Sunset

We had a lightening storm yesterday, and because of it, a lovely sunset. Yet another perk of being out of the city--we can actually see the sunset!

Birds

I'm on the Petite Cote right now, in a house on the coast south of Dakar. Some other Tostan people and I are here for about five days, updating and editing the Tostan literacy module. It's pretty cool to be working on something that will soon be used in villages all over Africa.

Another good reason to be here rather than Dakar (besides the food, ocean, and fresh air): there is so much more wildlife! I'm a bit of a bird nerd, and have been enjoying our new neighbors, a colony of dozens of village weaver nests:

I've also seen (these images taken from Google) the red-cheeked cordon bleu:

The red-billed firefinch:
And the beautiful sunbird:

Something to Chew On

Last night's dinner: macaroni covered with a beef, carrot, and tomato sauce, and topped with french fries, and served Senegalese style in a large communal bowl on the floor.

Inshallah

Chances are you've heard the word "inshallah" (or Insha'Allah) before; if not, you will. It's an Arabic word that means "God/Allah willing", and it's being used all over the place. In Senegal it's used as a tag at the end of any sentence where you want to say "Oh, I'd love to, but we'll see if it actually happens." So one might say, "Yes, I'll give you my sunglasses the next time I see you, inshallah" or "Sure, I'll come to the beach for that party you mentioned next week--inshallah." Of course the inshallah means the event might well not happen, ostensibly because Allah did not will it. In Spanish, the same sentiment is carried by the word ojalá, which is probably derived from the same root.

I've come across inshallah before in an academic setting; if you're interested, there's a really good short article about it in the American Scholar, here.

The article also contains one of my favorite quotes: "Is it possible that a little less faith in our convictions, and a little more skepticism toward our capacities, would itself be a form of self-improvement?"

Kids

Kids are always the easiest to get to know when language is a problem, since they communicate just about as effectively through play. Plus, digital cameras are a good way to make instant friends. So here are some pictures of village kids:




(The girl on the right in white here and in the first picture is deaf. She seems to get on fairly well, and communicated by slapping me lightly and signing. I can sign some in American sign language and saw a few signs I recognized, but I think that was coincidental; she was probably doing a combination of French sign and made-up signs.)

On Mission 3

I visited three more villages in the Mbour and Thies regions: Samba Dia, Samba Diallo, and Njassane, making a total of seven.

OK, so here's the thing about villages: they get pretty boring after awhile. Someone (forget who) defined boredom as the inability to do what one wants to do, and in this case I find it very true. I wanted to chat with people, but was unable to because of the language barrier. I wanted to explore the town and surrounding village freely, but was hampered by the face that I am a young white female and have to be accounted for or followed or begged for presents at all times. So most of the time in the villages I was gently trapped into sitting in my host's compound and watching life around me, which went a bit like this:

Get into the village late morning and greet everyone, shaking hands. Get ushered into a plastic chair, a sure sign of a respected visitor. Smile at everyone in turn. Say no when they ask if I am tired from my hour of travel. Smile again. Say hi to staring kids. Watch two roosters fight in the yard. Watch women braiding each others' hair and smile when they catch me looking at them. Watch the men brew attaya, the Senegalese take on tea (more on that later). Say no when they ask if I need a nap. Watch the ducks wander across the courtyard. Greet the grandmother when she comes into the compound. Watch the men continue to make attaya. Make faces at the kids. Watch kids ride by, bareback on donkeys. Smile at the kids. Answer a polite question through my translator (e.g., "Are you tired?") Eat a handful of peanuts brought to me by my host mother. Watch her draw water from the open well, knowing that she would refuse help if I offered it. Watch men pour attaya back and forth. (Have I mentioned this tea process can take up to two hours?) Smile politely at my host father. Watch my translator napping. Finally drink some tea. Have lunch with my translator, who then asks if I want to take a nap now. Take some pictures of kids, who are delighted and pester me for more. Watch men make tea. Watch kids pass by with goats and hobbled donkeys. Clarified the lyrics of "ain't no sunshine when she's gone" for my translator. Finally agree to take a nap, and laid down on a mat in the year. Didn't nap (never do), so ended up watching staring kids through my mirrored sunglasses. Sat up after about 20 minutes and read while men made tea. Greeted the host's adult daughter entering the compound to visit. Drank tea. Took some pictures of kids. Made faces with kids. Smiled at my host mother. Watched men make tea....

