Teranga

Well, I’ve been back in Canada now for a few days and have had a few days to settle in. Among the most exciting things I’ve done was cooking a vegetarian dinner for myself and a few friends: much appreciated after months of eating fish and meat. And in my few days here I’ve been asked several times how my time in Senegal was. And I’m always at a loss with where to begin or how to describe and usually end up not really explaining myself very well. I hope in reading this blog you’ve come across a slightly more comprehensive account of my stay, and in summing it up I’ll tell you about my last day in Dakar, having tea in the home of my peanut saleslady, Mariama Diallo.

Walking home from school through the Baobab neighbourhood, I was often tempted to buy the sugar-coated or salted mini-bags of peanuts sold from tables on the side of the street by various women. Because I’m a creature of habit, usually taking a particular route home, I frequently stopped to buy peanuts from Mariama, chatting with her briefly about the weather and telling her what I’d been up to since last I passed by.

I had promised to stop by once more before leaving for Canada, so on the night before my departure I stopped by to say goodbye. On hearing that I was leaving so soon, Mariama was disappointed as she had wanted to prepare something for me before I headed home. Since I was leaving the following evening, she suggested I could pick something up at her house. So, leaving my friend Peter to guard her table, she led me through the streets to her small home, introduced me to her daughter, and told me I could pass by any time the next day to collect what would by then be ready for me. (Since Mariama would be travelling the next day, she wouldn’t be there to see me, but her children would).

Come three the next afternoon, Lucy and I headed over to her home, where we were greeted by her son Ibrahima who was in the process of making attaya. He welcomed us in, asked us to sit down, and then made the final two cups of attaya, sharing them with us. During the lengthy brewing of tea we chatted mostly about their family and his sister, living now in Belgium, also covering our experiences in Senegal and my thoughts on heading home.

After an hour or two, as we got up to leave, Ibrahima handed me a bag containing the gifts his mother had prepared for me: a large bag of peanut nougat brittle, and another bag of sugared peanuts. The amount of peanuts in the bags by far exceeded the entire quantity that I had purchased from Mariama in my six months of walking by – her generosity was unbelievable.

Being so welcomed into someone’s home, I was struck by how much the experience personified the Teranga hospitality of which Senegal is so proud. By this philosophy, a stranger should be able to walk into any home in the country and be treated like an honoured guest. Of course with the modernization and urbanization of the culture, the practice of Teranga has been modified and in some cases left by the wayside, but is evidently still existent.

While life in Dakar was not a haven, often accompanied by frustrating interactions where I felt like I was treated more like an opportunity to make money than I was treated like a human being, I also came across several examples of this Teranga attitude. It is these examples that I will remember, that I am trying to learn from, and that I endeavour to replicate as I make attaya for my friends and family here at home. And that is what I leave you with now. Thank you for following me along on this trip, and thank you to the Rotary Foundation and my sponsor Rotary District 5360 and the Rotary Club of Red Deer for giving me this unparalleled opportunity.

La Pouponnière

Ok, so I’ve been failing on the blog-updates front. Again. But turns out that I got insanely busy for a couple of weeks. And it just so happens that lucky for you folks I woke up really early this morning and can’t get back to sleep, thus updating seemed like a good option.

I’ve been meaning to talk about my work at the orphanage (pouponnière) recently, as I’ve been spending quite a bit of time there in recent weeks. I tried to fit in as much time as I could while still finishing off my class hours, which means that I go two mornings a week and once on the weekend.

There are about 90 babies housed at this orphanage, the only one in Senegal, and they are all under 1 year old. Most of the children have lost their mothers, and perhaps their fathers as well. These children will return to their father (or extended family) at the end of their one-year stay. While you then may be asking what the point is of taking them in if they have a family, it’s really to protect their health in early stages of development. These babies all need milk prepared for them several times a day, requiring both milk powder and safe water which are expensive quantities here. Many motherless children become very ill and die within their first year of life because of unsafe milk or other hygiene-related problems. Staying at the pouponnière takes care of these problems, protecting them until they are a bit stronger to return home (and then providing the family with nutritional support for the child for 2 years if necessary). Transition to the home and family ties are facilitated by weekly family visits on Sundays, an obligatory condition when entrusting your child to the pouponnière (visits can be by a family representative, if the family lives too far away).

