Day 24 - Au Revoir Senegal

Well, it seems my time in Senegal is finally up.  I spent the morning having one last beach day with some of the American students and their host families, and I will be boarding a plane heading back to the US in just a few hours (conveniently landing the morning of my 21^st birthday!)  As sad as it will be to leave this country, and all of the friends that I’ve made here, I think I am ready to head back.  Most of us have our entire afternoons planned out for when we get back to Columbus.  Personally, I plan to go get a delicious Subway sandwich, and then take a nice hot shower, watch some Netflix and eat Reese’s before going out with my friends for some pool and drinking.  This past month has truly been an invaluable experience.  It has been amazing to live in a culture which is so different from my own, and to gain an understanding of a completely different set of values and beliefs.  Upon reflection, I don’t the people and their lifestyle here are really as different from US culture as I had expected them to be, in many ways it is as if they are simply a few years behind us.  The most shocking differences are all well below the surface, in their political perceptions and views on gender equality which have been shaped by centuries of tradition and religious influence.  I think that many of the people here are also striving to create a nation which is very similar to my own, although that may be a long ways down the road for them.  There is a lot of culture here, but I feel that a lot of it is intended as more of a tourist trap than an expression of the people here.  The parts of the culture which do matter to the people are the more tribalistic-clothing and music, both of which exist as often in American styles as African ones (although the people here tend to dress a bit nicer than the casual American style, jeans and t-shirts are not uncommon, and I here American music all the time – I’m actually glad that after today I will most likely not have to listen to Shakira’s ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ for quite a while).  Religion is also very important to the people here.  Mosques are everywhere, as are prayer rugs for their daily prayers (I believe they are required to pray five times per day).  Although the majority of the people are Muslim, the government is considered to be more Christian-based, and tends to follow the Christian holidays.  Evidently they take religion much more seriously here, as everyone stayed home from work and school today in honor of the Christian holiday of Ascension.  Having grown up in a Christian household for 18 years, I could not have told you that Ascension was today, or even really what Ascension is all about.  It’s interesting how much of a difference a few differences in core values can make in the shaping of a culture.  That’s all for now!  I hope you’ve all enjoyed following my adventures this month.  I will see you all again when I venture to France for Autumn semester!

Day 23 - Bittersweet Farewells

My time in Senegal is coming to a close.  Today we started off with a reflection on the trip, with everyone sharing both negative and positive impressions of the country.  Most of them were fairly predictable, such as the differences in hospitality and political expression, and the poor waste management and difficulty of trying to practice French in a country where it was really only the second language.  The one point which did spark a fairly heated debate, as usual, was the oppression of women in this country.  It’s an extremely complex issue, with lots of complications rooted in religion and tradition.  The attempts to create a feminist movement are also points of debate, and whether the role of women in the US ought to be used as a basis for comparison.  That argument went on for a solid 20 minutes before our professor finally just cut us off and told us it was time to head out.  After the reflection we had a sort of farewell-party with our Senegalese partners, a last-hurrah before heading back to the States.  Although I think that it is likely that many of the students from this trip will be returning.  Ashley has an internship lined up in January, which Chatondra is also looking into, and Pat and Kenisha have both made very close friends that they will most likely be coming back to visit.  Our farewell party was back on Ngor Island.  I think that’s Thiam’s favorite spot in the city.  It was a great way to wind down, relaxing on the beach and doing a bit of swimming.  I was considering asking for permission to swim back to the mainland from the island after we were done, since it isn’t really that far, until I realized that there were jellyfish in the water closer to the mainland.  We had a nice lunch at the island restaurant and then headed back, saying goodbye to all of the Senegalese students and our bus driver before heading back to our individual partners.  Other than that there really isn’t too much to report, it was kind of a lazy day.  I discovered that I can download a Nook app onto my tablet, so I’ve taken to reading again during my free time.  That’s how I spent the majority of the evening.  Our plane leaves the Senegal airport around 1am Friday morning, so tomorrow’s post will be my last.

Touba

Day 22: God's City? Or.....

Well, Touba was….. hot.  It was cool and all to see a really big place of worship, I’m just not sure it was worth a four-hour drive to the middle of the desert.  The majority of the people at Touba seem to spend almost all of their time napping, which I think makes them much smarter than us.  We took an hour-long tour in 110*F weather.  The architecture within the mosque was amazing, but it was difficult to pay attention to anything our guide was trying to tell us, because we were swarmed by young boys.  They tried begging for the first minute, but when it became clear we weren’t going to give them anything, they didn’t go away, they decided to follow us around and either listen to the lecture we were being given, or stare at the white people.  I couldn’t decide which.  Probably the most upsetting part of being at Touba was when we walked past a man lying on the floor of the temple whose face & body were covered in boils.  To be honest, I’m not even positive he was still alive.  It kind of made us all realize that it’s really common for people to go pray at major religious spots when they’re extremely sick, and clearly no one keeps them out here.  I can handle any kind of deformities or mental illnesses, but I’m guessing whichever diseases cause boils are probably a little more contagious.  Needless to say, we went through a lot of Purell when we got back onto the bus.  I was also amused by their insistence that everyone remove their shoes before entering the mosque.  This was intended to keep their place of worship clean, but the reality of the situation was that there was still sand everywhere and people were just getting sand on their feet instead of their shoes and tracking it all over the place.  I actually think that shoes probably would have been cleaner.  The gender bias in this country continues to amaze me.  I understood that it was important for the women to cover up when entering the religious city, to the point that the only thing actually showing were our faces.  However, I hadn’t realized that no such standards existed for the men.  I think they might have still been required to wear pants, but there were plenty of men wearing simple t-shirts.  It was really unfair.  No one should be forced to wear so much clothing when it’s that hot out, and clearly the men will never understand because they aren’t being forced to do the same.  I also really just don’t understand who decided that it was a good idea to build an extremely conservative religious city in the middle of the desert in the first place.  If you’re going to have one, at least put it somewhere cooler, like along the coast.  I think they actually chose one of the hottest places in Senegal.  And this isn’t even their hottest time of the year yet.  The one really cute touch the place did have was people outside of the mosques selling finches, you could buy one and release it to ‘release all bad feelings.’  It was a cute idea.  Also, a monkey ran across the road in front of our bus this morning.  I have no idea where it came from, or if monkeys are even native to Senegal.  I’ll have to ask the professor tomorrow.

