My birthday
Tuesday was my 21st birthday. I had tentatively planned to spend the day at the beach drinking cocktails in observance of that auspicious occasion, but through an unfortunate combination of circumstances (laziness the weeks before, horrible headache the night before), I had a lot of homework to get done for the next day and ended up spending the day at home working on a paper. That and laundry, which, when you have to do it all by hand, is no joke.
Usually the WARC staff buys a cake for people’s birthdays you just share it around with who ever is there at the time that they bring it out for you, but since I didn’t have class that day, I wasn’t going to go to WARC. I got a call from Josephine at about 6:30 wishing me happy birthday and asking me why I hadn’t come in today. I told her I didn’t have class and I had things that I needed to do at home, and she said, “Oh, okay, see you tomorrow then.” About an hour later, she showed up at my house with cake. It was totally sweet.
I didn’t think my family was going to do anything for my birthday. I had gotten text messages from Moussouba and Habibou earlier in the day, Danny wrote on my Facebook wall, and Anita sang “Happy Birthday” to me in English when she got home from school (which is a big deal for her; she hates English), but Kiki’s birthday had gone by unobserved the Thursday before, so I wasn’t hoping for much more than that.
So I was surprised and delighted when Moussouba knocked on my door at about the same time she does every night when she gets home from work, and instead of the regular, “Bonsoir, comment tu vas,” all my siblings were at my door. They presented me with a big cake that said “Joyeuse Anniversaire Kiersten et Kiki,” complete with candle, turned off the lights, and sang “Joyeuse Anniversaire” to me. It was great. I made a wish and blew out the candle, and then we all went and ate cake (before dinner) in the living room. Someone even went out to buy soda, which is something that only every happens for parties and special occasions (though when I’m at school or out and about, I’m practically hooked up to an IV of orange Fanta). We had a nice time eating cake together and taking pictures and talking. It didn’t turn out to be a totally lame 21st birthday after all.
The Beach
A few weeks ago, I finally got to the beach for the first time. As I was preparing to come here, I had head from several sources that Senegal had great beaches, so I was really looking forward to some sand and sun. Unfortunately, all those great beaches that I heard so much about are not in Dakar. The Dakar coastline is mostly rocky cliffs, which means either no beach at all or beaches with pounding waves. This is good if you’re a surfer, but bad if you’re a swimmer. You're not even allowed to go into the water on many beaches because the riptides are so strong. Also, some of the beaches are sort of unofficially designated as “work-out” beaches, meaning that they’re packed with guys lifting weights and doing crunches, which is not necessarily the kind of environment that a girl wants to put herself in if she’s clad only in a bikini and shades (or anything, really).
So, if you’re looking for sun and sand in the Dakar area, your best bet is to go up to Ile de Ngor. Ngor is a village sandwiched between the swanky Les Almadies and the traditional Yoff, and there’s an island just a short pirogue ride away. This island has a few small beaches and lots of resorts and houses belonging to rich people, including, I think, Akon. It kind of feels like the Nantucket of Dakar. But it’s only a dollar to get there, and if you cave in to the pressure of the guys working on the beach and pay for a mat-and-umbrella set up, its only another two dollars, so you can totally get the feeling of being at a resort without having to pay for it.
The beaches are really small compared to what I’m used to at Cape Cod and Rhode Island, and I’ve heard that they get really crowded and insane when it gets hotter, but in the middle of March, its still too cold for the locals to have any interest in swimming or sun bathing, so the only people there are the toubabs on vacation and the people trying to sell things to them. Men and women selling scarves, woodcarvings, and jewelry walk from mat to mat, greet you in French and English, and if you show anything even resembling interest, they’ll set up shop at the bottom of your mat and give you a full tour of their wares. I was there with Miranda and we spent probably half an hour talking to a woman selling jewelry. She told us what everything was made out of, and some of it was actually kind of pretty, so we bought things. I can’t remember what I paid, but I know that it was dirt cheap compared to what I would have paid in the states and exorbitantly expensive compared to what any Senegalese person would have been willing to pay.
The beach is lined with little kitchen shacks that sell food and drinks and have tables and chairs on the sand, so we had lunch there too. It was quite lovely. You can watch people fishing on the jetties, which is cool because you know that the seafood that you’re eating is as fresh as it could get. We also saw a guy bring in three huge marine creatures that were probably some variety of shark. That was interesting. No one seemed to be in any rush to bring these into a kitchen and cook them, so I don’t really know what happened to them. One minute, the guy who caught them was showing them off to all the vacationing French families, and the next minute they were gone.
That was a really nice day. I read, I napped, I swam, I got a safe, protected tan in some places and angry red sunburns in others, and had a general good time.
Packages
When us WARC kids get sent packages, one of two things will happen. Either the package will be deemed worthy to be sent to Poste de Fann, the post office down the street from WARC, or it will need to stay at Colis Postaux, central post office for packages in Dakar. I have no idea what factor it is that determines where the packages go. At first I thought it was size, and that the small packages would go to Fann and the big ones would stay downtown, but now I’ve had big packages come to Fann and small ones go to Colis Postaux, so I have no idea.
Wait, brainwave. It depends on what kind of customs form you put on the package. If it’s the little green one, it goes to Fann. If it’s the big white one, it goes to Colis Postaux. Perhaps there world is a logical place after all.
If the package is at Fann, you get a yellow slip at WARC and just have to take a lovely stroll down the street in order to get your goodies from home. Poste de Fann can be a little nuts if you’re trying to do something like buy stamps, in which case you have to choose a window to wait at, determine if there is a line (which you think wouldn’t be that much of a challenge, but which oddly often is), and then stand in it assertively so that people don’t step ahead of you (usually this means keeping little to no space between you and the person in front of you. No one’s really big on “personal space” in Senegal). When you’re next, you then have the challenge of communicating with the person on the other side of the window. You know in some places with windows, like banks and movie theaters, there will be glass separating you and the teller, and a little device thingy in the glass at around mouth level that makes it so the teller can hear you and you can hear the teller? Yeah, that’s probably what they were going for at Poste de Fann, but they’re missing the little device things. There’s a small cluster of holes in the glass at about mouth level, but they’re not enough to facilitate communication. The teller is seated so that their mouth is closer to the hole where the letters and stamps and money are passed back and forth, so more often than not, you find yourself bending over to talk through there. It’s a good system.
If, however, you’re picking up a package, you get to go to the lovely window number 8, where for some reason, order prevails. The line is easy to find and place yourself in, and the window is a sliding glass door, so there’s a wide open space to talk through. You present your package slip, hand over a tax of 1000 francs, and receive your box of delights.
If you’re picking up your package from Colis Postaux, it’s a whole different story, beginning with the fact that your slip is white instead of yellow (I know, it’s insane). CP is a bus/taxi/car rapide ride away from WARC, in another neighborhood called Medina. Once at CP, retrieving your package is an exercise in Senegalese bureaucracy. You go to the package window and present your slip. The guy then picks through a pile of customs forms and finds the one that goes with your package. You leave the slip with the guy and take the customs form into the next room to the customs guy. The customs guy looks at the form, stamps it, and then sends you into the next room to the next guy, who stamps it and then sends you in to the next room, where another guy retrieves your package and puts it on a table. He, or you, then goes back and gets the last guy, who holds your customs form while the present guy slices the box open and rifles through all your stuff to make sure that there’s nothing dangerous or expensive in there. The guy with your customs form then tells you to stay there and wait for the other guy to tape your box up again. When he’s done doing that, you go back to one of the other rooms, leaving your package on that table in the last room, and get your customs form back. Then you go all the way back out to the main room and present your customs form back to the guy who gave it to you in the first place. He looks at it, gives it back to you, and then sends you to the window to your left to pay the taxes on it. If they guys who searched your package didn’t find anything expensive in it that they could get you to pay more for, you pay your 1000 francs and wait for the guy at this window to write out your receipt. You then return to the original window and present your customs form once more. The guy will then ask you for some ID, make you sign the back of the top sheet of your customs form, which he will rip off and keep, and then give you back the bottom 3 sheets of the customs form. Then he will go into the back room where your package is waiting on the table, bring it back, and finally relinquish custody of your package to you. At this point, you can scarcely believe that you actually have your package in your hands, and you flee the building in fear the someone is going to tell you that you need to get 8 more stamps and see 14 other guys before you can enjoy the contents.
