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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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Peace Corps Senegal

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Hello Travels with Tavish Readers! I am writing this post as I take a break from packing for Senegal!  I am joining the Peace Corps in Senegal as a Forestry and Environment Change Agent. For two years, I will be living with a host family and working with farmers to help implement sustainable practices on their farms. Many of my projects will be focused on tree planting. I depart for my Peace Corps staging event in Philadelphia on Friday, September 21, then my cohort will fly to Senegal together on Sunday, September 23. We will train for 10 weeks at the Peace Corps Training Center in Thies before moving to our respective communities. Due to limited internet access during service, my posts on this blog will likely be infrequent. You can subscribe to the blog to get an email update whenever a new post is made. After you click the "Subscribe" button and complete the Captcha, you will get an email from Feed Burner to verify your subscription to t...
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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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