Last week of Tests and Exames

This week is our last week of the program, and for many of us our last week in Senegal. We are trying to balance out the days of classes and revisions preparing us for the exams at the end of the week and soaking up more of the culture that we have not gotten to experience yet.
I finally went to the artisan's market this week and was able to bargain a bit in wolof. I mostly speak in french because I am much more comfortable with the language and I can be understood more clearly. However, if a toubab tries to bargain in wolof, it shows that they have a better understanding of the culture, and often the price will be better.

In the market setting I am automatically labeled as wealthy because i have white skin and I am clearly not from the area. As soon as I enter the area there are people yelling "hey, madam Toubab, come see my pretty necklaces, come to my shop, buy my paintings, come see, come see" from all sides. At first, the market can be a little overwhelming because they sellers are desperate for buyers. They are also shrewd. Prices are not fixed int he market place, so sellers can charge whatever they want for their merchandise because they are the ones who are making it. When I approach a stall, i can look but I have to be careful at how interested I act in the merchandise. If I see a necklace that I like, the shop owner will ask me about it, take it off the rack, try it on me, compliment me, and then augment the price because I am obviously a rich toubab. The trick is to play their game of lowering and raising the price to a place that you both agree on.

So, when the lady says the necklace will be $40 (as an equivalent US standard) i say "no way, that's way too expensive", and offer $5 for it instead. I know that the shop owner will not sell her items for this cheap, but i do know that she will lower her price if she wants to convince me to buy it. Through this process we arrive at a price that we both agree on. Plus, the more things you buy from one shop owner, the better deal they will give you. It's definitely a game of drama, though, which is fun too. Acting uninterested really gets them going, especially if you shrug your shoulders and say "i want it, but you charge to much" and then start to walk away. They often say "no, no, wait! come back! I will make a better price for you, since you are interested." It's quite fun, and tiring at the same time.

I also finally got to visit an art museum, something that I have been waiting this whole trip to do. I visited the IFAN musueum (Institute Fundamental d'Afrique Noire) which houses traditional sculptures, masks, and small thrones from all over west Africa. It was really neat to see the displays that put the objects in settings where they would have actually been used to show their purpose. For example, to show the purpose of a ceremonial mask used by the Serer tribe, the museum constructed a still life setting on a small stage with a hut and several life size mannequins dressed in traditional ceremonial clothing. It was an interesting approach which allowed for the context to be viewed in a way that was accessible to everyone.

Our final exam in Wolof was today, and now I am done with that class. I was tested on my knowledge of basic grammar, vocabulary, and conversation tools that we should have been using during this trip. Tomorrow I will give my program presentation on "any aspect of Senegal that you found interesting", as the description says on the syllabus. I will be speaking (all in french, mind you) about the roles that gender play in traditional music and dance in Senegal. I am interested in the interaction between dancers and drummers that happen within the dance circle. Their is a kind of non-verbal conversation that is exchanged, and it is really interesting to watch at the performances that I have attended.

So, I had better get to bed so I can get some sleep before my presentation tomorrow. I am a little nervous because I will be speaking in french, but I will just have to remember to pause and take breathes and hope that everyone understands me. Glad to be hearing from all of you in the states and please don't hesitate to leave comments or email me about how you are doing or with any questions that you may have.

Gaya and St. Louis

Apologies for the delay in this next installment of my entries from Senegal. I have been having fun and recovering from a sickness that I will go into detail later in this peace. I hope that everyone is doing well at home and that you are all enjoying your summer.


So last week we took a big program excursion to the village of Gaya. It is further away than our last trip, so Tuesday morning we pile onto the white "UCAD Ecole Normale Superieur" bus and head off out of Dakar for a new setting. We have affectionately dubbed the "Toubab Bus" because it alerts everyone in the area of our arrival. I really feel like a tourist on the bus. When we stop on the road at rest stops or even in traffic, people selling things on the street will come up to our open windows and offer us anything from bagged peanuts to Senegal T-shirts to phone cards for our cell phones. It is rather exhusting at times being in the city because of all the activity that happens in the streets. Needless to say we were all quite excited to get out of Dakar for a few days an experience a new part of Senegal that we had not seen yet.

