Monday, November 30, 2015

Weekend Getaway

My last few weeks in Thiès have been fantastic. I've gotten started on research for my senior capstone project, and I'm devoting this week to finishing up my end-of-semester projects, which are due next week - time's really flown by. I had a couple outfits made, which look fantastic, if I do say so myself.

Here's one new outfit - and some cows! Claire and I saw these in the street, and wanted a picture. PC: Claire Dineen

This weekend I left the city for a bit to go to Joal-Fadiouth with Casi and Delaney, some of my MSID friends. We caught sept-places (pronounced "set-palaass;" run-down stations wagons which you can take between cities for about $2-$4, depending on how far you're traveling. The price you pay for it being so cheap is being crowded in with at least six other passengers) to M'bour, which was pretty central for all of us, then got a taxi to Joal. We arrived very late Friday night at the Hotel Finio, a charming little inn right on the bay.

Joal sits on the Atlantic coast, joined to the village-island of Fadiouth by a pedestrian bridge. No motor vehicles are allowed on Fadiouth, due to the island's unusual covering of shells. "Guards" try to get tourists to pay a fee of about $10 USD to cross the bridge, but in reality there is no fee. Mason, another American student who lives in Joal, showed us around and helped us negotiate fees and taxis like that. Noah, another MSID student, was visiting a relative of his host family in Joal and joined us on Saturday as well.



There were many pigs around, a rare sight here despite the other animals commonly wandering the streets - most Senegalese are Muslim, and thus do not eat pork. Fadiouth, however, is mostly Christian, due to an old Catholic mission which still has a thriving cathedral on the island. I took a lot of pig pictures.



We had a nice lunch out and met Mason's host family, before walking around Joal a bit. We saw the outside of the house of Léopold Sédar Senghor (the first president of Senegal), which is now a museum, but decided to go to the beach instead.

There were lots of crabs around, and some little boys were all too happy to help us catch a few. 

In the evening, we went to Mason's house for dinner, and hung around playing Uno with his host brother (aged six) while waiting for the food to be ready. We didn't let him win, but we did let him say that he won.

The next day we had breakfast at the hotel, where this pelican hangs out - we saw him getting his breakfast as well, a bucket of fish. We think the hotel must feed him so he stays around, and I can't blame them, he does add a good ambiance to the place.



We took a walk around the beach, then went out for lunch at the Taverne des Pecheurs (Fishermen's Tavern). The food was fantastic, though a Senegalese quartet came and played music right next to our table. Their style seemed to be "annoying enough that tourists will pay us to go away." We didn't give them anything, being rather sick of playing these kinds of games. I was reminded of Sir Robin's minstrels from Monty Python and the Holy Grail - luckily, we did not have to eat them to get them to stop.



We took the same chain of taxis and sept-places back to our respective cities, for one last week of work and wrapping up. Should have at least one other post up this week, and plenty more photographs on the facebook!

Monday, November 16, 2015

Thoughts in the wake of this weekend

This post also represents a departure from my usual style of posting, but as a student of global studies, I wanted to weigh in on the events of this weekend and the fallout. It’s no more than my two cents on the matter.

I was very shocked and horrified when I saw the news of what happened in Paris on Friday night. In my way of thinking over the past few years, France was very “safe.” I struggled a lot my freshman year with the choice of where I wanted to focus my area studies and spend my year abroad. I really wanted to apply to study at the Political Science Academy in Paris, and experience the movable feast. But I also wanted (and felt I needed) to spend this year growing in a way I knew would be difficult in Paris. I chose Senegal to get a better sense of the larger world, because I want to work in development, and to experience a rather different way of life.

Though Senegal is a stable, relatively healthy republic, West Africa is more or less synonymous in the news for Ebola outbreaks and armed conflict. Even though I felt comfortable in my decision, I know a lot of people felt I had chosen the less “safe” option for my year abroad, and at times before coming here I struggled with that myself.

Do I feel less safe here after what happened in Paris? No less than I did before, which is no less than I feel at home in the US. It would be very, very wrong to lump the actions of the Islamic State with the piety and peace practiced by the other Muslims around the world, which include 12.5 million Senegalese, who look down on militant Islam the same way any sane person would. I have nothing but utmost respect for Muslims and Christians alike who continue to find a path to a better world using some of the same holy texts that others have used to declare justification for atrocities.

But really, I’m not safe. None of us are. The reason all of the US and Europe is in an uproar over Paris is because it was, like 9/11, another glaring reminder that it can happen here, in “civilized places.” It doesn’t just happen in countries that still haven’t recovered from years of colonial rule, in places we have already written off as zones of violence and irresolvable conflict. Terrorism is not just their problem, and we are foolish to assume violence is ever so far from our door as to not merit our attention.


