In Bayakh! And it's...

Overwhelming, overstimulating, incredible... There is at least one moment every day, though often two or three or four, when I think that this experience is the coolest and bravest thing I've ever done. Those moments usually come when I'm sitting in on family planning sessions with 40 Senagelese village women, or when I'm talking with case de santé (public health clinics on a village level) volunteers about why they are thrilled that USAID is working with them. I've been completely shocked by the 100% support everyone seems to feel towards the work of USAID in these communities. I had expected at least a little resentment, perhaps some initial unease, but what I keep hearing over and over is the feeling that the Senegalese government can't do everything (a sentiment that is somewhat jarring for me and a little frustrating -- why shouldn't the government be able to provide health care for it's citizens? Why is that the US government's job?) But regardless, since the government isn't helping properly, the work of USAID is essential and highly appreciated. By and large people wish that USAID would help in more ways besides just health care and health education. It's fascinating and inspiring and really a rare privilege I think to see how grateful these people are for my tax dollars, hard at work.

At the same time, there is at least one moment every day, though often two or three or four, when I think that this experience is the hardest, most exhausting, most uncomfortable thing I've ever subjected myself to, and I wish I could retreat into "my" room in "my" house (read: the room that I'm renting, which reminds me a lot of a dorm room,) or back to my friends in Dakar, or to a television set or somewhere that wasn't the realities of being a white American in a rural (not even super, super rural) village. I make babies cry sometimes; they've never seen a white person before and don't know what to make of me. I'm pretty sure the town I'm staying in, Bayakh, has never had a toubab (white person) in town for this long, maybe even for a visit, who knows... The villages I'm working in are all within a dozen kilometers of Bayakh, most much closer than that, but I'm positive that many of them have never ever had a white person visit. Children legitimately scream toubab at me sometimes -- the only white skin they've ever seen before is on TV -- and then follow me around the village and gape. Today I had someone on the community for public health in the village I was in tell me how much he hopes we'll keep in touch because he really wants to move to America but the visa is near impossible to obtain; didn't I want an African husband, though? Maybe he could come live with me? Wouldn't I give him my address and phone number in the States? And this is someone who I was kind of working with, who had been giving me information on health statistics in his village not even two hours before! I felt so awkward wanting nothing but to say "déedéet, baay ma" (no, leave me) but I couldn't... Even more regularly people will say in Wolof, to me or to their friends near me, "Tell the toubab to give me money!" Or women grab my hand to look at my rings and say "That's pretty; give it to me." Men feel a strange need to tell me how many wives they have, and to talk about how great it is to have at least two. (Talk about polygammy being a recurring theme in my semester...) I frequently sit for over an hour in a meeting where I have no idea what's been said. And despite feeling like my French is pretty good, sometimes Roger (the guy I'm shadowing, who is being beyond incredibly helpful even if he is at times a little awkward) has a weird accent that I find almost unintelligible, and I have to ask him to repeat an explanation three or four times... Most days I'm shocked when I collapse into bed to find myself exhausted, even after having slept for 9 or 10 hours the night before.

Needless to say this is a once in a lifetime experience... Internet time is a little pricey here so I'm keeping this post short (plus the keyboard is kind of funky, so it takes me a long time to type) but I'll try to post again later this week. Suffice it to say though that I'm learning a lot, both about development work and about myself, and that I'm safe and healthy and trucking along. Many, many bisous (kisses) from this tiny cyber!

Demain, je pars!

Pretty wild that tomorrow I leave for Bayakh... Here goes nothing!

Today we had language testing with teachers from the Peace Corps (ACTFL tests, I think they're called) to see how our French and Wolof skills have improved. The tests were incredibly nerve-wracking, both of them. The Wolof one because I basically can't speak Wolof; the French one because they asked the most difficult questions that would have been hard to answer even in English! "What do you think about relationships between Senegalese people? In what ways are they different than the rapports between Americans? If you were going to give a lecture at Columbia on Senegal, what would you talk about? Oh, you say the French colonial legacy? Why don't you elaborate on what you think the French colonial legacy in Senegal is!" It quickly then became a semi-stressful day, between my last minute revisions of my Independent Study Proposal and the exams, but it's ending relatively smoothly. I even already have my results back! Novice High in Wolof (not very good compared to some people in my program, but I'm more than content with that) and the real feat, Advanced High in French! That means that I'm about as good at French as anyone can be who is not a native speaker! I actually screamed when Souleye (our Program Director) read me the result. And it makes a lot of sense to me -- I have been speaking almost no Wolof at home but lots of French, which is perfect because I came here to improve my French and I can now prove that I have by an entire "level"! Pretty cool... And now I'm off to Bayakh to speak it some more!

