Friday, July 17, 2009

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.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

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!

Friday, June 5, 2009

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.

Monday, May 25, 2009

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!

Friday, May 8, 2009

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!

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

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!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

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!

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Drink some water . . . or some other stuff

Hey all,

It’s been a while since I last posted, but admittedly that post was a tad lengthy so I wanted to give you all time to recover. And as I mentioned, I’m now staying in Dakar for a bit which means I’m back in a routine which means I have less exciting news.

However, I did have my first substantial experience with being sick here last week. I’ll spare you the gory details but I had to rope my friend Lucy into taking me downtown in a taxi so I could get a malaria test. Which normally wouldn’t be a big deal, but it was election day (for the mayors of each neighbourhood) and we had been told repeatedly not to leave our houses. But when you have a fever climbing and approaching 40 C while your host family is telling you to drink water and you’re thinking, oh, great, I’m going to be delirious soon, you do what you have to. And it turned out that downtown was deserted so we didn’t have any problems. And I didn’t have malaria. I’m thinking it might have been Giardia, everyone’s favourite parasite, but whatever it was I’m doing better now.

As for the election itself, the results spoke clearly of a dissatisfied Senegalese public. The president, Abdoulaye Wade, had endorsed mayors of his party, Sopi, and yet very few of the Sopi candidates won (even Wade’s son lost, and promptly hopped a plane to go live in France). The big winner (by a landslide margin in most neighbourhoods) was a coalition of opposition parties in whom the citizens have placed their hope for change.

And now our new and exciting theme: beverages! Which could also be labeled as: “copious amounts of sugar!” since for example my teacher regularly adds 4 cubes of sugar when preparing a glass of powdered milk, and all other beverages are also heavily sweetened.

My favourite beverage here and the one most emblematic of Senegalese culture is Attaya, or tea. Making and drinking attaya is a group event, often taking a couple of hours to drink three rounds of tiny glasses. The tea itself is gunpowder Chinese green tea and is boiled in the water along with vanilla sugar until the tea is very strong. At that point one of the small tea glasses (probably double the size of a shot glass) is filled and the process of pulling the tea begins. To pull the tea, it is poured carefully back and forth between glasses so that a layer of froth remains at the bottom of each glass and the tea to be drank can be poured over top, leaving the frothy layer floating. While it sounds like a simple process, I definitely need some practice as I have dumped entire glasses of tea on the ground and myself more than once. Such difficulties have led other students to cleverly pour a bit of tea into a bottle and shake it vigorously as a spill-proof method. Once the tea is poured, everyone is served their glass and is to drink the tea in a slurping fashion, letting out a subtle sigh of satisfaction after each sip (the legend is that once a guest at a man’s house didn’t let out the appropriate sigh after each sip, and the man stabbed him in the stomach at which point the guest made the right sound). And once all that is done, it’s time to prepare round two! It’s most common to prepare three rounds of tea: the first is bitter like death, the second sweeter like life, and the third sweetest like love. Many families make attaya every afternoon, others prefer to make attaya with friends late at night. Whatever time of day it’s always a great time to sit around and talk with family and friends, a tradition that I’m hoping to bring back with me along with some tiny tea glasses.

In terms of drinks that you buy on the street, café touba is definitely the most popular. Everywhere you go you see little rolling Nescafe carts or men carrying around a silver pot full of steaming coffee. All coffee here is instant, and café touba in particular has added spices and sugar (of course). Add to that a little froth on the top from pouring the coffee back and forth a few times, and there you go!

As for juices I’ve already explained the baobab juice made by stirring dried fruit into water until it dissolves, then adding sugar and possibly a bit of pineapple juice. It’s definitely my favourite juice here, and I’ve heard rumours that baobab powder is now being imported into North America: definitely something I have to look into when I get home. Other local juices are much more colourful that the white baobab juice, including the bright red bissap, brown tamarind, yellow ginger, and green dita (a local fruit). Once you start mixing these together (the most popular mix being baobab and bissap) the sky’s the limit!

The ubiquitous beer here is Gazelle, brewed in Dakar and served in a large green bottle. I’d offer you more information, but I’m not a fan of beer so although I’ve tried it, a reasonable description is beyond my capabilities.

And finally: while most students don't drink tap water directly, almost all of us drink the filtered water which removes particles but probably not a whole lot beyond that (and leaves the chlorine taste firmly intact). I've been drinking filtered water since my arrival and haven't had any problems. Yet when travelling within Senegal I try to play it safe with bottled water, as we did on our Tambacounda trip, and you can see below what a four day water supply for seven people looks like.
That about sums up the drinks here, so until next time (which I promise will be sooner rather than later . . . time just goes so quickly sometimes)!

Saturday, March 14, 2009

I'm so dirty I'll have to wash my soap . . .

