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.

Mbeubeuss

I just passed one of the most amazing days in Senegal….and I couldn’t take any photos L. In my Environment and Developmnt class we had a couple classes discussing the problem of solid waste disposal in Dakar. You see trash EVERYWHERE for two main reasons (among others) – 1. There’s just the habit of throwing your trash wherever, 2. There just don’t exist many trash receptacles and the trash pick-up service sucks and doesn’t even exist in some neighborhoods. But, what really interested me was learning about Mbeubeuss. That’s the landfill where all the trash from Dakar and its surrounding communes goes. It’s like any other landfill you’d see in the states, except this one has no gates or fences, no bottom liner to keep waste from leaking out, and, people live IN the landfill and make their livings from the trash.
So, I was really interested in learning about these people who live in the dump and the récuperateurs (people who collect trash to re-sell for recycling in places as far away as India or to resell to local artists). Let me preface this by saying that there are so many things that really would never happen back in the US, and the spontaneity of life in Senegal is one of the things I’ll miss most about being here. So, my friend Taryn (one of my best friends here – we enjoy discussing similar things, and our French is at about the same level) and I set out for Mbeubeuss with just 2 names of people who work with the NGO ENDA-Tiers Monde (an international organization that works on various development issues and is really involved in the environment in Senegal) and the name of the President of the Association des Récuperateurs de Mbeubeuss. We took a taxi to the commune of Malika, which is a part of one of the Dakar region’s poorest neighborhoods (and also a hotspot for producing some of Senegal’s biggest rap artists). About 7,000 people live in Malika, right next to the landfill (I really mean right next to. There is the landfill, and then 100 yards away there are houses).
We were dropped off right outside the main entrance into Mbeubeuss, and we could already see, a bit off in the distance, smoke rising from we would find as hundreds of piles of burning trash. We went to the truck weighing station and asked about some of the names we had. We were immediately invited in to the station to talk to the workers there. There, we met Richard, an officer who works on security at Mbeubeuss, which means that he helps weigh and authorize the dumptrucks to dump their wastes. He offered to bring us to the “platform” which is where the trucks all dump their stuff. So, we thought we’d be walking a short ways. No way! We hitched a ride with Richard in the cab of a dump truck going out to dump his trash.
We drove on a giant mountain of trash that’s been piling up since the 1970s. I really won’t be able to describe it well enough. Over a kilometer wide and much longer, the landfill is made of rolling 50-foot (or more) mounds of plastic, metals, glass, and a bunch of random crap that you’d find in any dump. We drove over the compacted trash heaps on a sort of “path”, which is really just a little clearing between the mountains of trash, but still we were just driving on trash. We had to drive almost a kilometer into the dump to the platform to dump the truck. On the way, we saw random people searching through the trash heaps for things to re-sell. Then, we turned a corner around a mound of plastic, and I’ll never forget that site. There were several dump trucks unloading their crap while hundreds of people (about 1/3 were children probably 8-15 years) clamored about trying to be the first to get their hands on the new bags of trash. All over the dump were piles of burning, smoking trash (plastic, paper, etc.) which are used to find iron in the trash heaps. Nobody has any kind of protective gear – people wore t-shirts and sandals (walking through trash full of rusty metal pieces, glass shards, and household waste).
We made our way back after dumping our load. Richard told us that on average people who come to the dump for a living make about $25 dollars a day! That’s a fortune considering like 2/3 of Senegalese live on less than $2/day.
Some people actually live on the dump. We passed by a series of shacks where people sat outside sorting their used goods and others ate lunch. Other people come from the surrounding neighborhoods of Malika and Keur Massar – that’s where most come from. But then there are also others who come from all over the Dakar region – some travel an hour or so every day to get to Mbeubeuss. That’s why it’s such a taboo to take photos at the landfill. Richard told us people get really upset and one of the main reasons is that they don’t want anyone back home to know that they work at the dump. Although you might make a lot money gathering trash, it’s still a job looked down on by Senegalese because of the conditions – it’s smelly, and it’s disgusting.
We got back to the weigh station, and Richard sent us in the direction of the Poste de Santé, a little health center set up by the Association de Récuperateurs de Mbeubeuss with the help of the NGO ENDA. We walked over to the little building and met a cute old man named Moustapha. After chatting a bit (as you always have to do in Senegal – how’s the family, where’s your wife? How’s work? How was your morning? How was your night? Are you in peace?) Moustapha introduced us to the doctor and nurse who treat people at the little clinic. They told us that one of the major health problems they treat is respiratory infections (understandable since the people are breathing in fumes from burning plastic and who knows what). Side note – I read a study done on the neighborhoods surrounding the landfill which said that 14% of the populations have respiratory illness, 10% have parasites, and 66% drink well water polluted by bacteria and heavy metals. Then, the doctor introduced us to Adama Soumaré, the man who works for ENDA at this community center that includes the health clinic and a training center for kids and young adults.
The training center was created to help give the children who work at Mbeubeuss with their parents an opportunity to find a different, healthier line of work. I asked how they get the kids to come to these schooling programs. Soumaré said it happens in several different ways – they go out into the dump and ask the kids themselves (older kids often may not live with their families), they talk to parents who come to the health clinic and see the school in session, and they hold meetings for parents to come learn about the school. Then, there’s a training program for young adults aged 18-20 years for the same reasons. They teach the girls things like embroidery, cooking, French, and computers. They teach boys things like carpentry, metal-working, and mechanics.
To encourage good teachers to come out to the site (right at the entrance of the landfill, for convenience for the families), they encourage parents to give about 1500 CFA a month ($3/month). It was really neat to see things like this in action, with so much grassroots support – most of these activities (health clinic, school, training)were started by the people who work in the landfill themselves, rather than an NGO coming in and doing it. ENDA assisted later on with technical support, but still most of these activities are really community-run, not outside NGO-run, like so many projects I’ve seen in Senegal.
I’ve read about the debate over closing Mbeubeuss and opening a new landfill in another region of Dakar. But, from what I’d heard and read, there was no community that would accept another Mbeubeuss. So, I asked Soumaré about it. He said, in fact, that they’ve already found another place. This was the most interesting part of the day because it involved the World Bank and we got to hear from the people about negotiations with the big shots. So, here’s what went down. Mbeubeuss was created by the Senegalese government in like 1970. Then, in 2006 or 2008 the World Bank financed a large highway going from Dakar toward Pikine (a community on the outskirts of the Dakar area) and past. But, to do this, they had to displace hundreds of people who lived where the highway was to be built. So, they were moved up to one of the neighborhoods by the landfill. But, then the World Bank said the people couldn’t live next to the landfill because of all the air pollution, so they were working to have Mbeubeuss closed. But, that’s a problem for the people who make their livings there – they don’t want to move, and when the next landfill opens, it might have higher regulations so that people can’t go inside. So, people were going back and forth about what to do. Finally, the World Bank and Abdul Azziz (president of the people who work at Mbeubeuss) and the Senegalese government agreed on a compromise. They are going to open a new landfill in Thies, and city east of Dakar. But, first, they will bring the trash to Mbow, which is near Mbeubeuss, and people can go there to collect their goods, and then the trucks will bring the remainder to Thies to be incinerated (I think – it got fuzzy because of French vocab I didn’t know). So, Mbeubeuss will be closed, but the people at Mbeubeuss will still be able to continue their living. I’m not sure of the details of how that will all happen though.
Then, Moustapha took us out into the dump again to meet Abdul Azziz Seck, the president of the Association des Recuperateurs (people working in the dump). We followed Moustapha through piles of sorted plastics, metals, and glass and met dozens of people sitting outside shacks, taking a break from their work and eating lunch. We met Abdul, but he was busy with his family eating lunch, so we didn’t stay long, and he clearly wasn’t in a talking mood. But, he told us that the initial reason he and his buddies wanted to create the association was to fight against delinquency in the landfill. It used to be a major hideout for criminals and gangs, but now the community living and working there has come together to make itself more into a society, rather than just a bunch of individuals making money.
Afterwards, we went back to the weight station to say goodbye to our friend Richard and some other guys who had helped us that morning. And, of course, it always takes forever to say goodbye here. It was lunchtime and they insisted that we stay and eat ceebu jenn with them, of course. But, we needed to get back to Dakar to make an American-style dinner for Taryn’s family. But, then Amadou (the head guy at the weigh station) told us to wait for this truck that had just headed out to dump its load. It was going back to Dakar, and we could ride in it on the way back. So, we waited, and then Richard came back with some ceebu jenn, and so we had to eat. It’s always so funny when you’re a guest because the Senegalese way of showing respect for a guest when you’re eating is to shut you in a room by yourself. It still makes me laugh. So, we finished the ceeb and then jumped up into the cab of another dump truck and hit the road back to Dakar! The looks we got were priceless – 2 tubaab girls riding in a dump truck??? Haha! It was also really cool because the truck was bringing bags of collected trash from peopleat Mebuebeuss back to people in Dakar who re-sell it to industries. So, we got to see the whole recycling process!
So, all in all, this was an incredibly eventful day, and so many things I would never expect to happen in the states. But, maybe being in Senegal will have made me more aggressive in terms of researching things for myself – you know, just really putting yourself out there to try to get info.

