Kayar x Mbeubeuss x Lake Retba

Dear all,

Greetings from gloomy Southern California! I am finally back on campus, my second home since 2014. Never have I experienced such a contrasting shift of feeling at ease and comfort, being reunited with my materialistic hoard and yes, of course my friends and my brother. On the other hand, I am missing Senegal. I don't think it has entirely to do with the glow of pride and liberal snobbish-ness when I casually drop "Yea, I actually JUST got back from Senegal. It was a GREAT experience." to people who wear astonishment on their faces. I mean yes, I get do get off on the fact that it has up-ed my social points (don't you lie), but I do miss it sincerely because it was a point in my life where I actually felt that I grew as a human being. 

As 2016 comes to a close, I am extremely grateful for how the year has been and the opportunities I had. I learned immensely. I did what I wanted to do and more. But, I'll save the reminiscence for another day or never, depending on what tea I drink in the morning. I kid. As I fight an annoying cold and jetlag, I present to you a mélange of photos and information on field trips I took for a couple of classes!

First one on the list: Kayar. A small fishing community on the grand côte an hour's drive north of Dakar, it is an important location for fishermen who travel up and down the coast annually. There have been many instances of illegal fishing in this area, committed by vessels from Mauritania, China, Japan, and even Russia. We spoke to individuals working in the local maritime surveillance and regulations center, and then visited a dried fish processing plant. 

The plant was the highlight of our trip, as it was commissioned by the EU to support the fish processing economy, which is dominated by women. In addition to being a center for empowering women financially, it is also a center of education and information, as the women employees help raise awareness of climate change in their communities. Over the years, they have seen a decrease of fishing yields. Its cause can be attributed to overfishing and climate change; its significance is the immense loss of livelihood in the Kayar region.

On a separate occasion, our environmental professor organized a trip to Senegal's largest waste dump and Lake Retba. Obviously, the waste site was the focal point of our trip, whereas Lake Retba was just a touristic detour. Mbeubeuss, which is the name of the landfill we visited, receives about 500 000 tons of waste annually. It employs about 3500 personnel daily, including many material recuperators who live on-site. Mbeubeuss, as our professor puts it, is a ticking time bomb. Sitting on top of a dried-up lake, it has contaminated the underground water reserve in a 50 m radius, which includes the ocean. As the dry period goes away, water is feeding back into the once dusty lake bowl and expanding the area of contamination. Effects of the contamination has caused life expectancy to decrease in the area, as the local community has limited access to tap water due to development and finance challenges. A study identified the average age of the recuperators living in the landfill to be 45 years old.

Another issue about Mbeubeuss is its mismanagement. Authorities have failed to come up with a more efficient way of separating and dealing with waste, thus having to pump in millions of dollars annually. They are currently working plans of relocation, but the plan is met with much protest from environmental professionals (criticizing its location being too close to the city and not having proper management systems to handle the waste volume) and the people involved in the informal economy of recovering and reselling materials. I'll let the picture do the talking.

See you next in 2017!

Intérieur du Sénégal - Mbantou

Another week has passed by and now I'm only looking at six more weeks in Senegal. To say that this program is long is both an under and overstatement, depending on how you feel. I choose not to look at my experience in Senegal as relative, but it's hard to put aside what my version of comfort is. At days I reflect and cringe at the fact that Senegal can be neex na (great) when I have a wonderful interaction with vendors at a marchés, or that Senegal is nii rekk because my internship was not particularly enjoyable. The volatility of switching from both sides of the coin only goes to show how I am still not embracing Senegal the way I expected it to be - another home. However, the reality is that it really is another home, but one for four months. School work is picking up now that we are deep into the semester. Still, it does not compare to the vigor of SUA. I still can go days without finishing or even starting any homework. Life is blissful, especially if you have wifi at home.

Onto the body of this post: In the first month (I know I'm still writing about the first month. Really trying to play catch up here), we spent a week doing a "Rural Visits", which is a week of experiencing rural life in the interior of Senegal. Granted that some people spent their week either with internships or in semi-rural areas, most of us were assigned to outskirts of cities, in pairs or on our own.