Another portion of the babies are abandoned by their parents and left to the police, who bring them to the orphanage. These children will be adopted out after a period of about 1 year during which their parents has the right to reclaim them. While Senegalese families can adopt, most adoptions are on an international basis, as it’s really not common in Senegalese society to adopt. Adoptions are not run directly through the pouponnière, but through a tribunal where the parents are accepted before coming to the pouponnière. They then stay a week or so with the infant to help transition before leaving.

Taking care of 90 babies (about 45 on each floor, separated by age) requires a tight schedule. At about 7:30 in the morning, everyone is woken up and fed. They’re then bathed in a room with 5 basins (and weighed right after bathing on Mondays) – there are even specific directions for bathing: grab the towel roll containing new clothes and washcloth, on arriving in bathing room wash the basin, start filling, during which time you undress the baby, then lather them up with soap, shampoo their hair, and then set them in the basin to rinse, then cover them with a clean towel while you wash their diaper cover in the basin, draining it after, put on their diaper, weigh them (if Monday), dress them, then clean their mouth with gauze and a cleaning solution, their nose with drops and cotton, and their ears with cotton – then it’s off to the play room! Play room is actually a bit misleading because the little babies who I work with are too young to do much of anything. But they lay there and giggle or cry as they see fit, and we try to keep them all happy. Generally it’s pretty successful. At 10 they are all given liquid vitamins. At 11 they’re returned to their cribs and take to be fed, set in a car seat after eating. Once everyone has eaten, their diapers are changed and they go for a nap until 2. At 2 it’s time to eat/be changed again, go in the play room until 5 when it’s eat/changing time again and then sleep from 6-10 when they get to eat/be changed for a final time for the night. Just like clockwork!

I really love taking care of these kids and try to give them some individual attention each time that I’m there. That’s really the only thing that’s missing in this environment, as they’re very well-taken-care-of physically but of course with so many babies there’s not a lot of time to hold each one. What does amaze me though is the girls who work there (young women who are themselves in a two-year education program, alternating looking after the babies with classes such as tailoring and cooking) literally know the names of all of the children – no small feat with new arrivals every week!

That about sums up the pouponnière. I have only 10 days left here now, which is a bit surreal after always thinking that 6 months was such a substantial period of time that it would just never end. And here I am. But I think I’m ready (we’ll see for sure what condition I’m in when I actually have to board the plane though . . .) I’ve had a great stay here, I’ve made connections that I hope to maintain for years to come, and I know that I’ll be coming back to Senegal some day – and with looking forward to starting up school in the fall, it keeps me looking on the bright side!

The daily grind

I figure since I’ve been so emphatic that I’m settling back into my daily routine here in Dakar for the rest of my stay, I should probably give you a better idea of what exactly that daily routine is (though I’ve already thoroughly covered my food-related activities).

While here as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, I am required to be a full-time student for 6 months. At a university that would take the form of taking a certain number of courses, but since my classes are all one-on-one French instruction, I instead have a quota of hours to fill before my departure (480 hours to be precise). Currently I’m taking 6 hours of class a day, or 3 hours of class on the two days that I’m at the orphanage in the morning. I have two different teachers: Thomas for my morning classes and Oumoul in the afternoons. The other day Lucy and I were discussing how much the Baobab Centre (our school) is like a family, and to give you an idea of my teachers’ personalities, Thomas is the cousin that everyone always idolized as a child and Oumoul is the mother. While I recently switched to have Thomas as a teacher and thus don’t know him very well yet, I’ve been with Oumoul all along and she’s been an invaluable source of inside information on Senegalese culture and is always welcoming (understandably it’s she who welcomes the terrified/jet-legged/generally confused students as they arrive at the airport).

The Baobab Centre - my classes are actually in the yellow building that you can just barely see on the left.

In coming here I was a little bit unsure of what form my French classes would take, and they are certainly more informal than what I’ve been accustomed to at home. While my high school French class involved following a text book to memorize verb conjugations and vocabulary lists, my class here started as learning one day the conditional tense and the next day relative pronouns and the next the use of clauses, all without much apparent order (though, to be sure my teachers listened to what I was saying, saw where the faults were, and then targeted lessons to that in many cases). Now most of my class time is spent in discussion with my teachers, and as I’ve always found conversational French to be my weak point, it’s been very useful. However, I have had to let go of my perfectionism in wanting to learn every little grammar rule so that I can then apply it and write formal essays etc, because that’s simply not the goal of classes at the Baobab Centre, and it’s probably not what will be most useful for me later on either. Maybe I’ll try to audit some French classes next year at school to brush up on technical stuff . . .