Working with the WWF

Yippeeee yi yoooooO!!!!!! There is nothing so satisfying than working for such a long time toward a goal and finally (FINALLY!) attaining something beyond what you ever imagined would happen. One of the elective courses I’m taking here is called “Community Service Internship and Development”. It’s a once a week seminar class where we discuss the role of NGOs in development, specifically in Senegal. The professor is responsible for providing each of us with an internship that fits our interests. Aminata (our internship coordinator) had a lot of connections with health, refugee, and education organizations here in Dakar, but the only environmentally-related internship she offered me was washing and feeding animals in the Dakar zoo. Which, may have been interesting, but that’s not exactly the kind of community focus that I’m interested in. So, I went about finding an internship on my own, which proved to be incredibly frustrating being in a place where Wolof is the preferred language, personal connections are indispensable (even more so than in the US), and a city and culture I was not familiar with.
Luckily, the two professors of my Environment & Development course are both bigwigs in the environmental world in Senegal. Cheikh Mbow is a professor & researcher at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, so he knows tons of people who work in various environmentally-focused organizations in Dakar. And, Arona Soumaré is the Director of Conservation for all of West Africa! Pretty incredible connections there. I discussed possible organizations that might be able to help me with finding some kind of internship – nothing huge of course, since it’s only about 3 months I’d have to work. But, somewhere that I could learn a little more first-hand about environmental issues and the work that NGOs do here in Senegal, and maybe contribute what I can. So, my professors gave me some names at various organizations. I went to their offices and discussed what I was looking for, gave out resumes and cover letters in French, called repeatedly when I didn’t hear back, returned to again express my interest. Nothing showed much promise until 2 weeks ago.
The break came when Arona told me that his friend Christian at World Wildlife Fund (WWF – not to be confused with World Wrestling Foundation) is working on environmental education programs in different communities in Senegal. He gave me his information, and I just went to see him today and it’s a hit!!!! Christian (Senegalese with a Catholic name) is an AMAZINGINGLY passionate person for environmental education (and sea turtles). WWF works on 3 main issues in Senegal : sustainable fisheries, endangered species & habitats, and policy. Christian and WWF worked with the Joal-Fadiouth community, which is on the Petite Cote in Senegal. It’s a fishing community, and it’s also a major nesting site for several types of sea turtles. For economic and cultural reasons, the people here eat a lot of sea turtle – it’s cheaper than beef or chicken in the area and its parts are valued for traditional medicine and tourist trinkets. But, interestingly, the people who catch the turtles are not from the community. They come from other areas along the Senegalese coast. They catch the turtles (Chris said at least 50 in each net) and sell them to the community. So, WWF worked with the local community to bring back control of this coast to the community. To replace the livelihoods of local people who used to sell the meat and parts of the turtles, the WWF provided technical and material support to help develop a marine protection crew (to monitor outside fishers coming into the community’s sea) and develop ecotourism in the area based on the sea and sea turtles. Last year the Marine Protected Area in this community was rated the most successful of all 19 in West Africa.
More recently, the WWF has been engaging in environmental education with children in the community. They have an annual EE workshop with representative children from 10 schools in Joal-Fatiouth and they teach them about the biology of their special environment, focusing on sea turtles, and then give them hands-on experience out with sea turtles. The culmination is each of the children creating some sort of art to represent their understanding of their environment – everything from paintings to poetry. Chris said it’s a way to focus more on the long-term success of environmental sustainability by education children, while also helping the shorter-term. These children then discuss with their parents what they learn and can perhaps teach them something with their new education, spreading knowledge and awareness about the uniqueness and needs of their environment.
So, Christian is working on developing a more comprehensive environmental education program for all of West Africa. I’m not sure exactly what that’s going to look like yet, but he’s going to send me some of his initial plans and we’re going to discuss things – he wants to get some different perspectives about how EE is done in other places. He also asked me to find him some kind of environmental education training so that he can get a better idea of how to engage children and communities in the environment. So, this is an amazing opportunity that I never expected. Being able to be part of such a respected and significant NGO and working on the beginning of an environmental education project in Senegal. Wow! I do feel a bit strange walking into this with nothing but a Colorado perspective on EE, but it’ll be a learning experience for both Christian and I. Senegal has developed two qualities in me – patience and perseverance. It pays off so well though!!! And, I personally can’t wait to see these sea turtles!!!

