| Stop being lazy, start updating livejournal |
[Apr. 27th, 2006|05:03 pm] |
Well, it's been QUITE a while since I last updated and quite a lot has happened. Where do I begin? Presently, it is Thursday April 27, 2006. I have been in Senegal for 103 days or 14 weeks and 5 days (about 3.5 months). I am leaving Senegal three weeks from tonight. It's SO hard to believe I've been here for that long. I finally feel like Im starting to live here without questioning things and am significantly more relaxed about all the ridiculous things I see every day. It's gonna be hard to leave my host family. Even if my host parents are deaf and have the TV on 24/7 and lead incredibly mundane lives (I suppose I would too if I were in their shoes though...), we have grown close and I already have a lot of good memories.
Let's step back about 5 or 6 weeks from now. Right after my next to last entry before this one, I headed out to les regions, into the middle of nowhere to spend a few days with a Peace Corps volunteer. Julia, one of the other Georgetown students was to come with me. Molly ended up in Louga, with a PCV, which is between Dakar and St. Louis on the Petite Cote. Katie ended up at a Lutheran aid organization in Linguere, in the middle part of Senegal. Julia and I, however, drew the wonderful village of Kanel, near where the borders of Mali and Mauritania meet the Senegalese border in the far east of the country. This would require a 12 hour sept place ride. Im not sure if Ive impressed onto you my readers just what a sept place is. Basically, its a Peugeot station wagon, usually about 15 years old, that holds 7 passengers. They leave from the local gare routiere (or car train station if you will) and connect all sorts of cities at fares fixed by the government. When you arrive at the main gare routiere in Dakar and when people see there are white people, they try and show you where to go and carry your bags so that you have to pay them and it usually an overwhelming experience. And by gare routiere, I mean a GIANT FILTHY parking lot crammed with sept places and vendors and people trying to steal stuff from you. Usually the sept place is crammed, miserably uncomfortable, and blazingly hot. Our experience didn't differ that much from this description. We got there in the morning, haggled with the driver over alleged "bag fees," and paid our 10,400 francs for the fare, which is the most expensive sept place fare I have ever heard of in Senegal, to give you an idea of the distance we were covering. When I got in, everything but the front seat was empty, so I claimed the middle row, right hand seat. Promptly, a man approaches from outside and says hes seating there. Unfortunately, he doesn't speak French so another gentleman had to intervene and translate for us. I basically explained there was no way AT ALL I was going to spend 10 hours in the middle seat of this crammed station wagon, given my size. Additionally, the left hand seat of that row was occupied by both a rather large woman and her toddler. The guy eventually caved in and let me take the seat. We got going sooner than later (because you have to wait for all the seats to be filled before you leave). Very quickly, it became clear this was gonna be a hot ride. All of the back windows had black curtains covering them, which frankly, was probably the worst thing someone could have done to this car. I was trying to balance keeping the window open, with staying in the shade, with not getting flapped in the face by the curtain blowing in the wind. The woman on the other side, who happened to be sitting in front of Julia, did not open her window the ENTIRE 12 HOURS, apparently to keep her hair from getting messed up. By the time we passed through St. Louis, about 5 hours into the trip, we took a stop at one of the sept place checkpoints, at which point the man who had been in the front seat got out of the car with the rest of us and basically almost expired at the side of the road. He just squatted down for like 10 mins not moving. I should add also we stopped at a town about 3 hours before this so that the man next to me could get fever medicine....just what I wanted to have as a seat mate. After St. Louis, things got desolate. Outside of St. Louis, we were basically in a desert, I counted several bull skulls glistening white in the sun. We stopped for lunch in Richard Toll, named after the plantation of Baron Richard during the colonial period of Senegal which is located in the vacinity. Of course the power was out there so no cold drinks and sketchily prepared foods in street side hovels were the order of the afternoon. After that, things got real rural for the last 5 hours. And it was HOT. The two guys in the back seat told me in French, "Mista, if you dont roll down that window we're gonna DIE back here..." This kicked off an interesting conversation between the two guys and me and Julia. They heard we were going to stay with PCV's and we got to talking about how they didnt they the Peace Corps really did anything. They thought the volunteers just came and lived but never really accomplished anything. Apparently, the guy talking about this didn't hear us initially say we were American and when he found out, went back on everything he said. He also said that 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy because no Jewish people died in it though, so we can't trust him overly can we. We stopped to let everyone pray around dusk and arrived in Ouro Soggui, our destination around 9PM. Kim, the Peace Corps volunteer who was hosting us, met us and had a dinner prepared by someone for us to eat in the garage (rural way of saying gare routiere). She had been in Senegal since March of 2005 and was a health volunteer. We were so exhausted that we crashed after dinner. Keep in mind also that this persistent malaise in my stomach was lingering. I felt ok during the car ride, but NOT well during the night. I was sleeping in the main house of her host family, and the bricks retained SO much heat from the day that I could barely fall asleep. I kept waking up feeling sick. I made it through the night however.
