Moon

The custom in the village at night was to socialize with the neighbors, and folks would wander through the village from compound to compound, exchanging gossip, picking up news, and generally enjoying one another's company.

I had been out and about and had just returned to my own compound, where I found a group of men standing and staring at the moon.  The moon was full that night, and as bright as a spotlight beaming down on the village.  It was easily bright enough to read by.  I joined the group and idly commented, "That's the moon."

Many conversations never reach the depth and complexity of that statement, but I thought I'd leap right in on this one.

The men grunted, one of them saying, "Ah!" as though this were a revelation to him.

Talking about the Moon with the toubab was not so unusual when you realize that the Africans all knew exactly one thing about the United States:  We had put a man on the Moon.  Having been a French colony, they were pretty familiar with the French, and to a lesser extent with other Europeans.  But they knew nothing about America - except that we'd put a man on the Moon.  And they were mightily impressed by this fact.

Of course, it didn't hurt that they also knew that Americans came out and lived with them in their villages, wore their clothing and spoke their language.  This was in sharp contrast to the French.  By and large, the French that the Senegalese villagers had met were of the view that the Senegalese should live in the european style, speak French and wear western clothing.  I recall one time in the open market in Ziguinchor.  After I'd been haggling over something or another with a Senegalese fellow, he referred to me as American.  I asked him how he knew that, since the great majority of toubabs in Senegal are French.  He said simply, "Ah, but the French never learn our language or wear African clothes."  The fact that I was wearing African clothing and speaking with him in his own language gave me away.

This reminds me of another, completely unrelated story, which I'll tell anyway.  Many years after my Senegal experience, I travelled to Salzburg, Austria for a graduate law school program.  The airline managed to lose all of my luggage, so I arrived in Salzburg at 11 PM on a Friday night, as the airport was closing, speaking not a word of German and with only the clothes on my back, which happened to be a suit and tie.  The airline wouldn't be getting back to me until the following Monday, so I thought I'd head for the shops and see if I couldn't pick up something more comfortable over the weekend.  So off I sallied, in full regalia on a Saturday morning, looking for shorts and a t-shirt.

I was standing in line in a shop and overhead the owner speaking with a couple ahead of me in English.  When it came my turn, he addressed me in French.  I spoke French well, and we concluded our transaction in that language.  As I was leaving, I asked him why he had addressed me in French?  I knew he spoke English, and since I was an American it seemed odd that he would choose to speak with me in French.  He looked a bit surprised, and remarked matter of factly, "Only the French wear suits on vacation."

But back to the Moon in Africa.

Everyone in the village knew that Americans had walked on the Moon, and one of them had actually watched it!  At the time, he had worked in the electrical generating plant in Ziguinchor.  They generate power by burning not coal, or natural gas, but peanut shells.  Senegal produces prodigious quantities of peanuts, so the peanut plant produced equally prodigious quantities of discarded shells.  They had built what we would call a co-generation plant, taking advantage of the waste to generate electricity for the city.  At the time that Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, the peanut plant had a television and everyone gathered around to watch the historic event.

Since Armstrong was an American, and I was an American, it stood to reason that I knew everything he knew.  They began to pepper me with questions about the Moon.  Actually, like many American boys at the time I had quite an interest in the space program, so I really did know a lot about the Moon landing.  

They asked if the Moon was too far away to walk.  That is, if it weren't mysteriously hanging in the air like that.  I explained to them that the Moon is many times farther away than America.  That was mind boggling to them.  America was farther away than France, and that was the farthest thing they could imagine.  They had heard of people who had gone to France (there were Senegalese villagers who had fought in WWII,) but they'd never heard of anyone going to America.

One fellow wanted to know how you could walk on something so small.  I explained that it only looked small because it was so far away.  Actually, it was quite large.  I then told them that the Earth was also round like the Moon, but it was so large that it didn't look round when you were standing on it.  They were all astonished at this revelation.  Some didn't believe it.

I plunged ahead and said that there is no air on the Moon.  They looked perplexed.  Air is everywhere, I was politely told.  I turned to the fellow who had seen the landing on TV and asked if he remembered what the astronauts were wearing.  He described their bulky spacesuits.  I explained to the incredulous group that they wore all that gear because they had to bring their air with them.  This caused some consternation.

I told them that the gravity is less on the Moon.  Nobody knew what gravity was - there's no word for it in their language.  I explained that it's what makes us heavy so we don't fly off.  On the Moon, we would be lighter and would bounce like dry leaves.

By this point, I figured I'd confounded them enough, so we changed the subject.  Most of them probably didn't believe everything I'd told them, since it was all impossible anyway.