P.S. The power outages have been getting more frequent.  We’ve probably had 5 or 6 during the past two weeks – at least during the time that I’m actually home.  Really not sure what that’s about.

I'm alive

My computer's refusing to connect to the internet right now, so you guys will have to wait until tomorrow to read about Touba, sorry for the delay.

Day 21 - Islam

Well, I write today’s post as possibly my last will and testament.  We go to Touba tomorrow, which is a desert where it is supposed to be over 100 degrees.  It is also a religious city, so everyone is required to wear extremely conservative clothing, meaning long sleeves and skirts, and scarves covering our heads.  There’s at least a 75% chance that I am going to die of heat stroke before the day’s over.  If I do die, I would like my ashes scattered off the coast of Maine, I feel like that’s a nice touch.  I don’t really have any money for people to fight over, so there’s no point in worrying about that.  Whoever wants my possessions can duel for them.  With swords. 

Nothing terribly interesting to report for today.  We went to a university that specializes in business, actually just down the street from where I’m living, and had back-to-back lectures on Islam.  To be honest I missed a lot of what was said, they kind of lost my interest once the lecture turned into more of a history lesson.  It’s hard enough for me to remember US history.  The one point that has managed to stick with me has been the lack of rights that Muslim women have.  The most shocking in my opinion is the role of polygamy in their relationships.  I’ve never really had a huge problem with polygamy before, it doesn’t bother me at all in the Mormon religion.  As long as all parties are aware that they are entering into polygamous relations, and are consenting, I fully support the right of people to do whatever they please.  However, that is not how polygamous relationships work in Senegal.  Here, a married man will start to see another woman on the side without informing his wife.  In fact, she is not told until he is actually engaged to the other woman.  Sometimes, the husband won’t even be the one to tell the wife that he has taken a second fiancée, he will convince his brother to handle the situation for him.  The majority of women here do not seem to particularly like this situation, but they also do not feel as if they really have a choice.  They have learned to accept that it is part of their religion, and there is very little they can do to stop their husband if he chooses to take on other wives as long as he is financially capable of supporting multiple families.  Divorce is almost unheard of in the Muslim religion, as it is only granted under extreme circumstances.  I think it will be a long time before the women here manage to gain a strong enough voice to be treated with the respect they deserve.

One Band, One Sound

 

Day 20 - Going Native

I continue to have no idea what the relationships are here between family, friends, etc.  People kind of just wander in and out, they often stay just long enough to say hello, and then wander back out the door no more than a minute later.  I’m not sure how far they’re coming from for such a short visit, although we do live behind the Mosque, so maybe they are dropping by after their religious services or something at least some of the time.  There’s one boy that showed up about 3 days ago, and he now seems to spend almost the entire day here, but he doesn’t spend too much time talking to most of the family, and no one made any attempt to introduce him to me.  The best guess I’ve got is that maybe one of the 28-year olds are engaged to him or something, but if that’s not it than I’m completely baffled.  I’m not even sure where he is in the house the majority of the time, as he seems to spend very little time in the common room where most people relax.  So far he only wanders out for some meals and soccer games (that Madrid game was both awesome and ridiculous by the way.  Poor Atletico… good thing I prefer Real – not that I actually watch soccer when I’m not being forced into it.)  We had lessons today in African-style drumming and dancing.  The drumming went significantly smoother than the dancing, although none of us were particularly good at either.  I now have a lot more respect for drummers in general, even though they’re job is just to keep the beat, it’s really not as easy as it seems.  We were all terrible at the dance.  I think that I’ve decided that even one of us could have done it perfectly, their style of dancing just seems ridiculous when it’s a white person doing it.  It’s just too tribal looking for us to pull off.  I think I’ll leave the dancing to the true Africans from now on.  Unfortunately, it appears that video was taken of a significant portion of this class, so you all may get your chance to laugh at our non-existent skills. 

Day 19 - Finally Learning the Ropes

I am quite certain that sheep are the most annoying creatures on the face of the Earth.  Why anyone ever decided that they wanted to domesticate these animals and bring them to live on their land is beyond me.  I do finally understand how we began slaughtering and eating animals though.  It had nothing to do with hunger.  Today was another pretty slow day.  Chatondra and I got up early (well, early in my mind) to go downtown and check out the shops there, since she still needed a gift for her brother.  There are a lot of cute booths down there, although I think a lot of it was geared towards tourists.  There are a bunch of rather pushy men who wander around looking for foreigners so that they can insist on either taking them to their shop, or ‘showing them around’ which actually means leading them directly to the shops with the most expensive goods, and trying to help the stores make a profit off of the ‘wealthy Americans.’  It actually worked out pretty well though, because we decided to cave to one of the guides and let him show us around, so we got a good feel for the market and found out where everything we wanted was while our guide kept unwanted company at bay.  When we got tired of following him, we claimed that we were hungry and going to get lunch (we actually did stop for a quick ice cream break) and then doubled back really quick to the spots where we had seen something we wanted to buy.  I also finally cracked the secret to haggling with the vendors.  Most of us have been struggling with that, I think because we are clearly Americans, and the shop keepers know that we aren’t used to having to barter for what we want.  It turns out, if you say what you are willing to pay, and then simply turn and leave when the vendor refuses to lower his price even a little bit, he will come running after you and agree to the price you had offered.  If only I had figured this out three weeks ago…

