written Tuesday, 26 June 2007
I found out today how my village got its (two) names. Originally a woodcarver settled here with his family, because there are a lot of trees here (for Senegal, anyway) and it is close to the river, so it was an ideal location for carving pirogues (like canoes) and other things and then sending them down the river. So the area here came to be known as what translates to "the woodcarver's place".
But eventually the woodcarver moved away, and the place was uninhabited for a while, until my host family moved here from a nearby village in search of more land to farm. They renamed the area "New Medina" (after Medina in Saudi Arabia where the Prophet Muhammad was born - there are gazillions of Medina Somethings in Senegal). But everyone still knows the village as "the woodcarver's place".
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