Picture update!

The harbor of l'Île de Gorée

One of the most famous singers in Senegal...and I forgot his name. My friend told me, but I forgot. Shameful, I know.

Crazy lady who shook all kinds of ass during an act. I honestly think she could dislocate her hips. It was ridiculous.

Women's rap group at a concert we went to Monday night. The concert was themed around women's rights and domestic violence.

All the concrete here has shells in it. Shells in general are used like landscaping. Some restaurants have a layer of shells on the ground, and the hospital has shells filling missing parts of pathways.

Rural radio station promoting community development.

Typical Senegalese farm

1st Mosque

These guys hang on the back of buses on the highway.. no.. thank you. They check fares and bang on the bus when someone wants off.

Tyler and I got a little enthusiastic with the whole eat-all-food-groups-with-your-hands-thing..

Park in front of the 1st mosque.

Village in rural northern Senegal.

Typical neighborhood street in Touba. Our bus was dodging horse-carts and pot-holes the size of ten people.

The girls in front of the mosque!

Tomb of one of the founders. People who follow this brotherhood dread-lock their hair and wear crazy multi-colored outfits.

Aloura dying of heat..

Neighborhood kids in Touba who got pretty attached to us. They hung on the back of our bus for about 5 minutes until they were literally bounced off. At which point, they would run home crying.

When they were happy, however, they taught us to dance the Youza. So we taught them the Macarena. Just thanks to our group.. it's going to become the new national dance.

The mosque is continuously under construction. The marble is imported from Spain and Italy. We had to go in with our hair covered and no shoes. White marble surrounds the entire mosque, and is a special kind that doesn't absorb the sun's heat. That way people can come here to pray without burning themselves or bringing prayer mats. 

Beautiful Moroccan artwork

The front of the mosque in Touba-the religious capital of Senegal (home of the Murid brotherhood)

Aloura's traditional outfit to go to Touba. Aka Harry Potter dress robes.. aka jedi master robes..

Kittens in the cafe!!!

Really beautiful sunset one night. 

Reverse glass art! You paint on one side, wait until it dries, and display it form the other side..

l'Île de Gorée pictures!

A small walkway down the island, so pretty!

The island!!!

Cannons at the top of the island.

Alter of a Catholic church on the island. It's a perfect example of cultural hybridity! The African drums for Mass, with the Catholic tradition, and modern speakers. 

 View of the Island from the top.

Sand representing different parts of West Africa. The artist paints glue on the woods and spreads the sand to create an image. it has to be made from the foreground back, because it is layers of sand.

Artwork created from the sand seen above.

Tiny window in the children's cell. My arm couldn't fit all the way out, it was so small. 

The cell where women (those who were believed to not be virgins) were kept. If they came with children, they were separated.

Statue on the Île de Gorée, pretty obvious what this stands for.. it's actually about 4 feet tall from the podium.

Oh wait, I actaully do serious things..

So, I suppose it’s time to update everyone on the true reason why I’m here. Discovering cultures is awesome, but I’m here to work and study. Don’t worry dad, your voice is still in my head.

I have an internship for the first 5 weeks or so with the Service Sociale dans l’Hôpital d’Enfants Albert Royer (HEAR). In case that wasn’t clear… Social Service. The basis of our office is to handle the patients who cannot pay for their treatment; or rather, the parents of patients who cannot pay. After the children have their consultations and receive whatever treatment they need, the question of finances is then brought up. If the parents have problems finding funds, they are sent to our office. There is a registration book the size of my torso in which we record the following:

Name of the patient; dates of entry and exit, age, total cost of visit, parent contribution, net total, and the CI (Carte d’Indigene) number. The CI is crucial because there are only a handful of first names used here, with lots of common last names. Thus, a verified CI is one of the essential components of identification. To obtain said CI, you have to present your ID card at a different office, then take a slip of paper with an official’s initials to a prefecteure who then stamps your CI. All this paperwork is brought to our office where you then fill out a yellow Fiche form. This states most identifying information as well as the description of the social and financial status of the family in question. If the story of the family seems unreliable, we conduct domestic visits to assess their living situation. However, visits are very rare because so many people pour in from outside greater Dakar, and even outside Senegal. HEAR has the kind of reputation where people do come seeking treatment for their children from across West Africa. The problems that stem from this are organizational, financial, lingual, and social. Usually these families don’t have a lot of money in the first place, and thus don’t have the resources for lodging in the city. And even if you are from outside greater Dakar, you cannot leave your child. As a result, hospital rooms are not only crowded with children but also families who don’t have the resources to go elsewhere. It can also be challenging if there is no common language between patient and doctor. Translators can usually be found, but a rural family from Mauritania might have difficulty.

What we (my partner Quincey and I) actually do is not definite. While we speak passable French, enough to get good grades in classes, the dynamics of a hospital and the language they use are beyond our capabilities. Direct contact is limited to playing with the kids on some mornings, or participating in weekend enrichment activities. Sometimes we help conduct the financial need interviews. Mostly, however, we have accompanied two other interns while they interview different department heads of the hospital. They are doing their own research project, so Quincey and I have begun to think of our time in the hospital as research as well. We’ve talked to everyone from the head radiologist to the Chef des Materials (aka the head of the storage room). Several things jump to mind:

First, we were interviewing the Chef des Materials on Monday, and I started to scan the pictures that were posted along his walls. One or two were of family; some were of the president shaking hands with some of the hospital administration (which is pretty common, as much as he’s unpopular), and one of the founder of one of the Muslim Sufi brotherhoods. Then my eyes hit the one right in the middle: Osama bin Laden. Now I’m not jumping to conclusions or anything, I’m just noting the presence of a picture. You know you’re not in the US anymore when someone casually hangs a picture of bin Laden in their office. That was interesting.

Second, was our two days in the pediatric surgery building. We were waiting to conduct an interview with the head nurse, but in the waiting process we learned an immense amount about the surgery. And just a side note, Quincey and I have decided that we are getting an accompanying Bachelors Degree in Patience because we do a lot of that: in this case: spending two mornings in a cramped reception room waiting…that’s two and a half hours on Monday, and two hours on Tuesday. Anyway. I digress. The time spent waiting was actually very informative. We learned that this building has their real surgery days twice a week- Monday and Wednesday. This is due to a shortage in funds, personnel, and materials. They do procedures in the meantime, but most of them are scheduled for those two days. We saw all the paperwork being stamped that would soon end up in our office. Watching the families come in and out was an experience. We asked Lamine (one of the Senegalese interns) why most of the little boys around four years old were wearing white outfits with gris-gris around their necks (charms of protection mostly seen in rural areas). “Ah yes, those boys are about to be circumcised,” he said, as one giggling, bouncy (and white-clad) mess was playing peek-a-boo with me around the door. Quincey and I got the chance to wave good-bye to him as we muttered, “good luck pal, see you on the other side.” 15 minutes later he emerged…crying his eyes out and holding his pants away from himself. We finally talked to the head nurse, and she told us the schedules of the doctors, and which surgeries were common, etc. Then we got a tour through the facilities. With the exception of the actual operating room hall, we saw the whole thing. It’s a two-story building with about 4 rooms which can fit 7 beds, and a handful of more private rooms. Those were quite expensive, so most people slept in the hallways. Keep in mind, this is the only children’s hospital in West Africa.

Third, was the radiology department. The Chef told us their problems were in shortage of funds, personnel, and materials. Sound familiar? I worked at a vet hospital for two and a half years in high school, and I can safely say that animals in America have far and beyond the resources that children do in here in Senegal. There were huge cracks in the walls because one of the machines broke, and now the building doesn’t have good enough protection from the radiation. Keep in mind that this is translated from rapid French, but I pointed to the cracks and asked, “this is from radiation?” and she responded, “oui.” Fabulous. The building probably glows at night for Pete’s sake. We spent the rest of the morning hanging around in the radiology rooms. They’re still developing their film in dark rooms, but the red light doesn’t wok, so they are masters of navigating that room in the pitch dark. It was pretty impressive. No one wears protective gear, like lead vests, you just sort of find a wall and get behind it. They don’t have warning words like we did in the vet hospital, so someone who knew when patients were being exposed would regularly snatch me into a corner. That was awkward, but that was still the best morning I’ve had at work. There were two other interns there helping the doctors, so the five of us had a good time while trying to avoid becoming some kind of irradiated experiment. But after that morning, I think at least a handful of cells in my body spontaneously mutated.