Well, you get the picture. The first day in the villages was relaxing. The second day was meditative. The third started to get frustrating. Greetings, tea, and napping would be interrupted three times in twelve hours: half and hour for lunch and dinner, and an hour for the interview. It was fascinating, but I think I can safely and inoffensively state that I'm glad I'm not in the village permanently, and have a good deal more freedom to explore while based in the city.

On Mission 2

I’m back in Dakar after being gone for over a week, sleeping both in Thies and the villages while doing interviews in 7 different villages. I already mentioned the first two villages in the previous post.

Our first of the overnight village stops—and my favorite—was at Soudiane. We were greeted by women and dozens of children, and as with the other villages, we dropped our bags off at the host’s common room, then took a tour of the village, both so that we could see it and so that the village could see us. We briefly visited most of the compounds in Soudiane, where I was informed a number of time that there was another woman in the village with the same name as me—Oumou Diop—but that she was huge and I would have to do a lot more eating to be like her. We interviewed our contact in the village health hut:

I also met several people with the family name of Njaay, whose family is apparently in a joking relationship with mine, so that every time I meet a Njaay, they comment on how I have a bad name, how I like to eat, and how they are my master. I am supposed to do the same, though I generally just look confused because they say all these things in Wolof.

Oh, no, a runaway goat!

My translator and I spent most of our time in our host’s courtyard, minus when we were interviewing and when we took a stroll through the peanut and millet fields to look at the community well setup. The area around the village was really quite beautiful—fields of low plants with occasional baobab and palm trees. At sunset, with a half-moon above, the lightening started in the pink clouds overhead, reminding me of the closing stanza of the Buddhist Diamond Sutra (yes, I am that much of a nerd):

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

Trust me, it was very appropriate to the moment. :) It was further improved by the fact that the only lights in the compound were from several small cookfires and cell phones that the villages women were using to test and change their ringtones in the dark.

We spent the night in spare room in the schoolhouse, and I was awakened by the sound of chewing. I investigated by the light of my cell-phone (my translator had forgotten his flashlight and borrowed mine). I suspected a mouse or (shudder) a cat-sized rat like the one that had been run over in the alley near the Dakar house, but found instead a beetle. It was the size of my thumb and was apparently feasting on the linoleum floor. I later saw the same type of beetle rolling and burying balls of dung in the fields, so I tentatively think it was a dung beetle.

The next day, after being awakened again by the downpour that the lightening had foretold, we headed off to the next village of Diabougou by horsecart. Horsecarts are much more available in the villages, and rather more reliable besides. I loved it, though I think my translator thought what he called “chariots” were provincial and beneath him (thankfully, he mostly kept quiet about it).

The horsecarts here are basically platforms—maybe 4’ x 6’—covered by a plastic mat and attached to a car axle. I hopped up easily to sit sidesaddle, much to the delight of the village women. It was a very pleasant hour-ride through the fields to Diabougou, though the strength of the sun made me break down and bring out my Smurf-colored canvas monstrosity of a hat. Our horse, though, seemed to not be having such a good time: he had a lot of gas and farted with every bounce.
Diabougou was nice, though larger and dirtier than the idyllic Soudiane. As with Soudiane, I made friends with the Bambara-speaking children through a combination of digital pictures, ridiculous face, and drawing in the sand. My host mother gave me a carved wooden elephant who I’ve decided to call Al—an acronym for artistic license, since there aren’t any elephants in Senegal!

On our way to the next town by horsecart, our hosts insisted that we stop at the largest baobab tree in Senegal, which was a minor tourist attraction. We gained an unsolicited guide, who informed us that it was 850 years old, hollow, and sometimes used by members of the art caste as a spiritual spot. He dragged the unwilling me through a two foot in diameter hole in the tree trunk about 3 feet off the ground, ripping my ankle-length skirt in the process (which was the reason I was being unwilling in the first place). The inside of the trunk was cool and dark, with the squeaking of a colony of 30 or 40 bats above us. My translator started taking photos of the bats with flash, causing them to fly around and drip a liquid that I strongly suspected was bat pee on us. I drew back to the side of the tree, causing my macho translator to ask in a condescending tone if I was scared. ‘No,’ I answered mentally, ‘I just don’t consider urine to be a good shower substitute.’Outside of the company, the tree was pretty cool, and the rest of the ride, though fields and floodplains, was pretty uneventful.

