Aventure en afrique

That's all folks

2008-04-30T00:22:00.000-07:00

What an anti-climatic end to a blog. My program is over and I am already out of the country, in fact in a completely different environment, sitting around Copenhagen for a while. I am tempted to try to go back, to log all of those missed logs, to write about all of the experiences, but I also feel like I should try to move ahead. Its so strange to be done already, but I am glad the wait is over. The last two weeks were nothing but waiting. Senegalese people don't make farewells easy. They remind you every half hour that you will be gone soon. Plus they stop talking to you, really, as if you are already gone. They say things like "Don't go stay and live here", or "You'll be back right?" Nevertheless, its just this quite sadness, they won't ever admit that they are sad, they just won't talk, which is a sign that there is a problem in Senegalese culture.

Silence characterized two of my departures. First from Joal, I remember the taxi ride to the garage, the area where all of the buses and cars going to other towns wait, with one of my neighbors. He just stared out the window, didn't say a word. A few times I tried to talk but got only one word responses. "Waaw", "Daydet", "Inch'allah". He did stick his head into the cab once I got in, the cab going to Dakar. He just held my hand and thanked me. Then he left.

Dakar was similar. The night I left (my flight left at 2 in the morning so I left the house around midnight) barely a person said a word. Most of them just continued to watch T.V. Finally around midnight I decided to leave by saying "Well, I guess I'll go". They followed me to the door, first splashing water in front of me (a good luck gesture in Senegalese custom) and then everyone shook my left hand (a gesture that signifies the hope that you will meet again soon in the future). No one made miraculous speeches, no one even said much. I just kind of disappeared into the darkness, shifting through the somber streets until I came upon the main road, hailing a taxi.

I guess I was sad as well, I mean I didn't necessarily try to initiate any conversation. It was interesting, watching Dakar one last time, going over the newly paved roads, seeing Dakar in this mess it is. I don't know if the taxi man sensed the finality of it but he seemed to drive much longer than necessary, taking turns down side streets, going in front of buildings that weren't necessarily on the way. He seemed to loop around the city, creating a web back and forth across a city that I would soon leave.

What does it mean to live somewhere? I know, it means to be there, to hear the sound, but I want to know is there a difference between just being there and being a part of 'there'. I remember how comfortable I had grown, being able to understand the conversations on the bus, being able to watch TV and know what they were saying. The way that responses just rolled off my tongue.

I barely looked out of the window when we left. The lights were the same, that strange contrast of brilliance and darkness, the shadow of a world ending. Taking off from Dakar you shoot directly over the Atlantic, the divide between two worlds, the end of a continent. I remember seeing those lights for the first time, like some signal on the horizon. Coming into Dakar for the first time, these lights seemed like a beacon, life exists here, there is something pouring out of this darkness. Leaving, I have trouble thinking of what the lights could mean, of what they are illuminating?

I don't talk to the person in the seat next to me. I put my head against the back of the headrest and close my eyes, just so I can pretend to be asleep.

The sun bleaches out this darkness as we reach Portugal. The Portuguese were the first to reach Senegal, brushing against its what must have been frightening shores, a world so foreign, so bizarre. I feel like I am discovering this process in reverse, the red roofed villas catching my eye with a twinge. What happened to the decaying cement, the typical black birds? We get off the plain and it smells like spring. You can still see the ocean, the great ocean that never changes, only just reflects through people's minds differently. Another continent. Another world.

What else can I say?

I seem to have held my breath since we took off and when I release a whole world floods out and mixes with this one. How long will it take for my expressions to not be laced with Senegal, how long will it take before I can't think of it so easily. I shouldn't ask these questions. I should step into the bus, wait in line, almost miss my plane and think about Denmark. I should.

P.S. I have uploaded a whole ton of new pictures, pass your eyes over their content immediately!:

http://community.webshots.com/album/563209529YdnmhW?vhost=community

Research

2008-04-21T04:33:00.000-07:00

Means no time. Means no creativity. Means no blog posts right now.

I have way way way to much to do so I can't blog.

Imagine what I am doing.

That's an order.

Pictures of my work

2008-04-14T04:28:00.000-07:00

I teach computer classes
I teach English classes

I helped establish an in-school library

Pictures

2008-04-02T09:21:00.000-07:00

Yeah boy!

2008-03-26T07:32:00.000-07:00

That is the name of a fish, or at least its pronounced that way. It is also an insult, meaning a skinny, good for nothing loser who has neither a job, nor any sort of future. Weird.

Fish. These things remind me of Joal. We only eat fish at my house in Joal, only. The only expectation is when relatives come over and then we get meat. To think that I was a vegetarian before I came here.

This has nothing to do with anything, so I will start talking about Easter, because its so much more interesting.

So people talk Easter up, they talk about it months in advance. The old people talk about the Galax, this peanut butter like yogurt that all the christians make in mass quantities to give to their muslim neighbours. They make tons of this stuff! I came home one night to find two tubs filled with the sauce, the peanut sauce with sugar, Bwee (or monkey bread, a fruit from the boabab tree) and water. Two tubs, I mean I could have sat in these tubs and had it come up to my waste. Along with that they had two tubs of millet, these small balls of millet that would be added to the Galax later. My host mother said she bought 15 kilograms of sugar, 20 kilograms of Bwee, and a ridiculous amount of other ingredients. They used a hose to fill up the basins, like a garden hose because the basins couldn't fit under the faucet.

They spent three days making the Galax, spending the first day buying all the ingredients and then putting them all in a bowl together. The second day they started making the sauce and the millet seperately. The third day they mixed them together and dished some into little bowls to give to all of the neighbors. This whole holiday is about solidarity, showing the muslims that even though it is a christian holiday that they are involved too. It is also an expectation, since during Ramadan, the holiday that ends Korite (the month long fast for muslims), all of the muslim families give out Soow (pronounced "so"), a yogurt like milk drink, to Christian families. Its weird too, how all of the christians fast during Lent, like actually fast. Some don't even drink water during the day. Its nothing like in the States, we choose one thing to give up. They say that they fast during the day, give gifts to the poor and pray. The idea behind the fasting is to give the food you normally would have eaten to someone with less than you. Despite their insistence on fasting, I know no one that actually did this, that gave anyone anything out of the ordinary.

This could be the reason that people got excited about the Galax, because they made so much of it that you could pig out on it for hours and never eat it all. Its funny though, because sometimes people actually do this, just eat cup after cup continuously and then end up very sick the next day. The peanut sauce isn't the easiest thing on the stomach.

Galax. That was it. For talking the holiday up so much, and mostly the young people who talk about how drunk they get each Easter (a common way to celebrate holidays among the catholics here), nothing much happened. I went out but no one else in my family did, they just watched T.V. and acted like normal. Everyone just seemed bored. We went to church, then came home and lazed around.

People talk. There is a word for it in Wolof: Waxtu. It means talk for the sake of talking. Talk in circles.

The sixty cent shave, part 3

2008-03-25T02:55:00.001-07:00

Coming over the hill, getting the first glimpse of Toubab Diallo caught me off guard. Maybe it's the nostalgia more than what I actually felt, or it could have been the fatigue, but I remember just being struck by the sight of all these hills, the cliffs, the ocean and the houses that were perched on the edge of this, the city rolling over the landscape like some giant wave. It felt like I'd crossed some border, like I'd found a part of Senegal that was unknown, hidden. I guess Toubab Diallo is kind of like this, it's no Sally (the real tourist area, with giant five star hotels and all). I think the LonelyPlanet guidebook describes Toubab Diallo as a quaint place, like Sally but still unnoticed by the majority of tourists. That would make sense, despite all the white people, all the Europeans that did live there, they weren't ridiculous, at least not on the outside, they were all holed up in their houses, behind their high courtyard walls.

There were hotels, lots of hotels, in fact beautiful ridiculous hotels with a Senegalese staff that didn't expect you to say hello to them, they didn't expect you to acknowledge their existence, they just sat and figured you were European, that you didn't care about them or their experience. They didn't automatically say hello. I shouldn't complain, after all, this is what we were looking for, a little escape from this ever present conversation, a little silence as oppossed to being expected to carry on a conversation well past your interest.

The hotels. My god the hotel we stayed in was beautiful, this sea shell ridden, Disney Land like structure. Grass roofs. Wild flowers planted everywhere. Everything looked rustic, like it had been there forever, as if the rocks just formed in these ways. When we got here we thought this must have been a mistake. The guide book said we could find rooms for 4,000 CFA a night (8 dollars), but this place is exotic, wild, closed and cloistered. We thought for sure something had happened, the hotel had upgraded, they were now hosting only the elite Europeans, the business men that come to Senegal for a little relaxing, sit on the terrace and read a book, drink a cup of coffee and watch the tide role in and out. Despite this, we got a room, a beautiful masoleum like room, that you had to step down into, and it only cost us 5,000 a night (10 dollars). It was the dorm room, they would rent out beds as opposed to the room.

This room was like a tomb, like some exoctic burial site, especially my bed which looked just like a rocky ledge with a matress on it. You can see the ocean from the window. These things seem to good, their must be some catch, maybe we have to buy dinner, or maybe they'll come in a steal everything we own during the night.

Yet, they didn't, nothing happened, the only thing we would have had to deal with was the minor inconvience of having a fourth person stay in the extra bed that was in the room, but when we asked if the lady at the front desk wanted the key, she told us she wouldn't book anyone in the extra bed.

So we had a room. The beach was right outside our window. That is how the story starts.

We hit the beach soon enough. First to get something to eat and then later to swim. The ocean water was like any ocean water but to the backdrop of these cliffs, to all the ritzy European summer homes it didn't feel like Senegal. I guess the inebriation of it all stopped us from criticing it. It had a way of not upsetting us, despite all the weird things about it, the gitchy hotels, the Senegalese people that told us outright that they depended on tourists for EVERYTHING. This culture of expectations. Europeans need to come. Europeans need to spend their money, buy a house here, employ people, buy food at the super market, give to beggars, build hotels, create revenue, consume, eat, feed. These things only appear in retrospect, all these criticisms that live just next to the memories.

We didn't do much but relax, take in the sun, walk down the beach and sit on the terrace at night at feel the strong ocean wind blow over us. Every so often people would pop into this imaginative little world, like the Senegalese man who popped his head over the veranda and asked us if we wanted fish, a fire, anything? The senegalese women who sold jewerly just outside the front gate of the hotel, always asking us to just look, and then asking us what we will buy. These things litter the memories of the scenery, the beaches, the clear nights, and the quite days sitting on a hammock doing nothing but thinking. This was what we needed, time to think, time to do nothing, be expected to do nothing, and just think. Not think about something specific, not brood about our jobs, not plan out our next step in our research, just time to let our mind wander, contemplate nothing and come back to the world through this.

We ended up meeting some other students there, just by chance, they were out for a weekend, just visiting a beach town. We hung out, hit the beach together, took naps. Did things unextraordinary, even if it was in an extraordinary place, at least on the outside, at least the first time you come over the hill and the city seems like some Greek scenery, like some Mediterranian village, with the red clay bricks on every roof and the roads that never run straight. We climbed hills to go to stores (we asked for directions to a supermarket, well any place we could buy beer, and the man on the street told us to "climb the mountain", which when we did climb the hill, which he refered to as the mountain, magically we found a suprette, a toubab market that sold beer). The hardest part was leaving, not because I didn't want to leave, I mean I didn't want to leave, I didn't want to have to start doing work, to think about my research, but it was because we were caught in the two faces of this place. We couldn't find a cab that wouldn't charge us 5 times the normal price. We ended up paying, I guess overall it works out, the cab only cost 30 dollars and there were seven of us and it was an hour and a half car ride.

That is the end of the story that was inspired by the sixty cent shave. My beard and mustache are coming in again, a fact that the small bearded Senegalese man that shaved my beard, commented on when I walked by his booth the other day. "You beard is coming back, are you sure you don't want another shave?" I feel like ending this post with something sentimental and sappy like, "Not until I have some more memories to sift through."

Instead I will end it with a word, some random phrase, like Pickle.

Just like Richard Brautigan, ending his book with Mayonaise, just because he had never read a book ending in that way. Except I don't want to forget, and let myself end talking about something else, finding something more important to say, and let everyone down when I don't say the word pickle.

The sixty cent shave pt. 2

2008-03-24T12:05:00.000-07:00

Mmamb (pronounced bomb), I am tempting so say something like "Man, that place was the BOMB!" Get it? Even if it wasn't the best place, didn't draw more tourists than anywhere else, didn't have the most exciting beaches, or any that I saw, it was the bomb. Not in some crazy-wild-party-beach-madness-running-adjective sort of way, it was chill, cool, relax, in a way only a small Serer village could be. Our descent into mbamb was the end of this choatic trip, this trip that took a whole day to travel the distance between Milwaukee and Madison (usually a two hour trip). It took us one day, and I had to hold a rag against the roof of one of the buses we took in order to avoid getting soaked from some brown colored water that poured in from who knows what on the roof. When we finally got to Mbamb, it was dark and we were tired and hungry and I didn't know what to expect.

Walking through Foundioune, the bigger tourist village just on the outskirts of Mbamb, reminded me so much of Joal. Things were lively, and people spoke more Wolof than Serer. We headed through this choas, these mad streets, walked through the darkness down a long road that led nowhere, and at some point in this nowhere we arrived at point.

We, but for the others this was a return, a sort of homecoming, both Ellen and Madelyn had been here, had lived here, so for them the giant trees, the fields, all of this was a memory. We marched through this darkness and they pointed to a tree: I sat under that tree and read. They pointed to a fence: In that fence I helped herd the cows. I don't know these things, these things are like the shadows all around us, these indistinct blurs that you can never fully see, that always exist because of the abscence of clarity.

We wake up and the village is exploding, at least that is what it sounds like, this machine gun fire like procession choking the air. We head off into the midst of it, walking closer and closer to this commotion. We stumble upon a herd of humanity, the whole village is assembled in a circle under a giant mangoe tree, all staring at the old women dancing. The same bullhorn loudspeaker is set up and high pitched singing along with metal toned guitar music drowns out any thoughts, its surprising how people still are talking through all this sound. The drums. The guitars. The singing. The excited cries of the old women as they dance in a circle. We get special seats.

Its a celebrationg, and its Serer style. A French foreign aide organization just finished constructing additional classes at the local middle school. The military is there. The village chief is there (who Madelyn makes the impossibly hillarious comment that his voice sounds exactly like the puppet, the old female one, from Mister Roggers). We are led to seats among the old men with their boubous, dark glasses and scarves despite the warm weather. We just laugh and watch the music, and watch everyone come and go, people pushing their way closer, pushing their way through this circle. We leave once the speeches start.

