Week 5 and pensive of some sorts

Salaam aleekum from Dakar, Senegal! It's about 9pm and I'm in my favourite quiet corner of the house, a beautifully arranged living area with soft carpets beneath my feet. There are about 9 people in the next room - kids parked in front of the television watching Disney Channel in French, and extended family catching up on their week with a cocktail of perfume in the air. My host-brother who is visiting from the US just joined us (me + my other host-brother who lives with his family of 4 in Dakar), turning on the lights and breaking the quiet whirring of the electrical fan. Somehow, their quiet chatter of commercial kitchens in Wolof is comforting, because I have grown to appreciate unfamiliar things, and the strange (relative) concept of feeling at home. 

It's the 24th of September, officially marking the end of my fifth week here in Senegal. Somehow, my feelings have shifted from oh-my-goodness-there-are-4-months-left to oh-wow-this-threefold-is-not-long. There has been a lot of going-ons in the previous month, and the coming weeks are going to be mundane in the sense of routine class-internship-homework schedule. Of course, I will be learning new things. But, I have gotten used to going out and seeing things that this seems like an abnormal turn in the past few months of venturing. 

I just came back from a week-long rural visit, arranged by the program of course. There will be a separate post with pictures in it, but I feel like doing a detox/reflection post while the experience is fresh in the grey folds of my brain.

*flow of writing paused here due to rapid callings of May, kai reer (May, come eat dinner) where I had wonderful lamb curry couscous and carrot-cucumber salad* 

The purpose of the visit was part of culture immersion, and to get to know more interior/authentic (not that Dakar is inauthentic in anyway) parts of Senegal. I was paired up with another girl from my program to a peace corps volunteer (PCV) site about 30km away from a town called Ndioum, which is about a 6-7 hour drive away from Saint Louis. We were placed in Mbantou, with a small population of around 500. Our PCV’s host family did not have running water nor electricity, but that did not bother us as much as we thought it would.

The largest shock was definitely way of life and culture. The use of “shock” here does not harbor any underlying negative feelings towards the overall experience, but rather the active realization of differences between experiences, expectations and reality of elements we were exposed to. The community mainly speaks Pulaar, which is a dialect of a long-standing ethnic group that migrated from East Africa and has settled in many countries across the continent due to their farming/herding history. Futa (?), which is what the Northern region of Senegal is known as, is home to mostly conservative Muslim communities. From the short 6 days spent in the region, I’ve come to realize how customs and traditions shape a culture and lifestyle. It's not like I've never been exposed to this idea before, but juxtaposing my norms with the very different norms of others put the context in my reality. We don't really control our identity, really.

Reading about feminism and patriarchal societies, classicism, and development is nothing new. To have observed and linked these theory/writings to reality was an awakening. Not speaking for the whole Senegalese society, or even the Futa region, but women are definitely central characters in families, but occupy an inferior position than men. I don't want to go into the whole essay-rant about ménage vs work vs importance vs power, but it seemed clear that in general, women are seen in a different light than men. One of the incidents that has etched itself in my mind was this wedding ceremony I attended in another PCV's village. She's a 16 year old girl who was in her second-to-last year of her baccalaureate studies, and he's a 24/25 year old removed cousin who is a student in Saint Louis. Theirs is an arranged marriage. The second day of their marriage, she moved to his village which is about a 13 hour drive East. She will not be coming back to her home in the near future, nor complete her studies, because her husband has refused to. I don't know her personally, or what autonomy she has in her life, but 16 year old me would never have to do that. It's this stark contrast between her life and mine that struck me. It's this absence of empowerment that upsets me. The conversation is more than this, and beyond me. Perhaps I will continue on this train of thought in a future post, because my mental and physical condition after my 12 hour travel today has left me pretty drained.

On another note, I am very thankful for calling Dakar home, and having Mam Fat Sow and her family who has accepted me with warmth and good food. The visitation has definitely put reality into perspectives, and I feel more grounded as a being. Being immersed in a Pulaar-speaking community with only Greg (our PCV) as our translator has been confusing. It has certainly given me a push in the "if only I could communicate in Wolof or French, however little knowledge I have of the two" direction. I now have a newfound appreciation for being able to learn them both. 

So before I crash, I do not want to apologize for my rant, because these opinions are my own and I just want to put them somewhere. I also thank you for reading so far down in this post and sitting through my awkward syntax and proses. I will now proceed to take a refreshing shower (running water and a shower head!) and love my hair with some much-needed conditioning. Bed will definitely follow in suite. The next post will be short write up on a football match I attended in my first week. Toodles and much love!

Île de Gorée

I apologize for my absence. The weekend leading up to Tabaski (Eid al-Adha) was spent in a little touristy artsy community tucked away in Toubab-Dialow, and post-Tabaski, I was taken ill. There was no appropriate time window to pop in with a post and pictues. So hello, this is me writing to you at the end of week 3 here in Dakar, Senegal. In all honesty, time has been passing by so quickly I get freaked out thinking about it. Once our schedules were set in place, things just proceeded in their own momentum. These first couple of weeks at school have been great. I feel more connected to my classes through living in the "reality" of our discussions on development and progress in economic, social, and environmental matter. Field trips and classes seem to go hand in hand when it comes to learning, as opposed to the system of theory before application. You're pretty much thrown into the midst of it all here and then gradually working on organizing the pieces you pick up. (And they are too many!)

