Insh Allah

Several weeks ago I was down working in the garden I share with a man named Walli. I had just finished watering the entire garden by myself, a job which requires me to draw about 25 buckets of water, when Walli shows up. Often I do not see him it at all in the garden, which I do not blame him for because his brother passed away and he cares for his own family and his brothers in another village while working his fields and keeping up this garden. I am still at the stage in my language acquisition which dictates that I understand very little of what has been said to me and Walli begins telling me about what I gather to be his wife in the nearest town with a road, 4 miles away. He had spoken of her presence in the hospital there to me over the previous days but I didn’t understand the specifics. This time I gather that his wife is pregnant and then I catch onto the vague statement ‘baby died, but my wife is alive’. He follows this statement with ‘but you watered the garden, so that’s good’.  The loss of a child is a tragedy under any circumstance yet without competency in any common language I was unable to offer any condolences, and left standing there speechless. I think part of what offset me was the rapidity with which he moved onto the statement ‘but you watered the garden, so that’s nice’.  I theorized the reason which caused his actions were partially his own unique way of experiencing grief and partially a cultural normality of death as a very probable reality.  This event was followed by several similar ones which put me on a rather somber train of thought.

A week passed and one morning my host brother enters my hut and tells me that someone has died. Apparently a two year old child in a compound on the western side of my village died. My host brother tells me I should go and greet the family but leaves it at that. With little language under my control and no idea what one might say in such a situation I postpone for the expected greeting for the time. The next day someone asks me if I’ve greeted the family yet and I tell them I haven’t. Eventually my work partner comes to my hut and tells me I really should go and greet them and that he will help me. A work partner is a liaison between the volunteer and the village and culture. On the walk over I’m informed of the correct thing to say which is “_____ died. God is sad and sorry.” I nervously make my attempt to say this in Pulaar to the grieving family, worried that a screw up now might just make them feel worse. I’m still unsure whether the absence of their observable grief is cultural or individually based.  

Another two days pass and I wake up and head outside to greet the usual people with the five or six back and forth phrases. The first person I greet doesn’t greet me in return but tells me someone has died, and that this individual is the wife of my work partner. Now I’m just sinking fast because I consider my work partner to be an extremely nice man. Mama Sailliou(Sal-e-u) is his name, and he always speaks slowly and softly with me and tries his very best to bring me into comprehension.  I look on him almost like a Senegalese kindly old grandpa. Upon learning of his wife’s (whom I could not recall having met) passing it was all these ideas that made the event seem so saddening. Then I realized that I would need to go to his compound very soon and use the same words he’d taught me only days prior to communicate the culturally appropriate condolences. I began the short walk to his compound and arriving was informed that he had left and would return later in the day. It was nice to have a little time to process. Slow day, as one might expect, but as the sun began to set it was time to return and try again.

Half the community was grouped in the compound with most of the men and women sitting in separate circles chatting. There was a line of women six or so long on either side of a building all in what an American might term “their Sunday best”.   It is now just after dusk and I have yet to see my work partner.  There are groups of people sitting next to small fires, simply several sticks burning to keep a body warm for a short time and to throw a little light. Then a train of ten women walk into the compound and the third or fourth women is weeping and wailing. The novelty was when the full train arrived near the women sitting in front of the building all the women and children began to cry and wail simultaneously. The men sat somberly and the women and children mourned openly and briefly, the endeavor lasting only several minutes for the majority while a few children and women continued and did not cease as suddenly as they had begun.  The arrival of Mama Sailliou minutes later almost seemed anticlimactic after such events as I’d seen within that hour. Though as always he was polite and soft spoken and after accepting my condolences began trying to explain to me the cultural implications of what everyone was doing.  The wailing was a sort of controlled release of distress from individuals seeking comfort for their loss, and acting as a group gave solidarity and support. All interesting information but the man who was giving it to me had just lost his wife. I think the whole situation shows my Americanized sensibilities a new way of looking at things.

The new way of looking at things is verbally expressed by Senegalese and much of the Islamic world by the statement “Insh Allah” meaning ‘God willing’. In Senegal and in much of the world that has yet to be deemed ‘first world’ time has a different perception than in America and other ‘developed nations’. In America I’ve heard often “I have a meeting next week”.  The word ‘have’ in this context implies that the individual owns some part of the future.  Americans tend to think of the future as an obvious and malleable probability rather than a vague possibility. Americans say “I will see you next week” and consider it a certainty. Here in Senegal people will say “I will see you tomorrow, insh Allah”. If God agrees we will see one another tomorrow. This term is post positioned to almost every statement with regard to future events, because here there are many forces that might oppose such future planning.

Most jobs in America have strict tardiness policies stating that being late is a punishable offence. This mentality that the future is such a definite probability that if one fails to manage it they should be held accountable is considered by much of the rest of the world to be excessive. Here in Senegal within the next three hours you might become ill, get a flat tire, have a car break down, have a relative become sick, die, have a relative or friend or member of your village die, or there might be a birth, or there could be a fire, or there could be animals breaking into your garden and you need to take care of that immediately, and if you’re travelling any of these things could happen to the driver and thus it’s almost amazing that anyone manages to make it anywhere to me. Yet living in this culture makes one question their preconceived notions of time and that, to me, is wonderful. I came here to see things from a different angle and to learn crazy new things and for all the bad stuff that happens in the process I am incorporating mass amounts of new data into my worldview.

It’s just been swirling around in my head that Americans, who are so obsessed with their/our absolute control of the future, often stop just short of the final stage of life, death. It seems as though the Senegalese realize and accept this culturally. It’s rather freeing to live here because other people don’t become angry with you because you have failed to bend the future to your will. I might even call it a more realistic outlook. A guy comes to work late three times and he’s fired for not being a master of the space-time continuum.  Here you’re late and people are understanding and just kind of say… ‘shit happens’. I like it. My ideas are a bit jumbled but it’s Africa… shit happens!