Mbam diggity

Monday morning is the day! How exciting! I can't wait to get out of Dakar and see another way of living here. I could use a bit of a break. I really haven't ever lived in a big city and I think I will appreciate a few weeks of calm and quiet in a smaller village. I have heard only good things about Mbam and the family that I will be living with. I really have no idea what to expect, which is really part of the fun. I will try to post some updates because I think that I will end up with some good stories, but if I fail I will be typing journals and will try to post them later.

So basically I may or may not have internet access, but hopefully I will be able to recount some epic tales of adventure at the end. 

Right now most MSID students (myself included) are really making a lot of excuses to spend money on delicious things. Last night I ate pizza for dinner and a hamburger for lunch. Hamburgers are so delicious here! Usually the most basic hamburgers come with egg, cheese, ketchup, and french fries all on the bun with the burger. So good. So basically I am bleeding money, but then again I can't really complain about $20 weekends because I usually spend that at school. And I am in Senegal having fun! I think tonight I am going to try to go see a concert by Daara J, a well-known Senegalese hip hop artist, tonight. 

Also of news lately, Dakar has little to no natural gas/propane available. This is very unfortunate because it means that the power has been spotty (and that's being generous) and today my family has been cooking with charcoal. Charcoal cooking is slow and much more annoying than cooking with gas. My mother has been grumpy all day. Also the streets have been full of people toting around heavy gas tanks, wandering from boutique to boutique in search of some cooking fuel. Really lame Dakar. Good thing I am leaving for Mbam!

On the road again...

So I am in my last few days of classes here in Dakar! Tomorrow is my busiest day yet academically (yeah it is not quite as rigorous here as my classes usually are...) as I have a Wolof oral exam and a final presentation for Country Analysis. I should probably be studying now, but a blog sounded like more fun.
Monday morning everyone who is leaving the city for their internships is going to pile onto a bus and go on yet another Senegalese road trip to do the drop offs. And I thought that getting left at our host families was intimidating! It's going to be really scary watching other people get left all over the country, although I am fourth on the list so I won't have long to wait for my turn.
Today I found out that Mbam has running water (and I mean taps, not indoor plumbing) which is exciting because I probably won't have to haul my own water. Waly has told me that it also has electricity, which is excellent news. No internet, but apparently there is a big road running through town so it won't be all that difficult to catch a ride to a bigger city to get internet if I want.
Also we are trying to plan an expedition to the Gambia. I would be sad if I left Senegambia without seeing James Island! It may get expensive, but I think it would be well worth the adventure. And also expensive is relative. I am thinking in the neighborhood of US$100 and cringing. Can't imagine all those fools in Europe bleeding money. Many other students are much closer to the border than I am, so I think it is quite reasonable to think that I can do it if I can find a few days.
So for now I am just finishing up classes, buying enough toilet paper to last me 6 weeks, and celebrating by eating all the cheese and fruit my paltry budget can buy.

Not having electricity is really inconvenient

The one overwhelming thing that I have noticed about living in a developing country this week is that a lot of things are just sort of inconvenient. It makes me realize that growing up I basically had everything at my fingertips all of the time and that living in a place where the power is always on, food and water are typically in stock, and a constant stream of natural gas is available for my cooking needs is pretty nice.

There have been a number of incidents that have made me think twice (or three times or five times) about this question of convenience. Right now, for example, I am sitting in the dark because the power has been randomly turned off again. SENELEC has some problems keeping up with the bills, so the government tends to shut off the electricity. They turn it off in phases so that only a couple neighborhoods are affected at a time, but sometimes there are multiple outages in a day and sometimes the outages last for hours at a time. It is unpredictable to say the least. The power has been on much more consistently in the past week or two, especially when compared to the middle and end of September. But even still, it goes out fairly regularly. Saturday night it also went out, as I was sitting enjoying a nice beer at a bar in my neighborhood aptly called Le Mermoz (Mermoz being the neighborhood I live in...). Obviously life goes on and in that instance the bartender pulled out some lamps and we continued our merrymaking, but sometimes it is much more difficult to do things in half darkness. I know that electricity is not a necessity and that I was fortunate to grow up in a place that has it nearly 100% of the time. Actually, it's a bit funny because for the first month and a little bit that I was here, when the outages were especially frequent, they didn't really bother me at all. But now they're wearing on my nerves ever so slightly because they're so infrequent that I let my guard down, only to be thrust into darkness when I am least expecting it. It's really fairly bratty of me to be annoyed about the outages, but there's something really unpleasant about it getting dark at 7:30 and then having to rely on my headlamp for light while I go about my business.