We head off into the sun, out of the giant shade of the mangoe tree. We leave this vibrant circle of pulsing humanity and head into town. Mbamb is Serer and you can just feel it by being there. Things take on a more basic form. Most of the houses are fenced off with the branches that have fallen from palm trees. Most of the compounds don't hold one giant house but a series of smaller huts, with grass roofs and twisted branches holding them up. Just like Marlodge, this place has a feel that is Serer, a sight that just inspires a lifestyle. We spend the day touring the town, Madelyn and Ellen catching up with all their old friends in town. When I say old I mean old,most of them are old women, joyously crying about how great toubabs are. We walk around this place, sputtering Serer and just living in it, speaking with Djin Thiarry, a Senegales man that never stops smiling and refers to me constantly as his big brother. There are more mango trees than I have seen anywhere else, and you can see all of the small mangoes ripening on the branches. The second mango season is coming, or at least they tell me.

Describing places like this is so hard, I tend to leave out so much detail. People come from thousands of miles away to see places like this, to live exoctically, but after seeing it so much it doesn't shock you. Seeing donkeys, horses, chickens roaming around the courtyards, often into the houses, have ceased to surprise me. The houses, which are often put together with any used material they can find, all of this seems so hard to describe. Once you have seen a small Serer village you have seen them all. That doesn't mean that you know them, that you can write all of the other ones off, its just seeing grass huts looses its appeal after you see them weekly, if not daily.

Even though most of the time in Mbamb is spent catching up, or is spent on Ellen and Madelyn catching up, we enjoy ourselves. Mbamb is an eco-village, a village that is dedicated to using agriculturally sustainable techiniques to develop. They reuse everything, have a string of meetings about new initiatives, about new ideas, about their future. Its all about organizing, organizing and trying to change their state. They have a biomass project, solar ovens, solar panels, and a whole new string of ideas. This is Mbamb, and the funny thing about it is things like this are typical of many villages, even if they don't call themselves eco-villages. The reuse, the fact that everything short of plastic bags, and even those most of the times, can be reused is a reality of most small villages here.

More to come on Toubab Diallo.

The Sixty Cent Shave

2008-03-20T05:47:00.000-07:00

What is this, I come back from a week long trip traveling through places that most people only see in those exoctic magazines. Places that remind you bitterly of that friend, you know the one whose parents are doctors, businesmen, anything that lets them travel, that went to some exoctic far away location, some place that's more of a story than a place. So then why do I choose to write about something as typical, boring, unattractive and, if I may, personal (people don't usually talk opening about their shaving habits, and if they do it is never in a wanted conversation) topic.

The sixty cent shave, it took just enough time for the short, white bearded Senegalese man less than one minute to use his electric clippers to cut off my beard, my mustache. What does the sixty cent shave mean? Is it a social commentary? I mean those booths were old men sit you down and give you a haircut and a shave still exist, think about all of those movies with old men sitting around barber shops, with the straight razor and the strop were they wet the razor before they shave you. These things exist here, in fact many people set up little informal shops on the street, things like a chair, a mirror and a small sign showing the same typical haircuts. On top of all of this the fact that it costs only sixty cents, (300 F CFA). Or is it just a rhetorical devise, a literary form, kind of like Proust's cookie (how is that for a literary reference), that allows me to talk about other things, a way to look through a situation without really touching it, using it like a window, like a ledge to dive into other areas, areas much more exotic, dark and as of yet unexplored.

Palmeran, even the name of this place gives you this thought about it. I mean "palm" is in the name, it seems almost gawdy it works out so well. Palmeran, where in fact there are lots of palm trees, sand, small African children wrestling ("la lutte" in French, "beri" in wolof, a typical type of wrestling that involves usually more dancing than actual wrestling), fish, fishing boats and the enourmous sun that just seems to tan these memories with brightness. This place is the palm wine capital of Senegal, although we never actually saw any palm wine here, it makes sense. Its exotic, typically exotic, with the large beaches, wavy ocean, the sun, oh god the sun is always out, always hot. This was the first stop on our trip, the first step in a large stride across islands, much of the middle part of the country, until we ended up sitting on a beach with the wind clifss and a hotel that seemed much to expensive to cost only 8 dollars a night (but we will come back to this later).

Palmeran, getting there was an adventure in itself. Sitting in the minicar, basically a smaller version of a Jegan-Jay. The minicar to Samba Dia, a garage town, like so many of the slightly larger towns in this area, built up around a garage, around an area where cars stop and let people off, people get on, but its rare to see people stay, and the people you see sitting, the residence seem more like characters than people, they are the typical mother selling peanuts and home made baked goods, the small girl asking for money, the old men sitting with their aviator sunglasses and large boubous, sitting staring at the world thinking whatever old thoughts happend to compel them to stare at the world from behind those dark frames. Samba Dia to Palmeran in the same Minibus and then we get off as a random Palmeran. There are four! Four cities with the same name, and they aren't necessarily within walking distance of each other. The only difference is the nicknames that are attached to each of them. Palmeran geej, Palmeran ngaleen.

We don't know these things, we get off at the first one, squinting into the sun that seems so much brighter than Joal. Is this exotic, there is a road, the typical red dust that characterizes all of the roads in Senegal, this rust color that stains your clothes, covers your face, and clogs your nose so that every time you sneeze this red blood color covers your kleenex. We can hear the beach though, and we feel the wind from the ocean. Its shooting through narrow alleys of the city, seeming to whisper to us from behind this wall of a city that is hiding something much bigger than itself, hiding this ocean that is so impossibly big, something that can't stay hidden. So we need a room, a place, some sort of base camp.

The campement has been shut down. The government shut it down due to its old age, the lack of running water (at least not in the majority of the buildings). It does look old, the painted animals on the side of the little huts are faded, polkadotted with decay. We bribed some local children (using the cookies I bought in Joal) to show us here. "The next campement is a half hour walk down the road". Luckily one of the men there shows us to a Frenchman's house that operates as an auberge when his family isn't vacationing there. "Robert Toubab", the eccentric French man, grandpa age, who mumbles but laughs, talks constantly, mostly about nothing. I feel like I am staying at a grandparents house. He rents us all rooms, the same price as would be the cost of the campement. Seperate rooms with sinks in the rooms, and RUNNING WATER. I forget the comfort of things like this, the creature comforts of getting your water from a faucet instead of taking a cup full our of a basin or bucket. We sink right into these things, we are thirsty with change, thirsty with acting as toubab as possible. This trip is a new one, a trip to forget, to act ridiculously American, be selfish, intentionally not talk to Senegalese people, not have to tell someone to come eat with us if they pass. We are tired, I am tired, but right now we are sitting and relaxing letting the salt air push all of these worries out of our air, letting the breeze help us laugh this fatigue out burst by burst.

We head into village for provisions: cookies, wine, soda. We horde these things, speak quietly to everyone we see, we don't want them to catch on, don't want them to know too much, then they'll be interested. They'll invite us over for dinner, we'll stay for hours, have to spend the night, wake up shower with a bucket, drink tea, eat lunch, watch T.V. Instead we go back eat our cookies, drink the soda, save the wine for later and head to the beach. The sun shoots into us, it shoots through our skin and warms our blood. We mostly sit on the beach, venture into the water occassionally, but sit and stare at the ocean. We have no obligations, we have nothing to do but breathe in a scene, to wait for nothing elese to happen.

Palmeran. Two days with "Robert Toubab" and his house, where wasps build nests on the bathrooms, where the Senegalese people pass just to ask us if we want to buy ANYTHING, they will go and search for it for us. The first two days of speaking English, speaking Serer, which although it is Senegalese it is better than Wolof, it is new, exciting. We stumble over these things, they bring back memories of Marlodge, the small Serer village I visited a long time ago, of Simal, another small serer village. For the others they think of Mbamb, a small village where we will end up watching some festival appear out of nowhere, but for now we are in Palmeran, where we do nothing particularly extraordinary, we do typical things, lay on the beach, don't necessarily act like tourists or like Senegalese. We are lying on this beach between two bodies, between the ocean that brought us here (well not actually the ocean, more of an airplane, but hell it sounds so poetic), and the land that we've come to know. Like usual we are lying right in the middle of these two extremes.

It is out of this that shoots us to Marlodge, well first to Samba Dia again and then to Dangan, and then a three hour wait for the boat leaving to Marlodge. We wait, like usual, sitting on a bench in front of a store, on a bench with some Senegalese women selling cashews and cashew fruits (I never knew there were fruits that came from the same tree as cashews), these Doctor Seuss like creations, these bizarres pepper like monstrousities that cost less than 10 cents each (although I never got the courage to try one). We have to deter the local canoe men, they try to get us to take their boats which are easily three times as expensive, because "time is money". They assume we are impatient tourists, that we will wait but eventually come around, after the first hour huff and walk back and forth scanning the horizon for the next boat. Instead we sit and wait, talking amongst ourselves and letting the delta breeze blow on.

Marlodge is an island, there is no way there except for boat. There is no bridge. There is no spot where one can walk because of a sand bar. We have to wait, we have to wait to take a boat through the delta, which seems more like a string of rivers than a delta, than the ocean pushing into the continent. These long windind arms that are lined with mangroves. The birds. The small men (small because they are so distant) paddling around their hand carved canoes, pulling their fishing nets from the water. This is just getting to Marlodge. This is just crossing the delta. Once we are in Marlodge, things stay surprisingly the same, you see all the pirogues literring the shores, the horse carts (because there are no cars on Marlodge). Marlodge is cut off, no cars, no roads (at least not in the normal sense, more liek paths), no noise after dark. All the electricity comes from solar panels, and at night you can see all the stars.

Here we stay with a friend of the family, a Senegalese man that was dating a 60 year old French women, a women easily twice his age. He brings us to "his" house, which is the house that the French women constructed here, so that when she was done working she could retire to Senegal. The friend, Ferdinand, tells us that he broke off his relationship with the French women, the "Française" as I call her, because of problems, namely that he couldn't have a real family with her. He still watches over her house though, still lives like he used to, as if he had half a share in this house.

We do pretty much the same things here, just sit around and try not to do much. We go swimming, this time not in the ocean with its giant waves and hot sand, but on a small river, where we pluck mussels from the river bottom to cook later (which we do!). The current pushes us down the river, its surprisingly strong. We swim and then wait, wait through the night, stare at the stars and get ready to continue, to take the next step in our journey towards Mbamb, a trip that will take more time than it should have.

Mbamb and Toubab Diallo, the next step in our week long journey, but not now, a little later, I have run out of time at the cyber.

Let's hope that it is sooner than later.

Sorry

2008-03-14T04:45:00.000-07:00

I am currently traveling.

All of the towns I am traveling in don't have electricity, let alone internet.

I'll update this thing later.

Stay tuned.

Loud Voices

2008-03-03T00:53:00.000-08:00

Do I repeat myself? I am not sure, I would like to believe that each of these blog entries is a new and completely independent topic, idea, etc. but I am tempted to think this is not the case. I guess I should not be concerned, my life does not occur like this, even my thoughts. Things are intermingled, interdependent, and thus so are these blog entries. So, sorry if I repeat myself but...

People here talk very loudly. Not in the American sort of way, no, in fact people are very quite if we were to compare them to Americans. People talk loudly when they want to be heard, not just when they are excited. The men will outright scream, or appear to do so, in order to get their point across, which is more often than not. In the U.S. we talk loudly in public places, make loud gestures, and keep doing so. I think the key thing here is longevity. An American will talk for 45 minutes on a cell phone in a public place, often exposing very intimate details, in a loud and flambuoyant manner. A senegalese person will argue loudly until they feel the argument is over, and then remain silent. Argument don't last long here.

Even if they do, they are usually organized arguments, like the sort of village meeting kind. You know, lets talk about if we should send out children to French school kind of thing. People speak very loudly in these cases. Not only will they speak loudly they will gesture, flail their arms around, point at the person they are responding too, and distort their face as if the person that just made the comment was actually causing them physical pain.

This is all very dramatic.

Yet true. They do these things. Its a daily reality, even the taxi men do these things when you argue over 100 CFA, the equivqlent of 20 cents in the US. Its almost like a game, to try to see who can act more hurt, who can seem more pitiable. When a taxi man tells you his first price it is completely normal to act shocked, if not downright amazed. "WHAT!". I often pretend to lose the ability to speak I am so shocked. This works, at least it starts the game, each of us trying to pretend like we are getting the absolute worse end of this deal. Ultimately we both end up relatively well off, I will pay this taxi driver three times as much as I would pay a taxi driver in the country side, but I still get a taxi between two destinations for less than three U.S. dollars.

Theatrics its such an important part of daily life here, making things appear worse or better than they are. This is why on religious holidays every seems rich, because even the poorest people have on the nicest clothing (and honestly it is hard to tell the difference, the clothign is so similar). This is like Magal, the yearly pilgramage to Touba, where people will spend as much money as they can so that they can cook enough food to feed anybody they meet. A friend that went to Magal actually told me they beg, they beg you to eat their food. This makes them look good towards others, and since giving alms is part of Islam, one of the five pillars, they take this as an alm, although most of the people that made it to Touba have a relatively large amount of money.

We won't talk about this though.

Even at our school, or the Catholic school I work at, the Principal, the teachers, everyone with authority, or the semblence of authority, speaks loudly. Just now the Principal is scolding a child outside of the computer lab and I can hear him clearly, almost uncomfortably so, he is that loud. His voice isn't soft or unsure, it is loud and clear and angry. People have mastered these sort of things here. The teachers too, they have mastered this Teacher's are the masters and students the lesser mentality. It seems to work though, because for the most part the problems that exist in the U.S. don't seem to exist here. Or at least appear hidden. I recently found out their is a school for all the kids that were kicked out of all the other public and private schools in the area. I think a lot of the times the directors of schools will expell children if they cause problems, whereas in the U.S. expelling a child is the last and final step. We tolerate more misbehavoir, which actually might reinforce it, but we also give them more chances. Children don't need to be kicked out of school in places like this. School is often the only chance that children here have of getting out of their social environment. School is such an opportunity, even if many college students can't find jobs, yet its the possiblity. Without this first possiblity they have even less chances. Without a college degree, even if it does mean you have to become a teacher because that is the only job that is hiring, you can't do much other than farm, fish or sell things (either in a store or as a street vendor). All of these choices don't bring in much money. I recently spoke with an ederly women who makes treats to sell at our school and she said she makes less than 500 CFA each time she sells a batch of here donuts. This is less than 1 dollar in profit every time she sells almost 35 bags of donuts. She can't raise the price either because all of the other women sell their donuts at the same price, so if she raised the price the children simply would wait till after school to buy them from another women.

