One more post - I'm almost home!

At last - back in Dakar where I can get consistent internet access and even wireless! I come back to the states on Saturday morning (leave here at 2:45 in the morning, get into JFK around 8 a.m.) and now we have one final week in Dakar to finish writing papers, buy our souvenirs and say goodbye to our families.
The rest of my "stage" - i.e. time in the village was great. The family was really fun and I got to do lots of things with them, despite the fact that the over 100 degree heat every day meant that from 1-5 p.m. each day, no one did anything. It's hard to summarize 6 weeks, but basically my internship wasn't so much "work" intensive - they confuse the idea of researcher, ecotourist, volunteer and intern - so the first two weeks were me going to interview people, then there was about a week of cultural celebrations: a four day wrestling competition, a marriage, a male initiation ceremony and traditional dance evenings. The rest of the time was me working some in an organic garden and doing a little manual labor where they are constructing a biomass facility that will make natural gas from cow dung. The rest of the time when I wasn't working, I hung out with my family and did family chores - learning how to cook, make senegalese cous-cous etc. It was a little frustrating because the region where I was was Sereer - that means an entirely new language apart from Wolof. Wolof and Sereer are sometimes mixed together, which can make it more complicated. But anyways, I picked up a little but not much - it's hard learning a language with no books and no one who can even really describe how to conjugate a verb.
Anyhow there were plenty of fun and funny adventures - riding on a horsecart and having it break while we were on it, turning 21 and being forced to eat two pounds of vermicelli alone in my own honor, playing with the baby goat, having my host mother's brother show up drunk and threaten to burn me (had to be there, it really was kind of funny), eating lots of mangos, as well as rice, bread, cous-cous and fish (almost exclusively).
Anyhow, I will miss Senegal and most specifically my family in Mbam quite a bit. That said, the next few days will be a challenge because my room mate and I have discovered that money was taken from our room here, and so we will have an awkward goodbye period. Anyhow, I look forward to telling my stories to many of you in person soon! All the best. P.S. - again can't get pictures to load, sorry!

Mbaldo from Mbam!

Mbaldo! (you respond "bay day jamm")

At last I have enough time on the internet to truly do a blog post, this being only the second time that I have been online since getting to Mbam. Short version: things are going really well here - the internship component is pretty light, the concept of internship doesn't really transfer, not to mention that the work day doesn't really exist at my organization, but the family is great, I'm learning a lot and having some great experiences.

I live in a house (meaning a collection of huts with one main building surrounded by a fence) with my host mother and about 10 kids, between the ages of 13 and 25 - none of them are hers, but they all go to school here and it's a lot of fun. During the days I've been learning how to cook some, and going around and interviewing various key people about the environmental situation here. This week I should be starting to do more "practique" meaning helping out in gardens, the community forest and other things. Unfortunately, I wanted to write a long post, but my time is severely limited, so best wishes to you all and maybe one day I'll be able to post a full description!

Spring Break in the Casamance

Hi all!
Well, we are fresh off the boat (it arrived in Dakar at 6:30 a.m.) from the Casamance, where our whole group spent a week for our spring break.
This will probably be an abbreviated summary, but here it is. We took the boat (14 hours) to get down to Ziguinchor, which is the capital of the Casamance region. This is because the Gambia is in between, and while you can get a car, it takes a long time and you risk having lots of trouble and bribing to do at the Gambian border. As it was, the boat happens to be very very nice - we got sleeper cabins and all slept very well! The story behind this is sad - there was an older boat that sank about 6 years ago, killing 2,000 people. Now, it's one of the safest and most modern ferries in Africa. In Ziguinchor, we were met by the relatives of one of our friends' host families. We thought they would just help us find a hotel, but they ended up letting all 15 of us stay in a house that they owned! They showed us around town as well as the good spots to go out at night - lots of fun. They were also a huge help the next day - there was a gas shortage in Ziguinchor and so getting to Cap Skirring (where we wanted to go) was going to be very expensive for us to negotiate. Fortunately, they found a 13 person van for us (we crammed in and my hips almost died) for cheap and naturally, the driver of the van knew of a cheap hotel by the beach where he could take us. I don't know what we would have done without all that help - the bargaining would have been impossible.
Cap Skirring is the touristy beach town of Senegal - as proved by the fact that there's a club med there. However, we were in a pretty little hotel ($6/person/night - the rooms were basically beds and the bathrooms were outside) that looked out on the beach and we met a lot of the local shopkeepers - 15 young people are pretty rare there. During the days we sunned ourselves (my nose and feet have not forgiven me), swam, and walked around the village, about a 20 minute walk away. For food, we had a great bakery for morning pastries. Then at night we had another good find. A guy came up to one of the members of our group (he has dreds and every Senegalese loves him - so he's acted as our ambassador many times) and said he knew a good restaurant nearby. It's basically one (very nice) woman, who makes one thing each night and serves it in her "restaurant" - plastic chairs, a few tables, and TV - very local. It was some of the best food we've had here, and it proves to us that we're becoming very accustomed to the food - rice and fish for three nights in a row with no problem.
Also, one of the days we got a Pirogue tour to several different islands. Each had it's own little touristy appeal - an old slave fortress (completely abandoned - people do laundry in it and the occasional guide comes through), beautiful birds amongst the mangroves and one had a fishing village. Pirogues leave from this village to go way out to the ocean (for up to a month) to catch not only fish, but shark and stingrays . We happened to get there when one had just returned and I had never seen so many flayed, raw, and (in some cases) moldy shark (and other fish) in my life!
Anyhow, we had a lot of fun, and now we have the weekend to do laundry, get a few last provisions, and see what local elections are like here on Sunday (stones have been thrown in some places, but I think it should all pass fine) and then Monday morning we will leave for our internships. I will be in an ecovillage called "mbam." Others have done the internship there before and have loved it, so I'm excited. I'll be far away from internet, but when I do get a chance to check mail and post, I hope to have heard from some of you! Ba beneen yoon!

