IM ALIVE

So I am alive and well. Dont have time or typing skills on a french keyboard to say much more.
Mbam is excellent and the time is flying.
I have been working at a school and harvesting peanuts and searching for fish.
And tqking bucket showers of course/
And riding horse carts and jakartas (,otorcycles).
I am sorry this is a lame update but I lack sufficient time for more.

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.