***The new blog banner is of the girls who followed me into the peanut fields around Soudiane.

On Mission 1

So I'm finally "on mission" this week, having had my departure time and travel information changed a good half dozen times in the last week. I'm in Thies right now, since the first two of the seven villages where I'm interviewing people are very close, so I can stay at the volunteer house here. There is only one other volunteer here at the moment and running water--luxury!

I'm traveling with a man from the Dakar office who is acting as my Wolof translator and is also doing research for a film. He treats me a bit like the incompetent toubab female that I am, but we basically get along. Especially since we're about the same age and I'm half a head taller than him, so he really can't act too macho. :)

Yesterday we went to Ker Simbara to interview the imam again. (See the earlier post for a photo.) They brought us tea during the interview, and while we were speaking, there were two boys who passed by: the first riding a horse, and the second guiding a row planter.

This morning we went to Baliga, which was a somewhat less idyllic village due to the industrial-looking buildings on its outskirts. To get there, we:

1) Went to the usual bus stop, where there were 8 or so women waiting around who had come into Thies for the market. They were surrounded by baskets and buckets of food, including a bucket of dead fish, all swarmed by flies. They said that the bus driver was sleeping in the front and no one seemed to want to wake him up, so we went to another stop.
2) At the second place, we boarded a crowded bus--a battered, boxy white vehicle for maybe 30 people. We crept down the road out of Thies at the pace of a Model T. One woman in the front was selling bags of golf ball-sized frozen juice for 25 CFA, or about seven cents.
3) We got off at a junction and waited for awhile for another bus by the side of a dirt road under a baobab tree with two other women. We sat on our sandals and one played a form of jacks with rocks.
4) We saw the bus, but it turned on the next dirt road down and didn't see us all running after it and yelling. We got to the second road and sat for awhile under another tree with a guy (maybe a guard?) who was sitting there with a radio. He got up and shooed me into his seat, which consisted of a bicycle seat on top of a cement block. One of the women practiced writing the alphabet in the sand. Three more women stopped to wait with us.
5) We saw a taxi and all seven of us piled in, two in the passenger seat and five in the back. After dropping off the women in various places and having a stand off with a donkey who liked the middle of the road, thank you very much, we got to the house of the interviewee. Welcome to Africa.

The village chief:

I'll be in villages in Mbour (a bit south) for the next 4 or so days, providing the interview schedule doesn't change again.

4th of July Weekend

Volunteers got a three day weekend because of Independence Day, and I ended up spending a part of the weekend with another volunteer (Midd grad!) whose father (also a Midd grad!) works with the UN in Dakar and has a house here. It was nice to have a break from the volunteer house, which (as usual, lately) has nine people and no running water. The house had the awesome perks of running water, a hot water heater, a generator for the constant mini-blackouts, and air conditioning in some rooms. Crazy, right?

I went with her family to "The American Club" for the 4th, an interesting place that I probably wouldn't have been caught dead at on principle in most other circumstances. It was fun, though--hamburgers, potato salad, a pool, and more toubabs than you could shake a stick at. Thankfully it was not exclusively American, though the lunch was sponsored by the embassy.

The next day we took a crowded pirogue to the beach on N'Gor Island. From the island, facing Dakar:

On Sunday, I went into downtown Dakar. My first stop was the museum of African art, which consisted of dusty hallways filled with masks and baskets, and about a dozen life-sized dioramas of paper mache people in traditional ceremonial dress. The artwork was from around West Africa, including Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Cameroon.

I strolled around downtown for awhile and was scolded by a guard for attempting to take a picture of a church within a block of the heavily-guarded American embassy. (As one of the volunteers put it, "Um, can't we just look at the embassy on Google Earth?" The answer is yes, yes you can.) I hung around near Independence Plaza in central Dakar for as long as I could stand the constant stream of vendors, then headed back to get my laundry off the line.

Incidentally, this is the neighborhood where I live:

View Larger Map
The apartment is one building left of the whitish building at the 4-way stop at the top of the frame. The dirt road of the 4-way stop is the one I follow to get to work. The curve of the paved road at the left is where we have to direct taxi drivers to turn right at the cow; it's one of the most noticeable landmarks in the neighborhood.

Eddie

I'd like to introduce you to Eddie, the African Grey Parrot who has been with Tostan for years. He lives on the fourth floor, on the covered porch near the kitchen, and likes peanuts and mangoes. He is also happy to come to the top of the cage and hold onto the bars with his beak so his head can be scratched, and whistles for people when they leave the room. Aside from the occasional joke about how he would have been added to the stew if he had more meat on him, people like talking to him and slipping him treats.