Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Quick Update: I'm back in Dakar

Scarcely a few hours after I published my last post, which I'd drafted over the weekend, I thought over some things that I'd been dealing with since my arrival last Tuesday, and decided that my time in Soussane wasn't going to be worth it. Honestly, reading through that post with the knowledge that I get aggressively upbeat when I'm close to breaking makes it seem like a bit of a cry for help.

A big part of me also wanted to stay, but I also knew I was not doing anyone any favors by staying there. Soussane needs a lot of things, but an unskilled young intern who is treated like a china doll is not one of them, and I was not thriving there. The people in Soussane were wonderful, but a stomach bug, a general sense of frustration at the resources available to me there, and the fact that I'd had no warning or information about the site beforehand made me feel very frustrated at being sent there, and I was so upset Monday I was seriously considering going home. I was having some trouble adjusting to not having sufficient internet connection and electricity, which I'm pretty dependent on because I've built a lot of my research and writing habits around using my laptop.

So I'm back in Dakar this week, figuring things out with MSID and finding another place to work this semester. Rest assured, I'm still staying in Senegal until April, but I'll be doing something different. Thank you all for your continued support and readership.

Monday, January 25, 2016

Mbaldoo!

(m-bahl-doh)

That’s how you say “good morning” in Sereer. If someone says that to you, you respond with “fedee jam” (fay-day jahm). Then there are several greetings asking about the family and your health that follow, and other ways of greeting each other during the afternoon or evening. Salutations are serious business in the village of Soussane.

Soussane, not to be confused with Sessene (a small town along a main road where Agrecol has an office), is a hamlet of a few dozen families, five kilometers of dirt road away from the main route. Agrecol though it would be best to send me to one of their newest sites for my internship, and they just got their organic gardens at Soussane off the ground in the past year.

In some ways, it’s rather like my fantasies of the Little House books as a girl – the town still gets all its water from a well (though I buy bottled drinking water because of my weak American stomach). My host father is the head of the village, and so we were among the first to get electricity, which is still being installed in other homes – until those arrived, only the school had electricity. It is enough to power lamps in the evenings and to charge cellphones, but to charge my computer I have to go a little further afield.

I can either ask a neighbor on the other side of town who has a more powerful electrical system, or go to the Agrecol offices (a journey which can range between fifteen minutes and an hour, depending upon whether I go by horse cart or car), or to Beersheba, a little under a mile away. Beersheba is a faith-based center which offers training in organic farming. The latter two have wifi as well, though I also have a 3G internet connection if I want to work at home. It’s a bit slow out here though, so I can’t post any pictures as yet.

So far, my schedule is split between helping at the village preschool a few mornings a week, helping with the organic farming, and doing things with the Agrecol offices. I can’t start conducting interviews until I get IRB approval, which I’m in the process of applying for, but until then I can do a lot of reading – as usual, I practically brought a mobile library with me.

The food is a lot more carbohydrates and a lot less meat and vegetables than I’m used to – at this rate, I think most of my body mass will be millet by the time I go home. Fortunately, I’m rather fond of it, and I really love the feel of meals eaten around the communal bowl.

Soussane is not the kind of place that gets all that many newcomers, and certainly not white girls like me, so all the kids here find watching me to be endlessly interesting. If I just sit down outside with my journal or my knitting, a crowd of them will gather. All except for the littlest ones – I still frighten some of the babies.

As per the usual, everyone, adults and children alike seems to like to watch me knit – I really wish I had brought teaching supplies with me, but I shall have to figure something out.


There is so much to say about life here that I have to cut myself short for this post – I’ve got a couple themed pieces in mind for later. Will post a lot more in the weeks to come!

Friday, January 15, 2016

First post of 2016!


And what a year it's already shaping up to be! I dropped off the radar for the last month while my family was here, and then I spent the past two weeks getting my research project ready. After we help with the orientation for the spring MSID students next week, I head off to Sessène on Tuesday! Crazy, right?


A lot of the highlights of our trip have been available on facebook, but to recap (photo credits to Karen Carney):

We spent the first few days in Dakar:

In front of the Marche Kermel

Mom and I in front of the Theodore Monod Art Museum
Will, me and Dad in front of the UCAD library
Île de Gorée
Then on to Saint-Louis:

Will and I at the Hotel Cap Saint-Louis

The pelican nesting grounds in Djoudj National Reserve
And then on to Toubacouta:

Dad in a baobab
The Hotel Keur Saloum
Green Monkeys hung around the hotel begging for (and stealing) food
And back to Dakar. 

Downtown Dakar
The Monument of the African Renaissance

It was a really great trip, and I miss those folks already! Still, I feel pretty good about the next few months. Next post should be from Sessène!