Oh, and stay out of Dakar. The OCI is going on, an islamic conference, and Dakar is like a military camp right now. I have never seen so many police officers and soldiers in my life, one would think Dakar was being occupied by a foreign army.

Pan-Africanism

2008-02-29T02:42:00.000-08:00

I don't really have anything inspirational to say, I just have the opportunity to use the internet and honestly I am slightly bored. Also, I drank a glass of Café Touba, coffee that is made by street vendors with normal Nescafé and various spices, which is three or four times as strong as normal coffee. This has nothing to do with this blog, and very little to do with much besides the fact that in writing this opening stating I am trying to find the inspiration for this blog entry.

I think we, as Americans, tend to simplify everything too much. One example is the idea that everything in Africa is similar, and although things in African by and large are similar relating to themselves, this is not to mean they are the same. Similarities do not entail homogeny. This idea is similar with European societies, that by and large general trends do exist, but overall there are distinct differences that seperate persons, even if on a microscopically small sociological level. Yes, African cultures did at one time use spears to hunt in the bush, and yes, many of them did shun the large cumbersone clothing in favor or loin clothes and beads. Yet, to expect all of Africa to be like this, and ultimately to remain like this would be the same as expecting to travel to the U.S. today and find Cowboys fighting with Indians.

I would take this opportunity to put a little blame on the media.

Yet, there are these similarities, but I am unsure whether they are things that are necessarily tied to Africa that make these similarities. This struck me as I watched news reports about the conflicts in Chad. Despite the fact that the people looked similar, at least to me, as much as all white people look similar to most foreigners, there were bizarre trends that I didn't expect to notice. As stupid as it may sound, and as trivial as it may seem, the people I saw fleeing their houses in Chad all wore the same foam and plastic flip flops that are sold on a mass scale here in Senegal. Also the buckets they used to carry their belongings, these small cheap plastic buckets that appear tye-dyed, were exactly the same. Chad is not relatively close to Senegal, not in the least bit, but these things were exactly the same. One has to wonder if the same consumer products get pushed on all of Africa, even in the relatively stable and "developing" nations such as Senegal. Senegal, like it has been for centuries before and for countless other explorers, has become a window out of which I can see the other African countries.

The United States of Africa, this is actually a real concept, and was for a while a relatively popular concept. It was largely developed by Senghor and his allies before the independence of Senegal in the 1950's. This is what gave birth to the Mali federation, a federation of associated French colonies that was formed before the federation was disbanded in favor of national independence. Senghor originally fought against this decision, stating that creating a strong pan-african state was more important that creating a series of independent nations. The remnants of this idea have been transfered largely through economic pratices, such at the use of French CFA's as the currency in the former French colonies. Also, the use of the West African bank, as the basis for this currency, ties most of the members of this former alliance, together based on their common currency. Even the democratic leader Abdoulaye Wade, expounds the need to create a strong African state, like the European Union, in order to be more effective in brokering deals with other powerful nations. Ultimately this would cause better trade agreements, because in working together the countries could boycott unwanted political affiliations and also unwanted trade agreements. This recently has been happening with the APE, the "Accords partenariet economique", the economic accords between Europe and the African countries. Abdoulaye Wade called for many other African countries to boycott this accord, and for the most part I believe many of the members of the old Mali Federation have boycotted the trade agreements. Unfortunately, many African leaders have embraced the trade agreements, which utimately give the goods of Europe free reign in African markets, but restrict the amount of goods and persons that can pass from Africa to Europe. Pan-Africanism doesn't work when countries don't agree, and thus, ultimately, it doesn't work. Yet.

At least that is the hope. People still debate the validity and the longevity of the European Union. With the members growing each year, many of the wealthy countries are fearing that the newer countries are going to drain their strong national economies of their resources. Also, the open border policy allows for the free travel of all Europeans between member countries. This has already had its side effects, with many Western European countries, such as France, complaining that Eastern Europeans are coming into their country and will work for less money, and thus steal the Frenchmen's job. Sound familiar America. Yet, how can you expound open borders and free trade of goods and then be upset when it actually works like this. Ultimately, I think these people want to export whatever they want, they want to spread whatever they can spread all over the world but want their country to stay the same. This is why they get upset when African's come to France: "Why couldn't they just stay in their country!". I mean after they exported their language, their culture, their televisions shows, their school system, etc. to Africa they get upset when the Africans, who in times past they expected to act like "proper frenchmen", act in just that manner and try to travel to France. Its this xenophobia.

Its colonisation in reverse.

If this Pan-Africanism works, and an African Union does exist, who will be left to make our dollar shoes? Who will be left to sell all of our recycled clothes? Who will be left to dump all of these late model computers, televisions, etc when we can't sell them in the U.S. anymore?

The 5 lunch adventure

2008-02-25T01:38:00.000-08:00

Before we talk about the 5 lunch adventure I should mention that my host brother and I took a kyake and actually kyakked around Fadiouth, literally around Fadiouth, we started by pushing off of the shore of Joal and kyaking around the island. It was amazing, almost picturesque with the waves, the salt air, the low tide, where you can see the immense "sable mouvable" or moving sand that gets left behind as the water packs up and heads out, leaving these designs in the sand, almost like millions of snakes basking in the sun. On top of it all we subverted all those tourist canoes, we just pushed off and went, and although I mean no ill to all those people working as tour guides at Fadiouth, its just I don't want to pay everytime I want to go swimming. And now, without further aideu, the five lunch adventure:

It all started out with a failed attempt to go to the national reserve at Bandia. My host family and I had been planning on going to Bandia for about three weeks and I kept pushing it off. Unfortunately there were several factors that seemed to stop us from going really anywhere, as if the stars willed it. First of all, we are in the middle of the travel for Magal Touba, the yearly pilgramige by all the Mourhide's to Touba, the capital of Mourhadism (a regilious brotherhood based on Islam that is unique to Senegal). The majority of Muslim's in Senegal are Mourhide, and thus, whoever is willing and can afford to (or can't but go anyways) rent cars, trucks, anything that rolls, drives or flies and goes to Touba. This mean that the week before and the week after Touba, the entire country of Senegal is a traffic jam. Seeing that there is only one highway going in and out of Dakar, and one highway going anywhere else for the most part, all the taxis and buses are on these sole highways all headed to the same direction. This also means a general lack of taxis, which are usually uncomfortably and annoyingly ever present. I went to the garage which is normally filled with its share of cars waiting to go anywhere you will pay them to go, only to find two cars that were going two preset destinations. The second thing that held up back from going to Bandia was an issue that is common here in Senegal: money. Since I was the only toubab in the group I was expected to pay for all the transportation costs, plus the entrance fees for the park. At first I was ok with this, I would end up usually paying a total of 30 U.S. dollars, which wasn't ridiculous. Unfortunately with the lack of transportation options and other things (such as the entrance to the park being 14 U.S. dollars a person) I would have had to pay over 100 dollars round trip. We decided not to go.

Yet, we did decide to go somewhere, after all, as the Senegalese women reminded me, we didn't get all dressed up for nothing (or at least they didn't). So we hoped in a clando (the bush taxis) and went to the village of Simaal, a small Serer village with nothing except for the beach, the sun and 5 lunches. Its common to hear getting places is half the fun but when getting somewhere involves waiting two hours in a car under the hot sun, when there are four people to a seat (a seat normally designed for 2 people), in these cases getting there is not half the fun. Add to this as soon as we actually leave the exhaust from the muffler pours in from under the car, and the dust from the roads fly in the window. In these cases when you blow your nowe it is actually black, nothing but straight dust. I am imagining people's responses to this, but this is an everyday sort of thing here, its a reality and I've become surprisingly used to it. Simaal is a tourist destination, its an exotic little backwater town located in the Sine_Saloum delta, rich in both salt water beaches and wild exocitc birds. These things seem impressive, but I see palm trees and the ocean every morning when I go to school.

For the Senegalese people this entire trip is one extended greeting. People that you have met quite literally mintues before will greet you once morein the street and run throguh the same saluations. These salutations aren't short either, they go a little bit like:

1- Hello, good afternoon
2- Hello Good afternoon
1-How are you
2-I am fine. How are you?
1-I am fine. How is your family?
2-They are fine. Thanks be to god.
1- Thanks be to god
2-Thanks be to god
1-thanks be to god

This will continue almost indefinately if you let it, people go so far as to repeat the same questions and responses over and over again. I was talking to a young Senegalese man and he said one time he counted the "Jam rekk kay"'ùs, a common response in Serer, in one salutation and he counted over 50. Greeting people is so important, its almost tiring, in fact it is exhausting. Even the Senegalese people weren't used to this barage of questions,this marathon of constantly talking about how the family is, how the heat is. This is what led to the 5 lunch adventure. Since we were guests and we were representing the family (I guess all the people we visisted were family) we were expected to visit so many of the relatives. This included eating lunch at each of their houses. Although the hospitality can work in your favor from time to time, knowing that you can go in just about any house and get a meal, in this case it was the opposite. To be polite in return we were expected to at least try all of these peopl's meals, plus drink at least one glass of cold water. "This is the Teranga", they said. It works both ways, people actually want you to eat their food so that you can say you ate at their house. They want you to talk about them with the family and say that they were nice and accomidating, which they are. It is nice, and tiring to travel, surprisingly tiring. Even after five lunches you are amazed how little energy you have after a half hour car ride. Maybe its the heat, the dust, or the five lunches themselves that steal your energy but peopel here are right when they ask you "Aren't you tired after all that travel".

Kamm sonn. Jam rekk kay.
(I am tired. Peace only is good)

To St. Louis and back

2008-02-21T00:48:00.000-08:00

The world flashes by in an effervescent melange when your hanging off the back of a Car Rapide, the world takes on a whole new look, and a slightly disturbingly close aspect, especially when you see the street sweeping by just inches away from your feet. I never thought I would be haning off the back of the Car Rapide's like I've seen so many young Senegalese people doing, but we got of our Jagen Jay and just ran to the nearest bus we saw and hopped on.

Take the ticket, Take the ride.

"Transport en commun", that is the logo printed on the side of all the Car Rapides in Senegal, yet its so much different that the public transportation anywhere else. In the U.S. and (I am assuming) other European countries, the public transportation sector started out as a state funded entity. In Senegal it is anything but that. The Car Rapides, half the time even the Taxis are just anyone who could find a car, paint it with the appropriate colors, and learn how to drive well enought to get around the city. Many lack real liscences (a fact I personally know since one time I had to bribe a police officer to let our taxi keep driving). Even though there are police checks up and dow the Route National (the most heavily used highway in Senegal) and even all over in Dakar, there aren't enough police checkpoints to discourage a lot of people. Its amazing how things still work, in the U.S. we always feel that without at least some measure of government presence or assurance that all infrastructure would fall apart, but people here have it together, they know how to organize and keep a system going, despite the lack. The Car Rapides are typically Senegalese, they are old European made vans that are converted into small buses. First they start by stripping the car of anything they deem unnecessary. Usually this includes all inside decorations, even the spedometer (I have never once known the speed we were going while in a car in Senegal, all the spedometers are in the cars but they never work), I believe they do this because they think it'll bring them good luck. Once they strip the car of everything they saulder seats in place, leaving just enough room so that your knees dig into the back of the seat of the person in front of you. Even the hallways have seats that fold up and fall back into place, so you can pass through but then sit down when the Car is full. They then hang up curtains (which at first just seems ridiculous, but now I realize does help when the sun is glaring through the window for a 4 hour ride) and put various stickers everywhere. The amazing thing is that they are always the same stickers, these cheap detail stickers. The most common ones I have notices are City Boy, A madonna picture, and roses. The Car Rapides are perfectly Senegalese in this way, they take these images, which they probably have no idea whay they really mean, and they use them to their own use. When you first come to Dakar you notice that people paint the Nike symbol everywhere, it has taken on a new meaning in this context.

I guess you could call it reculturification, but its amazing how it works here. The way people take images and just repeat them because they seem important, even though they don't know why they are important. All tire shops here have hand painted replicas of the michelin tire men (some hillarious renditions too). These shops may not sell Michelin tires, and they may have never seen a Michelin tire in their lifetime, but for them this little man made out of tires is some universal symbol stating that tires are sold at this location. This is the same with many images. Everything from Vitalait (milk) advertisements, to Djibiteries (Djibiteries are the restaurants that sell tradtionally cooked goat meat). I guess in a country where a large percentage of the population is illiterate that they symboles serve their purpose, even if someone can't read they can see this man and know that they can buy tires at this location.

Everything in Senegal seems to work as if by magic, it seems to make absolutely no sense, yet keeps moving little by little. Along with all these symbols the fact that other systems exist, such as the various Unions that dictate the rules in terms of transportation and tourism. Its amazing how quickly people form unions once they start an enterprise. One stunning example occured while I was trying to take a Sept-Place, a station wagon that rents seven seats, to go back to Joal. There hadn't been any Sept Place's at the garage for several hours, and this meant there were a lot of hot, dehydrated and hassled (because a taxi man will seriously talk to you the entire time you are there telling you how stupid you are for trying to wait for another Sept-Place, when he could take you right now to Joal, just for 3 times the cost). Finally a taxi pulled up and said he would bring four people to Joal for the same price. I ran and got in (you actually have to run and push your way through others to get a seat) and waited. What he was doing was technically illegal, he did not have a liscence to bring passengers between neighboring cities, his liscence only allowed him to bring passengers between desitinations within the city. This prompted an explosion of arguments between the driver and the other taxi men, who immediately got out their cell phones and threatened to call the police if he took us. We ended up having to get out and wait for another, liscenced cab. I was amazed how well the system was worked out and how faithful people were to the system. The other taxi men refused to take a bribe (which our driver offered).

Sitting in a Jaygen Jay is a great experience, it lets you see a part of Senegal, both in terms of traveling and in terms of seeing what most senegalese people actually do, the transportation they really use to get from place to place. Sitting cramped between so many people, makes you feel trapped, almost like you are going to drown, but once you learn to live with it, to make the most of it you seem to float on it all, almost enjoy these kind of situations. Like what a Senegalese man said to me the other day, "Now you are inside, in the middle of it all". He was talking about my cultural adjustement, but it pertains to this and so much more.

