My Name is Sisqo

by Elaine Tassy | 2009

A nine-year-old boy who went by the name of Sisqo was sitting on a porch outside a small Senegalese house, his eyes bright as he taught a group of American volunteers the local version of "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes." Tapping his hairline, he said head in Wolof. Then he went through neck, hand and chest. But when someone tapped his head while saying "hand," Sisqo laughed, started over, and looked at him as if to say, "This time, concentrate!"

Sisqo – whose mother died when he was seven and who didn't have a relationship with his paternity-denying father – lived in the Senegalese village of Keur Momar Sarr, where I spent the summer of 2000 volunteering. He slept on a mat on his bedroom floor and had a face so skinny that his cheekbones protruded. But he, more than anyone, taught me that living in what I'd consider mind-boggling poverty didn't mean he was suffering from it, and that maybe it was me, not him, who was starving – for the sense of community, pride and gratitude that came to him so naturally.

I arrived with 12 volunteers from Operation Crossroads Africa, a non-profit group in New York that dispatched teams for a summer of altruistic construction, medical and agricultural projects in countries including Ghana, South Africa and Tanzania. Most of us came with a westerner's mindset: the villagers were going to benefit, we thought, from the free labor we were there to offer.

* * *

In mid-June we arrived at Keur Momar Sarr, a village of 2,000 people, four hours south of Dakar. Too tiny to be on most maps, Keur Momar Sarr was an hour from the nearest town. It was dry, with little economy other than the shops along the roadside and weekend markets selling handicrafts, homemade beignets, printed and batiked fabrics, henna hand-tattoos and newly skinned goats. The few jobs available paid ridiculously low wages. Electricity was sporadic, so few households had refrigerators. The house the volunteers stayed in, three or four to a room, was nondescript with no indoor plumbing. We usually ate and hung out on a large outdoor front porch. It was there that Sisqo, on unsupervised summer vacation, came to visit us. He lived the equivalent of a few blocks away, in a small network of one-story, free-standing buildings with his grandmother, uncle and extended family. He seemed free to come and go whenever he wanted, since there was virtually no danger for children in the closely-knit community where people gave each other store credit, looked after each other's kids and braided each other's hair.

Most of the time he showed up in a pair of girl's hot pink jeans. He probably didn't see it that way – in Senegal clothes were for the people they fit, regardless of the manufacturer's intentions as to gender. He topped them off with a yellow and blue nylon soccer shirt, huge green flip flops, and around his waist, a small leather pouch no one was supposed to touch called a gris-gris, containing secret contents anointed by a Muslim leader and believed to protect the wearer from harm.

One day Sisqo came over while we were having breakfast before volunteer duty to plant trees that would yield leaves the village residents used for medicine. His round gleaming eyes noticed everything. His skin was the color of dark chocolate, and his big-toothed smile took up half his face. Like many of the kids in the village, his hair had a rust-colored tint that suggested malnutrition, and bones protruded from his elbows and chest. Breakfast that morning was six-inch hoagie rolls we spread with a chocolate hazelnut paste like Nutella. I couldn't finish mine, so I handed the rest to Sisqo, who took it carefully and silently. He stuck his little finger into the chocolate part and put it in his mouth. After a few bites he handed it to another boy his age who was also visiting, and he also took a few bites without saying anything. Only boys had the freedom to make these sorts of visits. Unlike boys, girls usually didn't learn French or go to school – they stayed home washing clothes by hand, squatting over buckets in the backyard, and cooking on kettles fueled with coal. Some were forced into marriages with much-older relatives. Boys had relative independence, but still acted with the people around them in mind. Even if, for example, Sisqo loved the chocolate spreaded bread and was feeling ravenous, to keep it all for himself would be unthinkable in the company of other kids.