Senegal has a pretty significant energy crisis. They are a petroleum importing country that depends on a lot of big Western businesses to supply gas and oil. This morning I saw a newspaper headline about how most of the big gas importers- Total, Shell, etc- are dry for the time being. When Senegal doesn't pay its bills, the gas sits on ships in Dakar's harbor. And sometimes the ships don't even make it that far. Last week my brother ran around for almost two hours looking for gas for our stove. Many Senegalese families use gas burners similar to camp stoves for all their cooking and my family is no exception. With the gas shortages of late, it has on occasion become nearly impossible to find gas for cooking. We were completely out one day last week and he had to go all the way to Liberte 6 (another neighborhood that is a twenty to thirty minute walk away) to get gas. In fact, Liberte 6 made the news that night for having received a large shipment of gas, basically the only neighborhood on the whole peninsula to have done so. People flocked from everywhere to get their hands on it. It really puts things in perspective. People in the US would laugh about the prospect of having to go further than the corner Holiday station store for gas. It is just so convenient living in a really rich country where we don't even have to ask where the next shipment of gas or oil is going to come from. And it is so inconvenient to have to worry about whether or not there will be gas available to cook tonight's dinner.

And then comes the question of water. In Dakar the water is almost always on, but somedays it is inexplicably very unavailable. There was one Saturday about a month ago when the water was off for the entire city for a few hours. None of us ever figured out why, but it was really inconvenient for people who were trying to cook dinner and for people who had just returned from the beach and really needed to wash the sand out of their hair.

It is also interesting to see the problems in the supply chain that exist for the average business in Senegal. Last week every boutique (small shops on the corner of almost every street) in my neighborhood was out of 10L bottles of mineral water, a product that is common. At Le Mermoz on Saturday night, a friend of mine had to request three different kinds of soda pop before arriving at one that the bar actually had. At restaurants it's common to get a menu only to try to order and be told that the kitchen literally has two or three items available. It's hard to tell if these types of incidents are the result of poor supply chain management, goods shortages, or if there's a completely different reason that I can't even imagine. Whatever it is, it always causes a little laugh when one of us tries to get one of our top five options at a restaurant or bar and can't manage.

So yes, convenience is lacking in a lot of ways. It is usually just sort of hilarious. Most people on my program seem to take it in sort of a 'why am I not surprised that this isn't working right now' way. It also makes me feel like a privileged brat that I am so accustomed to always having things at my fingertips. I take that back, it makes me grateful that the US has the infrastructure it does. It's just so convenient to be able to turn on a light at night, have my fan on while I sleep, and order most anything I want at restaurants. Being here proves that these luxuries are in no way necessary, but that it is really a luxury in itself to not have to worry about the day-to-day stuff of life.  

Reality Check

The other day walking through the market I saw what I can only describe as half of a man. I didn't really dare do a double take for fear of being rude, but from one glance I was able to notice that this man had no legs and that the upper half of his body was the size one would expect from a toddler. On this oddly small body, there was the face of a man clearly more aged than myself. He was sitting on the sidewalk on a blanket, without a wheelchair or any other type of aid. It was heartbreaking to see this person on the ground, sitting so low that it would have been easy to miss him entirely. It was equally striking to me that he had been able to survive at all. His disability was extreme and he obviously lacked the means to get the attention he deserved. I had to figure that only some combination of insane mental determination, social support and luck had allowed him to successfully make it through so many years of life. While there was something a little bit intriguing about seeing this man at the market, it also really disturbed me. He didn't even have a wheelchair.

