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Here's the link to my Senegal photos. Enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.com/rebecca.sheff/Senegal

reflections on a religious city

Hi everyone! I'm taking some time out of writing my final report to check in, although at this point I feel like there's no way I could possibly capture my experience to share it. I'll do my best. I'm still in Touba wrapping up my internship. I'll be returning to Dakar next Friday for concluding activities and then I'll be flying back to the States on the night of May 10th. I won't mind coming back to Dakar if only because the water won't be as salty!! All the water in Touba is really salty and it's starting to bother my throat and my teeth, although I suppose it won't have done too much damage by the time I go. My internship has gone extraordinarily well. I've been very well integrated and immersed into the inner workings of the organization, and I've had plenty to do for the most part. I haven't had any major conflicts or cultural misunderstandings, which I'm thankful for. All of this stands in contrast to some other students' internships, which haven't had enough for them to do, which have left them bored.... and some students have tension with their families. It's kind of hit or miss if you get placed in a good internship or not, but it's also a question of how you approch it. All to say that I feel fortunate that it's gone well and that I've gotten something out of it.

My daily activities here are all over the board. Among other things, I've been.... teaching French, teaching English, teaching the basic principles of microfinance, participating in a sewing class therefore learning to make Senegalese clothes, doing assessment visits to a village outside of Touba so my organization can start doing a local development project there (building a well, building latrines, establishing a vegetable garden to give the women some income), observing the inner workings of a microfinance institution, hanging out at microenterprises, and meeting the local public authorities. I also had the opportunity to go to a health awareness presentation put on by a youth association for the entire neighborhood, which was theater-based and awesome. Of my own initiative, I've been interviewing Senegalese emigrants in Touba who have returned to visit their families, and I've interviewed the family members of Senegalese who are abroad. I'm writing my final report on the impact of emigration on the stability and prosperity of Touba and its surroundings, as well as the role of emigrants in local development.

I feel like I've learned a lot. I visited a hospital built solely by the voluntary contributions of Senegalese emigrants abroad, which cost 6 billion CFA (approximately $14 million in today's economy) to build. It's run by the state now but it's hitting some financial struggles. I've gained much more insight in the role of Islam in society and economics here, particularly the role of the Mouride brotherhood's leading family. I've struggled a lot with my own feelings toward gender roles, free choice, obedience, education, and so on. I feel that I've integrated well and my Wolof has gotten much better, but I don't know that I could spend months and months here without really struggling with the need to conform to this very conservative and religious society. Touba's a really special case, kind of like the Vatican, in that it is run completely at the discretion of the Khalif, who is the head of the Mouride brotherhood of Islam. The entire city is owned by the Khalif and his family, and until recent years Touba didn't pay any taxes. State law enforcement is scarce at best because the city operates under its own principles and is in practice almost completely independent of the State. Literally whatever the Khalif says is applied and the entire population complies. The Khalif is more powerful than the President here.

Among the things that are forbidden here: any kind of sports or activities of that nature, alcohol, cigarettes, playing cards, women wearing pants, hotels, night clubs, prostitution, etc. ''It's a religious city,'' is the repeated phrase. My cousin's dying to play soccer here and can't. He knows how to play because he used to study in Thies, another city nearer to Dakar. Once he was playing soccer in the street by our house and he was arrested by the police. He would have been taken to the station and fined 12,000 CFA (about $30, a lot of money here) but he twisted away from the guy holding his arm and ran for it. The other dominant characteristic that makes Touba particularly conservative is that women cannot show their legs here at all. Floor-length skirts only, and that goes for me too. To enter the mosque, women must be veiled covering their head and shoulders, but their face can show, and that also goes for me too. I've gone twice although I can't enter too far in because I'm not Muslim, and the sensation of wearing the veil feels weird to me. Just because it's not part of the culture I've grown up with, I've felt very confined at times by the social expectations surrounding me. I feel like I watch what I do very carefully. I've been dying to move more freely, laugh more.... people here tend to be more solemn than most Senegalese. On the days that there aren't school, the teenagers just sit around and sleep, which is apparently all that goes on in the summertime too. There's just very few activities. There's a lot of gender discrimination, what we would consider old-fashioned sexism (the belief that women can't handle money, women spend money on luxury items instead of family needs, women don't have the same inherent capacities as men to be active participants in the economy, and so on). This is NOT true across most of Senegal, however. Women in Touba are systematically denied the right to an education, although that's starting to change with the youngest generation. Almost all of the adult women in Touba are completely illiterate and speak no French, only Wolof, although they've attended Koranic schoools. Women get ordered around a lot. It's hard for me to see what their perspective is on the whole situation due to the language barrier. I do know that many women here prefer monogamy while the men prefer polygamy (which is accepted by Islam and encouraged among men here). It's also common practice here to marry within the family, which means that relatives marry each other. I know we in the U.S. see that as weird or unnatural but it's accepted as just how it works here. For instance, my host mother and father are also first cousins. They've got five kids, but the parents also hit their children on a daily basis, which I just flat out don't agree with.

That being said, Touba's been a really interesting place to live and I'm very glad that I've been here. I feel like I've gotten frustrated and critical lately but I know that at other times I feel much more enthusiastic. I know I'll look back on it differently as well. It's just very complex. Look for a more positive post later on. I've truly loved hanging out with my family here and the staff of the organization I'm with are incredibly courageous optimistic people with their hearts and heads in the right place. It's been inspiring to watch them and learn what works and what doesn't, recognizing that they're doing their best. I've been learning to cook ceebujen for when I come home to the States, and I've been asked endlessly when I'm going to convert to Islam. People respect that I'm Jewish here and want to learn more about Judaism, as I'm the first Jew they've ever met. What's most important to them is that I have a religion and I'm observant, no matter what that religion is. People also like to tease me about Dave. I mentioned that I had a boyfriend which they immediately interpreted to mean that we're engaged to be married, because that's the only context in which someone has a boyfriend here. You don't date at all here, you're supposed to retain your innocence etc. until marriage. So the women in the family have taken to teasing me all the time about ''Daouda'' (the Wolofization of Dave's name) by predicting what year we're going to get married, how many children we'll have, and when Dave will take a second wife. When I play along and say it will be just me, no second wife, they think it's hilarious. Which I think is hilarious. So it all ends well, despite the extreme awkwardness of it all. My cousins who are around my age enjoy discussing with me in French, both as an opportunity to practice their French and to do some cross-cultural learning. I've had some really deep and insightful conversations with them.

It's looking as though Dave may come to Touba on his way to Dakar for a day, to see the Grand Mosque (the biggest in sub-Saharan Africa). Then we'll go to Dakar together. That's about all for now. I know I'll be doing a lot more reflection and gaining new perspectives on my experience in the days and weeks to come. Most of the time when I'm so integrated here I don't do any active analysis of my own, I just live it, so I really only clarify my opinions when I step out of it. We'll see what this looks like in hindsight. Love you all, talk to you soon.

I'm in Touba!

