Senegal in the News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7214792.stm

More Books

I am sitting at home waiting for my lunch to arrive… it's 3:23pm. There has been another death in the family this week, so my host mother/sister I guess is at a gathering for that at the main family house. Earlier this week it was a grandmother who passed away and today it was a guy around my age. So my being hungry at the moment is not really the world's biggest problem at the moment, obviously.

Work this morning was great! We had three people come in from the local high schools to look at the books we laid out yesterday. We discussed how the project will proceed and what they are going to do, and what additional types of books they need for us. Right now, we're starting with three high schools… their English classes, English clubs, and books for the teachers. It also includes setting up basic libraries for students to be able to check books out of, because the current school libraries do not allow this. So at the moment there will be novels and geography books in it. Little by little. There are so many boxes and so little space at the school that is hard to see everything we have. So once we get these English textbooks out of the way, we will have some space to work with. Also, I would like to send a big thank you to the people who thought it a good idea to send "Keyboarding With Word Perfect 97" to Senegal. Not only do people here not use Word Perfect, but the keyboards in French speaking countries (like Senegal) don't use the same keyboard we use in America. We have hundreds of copies of this book that are useless and won't be going anywhere.

Tomorrow is another holiday, so I don't know how much work I'll be getting done. I still haven't mastered the Senegalese art of sitting around and doing nothing. So I'm hoping I'll be able to at least work in the morning, and then enjoy the festivities during the afternoon. I'm told that it's a holiday of eating, and children go from house to house begging for candy (much like Halloween), and that men dress like women and women dress like men. I'm not so sure about that last part of the holiday, so I'm interested to see what really happens.

Saturday I will return to Dakar again. My good friend, and fellow Rotarian scholar, Allen is leaving for the States within the week so I will return there to say goodbye to him.

It's 3:54pm… I still haven't eaten lunch. (And yes I've done other things in this half hour besides write this entry)

Idleness

I have basically been on vacation since December 15th when my role with Rotary technically finished. Just this past week when I started working with 10,000 Girls did I start having a job again. I was kinda going crazy feeling like I didn't have a purpose. Waking up in the morning and knowing that I didn't have anything that I needed to accomplish that day. It drove me crazy! I had enough of a break and was ready to actually start doing something again. This is a good example of how I am obviously not Senegalese (not that a million other things such as skin color and language would've given it away). When I started working last week and this week, even when I only worked for two hours and I felt like I really should be doing more, my family told me that I work too much.

It doesn't help the situation that about 50% of the working-capable population here is unemployed. But, the Senegalese have an amazing way of sitting around and doing nothing. Often, it's sitting around and talking. There is a lot of that as well. And people say that this society is built on the art of chatting. Aside from that, there is also simply sitting around and doing nothing. At this moment, while I've been sitting here for the past hour or so typing away, my two host siblings have been sitting on the bed with me… doing nothing. Occasionally they'll say something to each other or to me, but overall they're just laying there and not even sleeping. I went to a party yesterday afternoon with Bethany for a woman who had just returned from Mecca. We arrived and after greeting everyone, we were ushered to sit under a tent with a bunch of other people. Hardly anyone was talking, and no one was doing anything else. There was music playing, but not dance music, in the background. And they simply sat there. They were all dressed in some of their nicest clothing, and sitting. One man took his cell phone out when Bethany and I arrived to take pictures of the two toubabs who were there and then he filmed a short video of everyone seated under the tent. After a little while we got up and sat down next to some girls who were a little older than us, who wanted to ask us questions and become our friends. Before we arrived, they weren't talking either. But at least that kept us entertained for awhile.

Even this morning, a guest came to our house and just sat down on the porch away from where everyone else was sitting. She sat there for at least a half hour and then got up and left. During the middle of that she spoke with my host mother/sister for about 2 minutes. I was introduced to her, and I exchanged greetings but she kept looking away.

I'm amazed at the ability of people here to be content with sitting and not being active. This is a country filled with people who have lots of patience, and very little ADD.

Streets and Dancing

In Dakar, you can find just about anything along the street. It is exactly the same way in Kaolack. In Dakar, you will find horse carts on the national highway on occasion and people pushing cars that aren't working and all sorts of things, but there is still a crazy order to things. In Kaolack… the order is even crazier. Cars fly by without regard to any pedestrian. Animals run across the street all the time… typically sheep, but sometimes cows as well. The main paved roads are big enough to support three lanes of traffic, but of course there aren't traffic lines painted on them. The vehicles on the street consist of horse and donkey carts, taxis, hundreds of little mopeds (the most unsafe ones you can find, and they're often skidding and falling over), the Kaolack equivalent of car rapides, the occasional personal or business car, and the even more rare bus. All the vehicles go so fast (except, of course, the animal carts). It just looks like a free for all out there, not exactly the safest thing ever. I live on a paved road like that, and whenever I'm with my host mom/sister she takes my hand before crossing and then runs when the coast seems clear. It's worse than Dakar, which I didn't think could exist.

