Here to There

Note: Hey Everyone, I am actually home now. I got back last weekend, but I wrote this one before leaving and I have enough material for another blog or two before wrapping it up.

Caroline and I's travel started off in Dakar, with two other volunteers, Delaney and Britney, who were leaving the following day. We went to the île de Gorée aboard the noble sea vessel “Beer.” I loved how the name of the boat didn’t have any letters before it. Not the “SS Beer”, just “Beer.” The other boat we took during the trip was called the “Osama” so the boat namers of Senegal clearly have a problem.

Travel in Africa can best be described as cheap and uncomfortable. So for only 15 dollars, you can travel in a taxi for 10 hours from Dakar down to Casamance (Southern Senegal), but you have to share said taxi with seven other people, and it’s about the size of a station wagon. So it’s incredibly cheap, but you are sitting butt to butt, knee to knee, for a very long time. We started out with a ride like this from Dakar to Ziguinchor, in Casamance. It took us briefly through The Gambia, which is the small country that is completely surrounded by Senegal. While passing through Gambia, the taxi needed to cross the Gambia River to continue the trek, so there was a ferry that the taxis and the other cars boarded to cross.

While waiting on the ferry, we spotted an Osama Bin Laden supporter, manifesting his support in a sticker on his taxi.

I’ve seen a few Bin Laden stickers in taxis, and it’s always kind of frightening to think that the drivers share a similar mentality…but the people that were waiting for the ferry with us were very nice, and they really took a shine to Caroline.

The whole trip was basically planned with a copy of a Lonely Planet travel guide, which helped us find places to stay while we traveled. While in Ziguinchor, the hotel that we wanted to stay in (which had a pool and reportedly hot water) was full, but the dive hotel right across the street had rooms available, and, check it out, air conditioning!

The room did have a great view of the pool at the hotel we wanted to stay at across the street.

So the next day we took a bus to Cap Skiring, a coastal town with a great beach,

you just have to share it with some livestock

There was also a festival in town that we think was celebrating Mardi Gras? We ran into a bunch of cross dressers on the street who also had flour all over their faces so they would appear white. So it was like they were cross-race-dressing. It was a huge shock to us, just because Senegalese people are normally so conservative, but Casamance feels like a completely different country than the rest of Senegal.

There has been a lot of attention in Casamance because there is a separatist movement composed of rebel groups near the Southern border. Though the travel guides do warn travelers to this region about potential violence, and some things we read about the area made it seem very active, we didn’t see anything while we were there that would indicate an active violent movement. So, don’t count out Casamance in next year’s family vacation plans! Possible advertising schemes: “Casamance: no longer violent!” “Great food, no coups!”

Animist Museum

When Caroline and I traveled to Southern Senegal, we stopped by the coastal town of Cap Skiring. There was a tour guide there that had been recommended by some past volunteers, and their advice was literally “look for Abib”. At first we thought the chances of us finding this Abib fellow amongst all the people of town would be slim, but as we were walking down the street, Abib actually found us, and asked us if we were friends with the previous volunteers who came to Casamance. He is a practicing Animist and offered to take us on a tour of an Animist museum (In Casamance, there is much more religious diversity, with a higher population of more traditional African religions such as Animism, which is a stark contrast from the north which is almost completely Muslim). First off, it wasn’t a traditional museum. It was more of a trail through the woods, with periodic stops by enormous trees (fromage trees. Fromage is French for cheese. The French colonized Senegal in the early 1900s, and I guess named some trees after cheese?) which had exhibits leaning against them.

Some exhibits were more cultural, and dealt with traditional instruments, and agriculture techniques, and others were more religious in nature. These are some pictures from the more cultural tradition end of things.

A Senegalese guitar like instrument

Here is something used to gracefully climb trees

And here is me ascending the tree as gracefully as a forest lemur. What a natural!

This is a device used to catch fish in shallow water. You put this little cage over top of it and reach through the whole on the top to grab the fish.

In the middle of the museum were some Animist elements. Here is a picture of what is called a fetish. It is a pile of bones that the Animists use to communicate with the dead.

Most often, a maribout (pronounced “mariboo”) is present and he sits beside the bones and claims to translate what is being said by the dead. There are maribouts in Muslim culture too, and their presence in West African Islam is a relic from previous African religions. Next, Abib showed us something really freaky. It was this scarecrow thing with the skull of a bull that was dressed as a woman.

He said that if there is no rain for a while, they sacrifice a black bull to it, and then it will rain. I imagine a clever maribout would probably check the local weather forcast just before the sacrifice. Caroline and I were trying to remain focused on what he was saying, but standing next to that thing really gave us the willies. Being alone in the woods didn’t help the situation, and I felt for a second that we were those two people who always die at the beginning of a horror movie.

