Hello everyone! I am back in Dakar, after a week on “rural visits”, for the final 6 weeks of the program. The rural visit was just that- quite rural and in many ways, our hope to “make a difference” was replaced with visiting everyone and their brother in a small village for a week.
As I said, six other students and myself arrived in Kaolack, a small city 3 hours inland from Dakar on Monday. Our director in Dakar told us we would be working with a local NGO, APROFES, that worked in the region on many projects involving the advancement of women (whether it be giving out credit, helping women suffering from domestic violence, or encouraging women to get prenatal care). We would be divided into groups to study microfinance, health, and gender issues. The first afternoon we did the usual round of greetings, ate two huge platters of ceebu jen (national dish of Senegal; red rice, fish, veggies- in my opinion, quite tasty), and sat around for a while. When a few of us started dozing off in a post-ceebu jen food coma during a presentation, they asked us whether we would like nap time and showed us to some beds upstairs. While I had a fantastic nap, I had to laugh thinking whether my first day at a US internship would ever consist of a large lunch, a short slideshow, and nap time. Later on, we headed over to their bank to learn more about microfinance. One of the women had actually worked with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh (I would later stay at this women’s house and then share a mattress with her for three consecutive nights in some family’s living room in a nearby village). As I have learned at my internship here in Dakar, the biggest problem is not having enough international donors to be able to give out credit to all the people who want it. The woman who had worked in Bangladesh said microfinance has been more successful there because they have more money to work with and because the poverty is that much more extreme so small loans go that much further.
The next day we hit the road for the village of Paoskoto, an hour outside of Kaolack (yes, I was supposed to stay an extra night in Kaolack and in my mind, be able to see the election. I was not too thrilled when that turned out not to be the case…). The APROFES woman, Ramay (who worked in Bangladesh), came with us. We were also accompanied by 3 men whose professions we never really figured out, but they did seem to know everyone in Paoskoto. We toured the local health center, met the local government official, met the town leader and his wife, visited a local school, and to top it off, went to a hair salon! It was overwhelming in that every place we went tons of ambiguous people had to get involved (at the school, hundreds of children ran at us upon our arrival and then crowded around us while the teachers expected us to ask questions over the dull roar of all the children). We also kept facing impossible questions. We would arrive somewhere and with little explanation of where we were, the APROFES women and ambigious men would say : ask questions! It suddenly felt like the meeting was completely our responsibility and we struggled to come up with good questions that were also not offensive. When we asked a group of students if they had questions for us, one student asked us “Why don’t we have books? Where are our computers?”. Looking over to the APROFES woman for help with this impossible question, she looked directly back at us with the same inquisitive eyes. A group of men from another village could only come up with one question for us: “How can you fix our water supply problem?”. Hold on, let me consult my American-students-can-fix-the-world’s-problems manual. By the time we were dragged into a hair salon and asked to “pose questions” to the women who worked there, our patience had thinned.
Another day we took a horse drawn cart to another village (pretty fun, felt bad for horse- was right after we ate a lot of lunch, the people from the village fed us A LOT) where we got to see hundreds of cute kids and pull up water from a well. Some women started dancing for us and in return, we suddenly became a traveling chorus. I can’t tell you how many times we sang “Ain’t No Mountain High” (only song we all knew the words too) this past week. While frustrations ran high at some points, being dragged to unnecessary places and hearing “Toubab! Toubab” everywhere we went, I did learn more about development projects in Senegal. In some towns, it seemed like people needed more motivation and felt down-trodden by their struggles, where as in another village, a group of women had started a credit center to help pay for health related costs and spent their free time going around to other villages spreading the word. They said their biggest problem was transportation- for some people, just going to the credit center to pay their monthly bill involved taking a bus they couldn’t afford. Imagine getting to the actual health center in the time of an emergency! We met another woman, Viola, who has been nominated for top 10 “heroes” on CNN. Her program, 10,000 girls, has helped local girls stay in school and start their own businesses so they can be self-sufficient. Some days, everything seemed inefficient, while other days, we felt really inspired. Always a rollercoaster here!
The best part of the week had to be the election. On the morning of the 4th, despite being shipped off to the village, I was determined to find a TV. I am sure I probably seemed obnoxious asking everyone and anyone where we could find one. The good news is everyone seems to own a TV in Senegal, no matter how poor you are, and our family had a TV the size of my two palms put together. I almost cried when they switched to CNN in ENGLISH. Not only was Obama’s win thrilling, but as I sat watching the election, munching on crumbly madelaines, taking power naps under the stars at commercial brakes (by the time Obama won, it was 5 am Senegal time), with a donkey 5 feet to my left, and topless women in my family casually walking by in-between Obama capturing Pennsylvania and Ohio, it was a memorable night. In Obama’s speech he referenced people watching in the forgotten corners of the world. I decided I was in that category, never having been so proud to be an American and never having felt so far from America at the same time. Priceless.
Another long blog. Miss everyone comme toujours. My dad and Carolyn are coming to visit in just 4 days!
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