Society and Influence

2008-02-15T03:05:00.000-08:00

Irregularity, although it exists here, it is seen as some terrible thing. This is mostly true when I do things out of the ordinary, like get tired one day and decide to rest instead of aimlessly talk with people. For some odd reason, people take this as some personal attack, as some sign from above that I am not interested in their lives, that I no longer appreciate them as persons. So when I decide to sleep instead of being in a room with a bunch of people as they talk and pray in French and Wolof, most of which I don’t understand, they get angry. This was the case last night. I usually ignore these things, I need to guard a little bit of my own free time,not due to some cultural baggage, but mostly for my personal sanity. A lot of the times this is the same thing with Television,or my attempt to have absolutely nothing to do with watching television here. I usually end up watching T.V. the half hour before dinner, because its not enough time to do much else and the whole family is usually in the family room watching T.V., except for the mom who is usually cooking. If the fact that people here watch an ungodly large amount of T.V. wasn’t frightening enough, what they actually watch pushes it over the edge. There is a whole set of cultural influences that pour from Europe and South America, that seem so different from the U.S. I think in the U.S. we think that our media influence is absolute, that Holywood has a monopoly on the movie market around the world. Although every night there is some American movie on television, and often even the worst American movies on television, its largerly an European influence that comes through. One striking example is the fact that as soon as Senegalese people gain wealth they immediately buy French satelite T.V. and even stop watching the Senegalese news. It’s a habit leftover from colonialism, but I think its a thorn in the side of all those American unilateralists. America, although it is influential (and you find out just how much American influences things once you are outside of it, how montstrously huge it is both in thought and action) but its not omnipotent. This is not to say that European foreign influences are any better than American ones. There is still a culturally dependency, the idea that due to history Europeans and Ameicans have some culturally beneificial lifestyle and thus many Senegalese people aspire to these ideals. Local stations often imitate, if not almost exactly duplicate, foreign series, and often foreign series are translated into local languages. There is something strangely bizarre about watching Brazilian soap operas (which were actually filmed in Spain) translated into Wolof, it just seems unnatural. I love the way people change things here, how they use symbols and change them to mean new things (like all the symbols on the Car Rapids) but the rote repitition of certain things is just funny/sad. The most powerful influence Europe has here revolves around news. News concerning the United States is sparse and usually concerns three topics: The War in Iraq, USAID, or the Presidential Elections. Europe seems to be closer both in terms of relevance (mostly because many Africans have relatives in Europe) and also in financial pariticpation. News conferences are constantly shown between heads of different European states and different African countries and organizations. Even with all this influence Europe is still a sore spot on a lot of people’s sides here, people in Senegal still have a large dislike for French people, they will blatantly say they can tolerate anyone but a Frenchman. Also, with all the aid coming from Europe one has to wonder if these loans are actually helping anyone but the ministers (who thanks to the loans take half and buy new houses, cars, etc.) Its interesting watching Europe through and African point of view, seeing the French news in Senegal is something else. Not even France anymore, but Europe, all the nexs channels talk about the E.U. Europe has started to retake the reigns of power that the U.S. took from it, not that this is a good thing, because its just another power struggle, but it makes Americans think twice.

Fruit Trees

2008-02-14T02:17:00.000-08:00

Its kind of surprising and somewhat unsettling how much I feel like I've gotten used to living here. I distinctly remember asking one of the other full year students "Do you smell that?", she responded "smell what?". "EXACTLY!", this all ties to the fact that I remember a distinct smell that was pervasive, that was everything, the same smell that seemed to attack everything here, and now I don't smell it, or at least notice the smell. Its like this with a lot of things. The five o'clock call-to-prayer that the mosque sends out every morning around 7 o'clock a.m. The sheep that just wander in your house if you leave your front door open (I do notice this, but I react like Senegalese people, I just hiss and flail my arm at them and they scatter). The rice and couscous, something I thought I would never get used to, especially I remember how bland the couscous tasted, almost like eating wet cardboard, but now I actually look forward to eating it. I think there is a quote that goes a little like: "Overall, we end up doing most things out of habit". This is true here, I've gotten into the habit (even when I type this sentence I think in French J'ai l'habitude, or, je me suis habitué). This does not mean I don't still need change, which I do. I often wander around my courtyard trying to think of things to do because I don't want to watch four hours of T.V. again. There are some habits I can't get used to. Yet, there are things that I even downright miss, or don't appreciate the habit of not having them. Point and case, fruit. First of all, before I talk about fruit I should talk about seasons, a little thing which causes the maturation of fruits in most places (except in laboratories). Here, in Senegal, one notices the seasons very easily. First of all, it neither rains nor snows (or precipitates in any way) during the dry season. Yet, there are still seasons for various fruits. One example is mangoes. When I first got here in September it was Mango season, but within one month I did not see one single mango sold at a fruit stand. Now, in mid-february, it is clemantine orange season. You see tons of people walking around with little oranges. The most important thing to notice though is the complete, and I mean COMPLETE, lack of fruits other than those in season. You can go to the super market, which usually exists only in Dakar, and maybe, a big maybe, find these fruits, but even the rich people often find this unnecessary and expensive. I once bought avacados out of season and one pound cost me as much as 10 pounds of other fruits and vegetables (I spent as much buying two things at the super market than I did buying 20 things at the open air Senegalese market). In the U.S. we don't really understand seasons except for the increase in the price of a product. For example, during the off season, avacados may jump 20 cents in price but they are still at the super market, heck they are still even there in large quantities. This doesn't exist in most of the third world. Even if these crops are imported, which a lot of them are, they are imported from neighboring African countries. This means that although the climate may be different, it is not shipped half way around the world so that they can have oranges all year round. A lot of the fruit comes from equitorial Africa, countries like Guinee, Cote d'ivoire, etc. These countries aren't terribly far away from Senegal. In the U.S. we have pineapples all year round because we ship them from Asiatique countries, because we ship them from half way around the world just to have the possibilty to have them all year round. Although this is great, and I am no one to say that I don't like a good pineapple, even in the dead of winter, but its an expensive habite, if not for you but at least for the environment. Shipping alone constitutes one of the largest environmentally taxing industries, especially if they are flown places.

So, due to the lack of large shipping capabilities (in general) Senegalese people enjoy fruits IN SEASON, except for when (like in my case) you find some catholic monks who grow oranges, grapefruits and jub-jub's (kind of like crab apples) in the neighboring village. I don't know but I think catholic monks have a thing for growing fruit here. I am tempted to make some Freudian psychological comparison between their frustration due to the inability to watch their child blossom (good huh?) in their wives, so they turn to the next best thing: Fruit. Of course, this is all thought, they probably just like eating fruit and know they can make a decent amount of money growing fruit (because no one else here does, especially out of season).

I ended up walking to thie village, Ngazobill, and buying two kilograms of grapfruits and one kilogram of oranges. I gave the grapefruit to my family and hoarded the oranges in my room, a very un-Senegalese thing to do but desperate times call for desperate measures and I am vitamin C deficient! Not really. hah. The thing I was ultimately surprised about was how, like at Keur Moussa, these catholic monks had a huge field of fruit trees, with modern irrigation systems and all that jazz, yet no one else in Senegal seems to have this. It seems like the catholic monks either have the know-how, or the money to finance these things, it can't be something like laziness because Senegalese people are really resourceful. I've seen people make brooms out of things that come entirely from the branch of a tree. I am tempted to think it is the catholic church that has the money to finance the irrigation systems to start these kind of things, but then again, there are all these NGO's, all this financial help that ideally could let other Senegalese people do this exact kind of thing. I don't know, its confusingly delicious. I eat the oranges and they aren't bitter, but I get a sour taste when I think about how things still aren't how they should be in this country with all the millions of dollars of help and aide that gets poured in each year.

Wives

2008-02-11T01:12:00.000-08:00

In Senegalese standards I have been very active, and regardless of whether this matches up with the American standards I feel like I am doing a lot. I had some students come visit me for the weekend, which ended up with a lot of activity and a lot of fatigue, but it was generally the same thing. We visited Fadiouth, we visited the Sacred Boabab tree, mostly the same things we did last time. The major problem that happens when I have visitors is the idea that everyone feels they should have their share of time, financial help, etc., from me and my visitors. This is more noticeable when these visitors are women. When I first came here I was tempted to think that the whole bride price way of getting a wife, plus the whole idea that you could ask your friend to bring you a wife and it would actually happen, was just an old reality that wasn't really applicable today. I am still tempted to think that its more a joke than it is a reality, but the overwhelming pressure that is constantly pushed on you to "give" a white women as a gift to a Senegalese man, or the fact that men say they will "give" me a Senegalese wife before I go back to the states, makes me think otherwise. I was reading a article by the newly named cardinal in Senegal, Théodore Adrien Sarr, and he talked about his youth in Fadiouth, the island that is matched together with Joal to make up the "commune" of Joal-Fadiouth. He talked about, despite the history of christianity in the area (the Serer are the people that have been impacted the most by colonial religion. The majority, and often and overwhelming majority at that, had historically been converted to christianity from Animism and Islam.) The cardinal mentioned the importance of Serer lifestyles, more so than the importance of Christianity. Although he later connected the two moral systems, saying that they often complemented each other, the christian one and the animist one, he said there was an importance in his youth placed on the Serer lifestyle more so than the Christian lifestyle. I think this makes sense, that despite the rapid modernization of Joal, and the growth even in terms of population of the city itself, there exists this presence of tradition. I guess this can be seen in most of Senegal. Even Islam itself has its nuances particular to Senegal. Sufism, I believe is the word, is the mixture of traditional African belief systems with the Islamic belief systems. This gives you things like the Mourhids, who believe that Serigne Touba was another prophet (which fundamental Muslims deny). This also explains the importance of Marabouts, the religious leaders in Mouradism. The Marabouts are the religious leaders that read the Coran, and often they have a connection with spirits and thus god. It is kind of like the old catholic church, they don't want people to interpret the Coran for themselves, they tell them what they should think.

But overall, what I am getting at is that I do think that if I was serious, and insistent that I could probably get most women in Joal to marry me depending on how much money I provide their family. Its a custom that is left over from antiquity, and although I am tempted to think it doesn't exist, that its just a joke, the reaccurance of these questions (even if they are jokes) makes me think this. An example: my host father asked if I thought a particular girl was beautiful. I replied that I indeed think she was beautiful. He then told his wife "Good, we will talk to her parents before you leave so you can bring her back to America with you".

This wasn't really made in a joking manner, like a lot of the other things are. I was surprised by the boldness of it all, by the reality, I guess. I guess this one experience has pushed me to think this, but it constantly slaps me in the face. Senegalese people often scold me for not "loving" Senegalese women, but I can't help but think even if I were to take them up on these opportunities that it would be some sort of exploitation, some sort of cultural invasion, or some bride price that I've been trained to think is terrible since my birth. I just feel like a dollar sign, I feel like it would just be some girl trying to make things better for her family. Isn't this just a continuation of colonialism? Ha, I am tempted to think things like this. I found that joking is often a great way around these sorts of issues.

Its fun and interesting to come to understand traditions, to understand cultural beliefs, but ultimately there are things which are cultural differences and that even if one understands them it does not mean that one has to participate in them. In the eyes of Senegalese people I may be rude by not taking many wives (especially to the muslims) or even one wife, but I am fine with this. I have made my choice. Its largely a wealth thing I think, I mean the father of Leopold Sedar Senghor (the first Senegalese president) had a father who had 5 wives and 41 kids, only because he was a wealthy merchant. I know this was a hundred years ago, and people say globalism changes beliefs faster today than at any other time in history, but the pace is slower here. Often people assume a sense of modernization (in terms of socialized modernization) when they think of globalisation. However there is a difference between technology and modernity, although third world countries may be advancing by having newer technology, having infrastructural advances, the social pratices that we associate with development, such as equal rights, democracy, etc. often are far behind these advances. Just because people in a certain country can now talk on cell phones doesn't always mean they can say whatever they want into these cell phones. This a good example of the internet, all those bloggers across various third world countries that are jailed because they criticize the government. There is a stark difference between development and technology, although the industrialized nations often forget this. Its something as simple as going to a village where there is no electricity, running water or sewage systems and seeing three cell phone towers in the backround. Is this development? I think you know the answer.

P.S. And don't worry, I won't be coming back to the U.S. with any bride(s).

Discotheques and being politically correct

2008-02-07T03:25:00.000-08:00

Writing a blog is sort of a blessing and a curse, its nice (I would imagine) for others to read, but at the same time, as my life gets filled with work, fieldtrips, adventures, etc. I find it difficult to update my blog. Anyways, I digress...

Back in Dakar again, this time for a soirée, an all night party at the discotheques in Dakar. Soirées are pretty big here, its basically just the same thing as clubbing the U.S., except people don't start until much later, usually around 1-2 in the morning and end sometime around 5-6 a.m. I've been to my fair share of discotheques in Dakar, for better or worse, but I had never had one thrown in my honor. I had this exact chance this past weekend when my Senegalese friends surprised me and told me they were going to throw a soiree with me and another American, a guy named Tinaree. They originally told me I was going to co-dj and all, that I needed to bring a lot of friends and what not. Despite the slightly unpleasant, if not uncomfortable times I've had while going to other discotheques, I was excited. Leaving Joal and going back to Dakar is always nice, even if the travel isn't that interesting. Being cramped in a sept-place, a station wagon where seven seats are available, isn't the funnest way to travel, plus the constant traffic jam around Rufisque, basically just the urban spillover of Dakar, isn't the most appealing way to travel. The sept-place's are fine, they are better than the Jeggan-Jey's, which are basically the minibuses that run between villages in the country side. The Jeggan-Jey's are first of all more crowded (they quite literally push more people into the bus when it is already full, I mean push them in like you would try to fit more clothes in your suitcase even though its way past its limit), a lot slower, and they stop frequently to pick up anyone along the side of the road. I hate to be the rich American snob but paying the extra fifty cents to be that much more comfortable is not that much to me. The second hard thing about traveling to Dakar is Rufisque. Rufisque is the urban sprawl of Dakar, a continuation of the banlieu (suburbs) that extends for miles and miles outside of Dakar. Dakar is a mega-trapolis (or something like that), nearly half of the population of Senegal lives in Dakar, meaning that it is huge. Although it may not be as large as some U.S. cities, in terms of relativity, the numbers of citizens in the country side and those in Dakar, it is gigantic. If this happened in the U.S. it would be the equivalent of New York possessing half the U.S. population. Imagine that. Rufisque is a traffic jam, that is what it is to me, one giant traffic jam. Every time, no matter what time of the day, I pass through Rufisque it is always stop and go traffic for at least an hour. This is largely due to the fact that there is one highway, one single highway in and out of Dakar.
Once I actually get into Dakar its usually fine. I am usually dehydrated, semi sick because I have been sitting in a traffic jam breathing in dust and car exhaust (vehicle emmision checks do not exist here), and usually with only enough money to get me halfway home. This is a weird happening but it seems to happen everytime, I would like to blame something else besides my bad planning decisions. Anyways, there was a new American staying at my host family in Dakar. It was interesting to speak with him about his experience (he is african-american) and how different it is. Its interesting to talk about things like racial differences here because the whole politically correct, lets not insult anyone by saying they are different thing doesn't exist here. Here is an example of how people identify other people:

My host brother: "There is a black guy here"
Me: "alright"
My host brother: "NO a black American"
Me: "Ohhhhh, the other American student, the African American guy"
My host brother: "Yeah, the black one"

Of course this is in French and Wolof, but to some people it may seem crude. It isn't here, the whole racial thing is all out in the open. Yes, we do have different colored skin and I will classify you based on this appearence. This is how they think. It is the same thing with anything else. When I first came back to Joal my host sister here greeted me by saying "You cut your hair, you look so ugly". In any other society this might be an insult, here it is nothing.