But first I'm actually walking back to Mermoz to say goodbye to my family for a few weeks. Aby will turn 29 while I'm away -- I still can't get over how young she is; she and I are in such dramatically different places in life for only being eight years apart -- and I know that Soukeyna is still heartbroken that I've moved out. She was sobbing as I got in the cab yesterday to move my bags into the apartment. Aby told me as I was leaving that the pleasure has been all hers these past few months, getting to share her culture with me and getting to know me, but I'm not sure I could ever accurately describe in French or in English all the ways in which I have benefited and learned from her... In any case, I'll be seeing them all a few more times before I leave the country, so it's not a real goodbye just yet. It was semi-appropriate though to spend my last night there playing with the girls and then watching the BET Music Awards Show on a Wolof television channel, a final reminder of the strange cultural flux that I think symbolizes Senegalese sentiments about the West and Aby and Bashir's sentiments about life. It's pretty wild though to think how different this culture is from the one I was watching on TV, even if they all share a skin-color. I think about that a lot actually, how different African-American culture is from African culture, if I can generalize them both. In any case it was weird and a little hard (I kept taking long, completely unnecessary breaks) to pack up my one drawer, my small "shelf" of books next to the refrigerator, my medicines from the cabinet in the girls' room and my shoes from the rack. And my stuff from the bathroom I guess, but truth be told that was everything. It was funny to trace the semester thus far through the stuff I've accumulated: wall-hangings from different cities, gifts, all distinct memories that are associated with diverse places and moods but I rarely think about them anymore. Kedougou seems ages ago, let alone my first few weeks here...

To jump back to last week though, it occurs to me that I forgot to mention on Friday that I went to a seder last Wednesday with three other girls on my program! At the house of the Israeli Ambassador to Senegal! It was pretty awesome -- the seder was led by the Ambassador himself who spoke to the room (80 people?) in both French and English. We went around the long tables reading from the haggadah in everyone's native tongues, whether that be Hebrew or English or French. This made it pretty difficult to follow along (I'm not even kidding, I kept tabs on where we were by following the Hebrew -- the language I speak the worst of the three) as we were switching between different haggadah editions with different page numbers and translation languages. There were more white people there than I've seen in any one place in months. There were also about 25 7th-9th graders there from the International School of Dakar (mostly children of foreign embassy or military personnel, though some have parents in Dakar for other private sector jobs,) who were taking a "Junior Ambassadors" class and were there to practice etiquette. It was pretty cute to watch, and I was pleased to see that after two months with little girls I haven't lost my charm with my favorite kid age-group: the pre-teens. (Because they laugh at my jokes, in case you were wondering why...) We didn't stick around after the meal (it was already after 23:00 and we had Wolof the next day at 8:30) but between the sheer awe of the experience and the fabulous time I had talking with the American Ambassador to Senegal (!) I left that night feeling very fulfilled. For others reading this, you may or may not know about my internal struggles with religion since arriving at college... But I've dwelled on my own conflicting sentiments about Judaism less this semester, trading that time in for intense contemplation on living in a highly religious country where nobody understands the concept of not being religious. I have friends who told their families here that they didn't have a religious affiliation, and their families just didn't understand. Even though I feel comfortable sharing that I'm Jewish, I've had a hard time trying to condense all of Judaism into a nice, bite-sized explanation (in French) for people I meet, especially when my own religious practices have become so highly personal and untraditional. I think this internal uneasiness made my seder all the more powerful -- it was wonderful to reconnect with the idea of a Jewish community existing for all Jews all around the world. I'm not articulating it well, but I hope I'm somewhat making my point.

Anyway, I'm running late, in the classic Senegalese (and Jewish?) way. Will try and update again very soon once I find a cyber cafe in Bayakh. Until then, mes amis! Ba beneen yoon!

Jumping off a cliff...

I've been using this metaphor for a few days now, but it feels very accurate. I feel like I'm about to run off a cliff, and I'm hoping that Senegalese teranga (hospitality -- an important value here) will catch me.

