The non-internet era

Hello everyone!

It's been a while... It has been harder and harder to post and here's why. For the last week, there has been a power outage almost every day at the home for a number of hours each time. (I have internet access at work, but after being there for 10 hours, you just want to get out!) So when the outages come around, not only is there no internet, there's no light, and usually no water! I didn't shower this morning, because of the water outage, which is fine and all if you're in Canada, but when it's hot and sticky, a daily shower is a necessity! The worst is when you start showering, get covered in soap, and then the water stops... haha... that's happened to me twice.

Here's me in a moment of desperation, washing my clothes with water that was stored in case of water outages, and a flashlight that Chris - the American who is staying at the house - hung from a clothesline... It looks light out because of the flash, but in reality it was dark!

Speaking of electricity, I wrote an article about the debate surrounding using computers in African schools - and that was an interesting element that came up - that now these schools have computers, but they still don't have consistent electricity ! And what does that say ?.... Read the article to find out! (http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73348)

There have been other moments of twisting and turning in bed because the fan wasn't working and the heat was overwhelming, and add to that the itchiness of my scalp because of the braids... more than 10 hours of labour, and here is the result: (that's Chris in the picture - he's on some kind of study abroad program for a month and a half. He's got one week left and I think the power outages are pushing him over the edge! He's ready to go home. His theory is that Senegal can't produce enough of its own power, and can't afford to buy power from outside, so it's just on a rotating blackout cycle, from neighbourhood to neighbourhood around the country)

Anyways, there was a rough patch for a while, adjusting to all this... AND get this: One of my suitcases finally came, two and a half weeks late. I was all excited, picked it up from the airport, took it home, opened it, only to find my clothes full of mold (check it out) I guess they left the bag out in the rain! So, yah, hebster was a bit grumpy for a while, but I'm better now...

As for the house, it's not too bad actually. There are lots of interesting (somewhat crazy) people living there: Kals, tall and lanky, absolutely weird, responds to everything you say with a comment that makes no sense but makes you laugh; Malick, short with dreads, and a djembe player; Lamine (or El-Amin in Arabic), wannabe philosopher who loves to discuss ideas - and who at dinner is sure to throw some cut up meat onto my side of the communcal plate because I suppose he thinks I won't get enough to eat otherwise! And my favourite of them all: Aida, the little baby...

Otherwise, no malaria yet ( I bought some pills here that I have begun taking)... I think I am going to start jogging/playing football (wow, I just naturally called it football and not soccer!). The Senegalese love "le sport" as they call it, which is basically just running. You see them everywhere running on the street or along the beach, with sandals, half the time, and usually in packs. So I figured, I might as well get into it too!

Anyways, I hear it's raining buckets in Canada, so I hope you're all doing well despite the miserable weather... take care.

People... Ideas...

Well there's lots of them! - both the people and the ideas. And they come from everywhere - the women in the hair salon, the men at the dinner table, the djembe (drum) players. So here's a selection of interesting thoughts I've come across....

1 - Osama bin Laden does not exist. Seriously. One of the guys that frequent my house, El-Amin (there are many people who are part of the extended family and come to eat and are always in and out) told me he seriously believes that Osama bin Laden is a creation of the Pentagon. The whole thing is just one big conspiracy, he says. I'd never heard anyone say that before, and I was shocked! He and the others also seemed to believe that Al-Qaeda itself didn't really exist and if it did, that it couldn't be that bad!!!
2 - Polygamy is acceptable. Many of the men here have more than one wife. And it's normal. People talk about their father's "other wife" without embarassment. In the house I live in, the father has one wife in the house, another wife down the street, and a third who died 7 years ago. I was asking one of my friends if her mother and her father's other wife get along. She said they were friends, but they fought at lot.
3 - Many people have lost their mothers. I've met about three or four people so far whose mothers aren't alive. I'm sure there are many, many more. They don't usually say much more, but I suspect in some cases it's because they died of AIDS or some other disease that they don't like to talk about. And that is also considered just a fact of life. And they move on.
4 - Families are huge! My latest friend - Ndieme - who braided my hair for me, has 17 brothers and sisters (of course, not all from the same mother, but all from the same father)... Crazy !
5 - Many people have grade 6 education. A lot of the people I meet, who seem normal (ie. not poverty stricken and starving) have nothing more than a grade 6 education. The musicians, the hairdressers, etc. It's funny, another of my friends, Ndeye, (also from the hair salon), told me she wants her daugther to go to university. When I asked her why she didn't, she said she just wasn't interested. She wanted to work instead. It's the case for many people here, although many have impecable French despite the limited schooling. For most, Wolof is their native tongue, but French is a close second. I thought nowadays people stayed in school longer, but I guess that's still not the case.
6 - Stepfathers fall in love with their wives' daughters. This happens not uncommonly here, from what I hear. One singer had a music video about it, and that's how we got started on the topic. But apparently it's an issue. The girl often doesn't want anything to do with him, but in some cases, she does in fact have a relationship with the stepfather, and hides it from her mother. Can you believe?

