Senegal 2012: Field Notes Digest (Part 2)

The Traditional Medicine Hospital at Keur Massar is more of a compound of specialized buildings, well groomed land, and a comprehensive garden of the world’s medicinal plants (and it’s growing). A sign out front lists some ailments they are capable of treating, probably the most common, which reads like a fast food menu. It also makes mention of the price structure: Consultations are 1000FCFA, and treatments are the same. I am told that in the event that a patient cannot afford either, they are more than welcome to make installments. The generous pay-what-you-can policy found at the guérisseur in Dakar might be missing here, but it’s understandable: Keur Massar is a self-sustained property where the plants are grown at the point of sale. One might think that the cheaper rates and wide-open rural space might be more attractive to those in need, but at this time of the year, the hospital may only see five to ten patients a day. Unfortunately, Keur Massar is about an hour and a half from downtown Dakar by autobus (or 3 hours, in my case), though the cost is only 400FCFA there and back. On the other hand, a trip to the guérisseur from my neighborhood could be 10 minutes at 2000FCFA by taxi or 45 minutes at 200FCFA by car-rapide – both prices being round-trip.

Senegal 2012: Field Notes Digest (Part 1)

I’ve been in Senegal for two weeks now. This is my first time to Africa, and it certainly won’t be my last. For the most part, it has been an easy transition, but I’d be lying if I said that my first couple days weren’t completely overwhelming. It is one thing to be a foreigner here, but I get the impression that my experience is strongly influenced by the fact that I am tubaab – a Wolof word that describes me as a Caucasian, and implies that I have wealth. Senegal isn’t special in that regard; people the world over tend to assume that “because you are white, you have money,” which is a phrase I often hear. The onslaught of vendors just takes some getting used to.

Getting to the Root of Dengidëk

I often receive emails from the Anthropology faculty and staff alerting me of opportunities to study abroad, participate in a field school, or look into a particular graduate program. Sometimes they are sent to all anthropology students, sometimes a selection of them, and in many cases they are sent only to me. Most of the time, these advertisements – titled something like, “FORWARD THIS TO YOUR STUDENTS!” – don’t apply to my interests, and they go right into the Trash folder. This past December, however, I received one that caught my eye and I had to give it a go.

Please Don't Beat Me, Sir!: A Review

I have been thinking about this for weeks: What qualifies me to write a review for an ethnographic film? As of now, I am eight weeks into a course on visual anthropology and two-and-a-half years into an anthropology degree. I don’t know film theory (and frankly don’t care for it), and as it regards this particular film, I know next to nothing about the cultures of India, let alone India itself. And then I thought: Who is the intended audience of such ethnographic film? With the exception of those that find a wider audience (like Melissa Llewelyn-Davies’ 1984 BBC series, “Diary of a Masai Village” [sic]), most of these films are intended for institutional-use – I am the intended audience, and I guess that is my qualification.

The oft-asked question throughout my visual anthropology course has been based on the core of Karl G. Heider’s Ethnographic Film: What is “ethnographicness?” To really get to the heart of such a difficult (and at times, contentious) inquiry, I ask, Who speaks on behalf of the film’s subject? It is from this perspective that I review the film, Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir!

This is the story about the sons and daughters of “criminals,” their choice to turn away from the ways of their elders, and how they cope with a world that is not ready for their metamorphosis.

Scrooge Is My Hero

Some of my peers have called my atheism militant, while others accuse me of being a relativist. I will admit that it can be difficult to reconcile my disgust for religion with my love of culture; I constantly battle with Evans-Pritchard’s granary, as it were. While there are values in religious practice, the most obvious being enculturation, I must draw the line at extrinsic conflict. It is one thing to say that conflict within a given culture maybe inherent to the customs and practices of that culture, and it is another thing entirely to assert the same between two societies or cultures. Religion seems to be the medium for that clashing of swords.

Anyway, to completely switch gears: I do celebrate Christmas. Furthermore, I am more likely to say “Merry Christmas” than “Happy Holidays,” because that is how I was raised. Despite the utterance of mere habit, I do actually enjoy Christmas, or at least the nostalgia of it.

End of Fall 2011

Well, that’s that! Another semester down, and this guy is officially a junior!

It used to be that when a break came along, I did not cherish it. I wanted more than anything to continue my classes, keep moving, keep going. I could never bring myself to read for fun, because I felt that any time that wasn't spent studying was time wasted. That’s not really the case now, but I’m still torn. I look on the ensuing break as a chance to breathe, but I still look at it as an opportunity to study what I want to study. Reading for “fun” pretty much means reading textbooks or edited volumes, as opposed to reading ahead in the textbooks for the coming semester. I might even let myself play a video game here and there. (I do fear playing Skyrim however, as it may put my relationship with my girlfriend and school in jeopardy.)

The American Pantheon

Speaking to a women’s evangelical conference in April of 2010, Sarah Palin defended the union of church and state, saying that our Founding Fathers “were believers [in God]” (Sargent 2010). Palin’s statement is in line with much of political conservatism in the United States; there is a propensity to anchor the party line with an invocation of the Founding Fathers, but the Right are not solely responsible. In response to Palin, only days later, liberal television pundit Keith Olbermann retorted, quoting Thomas Jefferson in an 1823 letter to John Adams. The quote reveals that Jefferson regarded the story of Jesus and the virgin birth as fantastical as the Roman myth of Minerva born from the head of Jupiter (Cappon 1959). “A believer?!” says Olbermann, as if Jefferson is solely representative of the Founders.