When I decided to come to Senegal I figured that I would see things that would make me uncomfortable. I knew that the abject poverty faced by so many would probably inspire some sort of white/American/privileged guilt. What I didn't really expect was the disproportionate (and visible) proportion of urban homeless/poor that would have handicaps. Walking down the street to school I encounter a number of the same beggars everyday. I would estimate that there are between five and seven familiar faces greeting me each day on my walk. Of this group, three are in wheelchairs and another man could probably use one, but sits on a blanket on the ground instead. Many of the people I see with handicaps seem to have suffered from polio as children, their feet and legs characteristically twisted, while others have lost limbs altogether. Many people are in wheelchairs or use canes and crutches to walk, which is rather depressing to see, but the other day I was realizing that even sadder is the fact that those are the lucky people. I have been noticing with increasing frequency (probably because my attention has been drawn to it) the high number of people who clearly need a wheelchair or cane, but don't have them.

Last weekend in Saint Louis we were sitting outside a bar when a man crawled up to the table. He had crossed the street on his hands and knees, almost getting hit by a number of cars in the process. It's an awkward feeling to look at a man who clearly has very little in life, take a sip of an overpriced drink, and try to ignore his calls for help. There are so many people here who ask for help on the streets; it is difficult to say no, but also impossible to say yes to everyone. I realize that I am rich in comparison to so many people, but my bank account certainly can't handle unbridled charity. There are days when I offer a couple coins to beggars, or maybe some extra bread to the talibes, but I honestly don't do it very often. It is a little overwhelming to look at the scale of the problem and attempt to do anything about it because even if I give someone 50 CFA or some baguette today, they will be back on the street tomorrow. I know that just because the problem won't be solved doesn't mean I shouldn't help, but it is distressing to walk around and see so many people who are subsisting on the goodwill of others, clearly lacking any government support or consistent means. I feel like giving a few piddly CFA isn't going to do a thing. And realistically it won't. It might make their life a little easier for today, but in the long run the problem is going to continue to replicate itself.

I was warned that there would be challenges in processing the things that I saw here. It's strange because for the first month or so of being here I was able to write off a lot of what I see on the streets everyday because I had mentally prepared myself for the fact that extreme poverty would exist here. Because I knew that I would see it, I was able to brace myself and detach my emotions from the issue. But in the past week or so, especially with my observations about how disproportionately people with handicaps are affected, this barrier has been shattered. Seeing the same sad scenes everyday wears on one's ability to accept reality without getting emotionally involved.  

Nam nam nam

I have been avoiding writing this post because I really think it is going to turn out rambly and not be nearly as interesting as it probably could be, but nothing all that interesting or funny has happened this week, so I am giving in.

The food here is really delicious for the most part. In fact, at my house it always is. We don't often eat the mystery meat that so many people complain about and I have never been served Senegalese cous cous (which I hear is pretty awful). I do often find myself being grateful for the multivitamins I brought along, however, given that a large part of the diet lacks fresh fruits and veggies. And also contains a ton of processed, bleached flour and refined sugar. 

I don't really know what my family eats for lunch because to be honest I am never actually home during the lunch hour. I am pretty excited to (probably?) eat lunch with my family at my internship to see what lunch is because it is the biggest meal of the day.
A typical dinner is meat, carbs, and sauce. My family most often eats beef, although fish and chicken are also common. We almost always have baguette, although lately the price of bread has been high so that isn't really guaranteed. Dinner always also includes at least one other starchy something. Rice is everywhere and french fries (made from real potatoes fried in palm oil) are often featured. Yassa, or onion sauce, is the most common condiment. Other nights, this spicy something or another that probably contains a ton of MSG douses my rice. My family also loves ketchup, although I usually opt out of that. Vegetables are not altogether common, but some nights there will be boiled cabbage, manioc or carrots. My family also often makes this mushy pea dish that is: mushy peas, yassa, beef, and fried potatoes. Delicious! I eat so much here. My family has stopped eating from a communal dish and serves me my own plate. On an average night I eat enough food to feed two or three of my normal self. I justify it because my lunch is usually just fresh fruit and yogurt. 
I will try to take some photos of my dinners and add them someday soon to make this a little more exciting...

