Upon embarking on my DukeEngage trip to Dakar, Senegal, I hadn’t fully considered the implications of living for the summer in a country in which I didn’t speak the language. I thought it could be cool to live on a different continent for a summer. It would be cool to be able to say I’ve lived on a different continent for a summer. After all, why had I applied for the program? November 2024 me was already feeling swamped by my first midterm season, the reality of actually being a Duke student kicking in. I honestly was happy to commit to the program to lock my summer plans in early instead of taking on the arduous task of applying to endless internships for which I felt or was unqualified. They could wait until next summer.
This summer, I would be teaching English and Digital Literacy skills to adult learners. Duke was partnering with a local university, the Institut Islamique de Dakar, to provide free summer lessons to university students and professionals in Dakar. Speaking English opens up a lot of career and education opportunities in West Africa, and many Senegalese citizens are extremely motivated to learn the language. I was excited about the program’s mission: if you spend any time with me at all, you’ll ascertain my love of language (I never shut up). Look into my major (Public Policy) and some of my extracurriculars, and you will learn of my passion for accessible, high-quality education. The program was a great fit, and I loved teaching, connecting with my students, and honestly learning more from them than they learned from me.
I’m left feeling profoundly grateful for my time in Dakar, especially the things about the summer that I didn’t expect. Here, I want to write about one such unexpected experience: navigating nightly dinners with my host family’s maids, an interesting challenge, considering we spoke none of the same languages!
Rewinding to the beginning. After a spring semester of attending preparation meetings for the trip, dutifully completing my required readings, going to Campus Health to get travel vaccinations (typhoid, hepatitis A, yellow fever, few updates of routine shots, my anti-malaria pill prescription), going back to Campus Health to get two more shots that they hadn’t given me for some reason, wrapping up finals, surviving beach week, and slogging through a couple dull weeks at home, it was finally time to go.
After a long flight in which I was seated somehow both directly in front of, behind, and next to fussy infants, I touched down in the outskirts of Dakar. I was disoriented; stepping off the plane at what felt like 3 a.m. into the hot sun and sandy streets that I would come to know so well. I was even more disoriented and honestly downright terrified when, after the hour-long ride from the airport into the city, I was the first of our cohort to be dropped off at my host family’s house. My DukeEngage guides came in with me, spoke with my host mother in rapid Wolof and French, asked her to show me to my room, then swiftly departed, to drop the other DukeEngagers off at their own host families. My fellow Duke student housemate, Ellen, would not arrive until the evening, about twelve hours later. I was alone with a family I had never met before, in a country and continent in which I’d never been before, with honestly no idea what I was doing.
I arrived at a rowhouse in a residential neighborhood in midtown Dakar, where I was to stay with Kassé family. My family consisted of my host mother, Mama Kassé, a seamstress whose shop occupied the front part of our house, Papa Kassé, a semi-retired journalist, Malick, their 20-year-old son, a university student in Dakar, and their three maids, Fatou, Awa, and Astou. Only Papa Kassé and Malick spoke English. Mama Kassé and our maids spoke French and Wolof, Senegal’s regional language. Of course, Papa Kassé and Malick were the ones most often out of the house, of little translating use.
That first day, alone with my host mother in the house, not quite with my bearings, I tried the best I could to make conversation. Using exaggerated gestures and my (laughably) limited and halting French, I gave Mama Kassé the gifts I had brought her, and tried to make conversation. This was one of the hardest things I have ever done. She was confident, regal, and steady, while I was nervous and hyper, trying to show her my respect and gratitude. We made a mismatched pair, in energy, language, circumstance, and almost everything else. But I tried my best, and I think, at least I hope, that I conveyed my appreciation.
My DukeEngager roommate, Ellen, arrived that evening, and things got smoother. We spoke as much as we could with the Kassés, met the maids, and took a walk around the neighborhood. I was really there. Really doing it.
We soon settled into our routine: we’d get up, eat a light breakfast with the family, then head out for the day for orientation, then our teaching job. After work and Wolof class, and time at a neighborhood gym that we all joined, we would return home to the Kassés’ for dinner.
