If you are coming to Senegal or you have a Senegalese and/or muslim friend, you need to know three magic words that are used countless times per day here.
These are Arab words linked to Islam but I have heard them from Christians too, as a sign of how widespread they are.
The first one is the well known (but often misinterpreted) INCHALLAH (however you want to write it), it means if/how/because it pleases God.
Here’s a typical exchange at my house:
“I am heading out to run some errands. I’ll be back in one hour”.
“Inchallah. Bye”
It doesn’t mean that I will be back only if God will be so benevolent to think that if I get run over by a car my entire family will starve to death. It means rather that I will be back because God likes my plan to go run an errand and be back in one hour, right now.
A certain degree of uncertainty about me coming back will still linger and that is because people in Senegal, and all over Africa I suppose, always have in mind that a big chunk of our existence we have no control over (westerners call it misfortune). But no one in my family feels like they need to be praying for me to come home after the errand.
“Inchallah” means to acknowledge that man proposes and God disposes (so that things go according to plan) but it also means to accept that when things don’t go the way we want they still go the way God wants them to go and so that’s also good. My God-skeptical little mind has a hard time with that part.
ALHAMDOULILLAH is the translation of “Thank God”, you will hear it fifty times a day with salutations and also with anything else. Anything ordinary on a scale between OK and GOOD is Thank God/Alhamdoulillah
Are you oK? Alhamdoulillah.
Did you have a good day/good grade at school/were you hired? Alhamdoulillah.
Fun fact: Alhamdoulillah is often written on cars, buses and all public transportation. It may refer to the fact that those vehicles that are way passed their prime, are still, despite all, fiercely and dangerously running.
I have learnt to use this expression in the salamalekoum (though I still see that as an effort) but it gives me wide satisfaction to use it when a member of my family achieves a basic task that seems like monumental to them and is in fact communicated to me with a great deal of emotion.
A pair of socks found out to be exactly where I predicted it was? Alhamdoulillah! A bag of laundry dropped by the washing machine after 2 weeks of wait? Alhamdoulillah! A cup of coffee finally put in the sink? Alhamdoulillah. A plate of pasta finished after a baseball-match-long dinner? Alhamdoulillah!
MASHALLAH is a synonym of “God is mighty” and you can use it in two different instances:
-1 for an event/achievement which was made possible by God. A wedding being celebrated, a child being born, a good grade at school when it is widely known that you are mediocre in that subject but you worked hard. Or me saying a short hesitant sentence in wolof. “Mashallah” is something that requires working long and hard, it is a celebration.
-2 when you receive a compliment, directly or indirectly. Ex. “You look beautiful!”. We like the compliment but we fear being arrogant and we say “it is all for God’s glory”. Nobody here would ever say “Thank you!” because we don’t look beautiful for the sake of it, our beauty celebrates God. He who made us look good.
All this bringing God up all the time sometimes pisses me off because I think we are ereasing the personal merit: I want to be celebrated for the titanic efforts of producing that little sentence in wolof!
But then I also know that this is a society where the relationship to God, to the mystic, to all that can not be demonstrated with logical arguments is a fundamental element (it is important and it is also a foundation of society)
Westerners think they can control everything and when things get out of hand we consider two options: we were not as good as we should have been or we were out of luck. Africans (I am generalizing, I know) put in God’s hands what they have and what they don’t have, they accept their limits, they almost cherish them.
God’s plan is mysterious and we are at His service.