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
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