Day 18 - Home Again

Not too much to report today.  We left Toubab Dialo pretty early, and journeyed back to Dakar.  It was just the students this time, since I guess our professors had decided to stay another day for something, and a few of the students convinced the bus driver to let them out about an hour from Dakar because their African partners wanted to show them some kind of religious building.  I realized that on trips like this, I still don’t acknowledge the fact that we are all technically adults, since I am always shocked when people are permitted to do pretty much whatever they want to.  Everyone was kind of tired when we first got back, so no one really felt like doing anything, and Fridays are the religious days in the Muslim religion, so most things shut down in the afternoon.  I spent most of the day just browsing my wonderful American websites (which I’m pretty sure they just steal here like they do our music – the girls in my household are always playing these dress-up games online, but they are clearly on American sites) and then I went to the market in the afternoon under the pretense of getting more juice.  In reality I just wanted chocolate.  Food here is meant to be shared all the time, and the family would consider it rude if they found out that any of us kept our own food stocked in our rooms.  They would assume they weren’t feeding us enough at mealtimes, so it would be a personal affront.  We’re pretty sure that they wouldn’t understand the fact that American girls just need chocolate sometimes, so most of us have been sneaking out to get it from time to time.  I also stopped by the local pharmacy to see if they had anything good for allergies.  The hotel in Toubab Dialo had been crawling in cats, and the mediocre meds I brought just weren’t cutting it, so I decided that I was desperate enough to try sketchy African meds.  Those were effective, but they knocked me on my ass, so I wound up sleeping until dinner time (which is around 9:30pm here).  I’m still kind of tired actually, so I’m probably going to go back to sleep after I post this.

Toubab Dialo - View from our Hotel

Day 17 - Toubabs in Toubab Dialo

Can’t decide how I felt about today.  It was really interesting, and we learned a lot.  However, I think that our professors tried to pack too much into one day.  We were constantly on the move, and this was by far the hottest day we’ve had so far.  We were all ready to collapse by the end of the day.  We started off the day at a preserve, a small haven within a very polluted country.  The preserve was entirely run by women.  We listened to a lecture on the history of the preserve, and the efforts that they make, and then took a tour of part of the preserve as well as a small garden that they keep.  The garden seemed to be made almost entirely from recycled materials.  Smaller plants were grown in halves of plastic bottles, and peanut shells were used as soil.  Recycling seemed to be a big theme with the preserve.  The women make necklaces using recycled newspaper, and bags out of plastic.  Half of their profits go towards the preserve.  It’s pretty refreshing to see people actually caring about the environment for a change.  People here are terrible about dealing with trash, and what trash is collected is usually burned.  No one seems to understand that this is bad for the environment.  Our professor was surprised when we told him.  After the preserve, we drove to Joal to have lunch at Thiam’s parents’ house, and then walked down the street to a museum which was the house of Diogoye Senghor, the father of the first president of Senegal.  He was a fairly interesting man, although he seemed to be quite the womanizer.  He was a Christian, but he was also a polygamist.  We then went on a tour which led us across a couple of islands, both by foot and by boat.  The population on the main island was mostly Christian, which is the opposite of what is typical in Senegal, a country which is around 90% Muslim.  We visited a church there, and the other islands held a cemetery and a series of small huts which were used to store couscous after it had been prepared.  It was a good day for spotting wildlife.  Pigs run rampant on the island, and many of them had piglets.  There are also very colorful lizards, and roosters.  There was a pelican hanging out off the coast, and I tried to get a picture of it, but I’m afraid it didn’t come out very well.  Same for the little sand crabs that were scuttling about.  I also spotted a wild boar among the trees on our way back to Toubab Dialo.  That trip back was terrifying, by the way.  Buses simply do not belong on dirt roads.  They react much too harshly to potholes to be going over uneven ground all the time.  We didn’t do too much after we got back.  The Sengalese boys (four of our partners decided to accompany us this week) spent a decent amount of time trying to teach the American boys how to make a special kind of tea that is often drunk after meals here.  It was actually kind of cold here for the first time tonight.  The wind was coming in pretty strong.  I almost regretted not having a jacket.  Almost.

Day 16 - Sorry I'm Late in Posting

Looks like I’m not going to be having Wi-Fi here.  Oh well, I’m just going to write my posts anyway and I’ll upload them when I get a chance.  There’s supposed to be a little courtyard across the street which is sporadically open and has free Wi-Fi, so maybe I’ll be able to head over there at some point.  We are now in Toubab Dialo.  It’s another ocean-side city, and our hotel is absolutely gorgeous, and right on the beach.  Our only complaint so far is the water, which comes from a well and occasionally simply stops.  We spent most of the day just lounging on the beach, getting tan, climbing the rocks, and playing in the waves.  There are tourist-y little stands right outside of our hotel too if we decide that we want to buy some souvenirs, which is nice because it’s actually pretty difficult to find things like that in Dakar.  We had a writer come speak to us for about an hour, although to be honest I’m not sure I understood a lot of what he was talking about.  He talked a lot about dryness, and the universality of rhythm.  I’m pretty sure there was also something about salt-eating zombies, but I pretty much just gave up trying to understand at that point.  He looked kind of crazy too, so that wasn’t really helping.  We watched the sunset from our hotel’s deck, and later built a pretty good bonfire down on the beach, especially considering the amount of wood that we had to work with.  We borrowed Thiam’s speakers so we could play music and sing, and had a good time just hanging out, without the adults around.  All in all it was a pretty perfect day.