Another important part of class time is the coffee break, particularly in the morning when all of the classes break at 10 to refuel. It’s there that I get to meet all of the new students coming through. It’s really interesting to see all of the short-term groups come and go, as I remember arriving to find people who had already been in Senegal for 4 months and thinking “oh, they must know everything about Dakar” and I wonder if people think the same thing when they realize how long Ellen, Lucy, and I have been here. (They’d be wrong, by the way, if they did think that because while I have learned a lot since arriving there are still days when I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing).

Krystal and I having coffee (well tea, or perhaps tea mixed with coffee and milk, a habit Krystal picked up in Uganda . . .)

As for the evening routine, it’s pretty low-key. I actually spend most nights sitting at home watching Mexican soap operas that have been dubbed in French with Illy and Nogaye. Though apparently my host mom’s daughter and grandchildren are arriving soon for a short visit of only two months and will be sleeping in the room that we normally watch tv in, so it remains to be seen whether I’ll be able to keep pace with the latest happenings between Carlos Eduardo and Luisa Fernanda (they’re meant to be together, but you her fiancé just became paralyzed in a car accident and would be devastated if she left him, which she may be inclined to do because Carlos Eduardo has recently seen the light and is about to divorce his wife (who is laying on a heavy guilt trip over lack of attention) who is becoming a model and may be starting an affair with the director of her latest commercial. And I didn’t even get into the fact that their parents have started dating, except that Luisa’s father isn’t really her father, of course). Ya, I try to follow all of this in French, thus I pass it off as “studying”. And I’m only mildly concerned that this storyline may not be resolved before I head back home . . . how will I ever sleep at night without knowing their romantic destiny????

Illy braiding Nogaye's hair, probably while we were watching the twisted tales of Carlos Eduardo and Luisa Fernanda.

Back in Dakar and armed with a camera

Well here I am back in Dakar for the duration of my stay (or so I thought, I’ll actually be heading to St. Louis next weekend for the International Jazz Festival and a Rotary event). Matt and Dad were here for a week and left on last Saturday night. When they arrived I had this brilliant idea to take them downtown the first day so that they would be buffeted by everyone trying to sell them things or take them places, and then after that everywhere we went would be an improvement. And it worked! (The market in downtown Dakar is generally a place I avoid to preserve my sanity). They enjoyed their stay, and I think Matt might eventually come back to see some other regions of Senegal that we didn’t have time to get to.

In other good news: they brought my mom’s camera for me, so I should be able to put up photos soon (provided that I remember to take them despite the fact that I’m now used to not having a camera).

To tide you over until I’ve amassed my photo collection, I thought I’d post a couple photos that I entered in my school’s “Suma Senegal” (my Senegal) photo contest but which have not yet made it onto the blog (other ones that I entered which have already been posted were the girl with baby on back in Iwol and the woman making Ceebu Jen in Khardimir Rassoul).

This is the guard at the gate of the Phare des Mamelles, Dakar’s lighthouse. When my friend and I went to visit the lighthouse, we greeted him on the way in and the way out, and he didn’t respond either time. Which left us uncertain as to whether we were supposed to be entering the lighthouse grounds or not, but hey, he didn’t stop us. The building of the lighthouse itself has been neglected and you can’t go inside. And that’s probably a good thing because as we were walking around we came to realize that there were people living in the lighthouse.

Here are three girls studying at a Koranic school in the holy city of Touba. Most students of the Koran are boys, but there are now some schools for girls only as well. They memorize the Koran in Arabic by memorizing one or two words at a time, and then adding to the sequence once the previous phrase has been memorized. After about two years of memorizing in Arabic, they are taught the language so that they can understand the meaning of all of the verses they’ve memorized. All learning is done in a traditional outdoor space with two walls of thatched reeds where the girls rock back and forth with the rhythm as they repeat verses and sing songs.

Touba is the holy city of the Mouride brotherhood, which is the largest Muslim brotherhood in Senegal. Here, all Muslims belong to a brotherhood, and each brotherhood has one or two religious celebrations specific to them and has a different set of leaders called Maribous. The founder of the Mouride brotherhood was Cheikh Amadou Bamba (my host brother is named after him) and it was he who declared Touba holy. Although he lived most of his life outside of the city, he requested that his body be buried in Touba, stating that any man involved in transporting his body there without a white man touching it would have a place in heaven (this all happened during colonial times).