Saint Louis (Another Senegalese Roadtrip)

Saturday morning I woke up sometime around 5:15 to get a taxi and head to Saint Louis, the first colonial capital of French West Africa. It is one of Senegal's largest cities (after Dakar, of course) and is situated on the coast just a few miles south of the Mauritanian border. The city itself sprawls on both banks of the Senegal River and also encompasses a small island in the middle of the river itself. Bridges connect the island to both river banks. The city was completely different than Dakar, and completely wonderful. We spent most of our time on the island, which has a thriving ex-pat community and is home to most tourist amenities. (Because lets be real, this weekend we were being the world's biggest tourists.) One of the coolest/most unique features of Saint Louis is that most of the original colonial architecture has been maintained. This makes the island a colorful, open, and beautiful place. The buildings are painted bright shades of yellow, blue, and red, with shutters and balconies and other ornate details. There is also very little traffic on the island because it is so small, making it really nice to wander around.

The view from the back seat of the sept place

Let me backtrack for just a minute to talk about how we got to Saint Louis. Travelers leaving Dakar have a number of options for shared transport. There are buses operated by the Mauride brotherhood, minibuses that squish way too many people into them, and sept places (station wagons that offer seven places for passengers and their baggage, plus the driver). There are probably more, but those are the three I hear about most often. The sept place is slightly more expensive than the minibuses, but is generally considered a more comfortable option, so the five of us opted to take that. The other group of students was already at the station when Alyssa and I arrived, a fact made obvious when we pulled up in our taxi and immediately were greeted by two men saying: “Toubabs going to Saint Louis? Your friends are over there.” And indeed they were. Sometimes the toubab title is useful. Luckily there were other passengers headed to Saint Louis (the sept places don't leave until they're full), so we were able to leave almost immediately. We were squished three to a row, but it was surprisingly comfortable (and also a little too hot- but really how is that different than any other day?). The drive between Saint Louis and Dakar was fast- it took us only about 4 hours to travel the 310 kilometers between the cities. The road connecting the two cities is well known as the nicest road in Senegal, and it showed. Rather than the bumpy, slow ride that we enjoyed on the way to Toubacouta, we went highway speed on a road whose biggest problem was an occasional pothole. It was ritzy to say the least. The drive was fairly uneventful, although it was nice to get to see the Senegalese landscape in yet another region.

A typical building.

We spent most of the day on Saturday zigzagging across the island, taking in the sights and sounds. The architecture continued to amaze and the weather was amazing- a nice breeze coming off the river and not too hot. The island was so calm in comparison to Dakar. There weren't many people wandering around and this part of the city lacked the constant barrage of advertisements and vendors that are so common on the streets of Dakar. It felt amazing to get out of the city a bit, even if it was just to a smaller city. We also enjoyed a delicious lunch at a Moroccan restaurant and went to find our hotel, a cute little place called La Louisiane on the north side of the island. The day went fast, and soon we were gathering to eat dinner and find some way to amuse ourselves for the night. The island is home to a number of fine eating and drinking establishments; we frequented a number of them during our evening excursion. We started off eating some burgers that had a skewed bun to burger ratio but were delicious nonetheless. Then we continued on to a nice hotel bar where we enjoyed a few drinks, kept an eye on a Senegal-Mauritius soccer match and got offered many tours of Saint Louis and the surrounding area. Even though we were bothered by a number of beggars and vendors, the streets were much calmer than they ever are in downtown Dakar. We were sitting outside on the street and only got the occasional proposition. It was nice. Eventually we decided to hit up another bar where there was live music- a great little reggae group that made it hard to hear, but provided excellent ambiance. We made friends with some Guineans and danced a little, which put us all in a great mood. Obviously, we couldn't go to sleep after the band finished, so we continued on to a bar called the Flamingo that we had noted earlier in the day. The bar was calm, although Lonely Planet tells us that it is where the best parties in Saint Louis can sometimes be found. The service was great and there was a pool in the middle of the bar area. It also sat directly on the river's edge, which provided lovely panoramas. We had a great time there, chatting with the bar tenders and other patrons. There was a very silly man named Pierre who worked for the American embassy, a bassist named Becaye from a local band, and another man who only spoke Spanish? The night was definitely a success, and we managed to stay at the bar chatting in Frolof (French + Wolof) until well after 3 am. By that point we were tired and hungry, so we grabbed some really rich donuts and hit the hotel, where I actually didn't successfully get to sleep until more like 7 I think. Silly silly toubabs.