Palmarin - it's a different world

This past weekend I went to Palmarin with my friends Taryn and Nancy. Palmarin is a set of 4 small villages on the Petite Cote, just north of the Sine Saloum Delta. It's claim to fame is ecotourism since it sits on some of the richest mangrove preserves in West Africa.



We had to take 2 sept-places to get there - a 4-hour trip total. BUT, you've got to remember that this isn't just any 4-hour car trip. You're in Senegal in a sept-place, and the quality of the ride depends on your strategic decision to sit in the right places - i.e., not the back. In sept-places there's the driver and passenger up front, then there's two rows of 3 seats behind. The last row of seats is above the back wheels, so if you're my height, your head is literally 1" from the ceiling. God save the anyone over 5'4". That's a problem on roads where potholes and pigs spring up out of nowhere.



Palmarin is forested with mostly palm trees, acacia, ditakh, and mangroves. And don't forget the mighty baobabs that spring up every once in a while. The village is such a different place than Dakar. For one, you can actually breathe without smelling car fumes since there are about twice as many donkeys & horses as cars. The village where we stayed had about 500 people, a total of 60 or 70 houses, I believe.



In Palmarin we met up with Chris -a Peace Corps volunteer who works with the community on developing ecotourism. Two other Peace Corps volunteers were visiting as well - Chris2 who works on environmental education in a more inland village and Lauren who works up in Podor on the border of Mauritania and Senegal on gender equality & health. I learned a lot from them about the different cultures within Senegal and their individual work as Peace Corps volunteers. I'll touch on that more later.



After wandering through a maze of concrete-brick walls (the village was rebuilt about 15 years ago after coastal erosion made their original village uninhabitable) we met the family that Chris lives with - so many little kids and you never really know who's kids are who because they all just run around everywhere and their names overlap so much that I always mix them up, sorry little guys. We munched on freshly-boiled mussels caught just off the nearby sandbar that morning. They were delicious, although the texture kept me from gorging myself. A little later Chris' host mom made us some of the most delicious ceebu jenn I've ever had.



We then walked about a kilometer out to the port where the local fishermen bring in the catches each day to take a pirogue out to an island for the night. At the port, I saw domestic overfishing in action as the fishermen piled the day's catch onto the shore. A pile of sand sharks about 2 meters long, and then piles of increasing smallers sand sharks, right down to the babies. The coasts are getting more and more pressure from migrant fishers who come during certain seasons to fish to make a quick buck, and then leave until the next season. Although this area was supposed to be a marine protected area, there's absolutely no enforcement.



We met Tillay, a local guy who owns a pirogue and takes visitors out to the islands within the mangroves. A Senegalese woman (Sophie) came along with us to cook. We waded out into the water and boarded the colorfully painted pirogue, which sped us across the inlet toward the mangroves. I'm not sure how people here know where to go in the mangroves, because they're such a maze! We followed several channels throughout these mangroves, sometimes catching the calls of red mangrove monkeys and spotting giant dark blue herons, which I call teradactyls. I'd heard that manatees (lamantins in French) live in parts of the delta area, so I asked Tillay and Sophie if they'd ever seen them there. They didn't recognize the word in French, and none of us knew the word in Serrer or Wolof, so it took a while to explain what we were talking about. Finally, after we had given up, Tillay said something like "Ginamar" and explained what it was and we were like Yeah! That's a lamantin! Have you seen them? His response was hilarious, "Oh yeah, I've eaten them!" Manatees here are incredibly endangered and are very rare now in many parts of their original habitat. In the south, it's mostly humans hunting them and deforestation of mangroves, and their skin is highly valued as a gris-gris (charm to keep away evil spirits). In the north, in the Senegal river it's mostly dams that have altered their habitat. Unfortunately we didn't see any this weekend :(



We settled on a small island (about 1 acre big) surrounded by mangroves on all sides. Some of us went swimming in the warm, calm sea water, which was so much fun since the beaches in Dakar are so frigid, polluted, and ravaged by giant waves. Although, I cut my foot on an open clam and Lauren got stung by a rather large purple jellyfish. We sat around talking about lots of things, learning some Serrer and Pulaar phrases and words (which I have now mostly forgotten). We ate ceebu jenn again for dinner, with a few fish that Tillay had just caught in the channel. The meal was interrupted every once in a while by the calls of red and green mangrove monkeys (we never actually saw them though) and the splash of who knows what in the water.