Now the soirée: I actually managed to assemble a fair amount of Americans to come to my soiree. This has two advantages, first of all you are not the only white person in the club, which often attracts much attention, and also then my friends won't tell me I refuse to share my American women with them. It is common for Senegalese men to ask for American women, like asking to borrow a pencil. I know this may be unkind to the American girls here, but regardless whenever American girls enter any situation where dancing, drinking or partying is involved here they attract much attention, and as they will probably go to these sorts of things with or without my prompting I didn't feel so bad asking them to come to my soiree. I never ended up DJing, which was good, because although I know how to run a board I am not a real DJ. It was funny to see my Senegalese friends act like they were DJ's. They weren't very good, and there were many times when two people would be trying to play a song at the same time so all we heard was noise. Overall, it was fun. I am glad to be back in Joal. I love Dakar but hate it at the same time. Its generic nature, its massive ambiguitiy. At times when I am in Dakar I feel like I could be in any large city in the world. Its just a mass of any influence combining in some frankestein creature of a city. It seems to have its own movements, its own directions that seem to be outside of the control of humans. I prefer the countryside, even if it is less modern, even if I am bored a lot of the times. I'd rather be bored than stressed and confused. Dakar is just this, a city that you get used to because it is so familiar, so generic, so just like New York, with different languages and all Senegalese people. Its hard to feel like you are in Senegal there. I feel better in Joal, more like this is what Senegal was about, even if it isn't what Senegal will be. Modernity usurps Antiquity, its not a bad thing, in a lot of cases, its a process. People desire change, so its hard to complain about these changing morals, but I like the experience of Joal. There is peace. Am na jom.

Before we continue...

2008-02-04T01:42:00.000-08:00

Just a note to anyone reading this blog before we continue, I am enjoying myself. It has been brought to my attention that I might sound angry. I will explain this as such:
1. Cultural differences often produce uncomortable situations. As a result, it takes time and much reflection to cope with, process and adapt to these situations. This process is often long and arduous, if not often never ending. So when I complain about things, or bring up problems, it is not the express my deep down hate, or even anger with the situation, but to express a difference, often to prove a point. Point and case my host mother asking me for money - this brings to the foreground the weird idea about the importance of money here. People seem like they don't really care, but then they always seem to be asking you for it whenever they can.
2. Its emotionally taxing. Sometimes I often use this blog as a vent when I am tired, confused, whatever. I apologize to anyone reading for purely objective analysis. I am not an anthropologist. I try to give an idea of life here but I am forced to interpret this life through my own activities, and emotions. Sooo, if I seem angry, I might be angry, but this is not to say that I am very angry, or unhappy. Unfortunately, you may assume that this is some overwhelming problem, because I wrote about it. Nevertheless, I may write things when I am angry but it is not a constant thing, unfortunately, you do not see the majority of my life (I guess not unfortunately, I would not want to be Truman show-esque) and as a result I am not unhappy. I enjoy things here. One blog that seems angry may be followed by one that seems happy

And one more thing: Spelling mistakes. I am not really a bad speller, or maybe I am, but the large amount of spelling mistakes is probably due to the language changes. Here, I speak very very very little English. So when I start writing in English, I often have difficulties. I apologize for the spelling or grammar mistakes.

EN REVANCHE: GO SENEGAL!

Pictures

2008-01-29T04:45:00.001-08:00

The long awaited wait is now over. I have some pictures posted up on webshots.com. I only have a few up right now but check from time to time to see more. Yeah for obsessive compulsive internet access!

http://community.webshots.com/user/joshuacapodarco?vhost=community

The Sacred Boabab

2008-01-28T04:18:00.000-08:00

This weekend has been a mess of going back and forth. I had a friend come into Joal from Dakar, which as most of anything in Senegal, was a mixture of good and bad. First of all, it was good because during the weekends here I don’t really do much. When he first got here my friend asked what I usually do on the weekends. It pretty much goes like this:
I wake up, early despite the fact that I don’t have to go to school. I walk around my courtyard a few times because I can’t think of anything else to do. If I am really motivated I will read or study and sit on the roof. I then wait until I eat my breakfast, then I try to figure out ways to not notice that the time is just barely crawling by. The rest of the family usually either does housework or watches T.V., which sometimes can occupy me for about half an hour.
Other than that I try to go places. This is the give and take of country life. Its great during the week when I don’t have to worry about all the traffic jams, the loud noises, when I can go home and just do nothing, just watch the ocean after work. Then on the weekends I find myself pacing around going insane trying to find things to do. Having guests at my house in Joal is great, because well hell we eat well, we eat well normally but its not the same thing every night when we have guests. Also, it is a cure for ungodly horrible boredom. Maybe, I am just an ADD ridden American but I can’t get used to doing nothing for days at a time, I at least need to pretend like I am doing something, pretend like I am interested in something instead of just letting things slip by. On the other hand, whenever I have had guests over I feel like I am always stressed to provide so much, in terms of finding places for them to stay, and paying my family to cook for them. This is when the bad side of my host family comes out. My host mom will start asking me for money, complaining that the money I already gave her wasn’t enough, that I don’t know how expensive the market it, that she needs medecine for her baby. Sorry for this but, bullshit. She says these things even though I know they are all fake. I pay her 10,000 FCFA for my friend to eat here for the weekend, plus they have the money they get every month from when I am there. This is more than enough money to feed a family for several days, not just accomadate an extra mouth. Even if she does buy meat, which is expensive but not drastically so, she exagerates the prices. On top of all this, I notice that whenever I do give money for things like this, the kids get new toys, bracelets, book bags in the following days. Its just this two sided nature or hospitality. My family is not bad financially, not at all, but they make up the new middle class, and like all those new middle class families in America, they are greedy. My host father busy himself new televisions for christmas but complains about the 50 FCFA raise in price of bread. This translates to less then 10 cents, U.S. dollars. Itjust makes you feel like such an outsider, like such an object when everyone looks at you and sees dollar signs. On the other hand, we went to the sacred boabab, supposedly Senegal’s biggest boabab tree (which if I remember hearing exists not only in Fadiouth, but in Tambacounda, along with several other locations). Tourist traps. The boabab was interesting, it was big, but it was surrounded by a sea of beggars, and artisans basically grabbing you and forcing you to buy things. We actually got to climb inside of the tree, through a hole no bigger than one of those small bathroom windows. Inside was nice, dark, scary. You could hear bats inside but couldn’t see any. The senegalese man that gave the tour then went on to tell us how they used to bury Griots, Wolof story tellers, in these trees because the Griots never tilled land, never worked with the earth, so that if they tried to bury them in the earth the earth would not except them. There are no mummies, no skeletons, supposedly they had all been removed after tourists kept damaging them. Sitting in the tree, looking through the small hole, it felt like another world, alice in wonderland like. Watching the Senegalese people stare back through the hole, them and their sea of misery, it seemed like we were looking out from some land of the dead. Things are fine, people live, but its not what it should be. People eat, and even in the countryside they eat enough, maybe not nutritious enough, but its not the same. They can't seem like normal people, they can't act like Europeans and Americans because they aren't treated like them, they aren't allowed those kinds of comforts. By who, one might ask? The world economic market, capitalism, their own laziness, genetic differences, historical determinism, racism. Everyone brings an excuse but the things remain. "Put your hands on the boabab and pray", our guide told us this, "pray for something you want, for something we need. This place is sacred". My two hands were on the tree as I looked out this whole into the biting light, into the faces of all those people staring in.

Smoke and mirrors

2008-01-25T02:14:00.000-08:00

I apologize to anyone that has been waiting for pictures, or inspiration, I have been having the hardest time getting those two things together. Although I have seen a lot, I always have a hard time taking pictures, have a hard time getting myself to pull out the camera and snap off a few shots. It seems so cliché, it seems to touristy. I've visited a little bit more of Joal, so now I feel like I understand the city a little better. I went to the little island where all the fishers smoke the fish so they can transport it to Burkina Faso and Guinnee. I was surprised when I first got their, I had always heard about the fishing in Joal as being huge, the fact that people come just to fish, and women come from other villages just to work as "transformatrices". I had heard these words, I had learned about this phenomenoa, but I was still surprised when I saw it. For me, these "transformatrices" surely had to be some women who helped package the fish for shipping, but in the end they just peel the scales off the fish, seperate the heads from the bodies, and pound the heads into dust. First of all, when people talk about the fish smoking factories "les usines", I imagined some semi-modern, indoor conveyor belt driven shiny metal surfaces with women wearing those hair nets and plastic gloves environments. This is not at all what it really is. The factory isn't even a factory at all, its not even run by a company, its a series of fishermen who decided to bring their fish to one area, build ovens and smoke the fish. Only after more and more fishermen started smoking fish their did other things develop, such as roads, the presence of women working for the fishermen and the large transport trucks. First of all, the location is kind of desolate, location behind the majority of city in Joal. I think at one point it used to be an island, there are even the appearence of the recent presence of salt water, seeing that there are low lying areas where the sand it covered in salt. Now there is no water, and the low lying areas have quickly been filled in with trash of every variety. Broken buckets, small plastic sacks, any sort of waste that couldn't be reused ends up filling in the shallow areas. Surprisingly right next to the "factory', for a lack of a better word to describe the place in general, there are mangroves. I have a strong feeling that at one point that whole area had been mangrove, and that is why there used to be water there, but after the mangroves where all cut down the water dried up and it became what it is today. Seeling large areas or low lying land with salt covering the surface is usually a tell tale sign of mangroves, or the presence of mangroves before they were cut down for firewood, or to use the land for farming. Unfortunately, the Senegalese government tried to stop the deforestation of mangroves by providing subsidies for natural gas, thus making the small gas stoves an efficient and cheap way to cook, but they recently lifted those subsidies, thanks to the World Bank's suggestions, and now the deforestation starts all over again. People can no longer afford to use as much gas as before because it becomes more expensive every day.
In the "factory" itself, its a weird circus bizarre of activities, something that would make all those self sufficiency nuts in the States go ape. First of all, the fish is brought in by trucks and set up in piles next to each fisherman's oven. The oven is basically a long brick grill, with holes in the bottom so air can get in and chicken wire on top so that the fish don't fall into the fire. The fishermen then hire some women to come and peel the scales off of the fish, seperate the heads from the bodies and beat the heads and the scales into dust. The fish are they places on the grills to be smokes, while the powder that is left over from the fish heads and scales is put in packages and sold as animal feed. The fish powder is mixed with any sort of vegetable and water to make a protein rich animal feed. In terms of fuel for the ovens, the fishermen don't use wood, instead they use the dried stalks from the millet harvest. After all the grains are harvested from the millet, the farmers let the stalks dry in the fields for several months, and then cut them down and sell them by the bundle to the fishermen. Its funny how autosufficient it seems. The fisherman bring fish, the farmers bring millet. The fishermen buy millet to eat with the fish, and the farmers buy fish to eat with the millet. The fishermen buy the old millet stalks to smoke the fish, and the fishermen buy the fish powder to use as fertilizer for their fields. It sounds almost too perfect. Unfortunately, I have no idea why it doesn't work. Each year the millet harvest gets work, each year the fishermen have to sell their fish for less, and each year the fish get smaller.
It seems like a system that should work. The fish are then sent to Burkina Faso and Guinnee to be sold there. I asked why they weren't sold in Senegal and I was told that merchants in Burkina Faso and Guinnee are willing to pay more for the fish because they don't have access to the quantity or the same type. Most of the money goes towards Burkina Faso and Guinnean businesmen, because the fishermen make a little bit of money, but the vendors usually end up making the most. Also, the "transformatrices", the women who do the majority of the work end up making very little. I was talk each time they filled one sack, which was about as big as trash can in the U.S. they earned 2000 FCFA. That is the equivalent of 4 dollars for all the work, the seperating, the skinning, and the pounding. People are always talking about the plight of these women and I see why, they earn nothing but work so hard. If this doesn't dispell the myth that people in under developped countries are lazy I don't know what will. With all this auto sufficiency I don't see why things keep getting worse every year, I don't see were the solution lies if it can't be generated from within itself. "Yallah yallah bay sa fool", a wolof proverb meaning God doesn't help those that don't help themselves. These people are trying to help themselves, but it seems like it isn't working. Where is god, where is this IMF/ World Bank promised economic boom that was supposed to come with decentralisation. Where are the new trade lines that are supposed to develop with the many trade agreements between Africa and Europe? What have those NGO's been accomplishing if things keep getting worse? I think Senegal is waking up to these realities, the bitter truth that a lot of the prescribed help hasn't been helping at all. They are saying no the APE (the economic parternship and accords) with the E.U. This is a good first step, because APE just allows foreign factories to import goods and destroy the Senegalese production industry. It allows European trade and goods free reign in Europe but still restricts the amount of African goods shipped to Europe, even restricts the number of African persons that can go to Europe.
As a result of all this smoking, once nightly Joal is covered with smoke, from the "factory". It seems almost prophetic, almost like an omen.

Oriented in the Orient

2008-01-22T01:13:00.000-08:00

Four days in Joal and I am already back in Dakar. It seems like this city keeps sucking back into itself, into the mad two way highway coming into Dakar. Into the tired reluctant crawl of the progress of Dakar. Whenever I think of all this work I can't help but think of the President's saying "One must always work, never stop working..." My host father in Joal brought up a good point. "When do you ever see him working?" He has a point, he is always flying around for this conference, or that meeting. He is constantly plaguing every international development forum, every world bank African planning meeting. On top of this, he is a fan of giving long speeches, that seem both intellectual but somewhat simply. He is not afraid to break out of the political jargon and talk blatantly. I feel like its all an act. I think we might take it for granted but the disparity between the government and its people is so much more blatanly honest here in Senegal. In the U.S. we complain about congressmen getting 500 dollar haircuts, or spending thousand dollar electricity bills, but in Senegal, the disparity just becomes absurd. The private jets, the new cars. All the while talking about the general poverty of the people, the wretched of the earth, the blight of a hungry child. They don't wince as they say this. All the while they appoint their family members to government posts, fly for free on the national airline, and make people working in NGO's pay bribes to get meetings with them.
One example: one of the previous students worked with an agricultural NGO which dealt with solving, or trying to better, the huge cacophony of problems that go along with agriculture in Senegal. One day he said he asked his director why they didn't try to work with the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development.
The Answer: The minister said he would be more than willing to meet and work together on some project, providing that the NGO provided 100,000 FCFA for every hour of the meeting. These meetings usually last several hours meaning a nice chunk for the minister.
Someone in class brought up the point that the minister was already being paid to do this exact thing by the state. Is there hope?