New Clothes
I have new clothes. I few weeks ago I went shopping with Moussouba and Kiki and bought fabric to get clothes made. I got some wild African prints that I picked because I really liked the way they looked hanging on the walls of the fabric shop and not particularly because I thought I would look good clad in them from head to toe, which is probably something I will try to take into consideration next time.
The next week, I went with Moussouba to the atelier (workshop) where she works, which looks like it specializes in really fancy silk and bazin (a rustling, shiny, almost papery fabric for more formal clothes) outfits, and not so much in the casual clothes I was looking for, but whatever. A guy named Ass (yeah) took my measurements, and Moussouba set me up with some catalogues of what looked like Senegalese wedding parties so that I could choose my modèles (styles). Most of the outfits were either too formal or completely ridiculous, so I gave a vague description of what I wanted and hoped for the best.
A few days later, I got what I had asked for: one dress, in a style that I would describe as “sack-like, but still cute,” and a two-piece outfit consisting of a tunic/shirt and a pagne, which is the African word for wrap-around skirt. I can’t even describe what the fabrics look like, except that the dress is mostly red and the outfit is mostly yellow, but they really need pictures to do them justices. I’ll try and get some up soon. I like them, but I think I will put a little more thought into it next time.
Local Elections
March 22nd was local elections in Senegal. I don’t feel like I ever got complete answers to my questions about what was going on and how the elections worked, but I figured some things out. The elections were for positions like mayor and city council kind of people, I think. In presidential elections, you vote for candidates, but in local elections, you vote for parties/coalitions and get the whole ticket of which ever party wins. During the campaigning, posters went up on all the billboards and basically every stationary fixture with the names and faces of all the parties and some of what they were promising to do. There would be neighborhood rallies and sort of like parades, lead by pickup trucks full of people and speaker systems that would play music or shout things in Wolof that may have been encouragements to go vote, explanation of the party’s platform, or denunciation of the other parties. It was also very common to see posters defaced and political graffiti go up over night.
I asked all my voting-aged siblings if they were going to vote and if they did, who were they going to vote for, but they all said that they probably weren’t going to vote and didn’t know much about who was running and why. Danny said he might vote for the sake of voting against the President’s coalition, which was in the majority (of what, I don’t really know) and not really because he felt strongly about any of the other parties.
The weekend of the elections came, and we were all warned not to go out on Sunday because of the possibility of violent demonstrations. Also, no one in all of Senegal was allowed to travel between two cities that day because it could be potentially dangerous. Things don’t usually get out of hand during elections in Senegal, but, as Danny said, “In Africa, you never know.”
Nothing bad happened, and as it turned out, my host mom, Anita, and Moussouba all voted! Why did they tell me they weren’t going to when they actually were? I would have liked to have gone with them. They were all proud of it too. They showed me their little fingers that had been dipped in bright pink into to show that they had voted, and told me “J’ai voté!” with big smiles on their faces. Well, good for them, I guess. Danny, who was the only one who had expressed the possibility of voting, hadn’t voted at all. He said he’d lost his voter ID card (which is a card that looks practically identical to the other ID card that everyone has to have here).
The results of the election were apparently a huge upset for the President, Abdoulaye Wade (who’s in his 80s), and the Sopi coalition in power. In Dakar and other big towns like Saint-Louis and Louga, an opposition party called Bennoo Siggil Senegaal got voted into power. People here are saying that that’s a good thing, because it means that there will be a more equitable sharing of power in the government now, and because it sends a message to the President that the Senegalese people aren’t pleased with how he’s handing things. It also reduced the chances that his son, Karim, will succeed him as president in 2012.
March 26, 2009
March 20, 2009
Pictures from Saint-Louis
Hello all. I finally got my pictures from my weekend in Saint-Louis to upload. They're not great because most of them were taken from a moving horse cart or pirogue, but some of them are kind of nice.
Saint-Louis
It looks like I will be going back to Saint-Louis towards the end of my semester. WARC, WARA, and the US Embassy are sponsoring something called the Peace Initiative (or something like that), and they're going to be having a symposium for university students in Saint-Louis. It will mostly be students from Saint-Louis, Dakar, and Ziguinchor, but they decided that it would be cool to send some study abroad kids. Waly chose 4 girls from the Conflicts Resolution class to go and be the "foreign delegation," and I was one of them. The four of us will have to write papers (which we were going to do for class anyway) and the two best will have to give presentations at this symposium (en français, eek!). I'm looking forward to it, and I'm definitly glad that I'll have the chance go to back to Saint-Louis!
Saint-Louis
It looks like I will be going back to Saint-Louis towards the end of my semester. WARC, WARA, and the US Embassy are sponsoring something called the Peace Initiative (or something like that), and they're going to be having a symposium for university students in Saint-Louis. It will mostly be students from Saint-Louis, Dakar, and Ziguinchor, but they decided that it would be cool to send some study abroad kids. Waly chose 4 girls from the Conflicts Resolution class to go and be the "foreign delegation," and I was one of them. The four of us will have to write papers (which we were going to do for class anyway) and the two best will have to give presentations at this symposium (en français, eek!). I'm looking forward to it, and I'm definitly glad that I'll have the chance go to back to Saint-Louis!
Making change, or How I got 30 bucks stolen by being an idiot
Making change in Senegal is a constant battle. When you go to the ATM and take out money, it comes in 5,000 and 10,000 CFA bills. Unfortunately, the most common expenses in Dakar are things like snacks and bus fares, so like 25 to 250 CFA. Presenting a 5000 to a guy in a boutique for your Biskrem cookies would be like walking up to a vending machine with a fifty-dollar bill. The guy won’t take your money because he won’t be able to make the change, which means no delicious Biskrem for you. This means that having 10,000 CFA (about $20) and having no money at all are often basically the same situation.
The easiest ways to break your “gros billets” are to go to places that actually have cash registers, like supermarkets, gas station convenience stores, and western-style restaurants. In the WARC environs, this means going to My Shop (a convenience store/pizza place), La Gondole (a chain restaurant that does burgers, pizza, paninis, crepes, etc), or a grocery store that we don’t know the actual name of but that we called the Toubab Shop (it caters to all the foreigners living in the Fann neighborhood, which is where half the foreign embassies in Dakar are located). These places are nice because that’s where we get all our comfort food, but they are way more expensive than any Senegalese establishment, meaning that breaking your big bills requires a bit of a spending spree. We’re always looking for better ways to get small change.
This obsession with change, coupled with a strategically parked taxi and my own incredible stupidity, lead to my loss of 15,000 CFA ($30).
I was sitting at My Shop by myself having a snack before I started walking home. A guy came and sat down at the table with me and started talking to me. He said he recognized me because he owned the boutique next to my house. His name was Ousman. He said he was at My Shop because he needed change. I started to actually participate in the conversation because needing change is something that I, too, can understand. As it turns out, he has the opposite problem with change. He gets all his money in little coins and bills but in order to pick up what he orders from the grande boutique, he needs to pay in big denominations. He told met that I should come by whenever I need change because he would make it for me, which, to me, the idiot, seemed like a very generous offer from one neighbor to another. I should have known, however, that that was totally bizarre. The idea that a boutique owner would be happy to be presented with large bills is completely laughable.