Upon arrival we went to a small village just outside Gaya to speak with the chief and his counsel to learn about how a village is run. He spoke Wolof and Serer, so our program guides did most of the cultural and linguistical translation for us. It was very interesting to hear about how each man has the opportunity to run for a counsel position, and then some are born into families that have permanent positions within the power structure. At one point, a girl in our program asked if women could participate in politics. They chief answered that women could come to meetings and express their opinions, but they could never hold an official position. She then asked if a woman could ever become chief. When the question was translated, the men actually started laughing at us because the idea was so foreign and hilarious to them. Imagine, a woman . . . in power! This demonstrates the deeply engrained aspects of gender seperation within Senegalese culture, specifically within village settings. Men have their roles and daily tasks, and women have theirs. This has been something that I have been dealing with during this trip because, as a young caucasion woman, I have several strikes against me already without even speaking a word. Of course, I am always respectful to those that I meet and share time with, but sometimes I have to ask myself where does one draw the line between something that is cultural and something that denies people certain basic rights?

Anyway, Gaya is a farming community that grows rice and tomatoes for all of Senegal. After hanging around the town for a day in the super hot sun, we all decided to go for a swim in the river. At this time of year, the river is high and the current is actually pretty strong. Yes, that water was very brown and very dirty, but we were so hot that we didnt care. Across the bank was Mauritania. If the current hadnt been so strong I probably would have swam to the other shore just to say that I had been to Mauritania. There were people bathing in the river and doing their laundry as well. It turns out that the river is the main water source for the whole town of Gaya (11,000 people on a very spread out area), so there are always people nearby benefiting from the resource.
Meals in Senegal are served at very different times than they are in the US. Breakfast is eaten whenever you get up, and is not a social activity. Lunch is eaten between 1:00 and 3:00, and is the largest meal of the day, usually eaten with family and friends. Dinner is somewhere around 9:00 or 10:00 at night. Im not relly sure what happens between lunch and dinner, but I know that I sure have to have a snack.

So, the dinner is Gaya was really late, around 10:30. We were all starving because we had come back from swimming in the river and were ready to eat at around 7:00. When the trays were brought out, we discovered that they had prepared a special type of dish for us consisting of goat meat with a rich onion sauce. Yep . . . a plate of goat. Now I can say that I eat meat and I like it, but I have never sat down to eat an entire meal consisting of just goat. It was tasty, but my stomach was very confused that night.

Afterwards there was supposed to be some kind of big party that we were invited to in the center of the village. It had finally cooled off around midnight, and we wandered over to a place where lots of people were gathering. It was a traditional Senegalese wrestling match!

Wrestling is the national sport of Senegal, and it is a really big deal. People get super into it, and it is such a cultural thing to do. I guess it's pretty comparable to football in America. Each wrestler has his own "team" that comes out into the wrestling ring before the match to sing his praises and dance to his special rhythm that is determined by the local griots, or traditional storytellers. Griots are part of the caste system (a lower form) that know all the family histories in an area. They can tell you about what your father was like and where your mother came from. They can also give you good luck and are mainly part of events like wrestling matches to sing praises and to be the "cheerleaders" of the wrestlers. It was all very fun to watch. We even saw wrestlers in training as young as 5 go against each other. They both looked like spiders as they waved their arms at each other trying to distract their opponent for the fraction of a second that it takes to disarm them and throw them to the ground. Unlike American wrestling, the match is over once a challenger is thrown off balance and he is on his back. There is no holding that is necessary or referees with whistles. The whole match could be over in seconds! If anyone is interested, check out this youtube link. The first two minutes are boring, but then the action happens and it is suddenly over and the crowd is going crazy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onxGGxVz5a0