We spent the day basically sitting at the house. By 11, it was just too hot to do ANYTHING, apart from what everyone else was doing, which was sitting on mats and not moving, trying not to expire. I would say lying on mats trying not to expire took up about the majority of our time during the stay. This village was in a Pulaar speaking region, so while some of the family spoke French, it wasn't always easy to communicate. Also, me feeling crappy made my not overly excited about learning ANOTHER language. We were able to explore the village a little bit, seeing all the toddlers with the gris gris necklaces designed to ward off evil spirits and a lot of people with two scar marks on each side of their eyes, something apparently done among the Pulaar (but I dont know why still...). On the second day, I decided to bite the bullet and start some Cipro to try and kill whatever was making me feel sick (the latrines that came with the house we were crazy-tiny little houses, in the open air but surrounded by brick walls-this does not help people with stomach issues!). It worked thankfully by the next day and I was feeling better. We considered going to Matam, which is on the Senegal River and is the capital of a fairly depressed region of Senegal, but ended up stopping in Ouro Soggui. We intended to get to the internet cafe there to get some stuff done, but as soon as we showed up the power went out, so we took refuge in a neighboring bar and had lunch, hoping to wait out the outage. Several other Peace Corps volunteers met us there and it was cool to see some other people working in the region. We gave up on the power and went home around 4. The last day, we woke up and went to a louma, or weekly market that came into town. Nothing of particular interest and it was also flaming hot, so we headed back quickly enough. We threw around the idea of crossing the river into Mauritania for the rest of the day, but motivation didn't materialize. Instead, we bought some lamb, a delicacy for the family, for dinner. We left on Friday morning for St. Louis, where we spent the weekend with our friends from UPenn who are studying at the only other university in Senegal, Universite Gaston Berger. It was a fun weekend, St. Louis is a beautiful colonial city, as it was once the capital of both Senegal and French West Africa. It was also cool to spend time in a dorm and kind of get that feel of college life again, which we don't really have in Dakar. We ran into someone who identified himself as Mr. Very Nice and tried to pour some sort of potions on the girls, but we ran away before he did anything else....fairly normal for here. We ended up meeting the other girls from Beloit and had 7, and thus could fill the sept place back to Dakar with all of us.
The next big event was spring break, which was March 31-April 10 in Cape Verde. |
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| tired of being sick |
[Mar. 11th, 2006|07:01 pm] |
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Its now just after 7pm and Ive only been out of the house for about 15 minutes. I spent pretty much the whole day in the house because I wasn't feeling well. I must have eaten something last night that upset my stomach. No out of control vomiting this time around but I pretty much felt like I was going to throw up for the past twenty four hours. Add to this that the temperature in Dakar skyrocketed today to the mid 80s (which I believe is lower than what it actually was) and the breeze totally died (yet the dust and crap fom the harmattan persists...). Allow me to not recommend getting sick in blazing hot weather with no AC. The heat definitely made me feel worse. I ended up canceling my trip to Gambia because of all this but its probably for the better. I have a 9 hour station wagon ride to my rural visit site on Monday or Tuesday. |
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[Mar. 10th, 2006|12:38 pm] |
Its incredibly hot here today and the harmattan still hasn't left. I spent the morning teaching English with Molly at ENDA, an NGO where she is doing her internship. I was teaching two girls in the equivalent of seventh grade. The "school" is basically a garage style room off a busy street. It went pretty well, apart from it being hot, the pollution mixing with the dust making breathing not so easy, and the chalkboard not being so great.
Im back at BC now trying to figure out my trip to Cairo. |
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| harmattan |
[Mar. 8th, 2006|10:44 am] |
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Weather update: the winds blowing from the Sahara towards the western coast of Africa have turned hot and sandy. Its about 90 today and the atmosphere is really dusty which is not helping the cold I have after this weekend. |
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[Mar. 7th, 2006|11:03 am] |
Developmental Economics was canceled again, so here I am. The strike restarted at the university (this would explain the unannounced detour on the bus yesterday) and I think our prof has something to do with negotiating with students. This is good because it means I have time to go grab my passport from the Gambian High Commission and stop by the cell phone company to prove that Im a student so I can get cheaper rates. I applied for my Gambian visa yesterday and actually had to go through a brief interview, which was really quite funny because the main question in the interview was "WHY do you want to go to the Gambia?" in a tone that was so incredulous to me I almost burst out laughing, as if why would anyone ever want to go there? While waiting for that, me and a friend were flipping through some of the English (very POOR english too) Gambian newspapers in the waiting room and came across some really interesting articles, including one written by a woman about how women should especially submit themselves to their husbans during Ramadan. Interesting stuff.