The tension between French influences and the Mouride community in Touba continue through today. The city now has a million inhabitants, but does not have any French schools for academic learning, instead children have access only to Koranic schools. This was not always the case, but has been since the 1990s when all French schools in the city were closed. The Senegalese government is currently trying to re-establish the French schools, even suggesting constructing new buildings so that whoever has been using the empty schools since their closure won’t be displaced. But there has been strong opposition from the Khalif, a religious leader whose permission is ultimately required to build any schools. It remains to be seen how this conflict will play out. (Ok, that turned into a long photo explanation, forgive me).

And I think that’s about it for this time. Things at the Baobab Center are getting a little crazy as a new short-term groups of students arrive and people who have been here for a long time leave to go home (this week Cody and Krystal have already left, and Lies will be leaving on Tuesday). It will be pretty much more of the same until I leave as the summer brings many short-term groups who show up for a week to a month . . . but there’s a group coming from Boston at the end of May and I’m hoping to mingle and acquire friends for next year. Wish me luck!

The Cassamance

I just got back to Dakar this morning after about a week in the Cassamance region which is found in south-western Senegal, under the Gambia. If you’ve heard about the region, you probably know that there is a separatist movement that has caused violence in the past. But since 2004 a peace treaty with the government has kept things under control and the tourism industry, which had been huge in the area before the violence, is beginning to return. And although the military checkpoints and trucks rolling around with large pivoting machine guns were a bit unsettling at first, you soon realize that the military presence everywhere would be able to quickly react to any resurgence of rebellion.
The trip was a series of pleasant surprises from the very beginning when we boarded the ferry. We had all heard that the boat was nice, having replaced the Joola ferry which sank, but none of us were expecting that it would have hot-water showers (many of us don’t even have those in our host family homes) and comfortable beds in our cabin, each with its own curtain and reading light. I’m sure that our roommate (the 8th in our 8-bed cabin) was also surprised when he opened the door to find seven young foreigners already eating, playing music, and generally having a little party which may have involved wearing 80s-style headbands in our little cabin. But we shared our food with him so in the end I think he was happy with the situation.
Arriving at the port in Ziguinchor, we were immediately approached by several people wanting to show us the route to our hostel. And we soon realized that unlike the people who approach you in the street in Dakar, most folks in the Cassamance are being genuinely friendly, suggesting friends who can drive you places or organize a tour from you and benefit from talking to you that way instead of just asking for money, as we’ve been accustomed to.
Our most notable experience in Ziguinchor was having dinner at a friend of a friend’s house where his family prepared a special plate typical of the Cassamance region. It was a sauce made of manioc leaves, smoked fish, and palm oil, served over rice. Another exposure to Senegalese life that came along with our meal was watching Almamy, our host, talk constantly on his cell phone via the earpiece/microphone that he had connected to the phone in his pocket. It was more than once that I thought he was participating in our conversation and he was actually on the phone . . . but ya, the whole earpiece thing is very popular among young guys here.
From Ziguinchor it was on to Cap Skiring, by far the most popular destination in Cassamance due to its miles of sandy beaches (there’s even a Club Med there, though it closed at the end of April). Yet despite being a touristy place, we saw virtually no tourists there because the high season ended when Club Med closed. While this seems like it would be a good thing (and we did have the beach to ourselves) it also meant that anytime we left the beach to head into the village, all of the taxi drivers and store owners and random guys in the street directed their attention toward us. So we stuck around the beach, spending most of our time with the jelly fish who washed up on shore (and were therefore definitely in the water we were swimming in . . . I tried unsuccessfully not to think about it).
To go from Cap Skiring to Ile de Karabane, we hired a pirogue. Pirogues are small motorized boats often used for fishing. They’re made of wood, and the base of the pirogue is hollowed out of a solid piece of wood. When in Ziguinchor we saw some boat-makers and they told us that it takes one and a half months to finish carving the shape of the pirogue. Then the pirogues are painted colourfully with designs in white, yellow, blue, green, red, and black. The pirogue trip was beautiful, passing through mangroves and stopping at a couple of villages along the way. But the moment that made the trip was when a dolphin came and swam by the front of the pirogue. And since I happened to be at the front of the pirogue, it was less than a metre away from me. We all started yelling with excitement, which was a probably a bad idea because the dolphin didn’t come back . . . oops.
Ile de Karabane itself was my favourite place that we visited. It used to be a French trading station in colonial times, and the buildings from this period lie in various states of ruin. The most stunning ruin was located just around the corner from our campement. It was just four brick walls with arched doors and windows, right next to the ocean. But what’s amazing about it is that almost all of the walls are over-taken by tree roots, and the roots even hang down in the middle of the room as trees grow on top of the walls. It was an awesome visual metaphor for the survival of African culture through years of colonial domination.
The last stop on our tour was in Oussouye where we were able to go on a walk to nearby villages and see a local woman making pottery and a cashew farm. Cashews = really difficult to produce. First the fruit falls off the tree, and you break the nut off the end of it. The fruit can be eaten or pressed to make cashew milk. Then the nut (at this point still in the shell) is boiled or steamed. After that, the shells are placed one at a time in a sharp metal press to break them open (this has to be done carefully or the nut inside will break). Then the nut which has been extracted from the shell is roasted in an oven. And after all that, the bitter membrane surrounding the nut has to be scraped off by hand. No wonder cashews are expensive!
So that’s about it for the trip. Yesterday morning Lucy and I took a Ndiaga Ndiaye from Oussouye to Ziguinchor and walked to the port to board the ferry, arriving in Dakar at 6:30 am. And now, in the mid-afternoon, I’m still swaying back and forth when I stand up as if I’m still on the boat. I’m also getting excited to see Matt and Dad, who are arriving tonight! It’ll be great to show someone else what I’ve discovered here in Senegal!