And I don't know how much time I have left on the internet right now.... Touba is good! I don't know where to start. My family is great. My supervisor is Cheikh Amar and he is also my host father... or brother I guess because he's only 36. We live in a compound with approximately 20 family members but its hard to know who actually lives there and who doesn't. There's lots of women and one really hilarious grandmother, my supervisor's twin brother who's going back to work in Italy on Monday, a sixteen year old girl named Ami who's incredible and actually speaks French, and lots of brothers and little children. There's three girls around the age of 6 and they're my best buddies. The family only speaks Wolof but Ami and Cheikh know French and some of the brothers know a little. The grandmother pretends she doesn't but then sometimes she'll break out with perfectly good French and then act like she doesn't know what happened. We don't really do anything as a family except eat and eat and eat, and drink lots of cafe touba which is this spicy sugary coffee that's pretty weird and gives me a headache. They're really welcoming and accomodating and treat me as a family member. Every time I speak Wolof it's an event, like one of the aunts said thank you to me for helping her to take out her braids and I said Nookobokk, which means you're welcome. Not only did she crack up, but everyone else around us started laughing, and then later when we went inside she told the story to the rest of the family and they had a good laugh too. We spend most of our time together in the courtyard, which is just sand and we put out mats and chairs and mattresses. The family is really well off by Senegalese standards and I didnt expect that at all, although I should have because Touba is EASILY the wealthiest city in the country and it kind of blows me away. They just finished re-doing their house and now we have 10 bedrooms each with a queen or king sized bed. Each bedroom has its own full bathroom and we have a satellite TV with two dishes that gets every international channel possible, about 310 all told. Senegal only has 2 TV channels. We have two living rooms each with full sets of furniture. I can't really express how much this stands in contrast with the rest of Senegal. It's really remarkable. My organization is ASCODE and it's about a 10 minute drive from the house. Cheikh and i take a car there every day. We only live two blocks from the Grand Mosque, which I visited this morning with Ami and it is HUGE and beautiful, all marble and chandeliers and minarets and carved wood. I tried to dress appropriately before going but I actually didnt have anything that covered enough so I borrowed one of Ami's outfits and headscarfs. I do have a photo of this so you can all see me dressing up! I still can't figure out how women keep the scarfs on their head because mine kept falling off in front of everyone inside the mosque. I couldn't go all the way in because I'm not muslim but Ami took my camera and went inside and took pictures. ASCODE is good, we're still sorting out what I'll do but for now I'm interviewing immigrants' families, doing site visits to their 'integrated projects' - multifaceted projects - in the surrounding rural areas.... and learning to be a tailor! They do training at the office for young women who come from emigrant families so that they learnt o sew, and then they help them open businesses,a nd they do French literacy at the same time, so I'll hang uot with them and learn to sew. Also they want me to train my colleagues in English and in microfinance because they run a mutual here. I dont know that I know enough about microfinance to teach it yet but we'll see. It's really an exchange between what I can teach them and what they can teach me. I think it's going to be great. I have to go because the credit's up at the cyber cafe, later!!

moving forward

So this is it, my last day in Dakar. I packed up my things last night, bought phone credit, changed my absurdly large bills from the ATM into smaller change, and repaired my worn-down sandals. My stuff is all ready to go, but I don't know if my head is yet. Tomorrow morning, I leave WARC with two-thirds of the other students to be dropped off at our internship sites. The students who are interning in the northern "Grand Cote" region of the country left today, headed toward Saint-Louis. The rest of us leave tomorrow to go south, down the Petit Cote, toward Toubacouta where we spent our four-day field trip earlier in the semester. We'll drop some students off near Fatick on the way down, and then we'll spend the night at a youth hostel in Toubacouta. On Thursday morning, we'll drop Dave off at his village so that he can start working with the National Park Service to preserve the delicate mangrove ecosystem of the Sine-Saloum Delta. From there, we'll head north-east through Kaolack, dropping off Nicole, who will be working with an organization trying to get kids off the streets. I'm the farthest out in that direction, in Touba, the religious center of the Mouride brotherhood of Islam, where I'll be working with Senegalese emigrants and their families. There was an interesting article in the New York Times on March 17 about the role of remittances in development (thanks Mom), which is pretty much exactly the kind of work I'll be doing with ASCODE (Association for Co-Development), the NGO who I'll be interning with. I'll have access to cyber cafes while I'm in Touba, but I don't know how often I'll be online.

I'm looking forward to the internship and I'm sure it will be incredible, but I'm also nervous that it may be a challenging and frustrating experience. I keep reminding myself that this is why I came, this is why I chose MSID in the first place, and that working with NGOs has been my focus and passion for the better part of three years now. I know that I was nervous coming to Dakar and this has been some of the best times of my life. I think the difference is knowing that there will be a more significant language barrier since most everyone in Touba only speaks Wolof and studies only at Koranic schools. Also, knowing that I will have less access to my support network, the other students, is challenging, although we can always call each other. Also, since I've been living with a Catholic family, I will need to learn a lot of the social etiquette in more observant Muslim families and society. There's a lot that I don't know. Dakar is pretty liberal, on the liberal-to-conservative social scale, while obviously countries that live under Islamic law have much more stringent social practices regarding women. I don't know where Touba falls in between the two. Can I wear knee-length skirts or do they have to be ankle-length? Can I walk around town by myself or is that too bold? How do I greet men who are so observant that they don't shake women's hands or meet their eyes, when every greeting I know starts with a handshake? Will anyone speak French? All of these concerns may prove to be unnecessary, but I want to keep them all - and more - in mind until I have it figured out. I've been talking with friends, and we've concluded that the highs will probably be higher and the lows will be lower than they've been in Dakar.

We've been out of school for a week and a half with vacation, and we had a great time with Dave's parents. We made a lot of memories this week, mostly awesome. The only challenges were negotiating with really hostile cab drivers, dealing with insistent merchants at the market, and
riding in the back of a mini-pickup truck for over an hour to a Catholic monastery only to sit through a long monotonous Palm Sunday service with little in the way of music or singing. Everyone put up really well with that one, but it wasn't what we were expecting. The highs, on the other hand, were great. We went up to Saint-Louis, which is a coastal city at the mouth of the river that demarcates Senegal's northern border. The historic portion of the city, which used to be the capital of all of French West Africa, is an island that measures a mile and a half long by half a mile wide. It was a fascinating piece of history, and not nearly as built-up or Europeanized as we had been told. Most of the buildings are crumbling because the Senegalese owners don't have the resources to keep them up. Much of the cement has a high percentage of salt, because there are salt flats nearby and people thought it made good cement. Now, with the humidity and the rainy seasons over the years, the salt inside the blocks has dissolved and it's all pretty precarious. They've banned heavy trucks on the island because the vibrations of the vehicles can cause the buildings to fall down. On the northern side there was some construction at one point and a man turned on a jackhammer. A few seconds later, a building nearby collapsed. People think this is a shame because the architecture there is French colonial, and therefore rather unique. The UN has designated the city as a historic site to be preserved, but even that choice has its ups and downs. First of all, of all the places, natural and man-made, in the world among which we have to choose to preserve, why are we preserving this old remannt of colonial domination and exploitation? As a memorial, a testimony, a warning? Or out of nostalgia? Let's hope not. And if the place is a memorial and it's meant to be kept up, where is the money coming from? The UN body charged with designation and presrvation of these historic sites doesn't have enough money to do it all themselves. Also, since the island has been designated as a historic site, prices have jacked up and many Senegalese residents have been forced to move off the island for economic reasons. So, all these preservation efforts will hopefully lead to more tourism and a thriving economy, but the trade-off is gentrification and local displacement. It's not a clear choice, with a right or wrong option.