I got up to go back home, and he said he would come with me. For once, it didn’t bother me to have a companion, because he was nice enough, apparently knew my family, and hadn’t yet asked me any of the usual obnoxious questions. We were having a pleasant conversation about my family’s maids, who he knows because they would come into his boutique all the time. He said that Tening (who vanished about two weeks ago and has been replaced by Effie) went back to her village, which is somewhere near Thiès, but that she would be back. Then, he asked me if I had any big bills on me that I needed to get change for, and I was like, uh, yeah, actually. He was like, great, I’ll take them in here to the grande boutique because I need to pay for an order I put in and the guy here will make the change for me. He seemed really happy that I was going to help him make the change that he needed. He kept telling me that I was really nice and that he would give me some free phone credit because I was being so nice to him.
We got to the grand boutique, and he asked me how much I had one me. I had three 5,000s. He told me to stay here on the corner while I go inside with your money. I didn’t quite just hand the money over, and he didn’t quite just snatch it out of my hands, but somehow he ended up with my cash and I ended up waiting on the corner.
I stood on the corner for a few minutes thinking that there was no way he was going to come out of the boutique, but then he did and my faith was restored a little. He then spoke very very fast to me and I didn’t catch everything he said, but I understood that we needed to go to the bank and then go back. So we got in a taxi and went to the bank down the street, where he opened the door to the ATM and was said, “Go ahead.” I asked him what he wanted me to do, and he said, “Take out 100,000 francs.” I refused and said that I thought he was the one who had business here. He said that the guy at the grand boutique will only make change for 100,000 francs. If you give me that, I’ll go back with it and get the change for you. I said no, there was no way I was going to take that much money out (that’s $200 US), give me back the money I already gave you. He said that he had left it at the grand boutique, but that we could go back and get it. I’m not sure he was being entirely truthful about that because I could see a suspicious flash of green in the breast pocket of his shirt, but I said okay. We got back into the taxi and drove half way down the street before he said, “Or, I can just go back to the ATM, take out 15,000 francs and give it to you.” This was a totally stupid idea, but he had gotten the taxi driver to pull over in such a way that he could get out of the front seat, but I couldn’t open the door to the back seat without cracking it into another car. He hopped out of the taxi, told me to wait, and disappeared down the street, leaving me trapped and sure that my money had vanished with him.
When the car next to us finally moved, I got out and walked back down the street to the bank, but sure enough, Ousman was gone. I went back to the taxi to explain to the driver that the guy who had hired him was a thief and not coming back, but he didn’t understand French and my Wolof is totally inadequate for situations like that, so I abandoned him. I felt bad, but I was annoyed that I had just lost all the money and I was not going to pay for the taxi that was all but an accessory to the crime.
When I got home that day, I asked Danny if he knew of a guy named Ousman who worked in the boutique next to our house, and he said no. It then occurred to me that all of the things that he seemed to know about my family I either supplied to him, like the names of the maids, or I didn’t know and couldn’t have verified, like what happened to Tening, so he very easily could have been making it all up as he went along.
So yeah. I’m pretty embarrassed that I let this happen to me, but now I’ll know for next time, right?
The easiest ways to break your “gros billets” are to go to places that actually have cash registers, like supermarkets, gas station convenience stores, and western-style restaurants. In the WARC environs, this means going to My Shop (a convenience store/pizza place), La Gondole (a chain restaurant that does burgers, pizza, paninis, crepes, etc), or a grocery store that we don’t know the actual name of but that we called the Toubab Shop (it caters to all the foreigners living in the Fann neighborhood, which is where half the foreign embassies in Dakar are located). These places are nice because that’s where we get all our comfort food, but they are way more expensive than any Senegalese establishment, meaning that breaking your big bills requires a bit of a spending spree. We’re always looking for better ways to get small change.
This obsession with change, coupled with a strategically parked taxi and my own incredible stupidity, lead to my loss of 15,000 CFA ($30).
I was sitting at My Shop by myself having a snack before I started walking home. A guy came and sat down at the table with me and started talking to me. He said he recognized me because he owned the boutique next to my house. His name was Ousman. He said he was at My Shop because he needed change. I started to actually participate in the conversation because needing change is something that I, too, can understand. As it turns out, he has the opposite problem with change. He gets all his money in little coins and bills but in order to pick up what he orders from the grande boutique, he needs to pay in big denominations. He told met that I should come by whenever I need change because he would make it for me, which, to me, the idiot, seemed like a very generous offer from one neighbor to another. I should have known, however, that that was totally bizarre. The idea that a boutique owner would be happy to be presented with large bills is completely laughable.
I got up to go back home, and he said he would come with me. For once, it didn’t bother me to have a companion, because he was nice enough, apparently knew my family, and hadn’t yet asked me any of the usual obnoxious questions. We were having a pleasant conversation about my family’s maids, who he knows because they would come into his boutique all the time. He said that Tening (who vanished about two weeks ago and has been replaced by Effie) went back to her village, which is somewhere near Thiès, but that she would be back. Then, he asked me if I had any big bills on me that I needed to get change for, and I was like, uh, yeah, actually. He was like, great, I’ll take them in here to the grande boutique because I need to pay for an order I put in and the guy here will make the change for me. He seemed really happy that I was going to help him make the change that he needed. He kept telling me that I was really nice and that he would give me some free phone credit because I was being so nice to him.
We got to the grand boutique, and he asked me how much I had one me. I had three 5,000s. He told me to stay here on the corner while I go inside with your money. I didn’t quite just hand the money over, and he didn’t quite just snatch it out of my hands, but somehow he ended up with my cash and I ended up waiting on the corner.
I stood on the corner for a few minutes thinking that there was no way he was going to come out of the boutique, but then he did and my faith was restored a little. He then spoke very very fast to me and I didn’t catch everything he said, but I understood that we needed to go to the bank and then go back. So we got in a taxi and went to the bank down the street, where he opened the door to the ATM and was said, “Go ahead.” I asked him what he wanted me to do, and he said, “Take out 100,000 francs.” I refused and said that I thought he was the one who had business here. He said that the guy at the grand boutique will only make change for 100,000 francs. If you give me that, I’ll go back with it and get the change for you. I said no, there was no way I was going to take that much money out (that’s $200 US), give me back the money I already gave you. He said that he had left it at the grand boutique, but that we could go back and get it. I’m not sure he was being entirely truthful about that because I could see a suspicious flash of green in the breast pocket of his shirt, but I said okay. We got back into the taxi and drove half way down the street before he said, “Or, I can just go back to the ATM, take out 15,000 francs and give it to you.” This was a totally stupid idea, but he had gotten the taxi driver to pull over in such a way that he could get out of the front seat, but I couldn’t open the door to the back seat without cracking it into another car. He hopped out of the taxi, told me to wait, and disappeared down the street, leaving me trapped and sure that my money had vanished with him.
When the car next to us finally moved, I got out and walked back down the street to the bank, but sure enough, Ousman was gone. I went back to the taxi to explain to the driver that the guy who had hired him was a thief and not coming back, but he didn’t understand French and my Wolof is totally inadequate for situations like that, so I abandoned him. I felt bad, but I was annoyed that I had just lost all the money and I was not going to pay for the taxi that was all but an accessory to the crime.
When I got home that day, I asked Danny if he knew of a guy named Ousman who worked in the boutique next to our house, and he said no. It then occurred to me that all of the things that he seemed to know about my family I either supplied to him, like the names of the maids, or I didn’t know and couldn’t have verified, like what happened to Tening, so he very easily could have been making it all up as he went along.
So yeah. I’m pretty embarrassed that I let this happen to me, but now I’ll know for next time, right?
March 17, 2009
Meet me in Saint-Louis
This weekend was our group trip to Saint-Louis, an island city in the north of Senegal that used to be an important colonial city. It was the capital of French West Africa, which was the federation of French colonies (Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea, Cote D’Ivoire, and Benin) that existed up until everyone started getting their independence. It’s famous for its colonial architecture and its jazz festival.
