Long Time, No Update

Long time, no update. Sitting here munching on Reese’s pieces from my roommate who received them in a “Halloween package” from her mom. Some students in my program are considering testing trick-or-treating in Dakar. They’d probably just be really full because every house they would stop at would demand they eat part of their dinner. The Senegalese sense of hospitality means even random people on the street offer to share their food with me.

Since my return to Dakar about two weeks ago, school has gotten more demanding, I am in the midst of having a tailor make clothes for me (they have beautiful cloth here- some people say Dakar gets the shaft for not being considered one of the fashion capital’s of the world; I agree for the simple fact that all Senegalese women walk around in very high heels on a Monday morning on the sand sidewalks), and running water has ceased to flow at my school. Apparently the neighboring school has also stolen our generator. Nevertheless, I have begun to think more about what I will miss about Senegal opposed to what I currently miss about the US. For one, the aforementioned classes at my local gym. One of the numerous awkward moments that seem to characterize everyday here was during a “Body Attack” class. This class is unbelievable. The room is always filled past capacity and is an hour of either jumping up and down, an obscene number of push-ups, or splitting the class in two and having everybody run at each other. By the end of the class, everyone is so exhausted people actually look pissed as the instructors continue to scream Allons-y! (Let’s go!). During one exercise they had everyone running around the room in circles doing high knees. An instructor was suddenly next to me and put his hand out as if he wanted to hold hands. In the scheme of things it didn’t seem too weird- we had already done some type of square dancing that involved interlocking arms. So I finally put my hand in his. Only to finally hear him say “genou! genou!” (knees! knees!). The hand motion was to get me to lift my knees higher. My face was probably the color of a tomato. He just let go of my hand and pranced off to the next victim.

The theme of being kind of lost continued throughout the week. This past Sunday, three other girls from my program and I headed off to the nearby “Ile de Madelaine”- an uninhabited island off the coast of Dakar- for the day. We paid for the 15 minute boat ride over to the island (fully equipped with life vests and a driver who was wearing a hard hat?) as well as a guide. Upon arrival, no sooner had we gotten out of the boat, it was gone. While there were some Frenchies with us, one sporting an entirely too small speedo, it wasn’t exactly clear where this guide was and we had just been deserted on the island. So, we decided to just started walking around. But, the Senegalese have a way of coming through and within 10 minutes a man just emerged from the brush and started walking with us. “Ummm, are you the guide?” “Yep”. Hey great! The island turned out to be beautiful and included hundreds of birds and some quality kodak moments inside a baobab tree (national tree of Senegal).

Then, yesterday, it had finally been set for me to have a meeting with the company I am supposed to be interning with (yes, I have been here for 8 weeks already). The woman who coordinates all the internship business is less than pleasant. She is very scatter-brained, rarely listens but prefers to bark in French over the phone, and has a tendency to ignore people for weeks on end. Nevertheless, she has lots of connections and has found me an internship at a microcredit agency, an aspect of economics that really intrigues me. When she and I arrived in the neighborhood where the company was, she realized she didn’t know exactly where it was. Unfortunately, neither did the 10 people we asked on the street. She had also forgotten the number of the agency. Solution? Go home and try again another day. Had to laugh when she told me I’d have to come back another day and find it by myself once she got the address and phone number. That sounds like that will end well. Oh well, all about patience.

Finally, I gave a presentation in my French class today on marabouts (heads of Islamic brotherhoods) in Senegal and their power in the government (HUGE topic). Despite being a secular state, marabouts who head some of the major brotherhoods have a lot of power in Senegal because citizens have deep respect for the marabouts’ opinions and will usually vote the same way as their marabouts. Today, the president, Wade, is a member of a major brotherhood in Senegal called the Murids. As a result, the government is essentially being run from the holy Murid city, Touba. Yesterday, my culture class had a speaker who works in Senegalese media. He talked about all the opposition media (against the government) and the emergence of private radio in Senegal. Given that 30 or so percent of the population can’t read, the radio in Wolof (most prevalent language in Senegal) has allowed many more people in Senegal to be more aware of what is going on in the country. As a result, more people, especially young people, now view the marabouts only as a spiritual leader, rather than as a leader on every aspect of society from religion to politics. Religion will continue to be a huge factor in the Senegalese state but it was interesting to learn about the influence of the media.

Ok, long update. 1 week until rural visits. Apparently we will be staying in villages outside of Dakar by ourselves and few people speak French (funny how at this point French is the comfort language; there is a sense of relief when you find out someone speaks French). Sounds like some quality time in my own head.