Anecdote

Yesterday I got home around 5 pm after school and such.  Not many people were home, but Moustapha was! I love that he still just insists on talking to (at?) me in Wolof.  He just talks and talks.  Anyways, he put his little jelly shoes on and told me that we were going.  No one saw us leave, he didn't tell anyone else, we just walked out the door.  He directed me over to the little boutique at the end of the street and we ended up going behind the counter and sitting on a little bench.  There was another little girl in the boutique about his age and they were very cute with each other.  Just being kids.  We hung out in there for a bit.  I still had no idea what we were doing there, but after a couple of minutes, the boutique guy gave Moustapha some bread with butter.  My words here don't really feel like they're getting across the silliness of this situation, but trust me, it was very funny.  I was just terribly confused the whole time and completely at the mercy of this adorable four year old.  When I told him that I needed to go home, he just said "toogal!" which means "sit down".  Eventually I just had to leave! I never would've done that with any other 4 year old in any other situation, but it just felt like it was okay. He was fine in the end of course, I just felt so weird about leaving him there! It was a very funny situation.

On a completely different note, my host brother Mohammed is in the hospital! I guess sometime last weekend when me and the parents were in Toubab Dialaw, he was in an accident on a scooter or something.  He's been in the hospital ever since.  It's excruciatingly difficult to get any information about it out of my family, whether that be the language barrier, or something cultural, all I know at this point is that he's starting to get better and that they don't know how long he'll be in the hospital.  Considering I leave Senegal tomorrow, I don't think I'm going to be able to say goodbye to him, which is a real bummer because we're buds! So, send healing thoughts his way!

An update for the sake of updating!

My parents are having a good time I believe! We started off their trip with a bang and went to two crazy markets and Ile de Goree on their first day here.  It's been a whirlwind, but it's been really wonderful to have them here.  Just before they got here I ended up getting strep throat and thrush simultaneously, so it was very nice to have the parents around to doctor me!  I'm all better now, thank goodness.

This weekend the three of us went down to Toubab Dialaw and it was very relaxing.  I had to make myself stay cooped up a bit to get some work done, but mom and dad seemed to have fun.  They even took a djembe (drumming) class.

 Now we're back in Dakar.  We ate lunch at my house today, but we were served a separate little toubab meal.  Oh well, it was delicious!

Our Continuity and Change presentations were last week, as well as my French final, and I just turned in my history of Islam paper.  So now all that's left is to finish writing my art paper and write up and present my literature presentation.  Almost done!!

This semester has been incredible.  I have no words.  Actually, I have too many words.  I can't wait to tell everyone all about it!  I'm very much looking forward to my trip to Europe too!

I leave wonderful Dakar in 5 days now.  This trip has been unbelievable. 

11 Days Left

My lovely parents are here!

I’m very excited to see them and I’m proud of them too!  I’m glad they’re taking advantage of this opportunity to travel and try new things. Selfishly, I’m doubly excited because it will be much easier to talk to them about my experiences here now that they’ll have a frame of reference.  We’ve done a lot so far, even though it’s only been a few days.  I think they like it, but they’re still adjusting.

Last weekend we went back to Sokone to do our individual projects.  I believe I mentioned this in the first post about Sokone, but Sarah and I had planned to return to where the women make pottery for the village and study what they do and the interactions between them.  For whatever reasons (details I do not care to go into), we ended up being set up to study the education of girls in the village.  This was what I had wanted to do at the very beginning anyways, so I was thrilled.  The five girls from Beloit that have been doing essentially the same program as us (minus most of our weekend excursions) came with us this time.  One girl, Angeline, was grouped with Sarah and me.  Once we were all organized, we were chaperoned to our respective areas of study.  A group of six went to a village nearby called Medina Sangako.  They were going to be studying the oysters and restoration of mangroves and living with the villagers.  Three of the girls stayed in Sokone at the same auberge as we did last time.  They would be studying traditional medicine, talking to healers and such.  Two other girls went to live with Serer villagers and study traditional music.  Sarah, Angeline and I were directed to where we would be staying.  We had no idea that we were about to have one of the most unforgettable weekends of our lives.