The View from Sea Plaza (Dakar mall)

Day 15 - An Average Day in Dakar

We have had two power outages in the last two days.  My host brother says that this typically happens when it’s really hot out, somehow that messes with their electricity.  I suppose that balances out, since I think their lines must be underground or something (since I have yet to see anything that looks like it deals with electricity), so they aren’t frequently struck by cars or lightning the way ours are.  I did find out that my phone’s flashlight was actually strong enough to light up an entire room though, so that was nice.  We had another double-lecture today.  The first was on the role of women’s rights.  The guest lecturer got into quite a debate with our professor over what Senegalese women ought to be striving for, feminism seems to be quite a controversial topic here.  Then again, when isn’t feminism a controversial topic?  The problem is, no two women want the same thing, but we still expect the world to conform to our individual ideals.  It was interesting to find out that Senegalese women are almost trapped in their marriages, because they can lose their pensions and inheritance if they remarry.  However, they do have a tendency to leave their husbands, not in divorce, but for a short period of time in protest when they are angered by their treatment.  The second lecture was another one on Wolof.  Oumou and Papis have also been trying to help teach me Wolof, teaching me common phrases and going over the material from the lectures with me.  It is a really hard language to pick up though.  I do alright with pronouncing the strange sounds, and reading the language, but the phrases are so long that it is difficult to memorize them.  I also feel like we’ve been given way too much information to learn in such a short period of time.  After the lectures a bunch of us decided to head over to a local market, since a lot of people want to have African clothes made before they leave.  It is much cheaper here to buy cloth and have a tailor custom-make your clothing than to buy it in a store.  Chattondra and I decided to walk instead of taking the Car Rapide with the others, since we didn’t want to have too many Americans in one group.  Turns out, we probably should have stuck with the group.  We found a market, but we have no idea if it was the one we were supposed to be going to, since we never found anyone selling fabric.  There were a lot of booths though and I don’t think we got to more than half of the market before we got tired and decided to head back.  Most of the booths were selling clothes that looked as if they were most likely second-hand.  It is kind of frustrating shopping here as a white woman, because you can’t pause to look at something without being flocked by vendors trying to force things on you.  I miss being able to just browse and take my time looking at all of their goods.  It continues to amaze me how good Dakar is for connections.  The city kind of reminds me of D.C. that way.  Embassies are everywhere throughout the city.  Dr. Saydi, the Dakar professor who has been accompanying us most days, runs into people that he knows everywhere, usually people with really diverse and interesting backgrounds.  Thiam finds a lot of people that he knows too, despite the fact that he hasn’t lived here in approximately a decade I believe.  Thiam found out that our women’s rights guest lecturer was going to an interesting conference in the afternoon, so he decided to leave us with the second speaker and accompany her instead.  One girl who is studying with us actually hasn’t been coming to the majority of our lectures, because on one of the first tours we took of the city, we were introduced to a man who works in the burn care unit at the local hospital, and he offered her an internship for the remainder of her time here.  He is working on creating such a center in the US, since there are too many burn victims here for the hospital to handle, and many of the ones with money are transported to Europe for care, and I guess Ashley has experience in advertising so they decided to team up.  Everyone here seems to thrive on the connections that they make.  Apparently tomorrow we are leaving for another 3-day trip (it was in the schedule but no one actually understood that it was more than a day trip until someone asked a question about it this afternoon) so bear with me if I do not post anything for a few days.  Hopefully I will be able to find Wi-Fi there but I’m not making any promises.

Day 14 - More lectures. Yayy.

I was starting to think that maybe things weren’t really safe in this country for girls, as I’ve been getting heckled more and more when I go out into the streets by myself.  I’m gradually realizing though that it’s not all girls, just the blonde American ones.  Lucky me.  We had two guest lecturers today.  The first was about Saint-Louis, it discussed the importance of the city as a major trade port, and the French and English fight for ownership of the region.  I didn’t really catch most of the details, I’ll have to read over my notes later to grasp the full lecture.  I’m not particularly good at simultaneously copying down notes and listening to lectures when they’re in French.  I should probably work on that.  The other lecture was another Wolof one, but we had a different professor this time and he was much better than the first.  He actually taught us some useful verbs and phrases, as well as the basic conjugations.  Actually, Wolof seems to be much simpler than most languages, unfortunately I don’t think I’ll ever have a use for it again after this trip.  This has been the most useful thing we’ve learned so far: Ndax dègg nga wolof? Déeded, waante maangiy jàng wolof.  That roughly translate to: Do you understand Wolof?  No, but I am in the process of learning Wolof.  That will probably be the only full sentence that I actually attempt to memorize.  I think we’re supposed to have another lecture in Wolof tomorrow, hopefully we will be able to get the same professor for that one.  I think it’s kind of strange actually that roughly half of our lectures have been about Wolof.  Our French has gotten plenty of practice, but we haven’t really been learning about anything that relates to French.  I’m fairly certain that if the study abroad office knew what was going on during this trip they’d be fairly upset.  That and the fact that our professor hasn’t been sticking to our schedule at all.  We’ve stopped even reading it, because nothing on it is ever right.  We just ask him each day when and where he wants to meet us the next day.  Out of the three papers we were supposed to have written by now, we’ve only written one, and it was in a blog posting style rather than a typical essay format like it was originally supposed to be.  Not that I’m complaining about the lack of work, I’m just giggling at the idea of the school learning what we’ve been up to.  For now I will just enjoy it and hope that lack of assignments means that he plans on being an easy-grader for this class.

P.S. The three year-old in the house just bumped into my computer, and it fell and part of the screen is cracked.  Since it’s a touch screen, this could create problems.  If things get worse and I can no longer use it, I will try to start getting to WARC earlier so I can type up a blog piece before classes, but posts might become less frequent, especially if we’re going on day trips.  Fingers crossed the cracks just stay as they are, and don’t complicate things.  (And yes, things like this do always happen to me.  Deal with it.)

