Kedougou! and Thiabedji!

Last week, was the week of rural stays – when all us students were sent to live with various families outside of Dakar. I was lucky to be sent to Kedougou, about as far southeast in Senegal as you can go – you can see Guinea from the hills there. I and my friend Elise would be staying with a Peace Corps volunteer, Sheila, in her village of Thiabedji, where her project is agroforestry.
So, we took a mini-bus from Dakar to Tambacounda (like central/southern Senegal) and by chance and pure idiocy in not thinking about how long it would take the bus to fill up, we ended up leaving Dakar during the hottest part of the dry season, during the hottest part of the day (noon) and heading for the hottest region in the country. So, those 10 hours in the bus were quite probably some of the longest I’ve ever experienced, especially since, in perfect Senegalese style, I was crammed to a seat made for 3 people, but into which we squeezed 5. We passed all sorts of small towns and hut villages. Going through town of Kaolack (like 3 miles east of Dakar) was interesting because there was trash everywhere EVERYWHERE. Like, there were just fields of trash, and I’m guessing it’s because it’s a pretty large city and probably no landfill made. So, it all gets chucked into the fields for the goats to eat.
We stopped for lunch in a little tiny town where we bought some delicious French bread rolls from women on the street and drank some café Touba (really strong coffee with lots of spices in a shot glass). We sat on benches in the coffee lady’s curtained shack and spoke some Wolof with the other people there. It’s always amazing how much trying to speak just a little Wolof (or any other Senegalese language) makes people so happy here. It makes so much sense though. I mean, most of the non-African foreigners who come to Senegal are tourists, and they don’t learn Wolof. And, nobody really studies Wolof in other parts of the world, so I think it really legitimizes the culture here. So many times I’ve been told by Senegalese that English is “better” than Wolof. Or that English is the “best” language. And, I understand where that comes from – people see the US as incredibly successful, it’s the image created by film and by the limited knowledge many people here have about the US. It’s also a very useful global language, and I’m sure that’s where a lot of idea of English being “better” than Wolof comes from. But, it’s sad that so many languages get tossed aside in favor of a more commonly spoke language. Language is such a huge part of your culture, so I’m sure it’s very encouraging for Senegalese to hear foreigners (especially Americans and Europeans) speaking a language simply for the sake of really, sincerely communicating with them.
We arrived in Tambacounda around 10pm that night. We went to the Peace Corps regional house, which is just a big house within a neighborhood that serves as a little haven for volunteers in the region. It’s a place for the volunteers to come when they need a break from their village or a good place to do research or prepare for projects, or just to hang out with other Americans. We walked in on a 5-person dance party, which was pretty hilarious. And, the volunteers there that day had made frozen peanut butter chocolate bars, which were incredible. We didn’t have too much of a chance to talk with the volunteers because everyone went to be pretty soon after we arrived. We all slept out on the roof, on mats under the stars.
We got up the next morning and took a 5-hour sept-place taxi ride to Kedougou. On the way, we passed through Niokolo National Park, which is probably Senegal’s most famous protected area since that’s where most of the large mammals that characterize Africa live in Senegal. We were so lucky and saw quite a few animals on our drive through. We saw a troop of baboons cross the road. We thought they were dogs from far away, and then realized too late to stop that they were baboons. Then, we saw a few warthogs. We also saw what I believe are Abyssinian hornbills (you learn this stuff working at a zoo!), which are these giant (like 2 feet tall) black birds with giant beaks like Toucans. Then, we came upon a tourist hunting campement where a few guards were sitting under a shade structure feeding peanuts to two adorable little monkeys. We stopped to check it out, and got to feed them (sorry, I know, you shouldn’t feed wild animals, but, these guards do this every day, I found out).
It was really neat to finally see the landscape change. Most of Senegal is Sahel, the type of land between the Sahara and the savannah. So, there’s lots of grass with scattered acacia trees (and everything is super dry, since it’s the end of the rainy season). And, everything is totally flat. But, going to Kedougou changed everything! We finally saw hills! Covered with trees! And it was green! Beautiful green hillsides, or mountains, as they call them (although the highest point in Senegal is only 600 meters).
When we arrived in Kedougou, Sheila met us at the station. She’s a Coloradoan! And, she went to CSU and Denver Metro for college, majoring in Political Science and Languages (French & Spanish)and then she was assigned to work on agroforestry in the remote 500-person village of Thiabedji, where very few people speak French or Wolof, and Pulaar is the native language. We walked to another Peace Corps regional house, where we would spend the night. This one was different – it was all outdoors except for the kitchen, which was a cement hut. The sleeping area was a set of about 20 beds under a cement-straw roof.