I’m now back from my trip to Niokolo Koba National Park and mountain villages in south-eastern Senegal. It was an excellent week, full of many different experiences. Before I begin summing up, I’m going to warn you that anyone who has previously claimed that I am “high-maintenance” *cough* Mom *cough* is going to eat their words after seeing where I’ve been living for the past several days. To give you an idea, toilet facilities included the following latrine in Iwol, a mountain village where we had no access to water (other than the bottled water that we hiked in with), and the smell of which may have set off my gag reflex the first time I tried to use the bathroom. From then on I held my breath.
And here was one of the beds I slept on: open air with chickens walking around, a hard plastic woven mat over uneven bamboo slats. Complete with sandflies and a giant spider that we found earlier in the evening!

Ok, now for the actual activities we did. On Thursday morning we left Dakar at 5 am, taking a sept-place taxi to Tambacounda, a journey that took about 12 hours. We had heard horror stories of the condition of the road and were happy to find that most of it has been paved (expected to be completed in a year or two), but the last three hours of the drive were largely unpaved, and very dusty. Which led to my forehead looking like I had gotten a really bad fake tan. The rest of my face is somewhat naturally coloured only because I was wearing a dust mask. Upon arriving in Tambacounda, we had to take a 4X4 to Niokolo Koba Park, arriving at our campement at around 10:30. While we were all exhausted, a night-time arrival was an opportune time to see some nocturnal animals, mainly civets and bats, crossing the path of the trucks headlights along the way. Sidenote about campements: they’re organized into individual “houses” where 2-4 people can stay and there is a central open-air covered area where meals are served. The price of a campement bed is about 2500 to 4000 CFA ($6 to $10 CDN) per night, and meals run around 2500 CFA each – definitely a great option since many rural areas have campements available.

We spent two days in Niokolo Koba, searching for animals as we drove around for a couple of hours in the morning, returning to the campement for lunch and a rest during the hottest portion of the day, and then heading out for another drive in the late afternoon. While we didn’t succeed in finding the elusive lions that are present in the park, we did find many baboons, antelope, birds, crocodiles, hippopotami, monkeys (including about 8 who live right around the campement), warthogs, and a leopard (unfortunately not really in the wild, it’s in a cage because it was orphaned by poachers 20 years ago and has been raised by humans since then), and a scorpion. The most notable animal encounter was definitely when I spotted a crocodile beside the road but when we stopped the truck he looked dead and was also really far from any water. The guide threw a few stones at him to try to get him to move (we were all safely sitting in the back of the 4X4 at this time) but we got no response even though the stone actually hit the crocodile. So the guide got out of the truck, grabbed a long stick, and poked the crocodile in the tail, at which point he woke up turned his head and snapped his jaws and then scurried off in the opposite direction at which point the guide ran to the truck thanking his lucky stars that the crocodile hadn’t run toward him. We all screamed as this happened, me so loudly that Lies’ mom claimed later that she was more scared of me than the crocodile.

After two days in the park, we spend out third night at a campement in Dar Salaam which is the village right at the gate to the park. That evening we heard chanting and music coming from houses in the village, and upon asking at the campement what was happening, one of the employees led us to the village leaders who allowed us to observe the special ceremony. There were men playing djembes and all of the women were walking in a circle singing verses of the Koran. We were able to dance with them for a while, and then sat down to observe. Sitting near the village children, all of the girls braided the hair of Ellen and myself after touching it tentatively and requesting permission – but I think that the texture of our hair proved more challenging than expected as the braids started to fall out as soon as they were finished. The girls also gave us bracelets and crowded around us until we left – a sharp contrast of generosity compared to the demands for “cadeau, cadeau, cadeau” (gift) that we were met with by children in the more touristy villages later in the week.
Two 4X4s picked us up in Dar Salaam the next morning and we drove to Kedougou, stopping at the market to pick up gifts for the villages we were visiting: candles, matches, soap, candies, and kola nuts. We then continued on to the base of the mountain where the village Iwol is located and prepared our bags for the night, each of us also taking 3 1.5L bottles of water with us, which didn’t leave much room for anything else. We then hiked up the mountain for about an hour and a half.

On arrival in Iwol, kids immediately grabbed our hands and proceeded to be our entourage for the next day. We had some fun with them that night taking turns singing songs and playing with a stuffed animal serpent that another group had left there (Lies and Jonathan very convincingly reenacted the crocodile incident with the serpent, much to the delight of the kids). Iwol is a Catholic village, but like most people in Senegal their beliefs are also mixed with animism (it’s said that Senegal is 95% Muslim, 4% Catholic, and 100% animist). There is a sacred tree in the village where many women and children fell ill after pounding millet under the tree in 1987 and one morning all of their tools were found inside the tree’s root structure, so the village did animal sacrifices to get rid of the demons in the tree. Today the tree stands in the middle of the village, and children are allowed to play on it. Another notable tree in the village is a gigantic baobab which has a trunk circumference of 23.5 m!