We left on Friday (which meant no class, yay) and drove all morning through barren Sahel landscape. Things we saw on the way that totally mystified me include:
Animals, like donkeys, goats, and cattle, that usually belong to people but which were seemingly wild and unattended. They would just be hanging out on the side of the road with no one watching over them. Maybe I just couldn’t see the people. Maybe it is okay to let your animals wander like that without keeping an eye on them (I don’t know a single thing about animal husbandry, after all). Either way, it looked to me like the bush was just full of unclaimed donkeys and such.
People. Every now and then you’d look out and see people walking through the bush even though there was no sign of a settlement anywhere. What could they possibly be doing out there?
Settlements. Sometimes we would see little groupings of huts made out of branches and dried palm leaves and there would be people working around the huts. I don’t really have any idea what I’m talking about, but they looked like they could conceivably be family compounds like the ones described in Things Fall Apart. Again, even with these signs of human society, I wondered what these people could possibly be doing. I imagined the villages in Things Fall Apart to be a bunch of compounds grouped around a common area or main street, but these were just single compounds. There we no signs of crops or herds of animals. How could people live there? How did they get food? Water? What did they do all day? How could life possibly work here?
Some things that we saw that didn’t mystify me included a lot of dead cattle carcasses. In one case, it must have been a fresh one, because it was absolutely covered in HUGE scavenging birds. I don’t know if they were actually vultures, but they were certainly something in the same vein. They were gigantic and had incredible wingspans.
We finally got to Saint-Louis in the afternoon and then promptly drove right by it without stopping. That was a little disconcerting. As it turns out, we were staying at the University of Saint-Louis, which isn’t actually on the island of Saint-Louis, it’s farther north. Waly later explained to us that this is because Saint Louis has lodging shortages because it’s a small city with a large tourist appeal. It’s also election season in Senegal, and all the politicians are campaigning in the bigger towns and filling up the hotels with their entourages, so there was really no place in town that could accommodate 30 people.
Those are all good reasons, but nevertheless, it was a little disappointing to not be right in the city. It meant that whenever we had free time, and which there seemed to be a lot of in the schedule that they gave us, we wouldn’t be able to go explore the city on our own.
The real bummer about the university housing, however, is that for most of the weekend there was little or no running water. Apparently the university area is growing faster that the infrastructure can be modified, and the water mains are now hooked up to more places than they can really supply. So some times the water would run and sometimes it wouldn’t, and there was certainly never enough pressure to take a proper shower. Most of us, or at least lots of us, have gotten used to toilets that don’t flush and washing out of a bucket, but when the taps stop running all together and 30 people want to get clean, it can be a challenge.
Anyway. When we got to the University, we settled into our rooms and had lunch, and then headed back to the city to take a tour. The tour was another aspect of the trip that had its pros and cons. WARC had hired four horse-drawn buggies with tour guides that belonged one of the hotels to take us around the city. It was nice to be in a reasonably comfortable carriage with a friendly tour guide, a horse named Barak Obama, and an explanation of the history and what everything was. Saint-Louis is a very beautiful city, or at least, it would have been in its hey-day. The buildings are all painted bright, beautiful colors and have pretty wrought iron balconies on their second stories. There are also some interesting sights, such as the Point Faidherbe, which is named after Senegal’s most famous French colonial governor and was designed by Gustave Eiffel, and what must be the only mosque in the world that has a bell and a clock in the minaret. Apparently, for all that Faidherbe was an understanding governor who ate ceebujen, spoke some Wolof, and loved the Senegalese women, he couldn’t stand the call to prayer five times daily and had the bell installed so that he wouldn’t have to listen to it.
There were moments, however, that were a little less comfortable. The tour took us through the quartier where the local fishermen live, which was very busy and crowded with lots and lots of children in particular. The tour guide explained to us that there were so many children because pretty much all the marriages in this part of town are polygamous. We stopped and got out and walked around the fishing beach for a while, where the women make smoked and salted fish from whatever the men can’t sell to the merchants who come from out of town to take the fish all across Senegal and West Africa. The beach was covered in piles of fish heads, scales, and innards. As we were walking through here, women and young boys asked us for presents and money, and some played bait-the-toubab by shoving dead fish in our faces. That didn’t really bother me so much as the feeling that we were just a bunch of rich white people coming to gawk at a bunch of poor black people in their “natural habitat,” and that we probably deserved to have dead fish waved in our faces.
After our 90 minutes in Saint-Louis, we were put back on the bus and taken back to the University. We had some time to rest, then dinner, then we headed out for our “cultural evening.” We went to a house somewhere not that far away with a large courtyard where we sat and watched what I guess I would call a show. There were musicians, dancers, singers, actors, and a fire-eater, who each got up and did an act. They were all really good, but our enjoyment was somewhat hindered by the fact that we were all exhausted and terrified that they were going to make us dance at any moment, (which they did, at the beginning and end and once or twice during the middle for the unlucky people sitting up front). Watching Senegalese people dance is awesome because they move like no one in the US ever could or will, and dancing with them often totally fun as long as you don’t get too self-conscious, but its an activity that requires a lot of energy. I think that Senegalese people have and organ in their bodies that stores a well of reserve energy that they can tap into specifically for dancing, so they can stop, drop, and groove at any moment, but middle class white Americans don’t really have that, meaning that late night sabar’s are a bit more challenging for us toubabs. Senegalese “cultural experiences” like that are always cool to be there for, but we were all pretty happy to get back to where we were staying and crawl into bed at 1 AM.
The next morning after breakfast and no showers, we piled onto the bus and headed even farther north up the Senegal River (which forms the border between Senegal and Mali) to the Parc National des Oiseaux du Djoudj. Even the bus ride there was like a mini-safari along a dirt road (that got so narrow and precarious at one point that we didn’t think the bus was going to make it). We saw monkeys, lots of families of warthogs, and two huge pythons on the side of the road. The park itself is on the river and is a wildlife reserve for lots of wetlands birds, and pirogue (boat) tours are given by the local park rangers and a nearby private hotel.
It is forbidden to fish and to hunt in the park, which makes it rather difficult for the people of the seven villages enclosed within the park to earn a livelihood. To try and compensate for that, the government (I think?) gave the villagers several pirogues and trained them to be the park rangers so that they could make some money off the tourism. This is why we waited a very, very long time for the local boats to show up instead of taking the hotel boat, which was sitting there empty the whole time we were waiting. There would have been more local boats, but apparently, not that long ago, a villager was found dead in the park. The other villagers blamed the rangers for his death and burned a lot of the boats in retaliation. That was another moment of mixed feelings, when we found that out. It seemed like it was a good thing to support the local people, but the local people don’t seem to be particularly in favor of that kind of support.
The tour was a nice, leisurely river cruise. We saw lots of birds, pelicans in particular. They would swim around in little groups and dive for fish at the exact same moment, like synchronized swimmers. We also saw lots more warthogs, some huge lizards, and a couple of crocodiles. All good stuff.
At the end of the tour, we bused back to the University and had a very late lunch. After that, pretty much everyone else made an impromptu visit back into Saint-Louis, but I stayed at the university. I had been sort of sick but still functional since Wednesday, but by Saturday night I really needed to spend some time working on getting better. All I had was the obligatory gastro-intestinal complaint that everyone who comes here has to have at least once, and I was fine by Sunday morning, but it was really bad timing. I missed getting to spend more time in Saint-Louis, which I desperately wanted to do, eating a dinner that I ordered off of a menu instead of just one of 30 identical meals, and going out dancing afterwards. I did, however, manage to scrounge enough water together to take a bucket shower, so that was a big plus.
On Sunday morning, we packed up and headed back towards Dakar. We took a sort of random pit stop at an old baobab tree on the side of the road. The whole center of the tree was missing, but it was still alive, so that was kind of cool. I’ve heard that baobab’s just don’t die, and this one sort of seemed to be living proof of that. We had lunch in Thèis and got back to Dakar in the early evening. Overall, it was a pretty good weekend, but if I get the chance, I’d like to go back and spend a little more time in the city. It seemed like we didn’t quite do it justice.
