Why Did I Hide My I-Pod During the Stop-over in Dakar?

I pulled the complementary gold-striped red blanket closer and shivered in the fake cold. It was midnight local time, 2 AM according to my biological clock and 7 PM back home. Outside the tiny portal windows I could see the halted construction of the Dakar airport.

The stewardess came on the loud speaker to let us know ground crew members would be coming onto the flight to perform a security check and clean the cabin. We would be departing in one hour. I took out my I-Pod and selected Jackson Browne’s Running on Empty in celebration of my 40 plus hours of travel from Botswana, where I had been studying abroad for four months, back to my home in Minneapolis.

A crew wearing blue vests, speaking to each other in French and Wolof, swarmed onto the plane. They called to each across the aisles as they vacuumed the floors and patted down empty seats in an attempt to find explosives. One with a garbage bag walked passed my aisle seat, and I silently slipped my I-Pod underneath my blanket.

Immediately, I was ashamed. I like to think of my self as a liberal person, or at least rational, but this quick concealment was surely one of bigotry, the result of a newly-discovered racism that made me instinctively hide my valuables whenever poor black people were around. The perspective gained after spending a semester away from the American mindset had already began to fade. No one noticed my act of prejudice, especially the ground crew, but it didn’t matter. With a movement of my wrist, I revealed my true nature.

I recognized the error and absurdity of my ways, yet I kept the I-Pod under my blanket. The reasons behind my action became more complex. Even if I was inherently distrustful of those around me, I knew there was no way someone could steal it from my lap, get past the others patting down headrests in search of liquid nitrogen, and make it onto the tarmac with the freedom to listen to my 15 gigabytes of music.

Maybe, I thought, I hid it not for my benefit, but for theirs. In Botswana, I had seen Western culture permeated throughout every facet of life. I talked to people about how their way of life was fading, replaced by something foreign to them, something they could not understand. I saw the collective identity of the Batswana being crushed by the shear weight of American influence. Some accepted it readily, for its association with prosperity, contrasted to the poverty around them, but that did not make the destruction of Tswana culture any easier to bear or witness.

I had never been to Senegal before my one-hour stop over in Dakar, so I don’t know if it’s similar to Botswana, but maybe, I thought, I hid my I-Pod not because of a racist instinct, but because I wanted to keep the Western influence out of Senegal a little bit longer. It was just a small something I could do to help stop my culture from extending further, into places it didn’t belong.

This was the real reason, I thought. Of course I’m not a racist. I settled back into my seat and tried to get some sleep. But my wondering continued. The explanation of my action as an attempt to stop Western hegemony may be a nobler cause than bigotry, but still just as ignorant. Most likely, the ground crew already had I-Pods nicer than my own. And why not? If I can listen to an I-Pod, why can’t the Dakar ground crew have the same opportunity, even if it comes from outside their society? One of the few positive realities of globalization is the sharing of ideas and technology that occurs between countries.

The biggest problem that I saw in Botswana with outside influences was not necessarily the influences themselves, but the pace at which they entered into society. It seemed as if Western culture and Western capitalist development had been dropped right on top of that landlocked, arid country, leaving its citizens scrambling to make sense of it all. While trying to figure out what to it all meant, what was useful, what was not, their culture was slowly breaking apart in pieces. By hiding my I-Pod, I was just trying, in a small way, to give the Senegalese some time to make up their minds about all that globalization offered.

Again, a nice and noble explanation, but still slightly misguided. It’s like the Coke bottle in the movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy, and the confused San people who fight over its purpose, no one really understanding what it is. That story line is now outdated. When I visited the San, they had Coke bottles, and they were drinking from them. Africans are not as blinded by the light as some like to think, they understand what is going on. Some might not like what the West is doing to their culture, but that doesn’t mean they cannot enjoy Coke or listen to an I-Pod.

Development is quickly becoming focused on the individual, with microcredit and capacity building programs emerging as the most successful. Capacity building is all about giving people the option to help themselves, to make their own choices. If they want to listen to an I-Pod, I shouldn’t stop them. If they like parts of Western culture, then we shouldn’t deter that assimilation. But the problem arises when Western culture and Western development is not a choice, but something forced. That is how cultural displacement occurs. It is a fine line between forcing culture on someone and letting them pick and choose what they want to absorb. My short four months in only one African country is not enough time to figure out where that line is drawn. It exists, and finding out where is what successful development should focus on.

Eventually, I gave up my wondering, leaving the I-Pod underneath the blanket to weigh down my lap with all its complexities. Its questions would remain with me for the duration of my 40 hour journey, and probably continue to turn up whenever my thoughts went beyond American borders. After slightly overstaying their promised one hour, the ground crew left the plane and I, still not knowing why, removed my I-Pod from its hiding spot. We departed westward.