Just off the island is a long thin peninsula that's been settled by a fishing community, where men launch their pirogues in the evening, pass the night fishing at sea, then come back the next day and ship their catch inland. The issue of biodiversity and species preservation on the coast of Senegal is paramount, for fishermen and conservationists alike, and a lot of effort has gone into imposing regulations. Yet while we were there, we looked offshore and saw a great big Korean ship. Apparently it had docked at Saint-Louis to hire 50 to 100 local fishermen to work on the boat, taking in big catches and possibly violating regulations. These East Asian and European boats come in, devastate the environment, and take it all back. Senegal sees very little profit from these excursions, and much in the way of a decrease on local fishermen's yields. Walking back to the main road, we saw a building housing a women's organization, funded by the Japanese government (another over-fisher). This humantarian effort, a pittance relative to what is being harvested and carted away offshore, seemed relatively lame and bitter. Tragic, even, if it's not too strong a word, like tossing crumbs.

The next day we went to the Djodj National Bird Park, which is apparently ranked the third-best bird park in the world. The park sees hundreds of different species of migrating birds, which travel across Africa and even down from Europe. Coming from the north, Saint-Louis is the first waterway, the first refuge, for birds crossing the Mediterranean and traveling across the Sahara. So it's a prime stopping point. We took a pirogue tour through some of the lagoons there, and saw tons of pelicans, little yellow weavers, cormorants, gulls, and other birds. We also saw a few crocodiles (one with a baby on its back), a four-foot-long monitor lizard (kind of like Komodo dragons), and some warthogs and wild boar. Apparently there wasn't much in the way of diversity or rare species, although we all thought it was still pretty great, because the park rangers had just changed the settings on a local dam to divert additional water into the park. What had happened was that the water level had decreased to less than a meter in most lagoons, which made it hard to launch pirogues for tourists. They added more water so that they could lead the tours. However, most of the birds that come to the park prefer low water so that they can wade and peck at the fish below, so when they raised the water level many of the birds moved on. Irony, that this decision promotes tourism but gives the tourists less to see.

I received a present the other day, a dress made by one of my tailor friends who works with Tida at their ready-to-wear seamstress shop. It's a simple dress, ankle-length with slits up each side to the knee, fitted, with a wide neck and sleeves. I like the cut, but it's made in the single weirdest fabric that I've seen in the markets here. If I could choose one fabric NOT to have clothing made out of, it's this one. The background is brown but the design is lime green, red, dark blue, and yellow. But it's growing on me, and it'll be great for Touba. While I was at the tailors' shop, this older woman came in with a bucket of ngalax, which is this traditional food that Catholic families serve to their Muslim neighbors for Easter. On Tabaski, a Muslim holiday, the families who are celebrating will slaughter goats or sheep and share the meat with their Christian neighbors. Easter is when those neighbors share back, with this ngalax, which is a cold soup of sorts made of liquid peanut butter mixed with bouille, which is a thick white juice made from the fruits of the baobab tree (monkey fruit, in English). This mix is actually delicious, when they add sugar, and they mix in small balls of millet couscous. It's an experience. We didn't do much that was special for Easter, except to serve chicken instead of beef (chicken is more expensive than either meat or fish here). I went dancing at a friend's house where they were really having a party, which was fun.

Mantou says hi to the family, and Patrick is getting nostalgic that I'm leaving. I think this is all the news I have for now and it's time for lunch, so I'm heading out. I don't know how much I'll be able to post in this second half of the program, so we'll see. Take care, much love!

It's been a while!

It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to post here! Mostly it’s because I had a slight injury last week that’s been healing, and it’s been hard to type. Last week I was at the restaurant where I’ve become friends with the family who owns it, and they were teaching me to cook mafe, which is a traditional Senegalese dish. It’s my favorite one – it’s a garlicky well-spiced peanut sauce over rice, with beef and potatoes and carrots. I was preparing vegetables for the day with a pretty dull knife, which slipped and cut deep into my index finger. It was deep enough that I took myself to the clinic to get it looked at, and now it’s fine and it’s healed well and I’m back on the computer. The only weird bit that’s remained is that I cut through some small nerves which have been extra-sensitive as they’ve been healing, so it tingles every once in a while and surprises me. But I’m doing okay, and I’ve got plans this Thursday to go back and learn more of the particulars of how to make mafe. Maybe I’ll learn a bit about cebujen, too, which is the most famous dish of Senegal. It’s brown rice spiced with bouillon cubes, with grilled fish, carrots, potatoes, cassava, cabbage, and sour tomatoes. It’s delicious, but the sour tomatoes can be pretty unpleasant. A lot of the food that we’ve been eating is stuff that we would normally eat in the States, except that here it’s all piled up together on a big round platter that everyone eats from together with their hands.

I had the most busy, awesome weekend just now, and I feel that it’s been kind of a culmination of many experiences that I’ve become more and more comfortable with here. On Friday after school Dave and I hopped the bus down to Centreville and went to the French Cultural Center for an open-air concert. It was Habib Koite, who’s a guitarist from Mali who’s just started to make it big on the international music scene. He’s a big guy with shaggy dreads and an open, easy-going presence. He opened the concert, after the first song, by welcoming the audience in French and saying that we were the most beautiful audience that he had seen yet on the tour. But he wasn’t sure if the word “beautiful” should be masculine or feminine, so before welcoming us he asked us if his grammar was correct! No shame at all. The audience was a mix of (mostly) French ex-pats, international students, and middle-aged Senegalese couples. The band had the standard guitar, base, drums, and then also this wiry guy with a beaming smile who played the tam-tam and danced around the stage, and a man who played the xylophone and some other traditional rhythmic instruments. It really struck me that it was a relaxed concert yet totally different than it would be in the States; in the States it’s really a show, very highly organized and focused on the music, but Koite was also pretty intellectually demanding. Although I couldn’t understand his lyrics because they weren’t in French or even Wolof most of the time, a lot of them were commentaries on development issues. In between songs he would talk off the top of his head about challenges of lack of education, cigarette addiction, unfair trade policies, and so on. Even when you’re out to have a good time in Senegal, you’re never far away from these realities and even musicians like these guys demonstrated a heightened awareness of it. Their music was mellow enough that I was happy to sit back and let it wash over me, but it became more complex and high-energy towards the end that eventually most of the audience was on their feet and dancing. The percussionist would reach into the crowd and pull up women at random – both Senegalese and European – to dance on the stage. Most of them had no idea what to do, but this one Senegalese woman just marched right up there, faced away from the audience, and shimmied like no tomorrow. I don’t know how Senegalese women shake their butts the way they do but I’ve never ever seen an American who can approach that level of... I don’t know what. It would be scandalous, but the dancing here really isn’t about contact as much as it’s about showing off your moves and being bold, so it’s not like they’re trying to get a guy’s attention or anything. After the concert, I bought his CD and Dave managed to get both the CD and his ticket stub signed by Habib Koite. Then we hit up a Senegalese “resto fast-food,” most of which are open 24/7. I got a shwarma burger, which wasn’t nearly as tasty as the shwarma in Israel but it was still pretty good.

