Keur - Home

Jeex Na - It's Finished

On my first morning here, a group of us walked along the ocean until we reached the top of a cliff overlooking the two-towered Mosquée de la Divinitée. We stood there, breathing in the heavily exhaust-tainted sea breeze and taking in the view, as if to say, “Hey, Africa, we’re here now. Bring it.” We were naïve, eager, fat, paranoid, pale, sweaty and, on the whole, a little bit awkward.

Today, I found myself one of the last three remaining from the program in Dakar. It’s been seriously painful seeing everyone go and the life I’ve led turning from reality into a memory. During my time here I’ve experienced moments of joy which have left me feeling weightless. I have in fact lost weight, shaved my head and had my skin turn multiple shades darker. There are remnants of scraped away bug bites and pimples all over my face and limbs and I can never seem to adequately clean my feet. I have squeezed my hands into the tightest fists I could in frustration and spread my fingers out as wide as they’d go just to feel the sand fall through them. I’ve never seen so many rainbows in my life or been rained on so hard. I learned to know what time of day it is by what I hear. The prayers, the planes, the roosters, the children, the roman gladiator-esque horn of the garbage trucks and the djembes each represent something. At times, I’ve wanted nothing more than to just leave and then the next day been wholly convinced that I can never leave this place. My body has been run down by sickness, self-induced insomnia and malnutrition to points its never experienced before. I’ve become more fearless, but at the same time developed new fears and insecurities. I’ve voluntarily taken more time to myself to think and just be than I ever have before. And I think that was one of the most valuable things I’ve done here.

People say they come to Africa to find themselves. I never felt particularly lost so that’s not why I came. However, I do think that coming here has shown me a lot about myself, some of which I’m proud of and some of which I’m not. I honestly didn’t expect to feel so different about myself nor so attached to this place.

“We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all of our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time. And all shall be well…”
- T.S. Eliot

Ba beneen yoon, Sénégal, Inshallah.

Jërëjëf, Merci, Thank you.

For images from Tabaski, my Birthday Party on Île Ngor and Farewells, follow these links:
Birthdays and Goats WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC IMAGES OF SLAUGHTERED GOATS. NOT SUITABLE FOR YOUNG CHILDREN OR VEGETARIANS.
Farewells

Juroom Ñeent - Nine

In Africa there are fifty-four countries, dozens of languages spoken, hundreds of millions of people living without electricity, a handful of dictators, thirteen net oil exporters and one nation hosting the world cup in 2010. It is a continent where one can see the juxtaposition of the absolute extremes of poverty standing just out of frame of the picture of paradise. It is where I’ve lived and learned for the past four months. It is a place where we Americans aspire to come to experience, well, ‘Africa’.

On Friday, a group of friends and I packed up our bags yet again to leave Dakar for the weekend. This time our destination was Lampoul in northern Senegal, a small desert in the middle of an oasis. We arrived late in the afternoon, missing the worst of the desert heat and put our packs inside the white Mauritanian style tents set on the edge of the desert. In front of us were gigantic sand dunes, blown smooth by the wind, dipping and rising over one another. Effectively, we stood at the edge of our own gigantic sandbox. Immediately reverting to our elementary school selves, we sprinted up the face of the dunes, log-rolled back down them, threw ourselves off the apexes, made shapes with our fingers in the sand and watched as the sand melted off the peaks, wicked away by the wind. All the while my finger kept clicking on my camera’s shutter, capitalizing on the opportunity to be in what felt like untouched nature. But what was odd about this experience was how unbelievably unnatural it actually was. After spending the night making s’mores with French butter cookies under the stars in the middle of the desert, the following morning we walked straight from one end of the desert to the other and at the peak of the highest dune, one could plainly see that the desert was suspiciously rectangular shaped, lined on all sides by rows of trees and brush. The night before, it felt like I could’ve trekked across the desert for days but then the next morning, l was surprised that ‘salvation’ was right over the next dune. Although I don’t think it took away from the experience itself, as I photographed I felt like the director of ‘Titanic’ must have felt filming inside an enormous wave pool. While if I cropped the trees in the background out of my frame, it gave the illusion of a never-ending desert, I knew in my head that it wasn’t the reality of it.








