nestled between Sally and the third grade teacher with whom I had run the ticket stand with at the school fair last weekend. I couldn’t believe it was only a week since I had first met her. Although the past seven days had flown by, they had also been so full they left me feeling as though I had been living in Nioro for months.

As the teacher settled back into her seat, her daughter nestling into the crook of her lap, she leaned over and reminded me of my own dancing at the fair last weekend. I just rolled my eyes playfully as she teased that I should run up and join the dancers. I stared somewhat open-mouthed at the amazing artistry with which these young girls moved their bodies. They followed the seemingly unpredictable rhythms of the drums while bending their knees, waving their arms, and swinging their hips with an inner talent and grace which one could only be born with.

Almost another hour passed by with students from the school coming up to say hello to me. Some approached with a shy, hesitant smile while others sauntered up with a confident grin, eager to show me off to their older siblings. Suddenly, the stars overhead grew in number and intensity as the entire neighborhood’s power went out. The drums continued to beat on while people searched in the darkness for their little phones, illuminating the built-in torch. In the dim light some younger girls got up the confidence to run up to dance, their faces mostly shielded by the lightless night. After a couple minutes of waving the small phones back and forth, people’s arms tired and children’s yawns grew more frequent as it approached 1 am.

Sally grabbed my hand to leave and we held each other for balance as we strove to find our way in the blackness. The phone’s small illumination did little to counteract the intensity of the town wide power outage, but we managed to follow the voices of others finding their way home. We knocked on the metal door for our cousin to let us in and after trying to stifle our laughter in the sleeping house as we fumbled to find our way, I collapsed on my bed in fatigue.

There is no ‘nightlife’ in Nioro in the traditional sense. Men do not flock to bars in the evening and there are no lines of frisky teenagers lined up outside nightclubs. But nevertheless this Friday was not lacking in festivities. Families did not scatter to their own respective interests but instead a wide range of community members came together to dance and talk. Women pulled their chairs together and held their babies close, donning them with affectionate kisses and swift taps to their chubby legs when they began to whine. Children ran from one circle of mothers to the next, free to roam in the coolness of the night despite the late hour.

I believe one of the greatest distinguishing factors of this social time together was the lack of persistent, buzzing technology hovering in the background. Of course, the occasional phone rang and teenagers sometimes whipped out a camera to video the dancing, but there was not a plethora of glowing faces, eyes glued to snapchat stories and GroupMe’s desperately searching for ‘something better’ to do.

With the belief that we need to document every moment of our lives with updates and pictures sent out to all devoted friends and followers we greatly harm our ability to just live. Of course, this is no new revelation but for the first time in my adult life I have been able to actually experience a world with a reduced presence of technology. I say reduced because modernity certainly still exists and I am grateful for it. I love that I can switch on the 3G box in my house and text my family and friends an ocean away using WhatsApp on my smartphone. I wouldn’t want to do without the desktop computers at school that allow me to update this blog and answer emails. I think that the internet certainly has a place in modern living, but I think that its constant, nagging presence which comes along with limitless browsing poses a threat to our happiness. Just because we can access the internet almost anywhere in America on our smartphones doesn’t mean we have to. Although hundreds of apps exist to ‘keep in touch’ with those around us, there is a limit to how much we really need to know about the activities of everyone in our life.

There might have been something else very fun going on the Friday night that Sally and I sat in the plastic chairs, our skin sticking in the sweat, our hands swatting away mosquitoes. But in that moment we were perfectly content to talk with our friends and clap to the music. At the same time, it is unlikely there was much else going on of interest. When ‘pics or it didn’t happen’ isn’t the mentality, people don’t feel as pressured to go out of their way to create events and manufacture memories just to, quite frankly, rub them in other people’s faces.

And this added depth of authenticity has come characterize many of my memories so far in Nioro. Yesterday, we motorbike-taxied (they are called jakartas) to a local soccer match tournament where our neighborhood was playing two neighborhoods nearby. The girls sat together, offering bissap juice and water to the young men as they came off the sandy area of land serving as the field. There was still the classic boy-girl banter, there was gossip among the female spectators, and shows of manliness among the players. But no one was busy trying to snap the perfect picture for Instagram or scroll through Facebook, missing a goal, while wondering what other people were doing.

Much like how a wide range of community members came together for Sabba, there is none of the exclusivity that has come to characterize college nightlife. It is not a matter of ‘who knows who’ in order to hear about a certain event, as everyone seems to be included. When you are not striving to make sure your evening is superior, you also don’t feel the need to have many different activities occurring simultaneously. Part of this community spirit comes with living in a large village/small town, but if something is happening for the night then everyone seems to know about it and everyone makes sure that the word gets out as much as possible. At the soccer match, my English co-teacher reminded everyone of his rap concert for the subsequent evening. This impending event has already been the talk of the town for the last few days, with many other teachers making sure I knew all the details so I won’t miss out.

While a lack of technology can help enhance the experience once in the moment, its diminished presence can also create authentic memories. Two Sundays in a row I have sat out in the warm sun with Sally while we scrub our clothes in a bucket of soapy water. With no laundry machine we take this time to talk about our lives and our beliefs, comparing myriad of differences and similarities between Senegal and America. As substantial portions of my food always end up in my lap when eating via hand, it is no easy task to make sure all the ceebujen is out of my skirts. With our hands busy it is easy to converse freely, in the process we not only better understand each other’s cultures but also grow closer. In America, laundry at college typically involves throwing a load into the washing machine in the basement, sitting in the nearby lounge to watch Netflix while you wait and then after switching the clothes to the dryer heading off to live our busy schedules. There is nothing wrong with that routine, but it is not nearly as enjoyable or as enriching as time spent in good company.

Along with a lack of washing machines and Netflix, there’s also no DVR sitting underneath the TVs. As we walked back from Monday night’s soccer match, we visited the home of one of the teachers from APB with whom we had sat with at Sabba. We found her in the outside courtyard of her house, sitting on a foam mat and surrounded by a swarm of children. Her sister-in-law sat nearby making ataaya in the dimming light of the evening. Her older sister and mother sifted through peanuts, packaging them in small plastic bags to sell at the market while another cousin prepared the dinner in the warm glow of the outdoor TV. Our visit was prolonged because the nightly Bollywood soap opera came on the TV, and walking back would mean missing this evening’s episode. With no recording saved at home, we nestled into our chairs and watched along with the other women who apparently also closely follow the Indian drama.

The opportunity to share in this family’s nightly routine came about because of a lack of sophisticated technology. In America, high-tech gadgets are so ubiquitous it can be difficult to escape them. But upon returning home I will continue to look for moments where technology takes a backseat role. When driving in the car with someone I will make sure to put the phone away and just look out the window, talk, or listen to the radio. If I don’t really need to go online and I am just reaching for my phone out of boredom, I will try and find someone to talk to or a book to read. I hope that the way of life I have grown accustomed to in Senegal will stay with me even when 21st century distractions start to invade my daily life.