Dancing is such an important part of life here. If music is on, someone is dancing. They don't sit like Americans and tap their feet or bop their heads. The Senegalese dance in their chairs or stand up and dance. I put music on in my room one of the first nights I was here, and little Maguette came in and started dancing. 30 seconds behind her was her mother who joined us and started dancing as well. My host mom/sister will dance whenever there is music on, even if it's a television commercial. It's so great! There's no shyness . Everyone just gets up and dances (and for the women of the house, except me, shirts tend to be optional). Before I left for Senegal I saw a YouTube video of a girl who was staying in Senegal, it was 3 minutes of a group of people in a living room sitting down with music on in the background, and as time went on different people would get up and start dancing and by the end she danced, too. I didn't realize until coming to Kaolack how normal that is in typical Senegalese society. So almost every day since coming here we have had some kind of dance party at the house, aside from the two days of parties for the returnees from Mecca. I always know for certain that if I put on music with any sort of dance beat to it, within a few minutes I will have company in my room who have arrived to dance.

Book Work

I had a nice unexpected surprise on Monday… the university professors went on strike (again, as usual), so all the classes were cancelled until Friday. This meant that my friend Bethany from Dakar decided to come with me to Kaolack for a few days until her classes started up again. So, Monday afternoon we piled into a sept-place in Dakar with other strangers. One man who asked if we were French, we told him we were American, and he made a horrible face and told us that he's afraid of Americans. That then started an interesting conversation. He's basically afraid of Americans because he sees Bush as someone who will start a war wherever he pleases, and the guy didn't really like the idea of that. It was probably the most lively trip I've made outside of Dakar. At the beginning, there was some conversation between passengers. After awhile a woman got a CD out and gave it to the driver to play, it the was the music of a local Senegalese artist trying to get his name out. The music was alright. A little while later the woman who had provided the CD fell asleep. So, the woman behind me got her cell phone out and started playing music quite loud. All kinds of music: Akon, Nelly Furtado, The Pussycat Dolls, and Celine Dion. Needless to say we had a little dance party in the back of the sept-place. Ok, no dancing, but there was singing along and bopping our heads along with the music. (Side note: Playing music from cell phones is very popular here. No matter where you are. On the street. In a restaurant. People will get their cell phones out, sit it next to them, and blast music from them.) The sept-place ride took entirely way too long because the driver wouldn't pass if he saw any cars coming… he could not possibly have been Senegalese. This left us caught behind large slow-moving trucks for most of the journey. I was not very pleased. It took us well over an extra hour to reach Kaolack.

Tuesday I worked all day and Bethany came to help as well. We were incredibly productive, and it really boosted my spirits after a frustrating week last week. It started off rocky, but really what I have to do now is open up the boxes and look around to see what's in them. We searched for hours for English books and finally found sets complete with teachers guides and workbooks. Now, the 39,000 books are in boxes in all rooms of a school where I'm working. And please don't think that the sets of books, teacher guides, and workbooks were all in the same area… that would've been too easy. Nonono, they were all spread out and in no particular order. Even two days later I found additional boxes of books that belonged with them. But we were kept busy all day, and I was happy enough.

Wednesday we arrived at work later than I would've liked, but of course it didn't matter. There was not enough work to keep us busy all day. We worked until about noon, and then were done. We were told not to come back in the afternoon, because there was nothing left to do until Thursday. So, we returned back to the house for the afternoon. Amadou, the son of the family who is almost 18 years old, wanted to go to the beach so we decided to take him and his little sister and a friend to the beach for the late afternoon and early evening. About 5 kilometers outside of Kaolack there is a beautiful beach next to the village of Kahone. The water is insanely salty, but it's beautiful. There also isn't exactly a lot of water. You'll have to look at my pictures to really get an idea of it. Bethany and I didn't swim in the water because we didn't trust it, but we were content to sit on the beach and watch the kids play. We attracted an assortment of 15-18 year old guys who came over and started doing pushups with the two boys we brought. Bethany and I decided that we really like that age group of Senegalese guys because they're too young (in general) to propose marriage. There's always the occasional kid who tells you that he loves you, but in general that's left up to the guys older than them. The beach was surrounded by typical African scenes… people on horse carts, thatched roof villages, baobab trees, and such. It was so pretty! We were there for about two hours before the sun started setting and we headed back to the city.

Weekend in Dakar

My work last week was quite a bit frustrating. By Wednesday I had finished all that there was for me to do until my boss returned. So after another evening at the party for the man who returned from Mecca, I took a sept-place Thursday morning and returned to Dakar. I spent the afternoon at the Baobab Center, where I used to study French, catching up with friends I hadn't seen since before Tabaski and my old professors. I found out that a new group of study-abroad students will be spending some time in Kaolack, so the guy in charge of the Baobab Center wants me to show them around a bit… that will be nice and give me something else to do in a couple weeks.

I spent much of the weekend visiting with friends, as well as my old host family. However, Friday during the day I spent the whole day working on things for the Rotary project. Although my Cultural Ambassadorship is technically over, I'm still trying to help them raise $15,000 US to finish phase one of the maternity clinic. If anyone reading this is interested in donating, or knows someone who would be, please feel free to email me: Shannon.T.Orourke@gmail.com

I also spent the weekend, and much of Sunday, fretting over my graduate school applications which were due Wednesday of this week. My applications were completed and paid for before, but the schools were still waiting on IWU to send in my transcript as well as a professor who had yet to turn in one of my recommendation forms. I'm hoping everything got in, and now I will simply wait for responses… This also delayed my return to Kaolack until Monday so that I could make some phone calls to people in the States on Monday.

Pictures! Pictures! Pictures!

Lots more pictures from the land of Senegal...

Photo Album #3:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2027888&l=40c5f&id=41600114

Photo Album #4:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2029650&l=0fc6f&id=41600114

Photo Album #5:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2029685&l=406dc&id=41600114