Children and Infants in Senegal

This blog post is based off of preliminary observations, and I will hopefully be adding to it over time.

When it comes to children and infants, I’m most interested in how they relate to adults and in how adults relate to them.

At my CBT site, I lived with 5 younger siblings: Abdou (21 years), BaIsa (12), MaBintou  (8), BaSecou (6), and Mariyama  (4 months). My mother has had 11 children, one of which died years ago. Two of my younger brothers live with family in the Gambia, where they are currently learning English. My younger sister Jhara is 19, and lives in Dakar with her husband. Two cousins from the Gambia were also living with us during my time there. Molamine is 6, and Oumar is 12.

From my time with my family, I’ve noticed that the baby gets a lot of attention and affection from other family members. Abdou in particular takes great pleasure in holding her. The other children also carry her around, but more out of necessity: sometimes my mother is so busy that the other children must take care of Mariyama. Even my father, who rarely does any kind of household chore, will often coo at the baby and lay with her on a mattress in the courtyard.

The other children have a very different relationship with adults. Parents in America often have a huge role to play in their children’s intellectual and psychological growth. I remember endless conversations with my father about recent scientific findings, linguistic quirks, and natural phenomenon. Those were some of the best moments of my childhood.  Adults here will rarely have true conversations with their children. Children are expected to obey any direct order, do chores around the house, and run errands. The work is often physically demanding, such as dumping buckets of dirty laundry water outside. There is also very few physical displays of affection towards children.

People here hold their elders in high esteem, so anyone older than you can expect you to be obedient. My siblings obey without a word, or else.  (I do think my siblings are particularly well behaved, according to other new PCV’s.) My mother has rarely hit my siblings, but she certainly has harsh words when unsatisfied. From other volunteers, I know that some families can be far more violent towards their children, even drawing blood  in some cases. I have a friend who really struggled in situations like these during CBT. 

 If you are older, you can also expect that your needs will be met first and better. For instance, anytime I walk into the room, my younger sibling will give me his/her chair to sit in. Usually, the older siblings and men eat first around a large metal bowl, full of vegetables and fish. My mother eats with my younger siblings, not because she is not allowed to eat with the men, but because she is educating them on how to eat. They are never allowed to reach for vegetables and fish at the center of the bowl, but must instead wait for her to carefully portion food out to them. Their bowl tends to be less full of nutritious food, and has a higher proportion of rice.

My family at CBT owns a large compound, which they share with four or five other families. One family of Pulars has two young daughters who look exactly alike, Fatou (4) and Hadi (2). Hadi had never seen someone with such pale skin before, and she still cries whenever I get too close to her. Fatou, though, always came over to shake my hand several times a day. Despite the fact that she’s only four, she’s the one who made me feel most welcomed there. She has huge dark eyes, never says a single word, and always shakes my hand solemnly.

On one of my last nights at CBT, 60 women of the Danso and Gassamo family descended on Danso kunda (house). They came with gifts for Jhara’s wedding party and for her new baby’s Kulio (naming ceremony). Soon, the courtyard was full of laughter, dancing, singing, and drumming. All the while, money constantly changed hands. Under the tree sat a huge pile of gifts: fabric, large metal bowls, and plastic wash bins. The only strange thing there was the toubab sitting among them, adamantly refusing to dance.

Soon after I sat down, Fatou came up to me and started drumming her tiny hand on my knees. I picked her up and sat her on my lap, her head resting against my chest. After a little while, she started to get antsy, slid off my lap, and wandered into the crowd. I saw her take a few wobbly steps and vomit into the sand. A ton of adults were sitting around nearby, and yet none of them seemed too concerned. Her mother kept a watchful eye on her, but did not get up to help her. She pointed to the far end of the courtyard and told her daughter to go vomit there, so that she would be out of the way. Fatou did as instructed, and did indeed vomit several more times. She did so silently and tearlessly, which was incredibly strange as well as fascinating to me. She might as well have been peeing; it was just a different kind of fluid leaving her body. And a few hours later, she was running around again.

For me, this anecdote highlights some differences between Senegalese and American parenting. Parents here don’t seem to get alarmed when their children vomit, whereas parents in the US are driven into a frenzy. Senegalese parents probably worry when their children are sick for a long time, but won’t panic if their children vomit for a few hours. I wonder if children in the US are conditioned to cry and groan and recover more slowly by their parents excessive concern whenever they vomit or feel unwell. 

More thoughts to come, I’m sure.