After Gaya, we went to visit St.Louis, which was the original capitol of French West Africa during the colonial times before it was moved to Dakar. The architecture and the layout of the town very much reflect this, and it is interesting to see the traditional western buildings against a modern fishing society. Fishermn use long skinny boats called "pirogues" to go out fishing early in the morning. They bring back their catch at dawn and sell it at the fish markets that are all along the docks. We visited a school which had a strong marketing campaign towards children from rural areas encouraging them (both girls and boys) to stay in school instead of returning to their parents' farms. The mural reads "There are no lesser jobs", and then proceeds to list occupations such as teaching, fishing, nursing, secretary, taxi driver, gardner, etc. The mural reinforces the idea that in order for a society to function, all the jobs must be done by someone, and that you are not a lesser person if you do them.


Unfortunately, I got a massive food poisoning bug on the first evening in St.Louis and was not able to even leave my room for the remainder of my stay in the city. There were many people who at this point of the trip became sick with similar symptoms, so we think it was some kind of virus. Lets just say that I saved a lot of money in St.Louis because I didnt go out and I didnt eat (at all) during my stay. I finally started taking anti-biotics once i could keep food down, and my body got back to normal a few days later. I guess the best place to get sick is really in a hotel though, so i guess it wasnt so bad. Out of the thirteen Americans on the trip, ten of us were sick during some point of the five day excursion. Here is a nice photo that a friend took of the sunset looking out over the water from our hotel.






To give a great ending to this story, we all boarded the bus saturday morning to drive the (what we thought) four hours back to Dakar to the comfort of our own beds. Little did we know that our van would receive a flat on the way home and that the group would be waiting on the side of the road in the heat with more than half of it's members ready to drop dead from dehydration. Looking back, it is quite comical . . . only something that would happen in the movies! But, oh, at the time I really wanted to dig a hole and crawl into it. Ugh, we were so sick on the way back home!
Overall, the trip was a great experience and we got to meet a lot of new people, practice our Wolof, and see new aspects of Senegal that will stay with us forever.

More Pics from Toukar

Here are some more photos from Toukar for everyone to enjoy. This is a picture outside one of the village compounds. Although it is a funny word, compound really describes well the structure of the home. I love all the baobabs that have oftentimes been there for generations!













Yep, you have seen it. For the first time on film, Adriane is seen carrying a human child our of free will, not because it was simply handed to her. I actually wanted to carrya baby on my back to see what it was like. It's actually pretty comfortable. However, I only carried the little guy for about fifteen minutes, so that's a short time to judge it on. All the moms around me thought it was hilarious to see a Toubab carrying a little African baby.













One of the neighbor ladies started a dancing circle, and each of the Toubabs were invited to dance and sing a little bit. I think that this was a sort of "introduction" into the circle, and I had a great time with it. I asked if I could sit and play drums with the main singer, and she was delighted to have a partner. Everyone was laughing and clapping and having a good time.










In preparation for the party that night, everyone was braiding each other's hair in intricate designs. To have so many visitors at one time is a big deal, and definitely calls for a celebration. Grace and Jessie both look kind of nervous for their final appearance in this photo. The daughter of the household was doing most of the braiding. She had very thin quick fingers that were able to do the Toubab's hair very fast.






Here is the final result! We were given traditional Senegalese dresses to wear to the party and valuable family jewels as well. I think that they were some kind of Serer pearl that are saved for special occasions. I felt very honored to be allowed to wear them.

