Ice

There was a young boy about 14 years old in my village.  His name was Vieux Mane (pronounced "man-ay'").  "Vieux" means "old" in French, but is also a proper name in Balant.  Vieux spoke French very well, having been educated at a small Catholic school near our village.  It was easy to start thinking that he was basically western until something would happen that would remind me that he had grown up in a small African village.

He wanted to see Ziguinchor, so the next time I had business in the city I took him along.  He had never been that far from the village before, and had never seen a city the size of Ziguinchor.  

I took him to the animation house, an apartment that the Peace Corps provided us for times when volunteers in remote posts would come into town.  It was called the animation house because in French, what we did is called "animation rurale," loosely translated as rural development.  We were "animateurs," which made for some amusing misunderstandings with French speakers who weren't familiar with the area - tourists, for example.  "Animateur" also means "disk jockey" in French, so when I told some folks that I was an animateur, there was a pause, some looks, then the question, "Which station?"

When Vieux and I got to the animation house, my friend Ken was there.  Ken was posted to another village to the north, but was in town for some project.  I had to go to a meeting for a project of my own, so I asked Ken to look after Vieux for an hour or so while I was gone.

About a week or so later when we were back in the village, Vieux came up to me and said, "You remember when we went to Ziguinchor?"

"Yes," I said.

"Well, when you went out your friend Lansana gave me a glass with water."  He called Ken by his African name, Lansana.  My African name was Jibril, or "Jibi" for short.

"Yes," I said.  "He gave you some water."

"Well," continued Vieux, "it had something in it.  It was white and floated around."

Now I've known there to be some pretty noxious white things floating around in drinks in Senegal, so I was getting worried.  Ken was pretty responsible, and I couldn't imagine him giving Vieux contaminated water, but perhaps there was something in the glass that he hadn't noticed?

Vieux continued, "So I drank the water."

What! I thought!  You drank it???

"And when I was finished, it was gone!" He said with obvious amazement.

Understanding began to dawn.  "Was it cold," I asked?  It was cold, he said.  

"Ah," said I.  "That was ice."  

Ken had put an ice cube into the water without thinking about it.  Vieux was too polite to refuse the hospitality - hospitality is a major cultural value there - but had never seen ice before.