His given name was Maissa Kebe, and a few days after we arrived he and his friends started a summer-long inquiry of black entertainers. "What does DMX stand for?" was a frequent question, and "The Thong Song" by one-hit wonder Sisqo was at its height of popularity – villagers sang "Let me see that tho-o-o-ng" without knowing what the words meant. Kids wanted to be called the names of the rich and famous, so Maissa Kebe became Sisqo; another boy was dubbed Eddie Murphy; others Prince and Kobe Bryant. "My name is Sisqo!" he'd call out in an earnest voice. "I am nine years old!" he'd inform whoever was around in order to practice the little English he knew. "I am fine, thank you!"

Shortly after Sisqo renamed himself, he decided to find a place for himself as part of the volunteer project we read about in the Operations Crossroads brochures. The New York-based organization offered programs in many African countries; I chose Senegal to work on my French, and because I read in an article that actress Alfre Woodard said the Senegalese celebrated her size and color so much when she went there that she wanted her nieces to visit.

Sisqo showed up at a field we were working in wearing a sleeveless t-shirt big enough for an adult, over-sized flip-flops and faded cut-off jeans. We couldn't begin planting the saplings from a nursery until the ground was wet with rain, so to keep us occupied, our team leader one day suggested we clear weeds and debris from land intended to become a bigger nursery. The heat was so overwhelming that when I went to our restroom – a small, free-standing outdoor room with no sink or toilet paper holder – and squatted down over a slot in the ground, I noticed I'd sweated the available liquids out of myself until my urine was the color of iodine. Collecting debris from the land and making it building-ready was wiping the volunteers out. None of us had ever worked for less than minimum wage, lived without access to TV, air conditioning, indoor plumbing or regular electricity, or endured temperatures regularly topping 100 degrees. But the heat didn't hold Sisqo back. Maneuvering with ease, he pushed a wheelbarrow we'd filled with prickly, dirt-covered tree branches and empty bottles. The other volunteers and I were wilted, oily-faced, scratched and grime-smeared. Sisqo didn't look dirty at all.

As the rains came, we began going to the worksite where we were to plant trees a few miles away. The guys who worked for the local non-profit organization we were partnered with took us in a few pick-up trucks to the sandy fields, where we chopped plastic sleeves off the bottom of bags holding the nursery-grown saplings. Then we dug conical holes and placed them in the ground.

When there was work to do, maybe every other day or every three days, it became clear we were more trouble than our efforts were worth. One middle-aged Senegalese woman in a dress and low-heeled pumps was planting with an infant cloth-tied on her back, and her print skirt remained fresh all day. Our Senegalese counterparts asked themselves and us why we didn't work harder. Meanwhile, I got so sick from the worksite heat that the driver took me back to the house, where I sweated the afternoon away under a mosquito net. A volunteer pal and I didn't want to work one afternoon, so we discussed stories we could tell the group leader about why we both had to stay home: "Why don't we say you're sick so you can't go, and I'll say I have to stay here with you in case you need anything, so I can't go either . . . ?"

The sporadic nature of the work, and our lazy and largely ineffective skills we displayed in completing it, left lots of time to get to know the village and its people. Sisqo often hung out quietly, enjoying our company even if he didn't participate. We spent spare time with anyone who was free: the cutest infant in the village whom we named Fudgeball, our peers, grandparent-aged villagers, often lounging outside on woven mats when it got cool in the evenings. We listened to Youssou N'Dour while talking about experiences at our schools, jobs and with our families and friends back home. We showed them pictures we brought and shared CDs on our discmans.

They had a lot to share as well – besides games like the Wolof version of "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes," they taught us the Senegalese ritual of serving tea, brewed to a yellow-green bitter consistency in fire-powered kettles, sweetened until thick and served in shot glasses. They kept serving until everyone had three shot glasses, and often there'd be six people gathered, and two glasses.

One night, a few other volunteers and I decided to introduce Keur Momar Sarr to "Duck, Duck Goose." I explained the directions to about 20 skeptical-looking kids, some in Sisqo's clique of friends. Another volunteer and I demonstrated chasing each other around and sitting in the middle. About 20 kids who'd hustled into a circle for a part in the game picked the goose and raced around the perimeter, shrieking with the kind of laughter heard at a swimming pool on a 90-degree day. Kids' faces lit up in hopes they'd get to run, and there was so much energy that it took on a World Series-like suspense. Parents were lining the circle, screaming and rooting for their kids, some of whom ran barefoot or in sneakers full of holes. One little boy saw a player walking around the circle and cried out: "Goose-moi! Goose-moi!" ("Goose me! Goose me!")

