9. Western Senegal and the things that are there

Today I went on a run in Dakar, and, forgetting that the airport is right in the middle of town, ran straight into it. I climbed up a small hill to get a good view of planes from all over Africa as they took off or landed in Dakar, Senegal, the most important metropolis in this part of the continent. Being in the center of the city, the Leopold Sedar Senghor International Airport has been something of a nuisance for development. So a new airport is being built a short ways southeast of the city by none other than the construction firm Saudi BinLaden Group.

The land of the original airport has been purchased, according to many people I have spoken with, by a Korean firm. Whether it is private or government, what they plan to do with it, and how they secured the deal is all unknown, and nothing can not be confirmed by less than 2 minutes of googling, so it’s anybody’s guess as to whether the Korean purchase is real. 

What is treal, however, is the African Renaissance monument. This lofty Statue was in fact built by a North Korean company. This project was the brainchild of the previous president of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade. 

Gloriously pointing roughly towards Boston.

There is a rumor that the statue was actually designed by a Romanian. 
In fact, I happened to wander by the North Korean Embassy a short while ago. Pictures of the glorious leader are there for all to see. 

Looking at things in a cave. 
http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/

But what am I doing in Dakar?

Well it is a long story.
You may or may not be aware that a large portion of the two upper front teeth in my mouth are ceramic veneers. This is because, my dear reader, I was something of a heedless youth. [Notice here the author employing the past tense to suggest that 'youth,’ as such, is a thing of the past, implying that he has progressed to a more refined and mature state of being. A frequent trope in PCV writing.]

I would frequently crash into things, often on purpose in the interest of home made 'Jackass' videos, and often not on purpose, as I pursued dangerous sports with reckless abandon.

On one occasion I attempted a bar-spin on a BMX bike while racing down a hill and with no former experience with the trick. This is a significant part of the reason my two front teeth are partially false.

One thing about fake teeth is that they do not stand up as well against gravel and sand as real teeth.

Enter Senegal.

This is a country where many things that are done in the US on tables are done on the ground, a ground composed mostly of gravel and sand. One primary example is cooking.

The dentist told me that it could take a week or more to get my tooth fixed.

At this point though, I have already been away from my village for more than a month, because of a string of PC events in the Thies-Dakar region.

First there was the PC Senegalese 'All-Volunteer' Conference (All-Vol), then came the West African International Softball Tournament (WAIST), the Inter-Service Training (IST), and a quick vacation to the mangrove forests of the Sine-Saloum Delta, in the region of Fatick. 

All-Vol was interesting. It was a jam-packed two days of Volunteers giving short and highly informative presentations on the projects that they have been working on. It was also the first time most of us volunteers had seen each other in about 3 months.

WAIST was fun. It is a remarkable gathering of ex-pats of all types who come to socialize through the sport of softball. Softball teams are formed by a diversity of groups, such as Embassy people, Koreans businessmen, local catholic schools, and, of course, grungy PCVs.

In fact, we had our own league, as our level of competitiveness was in a class of its own, markedly below even the ‘social’ category.

Us PCVs formed our teams by region, with each region deciding on a theme for costumes. In Kedougou we decided to emulate Wes Anderson’s idiosyncratic film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. This film is a creative parody of Jaques Cousteau and the making of marine biology documentaries. In the movie they dress like this:

So we did too. (Picture forthcoming)

WAIST took place over a long weekend. During this time I stayed, along with 3 friends from my training group, in the home of an American ex-Pat family. This is what most PCVs do during WAIST. Our homestay host family was that of a high-ranking employee of the American Embassy. They were extremely generous hosts, and totally American!

Everything about their house, except it’s being located on a dirt road next to the embassy of the DRC with ladies selling sandals and peanuts outside, was just like a middle class American suburban home. They have 3 young boys who would run around the house like crazy and they had Legos and refused to eat their green beans. They attended an American school and had play-dates with other Americans, and the oldest one was reading Harry Potter 3 on his Kindle.

All in Dakar, Senegal.