Last night we made hamburgers (actually bacon cheeseburgers) for the host family and it went pretty well. I found premade frozen burgers at the grocery store, which was quite a shock, along with bacon. We used regular sliced bread as rolls, and added ketchup, mustard, and onions. The hamburgers didn't taste exactly the same (the meat was far more white than red) but overall it was a success. No one got sick or refused to eat.
This weekend we spent down in Mbour, a fishing village on the "Petite Cote" south of Dakar. After Friday became kind of a fiasco, I decided to wait until Saturday to head down with Julia because I didnt see any point in paying for a hotel when I could leave early on Saturday and be there before our friends who were already there were even awake. We ended up staying at Coco Beach, a rather large complex of bungalow style rooms with a really nice pool. The hotel was practically empty too which was a little weird. We found out on Saturday that one of the girls who had come down on Friday had her purse stolen from her as they were going back to their hotel after spending the evening in a bar. The bartender had walked them back and left them about 100 yards from the hotel. As they were approaching the entrance, a man who had been in the bar followed them, ran up, and ripped the purse from Elaine's arm. She immediately ran after him, but tripped in the sand. Meanwhile, Katie started shouting "Voleur, voleur" which means thief, thief, and about 100 people immediately came out of their houses (the street had previously been dark and deserted). One of the guys that came out was bearing a rifle too, which I think is really funny, however, I dont doubt he would have used it if he could have seen the guy. Its not unheard of here for crowds to beat to death people who are caught stealing. Then the next day, Elaine went to the police to file a report and what not and they had captured the younger brother (supposedly) of the thief and were interrogating him with only his underwear on and beating him with an iron rod. Really crazy. Elaine lost her digital camera with all of her pictures shes taken in Senegal, her cell phone, and a little money. This all took place in Joal, which is kind of reknowned as the birthplace of Senegals first President. I was staying up in Mbour, about 30-45 mins north of there. Nonetheless, the hotel staff advised us not to leave the hotel alone/not in a cab because two Spanish couples had been mugged at knife point just outside the hotel last week and a Spanish resident of Saly (even more touristy) had been robbed at home and had his throat slit. Now that I have sufficiently freaked out all friends and family, let me add that this is a very unusual and unheard of series of events. My host family was shocked when I mentioned all this. I also just got an email from the US Embassy with a list of recent crimes against Americans, including a robbery at knifepoint at Lac Rose (where the French family warned us about getting attacked) where a car was stolen from a couple. Fortunately, all the people we came into contact with at the hotel and the surrounding area were very friendly. There was a group of guys that tried to spend the whole weekend hanging out with us, making us attaya (the Senegalese tea, taken in three shots, each being progressively less strong and more sugary). It was very odd that they didnt bug us to go out with them and that they didnt hit on the girls (maybe because I was there tho..) because we're not totally used to people not trying to bug us one way or another. I think they were genuine and that they prolly just spend all their time being beach bums trying to get to know foreign tourists. They said they work at the hotel as sort of guides to accompany tourists into Mbour. I ended up deciding to come back Sunday night with the majority of the group that was there. When we got to the gare routiere (sort of transportation hub in each city), there were a ton of people waiting and no sept places in sight. A random group of three other people came up to us and we somehow negotiated renting a sept place (which basically meant simply paying higher prices for the exact same thing). Not quite sure I understood what was going on, but thats nothing new.
I also just found out where Im prolly gonna do my "rural visit" next week. We have no classes so we're doing our rural visit where we go to stay with an NGO or PC volunteer out in the middle of nowhere. We have been assigned to Kanel, which is way out in the middle of nowhere, near Matam, Senegal, which is near where the borders of Mali and Mauritania meet the Senegalese border. More info on this later.... |
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| TIME for an update |
[Mar. 3rd, 2006|02:18 pm] |
Greetings everyone,
Its been quite a while since I last updated, so I have a ton to write about. Unfortunately, the power was real spotty for most of the beginning of this week, and the Internet has been down at the Baobab Center. Because I don't like typing long documents on French keyboards I was waiting to do this at the Baobab Center but gave up. Im in the nicest internet cafe Ive been to yet in Senegal downtown. Its so nice, quiet and peaceful, on the second story of a building about a block from the main drag. Anyhow, I was supposed to have a fairly productive morning that kind of disintegrated into discovering new things downtown. I first went to get money to get my Gambian visa but because of some stupidity on my part thought I had no money and by the time I got the money the embassy was closed. While waiting around for a friend though, I found an amazing breakfast joint (pricey, but amazing French style breakfast and free English magazines). Then a street vendor started following me, trying as they all do to drag me back to his store. I was so ticked off at this point by 1) that the Tigo cell phone network (that of all my friends...) was down all morning, almost making meeting up with my friend impossible, 2) that the normal street hustlers were just as annoying, and 3) that I am still going through money more quickly