 

Sunset by the Beach

Day 13 - Beach day

Enjoyed catching up on sleep today.  Pretty sure my family was judging me because I didn’t get up until about ten, when I’m pretty sure they wake up around 5 or 6am most mornings.  I don’t care though, it felt good.  I didn’t get nearly enough sleep when we were at Saint-Louis.  I spent most of the morning just hanging out, talking to friends and listening to music that I like for a change (they listen to American music all the time here, but for the most part its rap or reggae, which aren’t particularly my favorites.  I was missing my rock and alternative.)  In the afternoon I decided to accompany a couple of the boys and their host brothers/host brothers’ friends to the beach.  For some reason, when I walked through the Case de Mermoz (kind of like a concrete park near where I live, we’ve been using it as our meeting place), I was having a lot of issues with being hit on by creeps today.  One literally stopped his car to tell me that he loved me.  In English.  It was awkward.  I wound up calling Pat to find out where he lived so I didn’t have to wait for them to get to the Case.  We took a Car Rapide to the beach.  That was pretty cool.  It’s their version of a bus, but it only costs $0.20 to go anywhere in the city.  You mount the bus from the back, and there are guys that actually hang off the back of the buses to note who’s getting on so they can come collect money from some them at some point.  Once everyone who wants to has boarded, they bang on the roof to signal to the bus driver that he can move again.  It’s an interesting system.  When they get really crowded, more than just the guys who work for the Car Rapide will be hanging off the back.  Not sure it’s exactly safe, but I suppose it works.  The beach we went to was pretty nice.  There were a lot of rocks in the water though once you got out past waist height, so we determined that it wasn’t really safe to swim, since the waves coming in there were above our heads sometimes and we were afraid of being sucked into the rocks.  I know I definitely got pulled under two or three times.  You probably could have surfed there if you were willing to brave the waves to get out there.  I still haven’t really gotten used to seeing cactuses growing on the rocks here.  It doesn’t really seem like the right climate for them, but I guess they’re thriving here.

Day 12 - Return to Dakar

Left Saint-Louis today.  Unfortunately.  I’m going to miss that place…. It was just so much more modern than the rest of Senegal.  I was enjoying the modern amenities.  It was roughly a four-hour bus ride back to Dakar, and we more or less traveled straight through.  There was one funny moment about two hours out of the city when we passed a bus from another university in Dakar, and our bus driver recognized the driver of the other bus.  He started honking like crazy and pulled over to the side of the road, and the other bus pulled up next to us, and they both jumped out of their buses and started wrestling on the side of the road.  We were all so startled it took us a minute to determine that they were actually friends.  I don’t think I will ever adjust to Senegalese driving.  It seems as if for them, braking is an absolute last resort.  They prefer to lean on their horns in the hopes that everyone will just get out of their way.  Honking is also their way of announcing when they plan on doing something highly illegal, such as passing a car on the left when there is oncoming traffic.  The highways are filled with Car Rapides, which typically have people hanging off the back of them, holding onto ladders, and occasionally there are vans with people sitting on their roofs.  I saw one car today which had a live sheep strapped to its roof.  It didn’t look particularly happy… By far the funniest moment of the day was when Jaileen decided to give our professor a lesson in Salsa dancing in the middle of the bus as it was driving down the highway.  I was surprised that he actually rose to the challenge.  Wish I had been a bit quicker with my camera so that I could have captured the moment on film.  I’m back with my host family now, it seems that there is a wedding going on next door.  As far as I can tell, that involves a lot of drumming and chanting, with what sounds like blessings in between.  Papis tried to explain something about how important gift-giving was in the Senegalese tradition, but I’m not sure that I grasped all of it.  I’ll have to remember to ask my professor about it on Monday.  My host family has been popping over sporadically to celebrate with them.  It seems to be a more casual affair.  They invited me to come with them, but I declined since I didn’t really bring any clothing appropriate for a wedding.  I’ll have to remember for future travel to bring one really nice outfit just in case, since it would have been cool to witness that.

The Fish of the Island

Saint-Louis

Day 11 - Hanging at the Island

Saint-Louis is beautiful.  There’s also another island right next to it that I think we spent part of the day on, but to be honest I don’t really notice when we switch between the two.  This area is definitely supported primarily be the fishing industry, there are boats and fishermen everywhere.  They seemed to be building some boats too.  I try not to look too much at the heaps of fish because I still don’t really like seafood, and I get creeped out by dead things staring at me, but there are piles of them everywhere.  In the boats, on the sides of the street, in buckets being carried on peoples’ heads, and in the carts pulled by horses.  At one point I glanced down towards the gutter, and it was just a stream of blood from the fish which had been gutted.  Once you get past all of that though, the islands are pretty cool.  There are vendors everywhere, and the architecture is really cool and colorful.  I spotted a couple of pelicans out in the water too.  We saw a bat last night, they’re absolutely huge here.  They remind me of the ones that you find in the zoos in the U.S.  We went to the beach, and the water here is absolutely gorgeous (minus the pollution – this entire country has a huge problem with that.)  We visited another art exhibit too.  Many of the collections of art here are associated with a program called OFF, which allows anyone to view the exhibits for free.  Goats are pretty much everywhere on this island.  It turns out that the animals that are outside of our houses back in Dakar aren’t goats, they’re sheep, they just don’t have wool the way American sheep do.  Thiem says that many families here keep sheep so that they can slaughter and eat them later.  Kenisha says that her family told her they just keep them as pets though.  Saint-Louis is a very small island though.  Everyone here seems to know who we are, I think they identify us as ‘those white people from the UCAD bus.’  A lot of people were waving as we drove through the streets.  I think we stand out a lot because buses aren’t typically that big in Senegal, most people use Car Rapides or taxis when they need public transportation, and the Car Rapides aren’t that much bigger than U.S. vans.  Our hotel is wonderful though, it's very modern for this country.  It has hot showers, which are fantastic, and really soft blankets.  I think we're all going to be sad to be heading back to Dakar tomorrow.