We stayed with a woman named Adji Senghor.  Adji works as a sort of go between with an NGO called Women’s Global Education Project.  In Sokone, she has developed a program called Sisters to School that helps insure the education of girls in the area.  When we arrived, we sat and chatted for a little while and she told us all about the program and some of the work she’s done.  Before I go on raving about this awesome woman and what she’s done, I just have to mention that her home was a little slice of paradise.  She showed us around the garden which has countless mango trees and more green things growing than I’ve seen in a while.  Not to mention a chicken coop, a duck coop (that doesn’t sound quite right, but it looked the same as the chicken one, so why not?), some sheep, and a puppy!  The front yard sported a hammock strung beneath some lovely vines.  I could go on.  There’s a girl currently living with Adji from a different program based in Dakar called West African Research Center (WARC).  She had been there for a little over a week and is staying for another five.  She is doing an internship at the hospital in Sokone, and in the short amount of time she’d been there, she had already witnessed death.  She talked about the fact that before going there, she had never truly understood the meaning of bad healthcare.  So much of the terrible treatment she had seen, she said, could’ve been so easily prevented.  I can’t imagine being in her position.  Being there, 100% ready to help, and really not being able to make lasting improvements.  I was very impressed by her and I’m so glad that she gets to go home each day to someone as wonderful as Adji.

Adji was the first person in all our time here that has talked seriously about gender inequality, especially in the area of education.  She talked about the fact that even when a family is able to send their daughter to school, the girl will have very little time to study and work because she is constantly doing the house work.  Cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry.  Adji used an example in her own household.  She indicated their maid, Awa, washing the dishes and preparing to make dinner.  She said later that day Awa would leave for a couple hours to go to her literacy class, before returning in the evening to finish the housework.  Awa is at least as old as I am and only just started to learn to read and write this February.  Adji then called for her nephew, Ali, and asked what he was doing.  Ali poked his head outside and responded by saying that he was watching TV.  See, she said, Ali’s always on the computer or watching TV.  My husband’s always in front of the TV.  It’s the women who work.

After being served the most delicious meal I’ve had to this day in Senegal (a giant salad, no meat, no fish, just all kinds of fresh vegetables. It was amazing), we went with the girl living at Adji’s to a wedding she had been invited to.  We were absurdly underdressed (though toubabs usually are in most things they do).  It was cool though.  There were a bunch of chairs set up around an area for dancing.  We talked with the husband for a little bit, he was very kind.  The wife had not yet arrived (in Islam, the wedding ceremony actually takes place in the Mosque without the presence of either the husband or wife.  It’s essentially their families that are married.  So we were attending the celebration afterward, which I believe traditionally takes place at the husband’s home.)  We were dead tired by the time we got back to Adji’s and we had a big day ahead of us.

Adji set up for us to meet with and talk to several of the girls in the program.  She gave us a ton more information on what the program does too. It was way cool.  I have so much more to say about it, but I’m lacking all of the energy to do so (sorry to be such a tease).  I also feel like I’m long overdue for a blog post, so I’m just going to throw this up there now.

Less than two weeks now until my three and a half weeks in Europe! I’m looking forward to it, but there is a lot that I need to do between now and then.

It's raining, it's pouring

Yep! You heard it right folks!

I woke up this morning to the loudest thunder I've ever heard, a flash of lightning, and then it was like the sky opened up and let out months and months worth of rain.  I had the goofiest of smiles on my face.

The power was out and when I walked into the living room everyone was curled up on couches around a single candle stick listening to the radio.

My Wolof professor said that it never rains in March and that it rained today because Senegal is changing.  Wade is being washed away with the mud. (It sounded very poetic in French).

So I whipped out my raincoat, which until now has just been the joke taking up room in my closet, and us Northwesterners joyfully reminisced about rainier times in our life.

The sun is out again though.  I guess that's good, right?

Side note...

Macky Sall is the new president of Senegal! Yesterday was the second round of elections and Wade finally conceded after it was clear that he was going to lose.  So that's good.

Also, I saw Wade the other day! I was in a taxi on the way to the post office and he was just there, on top of a truck, surrounded by a bunch of people.  It was pretty crazy.