This same scenario has played itself out time and time again while here. When my friends and I visited the Reserve de Bandia, I stood ten feet away from a rhinoceros and saw gazelles leap across the hood of our 4x4. However, barely any of the animals at the reserve were native to Senegal. I might as well have been driving around Disney’s Animal Kingdom. In spite of the artificiality of it, it felt very ‘African’, which is to say what you expect Africa to feel like, at least from a tourist approach. As I’ve spoken to friends back home and thought about my experiences here, I’ve realized that there is definitely a notion among Americans that one doesn’t go to Senegal, Kenya, Ghana or Ethiopia, one goes to Africa. Inevitably, someone will ask me “how was Africa?” when I get home, and I’m not sure how I’ll answer. In spite of the fact that that this continent is larger than the United States, Europe, India and China combined, there is a preconceived stereotypical African experience. Beyond these clichéd ‘African’ experiences, I have learned so much more from T.I.A. (This is Africa) moments.

If we’re going to generalize, what’s happened here has changed my view of Africa. Mainly, I’ve become severely more pessimistic on a number of different levels having to do with the future of the continent and its poeople.

Although I’ve been taking a course on economic development while here and have been studying it since senior year of high school, I learned the most about it outside of the classroom in Senegal. When I traveled to India in the summer of 2006, I saw serious levels of poverty. But in three weeks there and as a tourist it never really became tangible nor did I get to know those who live in a state of poverty or the realities of it, but instead lived in a bubble of hospitality provided courtesy of the generous Ramaswami family. Instead, when living in Senegal, there is no escaping the poverty which affects the lives of so many here even though I live in a three-story home with a wealthy well-educated family.

For the past four months, each day I have been confronted by and reminded of it in the endless numbers of children begging in tattered clothing who would ask me for money, food or whatever I happened to have in my hand at the moment and the number of people who come to Dakar, who upon first impression I believed to be poor without knowing how much worse it could get, for the work opportunities unavailable elsewhere in other parts of the country or even from other nations in worse situations. On my rural visit in Salamata, I saw illiterate adults and their young children rapidly heading down the same path as their parents as education became a time for them to be beaten, instead of helped. I saw for the first time what poverty can do to a people and their outlook on life and how unbelievably inefficient, and sometimes inappropriate, the process of furthering economic development can be.

The people who lived in Salamata, albeit unable to afford basic needs, seemed content with the simplicity of their lifestyle. However, in spite of this, there was a strong feeling that these people needed our help. That we could teach the children the tenses of ‘être’ and ‘avoir’, bring solar panels to the village, bring in an NGO to build a school. But then again, all those things were actually already there. Everyone (read: NGO’s and foreign governments) was there lending a helping hand, yet in spite of the collective efforts which may help in small steps, on a broader spectrum from what I have seen I believe they have failed.

Then again, who says that development in this direction is what’s right for these people. Maybe they’ll be happier without all the materialism and goal-oriented mindset of the western idea of a developed nation. Maybe they’re better off making pot after pot of over sugared tea. Even if it may not be the right definition of development, it became evident to me that whether or not they wanted to accept it, it’s imposed on them. This doesn’t necessarily occur through NGO’s or the Peace Corps entering and building up an infrastructure to encourage development, but rather through the spread of media.

In the computer labs at Suffolk, I have never seen so many people watching music videos on YouTube. The only clothes you can buy in the markets are either poorly done knock offs of glittery luxury labels or things that got passed on from the Salvation Army. Inevitably, this is going to lead to the younger generations aspiring to western ideals and then maybe development in the traditional sense is what’s actually best.

To see more of my photos from Lampoul, follow the links below:
A Giant Sandbox of Emotion: Evening
A Giant Sandbox of Emotion: Morning

Tana Alla - No problems (Pulaar)

Lying diagonally with my feet off the edge of the bed and wishing I hadn’t eaten all those things I had the day before, the room span a bit and my head throbbed. I dreaded having to use the toilet again. I say this because the ‘toilet’ was a hole in the ground approximately the size of a ripe grapefruit, not to mention home to a seriously disturbing number of cockroaches and flies. From outside the hut, I heard the very deep voice of a man speaking English with a heavy British accent and some Franco-African trills at the ends of his words. Considering barely anyone spoke Wolof, let alone French in Salamata, this man who somehow spoke English intrigued me. I gathered enough will power to get myself upright and out of the low doorway of the hut. Taller than me, he stood next to his motorcycle, towering over the young boys of the compound playing soccer and the women and girls sifting through beans and roasted peanuts on the ground. He was speaking about the elections with our peace corps volunteer, seeming to be very much enjoying the opportunity to speak English. I joined in on the conversation and found out he was a representative of World Vision, an NGO that arranges for people in developed countries to sponsor children living in poverty. Not knowing how to use his digital camera, he asked me to take pictures of the children to be e-mailed to their British sponsor families. Having been with the children for nearly a week already and taken pictures of them, they cooperated with my hand motions and nods. With them properly positioned in the sunlight, I took their pictures. The man from World Vision was incredibly pleased with how simple it had been and how the pictures turned out while the kids were happy to find out what they looked like. I’m pretty sure most of the young children have never seen a mirror before. Soon thereafter, the man had gotten what he needed, put on his helmet, kicked his bike to a start and sped off, blowing up sand into the air in his wake.

