At the Sénégal v. Burkina Faso football (soccer) game, on le 8 septembre, I had quite the adventure using the toilets at the stadium (twice). The toilets are for both men and women, and pretty much anywhere a man could pee, he peed. If there was a drain, he'd pee. There were stalls, but they didn't wait to use them. Men would cut in the line--just butt their way behind the man peeing in front of him, armed and ready to shoot for the bowl when the other was finished. The stall doors were never closed, unless of course a woman was fortunate enough to squeeze her way in, after previously being shoved out of the way several times.
It was so bizarre being in a public restroom with men. Is that how it is in the mens' room in the States? I guess they do have urinals... Anyways, I guess those are the two extremes of the general "time" table.
Construction: Dakar seems to be in a constant state of construction. The way I walk to school, I walk through a construction site--it seems to be a major pedestrian traffic route. First of all, in the States you would definitely not be able to just meander through a 'hard-hat area'. It would be fenced off and all sorts of safety precautions would be made. Otherwise, a lawsuit would just be waiting to happen. The constructions workers here don't wear hard hats--they wear flip flops, not steel-toed boots. It's always funny to see them barefoot and ankle deep in concrete. Cinder blocks, rocks, and sand sit in piles, taking over the sidewalk. I guess everything costs money, and money is precisely what's preventing them from finishing building. Waiting for money for building materials... waiting, waiting. So the piles of rocks wait too. Though when the construction workers are actually working, it's really fun to watch. Like a co-ordinated Target commercial, five men in perfect sync, heave their shovels into the pile of rocks on the sidewalk, flinging them onto the second level of the building. They're all singing, and the rocks make a popcorn sound when they hit the floor up above. The five men on the second level heave and gather the newly flung rocks, and the rocks continue to the third level of the building and crash. The men up top shovel the rocks into barrows of cement, and the cycle continues--if you can imagine, to the tune of, "I've been workin' on the railroad all the livelong day..."
The big street I cross before I walk through the construction site, has a median, where there is a giant dumpster (for the site I presume), rusty steel rods to support cement, and a tree. Under the shade of this tree, I can't remember if there's a bench or not, there are always men sitting. No matter what time of day. They seem to just talk to each other and people watch, watch cars go by... Some of them park their motorbikes there (permanently?) and sit on those instead. So I walk by, carefully creeping over the rusty rods, trying to bring as little attention to myself as possible. (As if it's possible--I'm pretty much always the only toubab (white person) crossing the street).
They always say something. Sometimes they "Tssst! Tssst!" or sometimes they say, "Bonjour! Ça va?" or sometimes even in English, "Hello? Hi! How are you? I am fine" and of course I've gotten the "Tu es jolie, uh?" a couple times. I never know if I should say something? Say "hi" back? I don't want to encourage them, but then again I don't want to be that unfriendly toubab who walks by every day.
Conjunctivitis: So a couple weekends ago (le 15 septembre), I contracted conjunctivitis (or pinkeye?) in my left eye. It just started itching one day, and when I woke up the next morning, there it was. First thing I thought was, "Oh great, an infection in my EYE while I'm in AFRICA. Not like I use my eye much."
At first, I waited to see if it would pass, but it just worse. Like it actually hurt. I was at the beach when I decided that I probably should go see a doctor and get some working medication. So instead of enjoying myself at this beautiful beach because it was too bright for my eye--I didn't even touch the water--I didn't leave my spot in the sand under the shade of the palm tree where I seemed to be receiving some sort of signal on my cell phone. After many phone calls, I got directions to the SOS Medecin office, where I went and waited for a doctor.