We made a fire, and sat around for while (even though it gets to like 95 degrees during the day, th nights can be frigid, especially with the coastal winds). Tillay brought out some Patis (a licorice-flavored liquer) that we mixed with water. And, silly me, I thought it would be good. If you like the black jelly beans, you'dlike this. But, that's definitely not me. We heard some jackals howling and some giant white birds (egrets, I believe) perched in the dead baobab above our tents - oops, bad camp planning. I found out where Senegal got its name. In Wolof, Sene=our, and Gal=boat. So, Senegal literally means Our Boat. It was really fun listening to Lauren speak Wolof fluently to Sophie and Tillay. She had it down - if didn't know who she was I'd have thought she was Senegalaise.



The next morning we woke up to find jackal tracks around our fire pit. We cleaned up camp and reboarded the pirogue to head for another island to play on the beach. Unfortunately, we didn't see any dolphins during this trip either, although people have told me they're pretty common. We arrived at a large island, with a long, narrow stretch of beach where we hit up a game of ultimate frisbee - 2 on 2. So intense, especially diving into the water and skipping over giant hermit crabs. I found a dead purple jellyfish on the beach, just likehe one that stung Lauren. We had some delicious yassa poisson for lunch, made with fresh caught fish again. The hermit crabs that lived in these waters were about 10 or 15 times as big as any I've ever seen - and so beautiful! Blue hermit crabs!!!

We headed back for the village shore. When we jumped out of the pirogue to pull it ashore, I noticed that all the hundreds of things I thought were rocks were actually little crabs!! I tried to get close to take a picture, but they loored me into a section of dee, black mangrove mud. One of my feet sunk in about a foot! Sneaky little crabs.

Later in the afternoon, we met Pierre, a local nature guide. He took us kayaking through the mangrove mazes. He was amazing - knew the French, Wolof, Serrer, and latin names for all the animals and plants we saw! We saw these lizards that looked lik mini-monitor lizards(verron in French). We saw a bunch of different birds - cormorants, herons, egrets, and a bunch of others. After turning one bend in the channel, we went on shore for a "surprise". Pierre pointed to 3 enormous baobab trees a little ways on shore. There was one that looks like a fat little person with a belt around the middle. And that's the one where we drank coffee inside!!! Yes, we went inside the trunk of the baobab, chilled, and drank some coffee. So cool! Pierre told us that this area, way back on the islands of the mangroves was a major hideout safe-place for the Serrer people during the slave trade. When the French and other people came to take people as slaves to the US, the Serrer retreated into these mazes which were difficult for outsiders to navigate. It was really moving to realize what that must have been like for them just a hundred or two years ago. Now, the area is a protected area.

We made our way back through the mangroves and met Pierre's friend Jean who took us on a ride on his "charette" - horse cart. The horse's name was Michelle and she pulled us on a big slab of wood on top of two big wheels - it took a while to get used to he bumps all over the dirt road. I almost fell off countless times. By the way, this is the part of Senegal where Catholicism is big and that's why most of these people have French names. So, we drove through the countryside, past mighty baobab forests, and other forests (ditakh, palm, acacia). Pierre explained what the Serrer traditionally use each tree for. They make juice from ditakh leaves (like bissap juice, a bit), palm wine from the sap of palm trees, buoy juice from the fruit of the baobab, and nutritious animal feed from the seeds of a kind of acacia (I believe it was acacia). We actually met a man who comes from the Casamance region of Senegal (way south, it's kind of a country of it's own and it's where the longest civil war has been going on in Africa) who comes to Palmarin to gather Palm sap. We bought a bottle of the freshly collected palm sap, which they ferment into palm wine (Which i've heard is absolutely disgusting, but the Casamance people like it). The fresh sap tasted like nothing I can really describe well - like a funky carbonated, lemony, tingly, very strong nectar.

We road the charrette through the outskirts of several villages and met many people heading home on their own charrettes from work. We passed the salt pools, whichpeople in the area have been digging for generations. Men dig into the ground, and the salt water from underground fills the depression. The women wait until the water evaporates, and then collect the residual salt from the edges of the pool and sell it all over Senegal. The cool thing is, the water in the pools is all different colors! Check out the pics. I'm not totally sure why that is yet - something to do with the different soil composition at different levels or areas, I think. But, they were beautiful! Reminded me of the hot springs in places like Yellowstone.

As we rode through the brush, we saw tons of new birds. I've forgotten the names of most of them, because I learned them in French, and that's a bit harder to remember. My absolute favorite was the Robodo Abyssine (or something like that). Anyway, it was this metallic turquoise blue bird that youcould see from way far awaybecause it was so bright! Definitely one of the most beautiful birds I've ever seen.

Finally, we arrived at our destination - the island of a pack of hyenas. There's a group of about 8-10 hyenas who live around this one set of islands in the mangroves. They sleep on the island during the day, and come out to the mainland to scavenge and hunt in the evening. These were the biggest hyenas I've ever seen! I didn't know they got that big! Way bigger than any wolf I've seen and their front ends, giant necks and all, looked so powerful. We waited in the bushes about 100 yards away and watched 6 of them come out of the mangroves onto the mainland. Then, Jean drove our charrette right through the middlf of their group!!! I guess they're used to it. They scattered a bit, and then stopped and just watched us. Got some nice close-ups, but I would definitely never want to meet one of them alone.

