Streets

A few days ago, I met up with a friend Fily in the neighborhood that I used to live in.  Like old times, we took the 'transport en commun' to the neighborhood where his family lives.  Transport en commun is not a recommended form of travel for foreigners and not preferred by Dakar's elite.  The van-buses shake and rumble at a moderate pace while guys hang off the back to collect the 25 CFA toll, equivalent to less than 5 cents.  They hop off while the bus is still moving and hustle people on and off.  It's tight quarters inside--a pickpocket's paradise.  Fily suggested I put my fanny-pack, which I had slung over my shoulder, across my chest and under my sweater.  Then he pulled me through the back door of the bus and people shifted to make space for us where there really wasn't.  A man in the corner said to us, this is so much cheaper than a taxi (Fily translated from Wolof).  A taxi costs a minimum of 1000 CFA, two dollars and 40 times more expensive than common transport.

Without Fily, I would never have ventured to take common transport.  In a lecture on security by the Peace Corps Security Director last year, we were advised against it.  But we were also advised against eating street food, and fruits and vegetables.  

'Transport en commun' 

To get off transport en commun, you knock loudly on the roof and the guy hanging of the back yells at the driver to stop--or slow down.  Fily and I jumped off while it was still moving and made our way through the streets, whose breeze carried the smells of fried fish and seasonings, burnt sugar and spiced coffee, and sewage too.  We navigated puddles of waste water, trash-filled gutters, and mounds of sand and fractured cement blocks.  Many of the buildings we passed were unfinished--it's normal to build as soon as money is available, not necessarily when there's enough to finance complete construction.  Store fronts and residences blurred together, and people sat on their stoops or stood grouped around vendors, socializing and watching passers-by.  

As we walked, I asked Fily what he thinks are the biggest challenges for people in Dakar.  He said housing.  It's expensive and it's limited because a third of Senegal's population lives in Dakar.   Fily then pointed to a hoard of little girls--ages 3-10 I'd guess--playing in the sand-covered street, narrowly avoiding the reckless driving of taxi men.  We had passed dozens of similar groups of children, playing with a punctured ball or tousling each other.  Fily cited these children, left unaccompanied in the streets by parents gone off to work, as evidence of lack of economic stability and quality education.   

We passed a crowd of young and old men watching at TV on a hardware store's counter.  A moment later, celebratory cheers rose from the crowd and then entire neighborhood.  Boys in European football jerseys sprinted in front of us, screaming with excitement.  Fily yelled after one of them, who made the goal! One boy turned around as he ran and yelled, REAL MADRID.  

Facets of a Nation

Seydou and Me

Early Thursday morning, two familiar faces greeted me at the airport in Dakar: Hassana Diallo, my lifeline for all things Senegal, and Seydou Diallo, a cousin from Dindefelo.*  Hassana was my Team Leader as a Global Citizen Year Fellow 2012-2013, and he played a key role in helping me develop my Davis Projects for Peace Proposal.***
*Dindefelo--a village of about 1400 people in the Kedougou** region in southeast Senegal.
**Kedougou is also a small city about 35 km from Dindefelo.  I'll travel there by car or bike to buy supplies and for internet access. 
***Here is the link to my project proposal, which I will execute over the next three months.  

Here in Dakar, I am staying with Hassana, his wife Mariama, and Seydou in the home of the Peace Corps Director of Senegal.  In this house, maybe more accurately called a mansion, wifi abounds, boxes of cornflakes line kitchen shelves, and the air-conditioning unit in my room offers complete climate control.  I'm still FaceTime-ing American friends and snapchat-ing things like a Sprite soda can with an Arabic label.  In a way, I feel like I'm cheating because the Senegal I relate to most, where I previously spent most of my time, is more than 700 km away from here in Dindefelo, where I will have little access to the amenities of my life at home.  In Dindefelo, a basic cell phone suffices for communication and the place I take most comfort in is a little, round mud hut.

But, Dakar too is Senegal. It can be as similar to home as watching Sports Center with a gyro in hand (dinner last night) and as different as passing families dining together on the sidewalk while their mothers sell small sacks of peanuts.


Yesterday, Seydou and I went to neighborhood called Medina to find Kedougou youth.  Though can only confirm that this exists for Kedougou, my guess is that there are pockets of young men from different regions in Senegal living in Medina and the surrounding neighborhoods to attend Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD), which enrolls 60,000 students from all over West Africa.  In search of friends from Dindefelo, we climbed several flights of dormitory like housing.  We went up and down the stairs half a dozen times while Seydou made phone calls to find them. We finally happened upon someone--Sekou.  I'd never met him but we made the connection that one of his cousins was a student in my art class last year, and another cousin is a good friend of mine.  

We spent a couple of hours with Sekou in the military-stye, bunk-bed configured room.  More Kedougou kids trickled in.  Seeing them all again relieved my exhaustion from the heat (relative to Ohio spring temperatures) and from constantly speaking Pulaar after so long.  

Points of Reference

Map of Africa (mapsengine.google.com)

A Matter of Sharing

We three young women find ourselves in preparation for travel, or in transit to, three different countries in West Africa.  We met up last night for a final farewell.  While Hattie and I will be back for our respective fall semesters in August, Molly will soon sojourn in Sierra Leone for 27 months.

Before parting, we had a conversation on how we should keep up with each other's lives and share stories among ourselves and our friends.  We've all had some experience in blogging and we each planned, in some way, to communicate the happenings of our West African lives.  I asked Molly and Hattie for advise: should I send emails to friends and family, or run a blog or two? How much do I say? Will I want to say anything at all?  I feared that maybe I'd be speaking to a nonexistent audience--that I would be writing with the false pretense that my three months in Senegal were actually relevant to other people.

Together, we came to a few conclusions:
1)  We are lucky.  Simply put, we are lucky to have the opportunity to live and work abroad.
2)  A lot of people will never go to West Africa.
3)  We have to blog.  And maybe we should blog together.

This blog opens up a small portal into West Africa through the eyes of American women.  It's a unique perspective that comes with biases but I think I can say it will also carry the sincerity and honesty of our time in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Senegal.  Here, we're taking advantage of our differing locations, goals and personalities to deliver an amalgam of micro-portraits of West Africa.

So, I blog here as a contributor to that gateway.  I blog to chronicle casual nuances, uncomfortable moments, serendipitous flukes, and the progress of my project.  I also blog out of gratitude for having been afforded the opportunity to return to Senegal.