It was shocking to arrive in Iwol and see children with distended bellies from malnourishment on every side. Worse still was to see the treatment of one village girl who has a handicap in her legs or feet which makes her walk noticeably differently. This girl immediately latched on to me and I held her hand as we walked into the village, but a young man from the village kept insisting that I let her go because her feet were not good. Later, when playing with all of the kids we encouraged her to join the group but village elders shooed her away, even hitting her at one point with a switch after she sat on one of our knees. While they're happy and playful, life certainly isn't easy for any of these kids.

The next morning we walked down the mountain to arrive in the village of Ibel where we visited a nearby marble deposit where Europeans have been removing large quantities of stone from an area surrounded by poor villages. From what we could understand from the villagers, locals are paid for labour but any other money goes to government in Dakar and the village itself is not paid for the land where the marble is removed.

For the rest of the day we stayed at the home of our guide and had a relaxing day of making baobab juice (bouye) which may be the best beverage on earth. Baobab fruit is very dry when you break it open, and the white fruit comes apart in pieces that contain large black seeds and pink fibrous strings. The fruit can be eaten straight, by being sucked on like a candy but in my opinion the preparation of bouye is a far better usage. The fruit pieces are added to water and then stirred for a very long time until basically only the seeds and fibres are left. It is then strained and thinned with water, adding sugar and pineapple juice to taste. Obviously not having access to pineapple juice, we added pineapple juice mix to ours which gave it an amusing fluorescent yellow colour but it still tasted great. Cheers!

That evening a group of Bissari dancers came to the village to perform a dance for some shepherds who have moved into the village to graze their livestock during the dry season when there is little vegetation further north. The dancers also encouraged us to join them and you should all be prepared that when I return my dancing style may involve a lot more random leg and arm movements. Look forward to that. Unfortunately the dancing stirred up a lot of dust which gave us the only big scare of the trip. Ellen had serious difficulty breathing during and after the dance but after getting her laid down for about fifteen minutes she started to feel better. There was a doctor in the village, but the nearest hospital would be in Tambacounda, which was about a 4 or 5 hours away so we were really feeling our isolation and helplessness when we had nothing to do to help her except pray.

Once Ellen was better, a few of us headed to the village mosque where many villagers were staying up all night to pray during the night of 1000 prayers, an annual religious celebration. It was there that we gave our gifts to thank the village for housing us, and in return the village elders prayed a blessing over us and then thanked us in French and English! We then headed back to our nice comfy beds (see beginning of blog) but I was so tired that I actually slept quite well.

For our final full day of activities we drove to Dindefello, a village famous for its nearby waterfall and installed ourselves at the campement there. We then headed out to hike to the waterfall, and I was so busy watching my feet so as not to fall that I didn’t realize when we had arrived at the falls. This picture does not do them justice, but the falls looked like something designed for a luxury resort: water trickled over a large section of rock cliff which was conveniently terraced so we could walk up and sit under the falls and at the bottom a large pool of water for swimming, surrounded by rocks which were at convenient angles to form lounging chairs. Oh, and did I mention that we could hear chimpanzees screaming in the trees and Jonathan even saw trees shaking from their movement? Ya, it was pretty much paradise. And I swam in the water even though my parasitology friends are all shaking their heads right now. But come on, it was worth it . . .

That afternoon we walked up to a village on top of the mountain to visit it and asked our guide before we left if we would need flashlights, but he insisted not. However, upon the descent in the dark on loose and jagged rocks we started to realize that maybe it would be a good idea to have flashlights anyway. Moral of the story: always be prepared, just like the Cub Scouts.

Speaking of which, I was prepared with a pretty handy assortment of medical supplies, which made me the trip doctor (providing medical advice and treatment on about 6 or 7 different occasions). Take note all you med school kids, observe that everyone in my group is still in good health, and be proud of me.

After spending the night in Dindefello we visited the village in the morning and then began our trip back home, arriving in Tambacounda that night. This day of travelling was the toughest for me in the trip, as at every turn when we had to pay the 4X4 drivers they were demanding more money than had been the agreement, the same happened again when we hired at sept-place to go to Kedougou, and then on arrival in Tambacounda we agreed to hire a sept-place to go to Dakar, but after walking with us to our hotel, he demanded half of his payment in advance to return the next morning but wouldn’t give us anything as security. Added to this was the large numbers of kids in Tambacounda who demanded money from us at every turn. It is exhausting to be regarded not as a person but just as a source of money. And it made me reflect on our week of giving gifts to villages as was advised by our guide. In villages where we stayed the night, gifts seemed natural as a gesture of thanks, but in some of the other villages we just walked through handing out goods and didn’t even have time to visit with villagers – obviously just supporting the notion that we’re there only to give handouts. However, the staff at the hotel where we stayed in Tambacounda were incredibly helpful, helping us to find a new sept-place and a place to buy sandwiches – both much appreciated after an exhausting day of travel.

