Tuesday, May 28, 2013

A Trail of Teranga

Learning to make attaaya (the tea)
It has been a while since I've posted, and I'm gonna just blame it on the speed of time's passing. I'm no longer in Senegal, though every day I remember where I was the past 4 months. God really blessed my time there. From the friendships I formed with others on the program to the daily interactions and friendly banter I had with the vendors on my street, I made some very special memories and experienced some really incredible things. Alxamduliaa for everything!


18 Mai: My Last Day in Senegal
Some of my family: me, Lydie, Bébé Co, Herbatin, Marie
My final day we participated in the "Dakar Semi-Marathon" to which my group showed up about 10 minutes before the supposed start of the race, only to get yelled at by the registering officials about how we needed to learn to show up on time (we were actually scolded by Senegalese for being late-- it felt a little ironic) and handed the remaining shirts (all sized XL). The race began another 40ish minutes after that. Most of us ran the 5k, with a few doing the half-marathon. As I ran down the street, jumping curbs, dodging car rapides and street vendors, and nearly getting hit by a bus in front of the main university in Dakar, I realized that I was glad I was only running the 5k. That had to have been the hottest 5k race I have ever run in my life, made slightly better by all the people in the cars and streets yelling words of encouragement and pity after me. My red face must have made a pretty great contrast with the white shirt (though the shirt got darkened some by the coating of exhaust and dust I got running down the streets). Since this was only a couple hours before I was getting picked up to go to the airport, I "hurried" home on a car rapide and spent some time with my family (I ended up on the rooftop chatting with one of my brothers and found myself wishing I had more evenings to spend up there with them). My final dinner, though rushed, was delicious all the same-- peas from a can with "yapp" (some kind of meat) and bread. Leaving the house that night was more emotional than I was anticipating. Saying goodbye to Marie and to Lydie (my host mom) were the hardest farewells, and I had to hurry away to make it easier on all of us. The van was waiting when I walked up the street with my host dad and another friend from the program, Camilla. My last purchase on the way was a bag of thiakry (the yogurt millet stuff) which I accidentally sat on and therefore popped in the airport about half an hour later (I was hiding it in the pocket of the coat I had wrapped around my waist). At the van was a crowd of Ouakamites from our program and some of our Senegalese friends there to say goodbye to those of us getting picked up. It was a really special moment, though sad, saying a "ba beneen, inshalla" (until next time, God willing) to all our friends gathered. Driving away and entering the airport felt surreal, and it is taking me a while to realize that that whole chapter of my life is actually over.

Madrid:
I flew through the night to Madrid with two other friends from my program to meet up with my friend Becca from my university back in the States (she had been studying in Seville). Mike was one of them, and we had a great time chatting up in Wolof the grumpy Senegalese man trying to sell wooden carvings on the street side. I soon found that every time someone tried to speak to me in Spanish I answered in Wolof. This was a problem. I never got to the point where Spanish came out, though this could be aided by my inability to speak Spanish. Some culture shock happened wandering those streets, and I am still caught off guard by the easy accessibility of public trashcans. We spent two nights in a cheap hostel-- a good experience for me after all the horror stories I had heard from friends. Living in Madrid is spendy, thus, we walked everywhere we could and I was forced into buying a McDonald's value menu burger one night for dinner. We saw famous art at the Prada and ate tapas in a large square filled with street entertainers.


London:
Greenwich Meridian Line!
Becca and I met up with a family friends' family in London and stayed with them for 3 and 1/2 days. Their generosity was incredible and their jokes were hilarious. I got a lot of great laughs out of all our conversations, especially since the man seemed to think that my British accent is actually an Australian accent (personally I have spent my whole life thinking I was incapable of speaking in an Australian accent). Apparently it needs some work ;) I loved being back in a place where coffee and tea are drunk on a regular basis, and the first half day we were there I drank a total of 4 large cups of tea. We saw so much during our time there, from Big Ben to the evensong service at St. Paul's Cathedral (and at Westminster Abbey). We went for a walk our first evening there with the couple we were staying with and came across the Queen's barge in this little harbor on the river! We took a healthy number of pictures of red telephone booths and we even got to meet up with an old friend of mine from high school who is from London. God gave us good weather, generally speaking, meaning we only really had to deal with the rain our last day there, the day we had already designated a coffee-shop day. Becca and I kept having to remind ourselves that we were actually in London, that we were actually riding that red double decker bus, actually watching the guards at Buckingham Palace change their posts, actually standing on the Greenwich Meridian Line. A beautiful city to be sure with a lot of history attached. And the family we stayed with was so generous. Teranga has really marked our trip-- teranga being the Senegalese cultural value of hospitality.