Day 10 - On the Move

We are now on the island of Saint Louis.  It took us most of the day to get here.  I think it was really only a 4-5 hour drive, but we stopped in Thiès for lunch, and for a tour of a sort of tapestry-factory.  We got to see each stage of tapestry-making, from the initial design and color-selection to the artisans working at the loom to design the masterpieces which have been dreamt up.  It was really cool.  Once we reached Saint Louis, we went for a short tour of the island, and we stumbled across a house which had been converted into an art gallery, where one of the professors that has been accompanying us ran into some people that he knew.  The art was really cool, and we enjoyed talking to the artists and other professionals that were there.  One of the women works in several offices around the world as a political supporter of some sort (it sounded like she dealt a lot with human rights?) and despite the fact that she lives in Germany, she spoke flawless French and spends a lot of the year traveling between Senegal and South Africa.  Some of the people we meet here are really fascinating.  I also caught a glimpse of a bat flying at the art museum.  They are huge here!  After dinner, the students decided to all go out together to see what the night-life is like.  Although we were unable to find any clubs which were open, we did stumble across a bunch of locals with a sort of drum circle going. A large crowd had gathered to watch them, and some people were dancing off to the side.  It was pretty awesome.  I guess that’s all for now, hopefully I’ll be able to tell you more about the island tomorrow.

Day 9 - Just Chilling

This morning we had our second lecture in Wolof.  It was much better than the first, in my opinion.  We quickly reviewed the alphabet and then learned some basic phrases in the language, as well as how to count.  It’s interesting, their method of counting is similar to a spoken version of Roman numerals, they count to five and then the word for six is the combination for the words for five and one, and so on.  That way they only need new words for ten, one hundred, one thousand, and so on.  The professor was confused by the English method of counting, he did not understand why we write ten as a 1 and a 0.  I’m not sure he really understood when we tried to explain it to him.  So far the only Wolof phrases I’ve really caught on to are (not spelled at all like this): ‘Nangadeff,’ (How are you) ‘Mangifi,’ (the response) and ‘Jaam a baax’ (peace is good).  I’m going to have to study if I want to pick up on the other words we’ve been learning, because they are definitely not coming naturally.  We had the afternoon free, so our Senegalese partners met us at WARC and the entire walked down to beach to spend a few hours hanging out.  It’s crazy how many people work out on the beaches here.  I don’t think they really have gyms, so I guess the beach is the next best thing for them (they even have outdoor exercise equipment on most beaches) but it’s still kind of overwhelming to have approximately 95% of the people at the beach running laps, playing soccer, doing pushups or boxing against an imaginary opponent.  I guess they don’t consider the beach to be a place for relaxing the way Americans do.  The dogs in the streets here are breaking my heart.  They are so friendly, I just want to adopt them.  I think the Senegalese just view them as pests though.  We’ve had several decide to join our group on our way to school, and they will just trot amongst us for several blocks.  I think if I ever decide to return I am going to tame one of them and bring it home with me.  It is interesting though that they all appear to be the same.  They are all roughly the same size, with a sand-colored coat.  It’s as if someone turned a litter out into the streets once and they grew to populate the entire city.

Day 8 - Lectures at WARC

Not too much to report today.  My sunburn’s finally starting to fade a bit.  It was pretty bad for a while there because I kept going back to the beach, and sunscreen does absolutely nothing for me when I’m by the ocean.  My skin feels kind of leathery in places, which is probably not particularly good, but at least I’m getting more than ten minutes of sleep a night.  We spent today at WARC, with a guest lecturer giving a presentation on Gorée Island.  To be honest, most of us were pretty lost for the majority of the lecture, because he was using Wolof words and then doing a really bad job of explaining what they meant in French, but I think the main points of the lecture were that the island has more significance today as a tourist trap than it ever did as a slave port, there were many more significant ports towards the south, and an explanation of Africa’s role in Triangle Trade.  One of the points that I found interesting was the value of slaves.  Apparently, one gun was worth seven slaves, and one horse was worth ten.  It’s crazy how little they valued human life… In the afternoon, our Senegalese partners came to WARC, and we all watched a film and had a debate about the role of hip-hop and democracy in Senegal.  It’s strange how much perceptions can change in another country.  In the U.S. hip-hop tends to be mostly rappers whining about how rough they used to have it, since the majority of them are fairly well-off by the time their music reaches American ears.  In Senegal, the music is used as a way of expressing political displeasure.  The majority of the population here is fairly young, so those who are trying to start a movement find that this is the best method to get their opinions heard.  The graffiti here also seems to be mostly political.  People are clearly very interested in both local and international politics.  Although Senegal is considered to be one of the most democratic nations in Africa, the people here feel that democracy is an exaggeration, because they do not truly feel liberated.  They feel very conflicted when they vote, and many presidents get re-elected not because the people support their policies, but because they often do not seem to have a better option.

