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Attaya: A Senegalese Tea Tradition

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Throughout my time in Senegal, across many regions and languages, the most unifying cultural force I have observed is attaya, Senegalese tea. My CBT family (local host family in Mbour) makes attaya once a day. My host dad in Kedougou makes it twice a day. Other families I have spent time with fall somewhere in between. Each puts their individual spin on it, but the process is generally pretty consistent. I will describe below how attaya is often made in my village, but small variations do occur among families. Attaya is made with a 100 CFA packet of green tea imported from China. These packets are sold in every boutique in Senegal. Even my village, which does not have a boutique, has multiple people who sell tea out of their homes. Conveniently, the same places that sell tea also sell 100 CFA bags of sugar; one bag is the amount of sugar needed to make attaya. Attaya is made in three rounds, so each person gets three small glasses of tea. In each round, more sugar is added to ...
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Diakhanke (Jaxanke) Greetings and Phrases Part 1

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Greetings are a very important part of Senegalese culture. They are the first sentences you say to anyone you see, no matter your relation to that person. If you do not greet someone, they will not be willing to answer any of your questions or help you. If you greet someone, they will generally be more than willing. This applies to family members, neighbors, boutique owners, people sitting in a restaurant you walked into, and everyone else. With someone you know well, greetings are usually longer. If you walk into a space with lots of people, a simple "Asalaam maalekum" will usually suffice. I am breaking this post into two parts because there are a lot of potential greetings that one can use in any given interaction. Below are some of the most common greetings in my village. I have also uploaded some short conversations with people in my village so that you can listen. Not every greeting is on this list, but I'll try to cover most of the rest in Part 2 of this post. ...
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Waterfall Trip

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At the end of October, the new Sustainable Agriculture and Agroforestry volunteers came down to Kedougou to check out their villages for a couple days, as I did last year. I came into the city to meet them again and welcome them to the region. After they returned to Thies, some fellow volunteers and I took a day to go to the Lombel waterfall. It was a longer walk than we expected (only about 2 miles, but very slow going because there was no trail); the waterfall was definitely worth it. A quick post today. More posts coming very soon. Enjoy the pictures! Watching our footing as we follow the river to the falls The beautiful Lombel waterfall My friends and I at the waterfall My friend Andrew climbed up to the top of the waterfall for a look down the cliff A view of the valley from the top of the falls
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