We left on Friday (which meant no class, yay) and drove all morning through barren Sahel landscape. Things we saw on the way that totally mystified me include:
Animals, like donkeys, goats, and cattle, that usually belong to people but which were seemingly wild and unattended. They would just be hanging out on the side of the road with no one watching over them. Maybe I just couldn’t see the people. Maybe it is okay to let your animals wander like that without keeping an eye on them (I don’t know a single thing about animal husbandry, after all). Either way, it looked to me like the bush was just full of unclaimed donkeys and such.
People. Every now and then you’d look out and see people walking through the bush even though there was no sign of a settlement anywhere. What could they possibly be doing out there?
Settlements. Sometimes we would see little groupings of huts made out of branches and dried palm leaves and there would be people working around the huts. I don’t really have any idea what I’m talking about, but they looked like they could conceivably be family compounds like the ones described in Things Fall Apart. Again, even with these signs of human society, I wondered what these people could possibly be doing. I imagined the villages in Things Fall Apart to be a bunch of compounds grouped around a common area or main street, but these were just single compounds. There we no signs of crops or herds of animals. How could people live there? How did they get food? Water? What did they do all day? How could life possibly work here?
Some things that we saw that didn’t mystify me included a lot of dead cattle carcasses. In one case, it must have been a fresh one, because it was absolutely covered in HUGE scavenging birds. I don’t know if they were actually vultures, but they were certainly something in the same vein. They were gigantic and had incredible wingspans.
We finally got to Saint-Louis in the afternoon and then promptly drove right by it without stopping. That was a little disconcerting. As it turns out, we were staying at the University of Saint-Louis, which isn’t actually on the island of Saint-Louis, it’s farther north. Waly later explained to us that this is because Saint Louis has lodging shortages because it’s a small city with a large tourist appeal. It’s also election season in Senegal, and all the politicians are campaigning in the bigger towns and filling up the hotels with their entourages, so there was really no place in town that could accommodate 30 people.
Those are all good reasons, but nevertheless, it was a little disappointing to not be right in the city. It meant that whenever we had free time, and which there seemed to be a lot of in the schedule that they gave us, we wouldn’t be able to go explore the city on our own.
The real bummer about the university housing, however, is that for most of the weekend there was little or no running water. Apparently the university area is growing faster that the infrastructure can be modified, and the water mains are now hooked up to more places than they can really supply. So some times the water would run and sometimes it wouldn’t, and there was certainly never enough pressure to take a proper shower. Most of us, or at least lots of us, have gotten used to toilets that don’t flush and washing out of a bucket, but when the taps stop running all together and 30 people want to get clean, it can be a challenge.
Anyway. When we got to the University, we settled into our rooms and had lunch, and then headed back to the city to take a tour. The tour was another aspect of the trip that had its pros and cons. WARC had hired four horse-drawn buggies with tour guides that belonged one of the hotels to take us around the city. It was nice to be in a reasonably comfortable carriage with a friendly tour guide, a horse named Barak Obama, and an explanation of the history and what everything was. Saint-Louis is a very beautiful city, or at least, it would have been in its hey-day. The buildings are all painted bright, beautiful colors and have pretty wrought iron balconies on their second stories. There are also some interesting sights, such as the Point Faidherbe, which is named after Senegal’s most famous French colonial governor and was designed by Gustave Eiffel, and what must be the only mosque in the world that has a bell and a clock in the minaret. Apparently, for all that Faidherbe was an understanding governor who ate ceebujen, spoke some Wolof, and loved the Senegalese women, he couldn’t stand the call to prayer five times daily and had the bell installed so that he wouldn’t have to listen to it.
There were moments, however, that were a little less comfortable. The tour took us through the quartier where the local fishermen live, which was very busy and crowded with lots and lots of children in particular. The tour guide explained to us that there were so many children because pretty much all the marriages in this part of town are polygamous. We stopped and got out and walked around the fishing beach for a while, where the women make smoked and salted fish from whatever the men can’t sell to the merchants who come from out of town to take the fish all across Senegal and West Africa. The beach was covered in piles of fish heads, scales, and innards. As we were walking through here, women and young boys asked us for presents and money, and some played bait-the-toubab by shoving dead fish in our faces. That didn’t really bother me so much as the feeling that we were just a bunch of rich white people coming to gawk at a bunch of poor black people in their “natural habitat,” and that we probably deserved to have dead fish waved in our faces.
After our 90 minutes in Saint-Louis, we were put back on the bus and taken back to the University. We had some time to rest, then dinner, then we headed out for our “cultural evening.” We went to a house somewhere not that far away with a large courtyard where we sat and watched what I guess I would call a show. There were musicians, dancers, singers, actors, and a fire-eater, who each got up and did an act. They were all really good, but our enjoyment was somewhat hindered by the fact that we were all exhausted and terrified that they were going to make us dance at any moment, (which they did, at the beginning and end and once or twice during the middle for the unlucky people sitting up front). Watching Senegalese people dance is awesome because they move like no one in the US ever could or will, and dancing with them often totally fun as long as you don’t get too self-conscious, but its an activity that requires a lot of energy. I think that Senegalese people have and organ in their bodies that stores a well of reserve energy that they can tap into specifically for dancing, so they can stop, drop, and groove at any moment, but middle class white Americans don’t really have that, meaning that late night sabar’s are a bit more challenging for us toubabs. Senegalese “cultural experiences” like that are always cool to be there for, but we were all pretty happy to get back to where we were staying and crawl into bed at 1 AM.
The next morning after breakfast and no showers, we piled onto the bus and headed even farther north up the Senegal River (which forms the border between Senegal and Mali) to the Parc National des Oiseaux du Djoudj. Even the bus ride there was like a mini-safari along a dirt road (that got so narrow and precarious at one point that we didn’t think the bus was going to make it). We saw monkeys, lots of families of warthogs, and two huge pythons on the side of the road. The park itself is on the river and is a wildlife reserve for lots of wetlands birds, and pirogue (boat) tours are given by the local park rangers and a nearby private hotel.
It is forbidden to fish and to hunt in the park, which makes it rather difficult for the people of the seven villages enclosed within the park to earn a livelihood. To try and compensate for that, the government (I think?) gave the villagers several pirogues and trained them to be the park rangers so that they could make some money off the tourism. This is why we waited a very, very long time for the local boats to show up instead of taking the hotel boat, which was sitting there empty the whole time we were waiting. There would have been more local boats, but apparently, not that long ago, a villager was found dead in the park. The other villagers blamed the rangers for his death and burned a lot of the boats in retaliation. That was another moment of mixed feelings, when we found that out. It seemed like it was a good thing to support the local people, but the local people don’t seem to be particularly in favor of that kind of support.
The tour was a nice, leisurely river cruise. We saw lots of birds, pelicans in particular. They would swim around in little groups and dive for fish at the exact same moment, like synchronized swimmers. We also saw lots more warthogs, some huge lizards, and a couple of crocodiles. All good stuff.
At the end of the tour, we bused back to the University and had a very late lunch. After that, pretty much everyone else made an impromptu visit back into Saint-Louis, but I stayed at the university. I had been sort of sick but still functional since Wednesday, but by Saturday night I really needed to spend some time working on getting better. All I had was the obligatory gastro-intestinal complaint that everyone who comes here has to have at least once, and I was fine by Sunday morning, but it was really bad timing. I missed getting to spend more time in Saint-Louis, which I desperately wanted to do, eating a dinner that I ordered off of a menu instead of just one of 30 identical meals, and going out dancing afterwards. I did, however, manage to scrounge enough water together to take a bucket shower, so that was a big plus.
