Senegal Stories

So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish

In my now-beloved garden/office for one last posting here in Senegal. My flight leaves Friday night at 2:30 (ah, the boundless brilliance of the Senegalese transit system) and I plan to spend the day catching up with a few local friends and bidding a fond farewell to the staff at the two hotels I called home for the bulk of my time in Dakar.

Wednesday and Thursday passed in a whirl of activity: reporting Wednesday from the garden at the Fann Hospital AIDS clinic, and Thursday from Thies, talking to the women who were the first in Africa to publicly abandon genital cutting. Both incredibly profound experiences, in their own ways.

Anything I can say about leaving is bound to smack of cliché (I can’t believe how quickly the time went; how long do I need to keep taking this malaria medicine?) so instead of wallowing in ever-deepening tristesse related to my imminent departure, I will sign off with the following thoughts on life in Senegal (in no particular order).

1. There is no such thing as a quick hello in Senegal. If you see someone you know, even in passing, you’re in for at least five minutes of greetings, beginning with hearty handshakes and culminating in lengthy inquiries into the health of your family, your friends, your great-great-uncle, etc, etc. It took a bit of getting used to, but now that I’ve slowed down a bit and accepted the pace of life here, I am going to sorely miss the genuine warmth of daily interactions.

2. If you visit a Senegalese village, and encounter a celebratory bout of dancing, you will probably be asked to dance. This will be embarrassing even if (unlike me) you are a good dancer, but there is nothing you can do about it. Just get up and shake it. Everyone will laugh, but remember, as I have tried to do, they’re laughing near you, rather than at you.

3. Senegalese men love to jog. They’re out on the roads every night, chugging along in their dusty sneakers. Senegalese women, on the other hand, are never seen jogging, at least in public. Probably because they’re at home doing all the work.

4. Horse-drawn carts have been unfairly and unduly eliminated from modern life. There is nothing more pleasant than waking up in your hotel, the sun streaming through the windows, and hearing the clippity-clop of horses on the street below. Granted, when you’re stuck behind them in a traffic jam, you don’t get quite the same thrill, but let’s not quibble.

5. Speaking of traffic jams, Senegal embraces a seemingly endless calendar of pilgrimages to various holy sites, usually located in one of the country’s transit hubs, each providing a new and exciting opportunity for everyone and their brother to line the roads and smoosh themselves into already overstuffed vans, cars and horse-carts, which then proceed to drive haphazardly (on the shoulder, in the middle lane, through sundry back alleys). This weekend, for example, a mass of humanity is leaving Dakar for a town in the east, to celebrate Mohammed’s birthday. My personal feeling is that if Mohammed was as great a prophet as he’s said to be, he would have foretold the traffic disaster precipitated by his birthday, and would have let his followers know that he was fine with them celebrating his big day in the comfort of their own homes, rather than in a 50-mile snarl of unmoving traffic and police barricades.

6. Traditional Senegalese food is fantastic. My favorite dish, by far, is a spicy rice and fish combination called thieboudienne. Unfortunately for me, it’s remarkably hard to find traditional food anywhere but the smallest and most out-of-the-way rice shack. I’ve happened upon a few of them, but on my reporting trips I’ve often found myself in lunchtime situations where I am hoping for a giant plate of red-tinged rice and fish and a handful of spoons, and my gracious host/hostess has gone out of their way to prepare something they consider more Toubab-appropriate. Like grilled fish. Which, of course, I consume with great gusto, but there’s always a corner of my stomach that’s still holding out for the bracing heat of a good thieb.

7. It’s good to be an American in Senegal. We enjoy an uncommon level of popularity here, which I suspect is attributable to the fact that very few Americans actually visit Senegal.

8. This country’s political system is even more screwed up than ours. After listening to some Senegalese friends rant about the blatant and ongoing corruption of President Wade and his cronies, I have a newfound appreciation for the relatively decorous corruption of Washington. Sometimes, it seems, ignorance is bliss.

9. There are a lot of amazing people here, locals and ex-pats alike, doing truly remarkable things with their lives, without the slightest interest in publicity or acknowledgment or praise. I haven’t gone a single day in five weeks without feeling overwhelmed and awed by someone’s kindness or industry or single-minded dedication to a cause. Even if that cause is, occasionally, convincing me to pay far too much for a taxi ride.

10.  I feel enormously lucky to have spent a bit of time in this country, and I will always be hugely grateful to the people (Rokhaya, Mor, Angela, Arthur, Cheikh, Diack, Molly, Dinah, Alfred and many others) who helped make my visit so productive and such a pleasure. I hope I will see you all again soon. Inshallah.