And finally, it was back to Dakar, leaving from Tambacounda at 5 am and arriving in Dakar at about 4 pm after sitting in traffic outside of Dakar for 2 hours (this traffic jam is consistent and incredibly frustrating as it takes about 2 hours to drive 30 km). And that was the end of my week. Our group is planning another trip now to the Cassamance region from May 1-7, and I’m also heading to Togo for the Rotary District Conference from April 16-23, but until then I’ll be staying here in Dakar.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Tambacounda . . .

Hey all,

So I'm leaving tomorrow morning for Tambacounda and the Bissari Country (south-eastern Senegal). I'll be gone for 8 days and hopefully I'll have lots of pics and stories to post when I get back!

Now I've got to start preparing myself mentally for tomorrow which is shaping up to be quite a joy: 12ish hours in a sept-place going over roads that only vaguely resemble roads in 38 C heat. Ya, it'll be fun.

Friday, February 27, 2009

ENDA-Ecopole (and a cross-dressing fete)

This week I’ve been a part of two different social events here, each from opposite ends of the emotional spectrum.

On Tuesday I went to a Mardi Gras party with Nogaye and Illy (the maids who work at my house). Apparently the Mardi Gras tradition here is to cross-dress. Unfortunately, Illy and Nogaye weren’t up for putting on men’s clothes, so I didn’t either, which I regretted as soon as I arrived. The party was basically a dance, and it’s really something to see people dancing in couples, each dressed and acting as the opposite gender. There were a lot of girls walking around like rappers, and a few guys sporting thong underwear sticking out over the top of their skinny jeans. (In the Muslim community here the cross-dressing holiday is New Year’s . . . I think I may have to introduce this tradition at any New Year’s parties I have in the future.)

The last night I went with Illy to a memorial mass and then her family’s gathering to commemorate the anniversary of her cousin’s death. Outside of Illy’s family’s house, plastic chairs were set up in the street and all rooms of the house were also filled with family members and visitors. In addition to the family and friends, neighbours and anyone else involved in the life of the family is welcomed. We were all served food and beverages (baobab juice, bissap juice, soft drinks, beer, mixed drinks, wine . . . they had it all – note that Illy’s family is Catholic, at Muslim funerals there is no alcohol but the gathering is quite similar). While I think it would be difficult to be surrounded by so many people while mourning, it also gives a really strong sense of community and support network which must be comforting.

Now as promised, the educational portion of my blog (I am here to be a cultural ambassador and pass on information after all . . .)

As part of my classes, I’ve begun visiting different charity organizations in the city. The first of these visits I took part in by chance when one of the short-term students, an employee of Medecins Sans Frontières, mentioned it to me in passing. The organization that we visited was ENDA-Ecopole, located in downtown Dakar next to the Khadirmore Rassoul neighbourhood which is one of the poorest in the city. These makeshift neighbourhoods (or quartiers flottants) of tiny wooden buildings are formed when villagers come into Dakar in search of work during the dry season. Dependent on subsistence agriculture in their villages, during periods of drought many try to find work in cities to be able to send money back to their families. Arriving in Dakar with little money and no acquaintances, people make a home where they can – some even sleeping on the side of the road where by day they sell peanuts or wash laundry. The laundry seen hanging here in the quartier probably doesn't belong to the people who live there - it's brought so they can wash it and return it to the owners.
ENDA (Environmental Development Action) is an international organization created in 1972 by Jacques Bignicour. ENDA-Ecopole is one of its facets was created in 1996 when an agreement was reached between ENDA and the owner of the Khardirmore Rassoul land. In this agreement, ENDA has become the “landowner”of the neighbourhood for 50 years, ending in 2046. Some of ENDA-Ecopole’s basic work in the neighbourhood has been to work with residents to improve the layout of buildings so that now all mechanics are located next to each other, instead of being dispersed among other houses, and there are communal toilets available for the community. Here's a view of the neighbourhood from ENDA-Ecopole's office. All of ENDA-Ecopole’s activities focus on development while protecting the environment. They run a recycling program where artisans are taught how to make products from recycled cans, bottle caps, and iron recovered from the dump. Classes include education of children with emphasis not only on regular school subjects but also on environmental and social responsibility. And one simple project they have is to make candle holders out of the recovered iron. These candle holders are then given to households in quartiers flottants and play a role in preventing fires in homes where candles are the only source of light. As you can imagine, fires in such neighbourhoods of wooden shacks are absolutely devastating.

At the end of our discussion at the centre, we were able to walk through Khadirmore Rassoul. Upon entering, we saw the medical office, an empty room containing a sink, some soap, a few medical tools, and a woman who works there to treat minor wounds, accompanying patients to a hospital if the injury is too extensive for her to treat. Next we visited a preschool where all of the students were singing when we arrived, but soon stopped to hold out their hands while yelling “Bonjour!”. While the tour was brief, I felt very welcomed in the neighbourhood by its friendly residents and in meeting them appreciated more fully how important it is that ENDA-Ecopole works with the residents of the neighbourhood, not for them. Here's one of the local women making ceebu jen in front of her home (mmmm, bowl of steaming vegetables).