Sand Artist on Goree Island

Day 7 - Goree Island

Today we went to another island, this one was called Gorée.  It was significant because the island was an important landmark for the slave trade in the …. Slaves were kept in captivity in small building on the island, in cramped quarters sorted according to gender and age, before they were forced into even smaller spaces in the galley of boats as they made their way across the Atlantic.  The worst part was their version of solitary, to punish slaves who did not obey.  They were either put in extremely tiny rooms, or they were thrown into a room covered in salt, which burned them since many of them did not have much to wear for clothing.  The island today seems to be a much happier place, although there are a lot of hustlers there since it’s considered a tourist attraction.  The hustlers do sell a lot of cool stuff though, it’s hard to resist sometimes.  We did go to one legitimate shop, where we got to see a man making pictures using sands which came from different countries.  He was really good at what he did, it only took a few minutes to make a pretty nice-looking picture.  It was really cool, the majority of us decided to buy one of his pictures.  After the tour, we ate lunch in a restaurant on the island (more of a tent with tables and chairs) and were serenaded by some of the local musicians who were looking to make a bit of money.  It was pretty cool, I took a short video that I’ll share when I get a chance.  The instruments they were using weren’t like any I’d ever seen before, one had a coré (spelling?), which was kind of like a cross between a mandolin and a cello, and the other was using these small balls attached by string, which functioned kind of like maracas.  Several of the students on the trip bought a set of those.  We gave our project presentations at the restaurant after eating, and then headed down to the beach.  There were a ton of jellyfish in the water.  Our professor had actually told us it was safe to swim there, guess he didn’t know about them.  Thank god none of us felt like swimming since we only had an hour before we needed to be on the ferry back to the mainland.  When we got back to Mermoz (the neighborhood we are living in) many of the students decided to meet up at a local bar so that we could work together to write a 2-page paper on the island that’s due tomorrow (Thiam’s being a bit of a slave-driver this week).  Bars here aren’t anything like in the U.S.  I’m pretty sure there are less options (although I wasn’t drinking tonight), and there weren’t many people there.  Many people in this country are Muslim, and their religion forbids them from drinking, so I don’t think anyone here ever drinks to get drunk the way Americans do.  There are also noticeably less random articles of clothing in the streets than you would find in American city.  Maybe that’s also a drunk thing…

Day 6 - Our First Free Day

So, because I don’t actually believe in being intelligent, ever, I went to the beach today.  If I die of skin cancer, it will be my own fault and I give all of you permission to laugh at my funeral.  Today was a free day for us, and some of the members of my host family thought it would be fun to walk down to the beach closest to where I live.  The waves were really big there.  We waded out to about waist-height, and then had to jump when the waves came because the majority of them were over our heads.  I finally learned the name of the guy that I talk to the most in the family, it’s Papi.  He looks like he’s probably in his late 20’s/early 30’s, but I have no idea how he actually fits into the family.  Apparently today was some kind of anniversary of Bob Marley or something, so he was all excited about that.  I guess Bob Marley’s really big here.  Actually, in a lot of ways being here is like being in the U.S. in the late ‘90s, early 2000’s.  My family watches T.V. but it’s an older style, and everyone talks on the phone, it seems that texting isn’t popular here.  I’ve also seen several people wearing Bermuda shorts.  I’ve been enjoying watching T.V. with the family because it’s like my childhood all over again.  In the past few days I’ve watched Tom & Jerry, Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny & Road Runner, The Powerpuff Girls, The Land Before Time, The Pink Panther, Dexter’s Lab, and Friends.  They seem to also get some modern shows, since we watched an episode of Twisted the first day I was here, but they seem to prefer the classics.  I have no idea how people here stay so thin.  There is barely any fat on anyone I’ve met, yet they eat more in one meal than I usually do in an entire day.  My host mother is convinced that I don’t like the food that I’m eating because I don’t finish everything she gives me, but the truth is I eat until I am actually feeling sick and couldn’t possibly put another bite in my mouth, and it’s still only about a third of my plate.  The animals here are also very thin, I’m not sure that they are the same breeds as the ones in the states.  The cats are very lanky, and most of them seem to have a different bone structure (they remind me of the animals in Egyptian hieroglyphics, which I always thought were exaggerated, but maybe they are actually accurate depictions of animals in Egypt).  The horses are also different (DBAL, J&D).  They are thin, and much smaller than horses in the United States.  Most of them would probably only be classified as ponies, but they’re clearly full grown.  They are used to move carts for the street vendors, and it is not unusual to see them on the busy roads along with the cars, being forced to gallop. 

Day 5 - Adventure to Ngor

Welp, I’m sunburned!  My shoulders, neck and feet are all bright red.  To be honest I’m surprised it took this long.  Today was pretty cool though.  We didn’t have class, but we went on an optional trip to an island called Ngor.  Our professor basically grew up there, so he ran into a lot of people that he knew.  The island was beautiful, and the water was so clear.  The waves get really big here, it seems like it would be a decent spot for surfing.  I’ve also never seen so many crabs on the rocks of a beach in my life.  Four of us decided to pay for snorkeling gear, so we went out and took a look at some of the ocean life there.  It was pretty cool.  I’m kind of sad that I couldn’t find the charging cord for my camera in time (I was packing the morning that we left because I had come back the night before from a camping trip in Tennessee) because I believe it is supposed to be waterproof, and that would have been pretty cool.  Next time….  We got back to our houses pretty early, so Kenisha and I decided to text our African partners from earlier and see what they were up to.  It turns out there was a big festival going on for the English club, which Kikinette (my partner) was MCing.  They put on a series of performances, about African perceptions, both in Africa and in the occidental world, but it was all in English.  It was really cool.  The transition between performances seemed somewhat disorganized at times, but those who performed were really good.  I have some video, maybe I’ll be able to share it if I ever figure out how to force Blogger to let me upload videos.  I’ve been fighting that battle for quite a while now, and don’t seem to be making any progress.  I will say one thing for the African eating habits.  Although having everyone eat out of the same plate may seem somewhat less sanitary than American standards, especially as the matriarch is pulling apart the meat and sorting it out to everyone, it does work really well for feeding children.  Instead of getting bored and running off after a few bites the way American children do, the boys here sit quietly, waiting for the next piece of meat to be placed in front of them.  Honestly, it’s not a bad system.  I think one of my favorite things about this city (besides the fact that we are right on the ocean) is the cost of the taxis.  You can get across the city for roughly six dollars.  It’s wonderful.  Things in general are pretty inexpensive here, with the exception of the clothes – our professor explained that one to us the first day but I forget what he said, I think maybe the majority of clothes here are handmade or something?  Although during the performances today, one of the students cracked a joke about everything being made in China, so apparently that’s true here as well.  Of course.