On Saturday I started the day pretty slowly sipping coffee in the courtyard with Mantou and then watching dubbed-over American sit-coms in the living room. Jean-Baptist, my host uncle, came over and we chatted for a while. I feel very comfortable and familiar with him, almost as though we met before, which I know Micah would read as a past-life experience but it could also be that because he’s studied in the States he has familiar mannerisms. He studied at the University of Hawaii and at Brandeis, so every once in a while we’ll talk about Boston. He also likes to teach me Wolof and go over my homework with me, which is actually really useful. I’ve started trying to memorize ten Wolof verbs a day so that I have enough vocabulary to actually communicate. It’s hard to stick with it but I’m trying. Jean-Baptist and I talked a bit about the TV stations in Senegal. Until recently, there was only one station – the TVs pick up on between 4 and 10 stations now. The one Senegalese station was RTS, which is run by the government, and the news that it shows tends to favor the positive social-service-type projects that various members of the government are involved in. A private channel, 2S, just opened – they started just showing music videos and now they’ve branched out to Senegalese sit-coms and other shows, and they do a bit of news. But I was asking Jean-Baptist if 2S was able to air anything critical of the government and he said that they wouldn’t be able to, even though they’re privately owned. He said that most of the politically challenging dialogue happens on the radio and in the streets. It’s true, though, that the Senegalese can talk and critique as much as they’d like in the street and even if the president were to hear it, he would just laugh. It’s just how it is, and it’s better that people talk now and blow off steam than keep it all inside and break out with violence later. In other countries even in this region of the world, you’d get dragged off to prison for criticizing the government, but here it’s a way of maintaining a real stability.

So, after lunch and a nap I met up with my friend Dodie at the boulevard by my house – it’s a gorgeous main street with fruit vendors and beignet ladies – these women who make fresh sugar donuts and meat-filled dumplings with a red onion sauce on a single-burner gas can on the side of the street. The street has a wide median that’s really a park that runs for a few kilometers. There’s no grass because there’s too much sand but there’s lots of bushes and trees and archways with vines curling around them, and benches with men playing board games or debating or drinking cafe Touba (a mysterious spicy concotion) or sleeping. It’s a calm, relatively open space. We walked down the boulevard to Dieuppel, the neighborhood next to mine, where our friend Tida has her tailor shop. Tida’s the woman who we’ve made friends with at the restaurant, which her brother owns. She has a separate workplace at this shop where she and some guys turn fabric into clothing. We spent the afternoon at the shop chatting with her and her co-workers. Her boss was making fun of me for not knowing how to cook cebujen so I told him I could make attaya (tea), and he had me prove it to him right then and there. I’m getting pretty good at the technique of making tea these days – I’m definitely buying a bunch of boxes of tea and maybe a teapot before coming home. Pretty much, you steep the tea, add a ton of sugar, and mint at the end, but the most important moment is when you make the foam. You take two small glasses and pour tea from one to the other from a tremendous height – without spilling! – until each glass has a tall foam built up inside, then you fill it with tea and serve in order of social hierarchy. So, for instance, at the tailor shop, I served the boss and then Dodie (because she’s a guest), then the two other male tailors in order of age, then Tida (who’s only 21) and then myself. You usually make two cups for each person, so two rounds of tea. It takes about an hour, hour and a half maybe, and it’s a whole social experience. Get ready, because I'm definitely going to come home and make lots of tea for everyone!

From there, Dodie and Tida and I walked over to Tida’s house, where we had been invited for dinner. Tida lives with her older brother, his wife, and their two boys. It was such a nice evening, cooking with them and chatting and watching TV and dancing and looking at photos and learning Wolof and playing with the boys. I really had an excellent time and was surprised at how comfortable and integrated I felt. Plus, we had incredible food. The meal that night was grilled beef and homemade fries with a mustard/vinegar onion sauce, on a bed of lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, with hard-boiled eggs sliced up, and French bread. We had brought them a gift of 2 liters of soda and some oranges and grapefruit, so that was what we had for dessert, and then we made tea again with them. At the end of the evening around 1 a.m., her brother drove us each home on the way to work – he works all night at a restaurant making chicken sandwiches and omelettes.

On Sunday, I had made plans with my host brother Patrick to go explore Pikine, which is a distant suburb of Dakar and a much poorer area than the neighborhoods that I tend to travel in. He said he knew a bunch of people there, so off we went for nine hours to walk around and explore! It turns out that by “people” he meant that he has aunts and cousins there that he hasn’t seen for five years even though he spent his whole childhood running around with them. Each of them took a minute to recognize him, and then they were so excited, and we were obligated to sit at each house for at least two hours (we went to three of them) while they swapped news in Wolof of what each family member was up to. An uncle at each house would inevitably go out and buy Patrick and himself a beer and to avoid being completely buzzed I would ask for a Coke or a Fanta, which meant that I was really water-logged by the end of the day. In between these get-togethers we would walk around through the neighborhoods and the markets. There was a big clothing market in Pikine because it was Sunday, and once a week each neighborhood has its market and today was the day there. We hopped a car rapide to Thiaroy, the next town over, and actually got completely lost in this huge permanent food market there. The stalls, as we got farther in, started serving more and more unusual goods in increasingly low-resource conditions. Eventually we broke out of the small narrow alleyways (all sand) into this open space, which turned out to be the railroad tracks. There were hundreds of people standing on the tracks, setting up shops on the tracks, and just talking – I checked and yes, the trains do still run, so I figure people must just scatter when the time comes. It was a weird perspective to get, because up until that point I had been so close to everyone that everything just seemed normal – a woman selling dried fish here, a man selling teapots and cooking pans there, a woman with her tomatoes and cabbage and dried hot peppers there.... but when I stepped out into the open I could see more of the construction of the stalls, which are all just bits of plywood attached together, covered by worn-down brown umbrellas, and from that more objective perspective it truly looked like what I would expect to call the slums. But then I dived back into the fray again and it all seemed completely normal. I didn’t expect that at all. The car rapide that we took back from Pikine to Dakar was patched-up on a whole new level – it was pretty clear that most of the main structure had been soldered together by hand, and that someone had nailed together plywood boards to put between the metal bars. The floor was just wooden boards, and not all of them were attached very well – there was a big hole by my feet and when I looked down I could see straight to the engine. But it works, and that’s what counts.

At the end of the day we ended up back near Dakar and there was a big lutte (wrestling) competition at the main stadium down the street. It’s been built up on the TV for over a week now. We got to Patrick’s cousin’s house just in time to see the actual match, which only lasted a couple minutes before one of the guys got taken down. Apparently Dave was actually at the stadium. After the match, the guys in the stands flooded the field and burst out into the street and caused havoc for a while. You could see the police on TV hacking around with their batons but apparently that wasn’t unusual or anything. We were about to leave but Patrick decided it would be better if we stayed in the house for another half hour so the crowd could clear, because with me as a white woman and a bag, there was a chance we’d be hassled and robbed. All in all it was a really interesting day, and it made me realize how much more Wolof I need to know and be comfortable with before I can just sit and chat with people. I didn’t say much all day, but it was still a really valuable experience.

It’s weird to be here with the OIC, I don’t know if the conference has shown up at all on the international news. It’s a gathering of a coalition of Islamic states, 57 of them, 26 of which are African, and they have a conference once every three years. This is only the second time that Senegal has hosted and it’s one of the only African countries that does, so it’s put a lot of pressure on the government to make everything go well and create a good impression. Which has translated into a lot of pressures and restrictions on the local population. They’ve shut down some of the main roads in Dakar and you have to have a special permit in order to enter the neighborhoods around the airport – so the northern half of the city is effectively closed-border. We’ve all been sure to carry our identification – notarized passport copies – everywhere because the police are out in greater numbers than usual and they’re stopping taxis at random to check ID and papers. Apparently they’ve also restricted the sale of petrol and gas and other flammable items to discourage terrorist attacks. All of that translates to a lot of bad traffic and a lack of availability of public transportation, so all the schools have closed except for ours. The university is closed, and the primary and secondary schools are also closed for the week. The newspapers have been saying that even though all this security is meant to show the conference participants that Senegal’s a secure place, it’s made the participants suspicious that there’s so much security precisely because Senegal is at risk of a terrorist attack. These concerns are linked to the fact that four French tourists were murdered in Mauritania last year and some of their assassins were caught in Senegal, and that there are mild suspicions that there are some terrorist groups running cells around West Africa. Realistically, Senegal’s not under any threat, but it’s pretty ironic that the security measures are causing such heightened concerns. But we’re safe, just to reiterate that fact.