On our charrette ride back to the village Pierre and Jean taught us a song in Wolof. It goes like this:
"Mafe mata Diolor. An degula! Ceebu jenn mata Wolof. An degula! Tcheeri mata Serrer. An degula! Attaya mata Nbar. An degula! Cafe mata Tubab. An degula! Dola ma, dola ma, dola ma, dola ma!"

It's a song about the different food dishes that the ethnicities of Senegal prefer. An degula means yes, we love it!!! And dola ma means "it gives us force"!

When Nancy and I got back to the village, we found that Taryn and Chris had butchered a chicken themselves - caught it, killed it, plucked it, gutted it, and cooked it. You should see the video of Taryn chasing the chicken they bought all over the village with all the litte kids watching and falling down laughing!

The next morning before heading back to Dakar, we got some ndembe. That is one of the best food I've ever had here. It's village bread - shaped like a baguette, but rich and chewy. YOu buy the bread at one person's house and then go to another person's house and they put these amazing beans inside. So so good!!! I would say that I'd make it for you allwhen I get back, but I highly doubt that I could do ndembe justice. Yes, it's that good.

We took a sept-place back to Dakar, and on the way there, Taryn had a conversation with the guy sitting next to here. He was a Bi-fall Muslim (I definitely did not spell that right) and it was so intense listening to him. Because once you asked him a question about ANYTHING, he'd alway bring it back around to how Bi-fall Muslims are supposed to live and trying to preach to us about Islam. Bi-fall Muslims are a sect of Islam that could be described as the hippies of Islam. I need to find out more about them though before I say more.

But, if you ever come to Senegal, you must check out Palmarin! I felt like I was in a different world the entire time! Such an amazing place with amazing people!!!

This is where Leopold Senghor - the first President of Senegal grew up - in y host family's village Dialor.

Basil - the guardian and gardener of the house.

Mangroves!!!

Me, Cecily, and Marianne cracking peanuts with the fam.

Robert, Cecily, me, and Rakkuyah (?). Shes the one who kept demanding I teach her how to dance in a club! Haha, me of all people!

Me and Marianne in a little pirogue on oneof the ocean inlets. I caught a crab with that stick!!!

Marianne's home in Dialor. We always ate outside in the garden.

I told Nancy I'd pay for her burger if she ate a heaping spoonful of pimon sauce (super super spicy!) and she's trying to do it here!! She finally did!

Raphael (the British voyageur, me, Nancy, & Rebecca leaving Ile de Ngor)

This is off the coast of Ile de Ngor.

Me & Rebecca on the pirogue going from Dakar to Ile de Ngor.

Spring Break - get ready, it's a long one!

So, big adventures recently. Last weekend I went with my family to their rural village Dialo on the Petite Cote, a really fertile river/ocean inlet delta. Then, I spent a few days in Saint-Louis, which is the old French colonial capital, right on the border with Mauritania. ANd, to top off spring break, we headed to Rufisque, another budgeoning settlement near Dakar.

My host mom, Robert, and Cecily (the other American girl who lives here), and took a taxi to the Gare Routière in downtown Dakar around 1pm on Thursday, which is probably the absolute worst time to travel long distances. It was smoking hot, right in the middle of the day. The Gare Routière is where most of the long-distance travel starts from – you have everything from large buses to taxis, and car-rapides to sept-place taxis (it’s like a station wagon, but with seats in the very back instead of a trunk). It was my first time here, and I had no idea what to expect. The minute we got out of our taxi, we were bombarded with men asking us where we were going, everyone promising they had exactly what we needed. Mostly it’s in Wolof, unless it’s obvious you’re not from here. My mom led us through countless rows or, rather, clumps, of sept-places, buses, and car-rapides to a white van, which I believe is called the Ndiaye-Ngiaye. I think it was meant to fit about 10-15 people, but we managed to squeeze in about 20-some. Three-seat rows had 5 people in them. There are never set times for transportation. You just have to wait for the car to fill up, and then you take off. For us, it took about an hour to get a van full enough for the driver to head out.

I’ve heard that almost all the automobiles in Dakar are at least 15 years old. At LEAST! The vans like the one we took are rusty all over, and you don’t really want to look at the roof to see cracks in the really rusty areas while they’re piling all sorts of baggage on top, making the roof bend in and out at various places, especially when the ride gets really bumpy.
While we were waiting in the van, drenched in sweat, street vendors paraded by the windows selling everything from barbies, watches, sunglasses, and razors, to oranges, peanuts, plastic bags of water, and hard-boiled eggs. (Side note – one thing that still makes me uneasy here is that eggs are rarely ever refrigerated…..but I’ve never heard of anyone getting sick from it here). Randomly, you’ll see a hand shove a handful of such goods through the window right in front of you, the vendor shouting “bon prix! Cinq-cent francs!” or whatever their good price is. The egg thing was a bit funny, because I didn’t immediately realize that they were already cooked. They sell them out of the carton, so I was thinking, “What the heck is anyone going to do with a raw egg in a jam-packed car/bus?” That seemed like the last thing you’d want on a long, bumpy ride. But, then I realized they were cooked.

So, this trip that was supposed to take 3 hours actually took about 5 hours. Our trip coincided with a Muslim holiday celebrating the birth of Mohammed, so the roads were packed like you would see in LA during rush hour. Nothing moved faster than 3 miles an hour. Rufisque is a town (more like a giant suburb of Dakar) through which almost all traffic heading out of Dakar has to go through. It took us about 2 hours just to get out of there. Again, street vendors are everywhere on the roads where long-distance travel generally occurs, and especially in Rufisque where everyone knows the traffic is slow. Sitting in a traffic jam with thousands of cars that produce the rankest fumes is pretty tough on the lungs.