The receptionist was not particularly attentive--she was preoccupied with whoever she was talking to on her cell phone. The only information she took from me was my first name... no forms to fill out for allergies or anything. I communicated with the doctor in broken Franglais. Apparently in French, 'pink-eye' (or oeil rose) rings no bells. Conjunctivitis it is. He saw me all of 15 (?) minutes, flipped through his gigantic encyclopedia of medicine and prescribed me with some antiseptic eye wash and an antibiotic eye drop thing. Our whole 15 minutes spend together cost me about 20,000 CFA! MEH! I already feel guilty enough spending money in the States, here even more so because I don't I'm not working. I don't have a job to somehow make up for it. It didn't help that I felt a little uneasy about the whole thing. He didn't even look at my eye to see if I had scratched it or had some sort of shard stuck into it. He didn't so much as use his fingers to poke open my eyelids and get a better look. Nope. Simply peered at it from about 10 inches away, discovered that I had a slight temperature (probably just from being at the beach), and fiddled around in his giant encyclopedia trying to figure out what to prescribe me. Well, it's better now, so what he gave me obviously worked. Strange though, getting medicine in another country, figuring out the directions in another language...
Animals: It's also hard not to notice all the stray animals on my walks to and from school. They break my heart every time. Skinny kittens drink out of muddy puddles. They scour piles of trash for any scrap of food. The dogs make beds in flattened foliage--or, they lie on cool tile in the shade. They're covered in flies, and their ears are covered in blood. They would all be good-looking animals in other circumstances. It's surprising that they're all so cute, considering that most of them are essentially just mutts. I have to resist the urge to pick up all the cute kittens, and take the skinny puppies home with me to nurse them to health. But then I remember that they're strays, and might give me rabies... or tuba flies...
Kër Sedaro (le 23 septembre): Yesterday at around 3pm, we arrived in the village--celebrity style. Plastic lawn chairs were arranged for us to sit, surrounded by the most children I've ever seen circled around me, to wait for our new families to called and take us home. I met my homestay sister, Ndack, who speaks French, and attends school (she's 20), and when we arrived at the house, (literally around the corner), we sat in a circle and talked. She's very curious-talkative. We had a good bond from the start. She immediately asked to see photos, and we looked at those while trying to construct a family tree. Instead, we made sort of a chart of who lives where on the compound so that I could keep them all straight. They also gave me my new village name--Aida Diop.
Then they taught me body parts (head, knees and toes, knees and toes-style) in Wolof, and how to count to ten. When it started to get dark, we sat on mats in the 'courtyard' and broke the fast, though I wasn't fasting anymore--that only lasted 5 days... Ndack asked me if I wanted Nescafé or café touba. I asked what café touba was, if it's made from real coffee beans. She said yes and I got REAL excited. (Real coffee!!!!) I made sure--clarified that Nescafé is "de poudre" and that café touba is "d'haricot." Yes, she assured. Yay! Except it isn't real coffee... I watched her make it and she first melts like a cup of sugar on the bottom and then there's some sort of spicy flavor in it. Maybe anise? Chili? Maybe? She was obsessed with getting me to take a picture of her making it:
When we were sitting, all the kids from the neighborhood, or so it seemed, touched my photographs, looked at them upside down... laughed at the freckles on my arms. They'd poke the freckles until they eventually got bored of it. Blake and Megan live on the same compound, though Blake spends night with Abdou (my uncle), and the cows. We three toubabs are cousins.
My mama, Ndeye Seck, and the Seck family cows.
Ndoggu consisted of French bread with a sort of onion resish, café touba, and the bisaap (juice made from dried hibiscus flower) that I bought in Thiès as a gift.
[I rather like Thiès--it's not as noisy, it's cleaner, people don't hassle you at the market! I like the market better too. Not only is it less stressful because people don't hassle as much, but I feel like there's more stuff that's easier to find as well.]
Back to ndoggu, we sat (lots of sitting went on in the village), ate, drank attaya (tea sénégalais--with lots of caffeine, served in shot glass cups), talked for a good while, the children napped, we ate mango. And that's mostly how my stay at the village went.
Our compound consisted of one large house, where Ndeye's brother and his two wives and twelve children live, a medium size house where Abdou, his wife and four kids live, and my house where Ndeye and her various four kids from different husbands live. All the men of the compound except for Abdou were off working (and living) elsewhere.