Ireland: (so far, Limerick)
Cliffs of Moher
We are now staying with one of Becca's extended relatives. To get to the first family in Limerick, we had to spend the night in a London airport on the cold stone floor (all the transit chairs were taken by 11:30pm). We didn't sleep very much, but managed to make it on our 6:40am flight. Her family picked us up and fed us an incredible breakfast of sausages, bacon, fried eggs, toast, and cereal. After stuffing our bellies we slept till about 2pm, at which point we got up and ate lunch. We saw an old castle that day and went to the Cliffs of Moher the next. Really gorgeous countryside here and more green than I have seen in ages. I'm realizing you don't see real grass in Senegal. They don't have it (at least not in dry season). You see sand and the occasional desert-like brush and baobab trees. Here you walk outside and are engulfed in bright greens that seem to dance across the rolling hills. Rafet na (it's beautiful)! Becca's family really spoiled us and even took us out places, paying for everything. There is no way we can really pay them back for their kindness. Teranga. Something I thought of is that this is a bit of how it is in our relationship with God. He has given us everything, unfathomable blessings and love, and yet there is no way we can ever pay him back. We have to live each day in a state of thankfulness, knowing that we are incredible debtors to his grace and yet He gives it to us so freely because of His love. When you can't physically pay someone back a great  debt, you have to thank them in other ways-- in your actions, in your words. A state of perpetual thankfulness.



Saturday, May 11, 2013

The Beauties of a Single Light Bulb

Sine Saloum (April 26-28):
Our whole program took a trip down south to stay together in nice campements for the weekend, enjoying each other's company, riding in pirogues (the canoe-boats), touring the town in sharetts (horse-drawn carts that are really just a platform that you sit on), eating delicious food, drooling over Tuareg jewelry that was 10x out of my price range to buy, and experiencing a night of village lutte (the Senegalese wrestling that you witness both on the streets and on every 3rd billboard- the other ones belonging to tomato paste companies and MSG-packed buillon cubes that form the secret ingredient in every meal here). So basically, a wonderful bundle of great things all packed together into a weekend away from the smog of Dakar. You had to take pirogues to reach the island we stayed on, and once you were there, the modes of transport consisted of your own feet and sharetts. Not that we felt the lack of car rapides or crowded buses-- it felt great to stay in one place and read in the sun on the beach. A gorgeous location for sure with lots of mangroves lining the shoreline. We took a "mangrove tour" by pirogue and saw the sacred baobab of the island where the villagers offer sacrifices of blood and milk to the spirits. Our island tour by sharett caused a lot of excitement in the villages when we stopped and spent some time with the children on the shore of the island.
Lutter doing psych-up cultural dance

Our second night there, we were invited to a lutting match in the nearest village and witnessed the pre-match ceremonies of stepping on special leaves, picking up dirt, and pouring liquids over themselves. There was one light bulb for most of the night, giving the makeshift lutte arena a certain mysterious glow as the sand was stirred up by many wrestling bodies. They gave us the opportunity to enter the arena and lutte against each other, an opportunity that a number of us seized very eagerly. I discovered the pure adrenaline that hits you when your one task is to bring your opponent to the ground in view of over a hundred people, dust flying, cameras (from other toubabs) flashing in  your eyes as you battle to keep your feet under you. I LOVED IT. Not the cameras or the audience so much, but mostly just the competition of it. As soon as I had finished my first round, I was hungry for another match. Guys and girls from my program lutted, and my friend Ethan who was undefeated from our group took on a couple Senegalese lutters. At first no one wanted to challenge him-- probably more than his impressive lutting skills, it was the fear of humiliation if by some chance he beat them at their own sport that, that held them back. He won his first match and lost the second. I wanna bring lutte back with me to the States (minus all the rituals with the liquids and leaves).

L'Ile de Madeline (May 1):
We climbed out on the rock cliff-- naturally.
A group of 13 from my program took pirogues out to l'Ile de Madeline on the Senegalese equivalent to Labor Day. I had heard tale of my friends making the infamous pirogue journey in the past and spending the whole time in a reverent fear for their lives bailing water out of the boat and getting drenched by the waves. But the island itself, uninhabited, was supposed to be gorgeous! Needless to say, I had some high hopes going into this one. Turns out the rumors were true about getting an unwanted shower on the way over and about the beauty of the island. It felt like a bit of a rocky island paradise with a great swimming alcove and some rocky cliffs perfect for climbing. Such beauty God has created! It felt a little surreal. Some friends and I got together before heading back from our lunch spot and prayed together for the rest of the semester in Senegal, that God would guide and use us according to His will. Just about every day it strikes me how blessed I am to be studying here in Dakar.
My friends on the ride back to the mainland

The Great Green Wall (May 4-5):
Onions!!
My Environment & Development class took an overnight field trip up north about 7 hours, the last few hours of those in the backs of pickups bouncing down roads that our bus couldn't drive. We had been learning about a project called the Great Green Wall, a tree-planting project that is supposed to span Africa someday to prevent further desertification. It still looked pretty desertified to me, but they had planted a lot of trees already and we spent the night at some sort of military facility next to the giant well that supplies water for thousands of livestock and people daily. They have community gardens going as well, to provide a hopefully sustainable income for the community. It was so good to see onions being grown here in Senegal, as we each consume at least 2 onions a day in various sauces and almost all of those onions are imported-- Senegalese staples: baguette, rice, onions. Senegalese imports: wheat, rice, onions.