Afterwards, we stopped by a little village and Abib showed us how cross-village communication is possible. Here it is

To deliver a message, the large metal drum is taken out of the hut and hit an appropriate amount of times to deliver a message to the adjacent village. However, strangely enough, in this remote African village I actually had a couple bars of cell phone reception. More so than a couple places in my hometown in Marlyand….

And finally, this wasn't part of the museum, but we found one of those huge African termite mounds.

This concluded our day at Cap Skiring and we traveled to the town of Zuiginchor before heading back to Dakar by boat the next day.

On a really sad note, my long time friend Delaney has left Senegal. To quote Michael Scott "it feels like someone took my heart and dropped it into a bucket of boiling tears". She arrived a little before me back in August and we immediately became friends, and we were the only people left in Senegal from that original group of volunteers back in September. Life here isn’t always easy, and there are many times when you need a friend who can relate to your problems when Senegalese life presents its many challenges. She is a great friend and I will miss her so very much.

Guest Blog

So today I thought since Caroline is visiting, she could write a blog about something about our travels to southern Senegal (Casamance region). Voila:

I’ve been home for one day, and my favorite story that I’ve been telling to debrief friends and family on how my trip to Senegal was, is of the boat ride that Steve and I took from Zuiginchor to Dakar. We bought fourth-class (the lowest class) tickets because they were the cheapest, and we figured that the level of discomfort that we would experience in the lowest class would be on par with the rest of our travels.

The boat that we took was named “Osama,” and like its name indicated, it was evil. Our fourth-class tickets landed us in the basement of the boat in a room with about 70 other members of our caste. Until it got cold, Steve and I enjoyed sitting out on the deck with a few other volunteers, soaking up some sun and comparing travel stories. The other volunteers were smart enough to spend five dollars more for third-class tickets that included showers and beds. We split with the other volunteers when it got cold and we were forced down into our
basement seats with the luxury of a flat-screen television that played French-dubbed, awful American movies.

I took a Dramamine so that I would be able to sleep and avoid motion sickness, but Steve was wide awake and stuck in his chair between me (asleep) and a weird couple. We called them a weird couple because the guy looked like Kevin Federline and the girl smelled strongly of
smoke and alcohol. However, the weird couple didn’t really act weird. In fact, everyone in our fourth-class area acted much the same. We all tried to sleep. Some people were retching and puking in plastic bags, stuck in their seats. While others were able to sleep and snored loudly.

Steve had one moment of hope when Return of the Jedi came on the TV. However, just as his favorite scene came on, the Ewoks’ fight scene, the TV was turned off. An hour later after Steve beat me in the Smart Dots game (he cheated), the weird girl asked Steve for a stick of gum.
Steve got the gum from me and I gave her a piece begrudgingly. I told Steve he should have told her he didn’t have any. Throughout the trip, Steve and I were able to recognize when we got mad at each other for circumstantial reasons, like being stuck in a room full of retching snorers, or whenever we were hangry (angry because we were hungry).

Steve ended up reading Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in different hallways of the ship, and in my Dramamine-induced state, I was able to sleep most of the night. That’s how we made it from Zuiginchor to Dakar aboard the noble Osama.

Thanks Caroline! Here's a picture of her on the roof of our house in Saint-Louis

Also, stay tuned for the next blog, in which I will explain this picture:

The Visitation

Being here for as long as I have, you start to get numb to how different things are. My friend Caroline came to visit this week and seeing her experience helps to readdress the little things you forget to feel weird about. For instance, we have frogs that live in our shower, but I just kind of forgot about them completely. Then Caroline would bring it to my attention that we shower with frogs, and I can remember to think, oh yeah, that isn’t normal. Also I don’t hear all the random roosters anymore, or the loudspeaker chanting from the mosque. She sat in on the adult classes in the evenings to see what it was like, and other than being hit on by a lot Senegalese men, she has enjoyed them. She says that life here “isn’t as scary as I thought it would be” which I’ve decided to take as a compliment.

We did some St. Louis touring on mopeds during the day to see a lot of the city. We took a lot pictures, and here are some of them. I also have some video, but the internet isn’t working well enough to upload it here, so I will have to wait till I get home to post it. On that note, it looks like I will be coming back to the states earlier than originally expected. I got a job offer from Bat Conservation International about a field biologist position, and it looks like a really good job, so I decided to take it. This means that I will have to leave St. Louis in March instead of May like I planned in order to start the job. I told my host family and students and they are all really sad that I will be leaving, but understand the circumstances.

