So you think you can dance?

Dance is a universal language. One doesn’t need words to express emotions, desires, and story. Though movement and body language, everyone possesses the ability to universally communicate. By utilizing the median of dance, one Peace Corps Volunteer brought together individuals from five different continents in a small Pulaar village in the middle of Senegal.

It all started when PCV Erika received an email on the Peace Corps listserve. A small international dance group was touring around the world with the hopes of performing in fifty different countries in one year. They contacted Peace Corps with the offer to perform in a couple villages around Senegal, if a volunteer desired it. Erika seized the opportunity to enlighten her very conservative Pulaar village of about 250 inhabitants and invited the group to perform at her site. It wasn’t until after the invitation that Erika did a little research on the group and viewed a couple of their videos on YouTube and she realized that the style of dancing is very modern and will be completely foreign to her village. Unsure of how the dance event would play out, Erika pondered that this day could turn out to be one of the most memorable days of her service.

Ndoumane, Erika’s village, is 12K away from Koumpentoum. Naturally, I was not going to pass up the opportunity to check out an international event such as this. I rode my bike into Ndoumane around 10 a.m. (I love bike riding in the bush). The dancers had not yet arrived and Erika had sent out for speakers from a nearby village about three and a half hours earlier. She had arranged to have lunch prepared for her whole village (that’s pretty much the only way you can get people to show up to events in Senegal) and was still waiting for her order of rice and fish to arrive.

The dancers arrived around 10:30 a.m. Of course, the speakers had not arrived yet and the presence of new guests in town started to already draw a crowd. One of the dancers was an older gentleman from Venezuela and the other dancer was a younger guy from Mozambique. He claimed that everyone in Senegal keeps trying to speak Wolof with him since he is African. The third member of the group was a woman from England. She was the choreographer and manager of the group. At around 12:00, the speakers finally arrived – after we had sent out another car after them. The international dancer did their bit for about 20 mins. Their presence along with the noise from the speakers definitely drew a crowd. It was hard to tell what the villagers thought of their contemporary interpretive dancing style. Most of them had puzzled looks on their faces during the presentation – of course it was like nothing they had ever witnessed before. I think most of them thought that the foreigners were just a little confused about what “real” dancing is. Nonetheless, the village was still very grateful for the guests’ visit. In addition, a few of the JICA volunteers came in from Koumpentoum to check out the dancing for the day, so it was quite the international crowd represented in Ndoumane that day.

After the dance troupe had finished their bit, the villagers of Ndoumane capitalized on the sound system that was reserved for the day. This meant very long winded speeches into the microphone which pretty much all covered the same general statements of “peace be with you” and “we are very happy”. The sound system also served as an opportunity for Ndoumane to whip out their dance moves. These dance moves varied from the traditional Senegal “booty-shake” dance to an attempt at American hip-hop to imitating dance from the Ivory Coast.

I biked back to Koumpentoum in the early-evening, filled with my lunch of fish and rice and tired from all the dancing that I had done throughout the day. I took the opportunity to glaze off into the pastel-painted sunset as it fell over the vast bush in Senegal and used the moment to remind myself that I am actually here, living the dream. It had been a great day.