The Mad Dash

Just returned from a very exciting evening – went to one of Dakar’s most venerable music venues, where I saw a fantastic band in the open-air café and ate a delicious fish stew. This, however, was not the exciting part. The real thrill came in the taxi rides to and from the concert. On the way, I negotiated my rate with a surly guy who illustrated his distaste for my low bid by pulling over immediately and relieving himself in the bushes next to the car.

On the way home (which was at about 1am, because no one here goes out before 11, and things don’t really get started before midnight, which has proved a major challenge to my already erratic sleep schedule), a sweet-faced young cabbie agreed immediately to my price, only to be pulled over by several police officers after apparently failing to make a complete stop. (His cab, which appeared to be held together by dental floss and some gum, may not have had entirely serviceable brakes. Not that that’s any excuse, but really, guys. Give the man a break.)

The beleaguered cabbie got out of the car and disappeared for a long ten minutes, during which time I contemplated the deserted road around me, and rifled through my wallet, wondering if perhaps I was finally going to have an opportunity to use my Hostile Environment Course training in the delicate art of bribery.

When he returned, the driver told me all about what had happened, in a stream of outraged Wolof. I made sympathetic noises in the backseat, and once we were safely in front of the hotel, I asked for an explanation in French. The police, it seems, wanted a bit of cash to make up for the theoretical traffic violation. This, it seems, is a fairly common occurrence on the roads of Senegal. (Will they use these ill-gotten gains to fix the roads? Probably not).

This week has evolved, as expected, into a veritable marathon of interviews – each fruitful, and each revealing a new, tantalizing story I’m salivating to cover. Given the fact that I’m leaving on Saturday, most are doomed to remain tempting non-issues. It’s hugely frustrating: the five weeks granted by the IRP fellowship, while hugely generous, is an awkward length; not a marathon and not a sprint. It's just enough time to get oneself situated in a new culture, to establish a good community of local contacts, and to begin to piece together the strands of some really fascinating stories. But it’s just not enough to time to do everything I want to do – a fact I am slowly beginning to accept, even as I race around town trying to squeeze in every last interview that presents itself.

With that in mind, Wednesday morning I’m off to Fann Hospital, where Steve Bollinger, former Peace Corps volunteer, runs an organic garden used to supplement the meager meals provided to the inpatient population. The brainchild of Professor/Dr. Salif Sow (whom I interviewed Monday, and who is one of Senegal’s (and Africa’s) giants in the field of infectious disease), the garden has emerged as a boon for the hospital, and for the often-undernourished patients. When Professor Sow, an imposing man with an encyclopedic grasp of the AIDS epidemic in Senegal, mentioned the garden during our interview, his serious face lit up and he clasped his hands together in ecstasy. “I remember the first time the kitchen made a soup from the vegetables,” he told me. “I watched the patients line up for it, and then they ate it.” His smile widened until it threatened to take over his entire face. “I was so happy!”

So I’m looking forward to visiting the garden, and to seeing what’s cooking (so to speak). Thursday, I’m back on the road, this time with TOSTAN, an NGO run by an American woman (originally from Illinois, but who has lived in Senegal for 30-odd years). TOSTAN is at the forefront of the regional movement to abolish female circumcision, and they also spearhead other health projects in Senegal’s rural areas.

We’re heading out at 6 am to visit a village where TOSTAN’s particular brand of community-based building and education has brought the practice of FGM to a screeching halt. (TOSTAN is careful to call FGM “FGC,” or female genital cutting, because, they say, “mutilation” implies an intent to do harm, and the practice, however brutal, is borne out of ancient cultural norms; i.e. an uncut girl is not marriageable in traditional society and is therefore doomed to the life of an outcast.

So the key, in the TOSTAN philosophy, is to provide each village with a yearlong, interdisciplinary course of non-dogmatic information that allows a community to internally address the health risks and human rights implications of FGC, rather than just moving in and lecturing everyone about barbarism. It’s an interesting, perhaps even revolutionary tack, and it’s been hugely successful – so much so that nearly 2,000 villages in Senegal that have undergone the TOSTAN course have issued public declarations abolishing FGC, thereby changing the cultural “norms” of the community, and rendering the once routine practice unacceptable.

It should be a really fascinating and thoroughly exhausting day. I've been told it will be quite warm Thursday, and in light of this I have dutifully prepared for the Senegalese ability to last for hours and hours without sustenance: water bottles and emergency biscuits have been procured, and are waiting in a bag by the door.

Les Lions de la Teranga

Saturday night, I fulfilled several people’s fantasies (Tony, Christopher), if not necessarily my own, by watching the Senegalese national soccer team beat Tanzania in Dakar’s Leopold Senghor Stadium. The final score was 4-0, which was probably a bit disheartening for the Tanzanian team, but it was awfully hard to worry too much about them in the frenzied joy that greeted each of the Lions’ goals. The win means Senegal advances in the qualifying rounds for the 2008 African Cup.

