Les Petits Cochons... oops, Les Petits Moutons

I thought I would share what I deem an amusing story:

I play with little kids' toes. I think children's feet are adorable and well, children's feet are less gross than adult feet... I think of them as much smaller, softer, and having less time to get nasty foot diseases. Anyways, tangent aside, in Dakar when I was at my house playing with my little cousins or when I was at the Pouponniere (orphanage for babies newborn to 2years old) or when I was at the SOS Village des Enfants (orphanage for children 2years and up), I played with the children's precious little feet. Often times I would play the "Little Pigs" rhyming game where you deem each toe a pig and tell a story until you reach the pinky-toe where you jumped into tickling time. I had always thought I was spiffy for implementing a fun activity I had enjoyed as a child, you know, sharing a little of my culture while practicing my French skills. However, I quickly, and awkwardly I might add, learned how to appropriately alter the rhyme to be more culturally acceptable. What exactly does that mean? Well, I was in a country where over 90% of the population is Muslim, which essentially means that no one eats pork and pigs tend to be thought of as... well... nasty creatures.

One evening I was with my little cousins, Hadijou (age 5) and Fatima (age 3), and my little sister Marianne (age 9) and I did the rhyming game with Hadijou. Fatima loved what I had just done and begged me to play the game with her next while Hadijou still sat in giggles. When I looked over at Marianne, it was a completely different story. Marianne looked at me as if I were completely off my rocker, as if I had said something really nasty. I asked her why she looked at me that way. She didn't tell me, she simply shrugged her shoulders and giggled at me. I asked her again. She continued to giggle. I asked her a third time and well... she told me that pigs were gross, that she had never and would never eat pork, and that her cousin ate pork sometimes but only because she was Christian. Nevertheless, my little sister thought it was nasty to play a game where your toes became pigs. I rougi (blushed)... I cracked up... and I decided from that moment on I needed to slightly alter my methods playing with childrens' feet.

From that moment on, I changed the "Little Pigs" rhyme to the "Little Sheep" rhyme - I thought it was ingenious considering sheep play a significant role in Senegalese family life and that sheep meat is a favorite in Senegal. Thus, "Les Petits Cochons" became "Les Petits Moutons."