On Saturday, Tom and I went back to the pottery. This time we brought with us the children of the family that we are staying with. The usual crowd was there, a handful of deaf children, ranging ages 4-13 if I had to guess, and my new favorite person, Boubacar. Boubacar is deaf and probably in his early 30s, he's engaged to be married this weekend, and he has taken me under his wing both times that have been to the pottery. If he is working on a project, he lets me help him make it, showing me carefully with patience how to construct jewelry holders or put add a molded frog to the lid of a bowl. On Saturday, I was mainly working on the frog piece but pottery isn't the only activity I took part in while we were there.
When we were washing up after finishing our Thieboudin for lunch, one of the smaller kids was swinging around on a pole. I decided to join him and make a little game of it, something like tag but while swinging around a pole- I went a little easy on him ; ). To my surprise three of the other kids joined in and in just a few short seconds, five of us were chasing each other around this pole while still holding on with one hand. After that one of the boys showed us how he could do the splits and to his surprise I got down and did them as well. That's one thing that always seems to amaze people of any age here, when a Tubaab can do the same thing as a Senegalese person. We moved on to sharing some of our favorite dance moves with each other, the coffee grinder being one we had in common.
My favorite part of our time at the pottery came next. There is a small tangerine tree in the back yard of the pottery, the kids pointed at me and then at the tree motioning for me to pick a few of the tangerines from the tree. One of the boys wanted to show me how he could juggle and the daughter of the family I am staying with, Jaineba, gave it a shot as well. I am going to take a second to talk about Jaineba because she is definitely worthy of that and more. When I first met Jaineba, she didn't say much, all I knew was that she walked with a strut and had some sass in her tone when ever commanding her brother, le petit Abda. For an eleven year old, she has quite an air about her. For the first time at that pottery on Saturday, we connected. I think because it was the first time that I had seen her act like an eleven year old, playing with friends, and for her it was the first time she saw me act like an eleven year old as well. I have always loved being around children but a lot of times they can be intimidated or put a front when someone a bit older, like myself, is around- especially because I'm not quite yet an adult in their but I'm also not a child. Anyways, back to the tangerines. Those small pieces of fruit provided our entertainment for close to an hour. At one point we formed a circle with about five of us and were passing of few of them around, sometimes in order but mostly trying to catch someone off guard. I was having such a blast and it looked like they were enjoying themselves just as much, if not more.
For these children, amusement is not a video game or playing dress up with Barbie dolls, it's more simple- it has to be more simple. There is definitely not enough money here for kids to have such toys, even a nice football is hard to come by even though the sport is extremely popular here (and by football I don't mean the type the Ducks are going to kick ass in tonight but the kind that the rest of the world plays, what we like to call soccer for some reason). Amusement comes from making a game out of running around a pole or from picking tangerines from a tree in the backyard to juggle with, play catch, or kick around like a football.
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