We all woke up tired, but content to wander, so we walked off the island and attempted to get close to the Mauritanian border. It turns out that even when you walk to the end of the road in Saint Louis and get close to the river that everyone always says is the border you are actually still about 7 kilometers from the border. We weren't altogether successful, but Joe and I have convinced ourselves that the tree line we saw down the beach had to have been the border, so that is a personal victory. The beach was worth walking to as well. There were lots of people fishing and the waves were lovely. There was also a group of Senegalese preteens who laughed at my nose piercing and tried really hard to get us to dance. It's really hilarious watching them laugh at us for being really white.

And after the march to Mauritania, we were pretty much ready to go. It had been a long night and the day was much hotter than the previous one had been. So we squished too many of us into a taxi and headed out of town to grab a sept place back to Dakar. Again we got lucky and got to leave almost immediately, which we were all grateful for because it was nap time. Sleeping in a sept place isn't exactly comfortable, and it was very funny to watch my friend Griffin's head bob on and off the shoulder of the stranger sitting next to him. At one point the woman turned around to me and Alyssa and started laughing at him. It was one way to pass the time. The drive home took even less time than the way there and after failing to figure out the car rapides leaving the sept place station, I just hopped in a taxi to go home.

So that was my weekend as a tourist in Saint Louis. I would highly recommend the city to anyone who happens to have a little time to kill in Senegal. I am a little bummed because I lost one of my favorite earrings at the hotel, but I guess I should have looked a little harder for it if I am going to complain. And I also got pretty sunburned. Oh well, c'est la vie. The weekend was just what I needed to clear my head a little bit and I would have been mad at myself if I spent three months here without setting foot in Saint Louis. It was well worth the adventure.  

A General Update

Hit the beach yesterday with my brother after dropping by a tailor to get a dress made. I hope it turns out cute and not homely because I fear that there may have been something lost in translation when I tried to explain what I wanted. Also, she asked me to draw a picture and then drew something totally different, so I feel like maybe she's just going to make whatever she wants. At least it will probably turn out nice looking if she's made it before. Stay tuned for that! But yeah, hit the beach for awhile. Just bummed around and started working on homework (which I actually have!?!) when I returned. Found more cockroaches in my room. Hilarity ensued. I could tell the story, but cockroaches have been getting way too much press on my blog, so you'll just have to guess. I will just say this: it involved me sitting on my bed, finding a cockroach close to my head, and panicking with a spray can full of insecticide. My mother also made many comments about how silly it is that toubabs are afraid of cockroaches. She's right. Also it is sad that I pretty much just told the story. I could have made it much more dramatic, but c'est la vie.

Wolof is always one of my favorite classes. Our professor is phenomenal and it is hard for me to believe that I walked into a room less than a month ago not knowing a single word of the language! Apparently a lot of people speak Wolof at my internship site. I figure some people will speak some french, but maybe that is a bad assumption to make. It's intimidating knowing that my ability to communicate with people might be limited to a language that I have spent 50 hours learning. I guess I will be known as a really quiet girl for the first time in my life.

Speaking of my internship, in a couple of weeks I will be headed to a village called Mbam for a month and a half. I don't have a very clear idea of what I will be doing there yet, but the possibilities seem pretty endless. From what I can gather, the village has a few thousand people and is a member of Senegal's 'Eco-village' network. The people living there have quite a few grassroots projects, in various areas such as: animal biomass/renewable energy, mangrove reforestation, lifejacket fabrication, and permaculture. I think it is going to take some initiative to get involved, but if I am able to think of a cool project it could really take off. I think I will need to make the acquaintance of a well-connected polyglot. Also I won't really have internet there. Foundaigne, a town about 5 kilometers away, has internet, so I guess I can have it as often as I am willing to walk for it. Savor the blog posts now!