Most of the time, Ellen and I ate with the family’s maids, Mama and Papa Kassé preferring to eat earlier. We all would sit on the ground to eat around a large communal bowl near the Kassé’s outdoor kitchen, and eat out of it, usually a meal consisting of rice and meat, with baguettes on the side. So many baguettes. The maids ate out of the bowl using their hands, but considerately gave Ellen and me spoons. Some people from home were shocked when I mentioned my dinner companion’s way of eating, but even from the beginning it seemed perfectly natural and easy. I never minded this difference in what we were used to. Awa, the most senior (or the most spunky… I could never tell) of the maids, would tear the protein off the bone and portion it around to everyone’s part of the bowl.
Eating dinner together as a family, talking about our days, is a value long instilled in me from growing up, and then transitioned to eating with the friends that became family every night at Duke. I was glad to continue the tradition in Dakar.
Awa, Fatou, and Astou spoke Wolof amongst themselves and with the Kassé family, and French sporadically. Ellen spoke just enough French to get by, and I tried the best I could with French (with limited success). We both dutifully attended and practiced our Wolof, the biweekly lessons being part of our DukeEngage program responsibilities.
I have never experienced a language gap like this around the dinner table—in this case, dinner bowl—and it was challenging at first. I am used to being good at language, extracting the right words from my vocabulary for any situation, using them to ingratiate myself with people, form relationships, make connections. I was now completely unable to. I was out of my element. I would find myself wanting to ask the maids how their days were, what they did, how they were feeling, all the traditional polite things one asks around at dinner to connect. I realized, feeling absolutely unsettled, that I did not have the vocabulary or ability to do that here, with these women.
I think Ellen and I were both uncertain of how to connect with our dinner companions at first. Sometimes it was awkward. We would mostly sit quietly, eat our portion of the meal, and listen to them converse, joke and bicker in Wolof. We’d say “jerejef!”, Wolof for “thank you”, when Awa gave us more meat. Our steadfast repetition of the word in our foreign accents led to laughter and kind mocking at our over usage of one of the only words we knew in their language.
As time passed, though, we slowly found ways to connect across languages, filling in the gap between our vocabularies. We’d use Google Translate, but sparingly. We wanted to try to connect in real time, without the pause needed to type and read and type and read. We’d be extremely intentional about our facial expressions and non-word noises, trying to express excitement, questioning, happiness, thankfulness, contentment visually; pretty much every emotion one might traditionally express with words at dinner with loved ones.
Ellen and I grew our Wolof vocabulary, wanting to meet our hosts where they were, not wanting to demand their accommodation. We learned to say that the dinners were “neexna,” meaning great or delicious. We could also say that Senegal itself was neexna, which we did a lot. We could ask how their days were, “Na nga yendoo, and how their work was going “Naka liggéey bi?” I think our increasing confidence in using Wolof meant a lot to them. It meant a lot to us, too. Being able to connect with these new friends on their linguistic turf, so to speak. It showed them, and us, that we could play. We were learning the rules of the game.
Our dinners grew more comfortable. Ellen and I, and Fatou, Awa, and Astou, leaned on every single word we all understood: the words we had in common, so to speak. Each of those words went a long way, longer than I would have thought. Every word we all understood, whether it be in French, English, or Wolof, took us strides further in understanding what each person was saying, further in understanding each other.
We could all understand some Wolof words about work, how our days had gone, our state of mind, food, the weather, and our relations. French went a little further, all those plus words to express some of our actions and plans for the day or weekend, and basic conversational vocabulary. The maids knew the English for some types of food, time markers, and other basic conversation benchmarks.
I realized that the words we all understood, that we all had in common, took us really far. We’d repeat the words we all knew encouragingly, and used context clues, our faces, and gestures to go from there, so that everyone eventually caught on to the gist of the conversation. It became a new language, in a way, a mix of French, Wolof, English, and our faces and hands. Something new, something rather beautiful.
Finding the words that we had in common with Awa, Fatou, and Astou, with whom Ellen and I had very little life experience in common, felt profound. It also made me think about the state of things at home, in America. Ellen and I and the maids were eventually able to communicate productively, despite having almost no overlap in language or experience. I think this was because we did it in good faith, and with a willingness to listen and learn.
My unique dinner conversations this summer taught me that the basic importance of breaking bread (in this case literally– again, so many baguettes) with one another transcends language and connects people, no matter the culture. It also taught me that communication across differences is more possible than we think. If Ellen and I and Awa, Fatou, and Astou could understand each other, despite having virtually no surface level commonalities or language, I think we should all try to make a better, more earnest effort to build bridges with those around us. Even if we don’t have many shared opinions, vocabulary, or lived experiences, an honest effort to connect goes further than one might expect.
by Anna Vannoy