Working at this hospital has made me more sensitive to reality than I ever thought possible. I’m sorry if you are tired of hearing this, but reality of this kind is very hard for me to accept. I can honestly say that remembering how life was like in the US sounds and feels strange to me now. Not because I’ve been gone for long, because I haven’t, but there is just such a difference in the assumed norms. I see everything here through a lens, and right now I’m having a hard time figuring out just what kind of lens it is. It’s like witnessing a real life model of the collapse of compassion. This model has been in all my International Studies courses and pretty much highlights why people give up caring. Whether it’s because we are highly individualistic and thus cannot relate with any cause larger than one person, or because after a couple months of headlines we think a problem should be fixed. (True story, by the way) At what point to people accept that this is more of a “them” problem, not an “us” problem? I hope I can come away from this program knowing that I’m on my way to solving the “us” problem, and keep a human lens focused on my year here. The last thing I want is to leave, telling myself I can’t do anything to help. People working at this hospital are extremely innovative, and can do anything. If there is anything I have faith in the most, it’s the people here. 

l'Île de Gorée

Last week we went to the l'Île de Gorée.. and I'm just now getting around to writing about it. I know.. I know.. I'm lazy. I'm just daunted a little by this post because the experience is still a little raw.

Gorée is an island just off the coast of Dakar which was one of the most important slave holding ports for West Africa. All of the colonial powers which had control of Senegal used this island mainly for the slave trade. Now, the island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and several buildings have been converted to museums. Many of the islands inhabitants are direct descendants of the families who lived on Gorée during the slave trade. Interestingly, the island is also home to the best all-girls high school in the country. The high school sends their students abroad to Harvard, Yale, and other ivy-league schools on full scholarship. It's pretty impressive. A couple of the girls in my program have their internship directed by the headmaster of this school. The island is home to about 1,000 people whose income is entirely dependent on tourists who come through, while the other shop vendors have homes on the mainland but still take the ferry there everyday. It is forbidden to build new buildings or modify the old ones, so a lot of the people live in old colonial houses. We shifted gears from students to tourists and all went to the island for the day. We toured through the Maison des Esclaves (Slave House) the Musée des Femmes (women's museum) and wandered all over the island.

The Maison des Esclaves was the hardest part of the tour. The slave owners lived in the upper levels, and the slaves were kept in cells in the basement. The windows were tiny slits in the wall, and one of the rooms was about 6' x 6'.. where they crammed in about 20 men. There were separate holding cells for men, women, children and young women (those who were thought to be virgins, and who were periodically raped by their masters). These young women, when they got pregnant, were sometimes freed and given a little better treatment. But this came with the price of being rejected by their own people, and raising children caught between two worlds and considered bastards. A lot of the mixed race people in Senegal can trace their families back to this area. Besides the holding cells, there were punishment cells as well, where they put people who rebelled. these were about 3' tall, 2' wide, and 5-6' long. They could get 4 people in those. The slaves would be let out in turn once a day, but never all at once. If nature called in between that time, they had no choice but to go in the cell. Their hands and feet were constantly shackled, and some chose to jump into the ocean rather than be deported. On the ocean-side of the building, there was the door called "the door of no return" because once someone went through it, they went straight to a ship (usually bound for Louisiana).