Most of the rest of the trip was pretty slow until we got out into the rural areas. It’s pretty shocking how different cities are from the rural areas here. The rural areas are, for the most part, just like you might imagine most of Africa. People live in little clumps of huts made out of sticks and brush. Some of them now have a concrete brick base, but still have a thatch roof. About 2 hours outside of Dakar, horse-drawn carts were the most common form of transportation.

It took about 4 hours to get to Fimela and then we took a taxi to Dialo, my host family’s village. This was where Marianne lived until she got married. You can tell where the Christians live here in Senegal when you start seeing pigs running around. Marianne is building a house in her village for when her daughters visit from France, and also for other visitors. The house is quite ways away from everyone else in the village – you have to walk about kilometer from Dialo on the road, and then through some brush off the road. There is a concrete wall that completely surrounds the house, which resembles the African huts you typically think of, but this one is HUGE! Like, the ceiling in the main room is about 25 feet high. The courtyard is mostly dirt, but they’re building a garden, petit à petit. There are some cashew trees and some bougainvillea bushes, and then a bunch of other types of flowers and plants. They get water from a well because I found out later that piped water is salty there.

Basil is the “guardian” who lives at the house, takes care of the garden, and just watches over things for Marianne. He likes making attaya (Senegalese minty, sweet tea) all the time. Since it took like all day to travel, went into the village the next day. We walked about a mile down a dirt road, surrounded by palm trees and cashew trees and tall grasses. DIalor sits along one of the many ocean inlets along the Petit Cote, so we could also see the ocean most of the time. Along the way, we met several people, and I learned some greetings in Serrer, the language of this area. Hello is “Balndo” and how are you is “Noflaye”.

We met all the extended family and friends, who live altogether in a group of houses with a common dirt courtyard area. There were chickens with chicks and roosters strutting around. Goats and sheep bleated behind little fences, and every once in a while a pig would waddle through. I met my host brother’s family and his 5 brothers. Apparently a French couple adopted one of his little sisters, so she only comes to visit sometimes. Peanut butter-making is a big income activity in this village. I spent about 2 hours helping some of the women crack open peanuts and separate the chaff. Others ground the peanuts using wooden mortar/pestels.
Marianne was with us cracking peanuts. There was one really big woman (I mean,really big, like tall and large) and she was doing work around her house topless (it’s not a big deal here). But, her breasts I’m not kidding must have been like 10 gallons each. So, it was just a little shocking when she and Marianne got into a really heated argument in Serrer. I had no idea what was going on. But, there were a couple times when I actually thought I was about to see a fight! But, then they’d start laughing. But, it just sounded so intense! And then, afterward, Marianne asked me “Why didn’t you stand up for me?” and I was like “Seriously? I had no idea what was going on!”

Afterward, we went to the historical site of Leopold Senghor’s house in the village. Senghor was famous poet, and the first President of Senegal after it gained Independence from France. I was sitting on the beach with Robert, Cecily and one of Robert’s friends, who was like 17 I think, and she kept insisting that I teach her how to dance like Americans. That’s awkward because I’m not much of a dancer. But, we danced anyway!

Later in the day, after asking half a dozen people about the possibility of crocodiles being in the water, we went swimming and the water was amazingly warm! There were some mangroves, but not many. I learned that oysters grow on the roots of mangroves. I asked Marianne why there weren’t many mangroves, and she it’s because of desertification? I’m not sure how that works, but ok.

We went back to the house and watched the birds and just hung out in the garden. Then, that night I woke up at like 3am because something was flying around in my room. And, you when you wake up in the middle of the night and you’re still half asleep? Well, I just laid there listening to whatever was flying around, torn between turning on the light and just cringing under my covers. But, I got up and turned on the light. It was a bat! I couldn’t find my glasses, and it kept flying right at my face so I swatted blindly at it with a pillow. Finally it disappeared (I don’t know where, maybe it roosted in the straw ceiling again). Next morning I tried to explain what it was in French, but I didn’t know the word for bat in French, so they thought I was talking about a big bug, and then a bird, and then just looked at me weird and finally Robert said “Aht-EEM!!” That’s Serrer for bat. And, in French it’s “chauve-souris”, literally translated = bald mouse.

I watched Robert and his brothers & friends “faire la lutte” – Senegalese-style wrestling. All the other little boys in the area came to watch –even the itty bitty ones. There was one boy who looked like he’d just learned to walk, and he was doing the lutte dance already! So cute.
We spent 3 days there, and then left on Sunday. We had to get up at 3am to catch a car that was heading to Dakar. So, we walked in the dark for about 30 minutes to Fimela, a nearby village. The car wasn’t there, and we’d just missed a van heading the same way. So, we sat on the road for about 2 hours waiting for the next transport option – Ndiagn Ndiaye. They’re the white vans. We were the first ones in, and as we went through different villages, we picked up more and more people. After about an hour, it was jam-packed and there were several women holding bunches of live chickens by the legs sitting around me. It was another long day of travel because everyone was returning to Dakar from the Muslim holiday.

The next day my friend Nancy and I decided to go to Saint Louis, the old French capital. We went to the gare routière again to take a sept-place. The minute we stepped out of our taxi into the lot, we were bombarded again with guys asking where we were going. Someone said they had a sept-place going to Saint-Louis, so we followed him. And, it was actually a Ndiag Ndiaye. But, ok. We might a French guy (Jean-Baptiste) and a British guy (Raphael) on the same van. Apparently, for the first few minutes, they had me pegged as French and Nancy as German. We ended up hanging out with them most of the time in Saint-Louis. The ride up to Saint-Louis took about 5 hours (it should really only take 3). The driver kept stopping at various points and giving little pieces of paper to people off the side of the road. I’m still not sure exactly why, and I never could get an answer.