It's safe to say this was a new sporting event experience for me: the crowd was huge (the Stade, which seats 60,000, was at about 90 percent capacity), the lines to get into the stadium were serpentine, and armed guards with riot gear slung over their shoulders checked us through the gates, one by one. But as soon as we (a few U.S. Embassy folks, Peace Corps volunteers, NGO workers, a young Senegalese man and me) got through the first checkpoint, pandemonium ensued – the crowd began running towards the doors, vying for choice seats. Tickets, which are sold for $2 to $20, give you access to specific sections, but the seats themselves are first-come, first-served.

In my initial reluctance to join the intimidating crush of fans trying to force themselves through a tiny gate, again manned by soldiers with huge rifles on their backs, I was the last of my group to make my way inside the stadium. As I finally elbowed my way through the crowd, I saw a kid, maybe 12, apparently trying to use a $2 ticket to get into the $6 section. A soldier grabbed his ticket and started hitting him, hard, on the head, before handcuffing the boy’s arm to the gate. No one seemed perturbed by this, and I thought momentarily about giving the soldier a piece of my mind, but then I realized I was literally staring at the barrel of a gun, and thought better of it.

I found a seat, and blinked in the bright lights ringing the stadium. The crowd was packed onto the concrete ledges that serve as seats, waving Senegalese flags, wearing hats in the national colors of red, yellow and green, and blowing, with great gusto, into plastic whistles. Vendors made their way around the seats, carrying baskets of nuts, loaves of sweet bread and unwieldy canisters of hot coffee. As the game began, the crowd became oddly quiet: no one chatting with their neighbor, or calling out for vendors. All of the stadium’s throbbing energy was tightly focused on the field, where Senegal’s many star players (perhaps most notably the 25-year-old team captain El Hadji Diouf) had returned from their clubs around the world to play, once again, for the home team.

Senegal scored two goals in the first half, both met with an explosion of cheering that lingered long after play resumed, and a flashing message on the otherwise static scoreboard: “BUT… BUT…BUT!” After the first goal, I wondered, “But, what?” By the second, I’d figured out that “but” is the word for “goal.” (It only took me half an hour).

At halftime, the players retired to their locker-rooms, which I can only hope are equipped with toilets that flush, and perhaps even some toilet paper, and scores of men climbed out of their seats and up to the empty top rows of the stadium, where they unfurled their prayer mats and knelt, bowing towards Mecca.

The second half had hardly begun before Senegal scored its third goal, and less than five minutes later, another followed. At this point, the crowd was hysterical with glee, waving their arms in the air, some holding torches spewing pyrotechnic sparks, and others simply jumping up and down. Tanzania came close to scoring several times, but the Senegalese goalkeeper was ready for them.

At the end of the game, fans were congratulating each other, shouting and whistling. As we began the long, slow process of filing out of the stadium and into the melee of cars and people outside, the soldiers were on us again, weaving their way through the crowds and attempting to direct the snarl of traffic. Next to me in the throng, a little boy sat on his father’s shoulders, grinning broadly under the red-green-and-yellow hat  perched, slightly askew, on his head. 

To Kolda and back

Back in Dakar after a productive, exhausting and arduous journey to Kolda and its environs. The trip was excellent, and I was able to interview a variety of fascinating folks, including a prostitute, who was eager to talk to me about her work and her advocacy on behalf of sex workers in the region, several peer educators, who field the questions many young people are too embarrassed to ask their parents, and an elderly, soft-spoken imam, who welcomed us into his home but whose hand I was forbidden to shake, and in whose company I kept my head lowered and my scarf draped over my hair.

All in all, a fantastic experience: the UNFPA office in Kolda is headed by the inimitable Cheikh Ba, whose deep laugh is reminiscent of Dr. Hibbert’s (of The Simpsons: “Oh, yes, AIDS education is definitely a challenge when you are teaching within in the context of an Islamic culture. A real challenge. But what can you do except try?” (Big smile). “Heh heh heh.”) Our driver, Dieme, deserves some kind of medal for tackling the 12-hour journey between Dakar and Kolda (and back again) with superhuman patience and an apparently bottomless appetite for listening to a single cassette tape of traditional Gambian music. And then there’s Arthur, whose year-long post as information officer with the UNFPA apparently involves not only cheerfully accompanying hapless journalists on days-long journeys to the far reaches of the country, but also taking over interviews when my French failed me and/or the searing heat had reduced my brain to a useless lump. I don’t think I would have survived the trip (and certainly I would not have laughed nearly as much) if Arthur hadn’t been unlucky enough to be tasked with my care and feeding (the latter was an adventure in and of itself).