I've heard of how the slaves had been treated, we've all taken history classes. I know that slavery exists today under similar conditions. I knew that to take responsibility for it is not my place because I had nothing to do with it. I knew that I was atypical just for being there and hearing that story, that what I want to do with my life will (hopefully) have a part in fighting slavery and suffering this world. I knew all of this, but it was incredibly hard to stand there and hear of such immense suffering and be completely blown away. I was in the same, the same damn place as truly evil people who did truly evil things. And in that moment I felt useless for having not prevented it. Which is ridiculous, and I knew that, but it's how it made me feel. I felt guilty for being white, for coming from wealth, for having a happy childhood--basically for my whole existence. It was awful and overwhelming. And I felt even more awful because I knew that all the things I was feeling were taking over the things I knew. So, my solution was to find a corner and cry a little. There was nothing I could do about it, and to be honest, it made me feel a little better. But my friend Fatou (my Fatou twin) found me and made me feel so much better. Being an African History major, as well as an African herself, she basically gave me the run-down of all the things I've already mentioned-all the things I was trying to tell myself but which were being smothered by my emotions. It felt good to hear the same things from someone else, especially someone who comes from a culture which has legitimate reason to hate my race. Not gonna lie, it was definitely a good/bad/terrible/bonding moment.

The rest of the tour took us through the rest of the island, and the Musée des Femmes. The Musée was really cool, and pretty much highlighted influential women in Senegalese history. Some were active in abolition or some in women's rights, etc. There were also several rooms which showed how women lived and their responsibilities in pre-colonial societies.

Lunch on the beach was a surreal reversal from the Museums and stories of suffering from La Maison des Esclaves. Confession: the rabies shot was a good idea, because Rachel cannot resist kittens the size of my palm who already know how to beg for food during lunch. I will probably get some kind of disease. Sorry Travel Nurse, you tried to warn me. After lunch we went to the beach on the island, and to make that sound less stupid, there IS only one. The rest is a cliff-like coastline. The waster was so clear that when I looked down I thought I could still touch the bottom when I was in 20 ft water. 40 ft was the same, I could still see fish swim under me. So cool. And apparently it was school field-trip day because there were at least 200 kids between the ages of 4-12 or so who were playing in the shallow water. Fearing a minor sewage disaster zone, we swam out really far. On our way back, however, we were cornered and basically turned into tubaab jungle gyms. One girl latched onto me and I (literally) couldn't get her off. So I played splashing games, dancing games, silly face games, and escaping games (which I lost) for about 30 minutes. Finally, I was exhausted and kind of fed up with all the salt water being thrown into my eyes and the in-fighting among the kids to climb on us. At the time, I had a girl on my shoulders. I told her in French that I had to go and tried to lift her off. Her legs tightened like flippin' pincers and she went into I'm-going-to-be-your-third-limb mode. Fine. Wanna play rough little girl? I walked a little deeper, so the water was about at my chest, grabbed her feet, and levered her off ejector-seat style. But I was tricky, and twisted as I did this, which almost removed my bathing suite top, but I managed to grab her before she sank. I think she didn't know how to swim, or she was in shock. Either way she was not pleased with me, and used her brown eyes as lazer beams. Feeling a little guilty now, I apologized and finally wrangled a smile and a hug out of her. Whew. I made peace with my people. Spending so much time playing in the shallows had stripped me of sunscreen, so I am now officially a rather crispy tubaab.

On the ferry back, my friend Fatou presented me with a multicolored shell bracelet she had bought on the island. Through some miscommunication, I finally realized she was giving it to me. I haven't taken it off since. Teranga in this country really is amazing.

Civil Disobedience

Here are a couple links to the current events I've been talking about. Reading these will give you a good background (albeit a brief one) on the discussion we had in the Senegalese class yesterday.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011-06-23-Senegal-protests-elections-Africa_n.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13938217

So, as I have said before, we are rommies with an American professor named (for the purposes of this blog) Candice. We heard some strange things about her from our Austrian friend Sophie. She has some pretty interesting views on Africa, development and how one acts coming to a developing country from a place of privilege. Growing up in the US, my view of the world has always been shaped by privilege. The reason I want to go into a "helping" or humanitarian profession is because I'm very conscious I came from privilege and feel like it's my place to give back. So in a collective sense, I want to use my position of privilege for the benefit of others. I believe I could just as easy have been born into another economic/political/social situation in which I would experience institutionalized racism and extreme inequalities. I want to help people for the sake of helping people, not because I'm looking to gain any monetary value from them, or the experience. I also believe that people have the immense capacity to help themselves. To be honest, I think some of the best roads that can be taken are grassroot ones. So! Those are my thoughts. You can like them or not, and that's your problem.