On a more local level:
I have restarted my work at CPC (College de la Petite Cote) in Joal. Things seem to be passing better. I am teaching less, which is better, and working to start up teaching computer classes. I don't mind teaching English, it just seems so different. I just can't stand this top down teaching method. The whole catholic school, if you don't repeat exactly what I want to hear then it is wrong, teaching style. An example: If the teacher asks a question she expects a specific response, even the the response provided is correct
Teacher "What is a man who make bread in the morning"
Student "He's a baker"
Teacher "NO! A man who cooks bread in the morning is a baker"
Followed by a pinch on the child's arm.
Other than that I feel a new sort of autonomy at my house, I don't deal with the drama that my family tries to start. Will I give you money - NO - will I refuse to talk to someone just because you are angry with them - NO - will I stay in the room and do nothing even though you don't talk to me - NO. I think one of the hardest things to deal with here in the stupid, yes I said stupid, family politics. It is hard enough to figure out what is going on with the language barrier, the cultural difference, the city-countryside difference, the individual preferences, and finally trying to figure out why one person isn't talking to another today. For a foreigner this is too much. For the sake of my own sanity I ignore many things.

Now in Dakar:
I love my new comfort in leaving and coming abck to certain places. I no longer feel uncomfortable just going to the garage and walking around till I find the place were the taxis go to certain cities. It seems to work so well, and the lack of specific hours has its ups and downs. I have been in Dakar for less than two days and I already have to leave. We were asked to come back to Dakar for the new MSID Fall semester student's arrival, and asked to leave the next day. It was weird to see the new MSID kids, so different than the MSU and Wells kids that came two weeks earlier. They seem less fashionable, less pretentious. I feel like they won't be the kids that come to class wearing their hipster jeans, their large sunglasses, and carrying their iphones, brand new laptops, asking people were they can get good drugs (I was asked this by one of the Wells students, I took a guess and told him to bribe a pharmacist. I kind of hope he tries and ends up in jail). Who are these kids, who is the kid who comes here and starts ranting about how he refuses to accept the fact that people single him out for being white, refuses to understand cultural difference. Who are these kids? Is this some prolonged vacation for some sorority sister culturally myopic valley girl? I don't get it, why come to Africa and talk about how weird it is (to a certain point). I don't know. I guess I am doing that, isn't that what all these rants are? For some reason, this just seems different, I guess I don't make comments like "I hope my new American room mate is ugly so I'll look more cute". Other than all of this, its weird to be part of these orientations. We admit openly that we are hear mostly for the food and juice (We being the three students that are staying the full year). These are the little things that you do because you eat the same thing every day in the country. We need change, we need variety. Yet, at the same time I love Joal, I love the uniformity, the flatness which makes every thing I do seem so out of the norm. I like the pace, but hate it at others. The slowness, the routine. It comes and goes. Its like when I go to the beach and watch the fishermen push out into the ocean, where they will spend one whole night, maybe a week working straight, sleeping in shifts, just to come back in and do nothing for a week in town. This is how all activity seems in Senegal. The explosion and then the silence. Bang.

A Seemingly Endless Myriad of Facts

2008-01-18T03:15:00.000-08:00

I don't smoke, nor do I drink coffee, this has very little to do with Senegal, but the itching suspiscion (is this in fact how one spells suspicion? I posit several other suspects: suspition. Suspicion, which I think is French. I should feel ashamed to say it but without the automatic grammar check I am left oblivious, I forget how to spell this word. I could look in a dictionary but I let the mistake stand) that no matter what people do indeed look cooler drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. The only possible reference this has to my experience here was my recent complete boredom while watching Television with my Senegalese family in Joal. So many needlessly important facts like this merry-go-round my head as I don't watch T.V. Coming to Joal is a mixture of everything, while I enjoy the countryside more, the life is easier, people are more friendly, and I don't feel that terrible rush, that neurotic push of people on all sides of Dakar, that bazaar that is this nation's capital. At the same time, the lifestyle does get tedious. The frequent requests to stop and chat (when I was last here it took me an hour and a half to walk 5 blocks to a store just because I stopped and talked with so many people). Also the relative resistance that this place puts up against the world, at the same time draws me in and pushes me away. I am talking about the fact that my host family refuses to eat the peanut butter I brought for them, they reluctantly tried the candy canes I brought them, and gave me back the can opener I gave them as a gift. I am not trying to impose myself, I am just exhibiting myself, exhibiting a world that isn't Senegal, and it often comes flying back in my face. My host father explained it as such:

Number 1: We all have habits (this is understandable) and I (meaning my host father) would probably eat peanut butter and whatever else they eat in the U.S. if I went to the U.S. I am sure I would get used to the diet, just like you (that's me) got used to all the rice (now for the average American this is a huge step, rice is the main food source, it is used to fill one's self up. In short, eat as much rice as possible to forget the fact that it provides relatively no nutrients). But (this the important part) I am not in America, so... (follow this comment with a small shoulder shrug meaning "We enjoyed the food, or at least we are willing to tell you that, but in fact we don't see any value in it, except for the fact that I (my host father) had mentionned that is was nutritious, probably more so than most things we eat, but in spite of all these things, we shall guard our customs and give no explanation."

Rightly so.

This is the defiant tome of tradition. Unlike Dakar, people here are less likely to change their habits, less likely to embrace change just because of its presence. This is not to say that they are backwards, not in the least, or that it is wrong to guard tradition, this is all just a response, a observation, a difference between here and Dakar. Only a small amount of moral value will be place on these happenings. I can't help but think of tradition when I think of this place, Mama Gejj, the delta that quick literally has its shore at the wall of our school (meaning the school I work at). Looking out into this delta and seeing all those haunting boabab trees, that distopian nature. I think of Senghor, the first president of Joal. I regress to literature. Typical.

On a typically ADD type of subject switch I do not, as I have debated time and time again, enjoy drinking coffee. (this is in reference to the very beginning of this post) For some reason this morning this had a terrible importance, I sgawked at my morning coffee (black with so much sugar the last drink is less liquid and more solidifying magma, same consistency) and thought, "I don't want to drink this" Normally, this is of no significance, but if I refuse to drink the coffee this has so many consequences, a domino of Senegalese faux-pas come crashing down.
Senegalese Faux-pas's
1. It is rude to refuse food when given it. Try some and leave it if you don't like it, but they will question you, they will stare.
2. The continued refusal of a certain type of food doesn't necessarily mean one doesn't like that food but usually is implied as "I don't like the way you (person who cooked the meal) cook".
3. The typically American temptation to simply say no does not translate well. To refuse something one first must thank the person for the opportunity multiple times, and make an excuse, which is often I have just ate. I have been invited to diner where I literally was grabbed by my hand, given a fork and told "EAT!", the only way out of a situation like this is to take three or four bites and say "Sour naa" meaning "I am full", the family will be upset but there is only so much a man can do.

Out of all of this I think the thing I notice most is this sort of undercurrent of double standards. As a "Toubab", white person, my actions become unbearably noticeable for all of the Senegalese people. I think this is one thing people have double dealing with, the fact that even if someone does the exact same thing as everyone else (to a certain point) they will still be asked why they do certain things. It seems like I become more concious of a lot of cultural ideas, more so than most Senegalese people. For example, the use of your left hand. I conciously make an effort to never use my left hand in giving someone something and taking something from someone, which culturally is considered rude. However, more and more I notice that for some people it doesn't seem to matter, even our Muslim professors. More on my work and family to come, and maybe pictures!

Aren't you excited?

Dakar to Lac Rose

2008-01-14T06:38:00.000-08:00

Dissapointing. I would say this is the word I most associated with going to Lac Rose (Pink Lake). Although it's a popular tourist destination, we saw about three or four buses full of French tourists get off in the same general vacinity as us, it was surprisingly nothing. I mean the fact that the lake was pink, which it barely was, I guess might draw someone from France, but looking across the lake, sheilding my eyes with my hands because there weren't any trees, all I saw was nothing important, nothing but what is normal. Trees. Sand. The occasional bush. Roads with potholes nearly everywhere, almost like the road had been bombed recently (more often than not in Senegal the drivers decide to drive off the road, in a sort of remade road that is usually right next to the road but composed of all dirt, just a path beaten down after repeated use.). The hotels, which seemed odd in their backround with the sheep, goats and wandering cows. On top of all of this as soon as we got off the bus we were mobbed by the craftspeople. This is the first time I've seen craftspersons actually run, from a far distance, to beg us to buy something or go to their shop. Within a short while most of the craftspersons had set up a makeshift market around our group as our professor explained some things about Lac Rose.

A Brief explanation of Lake Rose made by a grinning Senegalese man:
1. The lake is pink because it is extremely salty, so much so that when the sun shines it reacts with the salt and causes the water to take on a pink color.
2. The lake is not as pink as it used to be (the assumption here is that it was extremely pink, I imagine the pink on some Barbie box or car) because:
A. It is not summer thus the sun does not shine as much, meaning their is less of a reaction.
B. People harvest the salt by digging the lake bottom and leaving the mud to dry on land.
They then add chemicals and wash away the dirt and are left with salt that they sell.
C. It will never be as pink as you imagine it in your imagination. (I'm talking neon here, so
much so that it glows at night. This is what I imagined)
3. This salt, as mentioned above, is an essential source of the local economy.
4. There are no fish in Lac Rose, they water is too salty. All the boats on the lake are used to transport the mud that is taken from the lake bottom back to shore where it is dried.
5. The purple "salt" balls that people sell are not actually salt at all, they don't even come from the area. They are made using some sort of sugar, gum and water, dyed with fruit juice and sold as souvenirs. (They look like a dinasour egg would look expect for red, like the color of beets, and all the craftspersons sell them as Salt crystals from Lac Rose).

Surprisingly most of the crafts were relatively cheaper than the crafts I've bought in Dakar. I found that most of the Senegalese vendors immediately become much nicer, less hostile in their selling tactics and more laid back when I spoke wolof with them. I could explain to a vendor that I had no money in French probably over 20 times before they gave up trying to sell anything, but usually the first time I said I had no money in wolof they stopped immediately. Beyond that, the lake which was dully pink and the people selling souvenirs (that had nothing to do with the Lake itself, most of them where dolls or necklaces) there wasn't really anything else. I saw some French tourists ride by on Dune Buggies, so I am assuming there might have been some dunes near by. I was surprised to see the lack of trees around Lac Rose, Rufisque is known for its fruit trees, most people cultivate fruit trees and not millet. I also noticed the half built housing all along Lac Rose. The Paris-Dakar moto race ends in Lac Rose, and since it was cancelled this year, you see a whole string of grass huts that were going to house the drivers, half built and already decaying by the water. (For more information on the cancelling of the Paris-Dakar http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/north_yorkshire/7172939.stm ). Despite the relative dissapointment, at least I didn't waste an individual and potentially expensive trip, of Lac Rose, Keur Moussa, a monastary, was extremely good.
Before we went to Lac Rose, we went to a 10 a.m. mass at the monastary, which was relatively normal in terms of catholic masses go. There was the chanting, the incents, the bowing and standing up, making of peace, eating of bread and drinking of wine (which most of the students decided they didn't want to do). The different thing about church services here is their inculturisation (I am actually not sure if this is how the word is spelled), but the basic idea is that African churches shoud and can, according to the Pope some time ago, express their faith in their own language (in this case it was French but I have heard churches services in Wolof) and with their own customs. This means the presence of Djembas, a traditional african drum, and Koras, an instument used by griots from Mali for years before it was adopted by christian monks for prayer. I am absoluetly-enthralled-even-to-the-point-of-paying-600-U.S.-dollars-for-a-Kora enfatuated by Koras. Its like a harp but portable, in terms of its design, but sounds so different depending on how you play it. I would compare the sound to a satar, when played slow, a banjo when played fast, and a guitar is plucked feverishly fast. The monks actually have a workshop were they handmake Koras and ship them all over the world. Unfortunately, due to the delicate crafstmanship of the Koras, and the fact that there are only two workers that make them, they are expensive. Training Koras, as they call their cheapest ones, cost around the 600 dollar range. The more professional ones cost anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 U.S. dollars. Besides this, the monks are actually quite accomplished farmers. I was amazed to see that the monks had large stocks of fruit, with irrigation systems (which is rare to non-existant in Senegal), and livestock, which is usually hard to keep in one place because of the large amount of food they require. I don't know how the monks had developed their farm to such a point but the entire compound was self-sufficient, they required no outside resources to fabricate all of their crafts and food (even cheese and chocolate). I wonder what kind of money that had in the beginning to help them get this far, or if it was due to their cloistered life that they were able to accomplish so much. Potentially, if the computers work and I have enough time I will post some pictures and potentially a video or two.