Anyways, my eyes are being opened to new and interesting ideas everyday. So there's a taste!

The real Senegalese experience

People have been asking me what the craziest culture shock I've experienced is, and I've telling them that nothing has really been that shocking. Until now. Thanks to my new living arrangements, I have a long list of things to comment on.

I decided to move in with a Senegalese family for a while. They live in this big house about halfway between my work and downtown Dakar. Some of the 15 or so rooms in the house are taken up by family members of this huge family, others by squatters like me (apparenly there's a young American guy living here, but I haven't seen him). So what's different about this place? For starters, the bathroom. The communal bathroom I might add. Its basically a hole in the wall, with some tiles on the ground, a toilet, and a small spout that drips out one string of cold water (there's no hot water). Only, the spout of water is directly beside the toilet, no curtains, no separation, nothing. If I had to pee in the middle of the shower, it might be convenient, but otherwise it means a very wet toilet seat... Then there's my room, which is relatively large. But there's only one outlet (which means choosing between the fan and my phone charger), and the windows don't close (which means listening to the beautiful African street noise which never stops - thank God for the earplugs Enam!). Meals are included in the monthly rate. Yesterday, at dinner time (9:30pm) the mother of the family said to me, "Have you ever eaten 'a la Senegalaise' before?"... then she stuck a communal plate on the table and sat me down with four Senegalese men who all dug in immediately. (like the Horn of Africa restaurant where you order one plate that everyone shares with their hands). In any case, if I was hungry, I would have died because there wasn't enough food to go around. Luckily, my stomach has gotten to the point that it doesn't expect much food anymore, so it doesn't complain as much. In the morning, breakfast consisted of one baguette (which I assume was to be divided among everyone who lives there) and a block of butter. Oh and I forgot to mention that there are mosquitos in this neighbourhood, and I have neither a mosquito net, nor my malaria pills - or even bug repellant, because they were all in my luggage. As for the neighbourhood, you walk around literally among the sheep, which if you recall, are also present on the roof of the house.

So there you have it. Why am I subjecting myself to this? That's a question I was seriously asking myself yesterday. But it's cheap, it's real, and other people I know have lived here and seemed to like it. So I guess this is real African living. I can't go six months in Africa working in air-conditioned rooms, eating in Western restaurants and showering in world-class bathrooms, now can I?

The African Journalist

Sorry for the break in posting... I'm just drained and by the end of the day I have no energy left to blog!
I vowed this week never to complain about being a journalist in North America again, so someone hold me to that when I get back. You can spend an entire day here - and I mean the time that I would spend in Canada reading, researching, interviewing 5 or 6 people, and writing an article - just trying to get a hold of ONE person. The other day I spent 8 hours calling about 20 different numbers in Chad and could not get through to ANYONE!!! You call and get the busy signal (which doesn't actually mean it's busy, just that you can't get through), over and over again until you're ready to throw the phone against the wall. And when you do get through to someone, the line is so bad you can barely hear them. Add to that the fact that they're speaking in French, very quickly, with an accent. It all makes for a very difficult and frustrating reality!

In any case, I finally did get the article written. It was about different aid groups disputing whether there was in fact a malnutrition crisis in eastern Chad where about 150,000 people have been displaced because of attacks on their villages. In the end, it was a delicate topic, because some agencies were commenting on othersm, etc. etc. Once it was finished, someone quoted in the article realized that what he had said was perhaps undiplomatic, and complained. IRIN (who I work for) actually decided to change it and take out what he said! I've never seen that happen before.

Anyways, today, I did my first interviews outside of the office (most are done by phone). I went to a school in a poor neighbourhood of Dakar that has a pilot project going with computers in elementary school. When they told me about the story, I said, 'what's the big deal, they don't have computers in schools here?' And the answer was, 'they don't even have pencils and paper in the universities!' That was an exaggeration of course, but it's still pretty remarkable that in a shanty neighbourhood, where mountains are trash pile up on the streets and sheep roam free that classrooms have computers!

Here are some of the kids from the school:

Anyways, another post to follow shortly on my new living arrangements... that's a whole other story

In a sea of Black!

