Sounds

• Donkeys braying. Braying sounds like a nice word, but I don't feel it properly conveys the complete pained hysteria the sound actually communicates.

• The alarmingly loud (really, deafening) five times daily call to prayer from the mosque across from my house. And when I say five times, I mean seven: sunrise, noon, late afternoon, two evening prayers, and two pre-call-to-prayer calls to prayer at four and five in the morning respectively. Feeling fairly confident that the praying doesn't actually start til sunrise, I've asked a couple people why the mosque blares at four or five in the morning more days than most, and been informed that it's to warn people that sunrise is coming soon. So basically it's like an obscenely loud alarm clock with no snooze button.

• Roosters crowing, chickens squawking, goats bleating, sheep baa-ing, packs of dogs barking in the middle of the night (I never hear them in the middle of the day, only at night), lizards skittering across tin roofs, horses and donkeys clip clopping through the courtyard in the dead of night. I really don't think there is any sound more sinister than a donkey clip clopping through the courtyard at three in the morning- especially when you sleep outside on the ground and you wake up thinking the creature is going to step on you. This is only slightly more creepy than waking up in eerie silence to see a sheep staring at you at two in the morning from three feet away from your head.
  

• Music playing. This can be anything from 50 Cent, Youssou Ndour, Celine Dion, to Viviane or Baaba Maal, (in other words rap music to traditional kora cds) at any volume from merely loud (playing it on the radio until the father of the house yells at the boys to turn it down) to blasting (someone renting huge speakers and playing dance music loud enough for the whole village to hear)- there's no level which a normal person would really consider quiet or sedate.

• Hot oil sizzling in a pan with onions and garlic.

• Children playing; children crying because someone bigger than them is beating them; children insulting each other (I can't translate the things they call each other on a public website for fear of being banned from the site for extreme profanity); children singing the Senegalese national anthem ( and other French songs they've learned in school with various levels of recognizability when it comes to pronunciation); children laughing. Also, if you're white, children shouting 'toubab!'
  

• Wind and accompanying sound of sand blowing over a vast expanse of desert. Multiply that by a factor of a hundred during a sandstorm.
  

• The swish swish of a handheld broom on a cement floor.

• The squish squish of washing laundry by hand.
  

• Water from the tap filling a bucket; water poured from the bucket to a large clay pot for cool storage.

• Frantic car horn beeping. In Senegal, this does not mean 'Hey, you're driving like a maniac, watch where you're going,' it means, 'Get out of the way right this instant you lowly pedestrians, I'm bigger and faster than you and I have no intention of slowing down for you or that old grandmother carrying a baby on her back and fifty pounds of firewood on her head.'

• Snatches of conversation. With me, certain themes tend to repeat themselves- 'Take me to America!,' 'Do you have a husband?,' 'Give me four cents!,' or the ever popular 'Toubab! Toubab!' Otherwise, it can be anything- 'It's very hot today,' 'Aminata had her baby, the baptism is next week,' 'Where's that music coming from? Oh, there's a presentation at the school today.' Above all, greeting, greeting, greeting.

• Television playing. If it's a Venezuelan soap opera playing, the children sing along to the theme song. If it's the news, the father tells the children to stop making noise so he can hear. If it's a soccer game or a wrestling match, the entire crowd of thirty people who have gathered to watch it simultaneously jump up and down, shout and scream their heads off when a goal is scored or a winner declared. If it's the American tv show 24 dubbed into French, there are frequent efforts to translate the dialogue into Pulaar. I really don't think I can express how funny it is hearing terrorist plots to destroy nuclear weapons using computer-controlled satellite technology being discussed in Pulaar. Also many comments communicating the Pulaar equivalent to 'Jack Bauer is a badass.' If it's a commercial for condensed milk, the children sing and dance along to the theme song (commericals for powdered milk tend to be quite catchy, and usually feature families dancing while singing about the produce in question).

• Cat on a hot tin roof. This isn't a reference to the play; I mean this in the most literal sense. Somehow I don't think Tenessee Williams had as intimate relationship as I do with the incredibly alarming sound of a cat landing on an uninsulated tin roof. The first time this happened, I thought my hut was about to cave in on my head. Does the play talk about the incredibly magnified sound of an animal landing on a tin roof unexpectedly? I could also talk about lizards on a hot tin roof, or pigeons on a hot tin roof.
  

• Jingle bells. Yes, you read that one right. Horses hitched to carts often have bells attached to their bridles to warn people to get out of the way when they hear the cart coming. This has resulted in me turning my head in the middle of the desert and suddenly expecting to see a horse-drawn sleigh pulling up in snow instead of a two-wheeled cart barreling through the sand more times than I can count. Never mind that I've never actually seen a horse-drawn sleigh in real life, so I'm not sure why I continue to have that reaction no matter how many times I hear it.

• A group of Koranic students reciting the Koran in the afternoons, huddled around wooden tablets with Arabic script.

• Radio playing. News in French, DJ greeting in Pulaar. Among other things.

• Women pounding millet and singing along to the rhythm of their pounding.
  

• Mosquitos and flies buzzing, crickets hopping, frogs croaking.
  

• Silence. I think I did hear that once, maybe, in the middle of the night, between the late night chatter, moonlight donkey wanderings, and the competition between the roosters and the mosque for who can make the loudest noise the earliest. But I could be wrong.