Everyone makes judgments on how someone dresses, looks, or acts even if they do not intend to. In this situation because Senegal does not usually have tourists or visitors it was very easy for them to realize that we were American. Also when people see tourists, many times they just assume they were American and therefore try to make money off of you, especially the merchants. People also knew that we were American because of the way we dressed, especially my mother. My mom wore pants and t-shirts and very Americanized clothing (Fauchet). One of the reasons some merchants left us alone was because my mother would say something and because her accent is very good they would think she was from France and then ignore because having visitors from France is much more common than American. My little sister, who is Senegalese, dressed like an American, but people would still try to talk to her in Wolof. She would not understand what they were saying since we adopted her when she was 9 months old. Once they realized she didn’t know Wolof, they tried French, but yet again she couldn’t speak. After that Mme. Seck would tell them politely that she didn’t speak their language. But at this point some people would give a judgmental face. This would cause me to wonder what they thought of American people, and if they just saw us as a source of money. Obama had recently visited Senegal and had given money to the government but how many people really knew what was going on in their government, not many. So did this judgmental look also cause me not to speak because I was afraid of looking American? This could cause me to be afraid to try to look like them because many people when see someone who is trying to hard to fit in, they may judge them more than if they did not fit in. So maybe I didn’t want to learn the culture, or try to speak French in order not to look like I was trying too hard. Either way it inhibited my ability to fit in with anyone.