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.

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!

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!

Endings, Beginnings, and Milestones

It's December 13, which means I've been in Senegal for over a hundred days. Wow. I'm back in Dakar right now, after a wrap-up week of fall semester classes. Most of the other MSID students were only staying the semester, and left or are leaving this weekend. I know the pictures are a big part of this blog, but sadly there are none this week, as (and I know it sounds like a ridiculous excuse) I in fact accidentally deleted the pictures that I had taken these past few weeks from my computer after having already taken them off my phone. Technology 1, Jane 0. >_<

I had a nice week of activities - classes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with Tuesday and Thursday completely free. Tuesday Casi, Delaney, and I went to the world's smallest national park - the
Parc national des îles de la Madeleine, or Madeleine Islands. There's one big island, the Island of Sarpan (pronounced like serpent, the French word for snake, which is a bit confusing as it is snake-free), as well as a few smaller volcanic islands. The geology of the island is amazing to look at, and it's also home to some tortoises, nesting cormorants, and, according to our guide, a patron spirit who looks after it. There's some ruins from a few European attempts to farm or settle the island, but it's a rather exposed rock, and gets too much wind to grow anything beyond grass and a few hardy baobabs. It made for a gorgeous day trip!

Wednesday I had class in the morning and afternoon, but took a trip to the Artisanal Market between class and lunch with my classmates - I didn't have any money with me, so didn't buy anything, but other people stocked up on souvenirs, and I'll definitely be back. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were split between a lot of writing and saying goodbyes. We had a wonderful farewell banquet Friday night.

My parents and Will get here on Saturday, and I'm very excited! In the meantime, I'll be heading back down to Joal for a few days, working on some scholarship applications, and just kind of taking things slow. I've got a post on public transport that just needs some photos as well, so that should be up this week.

Slice of Life post: City Creatures

My time in Thies is drawing to a close, and while I'll be very glad to get back to Dakar this weekend (I can't wait to catch up with my MSID friends, see my host family in Dakar, and get the end of the semester squared away), there are definitely some things I'll miss about living in Thies - among them, the sheer number of animals I see walking around the city.

In Dakar, there are a few horse-drawn carts to be seen here and there, though they're much more common in the outlying suburbs than the downtown area. There are also a fair amount of other animals people keep, like the sheep my host family keeps on the roof. But Thies is a whole other story...

First off, you have the donkeys and horses, which are used as pack animals - cars and trucks are much more common, but the cart hasn't bought the farm by a long shot. You can catch a ride to the market on one of the carriages as well - some of them like, the one in the background below, are outfitted with benches for passengers.

City traffic moves a bit fast for my camera - even the non-motorized kind!

A donkey on his lunch break

The house I live in here is in a relatively new neighborhood on the outskirts of town, right next to the village of Thionah. It's a common sight to see goats wandering at all hours, and I can hear them along with donkeys and roosters throughout the day.

There's something a little threatening about the way goats look at you

Goats and a stray calf outside of a neighboring house

"Well," you might say, "that's all very well and good, but that's just in the outskirts of town, right?" These, however, are from a herd of cattle that passed through town not too far from the offices of Agrecol earlier this week. I  complimented the cowherd in Wolof for having pretty cows (or at least I'm pretty sure that's what I said).

Yes, that is a refrigerator store behind them.

Some of you are probably familiar with my mom's adventures in urban chicken-keeping, which was the great family story of 2013-2014. Thies wouldn't dream of any such ordinance against livestock as is common in the States. The chickens here (roosters and hens alike, and I can usually hear a rooster or two in the mornings) roam a bit freer that our girls at home do.

He didn't like me much

"I said, 'cluck cluck'" said the hen

Mammals generally aren't allowed to walk around the markets except on a leash, but chickens can't do as much damage to a market stall as a goat might. I found these guys scratching in between a general store and a hardware store.

Granted, there are some downsides to this as well, chief among which is that the streets smell like a barnyard in places. But for all of the talk I hear (and contribute to) about ending factory farms and instituting better livestock-raising programs - maybe part of our problem has been isolating ourselves too much from the animals that we eat. I'm not giving my full endorsement to re-instituting such laissez-faire attitudes towards free-range livestock in the US, but I can say for sure that they certainly add a bit of excitement to the streets here!

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!

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.