than I would prefer, that I just decided what the crap , Ill just go see what his store is all about. On the way over I ran into a woman from the Baobab Center (who recognized me but not me her). She happened to know the vendor, and as it turned out, the vendor lives in my suburb and is good friends with my next door neighbor. This, plus the fact that I know Wolof, and all sorts of Senegalese friends, made us instant friends according to him. Anyhow, he tried to sell me the usual stuff, which I admittedly have a tendency to be snobby about because it looks like junk, but I cant really ever tell between what a Senegalese would buy and what is tourist crap. I probably need to ask someone about stuff like that. I was nodding and did kind of let the conversation get out of my control and had to spend about 20 mins explaining my reasons for not buying anything. Still, he was a friendly fellow, and after offering me an obscene price (to which I responded with horror) reduced it 6-fold. He also noted that his store supposedly helped some sort of handicapped people shelter behind the store-which I won't buy until I see it. There are actually quite a few homeless (many handicapped) on the streets downtown, many of them with truly horrific. I saw a guy from the bus today with no hand, and the end of his arm in a sort of fork shape, as if the bone in his arm had split into a V and the skin grew over the new segments. Lots of people don't have legs, or have really deformed spines. I absolutely hate ignoring them and usually try and talk with them but its frustrating because I don't know what to do for them. There are also albinos who are kind of outcast from society that end up on the street. One fellow approached us last week and explained his situation in good English. One of the other girls we were with said "Im sorry, I dont have any money" in a kind of snotty tone and it set him off and he started cursing at us. Generally though, the homeless are peaceful.
In any event, it was interesting, most foreigners run from vendors and he was fairly content that I didnt brush him off. He made an interesting comment, that if I wear the shirts hes selling, people wont think Im racist. I never thought my clothes would imply much of anything, other than where Im from, but its an interesting thought. I think I will eventually go back and buy a shirt or two since they're really loose and comfortable. I ended up going over to the supermarket to spend some more time while waiting (this is always a fun way to pass time) and found out that they carry frowen American style hamburgers and bacon, which was quite a discovery. Odile keeps asking about when we're gonna make more American food so this could be a chance. I then ended up at the Air Senegal office with my friend to buy her ticket to Cape Verde with us for spring break. Since Gambia is off for the weekend now, Im gonna head down to the Petite Cote, which is Senegals main beach resort area, with some friends. Lots of fishing villages, European tourists and the like. We have school next week; then the following week is off for our rural visit. Since that won't take all the time, we should have a chance to travel. Spring Break is then the first week of April. Time has been flying like crazy; Sunday marks the end of my eighth week here out of 19.
Two weekends ago, I took a great trip to the Sine Saloum Delta region of Senegal, which borders the northern border of Gambia. We left Friday around 3 and arrived in Kaolack, one of Senegal's peanut shipping points, to spend the night at Kaolacks nicest hotel, the Relais, right on the Saloum River. We ended up having an amazing American dinner at a place called Celebration Baked Goods, part of a girls education NGO in Kaolack run by a woman from Detroit who founded the NGO. We had delicious hot fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, salad and yeast rolls. Everyone overate and concluded the night with pool and swimming in THE pool back at the hotel. Some people got up early to go have American pancakes at the same place back in the city but I opted for the free breakfast before we hopped back in the car for a few hours ride down to the Gite de Bandiala, where we were staying on Saturday night. En route, we stopped in a village to pick up some really good bread (not available in Dakar) called Tappalappa. Bread in the city leaves something to be desired, but this stuff was great. We also ran into a post cicumcision ceremony evil spirit scaring waway ceremony. Check out the costumes on my Webshots. The hotel was really secluded in the woods, about 15 mins from a village called Missirah. The hotel is run by a Lebanese couple and they made a great lunch for us. While waiting, we got to watch a huge family of red colobane (spelling?) monkeys, which are supposedly somewhat rare, chilling at the watering hole at the hotel. We then headed back to Missirah to take a pirogue (Senegalese boat) around the delta, which is bordered on all sides by large mangroves, which provide oysters for the villagers to gather and sell. In Missirah, we were the only Toubabs around at the time and everyone came out to see us, inluding hoards of children looking for the traditional gift. I ended up buying them two soccer balls from the boutique and I would say they really appreciated it. We made our way to our a village on an island and got a little tour, including of their new single room school house. The village is Muslim/animist, which was interesting also. We caught the boat back, had dinner, and then spent the evening at a special evening wrestling soiree in Missirah, where we had VIP plastic chair seating. I have videos on my computer but there are some dark photos on Webshots. The next morning was spent devouring hot tappalappa, making a quick stop at the biggest tree (a Baobab) I think I have ever seen, called the Fromager Sacre, which actually has some significance for the animists who live nearby, and getting back on our way to Dakar. We spent the afternoon at a pretty cool animal reserve outside Dakar that had a bunch of animals imported from East Africa.