More Senegalese Art

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 4: Being Tourist-y

Good news, no one got lost!  Darra and I left about an hour and a half early just to be sure, but we all found WARC okay.  We got an official tour of Dakar today.  We saw a museum of African art, which was really cool.  The tour was guided, which was nice, although I’m not sure that I understood what they were talking about all the time.  One of the more interesting exhibits was about the pollution in Senegal. It made the point that the newer, more materialistic materials were ruining our world with pollution.  Although wooden bowls and clay pots may seem ancient and rudimentary to us, they are much better for the earth.  It was an interesting perspective on modernization.  We also got to see the President’s house, as well as The African Renaissance Monument.  This is a large statue of a man, woman and child.  It points towards the western-most point of Africa, because it is supposed to represent bringing the African culture to those who have moved to the western world.  It was built in 2010, under the supervision of a president (not the current one) who cared a great deal for the diaspora, although not everyone here likes him.  We actually got to catch a glimpse of him our first day in Dakar, because he was getting into his car as we walked past his house.  The construction of the monument was very controversial, because it was built in a very poor neighborhood, which could not really afford the construction, and a lot of corruption occurred among the contractors.  Afterwards, we had the entire afternoon to work on our first projects of the class.  They are easy enough, just a creative reflection on our first impressions of the city (Sean and I wrote a poem called Jàam a Baax, which in Wolof means peace is good).  It seems as if this class will be mostly a cultural experience, with occasional papers reflecting on what we’ve learned.  Most people seem to love their host families, and it seems that I am not the only one that was surprised by the size of their family.  I think most of the families in Dakar are a mix of extended family living under one roof.  Some of the luckier students have other exchange students in their houses, not from our program but from others.  Many are from other parts of the United States, and I think someone has one from Japan.  The only person who is having difficulty adjusting to their host family as far as I know is Kenisha, and she actually loves the family, but she is having problems with flying cockroaches that are apparently very prevalent in her house.  Hopefully she’ll be able to work something out to overcome it.  So far the only thing I think I am struggling with in this country is their taste for fish.  I really hate seafood, and even though I will occasionally eat some of the more bland types of fish, I would never be able to scrape the meat off of the bones while I am eating the way they do here.  I find myself forcing myself to look away from other peoples’ plates because the fact that the fish on their plates are staring at me freaks me out.  I’m not sure I could ever become accustomed to eating meat that is more or less in its original form.

O-H!

The obligatory O-H-I-O photo by the coast of Senegal...

 

Day 3 - Sorry I'm Late Posting, Finding Wi-Fi Here is Difficult

Moved into the host family’s house today.  They all seem very nice.  They are definitely not at all what I expected though.  I was told that I would be living with my host mom, her two daughters (in their late 20’s) and a twelve year old girl.  There are at least five other people who regularly come and go from the house, and I am not really sure how many of them live their all the time.  There are actually two girls around the age of 12, and then two boys, maybe 5 and 3 years old?  They are really cute.  The younger girls be-friended me really quickly, and we went on several adventures around their neighborhood in search of their friends and food.  They tried to explain to me the relations within the family, but things aren’t quite as clear cut here.  If they have very close friends, they tend to adopt them into their family, and children are often raised by sisters of their mothers, so the child calls their aunt their mother, and things like that.  It’s all rather confusing to me and I’ve pretty much given up trying to understand.  The hardest part is remembering their names.  African names are so different from U.S. ones.  The two younger girls are named Oumou and Aminata, and my host mother is Maman Collé, but I have yet to memorize everyone else’s names.  All of the Ohio State students live within walking distance of each other, but we do not really know where each other live, or how to get to WARC from our houses, so it will be interesting to see how many people get lost tomorrow morning.  Earlier today, we went to hear a lecture on Wolof, the language that most people here speak.  French is the official language, which is used for school and media, but most people use Wolof when they are speaking to one another in the streets.  The lecture was very interesting, although I wish we could have learned more useful phrases.  We learned how to greet each other, and we learned the alphabet as well as some basic words for each letter.  The language reminds me a lot of Arabic, they use very similar sounds, more guttural than English.  After teaching us the alphabet, the lecturer sang one of his poems for us, while playing the guitar.  From what I gathered, he often sings things songs to children in school.  The biggest culture shocks so far have been the traffic and the showers.  Almost no one here has hot water for their showers, it doesn’t bother them to shower in cold water.  I think that will be the thing that I miss the most this month.  The traffic is absolutely insane.  If there are rules of the road, it doesn’t seem like anyone follows them.  Everyone just kind of drives where they please, cutting other drivers off.  There aren’t any traffic lights, they use small roundabouts instead for their intersections.  The pedestrians rarely use the sidewalks, they prefer to walk along the edge of the road, right next to the cars, and they don’t have the right of way here so everyone just sprints across the street when there is a break in traffic.  They walk much closer to cars than anyone ever would in the states, there have been times when our bus was turning and someone was walking so close to the side of it that I was sure someone would be hit.  No one has so far that I’ve seen though.  It would be interesting to see the statistics for this country for how often pedestrians are killed by cars, and compare them to the States.

l'Art de WARC

Some of the cooler artwork around the West African Research Center.