So this week there’s a chance that Dodie and I will have a dance lesson with Jaar, who’s one of the women who works with Tida at the restaurant. She’s training to be in a dance troupe that does performances at big events, and apparently her studio also gives group dance lessons. I’m not sure if it’ll work out, we’ll see. And we’re going back to the restaurant on Thursday to cook, and we’re trying to find an evening to take Tida, Ami, and Jaar (her co-workers) out to dinner for pizza. Tida said that whenever she has a little extra money she loves to go out and get pizza, so we thought that would be a nice way to say thank-you to all of them for really taking us in. Speaking of that, I’ve been blown away by the work ethic that people have here. They sacrifice so much and put so much energy into working as hard as they can to ensure a secure life for themselves and their families. For instance, which I meant to mention earlier, one of Patrick’s cousins is an administrative director at a middle school in the neighborhood next to ours, but we never see him because he’s too busy working and commutting to ever come by the house, which is why Patrick hadn’t seen him for five years. Every day, he gets up before sunrise and takes public transportation from Pikine to Dieuppel (which takes around an hour and you have to get there early enough to get a seat in one of the cars), he works all day, and then by the time he comes home it’s 9 p.m. and there’s just enough time to have dinner, shower, and sleep, before he gets up at 4 or 5 a.m. and does it all over again. He lives with his four children and his aunt, but he only sees his children once a week on Sunday because all other days he leaves before they’re awake and they’re asleep before he comes home. He said he never goes out because when he’s home he’s preoccupied with the family and there’s always something to do. It’s such a sacrifice to make, I can’t really imagine.

Dakar is empty. I've seen Lexington Center more busy. It's the day before Maggal, the annual pilgrimage to Touba, which is an inland city and the religious center of the Mouride brotherhood. Muslims in Senegal affiliate themselves with a brotherhood, which is a practice particular to Senegal and not particularly supported by other Islamic leaders outside the state. The Mourides are one of the numerically large brotherhoods and they control much of the economy and politics of Senegal. The founder of the brotherhood was expelled from the country in the early 1900s and this day commemorates his return to Senegal. So, a couple million people voyage to Touba and pray together. However, there's only one autoroute between Dakar and Touba, and the drivers are always looking to make extra money by doing multiple trips so they speed, and there's almost always accidents. Also, even though Touba is a very wealthy city because the Mourides have put a lot of money into it, it has a poor septic system and weak infrastructure, so periodically during Maggal or during the rainy season there's a cholera outbreak in Senegal and it often starts in Touba. Some of the students on the other programs have chosen to participate in the pilgrimage - i just hope for them that it's not too physically taxing and that they don't get sick. Meanwhile, there are very few people working the boutiques and food stands on the street in Dakar and much of the public transportation has gone missing. Dave and I went to Ngor this weekend, which is a fishing community on the northern side of the Dakar peninsula. You can take pirogues on a short trip to an island just off shore, which is only inhabited by people working the hostels and tourist shops as well as a handful of free-minded artists. The island itself is beautiful - there's no roads, just paths between houses with stone walls and flowers. One side of the island, facing the bay, has sandy beaches, while the other side has taller cliffs an rocks which have been pounded by the waves into Dr Seuss-like shapes. Mantou would like to go back with me sometime to the mainland side, which I'm looking forward to. To get home, we walked through the residential part of the town, looking very conspicuous as the only toubabs there, but we didn't get lost and made it to the bus stop. We took the most rickety, creaky, held-together-with-string-and-spit minibus. Pretty much, they cram as many people as physically possible into each of these vans - usually about 20 or 25, and then 3 or 4 people cling to the top while hanging out the back door. It's only 100 FCFA or 150 FCFA for the trip - which is about 25 cents. But, despite the aging vehicles, Senegal has an awesomely efficient public transportation system and I am in no way complaining. I'm actually impressed. I've been having a number of political science-oriented conversations with my family, their friends, and others, and I've started to understand a bit more of the reasons why the Senegalese - and people of other nationalities - tend to be more politically aware than the average American. (Setting aside the notion that Americans don't need to be politically aware because they live so comfortably that they have very little stake in the outcomes of political arrangements and issues.) I asked one of my brother's friends if he had studied political science in university and he said no, he would have liked to, but he didn't have the means to continue his studies. However, he said that if one person learns an interesting tidbit regarding politics, he will share it with his friends (over attaya, for example) and they will discuss it, form their own opinions about it, and maybe pass it on. People say that the Senegalese love to talk politics and love to argue. I would say that that's partially true, and that most of the people I've met have open minds and are interested in accumulating more knowledge, particularly in areas in which they are not well-informed. For instance, one of my friend's brothers didn't know anything about MAssachusetts so he asked me a bit about its geography and its food. It seems to me that most Americans are more tempted to just throw up their hands and say that it's too complicated, they can't approach issue X, because they don't know enough already about it. Take the conflict in the Middle East, or Darfur. The graffiti in Senegal is something else - I saw some at Ngor scrawled on a concrete wall saying that President Wade, instead of spending the state budget on the APEs and other international trade agreements that put Senegal at a disadvantage, should put money towards building local factories and supplying agricultural materials. We would never see that in the States. They're kicking us off the internet, so that's all for now.

Ana sa jumbax?

"Ana sa jumbax?" is my new favorite phrase in Wolof.... it means "Where is your bellybutton?" I still can't ask for directions without hesitating, but at least I've got that important piece of information taken care of. Anyway. Good morning from a really hot day in Dakar. Apparently it's pretty unusual that the weather's been as warm as it has this week and there's talk of the local impact of climate change. Pretty much between 11 and 3 it's sweaty-sticky hot as soon as you step into the sun. Not too much news to share. Toubacouta was an interesting and informative four-day trip to the Petit Cote region with the entire MSID program. We had a chance to speak with a lot of locals including a representative of an artisan fishing organization, the (only) health clinic nurse (a man), the heads of the local government, a schoolteacher and his hundreds of students, women farmers, a women's organization, a youth association, and university students. We actually gained a lot of information that I wouldn't have otherwise known, but I still felt uncomfortable traveling in our big group. Not only is it hard to have a conversation of any depth with someone local when there's so many of us students that every moment of communication has to be highly orchestrated... but also the expectations, needs and approaches of many of the students on the program are divergent from my own. I don't know how to put this more precisely in this particular (open) forum, but sometimes I feel rather skeptical of the group and I'm trying not to. I guess it's something to work on, for myself, and not to be too frustrated by. Now we're back in class and learning Wolof rapid-pace which is nice, and I've warmed up to our Country Seminar which teaches us about the inner workings of Senegalese political systems and the threat of anti-feminist religion and so on. She's a very outspoken feminist, which is refreshing, to have a teacher who's that passionate and opinionated. This weekend will be around Dakar, probably including an evening game of ultimate frisbee at a friend's house. Mantou finally came back from the Casamance after being gone for almost two weeks, and she's doing well. I bought some fabric the other day and did some drawings of it and I'm having it made into a sundress. Can't wait. Also, Nicole and I are trying to find the right public transportation to get us to an artists' village in Yoff, a northern suburb of Dakar. There's supposed to be a couple dozen artists who just rent small studios up there and I think it would be interesting to get to meet them. We tried today but couldn't find the bus. Maybe next week. That's all for now, hope it's not too cold back in the States!

sunburns, chocolate, and development theory

Hi everyone ! A couple reassurances and answers: Yes, I’m eating fine. I’ve taken it upon myself to carry around snacks with me to munch on throughout the day like pumpkin seeds, halva, crackers, and chocolate. Mom, I broke into the chocolate bars that I had brought as gifts. There are so few people in my family that it didn’t make sense to give them so many gifts, and I don’t want to create expectations that future students should be as over-generous as that would have been.... plus Trader Joe’s chocolate is just so good. I’m still saving the truly excellent chocolate covered cherries for my second host family. There are 23 people in the MSID program and we all take classes together, but we break down into smaller groups for Wolof. Only MSID students take our classes because we have a really specific and rigid curriculum. Other study abroad programs permit students to direct-enroll in certain courses at UCAD (Universite Cheik Anta Diop) but we can’t do that. It’s okay, because it keeps our schedule nice and stable, even when the university’s on strike.

