Chilling in Dakar-Yoff

Using the office internet for the day, hurrah!

I’ve been in the Dakar apartment since early early morning on the 27th, having arrived three hours late because of multiple mechanical problems in the Paris airport. (On the plus side, two of my flights were handled by Air France instead of Delta, so that was nice.) The apartment is technically in the “suburb” of Yoff, which is a fishing village that, due to growth on both sides, has been absorbed into the greater Dakar metropolitan area. Half the roads around the apartment are paved, while the rest are soft orange sand that covers most of the area. The streets have fruit and peanut vendors, and are used by horses and carts, though not quite as frequently as the ever-present honking taxis.

The volunteer apartment is the second and third story of a building, with maybe 8 bedrooms, most doubles (I haven’t seen them all), and several small balconies. It’s quite nice aside from the fact that, for some unknown reason, there is only running water in the middle of the night. As a result, there are five or so big blue containers that are filled with water when it is running, and are used from everything from hand washing to bucket showers to cleaning to cooking and dishwashing. Because of my school schedule, I am here early—orientation starts on Monday the 2nd at a conference center in Thies (pronounced appx. like chess), about 60 kilometers east of Dakar. I am the only new volunteer here at the moment, but I share the house with three “older” volunteers and the housekeeper, Penda. Aside from the water issue and my continual struggles with unlocking the three doors to get to my room, it’s pretty comfortable.

The Tostan offices are housed in a new building they just moved into, less than a kilometer away from the apartment. To get to it, one walks down one of the sand roads and looks for the four story reddish building facing the Foire (hard to miss). The Foire consists of a series of triangular and A-frame building and a few odd sculptures. At first I thought it was the artists’ community that is around here somewhere, but apparently it’s some kind of Islamic conference center or something (?). Senegal is predominantly Muslim, albeit a very accepting one.

The last few days I’ve spent half the day studying French, journaling, cooking, and doing some translation for Tostan (of a project proposal into French). The other half the day I’ve spent exploring the neighborhood and beyond. There are basically no decent maps of Yoff and few street names or even significant landmarkers (most of it consists of neighborhoods on flat land), so Wednesday I struck out to try and find the ocean, a pretty broad and supposedly easy goal (yes I could have asked, but where’s the fun in that?). Following the breeze, I went under a newly constructed underpass and found myself on the way to central Dakar, the opposite direction from the ocean. Not what I was looking for, but I did find a white and green mosque.

The next day, on a tip from one of the other volunteers, I found my way to the seaside and walked west toward central Yoff and the famous colorful fishing boats, called pirogues. The beach was littered with bizarre jellyfish, decaying fish, eel fish, white mollusks, and, as I got closer to the village center, mountains of trash. At the eastern end of town is a mausoleum dedicated to a prophet that founded a brotherhood that apparently many of the local men belong to. I was one of only a handful of females on the beach, and certainly one of the few who wasn’t doing laundry in the surf. Most of the beach was filled with men (mostly young), and it seemed that the beach functioned as a fitness club. There were men doing pushups in the surf, men running up and down the beach, men jumping over random objects, men driving their horse-drawn carts up the beach, and of course it wasn’t long before they approached me in my otherwise fairly peaceful walk. Despite my efforts to convince them that I don’t speak any language that they speak well enough to make me interesting and I didn’t need any help or fish, I had an escort on the way up the beach toward the incoming fishing boats and on the way back toward the paillotes (small beach huts). The older man who accompanied me on the way back informed me that he was a spiritual advisor and that he could see that I had a good heart and… “You have a brother, yes?” “Oh yes, I have three older brothers.” “Yes, yes, I could see that, too.” I’m such a terrible liar.

For lunch, I’ve been going to the Bureau de Tostan, where all the staff eats Senegalese food together. The apartment housekeeper, Penda, makes bottled drinks, and she and I carry a bucket of them to the office, stopping occasionally so she can sell a bottle or chat with someone. Lunch is eaten on the rooftop level of the 4 story building. Three large platters are set on mats and everyone gathers around, spoons in hand. I’ve only done this three times so far, but when I've done it, there have been 6-9 people around a platter of thieboudienne (pronounced approximately like chebu-jen and one of several spellings that I’ve seen), which is the traditional dish of rice and fish and much more. The rice and different types of fish variously prepared are covered in a mildly spicy sauce and accompanied by a (to my eyes) fairly random assortment of stuff which had included sweet potatoes, manioc, okra, lime juice, sea snail (rubbery and not terribly good), hibiscus stems and leaves, and an assortment of other vegetables and seafood.

Other new volunteers should be arriving this weekend, and we’re going to spend the next week doing orientation at a conference center in Thies.

Safe and Sound

I don't have a regular internet connection yet, possibly not until June 10, but I wanted to let everyone know that I'm here. I'm staying at an apartment in Yoff, a suburb of Dakar, with two long-term volunteers. I have a training session starting Monday, then should start work about a week later.

Green Mountain Hiking

After finals finished, I had time to go out and enjoy the weather and did some hiking on area trails (specifically, the Trail Around Middlebury, Spirit in Nature trails, Abbey Pond, Rattlesnake Cliffs, and the Aunt Jenny Trail). Here are some images of the hikes:

Old News: El Salvador

As a way of testing the photos function on this thing (and also as a way of procrastinating on my homework), here's some info on my February trip to El Salvador:

I went to El Salvador with a group of 10 other students from Middlebury, through an alternative breaks program run by the Civic Engagement Office. I was a little leery of the concept at first ("Oh great, so a bunch of rich college kids will have a feel-good winter break, huh? Fabulous."), but it turned out to be very rewarding and I met some great people.

We fundraised a good chunk of the expenses of the trip, and went down to El Salvador with little idea of what we were going to do, since the organizations we were volunteering with worked on projects where we could be the most useful on a particular day. We worked with the Foundation for Self-Sufficiency in Central America, and its partner organization in El Salvador, La Coordinadora. We stayed in Ciudad Romero, a small dusty town of about 900 people that is located near the Rio Lempa, southeast of San Salvador. It is impossible to find on maps both because of its size and, we had the sneaking suspicion, because the government may not officially recognize it. The town was only about 15 years old, having been built and populated by El Salvadorians returning from exile in Panama after the civil war. We stayed in a nice (i.e., clean but not ostentatious) dormitory complex with some other volunteers. We met few white people while in El Salvador, but nearly all those we met were there to engage in volunteer work. This is the only map image available, thanks to the far reach of Google:


View Larger Map

We were there primarily to work with potable water, and spent most of our time either working on this big long ditch out to a small shrimp fishing village:



Or, alternately, building new water lines at a school:




The school project was particularly satisfying because we were able to do the whole project during our time there, from digging to cutting and laying the plastic pipes to actually turning the water on.

Those weren't the only projects we worked on, of course. We also helped to build a dam in a shrimp pond (a muddy and stinky but squelchingly fun afternoon) and on another day, we worked on a hurricane and flood shelter that the community was building with the help of the UN. One evening, we even went to the beach and released sea turtles:




Another day saw us on a hike in the hills and in a market town that you can find on a map, Zapotecoluca:




All in all, it was a very positive experience and, though we obviously didn't make a huge dent in the country's problems, we did feel like we did some real and useful work.

You can find some more pictures and info about the trip on the College's website, here.