Odiles birthday was celebrated last week with much fanfare. Not much to explain really, the pictures on Webshots explain things pretty well. As usual, the TV played a major role in the social activity-whih I still dont understand.
Tuesday night was spent at a Mardi Gras Soiree at the church by our house. Everyone crossdresses and kind of goes wild. It was a lot of fun, and its too bad we dont do that at home. I wore one of Jacques boubous and opted not to crossdress, while my host cousin and another American who was with us originally in January and came back this week chose to dress as guys.
Wednesday night, while spent in a crazy furor trying to submit my state department application, was also spent at a huge charity soccer match (Norway v Senegal) and concert at Stade Senghor. I missed the match, which was punctuated by about a 5 min power outage in the stadium in the last 45 seconds of the match. I showed up right after power was restored and didn't stay for too long because it was unusually cold and I was real tired. Nonetheless, the concert went on for about 5 hours, featuring Lauryn Hill, Alpha Blondy, Viviane and Youssou Ndor, A-ha (eighties band that sang "Take on me"), and Tracy Chapman. When the concert started, people starting jumping off the stadium into the field, like people jumping off a ship. Interesting to watch but I stayed away from the mayhem in my seat.
Some other quick notes: dubbed Married with Children has made its way onto Senegalese television, leading my host mother to conclude that Senegal is on the receiving end of "dumped" American TV. There continues to be sewer overflows everywhere. I gave a presentation on Sierra Leone yesterday, and it went well. Odile continues to inquire frequently why Katie and I dont have significant others here or in the US because "how are we ever gonna get married?" We also had lively discussions on what she thinks of/knows about Protestants and "what ARE they protesting?" and which pizza joint here is good. Jacque reported last night that his foot was run over by a turning car on a business trip this week to Kedougou and is now using a cane. Ok times up more later. |
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[Feb. 15th, 2006|07:10 pm] |
Because of a general mixture of laziness and a power outage yesterday evening, I neglected to finish yesterdays entry about Sunday, which happened to be the most exciting part of our weekend. After Julia's house, we went home and crashed, to wake up at the agreed upon time of 730 so as to meet up at 8 to catch a cab to the Gare Routiere (or vast wasteland/terminus of transportation) known as Pompiers (because its right next to the fire department). We got over there without much trouble, but with less than two hours to spare to get out to a 10AM Mass at Keur Moussa, making our negotiating position less than favorable. That, combined with the fact that we had no idea how much was reasonable to pay, we kind of just accepted the offer made to us (twenty bucks for four people for just under an hour's ride, which we later found out might have been as much as twice as much as normal Toubab rates).
I suppose I need to elaborate on transportation in Senegal. 1) There really isn't a fixed price for ANYTHING (including non transportation things). 2) There are several ways to get to places. We ended up in a sept-place or seven seater (+a driver) Peugeot station wagon. Basically it ended up being like paying for a taxi, since they didn't wait for the remaining three seats to be filled (so in other words we paid for seats that normally would have been filled otherwise since you normally have to wait for whatever vehicle, bus or car, to be filled before leaving). Since we left without waiting, its safe to say we overpaid or at least paid enough to not make it worth for the driver to wait for others. Additionally, price negotiations were complicated by the fact that Dakar-Keur Moussa, while popular with tourists, is not really a standardized sept-place route. Nonetheless it was nice to a) get out of the rough city that Dakar can be and b) see the countryside. Traffic was light on the autoroute on the way out and we passed by stunning forest of baobab trees, which unfortunately I didn't have a good perspective from the car to take a picture. We got to the town near the monastery only to find out that our non French speaking driver wasn't exactly sure where to go. Not a major problem though as we got there with about twenty minutes to spare. The monastery is really located in the middle of nowhere, I guess on purpose but it was so nice to not be in the city. Mass started on time and included an interesting mix of African instrumental music and traditional chants. The chapel also had some really pretty African portrayals of the life of Jesus. Afterwards, we had the chance to stop by their gift shop, which must be a major source of funding for them, and I bought some cards and some orange marmalade that they made there. By the time that was over, the parking lot was empty and we didn't see any way of getting out except for walking about one mile to the main road. Of course, when we got to that village there wasn't exactly a bevy of cars waiting for us, which was made even better by the fact that everyone was staring at us. This is one thing that kind of is beginning to bug me, people who stare and when you stare back, they don't stop staring. Real annoying. We eventually found a sept place willing to take us to Lac Rose, our next destination, for yet another 20 dollars. We had little negotiating power here and really wanted to move on quickly so we accepted and spent the next 20-5 minutes driving over to Lac Rose. When we pulled up to the lake, the driver both didn't really know where to go and didn't seem overly happy about taking us to the restaurant we wanted to go on the direct opposite of the lake. At this point, a stranger came up and offered to ride with us in the car to show the driver where to go to drop us at our second choice restaurant. We were rather confused by this and expected a request for money but he truly was helping us out of kindness so it worked out.