On with the post. CIEE took us to visit Gorée Island on our first weekend here. We took the morning ferry from the port downtown at 10am. We stood outside the gate for 15 minutes, our passports in hand, before being let in. The ride was about 30 minutes, and we got to be on the top deck because the lower deck was full and so we could grab nice pictures of the whole island.

When we got to the island, we dropped by the House of Slaves (Maison des esclaves) and took a short tour of the place. It was really helpful that they have a standing exhibition of the place's history and significance, as well as a researcher/guide on site who gave a short background lecture. The island was one of the first places in Africa that the European colonizers settled in, having Portugese, Dutch, English and French ownership before Senegal's independence. Although it is difficult to trace the history of Gorée Island as the slave port of Western Africa, the place still stands in remembrance of the colonial and slave trade history.

There were two other museums on the island - Historical Museum of Senegal and . Albeit sightly run down, they both housed interesting information about archaeological research in Senegal, religious history, and important Senegalese figures pre and post independence.

After the tour, we had lunch and then hit the beach. There were also small market stalls tucked behind the receiving area of Gorée Island, where determined vendors invited us to look at their products. The architecture of the buildings on the island were reminiscent of the vibrant Carribean scene, but without the lively community that comes with it. At noon, the island was teeming with life. Tourists and locals alike flocked over to enjoy one of the more well-managed beaches here in Dakar, and to take in Gorée Island as it is.

Till the next one!

Downtown Dakar

As part of our orientation week, we had a downtown Dakar sortie (fieldtrip) with our cultural pals (local students working with the CIEE center). We gathered as a group and took the TATA buses from Mermoz into downtown, which was a 15 minute ride away. As any tourist visit would, we stopped at some of the city's most important locations.

The neighbourhoods that we, students, live in are vastly different from downtown in terms of the magnitude of cars, people, and things to see/do. We were dropped off by a large conglomeration of market stalls selling everything from cuts of leather to fake Nike shoes, bags of fresh fish to syrup-ed Madd fruit in disposable cups, engine parts to wax clothing. Beyond the cluster stalls of waterproof tarp lie the dynamic informal economy that many Dakar locals and people who have migrated from rural areas and other West African nations depend on.

It was 10 am in the morning but our stray hair strands were already plastered to the sides of our faces, at the napes of our necks. There is no such thing as not sweating in your first-week transition period, and cold showers are your best friend. Being new to Dakar, I had no sense of place nor direction. To be frank, I did not know what we were going to be doing. But all in good exploration fun, no?

We split up into groups of 3 and walked around for a bit, stopping by at notable location and taking in the sights and sounds. One thing that was notable was that there was more green cover downtown than anywhere else. The shadow of foliage and concrete buildings covered our sweaty backs as we passed through bustling traffic, displayed merchandise, and people. We were also surprised to learn that there were two major hospitals in the city, one geared towards expats and civil servants and the other more cost-friendly for other people. We did not do much that day, as lunch took up most of our time. Serving lunch for 40 is not an easy task.

Here are some photos I took that day. Next post on our visit to Île de Gorée coming soon!

 African Arts Museum

Parliament 

Place de l'indépendance

Senegal Teranga

Greetings from dusty, vibrant, ever-lively Dakar, Senegal. I am here on a 4-month semester abroad as a third year student from Soka University of America, under the Development Studies program offered by CIEE. Currently, I am sitting with DEET on my ankles and my 5 year old host sister leaning on my left arm. The dining room space is occupied by my host father and two other siblings, and the never-absent background noise of the television set. My sweat trickles down my temples and evaporates at the slope of my newly-tanned shoulders, beads pooling at the little crevices of my joints. As I type silently on my laptop under the harsh glare of the fluorescent ceiling light, I am reminded of any other day of the week I have experienced so far.

Before I jumped right into this turn-table journey, I made a few promises and objectives to myself. Of course I see this experience to be more than a timeline of achievements and "realizations" set in stone, but to deny that I chose this path without a sense of eventual "achievements" would be a denial of the self. With that said, I wish to document my stay here in Senegal at least once per week. Plainly aesthetically speaking, it would be a personal (and if you my readers find it somewhat useful, then otherwise) photo journal of the places I visited, the people I came to know, memories I've made, and the things I've come to love. I acknowledge that I speak from a fresh slate, not knowing the place and time and changes and wide history of the African continent, not more than that diaspora literature piece I read in class. Hence, I would like to express any apologies for any ignorance my posts may display, as far as interpretation goes. Please bring to light any insinuating instances, and I will do my best to achieve the woke-ness I should possess, the humility I should come to learn. As a work in progress, walking into a brick wall head on is only a natural phenomenon.

Until then, toodles as I continue to shift through my photos!