It was the Sahel – really dry and scattered trees. I saw a lot of goats wandering around, and some camels eating leaves, and sometimes some cows. So, Saint-Louis is made of 3 sections. There’s the mainland, which is all residential, like Dakar, but with some pretty French architecture. Then, you cross a pretty big bridge to get to a long island, which is the historical capital Saint-Louis and all the streets are full of French-style buildings – beautiful colors. Then, you cross another bridge to get to a second island, which is called Guet Ndar, a pretty big fishing village.

We all stayed in a hostel on the first island, which was full of French tourists. We did a lot f walking around, just exploring the town. It’s a lot calmer than Dakar – such a relief! Barely any traffic, and lots of space. We went to a nightclub, which was weird. We walked in around midnight, and there were only like 5 people there. Three were sitting down, and two girls were on the dance floor, watching themselves walk back and forth in front of a big mirror. Strange. Ok. About an hour or two later, the place was pretty full, but it was pretty much all American club music, and there weren’t many good dancers. Me, Nancy, and the other 2 guys finally jumped to the dance floor, and that was again awkward because then all the Senegalese girls left and the Senegalese guys kept pushing us together to dance with Jean-Baptist and Raphael. And, since I’m not much of a dancer, the whole thing was weird. But, we all laughed it off.
The next day, we hired a taxi to take us along with an older French couple up to Parc National de Doudj. It’s one of the biggest wetland protected areas, and is a big wintering area for European birds. But, man, that taxi ride. It was basically 4-wheeling for an hour in a taxi. Dirt roads the entire way, and we kept going up and down random little hills, and there were bumps everywhere, and a bunch of side paths when the roads were too bad. My knuckles were white at least half the time. We took a boat out into the river and saw thousands of pelicans and herons and cormorants. We saw a couple crocodiles and random feral horses and cows. But, my favorite – phacocheres!!! PUmbas! Warthogs!!! They’re so cute! And they were everywhere. When we got off the boat, we found a family of warthogs sleeping under our taxi! There were like 5 little babies. One of the adults got pretty angry when we got too close, and almost charged us.

Later that day we headed over to Guet Ndar. The waves there were intense! I can’t imagine taking a little pirogue out into those waters! We saw a couple making their way back to shore as the sun was setting. The beach there was covered with trash unfortunately. We met a fisher who then gave us a little tour of the fishing town. He showed us the 50-foot long (at least!) racing pirogues that they build for a big ocean race in August. And, he showed us some pirogues being constructed. Then, he was talking about pelicans, and I couldn’t really understand what exactly he meant. He took us down a little side street and outside someone’s house, next to some goats were 2 big pelicans! He told us they fish with pelicans sometimes. They tie a rope around their feet, tie a cord around their throat so they can’t swallow, and then send them out and they scoop up fish in their big bills, and then the fishers bring them back in. Sad, but true. Hassan (our guide) also told us that fishers there frequently cross the border of Mauritania to fish, since Senegal’s fisheries are so depleted.

The next day, we checked out the morning fish market on Guet Ndar. There were hundreds of tables piled high with freshly-caught (and now fly-covered) fish. There were also dozens of semis and vans being filled with fish to head to Dakar and other towns. The stench was barely bearable. And, I don’t even want to describe what we were walking in.

After 3 days in Saint Louis, we made it back to Dakar. Nancy and I went to the HLM marché, which is the big market for buying fabric. It’s huge. I got some fabric for like a $1.25/yard and am waiting for it be made into a skirt and shirt.

To finish our spring break, Nancy, Rebecca and I headed up to the Rufisque area. This was another big French settlement, which is now just a big sub-section of Dakar. Our goal was to go to the Lac Rose (a big pink lac as salty as the Dead Sea, and pink), Le Village des Tortues (turtle village), and the Keur Moussa monastery. They’re all within a few kilometers of each other. But, to get there, we took like 3 different Ndiag Ndiayes and then had to take a taxi from Rufisque to Lac Rose. I had called Le Village des Tortues earlier in the day to ask about good places to stay overnight in the area. Lamine, the director for the place gave me the name of his friend at a restaurant at Lac Rose. So, we headed there for lunch, and found out his friend Amda was married to this French lady Françoise, and they owned and operated a little restaurant on the beach of the Lac Rose. Françoise told us that she takes people to stay at her house all the time, and for cheap, so we waited till they had finished at the restaurant for the day, and then we all piled into their car and drove into Rufisque where they got some groceries, and stopped by a wedding. Then we drove about 20 minutes out in the country where they have a big house with a guest house, which is where we stayed. We had dinner with them – Françoise was an amazing cook and made some kind of pasta with a yummy olive sauce.

Nancy, Rebecca, and I stayed in e guardian house, which is in the courtyard/garden of the big house. We walked into the bedroom and I saw a giant gecko scamper down the wall and behind a picture frame. I made a mistake by telling the other girls, who freaked out when I took the frame down to show them. So, then it ran away again and we couldn’t find it. But it was so cute J Geckos are totally different than the typical lizards you see in Dakar.

Then next day we went to the Keur Moussa monastery which is a beautiful little church community out in the bush. I was a really beautiful place, and the music during the mass was interesting – typical Gregorian chants mixed with djembe drumming and the kora (a harp-like African instrument). The nuns and monks there make a lot of food products like mango jam, cashew wine, and goat cheese, so we got some and had a picnic at……le Village de Tortues, which is a little sanctuary for African tortoises. It’s an education center, but is really more of a breeding center. We saw some giant tortoises who had been abused (they’re a good luck charm in West Africa, and some people keep them tied to trees, so they just walk around in circles and often don’t get taken care of properly). And, we also saw some week-old baby tortoises who were about 2inches long. So cute!