Joal-Fadiout is beautiful, and we had so much fun there this weekend. It was me, Dave, and the other two Macalester girls on our program. It’s about two and a half hours south of Dakar, but still north of the Gambia, and it’s Senghor’s home town so it’s a big tourist attraction. Apparently as he gained prestige and entered office, he put a lot of money into the town’s infrastructure.... it’s caused a lot of positive development there but it’s really just pork barrel politics, which is how most African politicians seem to operate. We took a sept-place down there, which is really just a station wagon with a fold-up third row of seats. It’s pretty cramped, but it’s only 2000 CFA, which is about $4.50, and it’s direct. We got dropped off in Joal and crossed a long wooden bridge over to the island called Fadiout. You could see the Milky Way and I saw a shooting star. Fadiout is a low, flat island who’s population is mostly Serer and they’re almost all Christian. We stayed in a campement (hostel) for $10 (5000 CFA) a night, which was a good deal because the beds had good mattresses, clean sheets, (partially) running water in the bathrooms, and breakfast included. Saturday we took a pirogue tour around the mangroves and sandbars near Fadiout, which was beautiful. It was so good to be on the water. We saw a couple different kinds of herons, pelicans, loons, small birds, and seagulls as well as carp and little flying fish. There were fishermen all over the place. We stopped at a sandbar for a picnic lunch with our guide, and it was just as the tide went out so we spent a few hours exploring the tidal flats for clams, conchs, crabs, hermit crabs, sand dollars, and lots of perfectly formed white shells. Our guide scraped up two fistfuls of clams and boiled them right there, so we had a little impromptu feast. The swimming was good too, but we all got really sunburned. Our guide was awesome, he was a young man who was really friendly and casual and spoke good French as well as Wolof and Serer.... he made us tea and explained everything to us without being aggressive or flirty. He also knew everyone on the island because he grew up there, and he took us to meet his mom and his sisters. That night we went to Josh’s house in Joal, who’s a year-long MSID student from the University of Minnesota who’s staying with a family there for the semester and teaching English. His family prepared us a dinner of hard-boiled eggs wrapped in fish patties and fried (sounds weird, but delicious), with potatoes and a spicy red onion sauce, with French bread. I don’t know what I’ll do back in the States when I don’t eat French bread with at least two meals every day. The next day we wandered around Joal, took a horse-drawn flatbed cart to a huge baobab tree that you can climb inside, had sandwiches, and caught a mini-bus back to Dakar. We also met this awesome old guy who’s an artist in Joal. He paints murals and fabric and does postcards with ink. I bought two postcards from him. He seemed very centered and joyful and was very excited to hear that Nicole and I are both artists too. We took pictures with him, which will be great to look back on. In the end, the transportation for the weekend ended up working out really well, which I think is pretty remarkable. Senegal has a great system to keep up with a mobile population, and it’s all pretty informal. Mantou’s gone until Thursday or so (there was a second death in the family, a niece who passed from complications of surgery in the Casamance, so I don’t know if she’s going to that funeral too) so we’re eating dinner at their brother’s house each night this week. Then this weekend MSID is taking us all on a four-day field trip to Toubacouta, down in the Sine-Saloum Delta. It’s supposed to be more lush than the rest of the country, I think, at least ecologically interesting. I’m strating to understand a little more spoken Wolof, and I’m hoping that one day I’ll make the jump into being able to speak it back. Cool people keep popping up at pretty unexpected moments. This morning I woke up and there was a guy in the kitchen chatting with Patrick. He asked what Emily and I were studying and we ended up debating strategies of economic and social development over our coffee. He was clear in saying that you can only develop a country if the people change their mentality and their “esprit” which doesn’t translate very well into English, but it means something like a mix of personality, willpower, and spirit. I also told him that I was studying the intersection of development and immigration, or conflict-related displacement, and he got very excited and said that that was a very important subject. People love to debate about immigration here because the younger generation is looking to either live in Dakar or sneak into Europe but that’s pretty much suicide (it’s like the boats from Haiti to the States) so it’s also looked down on. He also asked me if I was "metisse"(mixed heritage, part black) which I thought was interesting. I explained that my family doesn't come from Western Europe. I hope that he sticks around for a while so we can continue the conversation. There’s a chance that he’s staying with us for a couple days because Patrick was making up the extra bedroom last night. People in general here are not big on using names to introduce people, so a lot of times at the house people come and go and we talk with them but never learn who they are exactly. Which makes it a little harder to keep track of them when they come back. I’m sure I’ll be taking more photos at some point, especially of my family and my neighborhood, but for now I’m also counting on the fact that we’ll all share our photos. I know that everyone else got great photos of Joal so I’ll get my hands on those at one point or another. Ba beneen yoon! (Until next time!)