We went to the Kedougou market with Sheila to buy gifts for her host family, who would visit the next day. What did we bring as gifts? (bringing gifts is expected anytime to stay with someone). We brought ingredients to make ceebu jenn – tomatoes, cassava, fish, and oil. Sheila said her family hadn’t eaten ceebu jenn in probably almost a year. The people in the village of Thiabedji live on less than a dollar a day – they grow all their own food, and sometimes are able to sell it. Men travel to other villages to find work sometimes, but there’s not much to go around.
We rode bikes to the market and it was so much fun! I miss bike riding so much and this was the first time I’ve ridden a bike since I left Colorado! It was so funny every time we rode bikes in Kedougoug during this week, I feel like our Americanness really showed because we always rode so fast, and the Senegalese ride ssssooooo slowly! Never ever in a hurry to get anywhere.
It was really neat to go around with Sheila and Kate (another Peace Corps girl) because they spoke fluent Pulaar and that’s so essential especially this far out from large cities where very few people speak French. Sheila had this hilarious way of dealing with men who kept asking her to give them either me or Elise (that sounds horrible, but it’s really just the way Senegalese men express that they really like you). The men would shout out that they loved us and Sheila would yell something back in English like “You smell like pickles! You look like my mother!” or something ridiculous like that. I guess that’s just her way of keeping from getting pissed off at them – because, really it gets incredibly annoying when men are constantly nagging you like that.
We went back to the house because it was the hot part of the day, when nobody does anything but sit or lay down for hours – and SWEAT!!! That night we went with some other Peace Corps people to this tourist campement to swim in their pool and I tried a bite of a warthog sandwich L. But, really, I had to do it.
The next day, we left early in the morning at 7am and Bruno, this French guy who decided to retire in Senegal, drove us in his jeep over the “mountains” to get to Thiabedji. I cannot describe well enough how remote this village was – stuck back in the hills, hours away from any sizeable town, no electricity or running water anywhere. There are about 500 people in this village. All the houses and buildings are made of mud, straw, and bamboo, and the floors are made of a mixture of mud, cow poop, and clay – it ends up like cement, a little bit. The houses are grouped into family groups. So, there will be like a central open space, surrounded by 5 or 6 huts for various members of the family (mom & dad, sons & daughters, children’s families, etc.).
Sheila’s host family is her host mom, her 3 adult sons, her 15-year old daughter Kadyjatou, her son’s wife Dolanda, and her 3 kids – Ousmane, Jennaba, and Fatou. Ousmane and Fatou were some of the cutest kids ever – Jennaba was cute too, but she was a little devil sometimes.
We went to meet Numu Sara, one of the more motivated agroforesters that Sheila works with. He has a mango orchard, which was pretty incredible. It’s about mango season now, and to get the mangoes down, they send kids up the trees to shake branches so that they fall. I haven’t eaten many mangoes – and, actually, I’m not sure if I’ve ever eaten a raw mango – just mango-flavored things and dried mango. They’re amazing! They’ve got some strange but delicious spice in them. I ate 4 of them that first day! Some of the two most common phrases I used in PUlaar that week were “No welli!” (it’s delicious) and “nowooli!” (it’s hot).
We went back to the huts before it got too hot. Then, from noon-7pm, we just sat around doing nothing because it’s so hot, you don’t dare go out of the shade. It was about 110 degrees everyday, and one day it even got up to 120! So, we talked a bit with Katyjatou because she knows some French from school, and I tried to get her to teach me Pulaar but it was pretty clear that she thought it was a vain effort – she just laughed at the way I pronounced things, and we let it go after a bit. For dinner, we had ceebu jenn! There is one hut that serves as the kitchen. It’s all made out of sticks and straw, but there’s no ventilation, and they cook on open fires, so all the smoke and heat stays in the hut – it’s horrible being in there.
We slept out on cots behind the hut in Sheila’s little backyard (a space behind her hut that is surrounded by a woven bamboo fence. The next day we woke up and had this kind of soupy pudding couscous thing for breakfast. It was exactly like something I ate for dessert with people on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota last year – and unlike anything I’m sure you’ve ever tasted. It’s a gelatin-like soup flavored with the sweet/sour tamarin seed pod and then there’s little pea-sized balls made out of cornmeal. It was interesting – definitely not bad at all. But, the nutrition problem here is that the people eat almost only corn, and some white rice. There’s flavorings like tamarind and baobab leaves, but that’s about it.