Now, Candice here invited us to come to her English class where they were finishing up a unit on MLK Jr and civil disobedience in the United States. As I've said before, her students think we're stuck up for not talking to people, so my friend Courtney and I decided to come with her to the last class of the term to talk with her students. Our presence really shocked them, and that was obvious. We were given desks facing the class, but were not told what we would be expected to talk about. The first 40 minutes or so was Candice introducing the topic of civil disobedience by asking them to define it in English. Then she lead a preliminary discussion about the current acts of civil disobedience seen here in Dakar. Now, lets be clear that this was an English class discussing Senegalese current events. English is the third, sometimes fourth or fifth language for these students--since I'm guessing that at least Wolof and French come first, not including other regionally based ethnic languages. (And for the record, even if an African can't speak a European language, they are usually fluent in at least 2-5 local languages...obviously not as "backward" or "barbaric" as some think they are. But I digress.) So these students are experiencing the same frustrations as us, as foreign students: they have coherent, well formed thoughts in the language they are comfortable with, but maneuvering around vocabulary and fragmented grammar structures yields a statement that sounds much less fluid and well organized. It can be frustrating trying to communicate our ideas in a different language, especially when we want a presence to our words. I could see this as we covered the positives and negatives of civil disobedience. We heard examples from other countries, and predictions for the Senegalese political system.

Meanwhile, both Courtney and I had a huge problem with Candice. She was assuming the role of the paternalistic, all-knowing, tubaab coming to Africa to educate the black man. She tried to tell them that the Jehovah's Witness missionaries whose church was burned gave out crosses and bibles to Muslims because they wanted to give them gifts from their hearts, and as means of extending a hand of friendship. Which is complete nonsense, they were, as they do here in America, going from door to door trying to sell their religion. In Dakar, they were asked repeatedly to stop calling door to door, and were told they were being very disrespectful to a community of devout Muslims. However, they persisted--hence the burned church. (Which is unforgivable, don't get me wrong, but the Jehovah's Witness weren't respecting the peoples' beliefs or cultural boundaries). In another debate, Candice told them to use their "teacher voices" when speaking in front of their peers (college students!). Then told me to delegate to them how to move their desks in to a circle for discussion groups, and also told me to facilitate their discussion. Excuse me? These are graduate students who have absolutely no need for me to tell them how to move their desks into a circle. Nor do they need me, a visiting undergrad, to facilitate their discussion. So I just moved my desk into the circle, and asked the student next to me to come up with a question and lead the discussion. All I did was sit back and listen to their opinions.

All of them argued for peaceful demonstrations, saying rioting only caused damage to property which would require their own money to repair. They said they wish civil disobedience wasn't necessary but they felt like the Senegalese public needed to use a direct means of getting the message across to Wade that they weren't going to stand for the institution of a monarchy. It was wonderful to hear all of their opinions and have them be interested in mine. I loved being in their class once Candice stepped aside and I was able to talk with the students myself. On our way out, because we had our Wolof class before their class ended, several people offered to help us with our French and Wolof. I just really hope that they don't think we all are like Candice, thinking we are better than them and trying to manipulate their beliefs. When she came home that afternoon, she said her students were really surprised that American students would take time out of their day and volunteer to talk to them. According to her, her students didn't think they were worth our time. I hate that they think that, it makes me feel awful, but I'm not sure their perspective was being manipulated.

