Revision of the revision

I wanted to post this yesterday, but the internet company was on strike last night or something.  So hopefully it’s all still current.

I guess this is just a little insight into the constant confusion that I'm experiencing here.  Nothing is ever 100% clear.  Sorry if a lot of this is redundant or confusing, this is partially just for me so I can clarify it all in my head.  Here is the latest information I have about the political situation:

Abdoulaye Wade, the current president of Senegal, first became president in 2000.  At that time, a presidential mandate lasted 7 years.  At that time there was also a judicial council consisting of five judges that had been appointed by the previous president.  Most of the country was thrilled about Wade's decision to run for president, even many of the people in the opposition today.  It seemed as though Wade had some sort of alternative motives that no one else knew about.  I'm not really sure.  Wade dissolved the judicial council and appointed five new judges.  Much of Wade's politics in the last 12 years have been based on bribery and whatnot, pretty corrupt.  One of the original five judges was assassinated and rumor has it that it was on Wade's order.  This rumor was confirmed in the minds of many because of the fact that one of the changes to the constitution made by Wade and his party (the Partie Democratique Senegalaise, or PDS) was a law that forbids anyone to bring up that specific assassination ever again.  The law also pardoned the three men arrested for what happened.  At some point during his first seven years as president, Wade decided to change the constitution to say that a president can have two mandates of 5 years each, rather than 7.  He also said that he would be happy to be done with his presidency after his second mandate of 5 years (aka this February).  Little did everyone know, Wade is super corrupt and is not the best president.  He made the claim that his first mandate of 7 years didn't count, so technically he has the right to run for a "second" mandate of five years.  You'd think that, because it's a "democracy" it wouldn't matter because people would vote and he wouldn't win.  Au contraire.  Once votes are cast, they are passed through the very judicial council that has been appointed and bribed by Wade, essentially guaranteeing his success.  On top of everything, he's 86 years old.  Just so old.  It was decided on Friday the 27th by the judicial council that it is indeed "constitutional" for him to run for the third mandate.  Thus, the protesting. 

 The opposition party organized a "manifestation" (as they are called in French) on Monday.  It was intended to be peaceful and involve speeches and such.  It is rumored that men were planted in the crowed by the PDS to stir things up.  First a group of men were trying to rally everyone to march to the Palais Presidentiel (the white house, essentially), but the opposition speakers said no, they would not be sacrificing all of these peaceful people, they would not be marching anywhere.  Eventually one of these rumored plants set off a firecracker, to which the police reacted with tear gas. The police (though they deny it was theirs) also had a giant truck with a tank full of hot water that they were spraying at the crowds.  At one point, the truck drove into the crowd, running over and killing a man.  This man was a graduate student working on his masters at University of Dakar as well as a middle school teacher in the city.  Another woman who was selling cold water in the crowd was shot in the knee and ended up dying as well.  The police deny that they were using real bullets, but real bullets were fired.  The idea is that they likely belonged to the PDS plants.  So that’s what I know, and as far as I know, it’s fairly accurate (it was told to me in English, so if nothing else, I understood what was being said!).  As far as the shooting of the student in 2005 goes, it was actually in 2001.  The case was never really investigated.  Now that this other student was killed on the 11^th anniversary of the first student’s death, there will likely be a movement toward making sure it is properly investigated.

To be perfectly honest, this is a relatively small city and everything is close together.  I don’t mean to scare or worry anyone (please, don’t worry!), but I don’t want to lead you all astray and make you think that everything’s just peachy.  There’s definitely tension in the air here.  The good thing is that there are important people that are starting to recommend to Wade that he steps down.  This includes the leader of a powerful Muslim brotherhood, a congressman (maybe?) of Wade’s own party, and France and the United States are beginning to realize that Wade is causing trouble.  People at ACI are saying that they’re optimistic, so that’s good!  Also, I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty cool to be here for all of this.

Here's a map of Dakar with where I live and interesting places we've been:

On a completely unrelated note, there’s a student from Lewis and Clark who’s a senior this year who directed a commercial for the Super Bowl this year.  He’s going to be in the Guinness Book of World Records as the youngest person to ever have a commercial during the Super Bowl.  It’s the one for Greek yogurt with John Stamos.  Pretty sweet!

Revised update

With further explanation, I have a better idea of what went on last night.  So it was on January 31, 2005 that a student at the University of Dakar was shot and killed by a police officer.  Last night, January 31, 2012 a student at the same university was run over and killed by a police car.  It is pretty upsetting and the university students are not happy. 

My sheep

I didn't know we weren't supposed to smile

The ocean from Ngor

A quick update

The political situation doesn’t seem to be improving.  From what I could pick up from the news tonight, a graduate student was shot and killed by a policeman at a demonstration this evening, and another woman was run over and killed by a cop car.  ACI is doing everything to keep us safe and secure though, and there’s no need to worry!   They’ve taken to cancelling our afternoon classes lately, which isn’t necessarily that bad…

Monday we took advantage of the afternoon off and the nine of us went to Ngor, a small island north of Dakar.  As it was a Monday afternoon, we were pretty much the only toubabs, and thus, pretty much the only target for venders.  We also were greeted by a group of musicians who played drums and sang for us, which was pretty great.  To get to the island you pay 500 CFA (about $1) roundtrip, and you take a little boat.  It was almost like a motorized canoe.  There’s a GIANT trained pelican that lives on the island.  The owner of said pelican charges for photos of it, so I opted out.  You’ll just have to believe me.  A man from The Gambia approached our group and offered us a tour of the island.  We didn’t really have any plans, so we went for it.  He took us all around and it was very interesting.  The same guy that owns the pelican also has a monkey named Gazou that lives on the island.  Just the strangest thing.  In the end it turned out that our tour guide owns a restaurant on the island, so at the end of the “tour” (it was quite unofficial) we just went to his little restaurant and got drinks.  A woman came by selling fresh fruit, which was great!  Maia and I shared a mango.  Sarah loves fruit and ended up buying one of everything.  Mango, pineapple, cantaloupe, and coconut.  It was all so delicious!

Yesterday during Wolof, our teacher went off on a little tangent and told us more about polygamy and ended up talking about divorce in Senegalese culture as well.  Yesterday sort of turned into “learn about polygamy day” coincidently because we ended up talking about it in French and I talked about it with Mohammad at home as well.  Here’s my little summary: In Islam, men are allowed to have four wives.  They have their justifications and reasons.  It’s economic to have more children; it’s for security, etc.  When I talked to Mohammad about it I just got frustrated because his justification was that God says you can have four wives and it’s really just helping women because there are SO many more women than men in the world.  Whatever gets you through the night.  It’s hard to talk about it hear though.  I get very worked up, if for no other reason than there’s no level of equality.  When faced with the question “well, what if it was the other way around? What if it were one woman with four husbands?”  It’s a joke.  They laugh.  Say it’s physically impossible.  As far as divorce goes, it’s apparently very common and easy here.  If a man wants a divorce, he will have some friends come over, say “I’m divorcing you” three times, and that’s that.  A woman does not have the right to refuse.  If, however, a woman wants a divorce, the man does have the right to refuse.  This would be unwise though, because “the woman might then try to poison the man”.  She is, naturally, the one doing the cooking after all.