Then, we went with Sheila to an agroforestry workshop/meeting where some community members were coming together to learn how to make a tree nursery. We met some of the nicest men in the village – Issa was another of, in Sheila’s words, the better farmers there. It was in his garden that they were making the tree nursery. They were planting trees that would serve as natural fences – lots of thorns – and other trees like mango and cashew. I didn’t follow most of what they were saying, because it was all in Pulaar of course. Sheila translated for us sometimes. She was really happy about this week, because it was a super busy week for her and people were motivated. She said it’s almost never that way in Peace Corps. The first year of your time in the village is just about learning the language and the culture, and experimenting a little. The second year is when you can actually really work on your project. Sheila (and other volunteers) told us that, on average, you can expect about 10% of the work you do in your village to continue after you leave. That means that, maybe after teaching a hundred people how to make a tree nursery, only 10 will continue to do so when Peace Corps leaves.
I realize that this totally depends on the project (whether that be health education, agroforestry, or business development) but, still, how much can you really do alone in 2 years? After being in Senegal fo about 3 months, I can’t even imagine how difficult it must be to be plopped down in a tiny village and be expected to carry out a development project with the community. Kudos to Peace Corps, and especially to female Peace Corps in Africa. Women here have such a harder time getting buy-in from the community leaders because society is so male-dominated and they don’t often take women seriously in leadership roles. Also, from other Peace Corps women I’ve talked to, it’s an added burden when you can’t trust men because you think they’re sincerely helping you because they care about the project/issue too, but in fact all along they were just hoping you’d marry them. Then it turns awkward really fast.
I asked how Peace Corps decides where to send volunteers. She said it can happen a couple of ways. First, is that the village leaders themselves ask for a volunteer, or, another Peace Corps volunteer might suggest a new village. But, Sheila said that when she came, nobody had any idea what she was doing there. That doesn’t seem like a good development approach to me – that a foreigner is just marching into a community and nobody there knows why. But, I’ve come to realize that Peace Corps really isn’t about development. It’s more about cultural exchange, and a way to give Americans who are interested in development a glimpse into on-the-ground challenges. I think the actually process of development in these villages is just a side-note. There’s really a lack of sustainability since most of these Peace Corps projects seem run by the volunteers themselves, so when they leave, their work disappears. And then maybe a new Peace Corps comes to take their place, but they’re starting at square 1 again – language and cultural barriers all over again. Of course, I’m generalizing. I only know Peace Corps in Senegal, so I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but I think a lot of the same things might hold true. It also depends on the individual Peace Corps too though – how they go about their work with the community, what steps they make to make it a sustainable project after they leave.
Sheila said the biggest problem with development, in her opinion (and I totally agree) is that it’s so uncoordinated. There are over a dozen NGOs working in Thiabedji (a village of 500 people), and they don’t exchange ideas or plans much at all. I’ve heard the same situation in other regions in Senegal. It’s made me wonder what the long-term affect of all this foreign aid is for Africa (and also other parts of the world). How much has it reinforced the culture of aid? The sense that the 1st world is where the hope for developing countries lies? That it’s not possible to develop without aid from the US and Europe? “Tubab, tubab! Give me a gift!” That’s the way I was greeted by all the children, and even several adults in the Kedougou region. How much does this reveal the culture of aid here? One Peace Corps guy said that there was a European NGO who came to his village and built windmills for energy, which was great, until a part of the windmill broke, and then nobody in the village knew how to fix it or where to get a new part. Then, there’s another French NGO in the same village that brings clothes every year, so nobody ever buys clothes there – they just wait till they come back the next year. The Peace Corps guy told me that when a well stopped working, he said “It doesn’t matter; we’ll just wait for someone from Europe to come and fix it or build us another one.” This lack of coordination of development work seems like it looks on at the here and now, and not at the long-term course of independent development which countries should be following. I am not a development expert, but these are questions I am really interested in researching more.
The other few days in the village were pretty much the same – agroforestry workshops/meetings, eating stuff made of corn and rice, and sitting & sweating. Sweating like you would not believe – starting right after breakfast, I’d start sweating, and I wouldn’t stop sweating until about 10pm at night. Incredible.
One day, we sat out under a mango tree with Dolanda and her kids and made attaya. I found out the only reason they pour the two glasses back and forth is to make a bunch of bubbles because it looks pretty. Haha.
Our last day there we hiked up a couple mountains to visit the Badik villages. They’re an ethnic group that, hundreds of years ago had a war with the Pulaar people, and were pushed up on top of the hills to live. So, they’re still there. They were pretty beautiful settings – like something right out of a Discovery channel show.
We went back to Kedougou at the Peace Corps house for night, and the next day, we went on a bike ride to the Gambia river to look for hippos. Unfortunately, we got pretty lost and by the time we found the river, it was too late in the day to see hippos. But, the biking was awesome! And we did see a bunch of really beautiful birds.