I was assigned to a small village called Mbantou in the Fouta region, located is in the Saint Louis province, north of Senegal. Juliette and I were attached to a Peace Crops volunteer and his host family, and we spent six days there. The village only had about 300 inhabitants and it is about a 45 minute walk from the main road. The village does not have any running water, so we had to pull water from the well every day and we basically lived off bottled mineral water. There are currently only ten households with running electricity, and our host family is on the waitlist for the next round of installations.  Greg (our PCV) was extremely nice and showed us around the area. We ended up visiting Podor, Ndioum, and another Peace Corp volunteer's house. Our daily routine at the village was breakfast and a bit of household visitations after. Then it would be too hot to do anything (temperatures rose above 100°F/40°C) until 4pm, so we will only be relaxing under neem trees drinking attaya. It would be cooler in the evenings but we slept outside as the concrete walls radiated heat throughout the night.

It was interesting talking to the families. We learned a lot about the geography of the area and how life here revolves heavily around the climate and seasons. It was smack-dab in the middle of hot season when we were there. There were people working in rice fields, but most people chose to wait the heat out. The Fouta region is considered arid, as it is close enough to the Sahara region to have a significant climate difference with the rest of Senegal. Mbantou, however, is in a micro-climate region as it is located next to one of the tributaries of Fleuve du Sénégal. Thus, during certain seasons, the water level drops and reveals fertile banks to carry out small-scaled farming.

The tempo of life is slower than Dakar, with fewer distractions and more activities carried out on moment-per-moment basis. Men are never involved with household affairs and mainly sat around. The patriarchal social structure is more pronounced in the village than what I am used to interacting in Dakar (be it that it is only with my host family and other direct relations) and gender roles are stricter and more distinct as well. The Fouta region is much more conservative, and it most likely has to do with the fact that almost everyone is Muslim and that religious and traditional practices are strictly upheld. I can get away with showing my calves and shoulders in Dakar without being too exposed by respectful standards, but being there, I stuck to covering up until my ankles. At the marriage ceremony I attended, I had to wear tights underneath my ankle length skirt because I had a slit running in the back. 

There were many different cultural differences with way of living and exposure between interior Senegal and Dakar. We could never get from one place to another without being called out as Toubabs (foreigners), granted that we (in most CIEE students' perspective) get called out in Dakar in many subtler ways such as taxis stopping for us or stares and unwanted interactions on a daily basis.

The day we arrived in Mbantou, we were lucky enough to witness part of a marriage ceremony happening within our host family. One of the sons or cousins was getting married, and thus, we got to have mutton (sheep) and pasta, which is considered a special dish in this region. The next day, we headed to Podor, which was/is a historic town as the French established a military post there as it is the border town between Senegal and Mauritania. We treated ourselves to a good meal and had a good time being out and about, navigating the informal public transportation (which is very different than informal public transportation in Dakar) systems to get there and back to Mbantou.

The next few days were a blur of heat, sand and constantly being dehydrated. We got to cross a river to visit a farmer, who was the same person who initiated the rice field plantations. I probably had the best attaya over at his house. We had a good conversation with him about the preservation of land and the Pulaar language. We then made our way back across the fast-flowing river on a wobbly plastic container boat, which I did not a lot of trust in but was sturdier than it looked.

The next evening, we traveled to another Peace Corps volunteer’s house in another small town where we attended another wedding. This time, we were with the bride’s family, but things were not very different. In both weddings, the brides were never seen outside, as was the same case before. They were escorted to a room upon arrival and were not to be seen until they left the house. I was uncomfortable at this particular wedding because we came to learn that she was 16 going on 17, and only had a couple of years left to complete her Bac (high school diploma). Her husband is in his early 20s and is a student in Saint Louis, but he hails from a village about 14 hour drive East from there. According to traditions and their plans, she is to stay with his family and start being a part of that community. However, she wouldn’t be able to continue her education as her husband did not agree to it. It was implied that they will soon start a family, and she would not visit her family for another few years to come, as she is now married out of the family.