This was all a shock to me at first, having grown totally used to life in a 200-person village. It was also really extraordinary to have access to fridges with lots of food in them and warm showers and cold beer and comfortable beds, especially after the intense softball games of WAIST.  We relished the comfort, and were extremely grateful for our host family the Browns, although we may have overwhelmed them.

The softball ‘tournament’ was also sprinkled with various social events. We had a talent show, a bowling night, and a party at the American Marine’s annex to the American embassy (Which is brand new, enormous, and made almost entirely of marble.) These were all very fun parties, and the Kedougou team performed with style and grace on the softball diamond. Overall WAIST was about as fun as any weekend I ever had in my college days.

It was also really fascinating to see how PCVs, who have limited social time with other Americans when they are in site, basically cram multiple months of social interactions into a single weekend. Lots of stuff happened— It had to! WAIST is the main fodder for the PC Senegal gossip machine for the next 3-4 months, at least until July 4^th!

Then came IST, which was for me a highly ambivalent experience.

I was excited to get training in concrete skills and techniques that would help me back at site. Stuff like grafting, how to really do IPM (integrated pest management), field crop maximization techniques, leading demonstrations and writing grants.

However, the training ended up focusing mainly on navigating the various administrative structures of the Peace Corps. Stuff like collecting data, reporting our activities, and various other managerial tasks.  Overall it was about marketing PC Senegal, and how to deal with the myriad of online bureaucratic systems that we must work through to accomplish many of the most basic tasks of our service.

These activities were justified as a valid use of our time because they produced the numbers and blurbs needed in Washington to ‘ensure our funding’, and because it was said that with time, the new and improved systems would help us improve the efficiency and overall efficacy of our aid work.  

Personally, I found that putting the emphasis on these skills served to really disenchant the Peace Corps experience. They have almost no bearing with what we are doing at site, and serve only to teach us how to pander to the jargon of a cynical entity known as ‘Washington.’ I suppose that Peace Corps Senegal is entering fully into the post-modern workplace paradigm. As workers we are evaluated, and surveilled rather than disciplined, and the work we do increasingly produces knowledge rather than physical goods, fitting for a knowledge based economy.

“Ok, hold it right there, college boy,” you might be thinking, “You live in an idyllic agricultural village, not a Kafka novel. So shut up.”

And you are right, I guess I should shut up. I am certainly not the first person to object to the unnecessary build up of a bureaucratic system. My experience is not unexpected, new, or unique. So what is the use of being an establishment contrarian?

In fact, we are lucky to have all the tools that we have today to organize, catalog, classify and report what we do. Right?

I get to tell by friend Washington every time I plant an eggplant, and every time I tell a villager about mulch. Moreover, I get to do it through dysfunctional online software in a country with shoddy internet. Also, rather than having to work simply for the sake of the people in my village, I get to work in order to be able to report my activities for the sake of securing funding. Great. 

So IST involved a great deal of long, repetitive meetings about administrative affairs. It ignited a great deal of cynicism among many of us about the realities and constraints of being government employees. 

But this is all part of the experience, and despite these regrettable aspects of the training and the dis-enchanting nature of the PC technocracy, IST was, simultaneously, an absolutely wonderful time. I got to hang out with volunteers whom I hadn't seen in three months. And delightful people they are. 
Things are simply epic when it has been so long since you see friends, and there is so much to talk about with Peace Corps volunteers! Everybody is doing something interesting, stimulating, and it is all perpetually novel, fascinating. 

Once classes ended for the day we would listen to music, joke around and drink beer. The friends I have made in the PC have proven to be some of the most interesting, intelligent, funny, creative and ambitious people I know. I went running a lot too, throughout Thies, and found a lot of beauty in what is often considered a rather grungy city. (Perhaps I am growing immune to landscapes of pure trash?) The food at the training center is always great and plentiful, and my friends and I had a number of interesting and intellectually provocative movie nights.  

Film Discussion group

It must also be said that some of the trainings were, indeed, fairly relevant. These included a couple of field days where we got to get our hands dirty. We also did learn how to write a grant, although this ‘skill’ panders even more than anything else we did to the arbitrary Jargon of that buzzkill ‘Washington.’

