The hilarity of Pa Saine

My host father is probably my favorite person in The Gambia. He is a wonderful mix of friendliness, exuberance, piety, protective father, comedy act, fashion statement, inquisitiveness, wisdom, tolerance, and honesty. I often sit with him at night and we just chat and enjoy the radio and the night sky. Sometimes the chats are serious and thought provoking for both me and him and sometimes they are just filled with riddles and funny stories. He usually likes to talk about things that he sees me knowing lots about because I am white - like flying airplanes and what it is like in space, how to fix his government or why they seem to be so many more women then men in the world. But sometimes he also likes to impart his wisdom on me and will recall what it was like to grow up in Senegal, or the traditions of the Sereer and the ways in which Muslims and Christians are the same and should really just get along. I always come away from chats feeling enlightened or just able to look at the topic in a new and interesting way.

As far as the most popular bar scene question in America - "so....what do you do?", which incidentally is a really rude question to ask here, Pa doesn't do much. Most of his days consist of waking up, eating some millet, sitting in his chair, eating lunch, laying on his mat, checking on his donkeys with occasional trips to the bantaba to chat with other old village men or mixing of some traditional herbal remedies if he wants to have a really crazy day. Pa has official senior citizen status here as all his children are grown with good jobs and can thus support him and his wife. Pa used to work very hard farming, but now he just gets to sit and enjoy life and do funny things for all of our amusement.

Funny/Memorable Things Pa Saine has done/said:

1. walks around the compound in his boxers searching for cellphone network
2. repeats "jerejef Haddy" (thank you Haddy) for everything I do or say, sometimes even as a morning greeting. I attribute it to his good natured laziness.
3. insists I take shots of vodka or brandy with him during the cold season so my body "stays strong"
4. spends 2 hours translating a dream interpretation book written by a sheik in Guinea-Conakry from French to Wolof to English. Then helps me find an auspicious day on which to bear children.
5. teaches me how to make herbal remedies from plants in the bush and calls it my marabout (mystical Islamic holy men who do traditional medicine) training
6. sent me home to America with a bag full of leaves and strict instructions for how to make medicine for my grandfather's bad lungs
7. gave me two mango seeds to plant in my back yard with the instructions that I should name each seed after a man I want to marry. Which ever seed grows the tallest and the fastest is the man I should choose.
8. "Which is better, fire or water...." and other crazy either/or questions
9. The "How much this cost in America" game
10. Sound advice - it is better to marry an ugly man who is poor because you will be the only one to love him. If your man is pretty and rich you will always have to fight jealous people. This was his reasoning on why my friend Rachel should marry Pa instead of her current rich, pretty toubab husband.
11. has in depth discussions with me on his thoughts of taking a second wife because "YaBoi is tired." Despite his being Catholic and his plan to have her live in a new compound in Senegal which would not really help ease YaBoi's workload. In the end, he decided new wives cost to much money.
12. Explanations of Muslim holidays, tinted with Catholic guilt and judgement, to be sure I understand what is going on at all times. Ex: "They think it's Ismail but it's Isaac, it's Issac! Ismail is a bastard!" on Tobaski and Muslims (mis)interpretations of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice of his first son.
13. watching him "heal" various villagers and their aliments with his leaves from the bush
14. his cell phone calls in broken English to wish me well and check up on me when I have been gone to long.
15. conversations about the possibility of people living on the moon and Mars one day. "What, there is not water there?! That is not good, we must take it!"