An afternoon worth remembering:

It was about 2:00 on Saturday afternoon and some friends and I (all tuubaabs, read: whiteys) were making our way across the north end of the island of Saint Louis -- not exactly a long trek, considering the city is four streets broad. We were walking along a cross street past a group of hut-like structures when a gaggle of women started waving to us. We waved back and continued on our way, but before we got far, we realized that the women had started to yell at us. They were saying yelling at us because we had rudely not greeted them properly; we had not shaken their hands. Friendly and good natured tuubaabs as we are, and dedicated to distance ourselves from the throng of French tourists roaming the streets, we stopped and went over to shake hands with our new friends. The women were tickled that we had actually stopped to talk to them, and even more so that we could fake our way through Wolof. Faatu, the clear matriarch of the bunch, commended our openness and our language skills and invited us to have lunch and tea with them. Who were we to refuse?

We followed Faatu into her house, from the outside a modest grass-hut-looking structure. Inside, we found cable TV, a DVD player, and a really fancy radio. Faatu turned the radio up and started blasting her favorite mbalax tunes and she and her friends gabbed and guffawed, and we sat there confused and amused. Women kept running out to get their friends to come and meet the tuubaabs who had come for lunch. With no men in sight, and considering the anomalous butch dress of several of the women, I thought somehow we had stumbled on some sort of weird lesbian commune in the middle of Saint Louis. Faatu, however, dashed my hopes of having an odd sociological experiment to study when she explained that they were all the wives of military men who lived together waiting for their husbands to return. After bringing us a huge plate of some kind of rice-and-sauce dish for lunch, the fun began.

While Aida Rose started to prepare attaaya, Senegalese tea that you drink from a shot glass that takes two hours to make (because you have to have three glasses; it is very rude to leave before all three are finished), Faatu mysteriously left the room. She returned a few minutes later with her dress tied up around her boobs, revealing a sexy slip and strings of beads around her waist. She began to dance in the middle of the small room, waving her jaayfondé (Wolof for big booty) in our faces with glee. The other women laughed hysterically, and we laughed hysterically, and Faatu laughed hysterically. In one hand she had a curious little clay pot, from which she extracted a long string of beads. She began to wave the beads around with her, and I asked her what they were for. Faatu briefly paused her ecstatic dance to explain that you keep these beads in the little clay jar with good-smelling spices and put them on when your husband comes home to seduce him in the bedroom. Launching back into her frenzy of footwork and ass-shaking, she made each of us smell her sex beads and confirm how seducing their odor was. The other women continued to laugh, and some began to join in the dancing. Everyone came into the middle to strut their stuff, which in mbalax world means complicated footwork to even more complex polyrhythmic beats as well as sweeping arm gestures and lots of pelvic thrusting. Despite the raucous nature of their dancing, each woman jumped in to dance, and then quickly receded in feigned embarassment.

Then it was our turn to dance. Faatu grabbed Julia, her turundoo (Wolof for name twin), and had her mimic some knee-wiggling moves. Our spectators shreiked with glee at her brave attempt. I was next, and they had me try something called the "sizo," which I can explain only as a combination of "tootsie-roll"-esque footwork and "backing-that-ass-up" while making some kind of doling-stuff-out gesture. It is not particularly easy, but my willingness to try was appreciated with an encore of applause and hysteric laughter. One by one the tuubaabs were made to dance, and we all looked like idiots but had a great time. When it was not our turn to dance, we enjoyed our three cups of attaaya, played with the many little children running around, and learned about the entire life histories of our new friends.

Our spontaneous and completely surreal dance party, unfortunately had to come to an end when we finished our third cup of attaaya two and a half hours after our ridiculous meeting. Parting was made only slightly awkward when, after having given us a long spiel about how they are devoted to the idea of Teranga and how foreigners must be made to feel welcome and we gave them all of our sunglasses as presents, they asked us for money. We politely declined but promised that we would come back and bring more presents next time. I'm sure that they will hold us to our promise, and I hope to go back and visit them soon.