Through it all I was, am, and always will be really happy to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, in spite of the technocratic, overly bureaucratized tilt that the program is taking as a whole. The experience, as with anything in life, is not without its ambivalence. 

With IST done, I travelled to Toubacouta, in the region of Fatick, with a handful of friends for a few days of decompression in order to regain our sanity. You see, Toubacouta is in the heart of the mangrove swamps of the Sine and Saloum Delta—a region of stunning natural beauty—and there is a Peace Corps regional house right there, located on a piece of land that could have had a resort on it.

There is also an actual resort hotel right next door that is very welcoming to Peace Corps Volunteers^[1]. They give us discounted prices on beer, and let us use the pool and hang out on their beautiful veranda which overlooks the infinite green of mangrove covered islands stretching.

It was mind-blowingly beautiful, and very refreshing. We took a cruise out to an island in the delta to see some birds and ended up seeing dolphins, monkeys, mongooses (mongeese?) and about 20 species of majestic, exotic aviaries. Posh Corps it was.

It was during this time that my front tooth began to show definite signs of compromised structural integrity, and I began to realize that I would have to go back to Dakar before returning to Kedougou. This was an unappetizing option, but clearly the right thing to do. It would be uncomfortable, unprofessional, and unwieldy to go a few months with no front left tooth. And it is really far from Kedougou to Dakar, which is the only place in the country to get PCV dental work done in Senegal. Once I get to Kedougou, it is hard to leave, and it could end up being a very long time before I come back to this part of the country, so I decided I should go back to Dakar while still in the western part of the country. 

After Toubacouta, I spent a few days in a town north of the city of Kaolack called Guingenéeo with a friend. This part of Senegal is starkly different from the land of man, Kédougou, where I live. The soil is virtually all sand, and only a few types of trees can survive in the wild. It is also completely flat, and the landscape is rather monotonous sahelian scrub land. Bleak is frequently the adjective of choice to describe northern Kaolack, especially during the dry season. Yet I found a real beauty in it. 

Guingenéeo has a wonderful small-city vibe, and hosts an enormous weekly market with traders from far and wide. It is busy but not overwhelming, comfortable but fully authentic, and as with everywhere in Senegal, the people are unbelievably kind, patient, and enjoyable.

I found Kaolack City to be cool too. This is everyone’s favorite Senegalese city to hate. I even gave it a few critical words in a previous post. But my view now is that it is like any large Senegalese city—at first exposure the city’s negative aspects feel overwhelming. The trash, the messiness, the rude drivers, the hordes of begging kids, the smell, and the sandiness all jump out at you and seem absolutely unbearable. However, if you spend a little time in the place, which few PCVs do, you begin to see that there is real form, beauty and intelligence in it all. 

All the way from Niger

Kaolack has, for example, what is said to be the largest covered market in Western Africa outside of Marrakesh. I can attest that it is enormous, repetitive, smelly, and contains entirely too many plastic bead sellers. It also contains basically anything you could imagine. From high quality diamonds to voodoo endowed animal parts, and from all manner of formal suits/apparel to hand made Korans and aphrodisiacs, I just couldn't stop thinking to myself “This is pretty cool!” I purchased a hat with a built in sweatband. 

I only spent one afternoon in the city itself, but the longer I stayed the more Kaolack revealed itself as an interesting and dynamic city. I came to see a great texture of different groups in the market, with Wolofs, Pulaars, Serers, and all manner of Mandé peoples mixed and layered throughout. It is truly the crossroads of Senegal, and has much to be discovered.