My siblings in the village.
[I'll post my village paper if you're interested in knowing more.]
Saint-Louis (le 1 octobre): This morning is my last breakfast in Saint-Louis (at least on this trip). Yesterday, we gave our presentations in the sweltering terrace room.
[For the 5 days we spent in Saint-Louis, I worked with Megan and Courtney, researching l'ancien L'Ecole des Otages ('School of Hostages'), and we presented our findings on the last day. There is little information about L'Ecole in 'libraries' (if you can call them that--ancient books collecting dust) and 'archives' (piles of paper on a desk in an office where a man has like 5 non-working telephones), and found that a lot of people didn't even know what L'Ecole was. During colonial times, Saint-Louis was the capital of Sénégal, until independence, when the capital was moved to Dakar. Saint-Louis has a lot of colonial architecture--L'Ecole is just one example--a very beautiful example! Anyways, L'Ecole was established in the 1800s under governor Faidherbe, to educate and train Senegalese to be interpreters for the French. Students lived and learned there and weren't 'allowed' to leave. Today, it's an elementary school, and during our quest for information we talked to some of the teachers there and had a look around. We ended up finding most of our information out from an interview we conducted with one of our guest lecturers, a history professor in Saint-Louis. Conducting research in a developing country is a daunting task. We are spoiled in the US with so much information at our fingertips. If anything, this assignment was a lesson on what lengths one must take just to find information on something that would take two seconds to find in Bird Library or on JSTOR. The information is just not recorded, or preserved. You have to physically go out and interview and dig dig dig to find the information you're searching for.]
L'Ecole des Otages
This trip has been great for me in a lot of ways. I thought the village stay was a big eye opener for me, and just the right length of stay there. A day longer, I may have left hating the experience, a day shorter, I may have not wanted to leave. It was nice to have the buffer in Thiès before we came to Saint-Louis.
I love the pace here--a city on the water is truly beautiful--it would be prettier if there weren't trash everywhere, but just the feeling of water surrounding you is so peaceful, clear. The beach is so W I D E--the widest beaches I've ever been to. The water is the warmest I've ever been in too. It's a salty green color, not much different than the Atlantic in Rehoboth. I guess I may have expected a clear crystal blue--almost like in the Keys--but it's not. It's still beautiful though. There was a storm yesterday. We were at the beach when the hugest black storm cloud I have ever seen started to approach us. The water started doing crazy things. The water here is pretty shallow until you go very far into the ocean. There, the waves are bigger, but not scary. When the storm came, waves became more frequent, they sprayed and misted, and waves even seemed to be going backwards, crashing into each other. I felt so small, although the clouds made the sky seem so close that I could maybe touch it. Looking back at the ocean and seeing everyone jumping/running out of the water with the clouds black and ominous, was so surreal.
Our trip on the pirogue I wish I could have enjoyed more, but I was scared for my life--or the life of my earthly belongings, mainly my digital camera. There were so many people stuffed in the boat for the Langue de Barbarie tour, and the water kept building up at my feet; I was sure we would capsize. I was too preoccupied with the thought of the water gathering at my feet that I got nothing from what our guide was saying about the birds. Then we finally stopped at the sand bar/island and stepped out of the boat in the river, traversed the sandbar, and reached the ocean on the other side. I wish that we could have spend a whole afternoon at the beach. It was so remote, and so beautiful. I felt like I was in AFRICA.
[A note about pirogues--the small fishing boats: many young Senegalese men will pile into these boats and head for the Spanish Canary Islands, with no way of navigation, just so that they can start a new (better, they think) life, as Spanish citizens. Hundreds and hundreds of young men have been lost, trying to get to the Canary Islands. Those boats are no match for the open sea--all however many km it is to get there. Another reason these men want to 'quitter' Sénégal is because there just are no more fish to fish. Not knowing the repercussions of signing an agreement with Europe to allow their huge boats to fish on the Senegalese coast, they are left with no fish. It's sad!]
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