So now I am reinstated at the hotel in Les Almadies, back at my table in the garden, surrounded by curious gecko lizards and the friendly hotel staff, all of whom have made a point of stopping by my makeshift workstation to inquire about my trip, my health, my family’s health, my work, my sleeping habits and my general wellbeing. They all seem genuinely surprised but shyly gratified when I turn the questions back on them.

And now, a few choice lessons learned in the course of the last five days:

1. “Bad” roads in Senegal are, in fact, not just “bad,” but well nigh impassable. On the trip down to Kolda, I was prepared for bumps, maybe some potholes. What we encountered was less like a road and more like tiny strips of asphalt, barely wide enough for tires, surrounded by four-foot craters of red dust. Your choices, when confronted with this situation, are as follows: You can drive sloooowly around the craters, hoping to avoid the worst of them, you can barrel over them at high speed, hoping to skim over the tops, or you can just get off the road altogether and drive on a dirt path, crunching over sun-hardened foliage and scraping against tree branches. Dieme employed all three methods, with varying degrees of success.

After seven hours of bouncing along, fearing for the state of my internal organs, I began to compose a letter to the Senegalese government: “Dear sirs: I hope this letter finds you, your family, and your various and sundry acquaintances and colleagues in good health. I hope you will accept this missive not as a criticism, but instead as a well-intentioned attempt to call to your attention the…um… problematic state of your country’s major motorways….” After an hour of this exercise, passing numerous freight trucks that had pulled over (or, more often, just stopped in the middle of the “road”) after blowing out their tires, I realized that perhaps a Senegalese-style letter of excruciating politeness was not the way to go, and that maybe I would be better off organizing some kind of march on the Presidential Palace.

At this point, of course, it occurred to me that despite the occasional tire-burning at the country’s universities, usually in response to inadequate facilities, this is also a country where the possibility of a stolen presidential election prompts loud and good-natured debate, but no tangible sense of outrage or visible protest. (It sounds familiar, I know. Except for the good-natured debate part). So I resigned myself to mild whiplash, reminding myself that I am only a guest here, and I am not in a position to criticize. (See next item).

2. When my parents took my brother and me to Europe (I was 14 and my brother was 11), my father sat us down beforehand and gave us this bit of advice: “Kids, here’s the thing. We’re not going to be in any one place long enough to truly understand the culture, or the food, or the customs. And that means we won’t have enough information to pass judgment or to criticize anything. So if you don’t like something, like the food, you shouldn’t say it’s bad. You should just say that it’s ‘different.’” Even now, “different”maintains special meaning in my family. And it’s with my dad’s wise words echoing in my head that I pronounce the Senegalese bathroom situation as wildly “different.” Let’s say you’re anywhere but the most Toubab-oriented hotel. Flushing toilets? Don’t count on it. Toilet paper? Not unless you’re really lucky. Sink with running water? Oh, please. Soap? I think not. And don’t even bother looking for a garbage can; you won’t find one.

3. When visiting a Senegalese village in the company of an NGO, it’s not uncommon to find the entire population waiting for you, gathered under a tree, which you hope has provided them some relief from the wilting heat. If you are white, there is a strong possibility that at least one small child will take one look at you and start screaming in terror. If the visit is truly deemed a special occasion, you will be offered a soda, cooled in a bucket of water and ice, and you are expected to drink this soda with great relish, in full view of the company, despite the fact that you are sitting next to empty-handed village elders who look like they could probably use a nice cold drink.

4. In a region (Kolda/Casamance) where the AIDS rate is six times higher than in Dakar (3 percent vs. .5 percent), there is a curious absence of people who will admit to knowing anyone who is HIV positive. Although everyone from the youngest students to the imam assured me that they would treat such people with kindness and acceptance (a favorite response is that “AIDS is a disease like any other, like malaria,”) not a single person copped to knowing anyone who is sick. I can only infer that either they are in denial, lying or, and this is perhaps the most likely explanation, the stigma of the disease is still so powerful that anyone who is HIV positive is too ashamed to discuss their health status.

5. Donkeys are not afraid of cars.

6. Neither are cows.

7. If a monkey crosses the road in front of your car, it’s a sign of good luck. If you get out of the car along a dirt road, the sound of the door closing echoing into the silence of the vast, brown countryside, and 35 golden-haired monkeys run out from under their cool hiding place beneath the road, it’s a sign that you’ve disturbed a lot of big monkeys, and you should probably get back into the car.

So there you have it. I will post photos as soon as I can.

Now it’s back to work in Dakar, for a last, frenzied push of reporting.

On the Road Again

Leaving tomorrow morning at dawn (that sounds far more romantic than I suspect it will feel) for Kolda, a town in the Haute Casamance region, where the UNFPA has links to a variety of AIDS prevention programs.  The drive, I am told, will take at least 11 hours, the majority of which will be spent on “difficult” roads.