Sunday I move out of my home-stay. It's been a strange week, knowing that the end is coming. Normally I would have been extra social to compensate for my imminent departure, but I've been so swamped with work that I haven't had much spare time to play. Additionally the girls are on vacation from school this week, so they've spent the past few days at their grandmother's house. It makes our tiny home feel eerily quiet, not having small girls screaming or crying all the time. I managed to actually be productive at home yesterday, a first for me for the entire semester. It's terrifying that I've been wrapping everything up -- presentations, papers, discussions synthesizing this adventure in cultural immersion... For those staying in Dakar I think it feels a lot less like "the end." For me, I'm bracing myself to legitimately say goodbye to a bunch of people for a while. (Two and a half weeks, but that's a lot in study abroad time...) I'll be more or less alone, with the exception of a few visits from a friend coming to take voice lessons nearby. I may be the only toubab (white person) living in this town... It's been a great week at home, though. I think in Saint-Louis I forgot that I do really like and care about Aby and Bashir -- I was so caught up in all their drama and my frustration at having to deal with it that I forgot why I had initially enjoyed being let into their weird little marriage. Even in these final days I feel like both of them are continuing to open up to me, sharing their lives (and of course their food) with me. They're all pretty upset that I'm leaving, which is incredibly flattering. Soukeyna especially seems distraught, though I've promised that I'll come to her birthday dinner on the 6th (with a present and everything!) I'm not sure that I'm ready to "say goodbye" to them yet -- luckily I don't officially have to until my last day in Dakar on May 16th -- but I'm definitely glad to be leaving while I feel so positively about them. Bashir even asked me to look for summer work in Dakar so that I could come back after Burt's graduation and stay with them for longer. It's incredible to think how far I've come with them, from that first weekend where I locked myself in the courtyard all the way through to today, where I feel so comfortable there that at times I forget that I'm white and their exchange student. How incredible that it feels like my house, where I'm renting a room or something maybe, not even... I don't know, the relationship doesn't really make sense. It feels so natural these days, it's hard to remember a time when it wasn't.

Otherwise this week hasn't been too exciting... Lots of work. I've been doing a lot of reflecting, both on what I've learned about myself and on what I've learned about Dakar and Senegalese culture. It's unreal to think that I'm in the home stretch now...

Sunday I move all my stuff into my beach apartment with 6 other girls at N'gor (!!) on the northern edge of Dakar, Dakar being kind of a triangular-shaped peninsula. I'll stay there until Tuesday morning, getting everything in order for my ISP. And then Tuesday I'm off! Moving to Bayakh, meeting Roger whom I'll be shadowing for a week, moving into his house... It's going to be fast and spontaneous, but I think it's going to be great. In case I haven't explained my project, I'll be living in a town that is surrounded by villages where USAID does development work. I'll spend the first week shadowing a Senegalese man named Roger, a friend of my Wolof professor Matou, and learning about the realities of poverty-reduction strategies. Where is the money going? What are the specific projects being worked on? Have they been successful so far? Is the money being well spent? Then the second week I'll select a specific strategy or village and do an in-depth study, completing interviews of USAID personnel and village residents, all designed to gauge the effects of development work on local cultures and whether or not USAID is appreciated there. The metaphor from the beginning of this post just has to do with how few details I know going in... But that's the Senegalese way! And no matter what happens, I'm going to have interesting things to talk about. Plus, I'll come back and have 8 days to live in an apartment on the beach with nothing to do but write a 40 page paper (ugg...) But I'll need study breaks, right? :o)

I'll try to post again before I leave on Tuesday... Maybe I'll have some exciting stories from the weekend. Bashir still wants to take me out clubbing, after all... We'll see if that happens.

Keur Sedaro (and more... to be read after the other post from today)

I've spent the bulk of the afternoon sitting on the dock outside my hotel looking over the river at the coastline on the other side, admiring palm trees and mosque towers. I successfully managed to read two chapters of my book, which only puts me about 80 pages behind where I need to be by Tuesday. This would sound completely reasonable, if the book wasn't in French, super hard, and I wasn't completely exhausted from sleep deprivation. While I imagine on study abroad programs other people go out and party all the time, that has certainly not been my semester. Sure I've checked out the local bars and jazz clubs, but it takes a full night's sleep every day to make the exhaustion of cultural immersion here enjoyable. However, being in a hotel with 20+ friends has encouraged all of us to hang out a little later, even if it's just watching Mean Girls and talking. Between less sleep and this wretched sunburn though, I'm finding myself a little worn down, and the prospect of an exhausting philosophical journey exploring the tensions of French colonial rule is completely unappealing to me. Oh well -- c'est la vie, quoi, as one of my favorite staff members Bouna would say.

Keur Sedaro. Keur Sedaro is about a 10 minute drive from Thies, which is one of the largest cities in Senegal (maybe the 2nd or 3rd? I don't remember.) Thies seems much calmer than Dakar to be sure, if only because in the marketplace the merchants don't step out of their booths to swarm or surround you. It also has a much smaller urban center it seems, and the entire city feels more residential and spread out. Also of importance, there is significantly less garbage all over the streets/sand. I know the Peace Corps has a large presence in the villages around Thies, but it's not like I saw that many garbage cans in my 30 hours there... Hard to tell why it's so much cleaner, but I noticed it the moment our tour bus entered the city limits. Dakar is just so incredibly dirty -- it's really gross. Black plastic bags hanging from trees, dried up streams covered in garbage, sidewalks with plastic cups and bags and papers strewn everywhere, in places inches deep. I was especially comforted about this aspect of Thies since the village where I will be doing my ISP is just outside of Thies, so I will most likely be living in an apartment there or in Thies proper. There's even a pizza parlor/restaurant with wifi! I didn't get to do a lot of exploring, but what I saw I definitely liked.