The enthusiasm kids had for games extended to learning – the kind of appreciation for the opportunity of education that is almost unheard-of in the U.S. among children Sisqo's age. He was a fourth-grader at the village school – a sandy, cleared area off the main road with low wicker chairs. No building, desks, tables, coloring books, Legos, puzzles or other toys or supplies. His school was just a chunk of sand in a Muslim village where everything stopped when it was time to pray, where the roads were unpaved, and the baobab trees, of which there weren't that many, didn't have the kind of foliage to guard Sisqo and his classmates from sunshine so aggressive that everything shut down between noon and 2 pm.

Sisqo told me about his school with great enthusiasm. He went to a school for young male children, and it was taught in French. When elementary school-aged, the boys became too old for that school. If their marks were good and their families could afford it, they went to middle school in a nearby town. But many families couldn't keep their kids in school beyond fifth grade because they didn't have the money or couldn't spare the extra hands needed to farm vegetables for income. With no guarantee of further education, and no lamp or desk to study by, Sisqo was a model student. He memorized vocabulary words and worked math problems in pencil in a flimsy notebook, his handwriting innocent and loopy.

"I'm seventh or eighth in my class!" he told me one day.

If his elementary school classroom had a headcount similar to that in an American classroom, being seventh or eighth would put him in the middle. "How many are in your class?"

"Forty-five!"

I stuck out my hand to shake, because in the village, shaking hands with people all day was common and expressed anything – Hello, Thank you, I'm sorry, I forgive you, That's great! It's a deal! Congratulations!

Instead of just shaking my hand, Sisqo pivoted his shoulders away and swung his arm back, and then sent it flying with all the power he could muster, so that when our palms touched there was a loud, hearty slapping sound before he wrapped his fingers around my hand. Being seventh or eighth in his 45-person fourth grade class was possibly as high an academic honor he might ever have to brag about, I realized, after a visit to his house to meet his grandmother left me with the impression that his family did not have much money to fund his education.

He dropped by one day to let me know he wanted me to come over and meet his grandmother. When we got to one of three buildings at his small compound, he started speaking in Wolof to a short, round 30-ish woman wearing a red headscarf and stirring food in a cauldron over a stick-fueled fire at the side of the building. It was his grandmother, who'd taken care of Sisqo since his mother died two years ago when he was seven. He introduced me as Faama, the Senegalese name his friends picked out for me around the time we started calling him Sisqo. She stopped stirring the food she was cooking and smiled at me. It was easy to see they were related, because their faces had the same expansive smiles. In another small building he showed me the room he shared with his teenaged uncle. The uncle had a full-sized wooden bed; Sisqo slept on a sponge mat on the floor. The room had no dressers or toy chests or anything personalizing it except some fabric printed with cartoon characters. One piece was hanging in the doorway as a curtain. Sisqo used the other one as a bed sheet. As soon as we walked in, he hopped onto his yellow-orange foam mattress on the concrete floor, gathered the sheet in a bunch, and tossed it in the air like a beach ball, his face glowing as if the sheet were made of gold.

Several days after the visit, another volunteer noticed something was different about Sisqo: his left eye was red and bloodshot. Right around that time, I got an ear infection after putting a Q-tip that was sitting out for a while in my ear without first dipping it in hydrogen peroxide. This simple negligence had me facedown on my bed in tears because the throbbing pain in my ear was so intense. The village didn't have a doctor, just a nurse who split his time between Keur Momar Sarr and another village, where he was at the time. I went to see him as soon as he returned, and took Sisqo along so he could look at his eye.

