Sengalese Svengali addendum

No shit. I think they just set up a slip and slide.

Sengalese Svengali

...and it was then, in the midst of my most perfect post ever, that the power cut out, as it always does, and my post was lost to the land that my server forgot.

So, let me try this again...

I am in my home. It is eighty four degrees with 73% humidity. My house does not feel like an oven. No. Ovens are dry. My house feels like the bowl of green beans that you warm up in the microwave, underneath the plastic wrap...

In the other room, the air conditioner that we finally bought on "no tax" day is cooling the living room. It has just enough power to do that. We don't have doors on the living room, so a curtain hangs between the dining room and the living room holding back (though obviously not hermetically) the cold air. This is my wife's area. It is set up so that she, pregnant and hot, can sit and watch hours and hours of Danjumbo repair various rooms and such on While You Were Out. The Learning Channel itself is an entirely different subject altogether.

I say "finally" in reference to the air conditioner because we were fairly certain before the day of our purchase that the air conditioner would blow our fuze, which near as I can tell is powered by a key attached to a kite string. Or at least it was.

Since the landlord's daughter has moved in downstairs there have been quite a few changes around the old homestead. Our power has been upgraded (hence our ability to run an air conditioner in at least one room of the house), we are expecting a new washer/dryer any day now (and have been expecting any day for over a week), and the old face of our house is getting a lift with a new coat of paint.

Before all this, our house was the ugliest on the block. Brown and tan, though really more umber than tan. And really, that's all technical speak for ugly. I had no problem with the house's homeliness because it insured, in my mind at least, that we would be the last house on the block that any one would want to rob. But now we have a new face to our house supplied by the Sengalese painters that my landlord has hired to do the job.

Today is not the hottest it has been this Summer. A Massachusett's Summer is always on the verge of a thunderstorm. The clouds constantly threaten to crowd out the sun. Some days they manage, but the heat is still there, rays of it pouring through the great nimbus giants that hang over this state turning the Summer into an armpit season, as if the Winter's out here weren't bad enough.

We would, of course, open our windows at the appropriate time of day to let the hot of the house escape were it only for two things. First, we have yet to find out what that time of day is. I suspect that it happens some time around four in the morning, but my experiments have proven inconclusive on this subject. Of course, I had to discontinue those experiments because of reason number two:

The Sengalese painters have painted our windows shut. I suppose that what I would like to say about the Sengalese painters amounts to a critique of their work ethic, but I feel that this is inappropriate or at the very least conditional. First of all, note that I have said the Sengalese painters--I have denoted their place of origin. I don't want my comments to be seen as a reflection on the people of Senegal in general. That is not my intention. It is simply a way of pointing out some very disturbing characteristics about the nature of my situation which I feel bear note.

After all, what I have to describe with regards to the Senegalese painters borders very much on racist commentary. I might say that it's all true, but then someone may take offense that I have already separated these manual laborers from other manual laborers, particularly white manual laborers, though strangely enough the designation of painter will offend no one. Evidently my commentary will not be taken as a sort of bias against the working class, which it isn't, but it might be. Nonetheless, I don't expect that this will raise hackles.

However, in the event that hackles are, in fact, raised, I ask you this: what would you call them? Painters of color? The designation simply doesn't work. It seems to denote the wrong thing. Of course they are painters of color, how does one paint something other than color. I could say "the people of color" who are painting my house, but I've always hated that term. It sounds to much like coloreds which is a derogatory term, but what can you do? The people who invent political correctness are so weird about the damn thing. I suppose I could say Black, marking myself as a conservative racist, or African American marking myself as either a liberal racist or a member of the KKK, but that's not really the point, is it? I assure you that what affects the facts of this story has little to do with skin color, in the case of the former, or hybrid national origin in the case of the latter.

I cannot, in fact, be sure that these people are African American, and I think it inappropriate to assume that anyone with that sort of pigmentation is necessarily American. After all, the Sengalese painters speak with rather thick accents and only to me. Between themselves they speak Senegali (if that's a language). They may very well simply be African, which would explain the culture gap between us, especially in regards to their "work ethic."