Keur Sedaro itself is a village of maybe 500 or 600 people. I was living in Wadde, a "suburb" village of Keur Sedaro, where there were perhaps 100 people? Fewer? Only a couple of families, and they all seemed to have moved from Keur Sedaro to this next-door location, legitimately no more than a three minute sand/dirt path from the Keur Sedaro marketplace. (Don't think of anything extravagant though when I say "marketplace" -- instead imagine a cement gazebo with a flat roof, almost a covered pavilion, with a cement floor. Women (or their husbands and brothers, frequently) go into Thies to buy vegetables, and then back in Keur Sedaro women sell them at a small markup to other locals in order to make the day's meals. I watched my homestay mother in Wadde shop at this market at 10 AM every morning, from the same vendor out of the back of a station wagon. We would buy tomatoes, fish (sometimes dried, sometimes fresh,) carrots, parsnips, eggplants, bitter eggplants, cabbage, spicy peppers, and I'm sure a few other things that I'm forgetting now... Tomato paste one time, I think. Overall I had an incredible experience in Wadde, living with the Mbengue family: mother Aida, father Ndiaye (though he wasn't around all that much, and barely spoke any French -- I was so lucky that Aida spoke enough to communicate well with me!) and the 5 children, 4 boys and a girl. The girl (age 9) is named Ada; I was her homonym and therefore called Ada for the duration of my stay there. The boys are named Mohammed (age 11,) Mbay (age 8,) Mada (age 6) and Moudou (age 4.) Truth be told, I hadn't even realized until I wrote those names down just now that they all start with the letter M... Though it doesn't surprise me terribly: one of the villages outside of Kedougou only has families where their last names start with the letter B. Aida was basically my main informant into village life, though Mohammed and Ada engaged with me a lot, too, as both of them are studying French hard in school. Mohammed told me he wanted to be President Obama, to which I responded that he should start by trying to become President Wade (the president of Senegal) and that if he studied hard, I was sure he could make it happen. Aida however completed the first 6 years of school here (through some middle school) and so her French is pretty decent. She's hosted students every semester for maybe half a dozen years, plus the president of World Learning (the company that runs SIT) a few years back. She was incredibly kind and generous with her time, her insight, and her thoughts on her life and challenges. When I first walked into her home, I was impressed by how cute it looks truth be told! A two-room cement building with a tin-roof, with another three room cement building (about the same size) a little to the side. In the front lawn (which is sand) are three trees surrounded by cement brick circles about 2 feet fall, and tied to the largest tree are the goats. In the back is a chicken coup, and the entire compound is surrounded by a branch fence about 8 or 9 feet high. In front of the main house (the two-room building) is a cement porch of sorts, where on the last night I taught my "siblings" how to play hopscotch. One I saw them writing things with the charcoal pieces left over from cooking lunch, and we started drawing together on the stones outside the kitchen, it occurred to me that hopscotch was a perfect game for the porch. But I digress: I first walked into the room where I would sleep and was stunned. It looked nicer than my room in Dakar! Large wooden bed frame with built-in bedside tables and a mirror in the center of the large head-board, wooden shelves in the corner with photographs of the kids and lotions, a huge wooden bureau/dresser on the side of the room. No electricity, but that wasn't obvious at first. The double bed was covered with a shiny blue comforter equipped with pillows and little decoration doilies that sat at the foot of the bed... It was beautiful, and I was shocked, truth be told. A little later I put together that this was the master bedroom not a guest room -- that I was displacing Aida and Ndiaye for the duration of my stay. They would sleep in the other room, which had no furniture at all. A closed cement room (maybe one window, but if so it was always closed so I don't think so) with a thin/medium thickness mattress in the corner where all five children normally slept. For my three nights in the house, Aida would spread out a second foam piece next to the mattress for herself and Ndiaye. I felt horribly uncomfortable about this, and tried to protest, but the concept of teranga (hospitality) is so important here that I didn't want to seem ungrateful, and she assured me that every student has slept in her bed. In hindsight I'm glad I didn't push too hard -- the mattress on her bed was caving in in the middle and was pretty uncomfortable, in addition to which she removed the fancy comforter (though that word suggests a thickness and warmth that is incorrect... perhaps decorated sheet is a better term, think silky satin) so it didn't seem too fancy when I was trying to sleep there. In addition, I was usually up for at least half an hour (if not three times that) after they had all gone to sleep just writing down my thoughts in my journal, and since my headlight is ridiculously bright I feel like a total tool using it in front of villagers... Seriously, they have no electricity and only dinky or old flashlights, but here comes this toubab student with a super bright light that she wears on top of her face! It's awkward. But it was actually lovely to feel like I really had my own space for a few days -- again, what a wonderful break from my life in Dakar! Right away Aida sat down with me and showed me pictures from past students (they develop them in the States and send them back to Senegal to be delivered by the director of our program) and told me about herself. She's 32 maybe, and while she is Ndiaye's only wife she tells me that he hopes to get a better job and take a second wife. (Something about me and the polygamous men!) Because of this I am immediately predisposed to dislike Ndiaye (I haven't met him yet) and it takes me a few days to realize that I actually kind of like him. Sure he seems to favor his youngest son above all the other children, and like most of the men in traditional Senegalese society he doesn't share any of the domestic work with his wife or daughter, but he works hard as a cab-driver in Thies and provides enough food for all his children and his wife every day. They can even afford "running water" -- a faucet that comes off the side of the house, but at least they don't have to walk to the well! Just this, not even a faucet for the kitchen and no plumbing or running water in either the toilet room or the shower room, costs 4.500 or 5.000 CFA a month ($9 or 10 USD, and in case you can't tell I'm writing money with the European/rest-of-the-world usage of the period rather than the comma.) Seeing him come home every day tired though made me feel bad about fighting so hard with taxi drivers over a few hundred CFA every time I negotiate cab fare. I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me that even taxi drivers probably have small kids with mouths to feed and in need of notebooks... After all, there are so many kids in this country and especially in rural villages. It's hard to tell though how much his income can provide, as I learned that a lot of the school supplies and clothes for the kids are gifts post-stay from past visiting students...