It is also noteworthy that a large portion of the market burnt down in 2012. Apparently it was a rather horrific and devastating fire, things being as closely crowded together as they are. But things bounced back surprisingly quick. Merchants cleared the wreckage, and recolonized the burnt part of the market section by section. The clean up job, however, has been left incomplete in many cases. Even today, many booths sit directly in front of, or even on, large piles of rubbish. As I see it,  the organizational structure of the market mimics many aspects of Senegalese society, where micro-solutions, rather than macro-solutions are most effective at meeting people's day to day needs.[2]

In my opinion Kaolack’s reputation as a shithole is largely the product of negative human tendencies among PCVs. Everybody loves to have a place to hate. Like Bakersfield or New Jersey. But go to these places and you will probably find that things are not as bleak as described. People exaggerate.

That being said, Kaolack does smell, it is sandy, and I haven’t seen it during rainy season yet, during which time the streets are reputed to become pools of fetid water. There is a reason that Lonely Planet only gives it about a half page, despite it being the 3^rd biggest city in the country. 

Then last Wednesday evening I rushed from Kaolack to Dakar for a Thursday morning appointment, imagining that it take one to two days to fix my tooth, and I would be in Kedougou by the end of the weekend.  The quality of dentistry provided by the Peace Corps in Senegal is good, relatively easy to arrange, and, crucially, free for PCVs. However, things move slowly. Processes that take a matter of hours in the US take days here, especially the creation of new ceramic veneers.

So, here I remain, a week later, with no exact idea of when I will be done.

The prospect of spending another week away from Dar Salam filled me with despondency. I am ready, on so many levels to get back to the life of my village. I am tired of spending money. I am tired of living out of a backpack. I am tired of not doing what I came here to do. I want to speak Jaxanké, I want to farm, and I want to hang out with the amazing people I live with. I miss the beauty and community of my village. And I am missing the onset of mango season.

But, the thing is, I am in Dakar. And Dakar is a really cool place. I have taken long runs and walks across the city, eaten at delicious restaurants, and made friends with a lot of people in my neighborhood. I have found Dakar to be a great city to walk and run across.  There are sidewalks everywhere, and people love to see toubabs running^[3]. The air is perpetually fresh and delicious because of the sea, and the temperature is brisk. It is also downright beautiful. Along the shore it looks like Santa Barbra but with dirt roads and large mosques. The cliffs and sunsets over the ocean remind me of California, and every day can lead to something new. But Dakar just isn't where I am trying to be these days, and this is getting me down. There is so much to be done in Kedougou, and even though it will be at least 100 degrees every day for the next 4 months down there, I can not wait to get back. Kedougou is my home, and the Mintés are my family. I shall return soon, Inshallah.

Bonus

With relatively good internet here in Dakar, I’ve been reviewing some of my preferred internet media. Like this stuff:

Louis CK resonates with the PC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JW1tJLRtsk

A gem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7FTF4Oz4dI

Everyone should watch “The Power of Nightmares.” Seriously. Watch the shit out of it. All 3 parts. Adam Curtis is a genius.

https://archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares-Episode1BabyItsColdOutside

I’ve also been getting back up with the news. How ‘bout those Russians eh!?

^[1] The name is Les Palétuviers, which means mangroves in French. It is the place to stay in Toubacouta. The hotel is run by a Belgian family. Apparently when it was established, they had few friends or regular customers beyond PCVs, which explains the ongoing pro-PC stance.

^[2] I recently skimmed through a great book called African Friends and Money Matters which gets into this idea. The author, David E. Maranz argues that contrary to the opinion of many outside observers, African local economies function quite well in doing what they are meant to do— which is to find a way to distribute enough goods to people in order for them to survive. This is accomplished largely through individually organized, ‘micro-solutions’, and these are entirely fitting for the reality of the situation where they are employed. In fact, Maranz argues that if many African economies were to adopt the macro-solutions proposed by western academics, they would be likely to collapse, and hardship would increase. (I hope I did not butcher that argument, and that it was not entirely irrelevant/dreadfully boring.)

^[3] Maybe I am reading into this too much, but I think this is a pretty big point. Most toubabs here are wealthy Europeans or Lebanese. They are generally overweight, or at least not physically fit. They drive around in nice cars, and I have never seen one exercising on the street. I think that to see a toubab running around with a smile through random city streets for no apparent reason, might resonate with people.