Markets, dancing

So a few new little things. This was our last full weekend in Dakar and it was a relatively productive one. We went out dancing in place in the fishermans village, along the water on Friday night (not the best smell ever, but you learn to live with that here). Then on Saturday we went to what I think is the biggest market here: Marche Sandaga. It was quite an experience. The market spreads out over a lot of streets and you can find almost anything there. I was particularly looking for fabric, but first we were found by a group of guys trying to get us to come to their one shop. No amount of saying no, or not saying anything at all, running away, or staying in one place could shake them. They were harassing us and grabbing for a full 40 minutes - very discouraging. It took a fatay (like fried dough but with meat and onions inside) and the most amazing ice cream at the really good, famous Dakar ice cream parlour in order for us to recover. Then we were finally able to go out and actually look at things (though everyone is still constantly all over you - browsing is impossible). I finally found some really nice fabric that I hope to have made into an outfit. The price was decent, though I'm sure there was a toubab mark-up. By the end, we were exhausted and came home and napped.

Then we got to go to another "family meeting," this time at the house of one of Maman Amitie's daughters. She and her husband and their three daughters have lived in the States, Britain and France and now they're building a bed and breakfast, so the house was very nice. While the adults did their meeting thing, we hung out with the kids, who speak English and a few other francophone cousins. One of the girls was so excited that we knew Harry Potter that we ended up playing the Harry Potter board game "scene it." That's one thing I didn't expect to do in Senegal. But though we were definitely at the kids table, it was still fun to see the family and see a different part of town. It was also fun to see Maman Amitie after a few too many - we were introduced to many members of the family many times and I got yet another tour of the family photos in the living room at 1 a.m.

Now we're into our last week of classes here. There have been a few minor exams but it's nothing like finals in the states. All in all, though I like Dakar a lot, I'm getting very ready for a totally new experience in the ecovillage. I've posted a picture of a mangrove to celebrate. Additionally, there's a picture of the whole group from the first week at the president's palace.

Oh and it's Mohammad's birthday today, so it's a national holiday and most things are closed and the kids don't have school. Happy Gamoul!

Class and Beach Update

So I've been a little lazy of late, but here's a little update on how things are going, as we enter our last week in Dakar. We have one more week of classes, then a week of spring break (I'll be going to the Cassamance, southern Senegal, below the Gambia, with friends) and then we head off for our six weeks of internships. My internship, if there are no changes, will be at an eco-village called Mbam, located near the mangroves here. I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing, but they have mangrove planting programs, vegetable gardens, some sort of biomass project as well as the possibility to teach kids about sustainability, so I'm very excited.
So a few highlights of the last week or so:
Class: not so much a highlight necessarily, but there sure has been a lot of it. All of our classes are two to three hours long and since two of mine are taught by people who work for government ministries, they get moved around constantly. Unfortunately, the professor we have the most (for both development and country analysis of Senegal), is absolutely insane. In trying to show off his English he has asked us whether we understand the words: town hall, pill, and witch. His style is to write his entire lectures on the board and then give us handouts (often without any indication of where they're from), and have us present in groups. The other day I thought I recognized the writing style of one article and sure enough, if you look up "mourides" on Wikipedia, you'll read what I did (assuming it hasn't been modified in the last week).
Beach: We finally made it to one of the nicer beaches around here: ile de ngor. You take a bus-ish thing up to a fishing boat that takes you to an island. It's kind of surreal once you arrive - touristy, restaurants on the beach etc. It seemed to be Senegal's answer to the Caribbean. Though the water was freezing, we did go in, built a sand castle and bought a coconut from a woman who cut it open for us so we could drink the juice.
This weekend I'll be headed to some markets for fabric shopping and visiting other members of my host family's extended family, and trying to make the most of some of my last time here. Best!