At the end of my stay (to throw this in out of order) I learned that to install electricity in every room (the bedroom, the second room, the kitchen, the shower room, the toilet,) plus one extra street lamp type fixture outside, would cost 100.000 CFA ($200.) Of course this was incredibly expensive for Aida and Ndiaye, though they were talking about it and hoping it would be feasible at some point in the future. It was in these moments, as I felt very close to Aida and the kids by this point, that I most felt the difference between my economic standing and theirs. This family of 7, who bought me small custard snacks and shared their green mango slices with me, who let me sleep in the only real bed they own, who taught me Wolof words and played with me every day, who bought me as well as the other kids banana bread corn muffins and sent me away in the end with a huge loaf of bread -- I could easily just pay the cost of their electricity installation. So that the kids could study at night, so that they wouldn't have to walk home from their neighbors' houses (where there are TVs sometimes) in the pitch black, so that nobody would get burned knocking over a candle that is providing the entire light for the room after 8 PM... At the same time that's not my job, and it's not as if I feel so wealthy in the States where the cost of living is higher! And paying for the installation doesn't change that the electricity charges monthly would still be expensive, that I can't guarantee if I wired them $200 it would even go to that and not something else, that there will always be more problems and more families that need electricity... But it's not as if every little bit doesn't help! Every jeans jacket sent my a former student, every pen and pencil and notebook and crayon... Lots to think about.