To learn more about ENDA’s involvement in Senegal, check out http://www.enda.sn/english/equipes.htm.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Carbs! Fish! (and Rotary update!)

I’ve now been in Dakar for almost 6 weeks, which is really astonishing. I have a feeling that the rest of my time is just going to fly by – while we Rotary students are here longer than most of the other students at the Baobab Centre, 6 months really isn’t that long in the realm of study abroad, so I’ve got to make sure I take advantage of every opportunity!

Just a quick update on Rotary-related activities: I’ve attended a few meetings of my host club and they seem to be quite welcoming. They are the Rotary Club of Dakar, and their current project is to construct a maternity building in a village in central Senegal. In the village there is a hospital, but it is difficult to get to and thus most women do not make it to the hospital in time to deliver their baby, which can obviously have devastating consequences. The maternity building will be staffed by people trained in delivery, and if complications arise, they will transport the mothers to the hospital as quickly as possible. On Friday I was also able to attend a Rotaract meeting here in Dakar, and I felt very welcomed there, so I think that the 4 Rotary students here, myself included, will continue to go to those meetings on a regular basis. One of the big things we’re looking forward to here is to go to the Rotary District Conference from April 16-18. This year it is in Lome, Togo, so we will likely fly there and may extend our stay a bit to see more of Togo.

Also on the Rotary front, Ellen, Cody (other Rotary students, the third being Lucy), and I met with Ann Dillard, a member of the Plymouth Rotary Club in Minnesota. Ann has been involved for over a year in setting up a Rotary Foundation Matching Grant proposal to provide mosquito nets and school supplies in Rufisque, a village just outside of Dakar. The Rotary Foundation offers these grants to certain types of projects involving cooperation between the district where work will be done and another district as an international partner If you’d like to hear more about her work, you can visit http://www.projectsafetynets.org/. Below is a picture of (left to right) Cody, Ann, Ellen, and me.


Now for the thematic portion: meals! Basically, I eat a LOT of carbohydrates, and a LOT of fish. And most of it is delicious, so I’ve been getting along just fine. A typical day of meals includes:

Breakfast at 8 am: Breakfast is left on the table for me, and consists of a large piece of baguette, chocolate spread, Laughing Cow cheese (the non-perishable kind in little triangles, kinda like tangy cream cheese), milk (I’ve bought powdered skim milk to try and get more protein), and tea. Everyone eats the same thing for breakfast, every day, in every house. Note that the breakfast here includes goat cheese from Keur Moussa (the monastery that was one of the destinations of my 11-vehicle saga). The cheese made everything worth it.

Lunch at 2 pm: Lunch is the largest meal, and is usually a fish or meat dish with sauce served on a bed of rice. I eat around a communal plate with Nogaye, Illy, and Bamba (the two maids and nephew). Everyone eats from the pie-piece in front of them, and all of the goodies (vegetables, meat) are in the centre. In order to take some vegetables or meat, you break a piece off and pull it into your pie-piece, sometimes distributing food to others if you don’t feel like they’re getting enough. We eat sitting on a mat on the ground, and if you get any fish bones etc in your mouth, you drop them or spit them out on the mat.
The typical Senegalese dish is ceebu jen, which is wolof for “rice fish”. I took a class on how to cook it and it’s quite complicated. First, the fish is gutted and cleaned, then stuffed with a mixture of parsley, garlic, chiles, and other spices. It is then fried in a couple of cups of oil, as seen here:
After the fish are cooked, they’re removed, and vegetables (carrots, cassava, cabbage, okra) are added to the oil, along with tomato puree and eventually water. This is left to cook for a long time, and rice is placed in a basket above to steam cook for a while, then is added to the tomato sauce mixture after the vegetables are removed, and is allowed to finish cooking. A typical plate for four people will have one or two fish on it (with heads etc still attached), a carrot, half of a small cabbage, one piece of cassava, two okra, and about 10 cups of red rice. We eat a lot of rice. There is a 50 kg bag of it in the kitchen, and Illy said that will last for about a month and a half. We are only a household of 6 people. You do the math.

Dinner at 8:30 pm: This is the most variable meal, but is generally a bit lighter than lunch. Sometimes we have vegetables with fried fish, potatoes, a tomato-onion sauce and baguette. Other times it’s pasta with meat. On days where I’m really lucky it’s beans! And on Friday, it’s always lait caillé with millet or rice. Which tastes more like dessert than dinner . . . a welcome change since we never eat dessert. Lait caillé is essentially sweetened slightly-curdled milk. And is way more delicious than it sounds (kind of like yogurt). To prepare lait caillé, you boil water, then wait for it to cool slightly and add powdered milk, whisking to remove any lumps (I made it last week and definitely didn’t whisk enough, oops). Then you add a small amount of yogurt, cover the container, and leave it at room temperature for two days. After it’s been left for this time, you add sugar and sweetened condensed milk, stir it up, and voila: lait caillé, ready to top your millet or rice porridge.