Daara J Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPuwfkn0uLU

Here is a link to the youtube video of Daara J. It shows some of the dancing and this was one of my favorite songs. I'm going to try and eventually translate this as a Wolof practice sesh. Hopefully one of my Senegalese friends won't mind sitting down with me to help me understand the music. Ha. Enjoy!

Daara J

So I'm going to jump ahead in a lot of my narrative to my night that just happened. To be specific this happened AFTER the l'Ile de Góree,  and Civil Disobedience posts. So keep your pants on, but this needs to come first, because I'm so excited about it.

So we have a friend here whose name is Sophie, she's an Austrian graduate student studying here and has been in Senegal for about a year. She has been telling us about a lot of the "in" places to be in Dakar as a young student, and tonight we went to Daara J's concert. And for the record... Senegalese pop culture is INFINITELY better than anywhere else in the world. Instead of singing about sex, women, and violence, they sing about political change, acceptance and living life to the best of you ability. The rap/hip-hop scene here is all about political revolution, and is seen as a youth movement for positive, non-violent change. So basically, it's a pool of bad ass people making some baller music.

So we left at 9:20 pm or so, and caught taxis downtown to the French Cultural Center. When we were about halfway there, the girl next to me (Courtney) was sitting by the window and she says the words that nobody wants to hear. Especially when they are sitting in the back of a crammed taxi with no evasive maneuvering possible, the taxi driver is playing chicken with on-coming traffic, and the overpowering smell of fish fills the cab as we pass the fish market on La Cornishe. The words...

"Guys.. I think I'm going to throw up.."

There was an extremely loud silence.. followed my all of us yelling, "Get your head out the window!!!" The problem was, though her head was out the window, her vomit kept getting caught in the wind and slung back into the cab. Luckily, for us, not for the owner of the car, most of it slapped itself across the back window. At the peak of the vomiting, I was patting her back, dodging her puke, and laughing so hard I think my stomach got mildly bruised. Because, come on, let's appreciate the grand image this creates--cab full of loud laughing Americans, one with her head out the window spewing the remains of her dinner across the street, hoping the "fresh" Dakarqoise air would make her feel better. Then we remembered that Courtney has a strange aversion to anything fishy, in a literal sense. So when we "helpfully" rolled down the widow to give her some "fresh" air, we timed it just right for the FISH market...Luckily she took it pretty well. As soon as she got some water, she was laughing with the rest of us. Parting lesson: don't take malaria pills without food.

Anyway. Back to the music.

We payed our driver extra as a form of an apology and headed over to the venue gates. We sat down inside the huge outdoor amphitheater, seeing a modern stage equipped with all the latest technological sound/lighting concert equipment. I didn't get the name of the two opening bands, but lets be real one never does. The first was a woman, which is pretty unusual, dressed in clothes that would make me look like a white girl in desperate need of a disco globe, but which looked absolutely amazing on her. When Daara J (pronounced Daah-rahh Jee) came on the crowd went ballistic. Their energy was amazing, and I have no idea how they sustained it for the two hour concert. Their lyrics were mostly Wolof, but incorporated enough French and English that we were able to understand most of the songs. We used this as a form of practice for Wolof, our teacher would be so proud! Dancers periodically came on stage and performed with the music, dancing a combination of local moves, break dancing, and modern. I really mean the modern part, they looked like they've studied it, because they used a lot of the signature positions and movements. Everyone was dancing and having a good time, and I didn't need to be fluent in Wolof to feel the emotion of the music. The guys who were sitting around us (Aloura and I broke off from our group) would encourage us to dance and were pretty happy that we weren't just sitting and watching like the rest of the tubaabs there. <--(I learned the correct spelling in class today. Ha.) It was absolutely amazing. I'm going to steal my friend's pictures and videos because I didn't bring my camera. I'll show those to you guys soon. And I bought their cd and another cd (Idrissa Diop) after the concert. By the time I left, I had seen one the best concerts of my life, met some awesome people in the local music scene, and deflected 3 interested men by telling them I was already married. Pro!!
All in all, a pretty awesome night. News on more important matters are to follow, but for now, I'm going to savor the song stuck in my head.