One of my most memorable moments with the Mbengues was on my second day in Wadde. Aida was cooking (as she spends the entire day doing every day) and I spent the morning talking with friends who were either staying in Wadde (two others) or in Keur Sedaro and the other surrounding villages, all within a 15 minute walk of each other. When I came home and was waiting around for lunch to be ready, Aida pointed out to me that Mbay had hurt his foot and maybe I could take a look at it. I was distracted by the other Wadde students for a while, and Bouna (one of our staff members) came by to visit and check in on me from Thies for no good reason, so it took about 45 minutes for me to finally sit down and take a look at the problem. To preface this story, and maybe I said this when I was talking about Aminata's foot in Samecouta, but I am absolutely not a doctor. I'm not even pre-med! Every time (and I mean every time) I get sick at school, I call my mom and I call Ruthie for immediate advice. But here I am, sitting with this 8 year old and looking at a half-dime-sized hole in his foot. He tells me in very broken French (or more that it's being translated for me from Wolof into French by his friends and older siblings) that it was an insect that ate it's way into his foot -- my best guess is ring worm since there's a huge ring around the hole. It's painful to the touch, and covered in sand and dirt and pus. He can't walk flat-footed because the ring around the sore has spread onto the bottom of his foot, so with the left one he walks on the outside only. I have no idea what to do for this child. He needs to see a doctor, that's pretty clear to me. But doctors are expensive, and I was specifically asked to help. Aby and Bashir had been having what appeared to be a serious talk the morning I was leaving (and maybe a serious fight the night before when I was packing,) and so in the uncomfortable maneuvering around the house I had decided not to walk into the girls' room and grab my small medical kit from the cabinet there. Because of this I only have with me moist toilettes, neosporin, and a box of different sized bandaids. Again, my medical knowledge is awful, but I know that neosporin wont fix this. Even so, I sit down on a small (1'x1'x1') stool and rest Mbay's foot on my leg while he sits in a plastic chair. I clean the area with three different wet wipes, and then cover the area in disinfectant. I try to put bandaids over that, but his skin is so dirty that the bandaids dont seem to stick. I manage to hold on the largest bandaid with two other small bandaids, but I know right away that all three will fall off before bed that night. Even when I tie a strip of extra fabric around his foot to hold the bandages on, it's clear that this is not a functional solution. Moreover Mbay doesn't always wear shoes (most of the children don't all the time) and there is sand everywhere, it's unavoidable. The front lawn is basically a beach, and the boys all play active games and get dirty just like boys do anywhere. Mbay is beyond appreciative to be sure, but as soon as I finish with him a family friend who must be about 12 who lives in Wadde as well asks me if I can help him, too. He rolls up his pant leg and shows me huge sores, many of which have scabbed over and are at least as big as quarters. There are a few on his feet too, though more on the top that on the sides or bottoms. He says these were also insects, though I have no idea what kind of insect eats at flesh like that. My bandaids wont even work on these -- they're already scabbed over. I'm a little queezy as I look back and forth between this leg and this boy's dirty, hopeful face. I tell him that all I can do is clean them and put on the cream, but again I have no idea what to do to make them better. Another half hour goes by as I clean and dab on neosporin. I'm almost besides myself, overwhelmed by frustration and my own lack of knowledge and supplies, by my own weak stomach about blood and gore and at the awful reality that these sores are completely preventable and avoidable with some bug spray and rapid treatment before they get big! But I didn't have anywhere to go and cry or yell, so I take a short walk around Wadde (5 minutes, tops) and come back to sit down and play with the kids again. This is the reality of their life, after all. I tell Aida during lunch that if at all possible Mbay should see a doctor (she nods her head in approval but starts talking to Ndiaye in Wolof, and I understand the word money being used a couple of times...) In the meantime, I tell her that when I come back to visit when I'm near Thies during ISP period (I really became quite fond of the whole family, and was thrilled that my goodbyes were only for a few weeks) I would bring Mbay some close-toed shoes so that at least he could keep his foot clean. And hopefully more support on the bottom of his foot (more than a flip-flop, at least) would be of some assistance in terms of the pain....

There are so many stories I want to share here but I'm only going to write for a few more minutes (without proof-reading again, my apologies) before I head down to dinner with the group for our final meal in Saint-Louis. (The restaurant here is so fancy, and super delicious! Plus we get to sit on the dock by the water... it's beautiful.) But let me run through some highlights I guess. On the last night the entire village and surrounding villages of Keur Sedaro through a dance for us, with tama and djembe drummers, and a huge percentage of the population turned out to watch and participate. All of us students were dressed in our parents' traditional outfits -- when I can, back in Dakar, I'll post some pictures of me wearing a coral colored boubou, hair wrap and all. If I do say so myself, I looked impressively good. Another memorable moment was learning how to cook cebu jen with Aida all morning on my last day, in the hot-box of a kitchen she uses. Imagine a small metal burner-like structure, where one burns wood underneath and puts the pot on top. But there's no chimney, it's just a cement room with a door and a window. Why the "stove" isn't put near the window I have no idea, but the entire corner of the room is charred black and the room fills with smoke. I'm floored that Aida doesn't have lung cancer from all the smoke she breathes in. But after an entire morning of cooking, trying to take good mental notes on her recipe, I ate what is easily tied for the best cebu jen of my entire stay. I also have vivid memories of my last night, standing outside the house and looking up at the incredibly bright stars just singing to myself and feeling very at peace with the world. Then, when Ndiaye heard me and started laughing at me, I was beckoned inside to sit with the family on the crowded mattress and natt (plastic mat) until bed-time. I fell asleep there beside them all as we all reposed together... Anyway.

I'll try and add to this another time. Tomorrow I head back to Dakar -- will try to update in a couple of days. More promptly than these two today, to be sure. Ba beneen yoon!

A Preliminary Update from Saint-Louis

AH it's been far too long since I last posted. But (sadly) one of my best friend's wallet just got stolen, so we've retreated back to the hotel so that she can call her parents and take a shower... It sucks, she's probably the fifth or sixth person to have a wallet or cell phone stolen (or an iPod one time,) and another one of my closest friends got scammed and accidentally gave away $40 USD (long story...) It's just so hard to figure out the line here between feeling like a tourist and feeling like a local. Especially because the concept of hospitality is so all-encompassing here, there's a strong desire to trust people and feel comfortable. Sometimes (over 50% of the time, I would say!) the Senegalese get offended when you act suspicious or withdrawn; it's a culture (Wolof culture, and then Senegalese culture as Wolof has expanded to be a near-national language in the past 50 years) that believes incredibly fervently in the importance of sharing (money, stories, opinions, food, etc.) so separating yourself by not responding to questions or ignoring people and keeping your distance in any way can be considered rude by the locals. At the same time, occasionally I think I and others forget that we stand out intensely by being white. All the time. Erin and I took out our wallets to buy a piece of sliced coconut and in the five minutes between that interaction and when she was looking at a scarf in a shop a few blocks away, someone reached a hand into her bag and took the wallet. Luckily she didn't lose too much money, but she lost her room key from Dakar and of course it just feels incredibly violating. Anyway, normally I would be out and about in the middle of the day, but we came back to our stunning hotel so that she can regroup her thoughts, which gives me the perfect opportunity to jot down some of my thoughts recently and the many things I've been up to in the past two weeks.