Women travel hours each day to get water from the well.
We saw their projects, "helped" plant some seedlings, then returned for dinner. Some ladies had cooked the goats we had bought (some of our group were disappointed they didn't get to do the slaughtering themselves), so we feasted on ALL parts of the boiled goats, hacked into pieces and placed in the communal bowls. The one light bulb gave us perfect lighting for the occasion-- just enough light to see that we were eating meat and onions, and just enough darkness to not see exactly what that meat looked like or where it was from. I know I ate some intestine and liver, but there were some other things I ate that I still haven't identified. A very filling delicious dinner, alxamdulilaa! We stayed up by the fire late into the night lounging on cots and mats on the ground (though our prof had strictly warned us against the snakes that were going to come for us-- we didn't have to worry about the larger animals that could wander into our little compound), making and drinking attaaya (the strong tea), and star gazing. We engaged in some waxtaan (discussion/conversation), taking turns telling legends and tales from our past and/or our region of the world. My class now knows about Kaldi (who discovered coffee in Ethiopia) and the reason why dogs chase cars, goats run away, and donkeys don't care. We relived tales of selfish tortoises, leopards getting spots, the Alamo, and John Henry. C'était parfait!

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Mbeubeuss

Sometimes it is in the little things:
-Making tribal sculptures across from a man with dreads while drinking strong tea and listening to the Civil Wars, conversing with random people in Wolof. 
-Holding a hold a 3 minute conversation with a stranger man before he asks about becoming your husband. 
-Feeling like I'm walking on a very sandy beach just walking down the street to the boutique to buy my breakfast baguette from my shop owner friend (the streets in my neighborhood are made of sand).
-Sitting next to a woman on a bus with a Catholic bracelet who pays a stranger's fare because he doesn't have change and then gives up her seat to an elderly woman who climbs aboard the bus.
-Stepping into a "car rapide" and getting to sit down by the next round-a-bout.
-Taking an extra 20 minutes to walk home because I run into "friends" who work or live along certain streets.
-Sharing dinner around the bowl with around 6 of my family members, all of us reaching in with our hands, trying to avoid dropping onion sauce or fish on the person next to us.

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On the 21st of April I went on a field trip with my Environment & Development class to Mbeubeuss, the Dakar city dump. Each day about 130 trucks deliver garbage of every nature (including the illegal dumping of heavy metals and untreated toxic waste) to this growing "plateau" of trash, picked through by over a thousand workers. Many of those who work in this inevitably health-risk-filled environment live in a small slum right at the base of the plateau. The shelters in which they live are literally built on and of the garbage collected nearby. The suburb that hosts Mbeubeuss is home to the majority of those who work in Dakar. An enormous health and environmental risk, the toxins in the garbage that is dumped have contaminated 50km on either side of it through the air and through the underground rivers that run just meters below the ground underneath the dump. Vegetables grown with this water pass on the toxins to people in all parts of Dakar, and respiratory diseases, cancer, and birth defects are common in Mbeubeuss' proximity. The ocean is less than 2km away-- a distance that is closing with time.

Neighborhood of Mbeubeuss workers
The stench immediately hit our senses when we stepped out of our bus, following the sights we had seen driving into the dumpsite-- the smoldering fires, the heaps of sorted and unsorted trash, people walking around with pieces of curved rebar for picking through the garbage more easily. As we watched 2 more trucks of garbage drop off their contents, people swarmed through the haze to get first dibs on the new mounds left behind. When unemployment rates are high and money can be made by selling sorted garbage, the many who work there strongly oppose the closure of Mbeubeuss, dangerous as it may be to them and their country. People need to eat. They need jobs. And yet, there was something about watching a little girl with smudges all over herself and a dirt-crusted dress play with a headless doll as she sat on garbage, next to a woman sorting garbage, next to a woman selling coffee to those who were taking breaks from sorting garbage. We were not allowed to take pictures of the people there or I would have captured that moment in more than just my mind's eye. To grow up like that! For that to be your life. And how wasteful we truly are. How little we think about what we throw away. How different it felt to step on the air-con bus after that, pull out a sandwich made from uncontaminated (possibly, insh'alla) meat, and drive away from the reality that swallows thousands of people each day. To be able to shower when I got home and wash away the black dirt and grime that was coating my skin and clothing. Not everyone can escape like that. How blessed I truly am! To wake up each morning in a clean bed, with birds singing outside instead of dump trucks, with tap water to wash off with instead of dirty water retrieved from who knows where. With clean clothes, with a family that is not ashamed of what I do during the day, with the knowledge that I will not go through life with my face covered against the fumes and my hands wrapped to prevent injury from the garbage contents. How blessed we are.

Plastics: about 14 cents/ kilo