Then, we made our way back to Lac Rose to go swimming. Outside of Dakar, everyone who has a car is a taxi when they want to be. So, we ended up in a station wagon with about 8 other people headed for Lac Rose. After a while we found out that our driver spoke hardly any French. So…..we had a hilarious time trying to explain what part of the lake we needed to go to. It’s a pretty huge lake, and we ended up not where we wanted, meaning we got towalk through the industrial salt-harvesting part of the shoreline, which was cool. I mean, when else do you get to see 30-foot mountains of salt next to a pink lake? We went swimming finally and there’s nothing like being able to ball yourself up like a cannonball in the water, and not drop an inch lower in the water. Nobody could possibly drown there.

That’s spring break! Finally – sorry it took so long! More to come soon, if you were able to read all that! Ba beneen yoon, inshallah! (until next time!)

Waa ker gi ci Senegal

Translation: home in Senegal

I made my first female Senegalese friend! I've met several other girls here, but nothing has really come of them. Last week my friend Katy met a girl named Soda on the car rapide, who then invited us to hang out with her in my neighborhood, where she also lives - Ouakam.

So, on Friday we planned to meet Soda at the Friday market in Ouakam, which is a big tent market that takes place every Friday on the big soccer field right across from my house. People sell mostly clothing, shoes, and household stuff like dishes & books. I got engaged there. There was a man selling cheap jewelry, so I bought myself a little ring for like 25 cents and it actually works! Now guys ask if I'm married or have a boyfriend, and I just show them my left hand, and they usually believe me. Although, one guy said that it wasn't a problem since America is 2000 kilometers away.

ANyway, afterward, we met Soda and hung out at my house playing cards. The 3 of us sat down in the living room and my host mom Marianne quickly called me into the other room to tell me to go get some soda. Evidently, anytime a guest comes over, you have to offer them a drink - water isn't good enough. So I ran down to a little boutique to get a bottle of coke. Coke is a big thing here -like most of the world, I suppose. Soda usually comes in glass bottles and you have to take them back to the store when you're finished, and they send them away to be refilled.

THat night, Katy and I were planning on going to an African dance show downtown, but.....that didn't happen....and something else much better did. Soda wanted to take us to her house to meet her family. THe dance show would start at 9, and it was only 6:30pm so we figured it would be a quick visit and then we could head downtown. There is a main street in Ouakam lined with hundreds of little stores and street vendors selling everything from whole fish and freshly slaughtered goats to cement, fabric, and jewelry. It's never not busy. Soda lives on a small street just off this main street. When I say street I mean a narrow dirt path between buildings. We walked a ways down this path along which were more small vendors - women selling little sacks of peanuts and green Senegalese oranges. We turned into this courtyard which is walled off by about 10 little one-story buildings. There are a couple of shady trees in the courtyard with a couple cages of what I think are Senegalese parrots. There was a rooster running around and a hen with a bunch of chicks. Soda led us to a little door, which was the door to a bedroom, which apparently also serves as a dining room and living room. Her mom was there and her best friend Saly came over. There was also a little 5-year-old girl who I thought was Saly's daughter, but isn't. The concept of family here is different than in the US. Family doesn't just mean parents and siblings. It also includes friends, and extended family. I'm not sure whose daughter the little girl was or her little friend. They just hung out in the courtyard and the street. Everyone knew each other and watched after the little kids.

So, we met Soda's family and they showed us all their pictures - which are always pictures of people. I found out that Soda is married , but that her husband has been in New York working for6 years. She said that he can't come back because he doesn't have papers to get back. That sounds strange because usually it's difficult to get INTO the US, not out. But, then again Senegal is a big center for immigrants from West Africa, so if he's lost his Senegalese ID documents, that might be the issue. I'm not totally sure. Communication is sometimes really difficult. The preferred language is Wolof. So, although people understand and speak French, they usually speak in Wolof, which makes interaction with groups of people difficult because I only know what is going on by what people say to me in French - I can't really interact with what's going on in Wolof.

So, teranga is the Wolof word for hospitality or welcome. And, it's so true that Senegal is the land of Teranga. The moment we arrived in Soda's home, she went out and brought us fattaya. Fattaya is kind of like a fried wonton. It's dough wrapped around ground meat or fish with onions and spices and then fried in oil. Then you dip them in this amazing tomato-oil-onion sauce and another sauce that's like spicy mustard. It is amazing. Anyway, then she and Saly made Attaya, which is a sweet Senegalese mint tea. It's always made fresh, and I think it's a middle-eastern-derived thing. You usually drink rounds and you drink out of little glasses. The first is the sweetest - youdont want more than a shot glass of that. And they get gradually less sweet.

So, it just kept getting later and later and it's just really hard to communicate that you have to go, that you have to do something at a certain time. They wanted us to stay and eat dinner, but we said that we'd come back another time for dinner. So, then it was about 8;00 and we needed to start heading downtown for the show. Soda had said she wanted to come too, so we said we needed to go get a taxi, but I guess the urgency didn't get across. So we ended up staying until 9pm and then headed out. But, then Soda kept meeting friends on her street and introducing us and everyone just wanted to keep talking. So, we got to meet all her friends and then she brought us to this apartment building and we walked up 3 flights of stairs and the parts that were'nt against the wall were totally open - no rails. We followed her and her friends into a room, which was again a bedroom which was simultaneously the living room and dining room. Friends just kept coming and so we ended up in a little maybe 20ftx20ft bedroom with about 15 people hanging out together. The couple whose home we were in had just had a baby and the minute I sat down someone handed this screaming baby to me, and then I had the responsibility to make it stop. We all just hung out, talking about stuff in French, and others talking in Wolof. The doors on this apartment floor were kept open and it felt more like a college dorm where everyone is hanging out together. People just kept stopping in and hanging out. The night ended with a dinner at 12am around a big bowl with 12 people eating out of it together.

Basically, it was just awesome to finally have some good Senegalese friends. Up till now I've felt really awkward, not completely settled in. Tonight we're going to dinner with them again!