And here is the link for my pictures from The Gambia:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150764405303125.463381.704873124&type=1&l=277e2adccb

Smiling Coast

For spring break last week we went to The Gambia.  The Gambia is the weirdest place I’ve ever been to.  It was fun though! A day before we had planned on leaving, we discovered that we would need a visa to get into the Gambia.  We sort of panicked a bit, but then learned that you could just go down there and pay for a little pass to get across (basically a bribe).  Our awesome Continuity and Change professor happened to have a brother who drives a “sept place” (a taxi like form of transportation that fits 7 people), so he arranged to have a couple of sept places meet us at ACI to take us to the border.  There were a total of 10 of us, our group of 9 girls, and then our friend Nico who goes to Evergreen and has been doing an individual study abroad at ACI.  Getting to the boarder was very smooth, everything went as planned.  While we were figuring out all of the visa and passport stuff, our sept place drivers hooked us up with some Gambian taxi men to take us to Barra.  The weirdest thing off the bat was that we had to switch our mindset back to English.  Other weird things (weird now is relative to the “normal” that Senegal has become): there’s grass in some places, you are required to wear seatbelts in the front seat, there are sidewalks, their president has been in office for 17 years and they still love him (the elections are coming up from them and they already have posters us saying “Congratulations Mr. President, super weird).  Gambia is the smallest country on continental Africa.  It was colonized by the British and is only a tiny sliver of land surrounding the river.  There’s one traffic light in the entire country.  It’s in a town called “Traffic Light”. No joke.

                So after we paid the people at the border, we took the taxis to Barra where we would catch a ferry to the capital, Banjul, across the river.  From Banjul we’d take more taxis to Cape Point where we were staying.  Thank goodness we had super helpful taxi drivers to Barra because we got there right when the boat was leaving.  We had to wind our way through a market and then ran to catch the ferry.  Just a bunch of silly toubabs chasing a boat.  We probably looked pretty cool.  The boat was rough.  A bunch of us felt kind of sea sick.  We had just been on the road for 6 or 7 hours, it was super hot, we hadn’t had enough water or food.  Recipe for disaster.   One of our group members actually passed out.  Another puked off the side of the ferry.  We were kind of a mess.  When we got to Banjul we were able to find water and we took a little breather.  Cape Point turned out to be pretty touristy, but we didn’t mind so much.  We stayed in a really nice guest house that was a five minute walk from the river.  We had a kitchen and bathrooms with warm water!  It took us very little time to hop into our swim suits and into the water.

                I’m not sure if this is true of all of the Gambia or mostly because we were in such a touristy area, but everyone there is a “guide” of some sort.  They were all just so helpful.  Too helpful.  Too friendly.  Everywhere we walked we were greeted with, “where are you going?  I’m a guide.  How far are you going?”  It got old very quickly.  They did show us a restaurant for the first night.  Pretty much every other meal we made ourselves though, which was really fun.  Another thing that makes the Gambia super weird is that they have the (valid) reputation of a sex-trade that is essentially young male prostitutes and old toubab ladies.  Super creepy stuff.  We saw it a couple of times.  It was just kind of sad. 

                We spent most of our time in the Gambia at the beach.  We also visited a crocodile pool and a monkey park, which were both pretty cool.  One day we were walking around Cape Point and Bakau, looking at the market and getting a lay of the land.  We were joined by a band of children at one point and just started walking with them.  One of our “guides” (aka one of the guys that was following us) said that we were taking the kids to school.  Before we knew it, we were walking them into their one room school house and the teacher invited us to sit in on a little lesson.  It was pretty cool! One night we decided to go swimming super late and there were bio-luminescence in the water!  It was absolutely beautiful.  All in all, the Gambia was really fun.  I’m glad it worked out.  I wouldn’t necessarily go back, but it was definitely worth seeing it once!

Sokone

Now that it’s been nearly a month, maybe it’s time to update this old thing huh?

The weekend following Toubab Dialao we went to Sokone, a village about 5 hours south of Dakar.  We travelled there with our Continuity and Change professor, Moustapha Sall.  We arrived in Sokone in the late afternoon and were greeted with bissap juice.  We had cebu jenn for lunch followed by fresh fruit.   Senegal is called “the country of Teranga” which means hospitality.  This is definitely apparent in Dakar, but the teranga in the village was amplified.  Everyone was so warm and giving.  After lunch we went and visited a group of women who made pottery.  We even got to participate, which was fun!  The whole point of our trip to Sokone is that we are returning there next weekend to do individual “research” projects.  Our first trip out was so that we could get an idea of things we are interested in studying.  At first I was thinking about going to a school there for my individual project, but considering we’re going to be there on the weekend, I decided it might be more beneficial to do something else.  My friend Sarah and I have decided to work with and find out more about the women who do the pottery.  Even being there for that short amount of time, we could already pick up on some interesting social dynamics.  I think it will be really great.  After visiting the pottery ladies we went out to see where they’ve been doing some mangrove restoration.  The whole area down there is built around the mangroves, which is a very fascinating ecosystem.  That night, the entire village put on a “soiree culturelle” for us.  Everyone was circled around the drummers and the dancing was incredible.  At first it looked almost random and sporadic, but the more we watched the more evident it was that there are precise moves.  It was pretty amazing.  We danced too, which was slightly embarrassing because we were just this silly group of toubabs in the middle of the entire village, trying to find rhythm in the unfamiliar beats.  That being said, it was really fun. 