Togo Togo Togo

I’m back from Togo! And not yet departed for the Cassamance, so here’s the update . . .

Cody, Lucy, Ellen, and I went to Lome, Togo for a week to take in the Rotary District Conference (and we figured since we had already paid for the flight there we might as well stick around and see the country for a few days).

The conference itself was held over the Friday and Saturday. The program on Friday was a lot of introductions and short speeches during the day, with a “home hospitality” evening. The highlight of Friday for me was probably when I had to stand up in front of several hundred Rotarians and introduce myself in French (and yes, I did make several stupid errors because I was nervous). But no moment was more surreal than when we went to the home that was welcoming 200 Rotarian guests for dinner and drinks as part of the home hospitality program. We rounded the corner to the backyard and found: palm trees, a swimming pool surrounded by candle lanterns, a LAWN (I hadn’t seen that much grass growing anywhere in months), and several shrubs that had been sculpted into animals (yes, I too thought these only existed in the movie “Edward Scissorhands”). And, as any self-respecting Rotary Scholars would do, we danced the night away, even when everyone else quit dancing with us.

Saturday was only a half-day program, focusing mainly on updates about what is going on in Rotary International and the Rotary Foundation, especially the large changes going on in the Foundation to streamline its grants program and raise public awareness of its existence. So, anyone out there looking for funding for international charity projects or study abroad opportunities, check out the Rotary Foundation website and see if they’ve got something for you! And spread the word! One more shameless plug: Rotary International is doing another big push for polio vaccination this year. The goal is to raise $200 million, which is projected to be enough to eliminate the disease entirely. Given my microbiology nerdiness, this program is close to my heart and I think we have what it takes to make polio a thing of history, much like smallpox (and it remains my dream that we’ll see AIDS someday in the same category). If you’re interested in making a contribution or organizing some fundraising, go to www.rotary.org/endpolio or talk to your local Rotary club (each club is expected to contribute to the program, largely through local fundraising efforts that will also raise awareness . . . let’s get this thing going)! Ok, I realize that became a little too motivational but I couldn’t help myself.

Now, the rest of the week we spent visiting Togo, spending most of our time at a monastery which is near the northern city of Kara. The monastery was peaceful, located near the mountains (actually a little bit terrifying driving to Kara in a bus as we passed several large trucks on narrow mountain roads because they were overheating and barely moving, but we got there. And back. And Celine Dion music videos were playing on the bus so that distracted Lucy and I as we sang along. Celine Dion is practically worshipped in Western Africa, even by otherwise macho young men). Staying with the monks there we were well-taken care of: each a private room complete with mosquito-netted bed and balcony area, all meals prepared for us and encouraged to eat until we thought we would burst, and the Brother in charge of visitors took us on a tour to surrounding village homes where villagers were eager to greet us, some generously offering us pentad eggs (which were later cooked into our lunch) or palm wine. We were likewise warmly welcomed in Lome by a local Rotary president who picked us up from the airport and arranged for us to get to and from the conference every day. Hospitality again abounded our last night in Kara when we stayed in the city and the local Rotary club organized a meeting solely for the purpose of meeting and visiting with us, and then one of the Rotarians got up at the crack of dawn the next day to drive us from our hotel to the bus station. If one day I make it back to Togo, I’ll look forward to checking in with all of our newfound friends.