The boys went back to playing soccer while the girls took their places on the ground again. The eldest took the one plastic chair being supported on its front two legs by pieces of wood as another girl sat in front of her so she could finish having her hair braided. I went back into the hut to lie down again and wait for our lunch of couscous with leaf sauce, a sauce of *drumroll* boiled leaves.

It was bizarre to find myself on the other end of all the canned food drives of junior school (the name for elementary school at UNIS), to find myself in one of those commercials asking you, yes, you to give a child a chance, to find myself with these people who before this had just been something I’d read about in newspapers or seen on television. While they lacked many things, they seemed genuinely happy. Having cup after cup of tea with friends and greeting everyone for at least a minute was enough. In America, we are very much defined by what we do. After your name, the inevitable next question is “What do you do?” (Or, if in college, “What’s your major?”) For them, it wasn’t just about doing. It seemed to be the opposite in Salamata where they found satisfaction in the company of others and producing for themselves simply what they needed to get by. A way of life definitely not for me, but for a week it was a very welcome break.

After a fourteen-hour car ride from Dakar through dust clouds and past fields of burning trash then tall baobabs then salt flats, we arrived in Kolda. At the peace corps house, having only gotten a few 20-minute periods of beyond bumpy sleep on the ride down after having been out dancing the night before just up until getting into the car to leave, I passed out early. The next morning, we tried to leave before the sun got too high, strapping our packs onto the backs of our bikes (which were actually rather nice, although very beat up, Trek bikes courtesy of the US Peace Corps) and riding out the 20 kilometers to Salamata in a group of three along paved roads. It felt great to be back on a bike and a little bit surreal riding alongside cotton fields and old Pulaar men. As we got further and further from Kolda, the calls from the children on the side of the road changed from “toubab toubab” to “toubako toubako”. You can guess what toubako means. At the village, we were greeted at our compound by our host family for the week and had missed greeting the chief as he was out working in the fields. Instead of taking lunch there, we hopped back on our bikes at the peak of the midday heat and made our way out further towards a weekly market. Not realizing what the heat could do, the additional fifteen kilometers out to the market was rough, but the countryside was beautiful and I managed to stretch what I had left in my water bottle to get me through it. Once we hit the market, the first matter of business was lunch. Between the three of us, we ate the last of a woman’s bean sandwiches for approximately seventy cents, my first experience with tapalapa, the hand-made baguette style bread of the region which was incredible. Making our way through the market and in desperate need of some relief from the dehydration and heat, our peace corps volunteer, Danny, insisted that we try the glaçes. Coming in bissap and baobab flavor, these miniature frozen juice bags looked a little bit dubious—but incredibly delicious. Throwing caution to the wind after having already biked nearly forty kilometers on the day in the African heat, I figured one small bag of frozen bissap juice (which is boiled in its preparation) couldn’t do too much damage. Alxamdoulilaah, it was incredible. Biting into the bottom left corner of the plastic bag with my teeth, it was everything I wanted at that exact moment. And then I wanted more. And this is where I think I got sick. A bag of donuts, 4 bissap bags and 1 baobab bag later, I was satisfied and we took a seat a little bit away from the market in the shade. Just as the sun began to set we rode back to Salamata, bringing up the total amount biked in our first day to about 50 kilometers or a little over 30 miles.

That night I shared a bed with the other American student, an upgrade from what I had imagined myself doing. It turns out that there wasn’t much for us to really doing the day since our peace corps volunteer, albeit an agriculture volunteer, was not in fact a farmer. His responsibility was not to go out in the fields and do the same work as the rest of the farmers but rather to change the way that they farmed to make it self-sustainable and efficient. This led to a lot of free time.