They have been here for three and a half weeks. We have been unable to open our windows for three and a half weeks. For three and a half weeks they show up at noon and work until eight at night. For three and a half weeks, their painting vans have blocked our drive way, their Senegali music has blared from their portable stereo, the exits to our home are taken over. For three and a half weeks they have been here, as if challenging me, saying, "this is our culture, try describing it to someone without seeming racist."

I will try. Senegali music is composed of four notes played over and over again, accompanied by the highest pitched singing voice one can find, repeating the same words ad nauseam. Chronologically, these songs are about fifteen minutes long. The part of me that covets modulation, however, believes that these songs are no less than eight hours long.

Aya allali Poo Apu
Aya allali Poo Apu
Aya allali Poo Apu
Aya allali Poo Apu
Aya allali Poo Apu
Aya allali Poo Apu

Careful examination of the lyrical structure of these songs reveals the same basic elements of a Lovecraftian ritual summoning. Who knows how long this spell will take to cast, but if it's casting time is indeed a month, then the painters have chosen an excellent cover for their dark arts.

According to Lawrence Levine, on the subject of African American use of song from his book Black Culture/Black Consciousness, African Americans often sing during physical labor in order to create a group rhythm and also to pass the long hours of work. In this respect, I must disagree with Mr. Levine, as the Sengalese painters often listen to the music during their many hours of staring up at our house, drinking fruit juice beneath the shade of our tree, with their wives and children that they have brought along to accompany them on the job.

Aya allali Poo Apu
Aya allali Poo Apu
Aya allali Poo Apu
Aya allali Poo Apu

By the way, I don't actually know if the workers are Sengalese. I only know that they listen to Sengalese music. For all I know, Senegal is the place you go to if you want to record African folk music, and these guys are just big fans of African folk music. They could be from Canada for all I know, but if so, they have still retained their tribal unity, falling upon our house, not just to work but to supply shade to their woman and an environment which is lush and comfortable for the rearing of their children. They work only when the "father" is here.

Let me repeat that, as it bears repeating. One of the painters seems to be the patriarch of this troupe. And when he is not here, and he is not here much of the time, his children (I assume that they are his, but I have no proof) stare up at our house from the back yard, well away from the street so that their sloth can be conducted in private. I watch them sometimes from the inside of my easy-bake house, and they laugh at me as I try the windows to see if any of them will open. I might go outside to complain, it would be easy to find them all--they are in one place: sitting at my garden table, discussing the various topics of the day, but then they are all around twelve years old, and I would feel bad yelling at children. Besides, who am I to interrupt their singing?

And then, once their father arrives, back to work they go, as if there was never any doubt about what to do next. Mostly, they hang out near the window near my bathroom making sure that it will open. It is, by the way, behind the wall of my shower, and is not openable from my side of the wall. But there they are while I think of showering away my stink or voiding my bowels. This is their hangout. I can hear them scraping, and sanding, and hammering (hammering?) for the entire time they are here, when they aren't playing croquet in my yard. Okay, yes now I'm exaggerating. Croquet, as you all probably know, does require some effort.

Then it is time for them to go home. Another eight hours down, another week added to the schedule, and I walk outside, their music still filling my head, to see that their efforts have paid off again, and another of my windows has been closed permanently, and another quarter of my house still needs painting so as to extend their nomadic stay in my yard indefinitely.

Now, is my story racist. I'm still not sure. Here is the real point of this blog. The Sengalese are simply annoying, but what am I to say. Surely, everything I have said is true. Surely this is the way that things are around my house, especially in the back yard. But is this culture shock? Is this some strangeness that can called something other than foreign? If it were a white guy putting his twelve year old kids to work on my house unsupervised except by their mother who is taking care of her young ones in my back yard, would I have the same reaction that I'm having right now? If they had the job done within a week like other painters I have seen, would I be right now, discussing the cultural attitudes interfering with the painting and cooling of my house? Is there any way, to describe this situation while serving two masters: political correctness and truth? I leave it to you. Understand, be offended, cringe at my choice of words, or throw in (to yourself, of course) your own colorful adjectives. I don't care. It's too hot to care.

Aya allali Poo Apu
Aya allali Poo Apu
Aya allali Poo Apu
Aya allali Poo Apu