On Sunday morning, we packed up and headed back towards Dakar. We took a sort of random pit stop at an old baobab tree on the side of the road. The whole center of the tree was missing, but it was still alive, so that was kind of cool. I’ve heard that baobab’s just don’t die, and this one sort of seemed to be living proof of that. We had lunch in Thèis and got back to Dakar in the early evening. Overall, it was a pretty good weekend, but if I get the chance, I’d like to go back and spend a little more time in the city. It seemed like we didn’t quite do it justice.
March 6, 2009
Photos!
My camera cable finally came, so I've uploaded a whole bunch of photos on to Facebook. If you don't have a Facebook, you can click on the links below to get to the pictures:
Album 1 (Nanga def?)
Album 2 (Maangi fi rekk)
Hopefully those will work. I might try to post photos directly to my blog when I have a little more time.
I admit that I didn't put a lot of effort into the captions because I was trying to get everything up quickly, but pretty much everything that's in there has been mentioned here, so hopefully they won't be too hard to follow.
Enjoy!
Album 1 (Nanga def?)
Album 2 (Maangi fi rekk)
Hopefully those will work. I might try to post photos directly to my blog when I have a little more time.
I admit that I didn't put a lot of effort into the captions because I was trying to get everything up quickly, but pretty much everything that's in there has been mentioned here, so hopefully they won't be too hard to follow.
Enjoy!
March 5, 2009
Ile de la Madeleine
First off, I want to direct your attention to the links that I've put or will soon put on the sidebar. These are blogs that some of my American friends here are keeping. Feel free to read them, but Dad, don't sketch them out by leaving weird comments. Also, I'm writing my blog while keeping in mind that I might have younger readers, but I can't say the same for all the others.
So I quit my internship this Monday, which was such a great idea. I’ll probably try to find something else (for instance, I looked up as I was walking to school in the morning and realized that there is an Amnesty International office like 300 meters from my house. Maybe they could use some help), but for now, I’m back to having a lot of free time.
So far, that’s working out for me because I’m actually filling it. I’m starting to have some work to do in my classes, so I spent Monday afternoon doing some research and homework, and I spent Monday night reading Pillars of the Earth. My family is horrified/fascinated that I would even consider reading such a long book just for fun.
With my liberation from pressafrik, I had nothing to do all day on Tuesday, so I decided to do some local tourism. I went with another Wells girl named Miranda to Ile de la Madeleine, which is a very small, uninhabited island off the coast of Dakar. It’s a national park and I think a wildlife preserve, because it’s an important breeding ground for several species of birds and fish.
Once we found the national park station thing on the corniche (which is not where it is marked on the map of Dakar, not advertised in any way, and impossible to find without a local to bring you right to the door), we took a boat from there to the island. It was the two of us Wells girls, two Senegalese women, and two British girls, along with a couple of Senegalese guys who were there to steer the boat and hang around on the island. They gave us life jackets, but there was none of that silly occidental concern about whether or not they were the right size (they weren’t, they were huge) or whether or not we had put them on properly (we didn’t, we just put our arms through the arm holes and left them unzipped and unclipped.) In Senegal, we like to laugh in the face of danger.
When we got to the island, we met our be-dreadlocked tour guide, Doudou, who took us around and showed us what was what. Some highlights:
The baobab trees. There’s hardly any tall vegetation on the island, and even the baobabs are oddly short compared to the ones I’ve see in and around Dakar. But they’re bona fide baobabs, complete with baobab fruit, which is called pain de singe, or “monkey bread.” I’ve had juice made out of the fruit before, but I’d never eaten it straight up. It comes in a hard green pod that you crack open. The fruit inside is white and weirdly dry, and you suck on the hard chunks and spit out the even harder seeds. It sort of melts in your mouth and has a bizarre sour taste that is unfamiliar but not unpleasant.
Phaéton à bec rouge. This is a very rare bird that nests on the island. There are lots of others, but these are the special ones. The name is “red-beaked something or other.” I can’t find a translation of “phaéton” and I don’t know enough about birds tell you what it is. At least I know the French name is right. I looked it up when I got online because every time the Doudou said the name of the bird, I heard “feuilleton,” which means “soap opera.” Anyway, we were supposedly at a good time of year to see them, because it’s the breeding season and the birds get these crazy long tail feathers and look really cool in flight. Unfortunately, because it’s the breeding season, they also spend a lot of time sitting on their nests hidden in the rocks and not flying around. We saw one in its little nest-cave, but that was it.
Signs of humanity. The island is made of volcanic rock that matches the coast that it’s separated from, meaning that at one time, it wasn’t separated. It’s been uninhabited for as long as anyone can remember, but they’ve found shards of ancient pottery there, which means that there were people at one time. There are also the remains of a tiny stone house, built by some French guy in the 1700s (I think). Doudou was pretty sure this guy was crazy, because there’s not much to eat on the island, and you would have to contend with . . .
The genie. Ile de la Madeleine is inhabited by a genie, according to the beliefs of the traditional Lebu fisherman who live up in Yoff. I tried to get all the details of Doudou’s explanation of the genie, but I either I was missing things or he was changing things around, so this might not all be accurate. From what I understand, there’s actually a genie living on each of the four islands around Dakar (Madeleine, Yoff, Ngor, and Gorée). Yoff and Madeleine are uninhabited because the genies that live on those islands are evil genies (either that, or the Madeleine genie is the only evil genie). Technically, you’re not supposed to collect shells or damage the island in any way because it’s a protected area, but the real reason is that the genie will get mad and wreak some punishment on you. There’s a Lebu marabout who comes to the island to pray and chill with the genie (he’s the one who let’s us know that the genie is still here), and he’s also the one, or one of the ones, who cures people who have been afflicted by the genie in the ndëp healing ceremonies held among the Lebu up in Yoff. The genie has a name, but I unfortunately don’t remember what it is. The UNESCO World Heritage page for Madeleine has the name “Ndoek-Daour,” but I’m not sure if that’s the Madeleine genie or the collective name for all the Dakar genies.
In any case, the island is really gorgeous. When you’re up in the high places looking around yourself, it just looks like a lot of brownish scrubby plants and sand, but the second you get to the edges, you’re either looking down these wave-beaten cliffs into a gorgeous blue-green ocean, or you’re standing at the bottom of a cliff looking out over the blue-green ocean watching the waves beat right next to you. There’s a natural pool around the back of the island that’s protected enough from the waves so that you can go swimming in it, along with all the fish that inhabit it. It’s all incredibly beautiful and peaceful. I’m echoing others when I say this, but you feel like a mermaid when you’re there.
After our tour, Miranda and I ate the lunch that we brought with us (a baguette to share, cups of strawberry yogurt that we drank because we didn’t have spoons, and rainbow colored Goldfish, courtesy of Lori) and sunbathed for a while, until the guys invited us to eat lunch with them. We then spent a lot of time eating lunch, waiting for tea to brew, drinking tea, and hanging out with them. This is clearly something that they do a lot. They have a little clubhouse over in a corner by the cliff and they all lounged around, sharing rice and cigarettes (of various substances).
In addition to Doudou, there was Abu, Moustapha, and Fred (yeah, Fred). Moustapha let me read a few lines of the book he’s writing and asked me if I knew any “edition houses” that he could send it to get it published in the US. Fred made tea for us.
After the first cup of tea (drinking tea is a three cup process around here), Miranda and I needed to get back in the sun, so we went swimming and exploring around the pool. I was walking on the rocks by myself at one point, and I turned the corner into this niche where water, rock, late-afternoon sunlight, and wind came together in a seriously breathtaking way. On top of all that, Abu was up on the cliff somewhere out of sight, and he was singing in a language I didn’t recognize. It was amazing.
Unfortunately, Abu spotted me not long after that and completely ruined the romance of the situation by trying to be romantic. He told me that he had fallen in love at first sight with me and I promptly fled back to the beach.