I don't have many deep thoughts about life in Senegal at the moment, but I figured I would give a general life update until I think of something better to write about. This weekend I am planning to go to Saint Louis, the former colonial capital, with a few of my classmates. I have no doubt that this adventure will provide ample blogging material for next week. Basically, I am telling you to wait for me to do something exciting so that I can write about it and this little info blurb is going to have to suffice for now.

The Streets of Dakar

A couple years ago I decided that most cities are probably pretty much the same. I acknowledge that they all have their own personality and unique skylines- anyone who has talked to me very often knows how staunchly I defend the Twin Cities as one of the best metropolitan areas in the States- but at the heart of it cities are all comprised of lots of concrete, industry, skyscrapers, noise, serious people, etc. Dakar is really no exception. Traffic is crazy, taxi drivers honk mercilessly, and business people walk around in very nice suits. 

The thing that I notice about Dakar is the garbage. Every day my route to school takes me past an area that is littered with organic and man-made waste. I can't be sure if people leave their piles of garbage there or if it is a low-lying area that naturally attracts trash moved by wind and water, but every day a clean-up crew is there, filling garbage trucks with all the debris and hauling it away. It smells awful and looks pretty disgusting. This problem with garbage exists on a large scale here. Material culture has moved in, but the culture of reduce, reuse, recycle (or even don't be a litterbug!) haven't had time to evolve yet. I have seen people carrying garbage bags down to the beach, only to watch as they dump out the garbage and take the bag back to refill it and repeat the cycle. It's discouraging, but what else can one really expect? The infrastructure for garbage disposal doesn't exist.

The funniest byproduct of this trash conundrum is the litany of polyester braids, animal innards, and people's clothing that finds its way onto the roads. I wish I had started a count of the number of extensions I see on the road because everyday I see at least two or three. They also hang from the tailpipes of many taxis. Fake hair is everywhere! But so are other things you would never expect to see on the road. The other day one of my friends saw the hindquarter of a cow laying on the street. I also often see rats the size of small cats decaying and feral dogs and cats eating the remains of unknown and unlucky little critters. Its part of the reason that leaving the city last weekend was so nice, although garbage was a problem there as well. Garbage is an inevitable part of human living in the modern era, I just wish there was a more pleasant way of dealing with it. 

Return of the roaches

I have been working a lot at conquering my fear of cockroaches lately. Last night, after my return from Toubacouta, I made a big step in facing that fear. I walked into my room to find a dastardly bug crawling on my bedsheets. I swept it from my bed, after which it ran behind my brother's trunk against a wall. I grabbed my shoe (chacos make great roach stompin' shoes if anyone was curious) and prepared myself to exterminate the disgusting insect. I took a breath and pulled the trunk from behind the wall, awaiting the roach's attempt to flee- which never came. It sat curled in the corner, just waiting. Alright, well that's how it's going to be roach. That won't stop me. I hiked up my pagne (a wrap around skirt, mine is floor length) and stood on top of the trunk, readying myself for the kill. I dropped my chaco repeatedly, squishing the bug, and then closed in to bash on it a number of times. When I was done, the roach was dead, guts spilling out, no sign of moving antennae, on its back. Pleased with a job well done, I decided to wait until morning to clean up the carcass and went to sleep confidently on top of my sheet, knowing my foe's life force had been extinguished. That was my rookie mistake.

This morning I awoke to see a roach slowly limping across my bedroom floor. It can't be, just absolutely cannot be, the same bug. But I was wrong. That blasted cockroach survived! IT HAD RESURRECTED ITSELF AND WAS TRYING TO ESCAPE! I couldn't believe it, so I checked the corner where I had left my victim and, sure enough, the bug was gone. So I grabbed my chaco and commenced again, finishing off the job I believed myself to have finished the night before. I felt a twinge of remorse at killing the handicapped little roach, but also decided that this had become a mercy killing. It was dragging itself by its two weak little front legs, innards still spilling out one side. It's a miracle that it lived, but I also can't allow those pests to lurk in the dark corners of my room. Absolutely not. Do I regret what I did? No. I only regret that I didn't succeed the first time around.  