The view from the roof

Caroline meets John Waller and an instant friendship is kindled

Kids in the house enjoying some fish and rice

Caroline with baby OusmanCaroline falls in love with hand washing clothes, vows to never use a machine again

Spot of whimsy during bike rideNot so whimsical part of the bike ride

Caroline's love of household chores is a big help to the familyWe stopped by a Senegalese kindergarten to say hi to the kids
During the dry season, the river becomes a landfill

Living Green in Senegal

Being an environmentally minded person, living in Saint Louis is sometimes difficult. There aren’t any trashcans or public waste management, so people here just litter everywhere. I have a trashcan in my room, but I think they just dump it down by the river. Even if I am walking down the street and drinking a soda, I can’t bring myself to just throw the can in the river because it goes against some natural instinct. I take the can home and put it in my trashcan, which my host brother takes and dumps in the river. Part of me wants to compress all my recyclables down and try to take as much trash home as possible. They sometimes recycle here, but they don’t melt the glass down. They just wash out the glass bottles and refill them. Not a great way to prevent disease, but a great way to save energy. There are also a lot less cars than American cities, but most of the cars come from Europe after failing emissions tests. So they ship all those cars here and sell them cheaply to African companies who don’t have emissions standards. Which you would think should be illegal, but apparently is not.

There are some other ways though, that St. Louis saves a lot of energy, not necessarily by choice, but by lack of availability. All the showers are cold, and since the weather has become cooler, they have become less tolerable. When I first arrived, I was taking 3 cold showers a day and loving it because it was so hot, but since there has been a change in the weather, my schedule is on a need-to-shower-basis, which is as charming as it sounds. I had a really awful moment when it had been a few days since my last shower and went out to feed the sheep, and petted it on the head and then smelled my hand and thought it didn’t smell that bad. Then I dropped my hand in horror and took a shower right after. Sometimes when I need to step into the freezing water, to psyche myself up, I will shut my eyes and think really hard “environmentalism!” and then step in, hoping that the good feeling I get from saving energy will help dull my senses to the water. Doesn’t really work, but it’s part of a routine now so you get used to it. Same with washing clothes just because I really don’t like washing them by hand in buckets, so through clever garment management, I can usually get away with doing laundry only once a month now with only minor regrets.

As for work, I started teaching adult classes to give me something to do at night. The striking at the public school is sporadic still. Usually a couple days a week there’s a strike, but the kids I work with on Fridays are always there. One of the other volunteers who works at a preschool said they had a strike too. I know it has to be the teachers who are striking, but it is more fun to imagine little preschoolers with poorly spelled signs demanding more milk breaks. I sometimes give my family members English lessons too, to fill the time.

Also, my friend Caroline is coming to visit this weekend! She will be in Africa for about two weeks, so we will get to do a little traveling while she is here.

Bizzaro Santa

There are about 6 kids who live in my house right now. I’m not completely sure about how they are all related to the family. They’ve told me their names before, but I forgot them all pretty quickly. One of the kids is a talibe and Moctar told me that the child has a curse of kleptomania on him, so I should always keep my room locked so he won’t steal anything. It’s a lot more likely that his maribou just told him to steal things and the kid is doing it to avoid a beating. Anyway, all the kids are all really nice to me, and I play with them sometimes. They showed me their little games in Wolof, and I tried to teach them leapfrog where you jump over the person in front of you, but after I jumped over the first kid, I kneeled on the ground, it resembled the Islamic prayer position, and they thought I was trying to pray or teaching them some kind of prayer game. They all ran over and kneeled down and started praying beside me in Arabic and it was all very confusing. Here is a picture of the kids in my house holding some beanie babies that my grandmother gave me to give them when I came home for Christmas.

There aren’t any behavior problems with the kids in the house, but sometimes if I am teaching little kids, they can be huge brats. Back in October when I was teaching at a little day care center, I had to deal with misbehaving kids all the time and it was hard because most of the kids only spoke Wolof at that age. The other teachers just smack the kids in the face or hit them with a stick, but I would just send them to the corner which seemed to work ok. I really don’t like the disciplinary methods here. Most of them would land you in prison in the states. Smacking a crying child in the face is just so heartless. There was a nicer Senegalese lady who showed us a punishment called “pumpay” where the children go stand in the corner and squat and stand repeatedly while holding onto their ears, like they are a water pump. This worked pretty well, and I use it whenever I am teaching little kids.

At one talibe center around Christmas, there was a special method to enforcing behavior. Santa Clause. But probably not in the way you are thinking. He was used as negative reinforcement, as in, you had better be good or Santa will come and take you away. Santa isn’t coming for you, but for you. I guess this is the way he is celebrated in the bizarro world. Then they had this terrifying little Santa figurine hanging from a string and they went around to the misbehaving kids and dangled it in front of their faces and they would start crying (I didn’t work at this school. The story was told to me by one of the other volunteers). Over Christmas, Delaney got asked to play the part of Santa (a good Santa) at one of the talibe care centers. Of course, it isn’t every young girl’s dream to be asked to play the part of Santa Clause, but they told her she would be a good Santa because she is white, and apparently, Santa is white even in African countries. Then she told them she was actually Asian, and the answer they gave her was similar to a “close enough” response.

House Tour

The internet was working really well today, so i took the opportunity to post a little video tour of my house. The house is fairly empty because the kids were at school, but you get to meet some of my family as well.