I'll work backwards in time, as that's easier for me. I'm currently in Saint-Louis, which was the capital of Senegal until 1960 when Senegal became independent from the French. In fact, today (April 4) is Independence Day! I spent the morning with two girlfriends at the parade in one of the main squares, Le Place Faidherbe, which is named after the former governor of Saint-Louis under colonialism. There is also a bridge named after him here, but apparently the local sentiments about Faidherbe are somewhat twisted and multi-faceted. On the one hand, he spoke Wolof fluently, took a Senegalese wife, and pushed school construction and infrastructure development, but on the other hand he represents the complete authority and degradation of colonial rule. In Saint-Louis it's even more complicated because of the city's pride about being the former capital, and because under French colonialism citizens of Saint-Louis (as well as Dakar, Goree, and one other region whose name I'm forgetting) were all awarded French citizenship. Of course everyone else in Senegal was not offered this luxury, and I get the impression that even those granted French citizenship were terrified under colonial rule of entering French-dominated areas... There are some that wish to rename Le Place Faidherbe after one of the founders of a Muslim brotherhood prevalent in Senegal, but the municipal committee of Saint-Louis is highly sympathetic to the French legacy, and has not approved the name change. It's certainly hard to avoid the realities of the French presence here -- the small island of Saint-Louis (it takes maybe 45 minutes to walk from the south end to the northern tip, and it's the equivalent of maybe 6 or 8 blocks wide in NYC blocks) is a perfect grid system (unlike Dakar) with houses with balconies and curved iron decorations, painted in Mediterranean pastel colors. It's beautiful. It reminds me of the architecture on l'ile de Goree (check back to an entry in February about the island... I think I mostly wrote on la Maison des Esclaves) which makes sense since that was another key area of French rule. But it's hard to find it beautiful and find it not Senegalese all at once, though that makes me question what "Senegalese" architecture really is, and if I think of Senegalese cities as looking plainer and poorer, is that offensive to deny them of the French culture that in some ways has deeply permeated a modern Senegalese reality? Anyway, the island is beautiful. Our hotel is incredibly fancy and is facing the water, la fleuve du Senegal (the Senegal river.) The island is in the middle of the river, and the city kind of spills onto the banks of either side. If you drive out to the western edge of Saint-Louis, there are incredible beaches on the Atlantic. I've spent a few quality chunks of time on the beach so far, including a morning two days ago where I tempted the fates and really badly sunburned myself... (why must I do this every year??) But it's beautiful, even if the undertow is strong. It's crazy to think that this is the same body of water that I stand in when I go to the beaches off Long Island... In particular, it's breathtaking how many beautiful shells there are all over the beaches here! I feel awful taking them with me, but the American attitude of preserving local natural beauty has certainly not taken hold yet here. (Have I talked about how garbage is everywhere in Dakar? Literally, everywhere.) And the shells are just everywhere, absolutely ubiquitous. Plus we're pretty close to the equator, so the sun looks huge as it sets on the horizon. A favorite past-time of the group is to sing songs from the Lion King as we wait for a huge, red, African sun to sink towards the ocean, as if floating like a huge rubber ball. Anyway.