(When Senegalese drivers acknowledge that roads are a problem, it’s a safe bet you’ll encounter crater-sized potholes and deep sand. After listening to several accounts of the drive, I found myself feeling hugely and uncharacteristically grateful that we will be traveling not in the usual shock-challenged sedan, but in a large SUV, its white doors emblazoned with UN decals.)

We’re leaving early because Casamance, which sits between The Gambia and Guinea Bissau, while no longer consumed by outright war between rebels and government forces, is still home to bandits who occasionally prey on vehicles caught on the roads after dark. The attacks, I’m told, are fairly rare (maybe one each month), but I’m perfectly willing to accept that this is a case of better safe than sorry.

Anyway, I’ll be in the area for most of the week, most likely sweating profusely (when Senegalese people acknowledge that you’re going somewhere “hot,” it is not an adjective to be taken lightly. Arthur, who is accompanying me on the trip, has made plans to buy water before we leave the city. “Lots and lots of water,” he said, nodding sagely.) Taking this advisement under consideration, I have begun preventative hydration measures.

Not sure what Internet connectivity will be like, so may have to hold off posting until I return to Dakar on Friday. In the meantime, I’ll take lots of pictures.

Ile de Goree

Wednesday, I stole away for a day trip to Ile de Goree, the former slave-trade outpost island just off the coast. I arrived too late for the 9 am ferry (foolishly having assumed the trip to the port, which is about 8 km from my hotel, would take less than an hour. Not so much. After a full hour and a half in the gridlock of fumes and horse carts that defines driving in Dakar, the cab limped into sight of the dock, and I waved to my driver, Sidi, who, after an initially chilly greeting, had warmed up to me enough to tell me his entire life story).

The dock was teeming with men offering their services as “guides,” and women who eagerly urged waiting Toubabs (of which there were surprisingly few) to visit their “stores”(the iron-walled shacks, stuffed with mass-produced crafts that clog every tourist destination) during their day on the island. I gently rebuffed the guides by explaining, with as much self-important flourish as possible and adopting a far-away look in my eyes, that as an American, it was critical that I experience the island on my own, so that I might hope to grasp the enormity of the atrocities perpetrated there. This seemed to work, although my success was probably due less to my deliberately pompous delivery than to the fact that I seemed kind of weird, and therefore perhaps not worth the trouble.  The women were tougher to shake; I tried being non-committal, I tried pretending I didn’t understand, and then I made the fatal mistake of agreeing to search them out later in the day. (As a result of this moment of weakness, I now own several lengths of cotton fabric, gorgeously dyed, and hilariously overpriced).

The wind, which has kicked up this week, sent waves crashing over the bow of the ship, and after 10 minutes of being tossed around on the ferry deck, I retreated to the glass enclosure, where the (mostly Senegalese) passengers sat, entranced by the two televisions mounted on the front wall, showing some horrifyingly cheesy Euro-pop video.

The island itself, especially after the dust-covered neutral tones of Dakar, is a shocking riot of color. Pink and purple bougainvilleas drape across Mediterranean-style buildings, painted in salmon and orange and accented in aqua. The island is home to many of the area’s Baye Fall disciples, who distinguish themselves largely by smoking huge amounts of pot and following people around playing various local instruments and shaking their dreadlocks. (This offshoot group of Muslims is also, to be fair, fantastically artistic, and occasionally, when they’re not too stoned, they produce some of the region’s most exciting painting and sculpture.)

After wandering the island for a while, I shared a lunch of yassa poulet (a local chicken dish, served with onions and the ubiquitous Thai sticky rice) with a few kittens stalking the grounds of a café near the harbor, watching a group of school kids play in the surf, and pirogues (fishing boats) paddling onto shore, often being bailed out energetically by their passengers.

I still had a bit of time before the Maison des Esclaves (Slave House) re-opened; the loosely defined midday break had begun at noon and I knew it could easily stretch to 2:30. So I walked a bit more, climbing the Castel at the far end of the island, where WWII-era weaponry remains on the hill, perched at the ready, and made my way back down the narrow cobbled streets to the Musee de la Femme (Museum of Women), where a lovely man walked me through the rooms (not clear if he was supervising or just being helpful). It’s not the big ticket item on Goree (most people come for the Maison des Esclaves), but the museum makes for an interesting visit nonetheless; rooms and rooms of aging photographs, memorabilia, fabrics and books, all celebrating the varied roles of Senegal’s women, housed in an airy villa surrounding a courtyard. I met the female artisans whose wares are on sale at the museum boutique, and examined the delicate work on their weaving looms.