After being turned off by touristy prices, we settled for good old tieboudienne (fish and rice) at a hut to the side of one of the restaurants. We were a little worried about how safe the food was but it turned out delicious and did not give us all diahrea either which is really good. We then thought we kind of explore around the lake. I need to back up and explain why this lake is a tourist site first. Its called Lac Rose or the Pink Lake because its water is an unusual pink color. We got various explanations for this, and the one I find most plausible is that there is a peculiar mineral concentration in the water. Anyhow, the water wasn't THAT pink (it varies from season though) but it was a nice place to just chill out. Secondly, it has a really high salt concentration and thus is a big salt mining site. There were tons of families along the short wading out with their boats which they fill up until they almost sink before bringing them back to unload. SO, we decided to cruise around in the huge dunes on the north side of the lake, composing about a mile of land between the lake and the Atlantic. This is also a big area for 4x4s and ATVs, and also importantly, the finish line of the Paris-Dakar rally. All four of us made our way across the dunes into a reforestation area, following the sound of waves, hoping to find the beach. After about 25 mins, we arrived at a huge open sandy area, which made it clear that there was still about 3/4 mile left to the beach, and another foresty area to cross through. Julia was the only one who still wanted to come with me at the point, so we trekked on and finally made it out to the beach after another 20 mins or so. The beach was gorgeous and completely deserted. There were also huge waves (dont worry I wasnt gonna go swimming), but all this was sort of ruined when a French family pulled up in a pickup and told us that it wasn't safe and that the situation could change in 5 minutes. Someone could "attack" us (which was a strong verb in French) they said. We thanked them, and having lost our appetite for the beach, made our way back across the dunes. We met up with Katie and Molly back at one the lakeside joints and sat by the lake for a while before getting ripped off yet again for a ride back to Dakar. Traffic was awful on the way back in, and this was compounded by the fact that the President of Senegal decided to pass us on with his motorcade meaning everyone had to pull over. Sunburnt and tired we crashed back at home.
Monday was our last day of sociology class and now we are free to start our internships. Im still waiting to hear back from Babacar about working at Red Cross, otherwise Ill have to hop to it and find something else.
This evening we had a town hall meeting at the US Ambassadors residence (super nice with a pool and GRASS!!) which is located near the Corniche/ocean in a nice neighborhood called Fann-Residence. They basically gathered all the American students up to talk to us about health and security issues. The acting ambassador also gave a speech. I also confirmed that something was screwy with their consular email list because I got a confirmation that I had signed up but had received NO emails since then. I can fix that now, particularly since they now know there is a problem. Last, they brought up that we can take the Foreign Service exam at the embassy in April, which I am seriously considering doing. I also chatted for a while with the Consul General about working for the State Department and about the internships they have at the embassy. Some of you may remember I was recently rejected for an internship this summer at the embassy in Dakar. Well, Im glad to say some of the sting was taken out of that when she told that they had a huge pool of applicants and that either all of some of the people accepted are in graduate programs. I don't know what kind of grad student wants an unpaid internship but I guess they're out there.
State Dept. fall internship app due on March 1
FS Exam Registration due March 1
Gtown summer counselor app due Feb. 17
African novel to read
documents on UN system to read
internships for Senegal to deal with
like 5 other internship apps due if the job doesnt pan out
time to get off LJ and get to work! |
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[Feb. 14th, 2006|12:11 pm] |
Well since my econ. teacher apparently isn't showing up this morning, I've decided to take some time out and update.
Tamkharit (Muslim New Year) was nothing too special. We had the traditional African (dark) couscous with raisins. Since we our family is Catholic, we didn't really do much else. Supposedly children dress up as the opposite sex and run around at night asking for money and candy (like Halloween) but after undergoing the obligatory pigging out I crashed in a food coma and didn't go out at night.
Thursday we had off for the holiday so we decided to go downtown. We had initially planned to go a beach south of downtown on Cap Manuel. We had never been there before though, and after taking a random bus we hadn't taken before, we ended up meandering our way down to the Corniche de l'Est (which is really pretty and follows cliffs along the peninsula) looking for Anse Bernard Beach. The weather wasn't great when we woke up (read: clouds and stronger breeze than normal) and by the time we got to the beach we decided to take a pass. Additionally we kind of wanted to explore the Corniche a little more, so we took it back towards Place de l'Independance. Starving, we stopped in at our favorite Lebanese fast food joint (and there are many because tons of Lebanese people live here) Ali Baba for some lunch. I ordered un hot dog double, and while not bad, couldn't have been farther from the ballpark style hot dog that I was craving. After lunch, the clouds got darker and it actually began to rain. That was our first rain in 5 weeks and 4 days. By that point we had to get back to the Baobab Center for a tour of the university with our academic advisor Babacar in his flashy Land Rover. It wasn't much that we hadn't seen before but it was nice to be driven around instead of walking. The campus is huge.