The nurse's dispensary was two whitewashed rooms stuck together – one had a table and some chairs; the other, the pharmacy, had shelves of medicines he wrote prescriptions for to medicate villagers who chose him over the traditional healers many residents preferred. There was no sink, needle disposal, record cabinet, paper towel dispenser, examining table or waiting room. After asking me a few perfunctory questions, the nurse prescribed eardrops I had to squirt into my ear several times a day. Then he turned to Sisqo, who explained his symptoms and was prescribed a small tube of ointment I bought at the pharmacy for about 50 cents. To demonstrate application, the nurse placed his finger on Sisqo's cheekbone and pulled down slightly, exposing the white of his eye below the iris. Then he pressed the tube so that a small line of ointment stuck above the bottom eyelid. Sisqo's eye watered and he rubbed it. An oily smear formed on his cheek, a combination of tears and some run-off, and Sisqo did not look happy about the intrusion of this new product. The nurse said the ointment had to go in his eye that way three times a day for the next three days.

Because I could only speak about five words in Wolof (none of them useful in communicating to his grandmother what his eye ointment regimen involved), I decided to take charge of his treatment. I knew I'd be seeing him at the house or around the village several times a day anyway. I didn't think he'd feel motivated to apply the cream himself if it caused the discomfort I witnessed at the nurse's dispensary. So for the first two days, I was in charge: I kept the tube in a rectangular cloth pouch I carried around my neck like many of the Senegalese people we met, and took it out when I saw him, put my finger on his cheek to lower the skin as the nurse had done, then I squeezed a little onto the white of his eye below the pupil.

On the third day I wasn't going to be able to apply the ointment for him, because the volunteers were heading out of town. The volunteer program included excursions, and that weekend, about three or four weeks into the program, we took a field trip to St. Louis, a small city on the water known nationally and internationally for its annual jazz festival.

A few hours before we left, I went to Sisqo's home with him so he could tell his grandmother that she needed to finish the rest of the three-day treatment. I realized on our walk over to the compound that it might not be so simple. If I were her, and someone who'd been living near me for only a few weeks, who didn't even speak my language, came to my place to inform me that she'd taken my grandchild to the medical center, filled his prescription and had been applying an ointment to his eyes for a few days and was now giving me directions for follow-up treatment, I don't think I'd like it. I can imagine my mother going ballistic if someone gave her such a story about me or my siblings.

When we got to Sisqo's place, his grandmother was outside working on that evening's meal. Sisqo started speaking to her in Wolof, gesturing to me, pointing at his eye. When he finished she turned to me and looked into my eyes while she clasped my hands in hers. "You did good," she said.

* * *

We returned from a weekend in St. Louis with souvenirs including batiked fabrics, handmade drums and the game Ouri, carved like an open carton of eggs into a log of wood and played with pebbles. Sisqo showed up shortly after we got back. Now free of his eye infection, he reported that he was mad at his best friend, Aziz Faye, a ten-year-old fifth grader who was nicknamed Best Boy. Sisqo and Aziz were a local institution as BFFs, walking around holding hands like guys did, together so often that we asked where the other was if one popped up alone. Aziz was a year older than Sisqo, with a mellower nature and softer voice. He had a standard outfit: a red and white striped shirt like Dennis the Menace, royal blue nylon shorts, and flip flops a few sizes too large. He was the oldest of four brothers and he walked on his toes and the balls of his feet like he was bopping from place to place a few inches above the ground. Their friendship often struck me as being based as much on activities as it was on non-verbal communication. A fight would weigh heavily on them both, because boys of Keur Momar Sarr their age expressed friendship with spontaneous, freeing energy.

One time, I was taking pictures, and my young subjects started glancing slyly at each other. It seemed like their excitement sent radar out to other kids – soon at least a dozen kids were doing karate kick poses for the camera. When the flash went off, they started high-fiving and pumping their fists like they won the lottery. They fashioned toy racecars from metal scraps, wires, old cans and pieces of wood. Using a wire lead, they tooled the cars around for hours, their faces gleaming with concentration and pleasure. Other times they pushed discarded car tires with sticks and ran alongside them, trying to see how far they could get without knocking over the tire. If Sisqo and Best Boy were fighting, it would upset a lot of kids' lives.