Village of Toukar

On Saturday we went out to the village of Toukar where Professor Dennis Galvan has been conducting his research for over thirteen years. He focuses on the socio-cultural and political aspects of the rural life, specifically a farming community's struggle to "keep up" in the ever modernizing world. It is very interesting, and it's great to see someone working with such passion and fire that has held his intense interest for so long. I had the opportunity to go a day early because of an outing with my internship position, and arrived at my host family's house late Friday night. This allowed me to spend two days and two nights in the village, soaking up all the different experiences around me.
Since I am comfortable with French and I have taken a few months of Wolof, the village stay went pretty well. I stayed in the house of the family that Prof. Galvan stayed with when he lived in the village, and the neighborhood was the oldest in the village, founded 800 years ago. It was great!



When you enter the "compound" of the family, there is a fence made from sticks and millet stalks around their home and yard. There is a main building made from bricks with four rooms, while the huts outside are individual sleeping rooms. The family that lived there had a mom, a dad, and four kids. Yet during the day everyone stopped by to say hello and hang out for a while, including aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors, so it was a little difficult to tell who actually lived there and who were simply friends. The food was awesome, the company was great, and I even got to try some new things. I helped a little with the cooking, meaning I helped stir the rice and clean a little of the chicken. Mostly the family wanted me to just hang out and talk to people because I was a guest. There were a few women who spoke French, but most of them spoke Serer, which is another large ethnic group in Senegal. It is a pretty language, but I had no background in it, so we found ways to communicate.


The kids were great fun, and I even got to carry a baby on my back with a cloth the way the Senegalese women do! The baby was fine while it was asleep, but as soon as it woke up about 10 minutes later and realized that I was not his mother, he started to cry. Yep, and we all know what Adriane does when babies start to cry. Yeah, I get all awkward and anxiously give the kid back before I cause any more harm to it. ;-)
His name was Abdoulai, and he had very pretty eyes . . . when he wasn't crying.



These pictures were mainly taken around the village. The trees in the first few photos are Baobabs, just like in the movie The Lion King. I never realized how big they were in real life. It's truly amazing to stand next to something that is so much bigger (literally) and older than I am. Many of the baobabs out there were more than a hundred years old. Our guide told us that the inside of the trees are hollow, and people used to bury dead bodies inside. We didn't believe him, so my friend walked up to the tree and stick her camera into one of the holes and took a picture with the flash. Sure enough, we could see a few bones at the center of the tree. Creepy.

As part of our weekend events, the village threw a little party for us and Prof. Galvan, welcoming him back into their hearts along with his family. We got all dressed up and were given special traditional scarves and necklaces to wear to the event. I felt a little strange, because I am a total Toubab wearing African clothes, but everyone kept telling me that I looked great. We sat at the front of the "stage", which was normally the town square, while the whole village circled around us.
We even got to sit under the tent. Special us.



Six Serer griots entered the circle and began singing traditional songs about the legacies of the families that were in the village. Griots are the keepers of the oral traditions, and use song and dance to tell the history of their people. It was very cool to see them performing, and my heart started racing when the drummers came out and started pounding out amazing layered rhythms. The way the circle works is anyone can jump in and dance to show off for however long they want, and then they exit and pass off the stage to someone else.


After a few village women strutted out and shook all they had, I decided to jump in and show them that a Toubab girl can dance too! I took two African dance courses this past year, so I just did a few moves with the music, and the circle went crazy! They were whistling, hollering, and laughing so hard all at the same time. My professor explained to me later that they love seeing toubabs learning their culture, whether it be through learning the language, playing an instrument, or through dance. Every time one of my friends got up to dance, the crowd would do the same thing. It was so funny. I was even asked to dance by a man who was one of the performers, which I had a great time attempting to follow him. So far, this has been my favorite event of the whole trip. Soon I will try to post videos of the event as well, so be looking forward to those!

The Mosque at Touba

On Monday we went to the holy city of Touba to visit the Mosque and see a bit of the city. It was refreshing to get out of Senegal and experience another cultural aspect of the country. The bus ride was about 2 1/2 hours to Touba, and about 4 hours back, but it was worth it.