Now for some random notes about how things are different in Lome and Dakar:
-taxis in Lome are almost exclusively motorcycles, whereas Dakar has cars
-when flying out of Lome at night, it looks like a network of little blue lights, whereas Dakar clearly takes the form of a large city with orange-lighted freeways
-the vegetation is greener and more plentiful in Lome, whereas in Dakar’s current dry season the sand is more plentiful than anything else
-traffic lights work and are obeyed by drivers in Lome, whereas in Dakar traffic lights exist but rarely function (I know of only one that does) and driving turns into a free-for-all
-the starch base of a dish in Lome is often a ball of cooked corn mush, whereas rice or millet are the staples in Dakar
-there’s not much garbage on the streets of Lome and garbage cans are available on the beach, whereas in Dakar garbage in the streets is a much bigger problem, in part due to the lack of garbage cans in public places
-you don’t hear the call to prayer in Lome where the Muslim portion is only 15%, whereas it’s heard every day in Dakar (and more than once I’ve been asked during a Skype convo, “where is that music coming from”?)

So, in closing, Togo was excellent. And although I’ll be off to the Cassamance in two days, I’m looking forward to spending my last two months exclusively in Dakar. This morning I visited an orphanage where I’ll be working a few times a week for the rest of my stay and I’m very excited about it (with 88 babies all under 1 year old, the Sisters who run it are always in need of some extra hands). That’s all until I get back from the Cassamance!

It's Easter. And I got married (ok, calm down, not really)

Ok, look at me here, blog posts in quick succession, aren’t you all proud of me? Actually, I’m leaving for Togo tomorrow so it was either post now or post in a week and a half. And after promising to post more option I figured this was the better option.

I’ve had a busy week, with the most significant event being a trip to visit Illy’s village for Easter to celebrate with her Catholic family. Almost all of her cousins came back to the village, where two sets of Illy’s aunts and uncles live, for the weekend. I left for Mont Roland on Saturday afternoon, taking a Ndiaga Ndiaye (see earlier transport post if you’re confused at this point). It was a smooth trip other than the fact that the traffic was really intense to leave the Dakar peninsula, so a trip that could take an hour took about four hours. Good news though: they seem to be constructing some sort of overpass system. Bad news: in the three months that I’ve been here not much has seemed to happen with it. I’m optimistic though . . .

As for the celebrations at the village, there was a lot of eating meat involved (they killed a cow on Friday and a pig on Sunday, and a few chickens along the way. All for one family). And for those of you who are like, “Yay, she’s left her vegetarian ways behind her!” you should be warned that while I tried the dishes I for the most part ate around the chunks of meat. I mean, it was dark (there’s no electricity there)! How was I supposed to dissect prior to eating?

Other than the weekend was occupied by the female cousins preparing the meals while the male cousins sat around and drank from one morning to the next without stopping. And then they kidnapped the girls one by one to get them to buy bottles of wine for the group. And generally acted like 10 year olds (although they range in age from 20 to 35). Their favourite games were to pretend that they were a camera crew and run around interviewing everyone, and then on Sunday they married each of the girls to one of the guys. My husband was wearing a bright orange Versace t-shirt for the ceremony which the “priest” performed by the power vested in him by the palm wine he was drinking. I somehow doubt it’s legit.

But anyway, the coolest thing about Easter here is the traditional dish that Catholic families make on Good Friday. It contains several of my favourite things in the world: baobab fruit, peanut butter, millet couscous, vanilla, and nutmeg (and of course sugar). And it becomes this wonderful soupy mixture. I’m salivating just thinking about it. And even more awesome is that they take it around to all of the Muslim families in the neighbourhood to share the celebration!

So that’s all for now, don’t have any pictures because my camera is currently broken. However, do expect more to be coming once my dad and brother bring me a camera in a couple of weeks!