That’s all for today . . . you can expect another post soon about some of the NGOs that I’ve been able to visit. Ellen and I have set it up with our French teachers so that outings to different community organizations comprise part of our class time, and afterwards we make presentations about them and answer the questions of our teachers, also composing documents so that future students can be informed about what volunteering opportunities are available without having to go search everything out themselves. And since I’m gathering all of this information, I might as well share it with you as well!

A bientôt.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

11 Vehicles in 13 Hours: The Joys of Transit in Senegal

And now, introducing . . . thematic blog posts!!! I realized that there was a lot of my daily life that was getting left out of my other blog posts, and I also figured that a catalogue of my weekly activities would soon grow tired, so I’m going to try out a new tactic of exploring an aspect of life in Dakar through each post.

Yesterday, I took a “simple” trip on Sunday to a monastery and then to lunch, returning to Dakar 13 hours later having ridden in 11 different vehicles. Inspired by this experience, today’s post is going to focus on transport!

Taxis are the most omnipresent form of transport in Dakar, almost all of them riddled with dents and missing various components of the interior (such as door handles, locks, entire door panels). The cause of the exterior damage becomes evident the first time your taxi driver bumper cars his way through a traffic circle. When a yellow and black taxi approaches me, I know before I see it since he honks repeatedly at me to see if I need a ride, as if foreigners are not capable of walking anywhere. And it’s probably true that most don’t walk, since taking a taxi to the downtown core will cost about 1500 CFA ($3.75 CDN) leaving from my house, and that’s for a 20 minute ride. And here's a taxi, complete with street vendor in background, who will sell you merchandise while you sit in the taxi. I saw a vendor selling entire fish on the side of the road yesterday. I didn't buy any.

Certainly for travelling after dark taxis are the best bet, but I prefer to try public transit during the day. Within Dakar, there are three main public transit vehicles, all of which are incredibly crowded and none of which follow regular schedules, which can lead to a lot of waiting. The bus is the least intimidating, as each follows a set route as distinguished by the number on the front of the bus (however, there is no map available to coordinate where you’re going with where the bus is going, you have to learn all of this by word of mouth). To take the bus costs 150 CFA, paid to a worker who sits at the middle of the bus and will even provide change! Another common form of transit is the Car Rapide, the brightly painted minibuses with an apprentice who hangs out the back door calling passengers aboard. To determine where the Car Rapide is going there is no labelling, you have to discuss with the apprentice who will then tell you whether to get on and how much your “pass” (Wolof for transit fee) is (usually about 150 CFA). Most Car Rapides follow the length of a street, and any time you want to stop you bang a coin on the ceiling and the driver will stop to let you off. The third type of vehicle is a Tata, which is similar to a Car Rapide, only more modern, painted simple white. The idea is that Tatas will eventually replace the Car Rapides, many of which are in a state of disrepair. Sidenote: many of the Tatas have a giant sticker of 80s-era Madonna on their back window.

Outside of the city, transit is another story. Again, there are no set schedules for transport between cities. So when you need to go somewhere outside of Dakar, you go to the Gare Routier Pompier (as in firefighter), where all of the vehicles sit until they are full of people going to a common destination, at which point they depart. The most luxurious choice is the sept-place or bush taxi. These cars are station wagons with two rows of three seats each and the passenger seat available for seven passengers. Once you find a car going to your destination, you discuss a fare with the driver, and there is usually much bargaining involved. Here's the view from a sept-place:
Minibuses are another option, they hold 14 passengers. We took one on my trip to Toubacouta the other week, and it was rather dusty . . .
Finally, there are Ndiaye Ndiayes, which carry either 35 or 55 passengers in a very small space. It is a large van, with 5 people sitting in each row, literally squished in against each other (the middle seat folds up to allow people to squeeze through to get in and out of the van). The problem with all of these vehicles is that they frequently break down, as happened when I was riding in an Ndiaye Ndiaye on Sunday. When this happens, the passengers have to wait until the driver tries to fix the vehicle, and if they can’t get it going again, the apprentice will transfer you to other Ndiaye Ndiayes with no additional pass required. But given the waiting, travelling in Senegal certainly requires that you be flexible with your schedule. Here's one of the 4 Ndiaye Ndiayes I took on Sunday.

There is one train line that’s functional in Senegal, it leaves Dakar and travels through to Bamako, Mali. However, the train takes 40 hours to do so and is notorious for stopping mid-journey and having other problems. Between some cities there is also boat service available, most notably the ferry service between Dakar and Ziguinchor. Unfortunately, this ferry route may be best known for the disaster in September 2002 when the ferry sank and some 1800 passengers, largely from the Cassamance region, were killed (only 64 survived). Regulations have been much more stringently followed since that incident, and travel on the new boat is much safer.