Today....
some fun stories.
I took the bus to the neighbourhood that I am going to move to this week to get a sense of the place, walked around, ended up in the same market that I bought my clothes from: Colobane, its called - random! I've gotten used to being the only non-Black person as I walk around. And I think once you're confident about it, people don't really treat you any differently. Anyways, I was starving, and came across some women selling things that looked like little round dumplings. I had no idea what they were, but decided to try them. They were plain tasting, pretty dense, like a bland pancake rolled up into a thick ball. I saved one and asked Orlando what it was when I got home - he said they were beignettes! ie. donuts! well timbits really, but they sure didn't taste like any timbit i've ever had!
Anyways, on the way back, I was waiting at the bus stop, when a car full of people honked at me and pulled over. The driver said, 'You going to Liberte 5?' which is a neighbourhood here. My neighbourhood is on the way, so I hopped in. I had read about these 'clandos' or communal cabs. They're unmarked and illegal, but about the same cost as a bus, more direct and you dont have to wait!
Then I went to this fair at the church near the house, the annual Kermesse. They have the regular fair games, and in the middle, the main attraction is this game where there are two live bunnies in the middle of this circle of boxes. Each box is numbered. And everyone who buys a ticket picks a number. When the bunnies are set free, they run into one of the boxes. Whoever picked the number the bunny chose, wins! Everyone crowded around to watch this - haha. I'll post a video later.
So i was trying to get a look, and this girl saw me trying and made a spot for me. So we introduced ourselves and within litterally three words, she said, ''From now on you are my best friend.'' haha... She's 18, speaks poor French, mostly Wolof, so communication is pretty difficult. But she came to eat with me, and wants me to play basketball with her on Saturday... Jeanne Marie Pierre Lobo is her name. And then as we said goodbye, sh said in this desperate voice, "You won't forget about me will you?" It made me feel kinda sorry for her...
Anyways, I need to sleep, so bonne nuit tout le monde!

Shopping Part 2

What a day!
My first day off work, and it was great! First of all, I've finally perfected "how are you? good" in wolof... "Nangadef? Mangifee." Woo hoo... i could never remember at first... but now i've got it. Today was a day of talking to Africans! At the cyber cafe I go to, the guy who runs it invited me to eat with him, which drew a big crowd. All the other guys crowded around - as if it's so incredible that a "white" girl (now I'm the white girl) sits down to eat with a local. What was amazing, was that he was teaching me Wolof, I was teaching him English, we were speaking French, I spoke Spanish to a Nigerian... the languages and cultures were just flying around! Then I spent the day at the Sengada market... I mentionned it before, but today was just crazy. It's actually exhausting shopping there because people are CONSTANTLY harassing you to buy things, and after a while you just want to scream, "Leave me alone!"... so you never want to stop and look at anything because you know you'll have 10 people on you at once. And it's in this environment that they sell things like bras and underwear!!! As if I'm going to look at underwear in the middle of this chaotic public market! But the great part of the day was meeting people. If you play them properly, these annoying merchants can actually be fun! And I've decided they're my in for taking pictures. Make friends with someone local, and then it's so much more acceptable to pull out the camera than if you're a random foreigner with a flash. Anyways, by the end of the day, I was tired, and wanted to snap more shots, so i stopped at this little dress-making place where some guys were sewing outside. I started talking to them, and they were so nice. One of them, Sidi, was 16 years old, not in school, of course, and the ironer. (The little one in front!) We started chatting, and I told them how I wanted to buy some black sandals. So Sidi took me through this maze of fruit stands and people chanting Qu'ran and dark alleys, to the area where they have the shoes. And then he went on to pick out sandals for me and negotiate with the vendors on the price. It's amazing how nice the Senegalese people are at heart. I wrote down the address of the sowing place, and hopefully I'll be able to find it again in that crazy labyrinth! I also ran into Pap again today. We rode the bus home together and he gave me a mango, which I subsequently just carried around in my hand. haha. It's still a bit hard to know which of these "friends" are actually friends, but I think as long as I'm careful, it's worth trying...

Here are some more pics of the marketplace!

Shopping Part 1

So, mom has been pushing me to go shopping, and yesterday I finally gave up on the luggage coming and did! My Australian colleague David at work has a Senegalese wife, so he took me to meet her at some second hand clothing place where i could get cheap clothes. Basically, it was a tiny little shop, with clothes hanging on all the walls and all over the floor. There's enough place for 3 people to stand uncomfortably close, and you're surrounded by clothes. Helene, David's wife, kept rifling through clothes, throwing shirts at me to try on. Of course;, there's no change room, so I just tried things on over my clothes, and we made a pile of the ones I liked. Ended up buying 6 items of clothing for the equivalent of 40 dollars, not bad, considering how expensive clothes are in Dakar, from what I'm told. Next, she's going to take me fabric shopping so that I can have a Senegalese boubou tailored for me - that's what everyone does here. They pick the fabric they like, and have the clothes made. A boubou is a matching skirt, shirt and head scarf, usually loose with vibrant colours. I'm excited!

As for my original clothes, I took them to the ''laundry mat'' next door. It's three guys, with a bunch of buckets of water, bars of soap, and a whole bunch of clothes. I don't how they keep track of whose is what because I just handed them my clothes, and they ended up in a pile with everyone else's!

What else? I told myself that I would use my time here as I way of learning more about Islam, since it's a Muslim country. The guy at the cybercafe says he will take me to his imam for some Qu'ran classes, so I might take him up on that. Increasingly, I am feeling embarrassed not to know Wolof, the predominant African language here, so I will try to pick that up too.

Still no gel or anything, so I think I will go get my hair braided and not worry about the frizz anymore. It's nice not knowing anyone here, cuz I can look like crap, and nobody knozs the difference! Anyways, it's Saturday, so I have to go discover the city!