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!