That lengthy catalogue about sums up the transit situation here (excluding air travel, which is also present, Air Senegal being an airline with an excellent safety record). It’s certainly difficult to get used to the lack of schedules, as I’m someone who likes to be able to plan everything ahead of time. But with clever planning (for example going in a group of 7 to fill a sept-place and thus having control over when to stop for rest breaks etc) travelling here can go relatively smoothly. Well, not literally smoothly due to the condition of the roads which lead many drivers to drive along the side of the road in the dirt instead of on the pothole-scarred pavement. It’s like going on a bonus off-roading safari adventure. Minus the lions.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Getting out of the city . . .

I've now seen more of Senegal than just Dakar! Last weekend, my friend Ellen (another Rotary student) and I were able to join a group for a trip to Toubacouta. There were 14 of us, so we filled a minibus to get there (rural transport is all paid by seat, and if you don’t fill the vehicle yourself you have to wait for enough other people going to the same town to fill the vehicle, so it’s definitely best to have a complete group). Toubacouta is a village south of Dakar, quite close to The Gambia, and it is on the Sine-Saloum Delta, a very beautiful area full of mangrove swamps. We stayed at Keur Bamboung, which is Senegal’s most successful eco-campement. All the proceeds from the campement go toward protecting the surrounding ocean reserve (boat patrols are necessary to enforce the fishing ban which has allowed some near-extinct species to begin recovering). Furthermore, the electricity is provided by solar panels and running water is supplied only from a reservoir sitting above the bathroom.

The lodging there is in traditional-style huts, with a few modernizations including concrete floors, mosquito nets, and toilets (though those toilets are open air). They also come complete with roommates! Our roommate was a lizard who proceeded to run around the room all night. Thank goodness for earplugs, I didn’t hear anything while the other girls lay there in fear of what was making the noise. Here’s a pic of the campement (that's my hut in the background):

All activities at the campement are included with your stay, and we were able to go canoeing and on nature walks. My favourite walk was through the mangrove swamps, which led us through water up to the mid-thigh (we went in the early evening when the tide was a bit too high) and mud up to the ankle. Mangroves are everywhere in the area as they grow in the salt water, their roots sticking out above the surface, and as they mature the roots form a structure allowing more mangroves to grow there. Eventually they’ll probably take over the world. The mangroves also make finding oysters easy, as they latch on to the roots and when the tide is low they can simply be picked off. Hey look, me with mangroves!

This week I started Wolof classes, and it’s been rather intense. Five hours a day of a completely new language is a bit much to absorb all at once, but I’m just taking lots of notes and will have to continue reviewing them once my week of Wolof classes is finished. My family also loves it when I bust out a few words in Wolof, so I’ll have lots of chances to practice.

I’m also starting to set up my volunteering project. I met with Gary Engelberg on Friday, and he is the head of ACI’s health activities. We discussed what I can possibly do to help out with HIV/AIDS organizations in the city and there are a couple of things I’m going to check out in the next week. First, ACI has a documentation center with hundreds of papers about the development side of the AIDS epidemic, and there needs to be some work done on organizing and updating the center. I may also begin writing summaries of some papers for quick reference purposes. The documentation center is used by many people who come to Dakar to do HIV research, so organization for accessibility is key. For more hands-on involvement, I may begin working with a pediatrician who has an NGO to support HIV-infected children. I’ll keep you posted on what I become involved in as it takes shape.

This week a number of students from the Baobab Center went to a concert by Cheikh Lô, and I stood at the back and attempted to mimic the dancers’ moves. Admittedly it was a pretty sad effort, but their dancing is insane! So, new goal: actually learn how to dance for a change instead of just faking. That said, if I learn to dance like they do here you may have no idea what I’m doing anyway. Some popular moves include flinging your legs out to the side and swinging them around sort of like your running while holding the front of your shirt out with one hand and swinging the other arm around and making an intense dancing face. Look forward to that.

There are a lot of cool students at the Baobab Center with whom I’ve become friends. But making Senegalese friends has been significantly more difficult. Of course I’m friends with my “siblings” in my host home, and I’m grateful to have people close to my age there. As far as meeting people in other contexts, most guys who talk to you just want to hit on you and most women are not interested in being friendly (most women my age are either maids or married so they don’t have the time to be visiting). Hopefully with time I can meet local friends, but I think it will come gradually as I build a network here.

Finally, in response to Emma’s request, here’s a pic of my bedroom:

I stay in a nice house; one of the few that has hot water and a guardian who sits outside of the front door of the wall surrounding the house six nights a week. Some other houses are organized as individual rooms around a central courtyard, but my house is quite similar to North American houses in layout, which makes it easier to mingle with my family. I would supply a pic of the bathroom also as per request, but currently the toilet is dismantled and laying on the floor, so it’s not really photo-ready. Perhaps later.