Touba is the holy city for Mourides, a large Islamic Sufi order that is very large here in West Africa. Today they are known as a brotherhood, and their leader was named Sheikh Amadou Bamba. (I included a picture of him on the right). There are pictures of him all throughout Senegal. He was famous for opposing the French conquest of West Africa by protesting peacefully, working hard for the Mouriddes, and studying the Qur'an instead of submitting to the colonial systems. His tomb is near the mosque, and his descendents and close disciples are buried on the grounds as well.





I really enjoyed visiting the mosque because of the beautiful architecture and details of the buildings. The main buildings were completed in 1963, and have since been added to about every ten years.

As we drove into the city on our white school bus (which we have now named the "Toubab Bus"), the road leads us straight through the town to the mosque.




In fact, the entire layout of the city is based on a sun, with the mosque and the center and all the streets "radiating" out from the center. I thought it was pretty cool. The population is almost entirely muslim, and when we exited the bus, we were told that we had to remain covered up when entering the grounds in respect to the locals.


When you enter the grounds, you are supposed remove your shoes in respect to the holy people that are burried there and to the holy ground which the mosque was built upon. It was very hot the day we visited Touba, around 95°. The stone (or marble) that was used was something imported from Italy that is resistant to heat, so it wasn't unbearable walking around on the stone. Although the mosque does not have air conditioning, it was surprisingly cool inside.
The buildings include a main square one in the middle where worshippers are called to pray five different times a day. People come and wash their hands, faces, and feet with sacred water that arrives from a spring near the town. On Fridays, everyone comes to pray at the mosque during the afternoon around 2:00, and the guide told us that they open the doors at 10:00 and the whole place is full by noon.


Here is a picture of our group in front of the mosque. All the women had to wear long skirts that covered their ankles (no pants, because that is too masculine) and shawls to cover their head and shoulders. I borrowed a shawl from one, of my roommates, but for those who did not bring something to cover up with, the mosque provided wraps that looked pretty heavy.





Our tour guide took us inside the temple to show us the various rooms for praying and meditating. In most of the areas, there is a seperate place for men and women to pray. When all the worshippers gather on Friday, then men are placed at the front of the room and the women at the back. At first I thought that this was totally unfair, but the guide explained that it was for modesty.
During prayer, everyone bends over at the waist and lowers their head in prayer, then kneels on the ground and touches their forehead to the ground in front of them. This makes a little more sense, and I was glad to have someone who was culturally sensitive and knowledgable to provide answers to our questions.








In Islamis teachings, the depiction of animals and people are commonly avoided because these beings are seen as sacred. Therefore, the designs consist mainly of plants and organic designs. Symmetry is a common theme as well, both in the art and in the architecture. In this detail you can seen flowers and vines on the celing. The whole process happened in four parts:


1. Masons came and layered cement/plaster on the surface where the design was to be made
2. Artists drew out designs on surface
3. Artists carved out designs from surface
4. Artists painted designs using paint made from a mixture of plants, roots, water, and local resources





Many of the artists were from Italy and Moracco, which I found very interesting as well.
So, our first program excursion went very well and Im excited for the next one this weekend. Hope you all are doing well and I really appreciate the emails and messages! Wish you all were here!

Our Apartment

Here are some pics of my apartment for the enjoyment of you all.

More Birthday Pics

My Internship Experience

Today I started my new internship placement. My prior placement fell through, so I started today at SWAA (Society for Women against AIDS in Africa). They are an organization that does educational activities for people in the West Senegal area, including presentations on sanitation, HIV/AIDS testing, and Sexual Violence prevention. Im helping translate materials including websites and brochures from French to English.