exploring the markets

Yesterday was probably the best day I've had so far in Dakar. I can't believe everything actually worked out. I feel so accomplished and even a little bit integrated. I didn't have class until 3, so Nicole and I decided to explore the market on our own. We met at the bakery in between our houses, where the sell the most buttery, delicious pastries I've ever had. I had never noticed before, but their security guard carries a short whip. Most security guards have billy clubs and the ones outside President Wade's son's house have M16s, but I'd never seen a whip before. I hope it's not for the talibes (little boys allegedly studying the Koran) who beg outside the shop. I got a really big pain au chocolat and we walked to the Marche HLM, the fabric market in the neighborhood next to ours. WE got there at 9 and most stores hadn't opened yet so we took a quick walk around and then sat with some goats until 10. We got up our courage and went into a boutique with dozens and dozens of batik fabrics hanging on the walls. We made friends with the two women there, one of whom is an international buyer who speaks English. She gave us her name and cell phone (she lives in Yoff, a suburb of Dakar) and said we should call her if we have any questions about traveling in Senegal. I chose a fabric that's blue and yellow/orange and off-white with a nice pattern, and paid $2 American per meter for it. I was surprised that it wasn't more expensive. I'm going to have it made into a dress by a local tailor, which is how most Senegalese have their clothes made. We then figured out which bus to take to downtown Dakar and hopped on. It was very slow as we sat in traffic in the Medina, one of the more poor neighborhoods. "It was nice to be on the bus, though, to be standing or sitting quietly crowded together with Senegalese passengers, taking it all in and looking out the window without feeling bad or ashamed or guilty. In contrast, it is AWFUL to travel with the whole MSID group on a chartered bus because you're really just 23 privileged (mostly) white Americans staring at people going about their daily lives, who are staring back at you. WE finally made it to Centreville (Downtown) and got off at Marche Sandaga, the biggest market in Dakar. I've never been to a place that was simultaneously so exhilarating and so overwhelming. IF you thought Manhattan was crazy, think again. It's dusty and sweaty and a taxi's about to run over your feet but there's nowhere to walk because there's a stand selling boxers in front of you and a boutique selling pointy shoes next to you and one person shoves a begging bowl in your face while a guy is grabbing your arm and telling you you're racist because you won't acknowledge is most recent marriage proposal and you want to stop and look but you can't because he'll keep talking to you. that's Sandaga. And it's great. We wandered around for a bit by ourselves and stopped at a bookshop stand where they literally just have books stacked on a little cart and they're all used copies. I made friends with the older man working the stand and bought Saint-Exupery's "Vol de Nuit" (night flight) and a book called "Le baobab fou" (the crazy boabab) by a Senegalese woman who writes under a male pseudonym. I was their first customer of the day. After a bit more exploring / being aggressively pursued by a guy who thought Nicole was beautiful, we stopped at a teeshirt shop. We made friends with an old guy who took us to his brother's shop across the street and then to a fabric gallery where two guys gave us a tour. In this one studio, they have a dozen guys on sewing machines making clothes. I asked if women do this kind of work too and then said no, women don't do commercial work. A sharply dressed friendly young guy then offered to take us on a tour of more of the artisans' studios in the market. This sounded a lot more awesome to us than just walking around and thinking about buying stuff, so we did. Every place we went, they welcomed us and told us to feel at home and look at whatever we want and we didn't have to buy anything. And it was all in French. We went to a shop where they sell wood carved sculptures and learned the significance of the features of each mask. They have a mask for each day of the week to hang up in your house. Thursday the figure wears a hat because that's the day you go out and celebrate a marriage. Sunday has legs and arms stretched out because it's the day of rest. Then we went back behind the boutiques, beyond some children playing on the path,past small homes jumbled together to the shop where 8 men or so were carving wood into sculptures by hand on the floor. We watched every stage of production and met a lot of teh artists then looked at some more art on display there. They had some of the 'families' of small animals, like turtles or elephants, lined up in size order. Sometimes they like to reverse the order of the children elephants so that the baby is closest to the mama. The guy I was talking to said that when the animals are lined up, it brings good luck to your house and your family. I settled on buying a small 'water carrier' woman while Nicole chose a larger, unfinished mask representing the 3 months of the rainy season (june, july, august). We bargained them down and spent about $15 American on mine and $35 on hers (20,000 CFA total in Senegalese money). WE found out also that they give 10 percent of their monthly profits to a home for handicapped children - who you see begging on the street in my neighborhood most days. After that, we went to a few shops where they make soda cans into art, then we hopped a taxi to WARC and I sat through 3 hours of microfinance class. Then I picked my way through puddles of raw sewage overflowing from the drain on my way home. Every day is full of contrasts here.

I haven't taken many photographs since I got here because I feel uncomfortable about what kind of impact my photos would have back home on supporting stereotypes about what "Africa" is and how people live here. At home we are so addicted to presentation and packaging, while here as in most of the world and in my personal preferences, functionality is more commonly valued over visual beauty. So I feel that by taking photos you only transmit the visual/material aspect of living here, while you can't capture the more intangible aspects like social interactions. It feels disrespectful, like a violation of people's dignity, to take photographs of their lives here, even if they give permission for me to do it. On the other hand, I'd like to capture a bit of what Dakar looks like to share with everyone back home.There's a choice that you're constantly making, about how much to reflect and absorb your experience here. But our program is so short and our time is so precious that I usually opt for LIVING MORE of the experience, rather than reflecting or recording it.

the beach is better in winter

Hi everyone! First of all, Patriots suck. Dave even got to watch the game at the residence of the Marines who guard the American embassy, and because of the time change it went on past 3 in the morning. Not worth it. Moving on. I had the most awesome weekend. On Saturday I took a boat out with some friends to this small island just off the coast of Dakar called Ile de la Madeleine. It's a low, flat island made of volcanic rock that's home to hundreds and hundreds of birds. Once you go around the main strip of land, there's a small cove that's probably one of the top ten most beautiful places I've ever been. It's surrounded by pillars of basalt that form a natural barrier from the Atlantic waves, and inside is a calm, deep pool that you can swim in. It's full of little fish and crabs and coral. We spent all afternoon there, then we took naps for a bit and went out dancing all night. It's a little weird to be taking classes in development here. I'm pretty well-covered in terms of my Senegalese history, because Iv'e already written some papers on it, so a lot of what we study is review for me. We haven't had many debates about the different perspectives and possible courses of development, which is what interests me, and the ones we have had are pretty mundane, like is globalization good or bad. I'm definitely not here for the classes. But Wolof and Microfinance are each really good. We don't have much homework, but a lot of writing assignments and a lot of class hours every week. I'm starting to shadow one of my friends, who's here on a Fulbright, as she interviews women involved in microfinance around Dakar. I'm really excited for it. Also, this weekend, Dave and I and another friend are thinking about taking a shuttle car down to this small fishing town on the coast south of here, just to explore. Apparently they have tours (by boat) of the mangroves there, and you can stay in a hostel on the island itself. In other news, I'm not sure what the situation will be with my host family in the next few days. Everything's fine on our end, but Mantou's cousin died in the Gambia suddenly of an illness, and she needs to go down for his funeral. I don't know if Patrick will go too, but if he does I imagine that they will find us a temporary host family. I don't think they'll let us stay on our own. We'll figure it out. I think it's time for class, so I'll talk to you later. Ciao!

Nanga def?