Ba ci kanam (Wolof for “until later”). I'll leave you with a pic of the sunset with a baobab tree that I took on the drive home from Toubacouta.

Friday, January 23, 2009

What I've seen so far . . .

I have now been in Dakar for 10 days, and I’m starting to get a feel for the city, though I certainly still have a lot of exploring to do. This morning headed downtown for the first time, so I’m starting to get my bearings in the larger city now that I know my way around this area. And this weekend, I’ll be making my first trip outside of the city to see a nature reserve near Gambia, which will definitely be a different side of Senegal.

Some basic observations of Dakar I’ve had so far:

There is dust everywhere. In the dry season (which is now), Harmattan winds blow in from the desert and bring lots of sand with them. So in walking along a road, it’s regular to have sidewalk completely obscured by sand (in some cases resembling small dunes). And daily practices, such as sweeping sidewalks and yards every morning, or the boy at the shoe store near my house who constantly washes dusty shoes stored in the open air, are a battle against the dust that just keeps coming.

Most stores are very small, and many food stores are just a table or a blanket along a road with goods for sale. On my ten minute walk to school this morning, I tried to remember all of the stores I passed (walking entirely in a residential area), and I’m sure I’ve forgotten some, but here’s a brief list: 2 women’s clothing stores, 2 shoe stores, 2 butcher stands, 5 convenience stores, a video rental place, a games store, a cosmetics store, a restaurant, a shoelace stand (?!?!) and a hairdresser’s. Markets are also popular here, and I’m looking forward to seeing the large market downtown tomorrow.

And some observations about Senegalese culture:

Family is very important. Your family network even includes neighbours and anyone who is important in your life. They are always welcome in your home, without notice (and when people come to my house, I often don’t know who they are or why they’re there . . .).

One of their main values is called muna, and refers to patience and endurance in difficulties. When something is a hardship, people are always look to better their situation, but they must also accept the hardships that come and learn to endure them. This value is really contrary to our North American way of working constantly to improve situations. For example, last year there was a lot of problem with power outages that would last days. But people were patient, and waited for the power to come back. Eventually, some “modern intellectual types” (so labeled by my cultural orientation teacher) decided to start protesting, and many other citizens joined in. This protest was met with success in that the power has been more consistent this year (I’ve only seen 4 power outages in my week here). But what I found interesting was that my teacher presented the protests in a negative light, despite the fact that the result was positive. Being so contrary to how I run my life, it’s going to take a bit for me to really understand this tenet, but I’m trying.

Ok, I’ve obviously written way too much. And I’m going to stop now. Also, if there’s something specific that I should be writing about that I’ve left out, let me know. I’m new at this blog thing after all.

But before I finish, some pictures!
The street in front of my house. Note the sand (there's pavement to the left as well).

This is my host brother Bamba and I playing a game of crib (which I brought with me, and taught to him IN FRENCH). And I must have taught too well, because this was our second time playing and he almost beat me (notice how close the pegs are to the end). Next time he might have his revenge . . .

I went to a batik workshop last weekend at a women's collective where they make artisan products (batik, fabric dyeing, and macrame) to support themselves. This is the sarong that I made using a stencil of the baobab tree, from which my school and neighbourhood get their names.

Ok, that's really all for this time.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

I'm here!!!!

Hi everyone!

I am now here in Senegal and have gone through my first day of French class successfully (and on very little sleep: I arrived on Monday at 11 pm after travelling for two days and started classes on Tuesday at 9 am). And although I definitely don’t know the neighbourhood yet, I can find my way to school and back without getting lost, so that’s a plus. My route to school is this: I wind through dirt streets, past several boutiques (small stores that look something like a newspaper stand) selling everything from toothpaste to bottled water, past a football field with no grass but plenty of boys playing football when I walk home in the late afternoon. Oh, and I also pass a stand where they were carving up half of a cow this morning, and there are random goats hanging out by the football field (I assume they belong to some of the boys).

So far things are going well. My host family is friendly, but I do have trouble communicating with them because my French is slow and they also often speak Wolof to each other, and then I’m obviously lost. But I’m hoping my French will improve quickly, as most of my class time thus far has been spent in conversation (and the class size is 1, so I get plenty of talking time). Much of my conversation has been surrounding the weather, as it’s currently about 20 C here, so everyone is shivering. Which is when I explain to them that it was -35 C only a few weeks ago where I’m from. Which is when they act horrified that people live there.

My plan as of now is to give myself a couple of weeks to settle in and understand the area. There are several other students at my school, two of them current Rotary scholars, so I hope that some of them can show me the ropes. Many of them are also involved in volunteering projects, so they’ll be a great resource once I know my way around and start to look at those opportunities.

I’ll update again as soon as I can (the internet is a bit inconsistent at my school, I couldn’t access anything yesterday). And hopefully pictures will be involved!

-Jamie