La Lutte

La lutte in progress

This weekend I got to experience the national sport of Senegal, called la lutte in French, firsthand. La lutte is basically a violent form of wrestling. The men (only men can be lutteurs) wear little itsy bitsy bottoms and nothing else. To start the evening off, all the fighters spent some time warming up in the ring (which is really just a big circle of people watching the lutte- which takes place on dirt). They strut their stuff and get pumped up for the match, warming up their bodies and their egos. I still don't really have a conception of how the matches are chosen, but when one starts two lutteurs enter the ring and start posturing. I was sort of falling asleep for a lot of it (it took place between ten and midnight!), but from what I saw of a few matches it seemed like they oftentimes threw a bit of sand at each other and started pawing at each other like cats or something. From the impressions I have seen of the lutte, I think that this is pretty typical. So they slowly close in on each other and start grabbing for the other lutteur's arms. Once they get ahold of each other they grapple and struggle around the ring, trying to knock the opponent down. The whole point is to get your opponent on the ground (like most wrestling I suppose), but the means of doing so are fairly jarring. Since the lutteurs engage and grapple with each other, a lot of the matches ended with one of the fighters getting thrown onto the ground HARD. And there aren't mats on the ground, just packed dirt. You could feel the ground shake when some men hit the dirt. Sometimes the battles were intense, with one of the competitors resting just inches off the ground for a painfully long time before managing to make a comeback and continuing the battle. It takes a lot of strength, no doubt, and I have been told that the entire point of the lutte is basically just to say “HEY WORLD! I AM REALLY STRONG!” Alright, you've made your point.

Also, the lutte seems to be more about ego than anything else. Some of the lutteurs straight up threw fits when they lost, convulsing on the ground and getting toted off and held back by their posses. It is totally possible that I am misinterpreting what was happening when they had these little fits, but at a superficial level it struck me as being anguish about having lost. Sort of silly, but also quite dramatic and fun to watch. I think usually lutte matches are more dramatic than the one we saw, which was orchestrated for our enjoyment, but even still, this one was pretty intense. There was drumming and singing the entire time and the whole town turned out to watch (that was also different- I guess usually kids don't really get to go because matches can actually get dangerous).

Senegal's lutte champion: Yekini

The lutte happens throughout Senegal, but during the summer months a national contest gets held. It is a big, televised event and the winner is celebrated like a national hero.

You can buy notebooks, folders, and trinkets of all kinds with the lutte champion's face on them. Very silly indeed. But everyone loves it. The men all go to the beach to work out and practice here in Dakar, and I think that the process is probably similar in the villages. Watching it sort of cracked me up because I was not really sure what to expect and the men really looked like fighting ponies or cats or something, but I shouldn't laugh because it's not like I could ever win any lutte contest.  

A Senegalese Roadtrip

The group waiting for a new bus.

Last weekend our program went on a trip to the Saloum Delta, a river delta south of Dakar that is very close to the Gambian border. I woke up early, before six o'clock and caught a taxi to school where we all loaded up our bus and enjoyed a delicious breakfast of pastries and juice. Unfortunately, as we were enjoying breakfast, and before we left school, the rack that was holding up all the luggage on top of the bus collapsed under the weight of all of our bags, hundreds of liters of bottled water, and mass offerings of onions, rice, and various other foodstuffs we were bringing for the family of our program's director. So we drove the bus a whole two blocks to exchange it for another bus. It was a surprisingly efficient process. Most of us really anticipated to be in Dakar until lunch, but we managed to leave before ten.

The state of the roads. Note the large potholes.