Built in 1786 by the Dutch, the Maison des Esclaves is a beautifully renovated reminder of the slave trade that haunts West Africa. The upper floors, where the traders lived, have been made into a museum, and the lower rooms maintained in their original state: grim, stone prisons where men, women and children were held separately before being shackled into waiting ships. The door that opens from the jailhouse looks out onto the ocean, and that glimpse of light through the darkness is incredibly poignant.

I took my time exploring the dark corners of the structure, eavesdropped on a few local guides as they described the history of the place. As I was leaving, a huge throng of students from Dakar were waiting to get in, some clutching paper and pens, rough-housing, laughing, clearly enjoying their field trip from the city.

After a café au lait at another harbor-side eatery, it was nearing 6, and time to re-board the ferry. It was far more crowded this time, mostly with students, many of them screaming with laughter and cold as the boat cut through the waves, sending huge, soaking sprays of water over the deck.

Go to Hell, Carolina

Settling in to do some writing this morning, I decided to check the ol’ Internet, you know, just to see what’s happening, maybe see how the team fared in last night’s game…and…oh, dear. Well, enough with the sports. Who needs sports, anyway? Who needs basketball? Stupid basketball…. (Note to Mark: Just send me that Kansas hat whenever you have a moment).

Back to matters at hand: Yesterday, on my way to an interview, I had my first true directional meltdown.  Thus far in the course of navigating Dakar I’ve been lucky in that I’ve been given very clear directions to every interview location; there is always a well-known landmark to use as a reference, or, better yet, someone more familiar with the city than I comes along in the taxi. This was not the case yesterday, and as I stared, with mounting desperation, at the words I’d written in my notebook, words that theoretically form an address, the lines of pen started to swim in front of my eyes. I was looking for “l’immeuble rose,” or the pink building, but there were at least four pink buildings on the block where I stood. I had no idea where I was, and, despite double-checking the address before I embarked on the day’s adventure, I had no idea where I was going.

So I called the office where my meeting was to take place. The person on the other end seemed to understand my dilemma well enough, but when he began rattling off directions in French, my brain just shut down. I caught phrases (“turn left at the…” and “it’s close to the store….”) but none of it made any sense. Finally, with a sigh of what might have been impatience, he asked me what I was wearing. For a brief moment, my mind flashed to some unsavory scenario, and then I realized he was going to come find me. And he did.

NB: The “immeuble rose” is not, in fact, pink. It was painted beige a few years ago. This fairly substantive makeover has not kept everyone in Dakar from referring to it knowingly as “the pink building,” a lapse I suspect may be symptomatic of larger logistical problems plaguing the country.

Roadside musings (and Alfred)

This evening, as I was walking back from the Point des Almadies, where I’d found very good crepes served amidst the smoking food carts, indefatigable vendors and amiable chatter, I passed the fortress-like cement walls that encircle the Meridien Hotel. I couldn’t help noticing that the road outside those barriers, like pretty much everywhere in Dakar, was strewn with garbage, and that several sleepy-looking cows had made a temporary home there, wandering around, poking their heads through the piles of trash, searching for a tasty morsel.

At that moment, two of the cows, apparently deciding the overpriced Meridien detritus was not, actually, all that tasty, walked slowly out into the street, causing an unprecedented phenomenon: two, even three cabs, whipping down the road, were seen slowing down, even coming to a near stop, in deference to the cows. I don’t think I’m being overly cynical when I imagine that their sudden driving politesse was inspired primarily by thoughts of the damage these giant animals could do to their cars, rather than by concerns for the cows’ well-being, per se. But still, it was heartening to see that the brakes (on these cabs, anyway) do, in fact work. Just imagine the good they could do if they slowed down for pedestrians.

Speaking of cabs, the drivers here apparently don’t like anyone to walk from one point to another, no matter how short the distance, and because all fares are negotiated (one of the more tiring but entertaining aspects of life here), they seem to take a special interest in my not walking, largely, I suspect, because I might as well have a giant, neon dollar sign positioned above my head. So they honk, and honk, and sometimes they slow down and wave, in case I didn’t hear the honking, or perhaps am incapable of raising my arm to actually hail one of them. This happens roughly once every thirty seconds during any walk, in any part of town. I call it “Honking at the Honky.”

Anyway, walking around here, which I try to do as often as possible, is an endlessly fascinating exercise (pun sort of intended). On any one mile of road, you’ll spot 12 goats, 8 chickens, 3 cows, 14 roadside stands, selling water and the ubiquitous Coke and, usually, some form of lollipop and/or packets of nuts. Colorfully-dressed women walk by, at a leisurely pace, balancing platters of food, sometimes fruit, on their heads. Businessmen and imams walk side by side along the edge of the road. (Sidewalks are pretty rare here).