To get to the internship I take a car rapide over the bridge and then walk through a smaller pretty neighborhood of Dakar. The people at the site are really nice and helpful. I spent about half an hour in one of my manager's office learning about the projects that the organization is involved in. Im helping set up data into graphs for one of their recent reports on the gender population breakdown of people living with HIV/AIDS. Its pretty cool for now, and im hoping to try designing or creating posters for future campains that SWAA supports. Although I do not have a deep interest in public health and HIV/AIDS research, I am able to find something about the organization that I can get excited about. Plus, there is always tons of things to learn from every experience that might not be obvious from the beginning of the experience. The workspace has a large table with laptops and a balcony/porch area. The supervisor's offices are upstairs, all equiped with fans as the building has no air-conditioning. Sometimes we lose power at the site, so there are a ton of batteries that the computers run off of.

Today was full of funny situations that made me laugh and everyone else laugh too. I was up in my supervisor's office, and he wanted me to take a look at a document that I was supposed to translate. He told me in French to go downstairs and look in the yellow folder for the document. So I went down to the lab and started hunting around for the yellow folder. I couldn't seem to find it even though I was looking in desk drawers and file cabinets. No yellow folders. So I trudged upstairs to tell my supervisor guy that I couldn't find the folder. He smiled and sent one of his helper people to assist in my search for the missing folder. The guy walked into the room, flipped open the laptop that was sitting on the table, and pointed to the yellow folder that had the same title as the one that the supervisor had specified. At that moment all I could was laugh, at myself and at the situation. Its just like in Zoolander when Hansel gets confused and says to himself, "Oh, the files . . . They're IN the computer". Yep, go me.

Sunday Lunch

As you can see from the photos, a group of us went to our Program Conversation Partner's house on Sunday for a lunch with her family. She wants to be a teacher when she finishes school, so she practices on us a lot. :-) She had us write down a list of items that we would need to make the meal, the amount that we would need, and how much it would cost. Then we went into the market to buy all the items for the meal that would feed 15 people. We bought vegetables, rice, onions, garlic, spices, and oil, as well as chicken. These chickens were not like the kind that you buy in the store at home though. Nope, at the market you buy the chickens when they are still running around in the pen. When you pick out the one that you like, you pay for it and come back about 20 minutes later to find a bag waiting for you to take home and prepare. We did not want to stay and watch the chicken get killed, although I know that these things must happen.

When we got back to the house, we began to prepare the meal. Everything is done in dishes or large pans on the floor. I was in charge of cleaning the meat because we had some vegetarians in my group who did not want to even touch the meat. I was fine with that. I helped the lady break open the ribs and pull out the organs and pieces that would not be eaten. I then helped clean the skin and stuff the meat with more wonderful spices for cooking. Everyone was helping except for the kids, who played near us and were so adorable.

The meal was wonderful, probably one of the best that I have ever eaten in my whole life. We scooped the rice into four large plates, then placed the grilled chicken in the middle. The Yassa sauce, made from onions, garlic, vinegar, and spices is spread around the meat. We added stewed tomatoes and a few hard boiled eggs to the presentation as well, which made for an excellent meal. I love eating with me hands, and Im getting pretty good at it too. For dessert we ate fresh sliced mangoes and drank Ataya, a sweet minty dessert tea.

After we helped clean up from the meal, we went into the market to buy fabric, which is something that I have been wanting to do now for a few days. I found two wonderful prints that i liked in a shop that had racks of fabric from the floor all the way to the ceiling. It was one of those moments where I walked into the shop and spotted th patterns right away because they caught my eye. Adema's friend is a tailor, so we went to visit him too. He took my measurements and helped me design a dress from each of the fabrics, which will be ready to wear next weekend. We are all invited to his house to have lunch and hang out. I absolutely love it here!

Sunday Lunch at Adema's House

Ok, so I will just label these photos from here. These were taken Sunday when we went to visit our friend Adema's house. She is the one in the picture above with the beige colored dress. She lives in Dakar with her family, and we made Yassa Poulet (chicken and onion sauce served over rice) for fifteen people. The photos show the courtyard where we made the meal, and pictures of Adema's family as well. It was seriously one of the best meals that I have had in my entire life!