I do not wish to offend anyone with my stumbling around these matters. Death and human suffering in any respect are not to be taken lightly or compared against each other. What happened in Paris was an atrocity, and my heart goes out in mourning to the victims and their families. But I must also mourn for Beirut, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Mexico, and so many other places. I mourn for the hundreds of Americans killed by police violence every year. I mourn for all the unnecessary deaths due to violence and all other preventable causes. I take a moment to remember all the suffering that happens every day, and then I move on and live the rest of it to the best of my ability. We must mourn, but we must also go on living with peace and without fear. Wherever we are.

Friday, November 13, 2015

Slice of life post: Fun with Currency!

So, up until now most of my posts have just been news about what I'm doing. I'm going to try starting something new, however, and making occasional posts that are just my experiences with day-to-day life in Senegal - things like public transportation, food, and culture shocks. Some of this is for my parents and brother, who will be joining me here for a few weeks' vacation during Will's winter break in December, and some of this is just to share all the little curiosities I come across here. 

One of the things that has been very interesting for me to figure out during these last few months in Senegal has been the different currency. Along with several other former French colonies, Senegal uses the West African CFA (CFA stands for "Communauté Financière d'Afrique" or Financial Community of Africa). The exchange rate is about 500 CFA (more commonly known as "francs") to the dollar, though it fluctuates regularly to be about 50 CFA above or below that. 

Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_African_CFA_franc#/media/File:BCEAOFranc.png
Image from: http://africanbanknotes.blogspot.sn/2013/12/west-african-cfa-francs-banknotes-set.html
Technically, there are eight coins and five bills, though only the five largest coins are in wide use - I've only run across a few 5 and 10 CFA coins, and never seen a 1 CFA. There is no sales tax, so prices are always exact, usually in increments of 50 CFA.

Prices are seldom marked on items here, and this combined with the ingrained culture of haggling means that the Senegalese are very good at remembering what they pay for things. I still get some funny looks for asking what things cost in stores, because they're used to people my age just knowing how much things are. I've started to memorize a fair amount of prices myself - 1.5L water bottles, for instance, are 400 CFA, whereas the same sized bottle of soda is 700 CFA. Here is a sample of what you can buy with each amount of money in Senegal:

1 CFA - Like I said, I am still not sure if these coins are worth the metal they're made of. I haven't run across anything so far that only costs so little. 

5 CFA - one of the sticks people use to clean their teeth. Yes, you read that right, you can buy whittled, cleaned sticks from food stands and shops to keep in your pocket or the side of your mouth and scrub your teeth with throughout the day. Toothpicks and toothbrushes are also used, of course, but the traditional method of chewing and scraping with sticks after meals persists, even in the cities. I haven't tried it yet, but apparently it's a rather effective supplement to regular brushing. 

10 CFA - a piece of hard candy from a corner shop. The corner shops themselves are a whole other fascinating post, but no matter how small the shop they always keep a few jars of different candies on the counter for children (and exchange students with a sweet tooth) to buy with their allowance. I'm rather fond of gingembre, a very strong hard ginger candy. 

25 CFA - still haven't found anything that costs exactly 25 CFA, but useful as halves of a fifty.

50 CFA -  A little bag of beignets (a kind of doughnut hole) or a small cup of Cafe Touba from one of the street snack carts, a short ride on a car rapide (price varies by distance traveled, but 50 is the base price), or a sandwich-sized, vacuum-sealed plastic bag of purified water (an alternative to water bottles; you bite a hole in a corner and drink from that). 

100 CFA - A small orange, a small baguette, a regular cup of instant coffee, a single-serving packet of cookies, about a cup of freshly-cooked peanuts, a short ride on one of the nicer city buses, a banana, or a 10-pack of tissues. 

200 CFA - a ride on a "moto," the taxi's two-wheeled cousin in Thiès. Young men drive them around the city and shout "moto" at pedestrians who look in need of transportation. Motos are two-seater mopeds or motorcycles (though I've seen ones with three or four children on the backseat instead), which provide a cheaper alternative to taxis, for the single passenger without a lot of baggage. 

500 CFA - a taxi ride in Thiès, a very basic lunch of ceebu-jën from a food stand, a family-sized package of cooked peanuts, or a breakfast sandwich with meat, potatoes, and vegetables. 

1000 CFA - lunch from a slightly more upscale food stand (that serves sandwiches or Senegalese food that is not ceebu-jën), a cross-city taxi ride in Dakar, a toothbrush, or a 10L bottle of purified water.

