As I was walking out to the field this morning, I said good morning to one of my elderly male neighbors and greeted him as usual. He said that there was a lot of grass now and if you walk in it there’s laeye. I looked at him slightly confused since I had not heard that word before, and after he confirmed that I did not know what it meant, he went on to explain that it is water in the grass in the mornings. I exclaimed,
“Oh, dew! Yeah I know what that is.”
He replied that yes- it’s water, and it must come from up above in the trees at night or maybe it comes from the ground, but either way, it goes away each day when the sun comes out and gets hot, then comes back again at night.
Helpless without the vocabulary to explain the concept of condensation and temperature difference in Wolof, I just smiled and agreed with him and went on my way. Sometimes Senegal amuses me.
~E
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