Pictures, Daras and a little conflict

First: what the pictures are: a) view of hazy Dakar from Ile de la Madeleine, with Cormorants taking off.

In Toubakouta, one of the two boats we took into the mangroves - we were having a competition between the boats as to who could sing louder and have more people standing up at once.

Also at the mangrove park - two friends from the trip.

I hope this picture shows up better on your computers than mine, but it's me on the beach at St. Louis.

A picture of the roadside scene on the way into Dakar - you can see people selling fruit and these buses waiting to fill up and go somewhere. This picture doesn't quite do the chaotic scene justice.

A very quiet, colonial St. Louis street - Dakar does NOT look like this.

Well now that I got some more pictures up, a little more news. Yesterday for our Senegalese culture class we got to take a field trip to a Dara - a Koranic school for young boys. These schools are all over Senegal, and they are run often in a pretty horrifying way. The basic idea (and this was the case in this one) is that kids are sent by their parents for a minimal fee (about 2 dollars a month) and they live with the marabout (koranic scholar) and study constantly. However, this doesn't include food and doesn't cover the expenses of the Daara. Therefore, the kids from the Daara (talibés) spend hours every day on the street holding empty cans (usually of tomato paste, for whatever reason), and begging in order to get their food, and get additional money for the marabout. They are at every major corner and often will follow you for a while. People will give them money or food.
The place we visited was in a poorer suburb of Dakar - almost no paved roads, mostly very tight alleys. The daara itself is a small courtyard with only about two or three rooms off of it - somehow 60 barely clothed boys live there. We got to ask the Marabout questions for about 45 minutes and interact with the kids a bit. We learned the most though from just observing and from what wasn't said. The boys all clearly have pretty significant health problems - we could see various swellings, open sores, and chronically runny noses (a sign of malnutrition, not just a cold). I asked the kids (in front of the marabout) what they wanted to do when they left, the only person who was allowed to respond said he wanted to teach the Koran. Afterwards another friend asked another of the boys and he responded that he wanted to get out of Senegal and move to France. Anyhow, not all Daaras are like this, but it was a sobering look at this phenomenon that we have been seeing here every day.

St. Louis and Mardi Gras

Well we successfully had our first weekend trip without the group or guide. Six of us left Dakar at 7 on Friday night and took a sept-place up to St. Louis - a city on the coast that was the first capital of Senegal. The way up was a typical Senegal transportation experience - we got the gare routiere, which is basically a huuuge parking lot, and were accosted by people who then found us a driver and negotiated the price (for a small commission of course). A sept-place is basically a station wagon with three more seats in the back - so eight people in a station wagon can be pretty cramped, not to mention the fact that the car couldn't go above maybe forty miles per hour at its absolute best (this is the estimate given that no dashboard indicators were working). All in all it took six hours to get there, though its possible for it to take as little as three and a half. In St. Louis we met up with my room mate's friend who is studying there and she showed us to our cheap but quite nice hotel. From there we went out to a bar around the corner and had a good time dancing, also discovered that there are lots more europeans and Americans here than in Dakar!
St. Louis is really different from Dakar - particularly the main touristy island, which is very quiet with grid streets and lots of colonial architecture. We really enjoyed being able to enjoy just sitting in a cafe - something you cant find in Dakar, not to mention that there were good bakeries. There are some in Dakar as well, but nowhere ever has seating where you can just hang out. We also walked around the fishing village area and the market, which were naturally much more lively. That night we went out for a nice dinner too, which meant getting vegetables, something I miss a lot here! We left Sunday afternoon and successfully got back in only four hours. We were shocked :)
In other news, yesterday was Mardi Gras, our sister's birthday aaand the day we had promised to cook for our family. We decided to make tomato soup, grilled cheese and salad (previous Americans staying with them seemed to have taken a lot of our ideas). We went to one of the big, intense and cramped vegetable markets to get the vegetables, and then to the main supermarket to get things like sliced bread, cheese and ham (family is catholic, but ham is still very hard to find here). The cooking went well except that we failed to realize exactly how different their tomato paste is until it was too late. The stuff here is very dark and VERY bitter. We managed to salvage the soup so it was acceptable, but still wasn't the best. The sandwiches were a hit though, and afterwards we all had beignets and cookies for mardi gras. Most importantly, they seemed to appreciate it, so phew. It was also fun throughout the day to see all the little kids who go to school: it seems like their version of halloween, with lots of little superheros, princesses and peter pans etc. all over the place.
Finally a note on birthdays: even though Fifi was turning 17, they barely acknowledged it. It seems like people celebrate their birthdays (if they know them) very selectively: you decide to fete it one year, and then not for a few more. I think the only people who I heard wish her happy birthday were me and Vanessa.
Well, off to class, and then off to find out what lent is like in our house!