Friday was our next to last sociology class in the morning, followed by our first Wolof class in a while. We had the opportunity to go out to dinner (on Georgetown's money/our tuition) with Babacar and Dinah (who works at Baobab and is responsible for study abroad students for the US and graduated from Duke a few years ago) at the Terrou-Bi restaurant/casino. Unfortunately, they reduced their menu to fish brochettes or pizza because it was some sort of theme night but it was still nice to not have to to pay. We ended up back at Molly's (from Georgetown) house and did the usual sit around and talk about what to do for half an hour before Katie and Julia headed out and Molly and I decided to crash.
Nothing special was planned for Saturday, and since I had gone to bed early, I decided to head downtown and run some errands/explore the area south of downtown a little more. After seeing that all airline offices were closed and making a brief stop at a travel agency I found, I headed out along the Corniche southward. I spent about an hour or so walking completely around the Cape-really pretty overall. On the east side was cliffs, good views of Goree Island and downtown Dakar, and a nice breeze. At the end of the cape is an old lighthouse, and weirdly enough, one of those exercise courses with different stations. It probably is connected to the nearby military installation. On the west side is the "Palais" or the former Palais de Justice, an enormous building that used to house courts and justice-related offices but is now crumbling and eerily empty. The REAL importance of this is that its a major bus terminal now and after continuing along the same street I finally got a good understanding of the bus routes that terminate there. I then made a quick stop in the Cathedral only to be stopped on my way out by a man (who Im fairly sure has tried this on me before) approached me, said he was Togolese and diabetic, and asked me to help him fill his insulin prescription. I let him tell his story and then said Im sorry but I know what you're trying to do. He let out a startled grunt and then ran away. Not very much surprised by the usual hassle, I continued on my way, bought two big bottles of salted roasted peanuts on the street and caught the bus back to my neighborhood.
Saturday night had been set aside for a "savar" being planned by the Baobab Center at a club they rented out. We had invited Odile and she came with us. We learned however that this was a "special" savar because 1) they're usually on the street and not in a club and 2) usually they're free. Nonetheless, I think she enjoyed herself. They started out with mbalax music then went to live drummers then back to mbalax. The girls who were dancing to the drums were out of control. I can't really explain how they were dancing; they were basically going crazy, just losing control of their limbs. It was fun but after a while we decided to at least go home to get some dinner. We had talked about plans for a daytrip on Sunday and also wanted to go to Just 4 U, the local Toubab club because Baobab Orchestra was playing (and one of the members is a Wolof teacher at the BC). We ended up at Julia's house, intently watching the French version of College Jeopardy and eating french fries and salad that Julia's host mom made for us. We talked some more about plans for Sunday and decided we would get up at 730 and head out to Keur Moussa (a Benedictine monastery in the countryside) and Lac Rose. |
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| About time for an update... |
[Feb. 8th, 2006|01:00 pm] |
Well, I've been a little busy lately which partially explains why I haven't updated. Classes have all begun and they're taking up a lot of my time. Additionally, nothing out of the ordinary has happened recently meaning there isn't much to write about.
We started our fifth class, African Literature, on Monday evening at the West African Research Center (WARC). Unlike our other classes where there is only just us four Georgetown students (with the exception of econ. where there are three other Beloit girls with us), this class is huge, about 25 students or so. The professor actually teaches English at Univ. Cheikh Anta Diop so he sometimes speaks a little franglais. It should be interesting since I haven't taken literature since high school and know nothing about African literature. Unfortunately the WARC is kind of far from the Baobab Center and really far from where I live. Im working on figuring out the bus to get there.
Other classes are going well. We're just about done with our 20 hours of intensive sociology and are looking for internships at this point. I've learned a lot of really interesting things in that class and the professor is pretty good. Im waiting to hear from my conflict resolution teacher to contact his niece who works to see if Red Cross Senegal would take me as an intern. Otherwise, Im looking at Caritas which is a global organization of Catholic charities.
Conflict resolution/crisis management is pretty good. I understand the professor perfectly, but sometimes what we're going over can be a little tedious. We've been focusing on political and legal means of solving interstate conflicts. In any event, the professor (whose name is Babacar Gueye and is really important in Dakar) is cool. He taking us to a casino restaurant on Friday (Im guessing in his capacity as academic advisor to the Georgetown students).
Wolof is on hold as we try to finish the sociology. I really need to sit down and memorize a lot of Wolof words if Im gonna improve at all, but Im really lazy about it because I don't have a huge interest in learning/speaking Wolof. At least Im not encouraged by listening to people speak it here because it just sounds like a jumble and I can use French instead generally.
