One of the strangest adjustments I have had to make being a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, is getting used to the idea of being a minority. I have never in my life been a minority. And here in Senegal, I have two identities, and I am a minority in both of them.
I am a white person in a black country. I am a woman in a patriarchal society. I am a Christian in a predominantly Muslim country. I stick out like a sore thumb. But I was expecting this, in fact this is one of the reasons I wanted to join the Peace Corps. For the opportunity to live, work and hopefully understand people that are very, very different from myself.
What I didn’t expect is that my second identity, my Senegalese identity, would put me in the minority as well. As Rokhaya (my Senegalese name) I am a Pular. I speak a minority language in a country that is dominated by Wolof-speakers. The fact that I speak Pular is a strange novelty. Even in my Pular hometown of Kedougou, people don’t understand why I wouldn’t learn Wolof. The Wolofs are the largest ethnic and language group in Senegal. And after the French left, their language has become the lingua-franca of the country. The fact that I would choose to speak Pular instead of Wolof or French is seen as bizarre. I am constantly on the offensive. At least once a day a meet someone who is Wolof (usually a young man who has come to Kedougou to work in the mines or sell goods at the market), and I am berated—in French, because of course he doesn’t speak Pular—that I should stop learning Pular and I should learn Wolof instead.
Whenever I leave Kedougou I am constantly seeking out Pular speakers. I look for shops with the names “Sow”, “Diallo”, and “Ba” in the names. I yell at kids in Pular thinking it might make me seem less foreign than English would. I still greet people in Pular in the hopes that they will respond back with “Jam tun” instead of “jam rek”. In a country dominated by the Wolof, I am fiercely proud to be a Pular. To be in the minority.