While it had gotten cool in Dakar, in the Kolda region, it was still frustrating hot and humid during the day. As a result, during the day, we stuck around the compound sorting through beans to be eaten and to be replanted, drinking tea with the men and picking up a few phrases in pulaar. One afternoon, I went out by myself into the fields to read the copy of “Prague” I’d taken from the peace corps house and to photograph. Armed with only my camera, “Prague” and my cell phone, I found a nice spot just on the edge of a millet field and looking out into a squash field. Et à ma grande surprise, c’était calme. Also to my surprise was that in the middle of a squash field and within view of the forest from where I could hear the calls of the monkeys and baboons, I had full service. In a village where they had neither running water nor electricity, they had not one but two cell phone towers. Development can be somewhat top-heavy, with this example being especially bizarre, since if someone had a cell phone it was mainly as a status symbol as they couldn’t afford to put credit on it. But I was glad to be able to stay in touch with my friends from the program when I felt so far away from everything.

Coming back to Dakar felt incredible. While I loved my time in Salamata, it was a serious relief to come back to civilization, a term I’ve learned is very much relative. Dinner that first night back was the first time since the first few weeks of ceebu jen at the beginning of the program that I’d enjoyed rice which had been considered a luxury in Salamata. I was particularly happy to have a bathroom again, even though there might not be a toilet seat and water all over the place, it was still better than using a hole in the ground. But mainly, I was happy to be back in a place that’s started to feel like home.

To see more pictures from my time in Salamata, please follow these links:
Rural Visits 1
Rural Visits 2

Sunu - Our

I don’t cry.

I’ve lived an incredibly gifted life during which I’ve avoided many of the worst situations that would bring me to tears but at a little before five in the morning on November 5th, 2008, sitting on a broken cot in the Peace Corps house in Kolda, Senegal, I finally cried. No one in the room seemed to notice as everyone was watching Obama speak to millions on the laptop which we had streaming CNN.com live.

It felt odd. Especially since I wasn’t sad.

While I know crying on this past election night was an experience shared by many, people did so for different reasons. I thought of Gladys, Randy’s grandmother who passed away earlier this year at the age of 102. An African-American woman who grew up in Harlem and lived through so many different periods of American history. It’s too bad she couldn’t live to see it through to Obama’s election.

I thought of when we found out Bush was reelected in biology class and Kirini, Nicolette and Libby immediately walked out of the classroom in tears.

This time it was different.

I was honestly proud to be an American. I no longer felt like I had to admit to being American. It felt like we, as a people, had accomplished something—a victory recognized and celebrated by the world. Besides a few periods of the Clinton administration, during my politically-conscious lifetime, I’ve felt that America has done significantly more bad than good. As a result, and particularly as of late, we’ve paid for it with our reputation, something felt particularly hard when abroad.

In Senegal, ever since I’ve arrived here the one positive thing people have without fail said about Americans is “Obama!”, usually accompanied by a thumbs up. It’s pretty safe to say that Obama would have gotten Senegal’s vote. On the day before leaving for my rural visits, while in downtown Dakar, a parade of car rapides, trucks, cars and buses drove by with pictures of and signs for Obama, people cheering and drums playing. While in Salamata, a village of only a few hundred outside of Kolda without access to television, the internet or newspapers, they referred to him as “Notre président” (Our President), cheering that the Maison Blanche (White House) had now become the Maison Noire (Black House).

With the election of President Obama, it really does give me some hope for the US. I may be naïve in thinking that not all politicians are the same and that Obama will do something different than what we’ve had in the past, but I’m excited by the premise of a future with the rest of the world behind us.

Gerte - Peanuts

An idea borrowed from a friend and reminiscent of early Firetrky (my first blog)—a list.

You know you’ve been in Senegal for a long time when:

1. You feel no guilt in throwing your trash on the ground or out of the window of a moving car
2. Bugs in your meal simply means more protein
3. You’ve seen an animal grow up, then have eaten said animal
4. You can vaguely find your way around downtown Dakar
5. You realize that it can actually be cold here
6. You no longer find breasts sexually attractive
7. You add “inshallah” or “alxamdulilaay” onto the ends of your sentences
8. You felt guilty about eating in public and now cherish feeling no guilt at all, but remain conscious of the action
9. Your natural response to a yes or no question is “Waaw” or “Deedeet”
10. Chocolate on bread is no longer a weird concept, but rather a delicious and easy-on-the-wallet snack
11. The ideas of personal space and hygiene no longer exist
12. Anything done with your left hand feels inherently dirty
13. You’ve tried all the Biskrem varieties (Original, Versem, and Dark)
14. Wolof miraculously begins to make sense
15. Gin is your liquor of choice
16. Women with makeup look bizarre
17. You’ve mastered the Senegalese hiss
18. You no longer call, but only send text messages
19. Hand sanitizer and malaria prophylaxis become a part of your daily routine
21. Uploading photos to Facebook is the bane of your existence
22. Dakar feels luxurious
23. You take Car Rapides or Ndiaga Ndiayes on your own
23a. You learn how to spell and pronounce Ndiaga Ndiaye
24. You manage not to burn your tongue while drinking ataaya (Senegalese tea)
25. Anything above 2000 CFA ($4.00) for a cab ride is an absolutely ludicrous concept
26. You learn the words and beats to the songs played in the clubs
27. You’ve done the row-tak dance
28. You’ve devoured a plate of otherwise less-than-spectacular food and not cared because it hit the spot like nothing else
29. You stop going to Le Mex and Just 4 U
30. You realize that you’ve done most of the things in the guidebook
31. You forget what your face used to feel like
32. You forget what you used to look like (see ‘Africa cut’)
33. You’ve decided you’re either a Flag drinker or a Gazelle drinker
34. You walk through your neighborhood and know the people you speak with
35. You understand that civilization is relative
36. You look forward to the next ‘promotion’ day
37. You’re as close with your Senegalese friends as you are with your American friends
38. You have a very complicated relationship with rice
39. You can almost dance like a Senegalese person
40. You can’t name a single movie in theaters in the US
41. You would do some very bad things for certain American food items
42. You learn to live without electricity
43. Bananas become a staple of your diet
44. The word ‘toilet’ takes on a very loose definition
45. 5 AM is early to be going to bed on a weekend
46. Going out on a weekend begins outside of a gas station and ends with mac n’ cheese with eggs and ketchup
47. You expect to have to bargain for everything
48. You judge what time of day it is by the prayers
49. It’s the small victories that matter most
50. You can make a list of 50 things that you know when you’ve done them that you’ve been in Senegal for a long time

Julli - Pray

In the past week, I’ve stood ten feet from a rhinoceros as it stared at me through the brush, eaten an Ethiopian feast with my hands while seated on the floor cushions underneath the night sky and shaved my head, getting what could be called the ‘Africa Cut’. To say the least, I very much feel like I’m in Africa. Or at least how I thought it was supposed to feel before actually coming.

This upcoming week, I stand to get up to my neck in it. Tomorrow morning at 5 AM I leave for my rural visit in Salamata, a small village outside of Kolda, the second largest city in the Casamance region in southern Senegal and the former capital of the Fula kingdom. In my guidebook, Kolda is only mentioned briefly on the very last page, almost as a footnote, saying “Kolda’s glory lies all in its past”. I can’t seem to find Salamata on any maps, though I’m not exactly surprised. Evidently, it’s somewhere just north of the Guinea Bissau-Senegal border. While there I will be helping with the November harvest as well as building a fence and well. I’ve been told to bring food because there isn’t always much available.

I plan on packing light. Maybe an extra pair of shorts and a few t-shirts. Enough underwear for a week. Tevas. Malaria medicine. And lots of bug spray. Oh, and the bag of gummy bears I still have left from when my parents were here. I say this because the journey there sounds like it will be one of my greater adventures. With only the money, instruction and contact information given to me by my program, I, along with a few other students, are expected to go to the Gare Routiere, Dakar’s taxi depot, negotiate for a sept-place (a seven-passenger station wagon taxi, usually of questionable durability and containing upwards of seven passengers) to take us to Gambia. Then once in Gambia to take a ferry across the country, at which point we need to find another sept-place to take us to Kolda where we will spend the night. The next morning, we will rent bicycles to bike to our respective villages. And I’m sure these bikes won’t be Treks. Total, I’m estimating upwards of 24 hours of travel. Without air-conditioning. Overcrowded to the point of extreme claustrophobia. Not knowing where I’m going. And I couldn’t be more excited for the journey.

Frustratingly though, I’ll be in Salamata during the elections where I won’t have electricity. Luckily, Danny, the Peace Corps volunteer I’ll be staying with has a short wave radio. As I sit around the radio, listening to the BBC commentary, the future of America will be decided without me. If there is an Obama win, I hereby vow to do a celebration dance outside of my hut in Salamata.

With that in mind, on November 4th, vote Obama.

And for pictures of my past couple weekends, follow these links:

Île Ngor Fanaan + Réserve de Bandia
Popenguine