A Weekend in Kaolack

This weekend I travelled outside of Dakar to Kaolack. It is the city where I will be living and working during January and February. It's about 3 1/2-4 hours outside of Dakar, depending on what form of transportation one takes. Thanks to a lunch meeting I had earlier this week, I secured transportation to Kaolack for me and my two friends with an employee of USAID… which means we were in an SUV driven by a chauffer. We figured this would be the safest and fastest form of transportation… but that ended up being debatable. We were supposed to meet them in one of the suburbs about 15 minutes away from my house at 6am… we arrived at 6:04am… they finally arrived to pick us up at 7:15am; the driver overslept. In the meantime, we made friends with the security guards at USAID who quickly tried to get my friend Anna and I to hook them up with one of our American girlfriends. Once we finally got on the road, the driver drove very fast, faster than many other cars on the road (granted, many of the cars drive very slowly, but it was still a bit too fast at times). We also ended up having to stop once because a piece of the car became detached (nothing important, just a corner siding panel), and again because the driver got sick right before we arrived in Kaolack. We made it there in about 3 1/2 hours. Dakar has one major highway in and out of it, which means that traffic is ridiculous for most of the day there, read: Chicago during rush hour. The roads outside of Dakar are amazingly nice. Paved, have white dotted lines and other various traffic markers. Nothing like the roads inside the city of Dakar. There's a decent amount of traffic on the highways. When we left there was such a thick fog that you couldn't see more than 50 meters in front of the vehicle. After it passed, you could see forever… flatland with brush and baobab trees everywhere. I quickly saw villages of thatched-roof huts, women walking to the communal well, people working in the fields, all sorts of the things that many people picture when they think of Africa. The animals remained sheep, donkeys, goats, cows, and some pigs… no giraffes or elephants or anything like that. We passed by one accident which involved four cars which was pretty bad, there was definitely at least one person dead. Those are not unusual on the roads outside of Dakar. Our car however was playing Christian praise & worship music (of the megachurch variety) and the Muslim man sitting next to me never stopped praying with his prayer beads. So, we were set.

Eventually, we arrived in Kaolack. It's a city with two paved roads. All the rest of the "roads" are sand. In the morning, women brush the sand in front of their home to make it even. There is trash everywhere in Kaolack. Everywhere. I thought Dakar had a lot of trash, but Kaolack has it beat. It's simply spread everywhere within the common areas of the city, and in some places is piled up. While there, I didn't see any other white people besides me and my friends. So every child we saw yelled "Tubab!" and smiled and waved at us. It's also much warmer in Kaolack than it is in Dakar, at any point of year. Right now it's getting to the cooler part of the year, so it was only 100 degrees in Kaolack when we were there.

When we first arrived in the city, we went directly to the restaurant run by 10,000 Girls (the organization with whom I will be working). Everyone raves about the food at the restaurant. I ate cashew, banana, and blueberry pancakes. They were absolutely delicious! There was no power in the restaurant, which we found out was not unusual. Because Dakar is doing reconstruction projects, most days out of the week the electricity from Kaolack is diverted to Dakar. That will make living there even more interesting!

After breakfast, my friends and I were taken to the school run by the organization. It's in one of the suburbs of the city. There are boxes of books stacked in each room of the school and in the hallways… they're everywhere! Some of the boxes have been opened and in some areas there were books strewn everywhere; so that was a bit frustrating to see. But, alas, I finally saw the work that has been waiting for me. And there's a lot of it. My friends and I got to work right away in opening up all the English Literature books (29 boxes = over 900 books), sorting and inventorying them, and packing them back into boxes. The room was small and cramped, the temperature in the room was definitely over 100 degrees and there was no air circulation. After a little while some of the girls at the school brought us watermelon so we took a break to eat that. We had only gotten back to work for a few minutes before one of the girls came back to get us because she was going to bring us to her house for lunch.

So, we walked about 10 minutes to a lovely house. It was such a typical Senegalese compound… it was filled with people. All of the extended family was in that house, people of all ages. The majority of them didn't speak any French. Instead they spoke Wolof and Pulaar, which made communicating interesting. The people here, if you don't speak their language, they immediately begin a game with you to teach you their language. They repeat things over and over, waiting for you to repeat them. So I learned a bit of Pulaar, but definitely don't remember any of it now a few days later. But this means that when I'm there in January and February, my Wolof will definitely get much better and I'll probably learn some Pulaar. The house was lovely. It was built for running water (sinks, real toilets, showers), but there was no running water to be found. Instead, there was a well in the back of the compound and they brought buckets of water into the bathroom. The family was absolutely wonderful and friendly and welcoming… taranga at its best. Because we were guests, they honored us by letting us eat by ourselves… on the floor of the bedroom where us girls would sleep later that night. It was nice of them, but of course we would've rather eaten with some of the people of the family, but it was not our place to appear ungrateful for the special eating arrangement they had provided for us. They gave us coca cola as well to drink since the water in Kaolack is the worst in the country; it makes foreigners quite sick, and rots the teeth of the locals. They provided us with spoons to eat with, which surprised me, but was quite nice. Eating rice and fish with your hands gets quite greasy and messy for the unskilled hands. After lunch we relaxed, played with the kids, and watched television with the women for awhile. Then we headed back to the school.