I've spent most of my time in Saint-Louis wandering around. We had a few morning lectures, but basically the week has felt like Spring Break. Of course then we had historical group presentations in French yesterday, so there are certainly moments of real school, but it feels different to conduct research through interviewing and mapmaking, using maybe one or two books or websites. It's starting to sink in that my independent study will be just that -- lots of interviewing, lots of participant observation... I've never felt more like an anthropology major. Anyway the presentations went fine (my French is getting pretty strong! Not fluent, but I can say anything I want if I allow myself to talk around the occasional word I don't remember;) sadly next week I'll have to seriously settle back into an academic mind-set. Besides my formal independent study proposal, I have a paper on my last village stay (more about that in a moment,) a French presentation on a super-challenging Senegalese book called L'Aventure Ambigue, and a final Wolof exam. It's like midterms, seriously. But yes, we've had lots of spare time to explore and shop and go to the beach. We spent an afternoon taking pirogue rides (traditional Senegalese boats that look like canoes painted with geometric designs in primary colors... Have I talked about them at some point? I just love them,) and bird-watching, mostly pelicans. One evening we went to a beach about 20 minutes from Saint-Louis where you can walk along the beach until you're actually in Mauritania, which was exactly the same as the Saint-Louis beach by the hydrobase that we frequent except that we could make jokes about being in Mauritania and speculate on sweeping national differences (Mauritania is cleaner, there are fewer people, the men are less sketchy and assertive...) Saint-Louis is much calmer than Dakar, though much more touristy. It's hard to have time to shop and at the same time know that we are getting initial price offers that are twice as high as we would get in Dakar, just because tourists don't necessarily know. The pricing here still fascinates me, and even as I buy more and more I still have little sense of when I'm suggesting a truly unrealistically low price. For example, the other day I bought two thin silver bracelets for 5.000 CFA ($10) but the original price offer was 15.000 CFA. But it took two days and an accumulative hour plus to negotiate that down. I'll look at a necklace, decide that I like it and ask the price, and then decide whether or not I'm willing to argue it down from the $8 USD starting price... Adjusting back to pricing in the States might be awful, though I do miss the concept of having a set price, of knowing that I'm not getting ripped off. Though I guess you can get ripped-off in the States, it just feels different here. There have been a few days in Saint-Louis where I've felt like I'm in a strange sort of funk -- not because anything happened or I'm stressed or upset, but as if I'm defaulting at one notch below my normal energy level. Feeling less bubbly. Does that make sense? It's pretty much faded by now, but I'm again finding that it's awkward to live in such an exciting place where I feel my time here racing by but I also know that I can't be as excited as a new traveller for three and a half months. And having 24 hour internet access in the hotel is allowing me to be more connected to my "other" life, which is wonderful and a little awkward all at once. I had forgotten how often I am tempted to check my email and facebook!

I'm going to post this now with a promise that I will write more later... I want to talk about my second village stay for a while, and my brief time in Thies which is near where I will be during my independent study project (ISP.) I'm pretty hungry at this point, and Saint-Louis is famous for cebu jen, a rice and fish dish with a tomato/oil sauce and vegetables. Cebu jen is the national dish of Senegal, and it originated here. The fish here is absolutely phenomenal -- comparable to Seattle for sure, which makes me happier than I could possibly describe quickly. In the mornings, you can stand on the south end of the island and watch across on the western section of mainland where gigantic refrigerated trucks pick up fresh fish and drive it all around the country. And unlike in Dakar, more of the fish in Saint-Louis is baked (as opposed to fried) which is delicious. A perfect eating afternoon here for me consists of Saint-Louis cebu jen, sugar-coated peanuts off the street which come in small packets for 25 CFA each (5 cents?) and a banana from a local fruit cart at 100 CFA (25 cents-ish.) But I promise once I am well-fed, I will come back and talk about Keur Sedaro and more. Apologies that I am not proof-reading this entry.

OH and tangentially, but it's short and I don't want to forget (plus just in case you've forgotten that this is still Africa and not an idyllic spring break in Cancun,) yesterday I was approached by a small boy, maybe age 7, begging for money. This happens to me a few times a day for sure, sometimes more, and especially when I'm with other white people or toubabs as we're called. What jarred me about this encounter was that the boy was wearing a Sonics t-shirt. Forgetting about the incredible amounts of money that were spent trying to keep the Sonics in Seattle, this boy was wearing a former symbol of pride for my hometown, a place that he has for sure never heard of. To make matters worse, I had just purchased maybe 100 CFA worth of peanuts because I needed a snack, and I was eating them in front of this poor and hungry child, telling him that I wouldn't give him any money. It's always incredibly conflicting trying to decide whether to give money or not, but many of the children especially are sent by their koranic school type instructors to beg on the streets, and only sometimes does that money go to food for the children as opposed to the instructor's pockets. Moreover, it's exhausting being asked for money all the time, even more so when I already feel conflicted about being a "poor student" on what feels like a budget, while by Senegalese standards I have (both in my bank account personally and in terms of broader access) lots of money -- I'm a walking dollar sign as a white person at times. Hence Erin's wallet. Anyway, it's moments like that which keep me from slipping into any sort of comfortable life here, as so much of Senegal (and I extrapolate so much of West-Africa as well, given the strong regional culture and pride) is riddled with contradictions and paradoxes: rich and poor in the same place, a religion that preaches peace and respect above all else but frequently denies women all kinds of rights, garbage everywhere but stunning natural beauty, more to be sure... I'll try and make a list sometime. It is hard to be comfortable here, to ever be entirely at peace with the strange reality of being more in-touch with the culture than a tourist but not accustomed to the melange of development and historic practices the way Bashir or Aby would feel... I'm rambling and becoming inarticulate, I'm sure a cause de my hunger. A tout a l'heure!