Taxis squeal past (honking), followed closely by the odd Mercedes or Land Rover (mainly, it seems, leased to various government officials and NGOs, which makes me wonder what, exactly, they are doing with their money). Horse-drawn carts amble along and innumerable car-rapides fly by, the white vans jammed with passengers, some hanging out the back door.

The car-rapide is the favored form of transport here: they’re ubiquitous and they’re cheap, but they’re also (ironically) slow as molasses, because they stop for anyone, at any time. The drill is as follows: You get on the car-rapide, which usually has too many people on it already, there’s a general shifting as you wedge your way into the van, and sometimes, if the transportation gods are smiling, you get a seat. Otherwise, you just hang on and tap the roof of the vehicle with a coin when it’s time to get off, handing a fistful of small change to the ostensible fare-taker, who usually appears to be about seven years old, and hop out the back door. The hope is that the van is actually stopped when it’s time to disembark, but this does not seem to be a given, or even necessarily expected. I took a car-rapide only once; I sat near the front, and when I glimpsed what I believed to be the correct landmark in the distance, I tapped the roof, handed a boy some money, and started stepping over people as I made my way to the back door, at which point someone pinched my ass. I was so astonished I didn’t think to respond, and by the time I’d disembarked, I could only stand there, mouth open, as the van lumbered off down the road, kicking up a cloud of dust.

UPDATE (this is turning into a long, long post, but bear with me): It’s 8 pm; I’ve eaten dinner and returned to the hotel. My latest stack of books has been read, and I can’t quite bear doing any more work. I am, by any measure, desperate for entertainment. 

My latest hotel has (wait for it) televisions in the rooms, so I climb up on the room’s third bed, switch on the wall mounted, postage-stamp size set, and investigate my options. They are, in order of importance: Four channels showing the same French volleyball game (who knew?), one channel offering a French movie in which, during the three minutes I watched, at least four people died, one showing soap operas, and, finally, a chat/game show hybrid on Canal+, showcasing English actors trying to speak French, much to the amusement of the studio audience.

Just as I give up, I see movement out of the corner of one eye. The night before, I’d been awakened by a chattering, scuffling noise in the vicinity of my backpack, but apparently I had repressed the memory, because I am more than slightly taken aback to see a small mouse skitter across the floor. This strikes me as incongruous: Mice don’t belong in Senegal. Gecko lizards, absolutely. Giant insects? Okay. Maybe (and this is where the repression came in handy) even snakes. But a mouse?

So I sit, perched on a bed, faced with a quandary: Should I call someone at the front desk, assuming there was anyone at the front desk? Should I just let it go, figuring I didn’t need the karmic backlash inherent in writing the mouse’s death warrant? I have just about settled on the latter when I made the mistake of wondering whether mice carry any diseases, or at least any of the three or four diseases I’m not currently vaccinated against.

I spend the next hour watching the mouse leap athletically from bed to floor to my canvas Trader Joe’s bag, where he finds a package of crackers, and sets forth tearing open the package and consuming several tidbits. After 20 minutes of listening to the contented crunching, I decide I’ve had enough, and march loudly over to the bag and pick it up. The mouse (whom I’ve now named Alfred, after the friendly concierge at the hotel), catapults himself out of the bag and runs across the floor to hide under the bed. I collect my things, place them on the top shelves of the room’s closets, hopefully out of mouse-reach, and close the doors firmly. As I’m settling into sleep, I imagine Alfred cursing me, wiping the remaining cracker crumbs from his whiskers.

Blackout

Typing this during a blackout, which is apparently only affecting the quartier where my hotel is located. It’s nearly 10pm, and it’s actually sort of lovely to be without power – the waves, just beyond the doors of the hotel bar, are amplified, the street dogs bark a bit louder, and the bass-heavy music that normally pumps through the lobby/bar area (where wifi is available) is stilled. So here we sit, illuminated only by candles and the fluorescent glow of my computer screen (see photo, which is me, squinting in the half-light). And the incense coil, placed there to ostensibly ward off mosquitoes, burning under my table.

(Mosquitoes, by the way, are not intimidated by incense. They are also, apparently, largely undeterred by DEET. I don’t mean to harp on the mosquito thing, but they really have some remarkably robust specimens here in Senegal. My hat is off to you, Super Mosquitoes, masters of your race).

The hotel staff is clearly quite accustomed to blackouts – the moment the lights flickered and died, they swung into action, creating a sort of assembly line of candle lighting and distribution.  Three minutes later, normal activity resumed, beers were hoisted, drinks were mixed, and people returned to their political debates.