Abu kept his distance for the rest of the afternoon except to bring us the second and third rounds of tea, and Miranda and I had a nice time talking about TV and eating green Goldfish. We piled back into the boat at around 6 and headed back to shore after that. Overall, I can say that Madeleine was a fantastic day, and I will certainly go back.
So I quit my internship this Monday, which was such a great idea. I’ll probably try to find something else (for instance, I looked up as I was walking to school in the morning and realized that there is an Amnesty International office like 300 meters from my house. Maybe they could use some help), but for now, I’m back to having a lot of free time.
So far, that’s working out for me because I’m actually filling it. I’m starting to have some work to do in my classes, so I spent Monday afternoon doing some research and homework, and I spent Monday night reading Pillars of the Earth. My family is horrified/fascinated that I would even consider reading such a long book just for fun.
With my liberation from pressafrik, I had nothing to do all day on Tuesday, so I decided to do some local tourism. I went with another Wells girl named Miranda to Ile de la Madeleine, which is a very small, uninhabited island off the coast of Dakar. It’s a national park and I think a wildlife preserve, because it’s an important breeding ground for several species of birds and fish.
Once we found the national park station thing on the corniche (which is not where it is marked on the map of Dakar, not advertised in any way, and impossible to find without a local to bring you right to the door), we took a boat from there to the island. It was the two of us Wells girls, two Senegalese women, and two British girls, along with a couple of Senegalese guys who were there to steer the boat and hang around on the island. They gave us life jackets, but there was none of that silly occidental concern about whether or not they were the right size (they weren’t, they were huge) or whether or not we had put them on properly (we didn’t, we just put our arms through the arm holes and left them unzipped and unclipped.) In Senegal, we like to laugh in the face of danger.
When we got to the island, we met our be-dreadlocked tour guide, Doudou, who took us around and showed us what was what. Some highlights:
The baobab trees. There’s hardly any tall vegetation on the island, and even the baobabs are oddly short compared to the ones I’ve see in and around Dakar. But they’re bona fide baobabs, complete with baobab fruit, which is called pain de singe, or “monkey bread.” I’ve had juice made out of the fruit before, but I’d never eaten it straight up. It comes in a hard green pod that you crack open. The fruit inside is white and weirdly dry, and you suck on the hard chunks and spit out the even harder seeds. It sort of melts in your mouth and has a bizarre sour taste that is unfamiliar but not unpleasant.
Phaéton à bec rouge. This is a very rare bird that nests on the island. There are lots of others, but these are the special ones. The name is “red-beaked something or other.” I can’t find a translation of “phaéton” and I don’t know enough about birds tell you what it is. At least I know the French name is right. I looked it up when I got online because every time the Doudou said the name of the bird, I heard “feuilleton,” which means “soap opera.” Anyway, we were supposedly at a good time of year to see them, because it’s the breeding season and the birds get these crazy long tail feathers and look really cool in flight. Unfortunately, because it’s the breeding season, they also spend a lot of time sitting on their nests hidden in the rocks and not flying around. We saw one in its little nest-cave, but that was it.
Signs of humanity. The island is made of volcanic rock that matches the coast that it’s separated from, meaning that at one time, it wasn’t separated. It’s been uninhabited for as long as anyone can remember, but they’ve found shards of ancient pottery there, which means that there were people at one time. There are also the remains of a tiny stone house, built by some French guy in the 1700s (I think). Doudou was pretty sure this guy was crazy, because there’s not much to eat on the island, and you would have to contend with . . .
The genie. Ile de la Madeleine is inhabited by a genie, according to the beliefs of the traditional Lebu fisherman who live up in Yoff. I tried to get all the details of Doudou’s explanation of the genie, but I either I was missing things or he was changing things around, so this might not all be accurate. From what I understand, there’s actually a genie living on each of the four islands around Dakar (Madeleine, Yoff, Ngor, and Gorée). Yoff and Madeleine are uninhabited because the genies that live on those islands are evil genies (either that, or the Madeleine genie is the only evil genie). Technically, you’re not supposed to collect shells or damage the island in any way because it’s a protected area, but the real reason is that the genie will get mad and wreak some punishment on you. There’s a Lebu marabout who comes to the island to pray and chill with the genie (he’s the one who let’s us know that the genie is still here), and he’s also the one, or one of the ones, who cures people who have been afflicted by the genie in the ndëp healing ceremonies held among the Lebu up in Yoff. The genie has a name, but I unfortunately don’t remember what it is. The UNESCO World Heritage page for Madeleine has the name “Ndoek-Daour,” but I’m not sure if that’s the Madeleine genie or the collective name for all the Dakar genies.
In any case, the island is really gorgeous. When you’re up in the high places looking around yourself, it just looks like a lot of brownish scrubby plants and sand, but the second you get to the edges, you’re either looking down these wave-beaten cliffs into a gorgeous blue-green ocean, or you’re standing at the bottom of a cliff looking out over the blue-green ocean watching the waves beat right next to you. There’s a natural pool around the back of the island that’s protected enough from the waves so that you can go swimming in it, along with all the fish that inhabit it. It’s all incredibly beautiful and peaceful. I’m echoing others when I say this, but you feel like a mermaid when you’re there.
After our tour, Miranda and I ate the lunch that we brought with us (a baguette to share, cups of strawberry yogurt that we drank because we didn’t have spoons, and rainbow colored Goldfish, courtesy of Lori) and sunbathed for a while, until the guys invited us to eat lunch with them. We then spent a lot of time eating lunch, waiting for tea to brew, drinking tea, and hanging out with them. This is clearly something that they do a lot. They have a little clubhouse over in a corner by the cliff and they all lounged around, sharing rice and cigarettes (of various substances).
In addition to Doudou, there was Abu, Moustapha, and Fred (yeah, Fred). Moustapha let me read a few lines of the book he’s writing and asked me if I knew any “edition houses” that he could send it to get it published in the US. Fred made tea for us.
After the first cup of tea (drinking tea is a three cup process around here), Miranda and I needed to get back in the sun, so we went swimming and exploring around the pool. I was walking on the rocks by myself at one point, and I turned the corner into this niche where water, rock, late-afternoon sunlight, and wind came together in a seriously breathtaking way. On top of all that, Abu was up on the cliff somewhere out of sight, and he was singing in a language I didn’t recognize. It was amazing.
Unfortunately, Abu spotted me not long after that and completely ruined the romance of the situation by trying to be romantic. He told me that he had fallen in love at first sight with me and I promptly fled back to the beach.
Abu kept his distance for the rest of the afternoon except to bring us the second and third rounds of tea, and Miranda and I had a nice time talking about TV and eating green Goldfish. We piled back into the boat at around 6 and headed back to shore after that. Overall, I can say that Madeleine was a fantastic day, and I will certainly go back.
March 1, 2009
Some stories
Power outages
Probably once every two weeks or so, the power goes out. The outages usually in the evenings and they’re usually pretty short, like 15-45 minutes. Everyone just lights some candles and waits for it to come back on. The last time it went out, I was sitting in the living room playing Snake on my cell phone (my high score is currently 800. I can do better than that) when Danny came in, lit some candles, and asked me if I wanted to play, you guessed it, Monopoly. We sat and ate snacks while playing Monopoly Europe by candlelight. It was a hilariously American power outage.
Cell phone thief
I was walking home from school one afternoon when I picked up a “friend” (read: Senegalese guy who wanted to get my number). This guy told me that he went to UCAD and walked home to Grand Yoff every afternoon, which got me really annoyed because I’d already told him that I lived in Sacre Coeur and it would not be that far out of his way to walk to Grand Yoff via Sacre Coeur. I thought I was going to have this guy with me for the next 45 minutes, so I started getting a little colder and a little shorter in my responses to his questions, hoping that he would get the hint and leave me alone.