The road between Dakar and Toubacouta is not long- about ninety kilometers I have been told- but we enjoyed every nook, cranny, and bump it had to offer. In fact, we enjoyed about six hours worth of everything that road had to offer. Such a time frame would be considered ludicrous in the United States, but that is just how long things take when the roads are full of crater-sized potholes and huge puddles.  Luckily, the drive was beautiful. It is the tail end of the rainy season, which means that everything is still lush and green. We got to take in fields of crops taller than me, baobabs, and lots of donkeys, horses, and cattle. So the drive was slow, but eventful.

Our first stop was a place we returned to a number of times throughout the weekend: the house of the mayor of Sokone, who also happens to be the brother of our program director. The house was gorgeous and the ladies there prepared us delicious food for lunch every day of our journey. They also entertained everyone with beats and songs and dancing, which was fun to watch. I couldn't dance for most of the weekend because I managed to fall ill again (yum, fever, cough, delicious!), which was very sad, but also allowed me to watch as my classmates busted a move. That was really entertainment enough.

The view from the dinner table.

After lunch we continued on to our hotel, which was gorgeous! It was nestled right on the river bank and was surrounded by mangroves. We shared little rooms between three of us, which featured AC and (I've been told) hot water. Our hot water was a total failure, but it was nice to think it existed for some people. It was really nice to escape the city for awhile, especially when we got to eat very fancy dishes overlooking the river every night. We didn't get to enjoy this little piece of paradise all that much though because our program had us doing things every second of the day.

We did quite a few things during our time in the area: visited a health clinic and maternity ward, conversed with the mayor of Sokone, met some local radio broadcasters, etc. I only partially got to see all of those things because I was sick and had to pass a lot of time on the bus, which was lame, but also better for my well-being so I guess I can't complain.

Two events stood out among the rest as really stellar. The first was attending a lutte match, which I will explain in a separate post because it is too silly/important/good to squish in here with everything else. The other was our day reforesting mangroves and taking a tour through the national park that is located in the Saloum Delta.

Saturday morning we set out on the bus, ready to plant some mangroves! I was actually being sort of a party pooper because of my fever, but I will pretend that I was actually really upbeat and excited for the sake of the story. Our bus dropped us off and we walked to the river's edge, where a few members of the group donned ridiculously oversized orange life vests. Very silly. Then we headed for the river, where a large pirogue was waiting for us (I think it was a pirogue- I guess I just call most of the boats here pirogues. It's totally possible there is a more narrow definition than I am assigning it though.). The caveat is that the pirogue was already 100 yards onto the river and we had to walk out to it. I had worn jeans rolled up past my knees thinking that would be sufficient for wading. Wrong. We went in thigh deep and had to dive into the pirogue in the middle of the river. Exciting, but also proved most people's choice of shoes to be entirely inadequate. Once everyone had made it into the boat, it made the large craft look piddly. There were probably thirty or so people, plus buckets and huge sacks of mangrove seeds in the boat. We rode the entire way about six inches out of the water. Actually, the boat was leaking right below my seat, which Waly described as “pas bon,” and some of the younger boys took turns bailing out the bottom of the boat as we rode, so I guess I should feel glad that we had even that much clearance. The boat ride was full of singing and dancing (due to space constraints only one or two people could dance at a time) and was entirely enjoyable.

We pulled up to a beach to watch crabs scatter everywhere and began to make our way across a flat expanse of mud to plant mangroves. Out on the mud flats there were thousands of crabs hurrying away in a mass exodus, trying to avoid our large group. It worked for the most part, although I would guess something like 100 crabs fell prey to various members of the group taking hostages. Apparently it was also very smelly, but I didn't know that. The mud was mostly reasonable for most of the morning, but as we moved further from our starting point it got softer and softer. Finally, I just started skating across the top of the mud. After awhile though, members of the group started sinking in thigh deep. That obviously didn't stop us from planting those damned trees, but it did mean that we were all very muddy by the time we left. Luckily, we still had to wade in the river to return to shore, so we were only wet with really muddy river water and not pure mud by the time we got on the bus.

Later in the day we got back into boats and took a relaxing cruise through the river system. Very informative and beautiful. Not nearly as adventurous as the morning's exploits, but a lovely way to end the day. Overall, the weekend was well worth the drive, even though we had to do it all over again to go back to Dakar.