I watched the surfers at the rocky Yoff Virage beach again today, and seriously considered joining in with my enthusiastic, profoundly elementary surfing skills, but just as I was contemplating this possibility, a gigantic – and I mean epic – wave appeared, and I stood there, mouth agape, as boards tumbled over limbs in a furious white froth, making a beeline for a line of black rocks. No one appeared seriously injured, but there was a mass exodus from the water immediately following the monster, buzz-kill wave, leading me to conclude that perhaps the surfing can wait, for the moment, anyway.

I am moving to a new hotel tomorrow (not because of the blackout, but because I sense the staff here, while unfailingly friendly, is slightly confused about the parameters of my seemingly never-ending stay. Which is fair, given that I keep extending my time here in fits and starts, And, if I’m completely honest, it will be nice to stay somewhere with dependable hot water and more than one light source per room, and where perhaps the towels are demonstrably clean. Yes, yes, I know. Americans.). Also because it’s time, I think, to get a new view of things here in Dakar. So I’m off to a different neighborhood, this one on the road leading to the westernmost tip of Dakar, and therefore of Senegal, and therefore of Africa.  To those of you on the East Coast, I will wave in a westerly direction when I get there. (Should be around nine in the morning, your time. I’ll be the one wearing a white shirt).

Minor adjustments (gastrointestinal and otherwise)

Earlier this week, at a gathering of various ex-pats (American, Swiss, French, Dutch and a few Spaniards), I watched as people around me dug into plates of salad, quaffed beverages nicely cooled by ice, and wondered, looking sadly at my plate of rice and chicken (in a very nice peanut sauce, but still), if perhaps I wasn’t being a bit paranoid in re: my rules of ingestion.

Two weeks after my arrival, I've not suffered a single stomach pang, or cramp, or anything approximating discomfort, even after sharing a few traditional meals and an afternoon tea (from a communal cup -- it really would have been horribly rude to decline). Having said this, I suspect the gods of intestinal fortitude are only biding their time, waiting to unleash some particularly unpleasant variation on the euphemistically named "traveler's stomach."

Anyway, my gut felt especially strong that night, and so I asked Arthur, my conduit to all things UNFPA, whether he’d had any problems eating the local food. Arthur, who is about 6 and a half feet tall and probably weighs only a bit more than I do, shook his head. “The only thing I still won’t do is drink the local water,” he said. I nodded, considering this fact. Arthur, like many of the other non-Senegalese young people I’ve met here, is working for a year or two in Dakar between graduating college and going on to graduate school. Most work for various NGOs, and in general they appear spectacularly unfazed by the challenges of life here in Senegal.

As I thought about the possibility of leaving the ice in the glass that had just arrived, another ex-pat spoke up. An ebullient woman with a sunny, confident demeanor, and, it should be noted, a taste for green salads, she was hopscotching across conversations at the table, and hadn’t heard my line of questioning. “Well,” she announced brightly, taking a swig of her ice-laden Coke. “I just went to the doctor and guess what?” We all leaned in in anticipation. “I’ve got two parasites and a worm,” she said, still smiling. No one (besides me) seemed particularly alarmed by this information, and soon the discussion turned to more pressing matters, i.e. the competing merits of Senegalese beers.

At my end of the table, moving with my best approximation of stealth, I picked up my glass and emptied its contents into the planter situated behind my chair.

In other health-related news:

I spent the first week or so of my Senegalese sojourn fretting quietly about the amount of DEET I was spraying on myself (a lot) vs. the number of actual mosquitoes I’d seen (not a lot). And so, out of laziness or perhaps some vague (misguided) sense of rebellion, I stopped applying the stuff and let nature take its course. (Nature, hemmed in considerably by the nausea-inducing malaria pills I choke down every day – which renders the DEET cutback less adventurous, but, I hope, also slightly less moronic).

Moments after making this decision, I got my first mosquito bite. Now, two days later, it is impossible to locate a square inch of my legs unmarked by a red bump, some of which are extremely itchy. I am, it appears, facing a conundrum: possible long-term side effects of DEET (cancer, sterility, and lord only knows what else) vs. the threat of Dengue fever, which, I am told, is quite rare but also enormously unpleasant and possibly fatal.

UPDATE: 80 million mosquito bites later, I am back on the DEET, consequences be damned.

Thanks to all of you who have expressed concern about the bumps on the backs of my hands, a health dilemma which ranks in global significance just below the hangnail I acquired last week. The bumps are stubborn, and have now spread up my arms, and are also making themselves at home on the back of my neck. Still no discernable ill-effects (itching, pain, oozing, etc), so will continue operating under that assumption that they are benign manifestations of sun sensitivity. (Mom: Please don’t worry; and also please don’t send me the dire results of any more Google searches for “bumps on skin.”)

Apologies to anyone for whom this post is slightly too, um, health-related. Those of you who know me well are probably wondering what took so long.