Baptism: Senegal Style

Just came back from a baptism. It has been quite a long day. One of my sister’s many little sisters (just someone of the family) had a baby. The baptism takes place a week after the baby is born. It an opportunity for us to all get dressed up, so I took out my best outfit.

The Mom breastfeeding the baby

So my sister has been talking about this for a while, I said I’ll go with her. This would give me the opportunity to visit the village of my family and see what really goes on at these ceremonies; NOT MUCH, I was highly disappointed.

Baby's big sis and mom breastfeeding

So we were supposed to live the house at 8 and OFFCOURSE that did not happen, we ended up living the house around 9:30. My sister was waiting on someone to give here fabric, which will be given to the baby’s mom as a gift. Well this someone never came, so we went to about four different houses, after we got tired of waiting for this lady to look for fabric. We finally got one. Then we left for the garage. We had to sit there for another 2hrs waiting on a car/driver. Supposedly it was prearranged the day before that we will meet at the garage at 8 and leave.. BUT this is Senegal NOTHING ever goes as planned. So we sat and kept moving around to various shops/restaurants (restaurant meaning someone has a table with some kind of shade structure selling food).

So the driver came and we finally left around 11ish. Got to the village around 12ish. There were six of us that left my city to go, all cramped in one car, which we had to pay about $2 each, which I think is too expensive, based on the distance we traveled.

Me, trying to hold her.. Sirra

We get to the village/house, we greeted the family and people already there, and we went straight to the mother’s room. We were there just hanging out, 20mins later rice and peanut sauce was brought so we could eat. I did not… OH SOOO VERY RUDE OF ME. After that more hanging out and I just fell asleep on the bed. Woke up and more hanging out. Then I got talked into telling the baby’s father that I would be doing the mother’s hair and it would cost him about $10. The father and I bargained and got it down to about $6.50. Why this, I don’t know, I was not doing the lady’s hair, it was my sister and her friends that would be doing it. They did not know what they were doing either, so luckily another lady came that knew how to do weave and saved the day.

After that more food was brought, this time it was couscous, made out of corn with sour milk. That again I did not eat. I don’t like that type of couscous, so I just tasted. After that they brought me some sour milk and crackers, ate the crackers and drank just a little bit of the milk.

GOT IT!!

After that more hanging out, IN THE SAME ROOM. We still hadn’t moved. So I spelt some more, while they did the mothers hair. After the hair did, they got the mom all dolled up with makeup. Here after putting on makeup the women just look like clowns, SERIOUSLY. The mom was all dressed up in her outfit; she changed about three times the entire day. The other women twice.

 After she was dressed we left her and went to another house, this involved more sitting around OFFCOURSE. We were all in one room again. My family members that were all there put all the gifts they brought for the baby and her parents together. Each person would give what they brought to the eldest in the room; she would then go around calling each person’s name and showing/telling telling them what gift the person brought.

She is soo tiny

After that the women changed outfits and they went over to the baptism house. I think that’s when they presented the gifts to the baby’s family.  BUT off course, my crazy ASS sister did not want to go, she wanted to eat. SO the both of us stayed behind and ate lunch. Lunch was brought over in two big bowls from the baptism house. One was rice (cheb) the other was white rice with a macaroni tomato sauce base. I ate with my hands as there were no spoons.. SO MESSY

After we ate we went over to the baptism house, while walking over the others were walking back to eat lunch.  So back at the baptism house, we went back to the same room, hung out drank some more milk and the baby pooped/peeped on me EEEWWWWWW…L

So we waited till the car came and picked us up, it took about 30mins for us to say goodbyes. On our way back, we stopped at my family village to say hi and then headed home..

Baby Sirra taking a nap after she Pooped on me

SO overall it was an interesting, long day, I’m still not quite sure what baptisms are all about…