Asalaa Malekum! Nanga def? Naka wa ker ga? We’re finally taking Wolof classes to learn the local language! My host family speaks French very well, and speaks a bit of English, but usually they communicate in Wolof, so it will be really useful for me to learn. It’s a pretty easy language in terms of how the phrases are constructed, but still, it’s a whole new vocabulary. I like learning bits of how the world is explained via language, like the word for “ankle” in Wolof literally translates to “the eye of the leg”. I don’t even know where to start, I guess I’ll have to pick and choose the stories to share with everyone. This weekend I went with Dave and Louise (2 of the other Macalester students here) to the beach near our school. The water’s the perfect temperature and there’s big waves. I made friends with a troop of young girls who were using sticks and rubber hoses to pry sea urchins off of a rock. They were going to boil them and eat them, or maybe sell them. One of them took me by the arm and pulled me into the surf to help them out – I got 3! And every time I got one they would say in Wolof, “Hey, the whitey got one.” They were really nice, actually, it was refreshing to talk just to girls who were just interested in being friends. With guys, you always have to be a bit on guard as to whether they’re flirting with you. I haven’t been approached by anyone really creepy yet though. After the beach, I visited Dave’s and Louise’s families – they live in the fancy part of town! We had heard a rumor that Youssou N’Dour would be playing a concert that night, and Dave’s roommate Chris confirmed it, so we took off to this Ethiopian restaurant on a rooftop and walked from there to the concert. It didn’t even start until 1:30 am and it kept going until 4:30. It was fantastic, but we were exhausted. Apparently I was too short to see, but there were some people dancing mbalax towards the front, which is the traditional/popular style of dance in Senegal. Look it up on YouTube, it’s awesome, arms and legs and knees flying everywhere. Needless to say, I can’t do it. I’ve been walking to school every day, 45 minutes each way, usually with friends, and I feel like that’s the point at which I see the most new things about Dakar. Like today, I noticed that there are small mosques built in the median of the street, facing east, so that people can pray as they wait for the bus. And we walked through open sewage bubbling up onto the street. And the air pollution here is really bad because the cars and buses are so old, but the ratio of public to private transportation on the road is roughly 4:1. If Dakar could just take care of its waste problem (among other things), it would be perceived as a top-notch international city. We went on a driving tour the other day of downtown and the suburbs – they tried to say that we also got to see the slums, but the true slums are out on the neck of the peninsula and we haven’t gone there yet. I don’t know if we will. I would like to, because I wrote an entire research paper on that area for my Development class two years ago. I also got a chance to talk to Waly, one of our program assistants, about where I might have my internship. Apparently there’s not many organizations that work with refugees here, and even though there are refugees adn internally displaced people, he says it’s not too much of a problem or a hassle for them to move from one place to the next. But there is an organization, ASCODE, that works with Senegalese immigrants abroad and their families who remain in-country. They have offices in Dakar and in Touba. I’ll probably be placed with them in Touba, which is the religious center of Senegal and the home of the Mouride brotherhood, the biggest Islamic brotherhood in the country. Apparently it’s run under Islamic law (or at least practices), and doesn’t have any drinking or dancing or so on. My work would be in the city (and it’s not that big) but it would also take me to the surrounding villages and more rural areas. I think it would be fascinating to see how people live and interact in such a religious context, so I’m pretty excited for this placement. I bet it’ll feel overwhelming, as the rest of Dakar can sometimes, but I’ll get by. Our classes started this week. We’re in class almost all day, from 9 to 6, studying Development Theory and Senegalese History and Wolof. We each choose a focus for our Development Theory class. I chose Public Health And Social Services, and I’ll also be auditing the Microfinance class. We split our time in these tracks between studying in the classroom and taking local field trips. The food here has been up and down. I have a strong suspicion that most of the other host families feed their students more than mine does, even though I have a fast metabolism and I tend to get hungry more often. Apparently other families are pushing food at the students, enough that they have to insist that they’re full. In my family we have some French bread with butter and tea for breakfast, then I eat lunch out at WARC or at a local cafe. They usually have rice with some kind of sauce and maybe meat for lunch, and that’s just about what we have too. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day, and always includes rice (or french fries!). Dinner is smaller and tends to be more varied at my house. I have yet to be served thiebujinn. We’ve had salade nicoise, rice and lentils in a brown sauce with beef, spaghetti and fish (dorado) with tomatoes, salad with vegetables and a fried egg... that kind of thing. It’s delicious. And there’s always enough to feed everyone. But I often don’t feel quite full at the end, and I end up having snacks in my room. It’s something to work out and I’m trying not to lose weight. I think I’ll have to go to the supermarket more often for snacks. And I’m still pursuing that perfect dish of thiebujinn – it’s kind of like searching for the best falafel in Israel, except I haven’t had any yet. Anyway. Thanks for the birthday wishes, love you all, and I’ve got some homework to do, so I’m out!

I'm in Senegal! And you'll have to excuse the typing mistakes if I make any because I'm using a French keyboard. We arrived safely in Dakar after a bumpy flight from New York and went to Yoff, a suburb, to crash at a really nice hotel. Dave and I and some friends went up to the terrace on the roof to take in the view, looked down in the street, and saw a herd of cattle passing by! It looked like they didn't have anyone guiding them, but they plodded on toward the main road and seemed to do okay. It's very dusty here and pretty hot, maybe in the 70s or 80s, which is a refreshing change from the winter weather. The next day we had orientation at a woman's house who had worked with our program for 10 years. She made the traditional national dish, thieboujinn (no idea how to spell it), which is fish and rice in a spicy red curry sauce. It's absolutely delicious, and apparently you eat it every day for lunch so that should be fun, at least until I get tired of rice. Yesterday we were dropped off at our host families, and I love mine! They're a brother and a sister who live together and neither of them are married. My host sister/mother is Mantou, and she looks a lot like Helena Bonham Carter. She's awesome, quick smile and an easy manner. Parick is my host brother. He's in his mid 30s and she's a bit older. He's hip and funky but old enough to be steady and to really enjoy teaching Wolof to us. Which brings me to my next bit of news, that I'm living with another American student as well! Her name is Emily and she goes to Michigan. We share a room and we both go to WARC for school. We stayed up until 1 am last night talking and it turns out that we're very similar people, both intellectually and socially, except that she's doing neuroscience while I have no head for chemistry. Anyway, it's awesome to be speaking French all the time again and I'm trying to start learning a bit of Wolof. I only know a couple phrases so far. Our three program assistants and the program director have been very supportive and welcoming. I feel very fortunate to be in such a supportive community. There's much more emphasis here on dignity, respect, and welcoming each other than there is in the States. Every time you see someone, even if you just saw them minutes before - or even if you're already in conversation with them - you ask them how they're doing and how their families are. The point is that you're acknowledging and respecting them as a human being. It's something that you can give to each other and nurture no matter how rich or poor you are. I feel like we've left this behind in the states - if we ever had it at all - and its something that feels important for me to retain and bring home. How, I have no idea. And I'm sure this is just one of what will be many cultural insights in the next few months. All my stuff and logistics are working out fine. I even used my first African-style toilet the other day and it wasnt too bad. The one in my house is a regular bowl, fortunately. My family's pretty well off, solidly middle class, in that they have a nice well-furnished house and a TV and a good bathroom. It's a great time to be on the continent, since it's the middle of the African Cup. We watched two soccer games yesterday, which was a good ice-breaker with my other host brother, Prince. I didn't mention him earlier because he's not a permanent resident in the house. He's a nephew from the Casamance, down south, and he came up to Dakar to try out for a club basketball team. If he gets in, he'll move here permanently, but for now, he's going back to Ziguinchor this weekend. Today is my first day at WARC, the research center where we'll hold our classes, and I'm in their computer lab. Once everyone arrives we're going to take a ferry to Gorée Island, just off the coast of the Cap Vert Peninsula (where Dakar is). It's the island that served as a launching point and as an auction site for the slave trade. Should be a fairly heavy visit, à la the Holocaust museum, and we're writing our first paper on our trip. I think that's all the news for now. I haven't seen Dave yet since we dropped him off at his host family, but we've both been doing great. Love you all, à bientot!

last-minute details

I'm pulling together the last few things before I go, starting to actually pack (and probably re-pack), all the last-minute details. It's funny how milestones seem to come in groups for me, not just one at a time.... This week I'll be celebrating my 21st birthday and I'll also be leaving to live on a different continent for the first time. The feeling of it is reminding me of when I graduated high school, turned 18, and left home for the first time... all in one week. That was January 2005. I've been looking forward to studying abroad for so long that, now that it's finally here, I feel like I have more emotions than I can listen to at one time. I'm sure I'll feel very differently once I actually get there, so I'm trying not to set up any expectations about it. For now, I'm cruising through the final details and seeing friends and family. If I haven't seen you yet and you're around, call me.

Let's give this a shot

Bonjour tout le monde! I just created this blog so that all of you, my friends and family, can share in my travels this spring. I'll be in Senegal on a study abroad program between January 20 and May 11, 2008. Feel free to email me or contact my parents if you need to actually get in touch with me, or leave messages here. Just know that I won't be on the internet too much, even though I'll do my best to get back to you... and I'll still love reading your notes!

Stay tuned for some more posts before I take off!