Economics of development is fairly boring and everyone is getting tired of it. Also, as Im the only guy in the class (the case for four of five classes), several of the girls in the class have accused the professor of only looking at me and disregarding them. I don't really know what to do about that.
In other news, the temperature is starting to rise here. It still hasn't rained here and people leave all sorts of stuff outside because they know it won't rain. There's an entire open air furniture market even. The biggest variation we see in the weather is occasional clouds roll in and decrease the temperature a little.
Last Saturday was spent a nuns-taking-their-vows ceremony at the cathedral downtown. There were three of them, and Odile knows one of them. She seems to have all sorts of connections to the Catholic world here with relatives who are priests and nuns. It was a long two hour Mass but it was still really interesting especially because it was definitely an African Mass. The music was African and parts of it were actually in Wolof. We then headed over to a local Catholic school for a big lunch celebration. We went through the traditional/hilarious arguing between Odile and Jacques about where and how to park. Im really impressed with their ability to go from arguing to lovey-dovey in about 2 seconds. I don't think Jacques is actually ever really mad, he just likes to seem mad. Its also really funny when Jacques is annoying Odile and she starts calling him a toubab (white person).
Speaking of Jacques, I've been having some interesting conversations with him lately, particularly about Islam. He thinks the protests that have resulted from the cartoon are totally ridiculous and I generally agree with him (Ill elaborate on this later). He has some more broad generalisations about Muslims in Senegal that Ill have to investigate on my own before agreeing with him. I've been able to follow all these protests with a pocket radio I bought recently. The BBC World Service is on an FM frequency in Dakar so its really easy to pick up. As I understand it, the imams who took the caricatures to the Middle East actually added three extra ones to their dossier that were not actually ever published. I think if people want to demonstrate against the publication of something they feel is offensive to a certain religion then they have every right to. To demand of a government to ban a newspaper from publishing something because it violates a religious law is unacceptable. I think that distinction is really important and hasn't been made by Muslims who are protesting. Are they protesting because its offensive/portray Muslims as terrorists, or are they protesting because they think that the newspaper broke Islamic law that forbids depictions of the Prophet? Theres a major difference and I dont think people protesting have made clear what they mean. The fact that they are trying to burn down embassies is really damaging their argument even more. Obviously freedom of the press isn't a hallmark of much of the Islamic world so the concept of that overriding religious law is probably pretty foreign.
I was interested to see that an Iranian newspaper proposed a contest of Holocaust caricatures to see if the West supported freedom of expression as much as they say they do. At first glance you'd think this would be a reasonable test but its different from publishing the caricatures of Mohamed. The reason for not publishing such images is because they are offensive to everyone. Making fun of massive human suffering can't really be funny to anyone. In the case of publishing images of Muhamed, the offense is really only done to one group and therefore banning such images because of the demands of one group can't really be justified, unless such a ban applies to anything is offensive to any religion. As I understand freedom of speech in the west, that is not generally the case. Obviously, I think the publishing of images to simply stir up hatred is pointless (and reckless) but I dont think violently responding to that is acceptable nor do I think that we can determine what should be published or not published based on the demands of one group of people and their threat to use violence to prevent such publishing. I'd be interested to see if people think there is a double standard against Muslims in countries that have traditionally been Christian (namely in Europe which is dealing with migration of Muslims).
No protests here yet though. People here are pretty peaceful in general.
Sunday Katie and I headed downtown to do some more exploring but it turned out to be a big bust. After about 5 mins of walking around some random Senegalese started following us and trying to convince us to go to his shop (which basically happens everytime we come downtown). They see youre foreign and start talking in English and about how they have relatives in the US (which they probably do) and as soon as you think you found someone who is just being friendly they whip out pictures of their store/products. We explained we were actually on our way to eat but we could come by another time. SO, instead of leaving us, he showed us a restaurant and sat with us through the whole lunch. He was very friendly but at the same time, we didn't need him following us around. Fortunately, a friend called and suggested we go to the beach, which provided an excuse to leave. Then, as we were walking back to the bus stop, a group of three men pulled the old "try and bewilder the foreigner so as to easily take his wallet" manuever. I fortunately saw right through it from the start and immediately grabbed my wallet in my back pocket (where, no, I don't normally keep it when Im out) and ran away. I think we're just not gonna go downtown on Sundays any more because its deserted and and theres just people lurking around to bother you.
In an apparent continuing tradition of animals showing up before religious holidays, three huge bulls (is this the right word? cows with horns?) appeared outside the mosque by our house, apparently to be eaten with couscous for the celebration of Tamkharit or the Islamic new year. No classes tomorrow at least!
Ill try and add some more soon but now I have to head home for lunch. |
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