Paris to Dakar

2008-01-09T04:27:00.000-08:00

I am surprised at how I feel so used to being here already. Its been less than a week and I already feel like I never left. I just kind of showed up and fit back in so easily, the majority of the people here didn't make a big deal out of my arrival, which was nice. Even though I have a lot to say about Dakar coming back I think I should talk about Paris for a while. During my day long trip back to Senegal, I left the U.S. on the 6th and arrived in Senegal at midnight on the 7th, I had an 8 hour layover in the Paris-Charles De Gaulle aeroport. I had been debating whether I was going to go into the city during my layover seeing that it was relatively cold and I had two heavy bags to lug around. I finally decided and took a train into Paris, not knowing any of the stops. Taking the train into Paris was an interesting first look at France. This is the first time I've been in Europe and actually set foot outside of the airport. Coming into Paris we passed through all the suburbs, the notorious banlieu, where there were riots a few years ago. You can definately see a population difference. Even the apparent upkeep of the streets, the buildings, everything seems to sag the further away you get from downtown Paris. I kept thinking about how this is so different from the U.S., I though about takign the train to Chicago and passing through all the rich suburbs. Everything seems unnecessarily organized, almost plastic like, as if nothing happens, everything just stays the same. The lawns are always mowed, the streets lights are never out, the people all have peacoats and long winter scarves. The closer you get to Chicago the more things change, the towns no longer have Porsche and Jaguar dealerships, and the people seem more normal, less hidden. Its the opposite in Paris. Heading into Paris you notice less and less people until you hit downtown. You don't see the large housing complexes but the classic European apartments. I ended up getting off at the stop labelled "St. Michel - Notre Dame" and ended up right in the middle of everything. The metro exit lets you out right next to the Notre Dame cathedral. I walked around the city just looking around and taking some pictures (which I tried unsuccessfully to upload, so maybe next time). I was surprised to hear so little french. The majority of people that walked by were speaking other European languages, even on the train the group behind me spoke Spanish, while the couple in front of me spoke some slavic language (which reminded me of the German women who spoke German with me during the flight from Chicago to Paris. I didn't understand a word she said but she kept talking endlessly). Paris seems so much like a thing, so much like something that has changed so much, taken in so much, that it no longer seems in control of people, like it just controls itself. The city is a mix, a complete mess of foreigners with the strange beauty of its old buildings, its history.
Now in Dakar: I was insanely nervous flying back into Dakar, last time I flew into Dakar the airport exit was packed with so many people hastling me, asking for money and trying to get your baggage. I hadn't told anyone I was coming back that night, not even the other American students, so I had to leave the airport with my four bags all alone. I actually had a better time than expected. The airport is a lot better know. The baggage handlers don't seem to ask for as much money when they give you your bags and people can no longer stand directly outside of the door waiting for passengers. Life has been slow but it has been nice. Its nice to just talk, just be with people without having to do anything. About twenty or so American students just arrived from the U.S. through other U.S. programs. Its kind of interesting, annoying and fun to watch them stumble through their first time in Dakar. They are so nervous, understandably, but they seem different than our group. Everyone in our group seemed open to living in Senegal, seemed less pretentious and more willing to think about Senegal. Some of the students here are refusing to give up their vegetarian lifestyle (which I gave up the first day I was in Senegal, the first night even) and othesr have asked the program directors how serious it would be if they got caught smoking pot. It just seems weird, less like a study abroad option and more like tourism. I can understand that different people want to guard their different believes but to come to a country, especially a third world country, and expect people to change their habits it a lot. Food especially. Often people eat in specific ways because it is less expensive, the reason that people eat a lot of rice, a lot of fish and little vegetables. People can survive only this diet, recieve a somewhat sustainable amount of nutrients by doing this. Often, because of the dry seasons, vegetables are expensive. I don't know but it seems inappropriate to expect a family to change their diet, especially if it is going to cost them more money that they don't really have, so that you can stay vegetarian. This is not to say that I am against vegetarianism in Africa, or any third world nation, but just like any habit, it all depends on the apsects of the environment and the culture. Coming here means leaving behind all the fancy soy products, even the majority of vegetables rich in protein (I have eaten beans here probably 3 times in 4 months). A vegetarian diet for a Senegalese person, if they didn't spend more money than they normally would on a meal, would mean eating plain rice with oil, and some vegetables, if they were lucky. Its just the whole consumption process in the U.S., we eat what we want, when we want, regardless of seasons. Here you are forced to pick and choose. There are no longer mangoes here because the season ended in September. Here it isn't a choice, but that doesn't mean since its available in the U.S. it's necessary. I am ranting so I'll stop. I love being back here, I feel like this is a second home for me. The other new American students look at us (the three of us who decided to stay in the U.S.) like some strange hybrid. We talk in wolof, have a Senegalese sense of humour and do things slowly. I can imagine they think of us as the hipster of taking on African culture, but I don't feel like that, I feel just like I try to live here. Not like I would in the U.S. but like I would so that I can live easily with the most people here as possible.

Update

2008-01-04T10:48:00.000-08:00

I should start this thing apologizing to anyone thats been trying to keep up with my experiences. I was surprised to find out the large amount of people that actually read my blog, so now I am going to try to bring my blog up to date before I start another semester in Senegal. Its been interesting to be back in the states, even though its been such a short amount of time. I feel excited to go back, a little more confident, but at the same time a little wary. The airport always worries me. When I left Dakar last time I was nervous the entire way to the airport. Getting out of the taxi is like stepping into a microcosm of all the terrible things about Dakar. As soon as I pulled up people crowded around the taxi trying to help me with my bag (which they would try to grab from my hand) just so they could ask for money afterwords. After that all the money changers would hassle me to change money (They do this by just shouting nationalities at you and then flashing the dollars they have, hoping to cheat you on an exchange rate). Finally, the beggars trying to grab onto your hands hoping that you'll give them the last of your CFA's as you leave the country. Its kind of a starch reminder of the foreignness of Senegal. All of these people pressing themselves to get whatever they can from you before you leave the country, makes you feel so completely foreign, not unwelcome but always different. Although, I feel like they single all tourists out, or foreigners for that matter, I remember my host mother's story about returning from France. She described the same maze of beggars and hasslers trying to latch onto her as she got off the plane and tried to find a taxi. The assumption that all foreigners are rich (and in Senegal if you can travel you are considered as rich as a foreigner) is everywhere. I am by no means poor, but at the same time I have my own financial problems. I feel like I want to blame the U.S. media, that its the fault of all those shows like CSI, Prison Break and 24 that these people think this way. I've had so many conversations with people talking about the portrayal of Africa in foreign news reports. AIDS! WARS! EPIDEMICS! Its the hype of seeing something terrible on the news, the distorted realities that show Africa as a breeding ground for pestilence, wars, corruption and serious diseases. Back in the States, I could watch entire news segments without hearing a word about South America, Africa and Asia, unless a disaster hit. A good example is the current problems in Kenya. Kenya has been all over the news for all the killings going on their, all the problems. Again, one thing: war and corruption. But nothing ever about Senegal, nothing about the African nations that had no national disasters, no terrible ethnic cleansing, but just enjoy a stable way of life. Its rare to see reporting about the progress, even if it is considered small, in any of the relatively well off African nations. Egypt gets in the news only in relation to what it says about Israel. The same thing happens with the U.S., people hear nothing about the U.S. except for a few reports about deaths in Iraq. The rest of what they understand of America comes from sitcoms and movies. One particularly funny incident occurred when a stranger, upon finding out that I was American, asked me: "Are there vampires in the U.S.?" He later explained that he had recently seen a movie about vampires in the U.S. and took it for a true story. Some people will immediately interpret this as ignorance on the side of the Senegalese, and for that matter the Third World population, but with all the difference can you blame him. I could try to say that he wasn't educated (which he wasn't he was a fisherman who was both illiterate and relatively weak in French, even in terms of speaking). I could also blame it on his sources, he only processes what he hears on the T.V., which isn't usually news reports about the inner workings of America, its not about politics, culture, the newest presidential races in the U.S., instead its always a T.V. show showing some drug dealer with three houses, super model girlfriends and money, driving around killing people and getting into firefights with the cops. Some people will say that it is ignorant to assume, but what else option do most people there have? The lack of infrastructure means most people have no access to libraries (which basically do not exist), the internet, or news sources that are broad reaching and concern global politics. Although Africa started history it feels like its being left out of the consideration of historians besides inside of Africa itself. No country seems to want to fully embrace cooperation and co-development with Africa, instead they just dump a lot of money with strings attached and hope the situation cures itself. I don't know where I fit into all of this, this whole struggle to better the country and become an economically global player. It was the president Abdoulaye Wade who said, "One must work, still work and work always". In terms of GNP the country has been growing in the last couple years but as I've been talking with the country people (the people in the small towns) I get the impression that things are getting worse. People always tell me about how things are harder, food is more expensive, that they work harder and get less money. One has to always work, but what happens when all your work gives you only enough to barely feed you for the next year. The farming situation in Senegal seems like an endless loop; each year the farmers plant as much as they can just to get by for the next year, but each year the crops yield less and less. They don't have the access to irrigation systems, fertilizers or machinery, so every year the grounds become less fertile and so on and so on. I remind myself of all of these things was I am packing to head back, backing to head into another world, basically. I can only wonder the things I'll see and the things I'll understand the second time around.

Family

2007-10-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

Just as I was getting used to Dakar I have to leave. At the end of the week most of the students (all except for 3) are leaving Dakar and going to internship sights around the country. Its interesting to see how fast time passes here. I have a lot of trouble actually getting any work done, even though it seems like I really have nothing to do all day long. This past weekend was spent doing a lot but at the same time not really doing much. I went to a family reunion with my family. We rented a bus (kind of like the car rapids in Dakar) and we went from quarter to quarter (Dakar is split up into quarters like counties) picking up various family members. I still love watching Dakar from a car window. The city sprawls all the way down the penninsula until you hit Thies. For the most part the city of Dakar is indistinguishable from the urban sprawl that is its subdivisions. The only really noticeable difference is the disrepair of the road once you get out of Dakar. I think I understand Dakar better now, in more ways than one. The graffiti that it painted on every available wall space (even on houses and doors) isn't such a mystery to me anymore. For the most part its just propaganda promoting some political party. Also I am beginning to understand wolof to a level so that I can understand the radio for the most part (when they speak wolof). Writing and speaking english has become somewhat hard (if not hard at least it takes a little bit to get used to). For example when a senegalese person finds out you are from the U.S. they immediately start going through all the english phrases they know. Being at my family reunion was interesting. About an hour after we ate lunch I was called into a room for the "family reunion". I was slightly confused seeing that we had been together at the hosue for over two hours. I found out that the family had a family committee and each year they got together to talk about family projects (they are going to build a football field somewhere), problems and setting up the next family event. It was interesting to see how organized and precise everything was. For example they had a system set up stating that a person had to pay so much money per hour for every hour they were late to family gatherings. Along with this they had set up a bank account that could be used if one of the family members was in need of money. The family reunion was more like a business meeting than a family meeting. I felt kind of weird during the whole reunion because I was forced to eat with the adults, which I am assuming was a nice gesture because they got all the good food and more of it. At the same time I felt like I didn't have much to say because they were all talking about the family. It will be interesting to get out of Dakar but it will be a little difficult since I think I am just beginning to understand it well.

Begging

2007-10-17T05:27:00.000-07:00

In Senegal money has such an ambigious nature. Money is both a blessing and a curse in Dakar (I guess one could say this about any city in the world), because along with the presence of money comes the bitter realities of the poverty of Dakar. As an American (or any toubab, meaning white/westernized person) I often feel that I am immediately seen as a walking dollar sign, not only by street vendors and beggars but even by some of my closer friends in Senegal. I think the reason has such an ambigious nature here is the clash of values in Dakar, which is really just a clash of traditional values with that of modernity. The contrast between rich and poor his is so visible its impossible to block out. Even walking from my house to school, I encounter beggars at every large intersection. I am surprised to find that it is the same people everyday, taking up their respective positions to ask for help. No matter how much someone tries to avoid it, Dakar is a city of hidden wealth, that is, those with wealth hide behind their high walled in courtyards, with guards at the doors and drive around in their cars. The only contact that some of them would have would be the Talibes walking from car window to car window asking for money or food. At the same time, its amazing to see the amount of trust people here place in each others. On two seperate occassions I had too large of a bill (getting change is a huge problem here) and I was told by the owner of the store to come back whenever I got the change. This kind of trust confused me. On another occassion I owed 4,050 cfa and I gave the store owner a 5,000 cfa bill and he simply gave me a 1,000 cfa bill saying that the 50 cfa wasn't anything to worry about. The clash between the old sense of village community, where nearly everything is communal, and the weird frankenstien like modernity of Dakar, with its western lifestyle, seems hidden until this little nuances appear. During our classroom conversations, the question of honesty and begging came up. Is it the fault of the beggar if they beg in a way that is dishonest, that is to say they lie about their situation. We heard an example from our teacher about a women who told her husband she worked every morning but really pretended to be blind and asked for money on the street. If this is the women's only way of earning an income isn't it wrong to commit her of being immoral? Why is it necessary for someone to be honest when they ask for help, when they have nothing? From where does it come the need that someone be more ethically clean than those with money (much like myself who often say that I have no money when I have enough money in my pocket to feed a family for a night). The glaring reality of poverty is terrible in its omni-presence. Another interesting idea came up in our class discussion: By contributing to beggars isn't one perpetuating the problem by allowing the person to live on the bare minimums (and by consequence their family). In Islam, one of the five essential beliefs includes giving 10% of your annual profit to the poor. In this way, one could say that someone living in a predominately islamic country (where this practice is enforced) could be guranteed a living. One has to wonder whether this belief is reinforcing the state of poverty. At the same time, its easy to forget the social function, necessity and particularity of begging in Senegal. Unlike the United States, persons with metnal and physical infirmities do not get state assistance. As a result, if a family who is already poor bears a child with a deformity, it is nearly an impossibility for that family to survive and support that child for their whole life. As a result, many of these children are left to their own devices to beg in the streets or be put in the very few organizations that will help them. This is not to say that a child who is born with a deformity is fated to beg but that by understanding the particularity of the situation in Senegal one sees begging as less of a negative aspect and more of a social reality.

Dakar

2007-10-09T06:12:00.000-07:00

Just like every city wordwide, what makes Dakar itself is not only the people, location and the culture, but the little nuances that regularly go undetected as one walks through the streets. Sitting on the terrace of a friends house (four stories up so I could get a great view) I watched Dakar and realized that everything, from the piles of trash, stray dogs and the never ending chanting coming from nearby mosques helps make Dakar itself. I was first annoyed, but now enjoy the fact, that every morning at 5 a.m. I am woken up by the nearby mosque's call to prayer. It seems like the unitelligable chanting (unitelligble to me because I don't know Arabic or Wolof well enough) is part of what makes this city a city for me. Walking home from a friends house at night I was amazed to realize how often I forget that this is a country with over 90% of the population being muslim. Seeing row after row of people lined up on any free space no the sidewalk, all facing east, and all bowing at the same time was a distinct reminder of just this fact. Surrounded by foreign influences, from U.S. media and my catholic host family, its hard to remember that christians are the foreigners here. I guess I often feel surprised because Dakar is such an open and pluralistic city, all faiths and ethnicities live in a semblance of unison, and for the most part, everyone seems to be on normal terms with everybody else, despite their differences. Tangara is such an important element of this melange, and I feel that without it thigns might be different. Tangara is a wolof word meaning hospitality, but it doesn't just describe a state but a whole system of beliefs. I think that the best way to describe it is to provide a concrete example. I was walking home from school two days ago when I ran into a neighbor who I knew relatively well. I was with an american friend in our program and he invited us in to see his family (I've discovered that this is a common practice among new friends, I've been to several peoples houses to visit their family who I would barely consider acquantinces in the U.S.). We ended up staying for a while and talking with the family and ended up breaking fast with them (even though I wasn't fasting). This was the first time I broke fast (or just ate food when everyone else did) and it was really interesting to see how the people ate just a small piece of bread and drank some coffee (after fasting from sun up to sun down). After our small meal we talked some more with the family and ended up eating dinner with them. Despite telling them that I was going to have to eat at home they made us stay and eat dinner with them and their family. It was the first time since my first week in Senegal that I used my hand to eat instead of a spoon (Its tradition to eat rice with only your right hand). After dinner we ended up staying two more hours while one member of the family made Ataya (Senegalese tea). I ended up spending over 5 hours with the family just eating and talking just because I ran into someone on the street. One of the most interesting things about life here is how difference conceptions of time can be. For example when I ate dinner and talked with my neighbors family I spent 5 hours doing relatively nothing (in terms of a western point of view) but if I am ever late for class the Senegalese instructors act like they are shocked. Another glaring example is going to the market. I went to this market to buy a boubou (A traditional senegalese outfit). Going to large markets in Dakar is probably one of the most nervous/fun experiences about Dakar. Walking between the vendors stalls you quick literally have to push people out of your way to move. On top of this people walk in the crowd and sell you things as your are pushing your way through. I bought my outfite from a guy as I was pushing my way through the crowd (I often had to bargain the price by shouting since the vendor would be pushed away). Bargaining is a whole nother story, and since I'm American its interesting to see how vendors start the price off at four times its normal price (for example when I bought my boubou he asked for 12 mille CFA, roughly 24 dollars, but I ended up paying 5 mille CFA, roughly 10 dollars).