According to Sisqo, Best Boy had kicked him in the leg, and because of that, the two of them were no longer speaking. This news rippled through the volunteer team as we unpacked from our weekend trip. It was an outrage. It wouldn't do. Their innocent hangout sessions and games of one-on-one soccer with a deflated blue ball had become part of our everyday lives.

Sisqo and Best Boy
Senegal © Digital color by Elaine Tassy

Once I put my bag and souvenirs away, I went outside to look into the situation. I saw Best Boy not far from the house, head down low, feet kicking the sand. I asked him to come with me to Sisqo's. On the way, he admitted they were in a fight. He wouldn't admit he'd kicked Sisqo, but his shamed, guilty grin said otherwise. Sisqo was in his yard when we showed up. I asked him what was going on between them and he looked away, scowling. But even with his eyes averted, I could tell he was enjoying the visit and the opportunity to milk his role of the one who'd been wronged. I asked Best Boy and Sisqo if they knew what a calene (French for a hug) was, thinking I could suggest a hug-and-make-up reunion. Their French vocabulary had holes and the word "hug" wasn't used often in Wolof, because hugging wasn't common there. Sisqo said he didn't know the word.

Best Boy, seeing an opening, asked, "Is it this?" and went over to Sisqo. He brought his cheek near Sisqo's and opened his arms. For a few tense seconds I waited until Sisqo wrapped his spindly arms lightly around his friend's. Then they started walking down the sandy path hand-in-hand.

* * *

Things went along that summer with work projects and visits, and soon the program had only two weeks left, then one, then just a few days. The departure plan was for us to drive out of town on the pre-determined morning at 8 a.m. in two station wagons the group leader reserved, all our luggage and souvenirs in the trunks. I hadn't given much thought to leaving until the departure was in close range. In the days before we left, we gave away a lot of the things we came with. I gave Sisqo my plastic yellow sunflower key-chain with a built-in change purse that contained a few coins. He held it in two hands, then he took off the University of California baseball cap another volunteer gave him, put the change purse on his head, and returned the cap back on to hide the key chain in between.

The group leader organized a closing ceremony-party for the night before we left. She and some village officials made speeches, and when she expressed thanks for our work on behalf of the village, a guy we worked and hung out with turned around to face me and a few other volunteers sitting behind him. In a not-unfriendly way, he mentioned that nothing we'd done work-wise advanced them in a way they couldn't advance themselves just as effectively, if not more so. He also reminded us that he was capable of doing much more work independently than we had been able to do as a group. This wasn't news: planting saplings was little more than a cover for spending time alongside members of a Senegalese village while they lived their lives.

At the party, Sisqo stood at a table with his back to me and refused to turn around when I told him we were leaving the next morning at 8 a.m. I managed to invite him to come say goodbye. A lot of the people we'd gotten to know were also going to come see us off the next morning.

While we were sleeping the next morning before the sun came up, the group leader rushed around and woke us up to tell us that the station wagons had just arrived two hours early. We had to get up right away, shower and pack. When rides were off schedule, they were usually late because of flat tires, empty gas tanks, broken fan belts and other car problems that were usually difficult to rectify there. Rides were hardly ever early. By the time we put our bags in the trunk, only a few people had shown up to say goodbye – mostly those who lived close enough to hear the commotion, and that didn't include Sisqo. We couldn't wait any longer. After sad farewells, the cars pulled off down the sandy road away from the village. Although most of us teared up, I was the only one in my car trying to muffle audible crying sounds. I wondered how Sisqo would react when he got to the house at 8 a.m. and found us gone.

After returning home, I know I got more than what I'd come for: the recognition of my beauty and the self-worth Alfre Woodard wanted for her nieces. I also got hot mornings discovering how little work I could do, afternoons walking along sandy paths, evenings hearing Senegale music, and weeks in the company of a scrap-metal car loving boy who liked to point out: "My name is Sisqo! I am nine years old! I am fine, thank you." I think about what he has: his grandmother, his bed sheets, his friends and his schoolwork, and I believe he means it.

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