He was a stubborn one though, and as it turns out, I’m glad he was. As we were walking past the car rapide stop on Avenue Bourguiba, the car rapide guys started trying to hustle us on to the cars as usual. One of them had his hand on my backpack, which made me sort of nervous because my cell phone was in one of the mesh pockets on the side. The second he let me go, I put my hand in the pocket and sure enough, my phone was gone. I turned to my friend and said “Il a pris mon portable!” (He took my cell phone!) He asked me which guy and I said I wasn’t sure, but he chased down the guy he thought that it was and sure enough, he got my phone back for me. I was a lot nicer to him after that. Thanks again, El Hadj of Grand Yoff, student of Arabic.
Some random assorted facts about Wolof, for people interested in languages
You don’t have to conjugate verbs in Wolof. No matter the pronoun, no matter the tense, the verb is always the same. The only exception that I know of is for the imperative, which is really easy (just throw an “-al” on the end of the verb and you’re good) and, like, not a real tense anyway.
There are also no adjectives in Wolof. All adjectives are verbs. “Sonn” doesn’t mean “tired,” it means “to be tired.” “Baax” doesn’t mean “good,” it means “to be good.” I think that this means that the verb “to be” does not exist in Wolof. If it does, it would only be in the sense of affirming that one does in fact exist. There would be no way to fill in the blank in the sentence “I am _____ ” and still have a subject-verb-complement structure.
Unfortunately, while verbs and adjectives are a lot simpler than in French or English, pronouns and syntax are way trickier. Wolof is an emphatic language, which means that the pronouns conjugate and the syntax changes depending on what part of the thought you want to emphasize. I’ve learned different sets of pronouns for making simple statements (no emphasis), asking/responding to questions posed with question words (which emphasize the object), and asking/responding to yes/no questions (which emphasize I don’t know what), and I know there are like a dozen other sets that my class hasn’t gotten to yet. The pronouns also change depending on whether or not the verb you’re using is active (like “to dance”) or passive (like “to be named”) and whether or not you’re in the past or present tense. It is insanity.
Also, the pronunciation of Wolof vowels has to be frustratingly precise. If you hold a vowel too long or cut it too short, you run the risk of saying a completely different word. With any luck, you’ll only mangle the meaning of your sentence, as opposed to saying something totally obscene or insulting. Some examples of tricky pronunciation include:
Toog (to sit) and togg (to cook)
Soow (yogurt) and sow (urine)
Reer (dinner) and rèer (lost)
Géej (beach) and gejj (dry fish)
Xool (to look) and xol (heart)
Maangi (“I” for present tense passive verbs/past tense active verbs) and maangiy (“I” for present tense active verbs)
Wofol numbers are base five instead of base ten. “One, two, three, four, five” is “benn, ñaar, ñett, ñeent, juróom.” “Six, seven, eight nine” is “juróom benn, jeróom ñaar, juróom ñett, jeróom ñeent,” and “ten” is “fukk.” The number 28 would be “ñaar fukk ak jeróom ñett” (“ak” means “and”).
Needless to say, numbers can get a little confusing for Wolof outsiders. If the base five thing wasn’t already complicated enough, pure Wolof speakers bring it to a whole other level when it comes to money. The smallest denomination of Senegalese coin is 5-CFA, and when you ask someone what the price of something is, they give it to you in “coins” and not CFA. So if they the price is “ñett fukk” (40), they don’t mean 40 CFA, they mean 40 5-CFA coins, so 200 CFA all together. Thankfully, this is something that only really hard-core Wolof speakers do. City people will almost always give you numbers in French, even if you use Wolof to ask them the price.
Probably once every two weeks or so, the power goes out. The outages usually in the evenings and they’re usually pretty short, like 15-45 minutes. Everyone just lights some candles and waits for it to come back on. The last time it went out, I was sitting in the living room playing Snake on my cell phone (my high score is currently 800. I can do better than that) when Danny came in, lit some candles, and asked me if I wanted to play, you guessed it, Monopoly. We sat and ate snacks while playing Monopoly Europe by candlelight. It was a hilariously American power outage.
Cell phone thief
I was walking home from school one afternoon when I picked up a “friend” (read: Senegalese guy who wanted to get my number). This guy told me that he went to UCAD and walked home to Grand Yoff every afternoon, which got me really annoyed because I’d already told him that I lived in Sacre Coeur and it would not be that far out of his way to walk to Grand Yoff via Sacre Coeur. I thought I was going to have this guy with me for the next 45 minutes, so I started getting a little colder and a little shorter in my responses to his questions, hoping that he would get the hint and leave me alone.
He was a stubborn one though, and as it turns out, I’m glad he was. As we were walking past the car rapide stop on Avenue Bourguiba, the car rapide guys started trying to hustle us on to the cars as usual. One of them had his hand on my backpack, which made me sort of nervous because my cell phone was in one of the mesh pockets on the side. The second he let me go, I put my hand in the pocket and sure enough, my phone was gone. I turned to my friend and said “Il a pris mon portable!” (He took my cell phone!) He asked me which guy and I said I wasn’t sure, but he chased down the guy he thought that it was and sure enough, he got my phone back for me. I was a lot nicer to him after that. Thanks again, El Hadj of Grand Yoff, student of Arabic.
Some random assorted facts about Wolof, for people interested in languages
You don’t have to conjugate verbs in Wolof. No matter the pronoun, no matter the tense, the verb is always the same. The only exception that I know of is for the imperative, which is really easy (just throw an “-al” on the end of the verb and you’re good) and, like, not a real tense anyway.
There are also no adjectives in Wolof. All adjectives are verbs. “Sonn” doesn’t mean “tired,” it means “to be tired.” “Baax” doesn’t mean “good,” it means “to be good.” I think that this means that the verb “to be” does not exist in Wolof. If it does, it would only be in the sense of affirming that one does in fact exist. There would be no way to fill in the blank in the sentence “I am _____ ” and still have a subject-verb-complement structure.
Unfortunately, while verbs and adjectives are a lot simpler than in French or English, pronouns and syntax are way trickier. Wolof is an emphatic language, which means that the pronouns conjugate and the syntax changes depending on what part of the thought you want to emphasize. I’ve learned different sets of pronouns for making simple statements (no emphasis), asking/responding to questions posed with question words (which emphasize the object), and asking/responding to yes/no questions (which emphasize I don’t know what), and I know there are like a dozen other sets that my class hasn’t gotten to yet. The pronouns also change depending on whether or not the verb you’re using is active (like “to dance”) or passive (like “to be named”) and whether or not you’re in the past or present tense. It is insanity.
Also, the pronunciation of Wolof vowels has to be frustratingly precise. If you hold a vowel too long or cut it too short, you run the risk of saying a completely different word. With any luck, you’ll only mangle the meaning of your sentence, as opposed to saying something totally obscene or insulting. Some examples of tricky pronunciation include:
Toog (to sit) and togg (to cook)
Soow (yogurt) and sow (urine)
Reer (dinner) and rèer (lost)
Géej (beach) and gejj (dry fish)
Xool (to look) and xol (heart)
Maangi (“I” for present tense passive verbs/past tense active verbs) and maangiy (“I” for present tense active verbs)
Wofol numbers are base five instead of base ten. “One, two, three, four, five” is “benn, ñaar, ñett, ñeent, juróom.” “Six, seven, eight nine” is “juróom benn, jeróom ñaar, juróom ñett, jeróom ñeent,” and “ten” is “fukk.” The number 28 would be “ñaar fukk ak jeróom ñett” (“ak” means “and”).
Needless to say, numbers can get a little confusing for Wolof outsiders. If the base five thing wasn’t already complicated enough, pure Wolof speakers bring it to a whole other level when it comes to money. The smallest denomination of Senegalese coin is 5-CFA, and when you ask someone what the price of something is, they give it to you in “coins” and not CFA. So if they the price is “ñett fukk” (40), they don’t mean 40 CFA, they mean 40 5-CFA coins, so 200 CFA all together. Thankfully, this is something that only really hard-core Wolof speakers do. City people will almost always give you numbers in French, even if you use Wolof to ask them the price.
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