It is one thing to read about things and another thing to experience these situations firsthand. At one hand, I understand that traditions and customs should be respected. However, it should not be the case if it outright deprives one of their basic human rights, especially if it a gendered situation. I am not particularly eloquent when it comes to talking about issues such as these, because there are so many others who put things in better perspectives and have stronger arguments for the right to education and empowerment of women, and how to navigate through gray areas. But, I am pretty clear on where I stand.

We travelled back to Dakar the day after, having spent the day in Ndioum. It was a 9 hour drive over dusty roads, under sweltering heat and warm wind in our faces. Getting off at the gas station at the end of our stop, I relieved at the fact that we were back in Dakar. Forget the uninhibited sweating, forget the constant dust in your bedroom, forget the flies on my food, forget having frequent whiffs of manure, forget the slow wifi, forget the frustrations of unstructured everythings. Perceptions of experiences are ultimately relative. In retrospect I am just humbled by my week in Mbantou, as I realized that I have settled at a certain level of comfort and privilege. It was good to be reminded of where I am. 

Mauritania right across the river

Toubab Dialaw

In the first month of the program, CIEE arranged for us to take a traditional trip to Toubab Dialaw. Situated along the coast line (petite cote), about 70 km outside of Dakar, Toubab Dialaw is home to a fishing village and an artists’ colony. Toubab, which is the noun for “white person” in Wolof, became part of the location’s name handle as it was rumored to have attracted many, well, toubabs to drop in for a visit. We stayed in a guesthouse called Sobo Bade, which clearly stood-out in the landscape with its red brick exterior and inconspicuous second-floor room options. The hotel was propped on top of a small cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, a sight to behold during sunset.

We got there before noon and went through a brief room assignment process. I ended up sharing a room with three other people, and was lucky to have an en suite bathroom. We had a buffet styled lunch, which included three types of salad, so of course all the greens were gone within the first 15 minutes. After that, we went to the beach and walked around within the vicinity of the hotel area to explore the artisanal shops and the town.

There is definitely a tourist presence throughout the area, and I figured so by the amount of shops selling art pieces and by the constant wave of peddlers walking about. I am constantly attracted to tourists’ wares, and therefore I enjoyed browsing and haggling my way through people and things. I ended up with a pair of silver earrings from Mauritania (sold by a Mauritanian man), and struck up conversation with him about how he came about this trade in this specific location. I lingered around the open beach with some of my friends for the rest of the afternoon. There were dead fish lining the wave front, so I decided to stay put and sunbathe on the beach while others went into the ocean.

In the afternoon, we each selected a complimentary activity offered by the hotel, and I stuck with batik painting. The workshop organizers prepared cutouts of shapes and patterns so that we could trace the outlines onto our white canvases. Then, we went over our designs with wax (using a brush) and picked a base colour. We got to pick a second colour after our second do-over with wax, so we could achieve a dual-colour result. My base colour was a dark green, so it was fruitless to play around with dark purple.

Towards the afternoon, a brief spell of rain interrupted the dance class. They still resumed, dancing in the music area, as the rest of us watched. When sunset approached, the entire property was basked in a vibrant orange glow. It was a beautiful sight to behold, especially when the sun completely dipped beneath the ocean brim, and lit the sky in vivid reds while the landscape faded into mere outlines.

That night, we had another good meal. Nobody can really mess up grilled chicken and fries, and the kitchen certainly did not. We had a great selection of salads and some pizza slices, and brownies for dinner. Needless to say, it was probably one of the best meals we have had since getting into Senegal (then). I spent my night with a couple of musicians. It was an intimate session where they attempted to jam with us using djembes (drums). We ended up listening to a few original pieces and sat through a folklore recantation. It was a great experience, especially when one of the guys started playing the kora, which is a harp instrument that produces the most mellow, rich, and sonorous sounds.

We left Toubab Dialow around noon the next day. It was, overall, a timely getaway from the realities and shock of Dakar. I thought it really rejuvenated my spirits to start classes and my internship. The place we stayed at was well-organized but not extremely well-kept. Two of my friends had a really bad case of bedbugs, and so did this other person who stayed at Sobo Bade. However, we had a positive experience and that’s all that mattered to us. Until next time!