The next day we went out to see more mangroves.  One of the main sources of income in the area comes from oyster harvesting, which is interestingly enough exclusively the work of the women.  The oysters grow naturally on the roots and stems of the mangrove trees and the way that they are harvested is by cutting the roots off.  Obviously, this causes problems because it kills the trees.  The women have found a way to combat this problem.  They take a long stick and hang string from it into the water.  Now, the oysters grow on the strings instead of on the trees.  It’s really quite brilliant.  Another source of income in Sokone is the harvesting of mangrove honey.  They have hives located all throughout the trees.

After visiting the oysters and the bees, we took our little bus out to where we could take a pirogue tour of the mangroves.  It was very very hot out, so it was nice to rest a bit on the boat.  We arrived at our destination and walked for a while until we reached a little beach side restaurant where we would have cebu jenn for lunch again.  It’s a good thing that everyone likes cebu jenn!  Before lunch we hopped into some kayaks and kayaked through the mangroves.  It was incredible!  We were even able to jump out of the boats and swim for a bit.  The water was absurdly salty.  As soon as we were out of the water and dry, you could see the salt all over our bodies.  After lunch we went swimming again.  Apart from being salty, the water was the perfect refreshing temperature.  After our swim we walked back to the pirogue and took the boat to an interesting little island.  Not all of the details about the island are clear, but I’ll do my best.  At some point a long time ago (very specific, I know) this island was essentially built out of shells.  There are many different ethnic groups in Senegal and some of them, including Wolof, have a caste system of sorts.  The low working class in the Wolof ethnic group includes the “griots”.  Griots are musicians and are responsible for recounting stories and family histories.  A different ethnic group (I believe the Sereers, but I’m not entirely sure) wanted to use the griots for their storytelling and music abilities, but they also thought that the griots were terrible luck (I think? Sorry, this is the best I can do considering it was a month ago and in French…). Anyway, the Sereers would not allow griots to touch their land, so they were confined to very specific areas.  This superstition even extended to death, thus, griots were buried inside baobab trees instead of in the Sereer cemeteries.  All that is to say that on this strange little shell island, there was a baobab tree that was the ancient grave site of a griot.  So that was pretty neat.

We got back in the pirogue just as it was starting to get dark.  There’s a little island of mangrove trees where, at nightfall, all of the birds in the area go to sleep.  ALL of the birds!  It’s hard to explain how insane that was in words, and the pictures I took didn’t show anything.  But we took our little pirogue to go look at this small group of trees and it was incredible.  Many of the birds were hard to see because it was so dark, but the noises were unbelievable.   Dad (cough, wannabe-nature-boy, cough) you would’ve loved it so much!  My friend Maya took a video so hopefully I can get that from her so that I can share the bird noises.  It was way cool.

It was so long ago now I can’t even remember if anything cool or exciting happened in the week following Sokone.  Classes are good.  They’re just so long! It also doesn’t feel like real school because essentially the only homework we have is reading.  Unfortunately that is going to change drastically in a very short amount of time.  We have to write two papers and prepare for two presentations that all happen in the last week of being here.  It’s terribly unfortunate because somewhere along the line, ACI and Lewis and Clark mixed up their dates.  LC told us that our program ended the 21^st of April, which is the day after classes end.  ACI seemed to think we had another week after classes ended, which would have been set aside to give us time to do all of the work we need to do.  So essentially we were cheated out of the one week we had to work on all of the work that constitutes our grade for the semester.  On top of that, we have class basically from 9am to 7pm three days a week and we travel nearly every weekend.  There was just some terrible planning that went down.  Oh well! We can do it!!

My lovely parents will be here in two weeks and I can hardly wait! I’m really going to have to step up my game and not be afraid to speak French though.  It’ll be a good challenge.