Worst experience so far: Walking home one night with some people and watching a girl get mugged.

Wolof saying of the day: waari-waari naari djaari
Meaning: By going around the circle one ends up behind. (or what goes around comes around).

Current

2007-10-03T03:51:00.000-07:00

Its been a while since my last entry which has been mainly due to the lack of electricity during the past few days. Electricity is a big problem here in Dakar. Its normal for the electricity to go out several times during the day. Often the electricity will turn off and on just for a few minutes but sometimes it will last half a day. The problems with electricity here aren't just a problem of access (most people that have houses have electricity and they pay on a regular basis) but its a problem of infrastructure problems. Senelac, the country that controls the distribution of electricity (somehow I honestly don't know how it works), has many problems internally, in terms of reliability and sustainability, and also in terms of payement. Many of the major international oil companies attempted to stop selling oil to Senelac but the Senegalese goverment intervened and repossessed all the oil in the country and forced the oil companies to provide the oil to Senelac. For most of the population of Dakar the blackouts aren't so much a problem as they are a reality of daily life. My host brother said to me, "When one quarter of Dakar has power, another quarter doesn't". Dakar is broken up into many quarters (such as Amitie, Boubab, etc), and its terrible to think that as I'm wasting time watching bad soap operas with my host family (which is extremely common) that somewhere else a family, even an entire section of the city, doesn't have electricity. I've often felt very frustrated, even in the short amount of time I've been in country, by the fact that I feel reluctant to start working on a computer because the electricity could be cut half way through my work. I can't remember the times where I've been in the middle of writting an e-mail or assignment and the computer has turned off due to a lack of electricity. The evidence of the lack of infrastructure is so evident in every form of work here. Our french teacher said that he would love to bring in movies for us to watch but he was hesitant because he didn't know if the electricity would be cut halfway through the movie. With all the progress going on around Dakar (everywhere you go in Dakar right now is under construction) one would think that the problems were being solved but it seems like everyone that should have the answers doesn't know either. The OCI (a large islamic conference that is being held in Dakar) has pumped millions of dollars, through foreign investors, into the city but these problems consist. Although this is a huge problem I still enjoy sitting with my host family and listening to the radio by candle light (I can only stand so many badly dubbed soap operas). Its interesting to see how people stop even trying to work during these blackouts. I walked around the city last night when our power was out and noticed that the streets were abnormaly lively. Its interesting to see the behavoirs people resort to when all their modern solutions fail. I think it is amazing that once technology fails in Dakar, everyone goes outside and talks with their neighbors, I wonder if that would happen in the U.S.

Best moment spent in a class: Spending half of our french class singing along to the Julio Aglesius song "L'amour est fou"

Wolof word of the day: Alxumdililum
Meaning: Thanks be to god.

Paradise

2007-09-25T04:53:00.000-07:00

Paradise is in fact a beach in Senegal located down a long dirt road with signs that say "Forbidden to the public". Its funny because the name of the beach is paradise and when I think about it, it was pretty close. On Saturday me, my host brother and his cousin walked halfway across Dakar to get to the beach. It was amazing to swim in the ocean with giant sand cliffs behind you and the endless ocean in front. One of the best parts about the beach was the line of boulders that protected the beach from the giant ocean waves. In between the rocks on shore and the rocks far out in the ocean the water was calm and relatively deep. One of the funnest things to do (and it appeared all othe other Senegalese kids thought so because they did it all the time) was to swim out to the rocks in the ocean and stand on them and wait for a wave to come and dive into the water just as the wave hit your feet. When I did this the wave carried me almost the entire way back to shore. Watching everyone at that beach was intersting, it wasn't a designated beach and it was on private property but everyone (entirely Senegalese besides me) just came there and spent their time swimming around. Walking back from the beach was an intersting experience in itself, we stopped almost every other block to talk with a friend or relative of my host brother's. One of the best parts about walking throught the streets of Dakar is the ability to talk with anybody without it seeming odd. I made friends with some workers just because they invited me to drink tea with them. Its interetsing to see how people value time in Senegal much differently, I haven't felt rushed in a long time.

Funniest thing I have heard: My host brother described his dream of becoming a modern viking. It basically consisted of looking like Santa Clause (Having a large stomach and a long white beard) smoking a pipe and wearing a viking hat.

Wolof word of the day: ci-degg-degg
Meaning: truely

Top Ten

2007-09-20T06:38:00.000-07:00

Just for fun I decide to include at Top Ten Coolest Things You Can Buy From Random People on The Streets of Dakar.

1. A Turtle (a guy just walked up with a turtle in his hand and asked me if I wanted to buy it)
2. Trees (Its quite common to see people walking around with trees trying to sell them to taxis)
3. Beds (A guy had about three foam beds balanced on his head)
4. Electric fans (Although the fan was as tall as the guy he felt he had to sell it to me through the bus window)
5. Someone else's keys (He doesn't tell you what they open but he'll sell them to you)
6. Passports (You never know who's passport you're going to get)
7. Brooms (Selling brooms from car to car just seems unnecessary)
8. Car parts (self explanitory)
9. Paintings (The funniest ones are they giant romantic landscape paintings)
10. Instruments (I actually find this awesome, you never know when you'll need to buy a good drum).

All of these things are sold by people walking around the streets who thrust their merchandise into people's windows when they stop.

Sortir et Reentrer

2007-09-18T05:02:00.000-07:00

I swam in the ocean.

The last week has kinda flew by in a mixture of chaos and calm. I spent the last week visiting different village and areas in Touba-Couta, a region close to Gambia, near Koalack. The trip, now that is has passed, was good in retrospect but during the trip I remember thinking constantly about the oddity and problems of the various places. We spent our entire first day traveling from Dakar to Touba-Couta. This was the first time I've been out of Dakar so it was interesting to see the city from afar. I've now realized how insanely large Dakar really is. The city sprawls and spills over the entire peninsula (Downtown Dakar is located towards the end of a long peninsula which pushed out into the Atlantic ocean). The urban sprawl absorbs the entire landscape until you are well out of the penninsula and heading towards Koalack. The difference between downtown Dakar and the urban sprawl of the suburbs (of the banlieu in french) is indistinguishable (that is the developing part). Every building is a shade of grey concrete mixed with the strange off colored advertisements that litter every wall. I often wonder how every little market managed to get the same Coca-cola advertisement. Once we got out of the city the countryside passed without much thought. I'm not sure whether the countryside is natural or man made, everything is flat and there is a lack of any sorty of large vegitation (except for some Boabab trees scattered about). Once we arrived in Koalack, to get some gas, we were confronted with the sad realities of city life. As a bus full of American tourists we were surrounded on all sides by people trying to sell us things. I often find it difficult to engage in conversation with strangers in the city because I often feel like if I start a conversation it will only drift towards giving money or buying something. Once we arrived in Touba-Couta we spent the next few days visiting villages and seeing "traditional" dances and such. I couldn't help but feel like a tourist during our entire stay. "Are these really the customs or are they dancing just because we said we wanted to see some dancing?" During a trip to a village, were I assumed we would be talking to the local population, we ended up trying to convince them to send their kids to French school. I think everyone was shocked when our professer said, "If you don't convince them that they need to send their children to french school then you will have failed?" How can we as foreigners, who are not culturally informed, tell a local populace its needs? I've never felt so foreign and imposing in my entire life. We spent the next few hours sitting under a tree while the professer argued with the village chief (in Wolof meaning we didn't understand much of anything) about the importance of a french education in a village where Quranic school is the primary means of education. The following day we visited an island on the coast of the atlantic ocean to start a mangrove reforestation project. We spent much of the morning lazing around in the shade (a few of us went swimming in the ocean) and finally walekd to another island to plant the mangroves. It was amazing to be able to walk through the ocean from island to island, all we had to do was wait until the tide went out and the water stayed at waist level. During the entire trip I couldn't help but feel like a tourist though, we just appear in a city, do one thing (plant mangroves, tell people they need to go to school), eat (which was really akward since it was the third day of Ramadan so we were the only people eating in the entire city) and leaving. Coming back to Dakar was a nice change though, surprisingly the city is more relaxed and slow paced (at least at my house). Its funny how something small reminds you of being in the U.S. Today, for example, during class we had air conditioning. For some reason I couldn't help but feel like I was back in the U.S. sitting in a French class solely based on the presence of air conditioning (especially since we don't even have fans at my house in Dakar).

Favorite experience in Touba-Couta: Being able to walk from island to island on little sandbars.

Oulof saying of the day: Nit nittaay garabam
Meaning: Man is man's own remedy

Salt Water

2007-09-10T08:05:00.000-07:00

The last few days have been spent traveling Dakar and seeing the environs. The entire city of Dakar is one giant dash to build, develop and construct as fast as possible only to let things deteriorate in less than a year. We visited "Le Millenaire", a statue commemorating the peaceful transition of power in Senegal from the socialist party to the democratic party. The statue had been built the year of the transition (2000) but it was already half eroded away. We also visited the most western point of senegal, a small penisula that was used as a military post by the french during the colonial period. I think that this point is the furthest west that continental Africa reaches. The entire coast of Dakar is slowly eroding away, leaving cliffs of black volcanic rocks behind. It was amazing to see the contrast between the giant sand beaches and the stark clifss along most of Dakar's coast. Dakar, like most coastal cities, is losing the battle to the sea. A director of city planning told us that within a few years, many of the houses that are on the coast will have to be moved or they will be sunk under the approaching tides. This last sunday me, Jiba and Jenny walked to a little beach right next to a carnival like amusement park. There were people everywhere swimming in the salt water and going in and out of "Magic Land", the name of the amusement park. I am extremely surprised at the amount of T.V. people watch in this country. During the past few days with my host family, the majortiy of my time has been spent sitting in front of the T.V. watching soap operas, music videos or American movies. Its hillarious to see the terribly dubbed soap operas and movies and even funnier to see all the music videos, full of people trying to emulate American rappers. It is hard to understand whether the people really enjoy watching this much T.V. or whether they just have nothing better to do. I talked with so many people that tell me that life in Senegal is too hard, and the little that they do get is so little that they have to keep working all the time just to keep it. I don't know whether the T.V. and obsession for America is an escape from the harsh realities but people seem set on convincing me that America is the greatest country in the world. I think ultimately it is a matter of interpretation, I may not be hearing the right worlds, conflating the wrong adjectives, missing puns, or something else. We are heading to a coastal commune on Wednesday, a village that predates colonialism.

Funniest experience: The giant Reggae concert held in some stadium. Less of a concert and more of an excuse for a bunch of people to get up on stage, dance and pretend to sing the lyrics to a song (because although it was a Reggae concert there were only two Reggae bands, the rest were people singing kaoroke)

Oulof word of the day: ndank-ndank
Meaning: Little by little

Le premier

2007-09-05T07:23:00.000-07:00

This is the first post in country. I am still getting used to writing on a french computer, the words are in an entirely different order. The last three days have been spent between driving around and seeing Dakar and sitting with the director of the program and eating. C'est le premier fois. A lot of new experiences and questions. Everything in the country seems to be either in a process of decay or construction. People crowd into houses that stop construction only after they have been half built. It seems as if everything is the process of going somewhere but never does. One has to wonder if this is how it always is? Living in a "developing" country appears so uncertain. Power goes in and out during our classes but the signs are pasted over the street speaking of progress. "Un avenir", a better future seems to be the campaign on every billboard whether it is for mobile phones or government projects. A weird sense of absurdity attaches itself to every situation due to the integration of U.S. Pop Culture into this world. For example, during our first tour of Dakar the driver played nothing but 70's music (the most memorable being "I can survive" live in Dakar) and club music. Seeing the city this way is like seeing a ghost the world round. Those who can't afford to have their own clothes made wear nothing but second hand U.S. brands (it is common to see people walking around wearing 49er jersey's). I don't know really what I think of all of this yet. Despite these apparent oddities learning both to use French and Oulof has been exciting. People who want a future tend to inherit the past of others, and in this case I don't know what to think. L'avenir approache, alors je attenderais (The future comes so I will see).

Favorite experience thus far: As funny as it sounds driving around the city and listening to American club music was fun.

Oulof saying: Slowly bit by bit one catches the monkey in the countryside
Meaning: Things take time so be patient.

Blanc

2007-08-27T14:12:00.000-07:00

I've been debating how to start this, I haven't really decided on anything except for one word: Blanc. This word has a meaning that is deeper than its literal meaning. From French to English "Blanc" translates to "white", a simple enough process but this word carries so much more. White, a way of thinking, a past, a color, a stereotype, a chance, a foreigner. White also has another meaning: blank, yet to be filled. Along with this second meaning I hope that this is a starting point from where my experience fills (if I wanted to I could even say color my days). So I start of this journal as it was, blank, excited and expecting much but still a little unsure. I've done the reading, I've "understood" the culture but I know that each person is not a culture. I am spending one year in Africa, one year in Senegal, speaking a language I pretend to know (French) and most likely learning a language I have never heard (Oulof). I'd like to say that I am going to help people, change something, but I really don't know yet. I am going to include a picture of myself before I depart. This will be a journal of the process of filling in the blank spaces, changing the assumptions to knowledge and seeing whether things are so "blanc" in the end.