We continued to sort books. We were able to finish the entire English Lit section which was an incredible amount of work. My friend Andrew got sick partway through the work, but he had been sick the day before, and I think the heat and non-existing air circulation just made the situation worse for him. He also thinks that the water filter system he used to be able to drink the local water didn't work correctly. He didn't get terribly sick, but he definitely sat down outside to break for awhile. I was so incredibly grateful to have Anna and Andrew around to help me with all of that work! Andrew was especially helpful in lifting the terribly heavy boxes of books.

When we finished our work, it was almost dusk. We went outside to find a bunch of guys from the town playing soccer in front of the school… in the midst of piles of trash. You will have to look at the pictures I will put in a photo album to really grasp the reality of the amount of trash in this city. After we went back to the house, I told Andrew and Anna that I wanted to buy them ice cream for helping me work all day. So, one of the brothers of the family took us back downtown Kaolack. We bought ice cream bars from the local boutique and sat outside eating them. When we were done, I was holding onto my trash. The Senegalese guy we were with through his on the ground and told me to do the same. I told him I simply couldn't. And he told me that I had to, because that's what the Senegalese do. I told him that as an American, it was very difficult for me to simply throw trash on the ground. So the guy took the trash out of my hand and tossed it onto the ground. Anna mentioned that she had found a trashcan, so Andrew picked my trash off the ground and put it with his in the trashcan. Not ten seconds later, one of the little boys who had been sitting nearby us on the street ran over to the trashcan and pulled out one of the wooden sticks from our ice cream bars and stuck it into his mouth. He simply wanted something sweet. On the other hand, he didn't touch the wrappers that had been thrown on the ground. It was such an eye-opening experience for me.

After the ice cream, we went to get some dinner. As in all Senegalese restaurants that are not targeted solely at the elite or tourists, the majority of things on the menu were not actually available. Always when eating at a restaurant here you have to pick four things that you think you'd like to eat, then wait for the waiter or waitress to come and then inquire about what is actually available while hoping that one of the four things you chose is available. I was absolutely delighted to find that they had falafel… it was the first time in Senegal when I not only saw it on the menu but they actually had it. I was quite pleased.

After dinner, we went back to relax with the family. They pulled a huge mat out onto the cement in the back of the compound and we all sat down and relaxed. One of the girls brought out her laptop and we watched music videos. After the music videos were over, we listened to music and talked. Occasionally one of the girls would get up and dance. Since we were a ways out of the city, we could see the stars in the sky perfectly, it was wonderful. The music videos we watched were all Senegalese music. But the music we listened to afterward was the most random assortment of French songs, Backstreet Boys, and everything else you can think of.

When it was time for sleep, Anna and I went inside to our room to get ready. The boys all slept outside. I'm pretty sure that the only people in the house were the women of the household, Anna and I, and perhaps the father. All the other male members of the family slept outside. Mattresses were laid out on what would translate to the porch of the house and mosquito nets were put up over them. One of the girls came into Anna and I's room and told us that the boys sleep outside and the girls sleep inside… thirty seconds later we heard someone lock the door to the house.

In the morning, we woke up early and took a taxi to the main transportation hub of Kaolack. The place is a huge mess of people trying to take your luggage and direct you to their form of transportation. It's madness, to say the least. My friends and I arranged three spots in a Sept-Place which is a station wagon which has been converted to seat eight people all facing forward. They're typically cramped, ill-ventilated little vehicles that get really hot when stuck in traffic. Our experience wasn't too bad, but we also weren't stuck in traffic. My two friends and I were cramped into the backseat together, but since we knew each other, we didn't have a problem leaning on each other to try to sleep… it would be completely different if I was sandwiched in the back between two people I didn't know. The passenger sitting in front was a well-dressed Senegalese businessman. The three passengers in the middle were 50-something men from Mauritania… all decked out in head wraps and everything. One of them really did look like he had just gotten done trekking across a dessert with his camel. They were all very friendly. Since we left so early in the morning, traffic was not too big of a deal. We were stopped for a few minutes on the way into Dakar, and in those few minutes the inside of the car heated up quite a bit, but as soon as we got going again the wind coming in from the windows made it bearable again.

Anna, Andrew, and I grabbed lunch before heading back to our houses. We went to a new "fast food" restaurant in a neighborhood by us that a Lebanese family just opened (it's put in quotations because fast food still takes at least 20 minutes here). We were shocked at how much we felt like we had just returned to a very modern city. But compared to Kaolack, Dakar is definitely modern. There are more than two paved roads, and sidewalks exist, and all sorts of other fancy new things, haha.

When I arrived home my host mom was just finishing eating lunch with the kids. She was really excited to talk to me about Kaolack because her whole family is in a smaller city named Fatik which is about a half hour away from Kaolack and I passed through it on the trip. So it was really nice to sit down and talk with her about her family, because she doesn't talk about them and her home often. She even started teaching me more Pulaar. The kids were also fascinated to hear what I thought about Kaolack, since it them it's just an incredibly hot and dirty city.

All in all, it was quite a weekend.