2000 CFA - a taxi ride if you're really bad at haggling or it's raining (price goes up because demand goes up), or a SIM card for a cellphone. 

5000 CFA - a portable 3G internet connection, 2GB worth of data for your phone or 3G internet, or two meters of good cloth, which is about enough for making a dress. 

10000 CFA - usual cost for having an outfit made by a tailor, though often negotiable if you are able to buy the cloth from the same shop. 

As you can see, a few dollars can go a very long way here. The more upscale or western-style restaurants that I've been to in Dakar are only expensive in that they charge more what I'm used to paying for a lunch in the US. I haven't done any independent travel yet, but apparently the same is true for hotels as well - even the fanciest hotels listed in the guide don't generally go above 60000 CFA a night. Cost of living is balanced out by the high-cost of utilities, which are all privatized, but for travel it's very easy to do on a student's budget. 

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Toubab Dialao and a village visit

My first few weeks with Agrecol Afrique have been a lot of fun so far, and I'm learning so much here. Agrecol is a non-profit NGO, and so while there are mostly regular paid employees, there are also a few interns from Senegalese universities, as well three volunteers/interns from SUCO, a Canadian volunteer organization that is a little similar to the Peace Corps. They're Quebecois and speak mostly French, but enough English that our conversations frequently slip into a mix of the two. It's still difficult for me to properly express myself in French when I get excited or angry about a topic, and agriculture has its own vocabulary which I am doing my best to learn.


Monday and Tuesday the whole organization, about thirty people total, had a conference and retreat at Toubab Dialao, a tourist town on the Petit Cote which is about an hour and a half's drive from Thiès. We stayed at the Sobo Badé, a lovely sprawling collection of bungalows built out of stone and decorated with seashells. It sits right on the edge of the sea-cliffs, and there was a lovely breeze around. We went swimming in the ocean - the first time I've been swimming in the ocean here, as I never found the time to go in Dakar. It was a lot of fun, though the waves were much stronger than I'm used to, my other major experiences with the ocean being on the Florida side of the Gulf of Mexico and in South Carolina. At night, me and a few of the Canadian volunteers went out in search of a drink (the hotel bar was ruinously expensive) and when we were walking along the beach, we saw hordes of little crabs scuttling about, which made me rather nostalgic for family ghost-crabbing adventures. I didn't get any photos, as I forgot my smartphone and my camera is being a little difficult right now, but there are some of the hotel on that link, and here's a few my coworker Abdoulaye took:

Crocheting by the seaside
The view from the cliffside - those are fishermen on the left
We also got some real work and conversation done - I got to see presentations on all the major projects of Agrecol Afrique, including a food security program in the Casamance (I wish I were able to do work there, but security concerns mean that MSID does not usually allow students to work there), a shiny new version of the website to be revealed soon, and a presentation on the Naturel-Biologique labeling program, or Nat-Bi (biologique means organic in French). I may be able to do some work with the Nat-Bi program in the next few weeks, if my schedule permits.

Wednesday I got back to find that my library project has been a little derailed - what little progress I had made had been undone by a well-meaning janitor stacking the books back in the closet, rather than leaving them in the organized piles I'd had them in on the floor. To them, I'm sure it looked like I had just thrown them willy-nilly around on the floor, but there was the beginning of a system there! I never thought I'd daydream about steel bookcases with movable shelving, but when all you have to organize with is a dirty closet,with three tall, deep shelves, what were once the most mundane solutions seem very appealing. I think I'm going to put the project on hold until (unless) we can get a hold of some milk crates or other boxes for organizing the books - otherwise I'll just be putting them in slightly more organized stacks, which, much as I hate to say it, is not a very good use of my time.


Thursday I went with the technicians to see some of the field sites where Agrecol does work - three villages, two with women's collectives and one with a general farming collective. At the first village, Koulouck, we brought seeds and helped plant a few beds of onions. In the second, Mboulouckhtène, the program focuses on okra production and chickens - meat, not eggs. Ngemme, the third village, hosts the largest collective - 17 men and 10 women each work large plots of organic tomatoes, peppers, hibiscus, and other vegetables which they then sell to Agrecol. We had ataaya, freshly roasted peanuts, and vegetable stew with rice with the farmers in the shade of a baobab and weighed and recorded the harvests of the week. It's very odd for me to see a land in full bloom in November, after growing up in a place where there's only one growing season, which has already passed by this time of year. 



My second week in Thiès was very well-spent, and I look forward to the adventures that this week will bring!