Dakar (an essay by Sara)

With Professor Dienaba (doesn't she look like a French teacher?)

Yesterday was our last day of French class.  Sara woke up early with excitement, and we bound our way through the neighborhood streets eager to "get this the hell over with".

Our class started with a comprehensive exam, of which we both got about 50% correct, and finished with us each writing an essay about our month in Dakar.  For someone who "sucks at French", Sara was able to communicate a thoughtful piece in French, and I think she's come a long way since needing to be reminded of how to conjugate the present tense of the verb "to be" on Tuesday.

Dakar 

(English version per Google translate)

In Dakar, we learned a lot. Julienne learned the French language and I learned that my teachers are very patient. We listened to the music of Senegal, we eat many types of Senegalese cuisine, and we found many neighborhoods in Dakar.

We took pictures of a busy city, amicable and complicated. For this trip, Julienne and I have a blog, and we share our time in Dakar with our families and friends. I hope they understand that Dakar is an important city for Senegal and for all of West Africa.

When I arrived in Dakar, it was very hot and I was immediately pleased to start our holiday in a city with a warm climate. After three or four days, I hoped the snow. Today, I prefer the heat and wind.

I am very pleased that we decided to start our holiday in Dakar and with French class. I know that other countries have very large "shoes to fill."

Dakar

(French version per Sara--minus the accents needed to convey the true meaning of each word)

A Dakar, nous avons appris beaucoup de choses.  Julienne a appris la langue francais et j'ai appris que mes professeurs sont tres  patients. Nous avons ecoute la musique senegalaise, nous avons mange beaucoup de types de cuisine senegalaise, et nous avon decouvert beaucoup de quartiers a Dakar.

Nouse avons pris des photos de une ville active, amicable et compliquee. Pour ce voyage, Julienne et moi avons un blog, et nous avons partage notre temps a Dakar avec nos famailies et nos amis. J’espere qu’ils comprennent que Dakar est une ville importante pour le Senegal et pour toute l’Afrique de l’ouest.

Quand je suis arrivee a Dakar, il faisait tres chaud et j’etais immediatement heureuse de commencer nos vacances dans une ville avec un climat chaud. Apres trois ou quatre jours, j’ai espere la neige. Aujourd’hui, j’aime las chaleur et prefer le vente.

Je suis tres heureuse que nous avons decide de commencer nos vacances a Dakar et avec la classe de francaise.  Je sais que les autres pays a tres grande “shoes to fill”.

Haute Coture: Skirts a la mode

In Dakar, people dress.  Whether we're checking out American t-shirts (Ramirez Family Reunion 2008) or admiring Dakaroise women's "boubous"in gorgeous technicolor, fashion is serious in Dakar.

Thanks to all of the "pack light" advice we received from home, our "fashion" options are usually limited to whatever in the closet (er, backpack) is cleanest and coolest for the day.  While we're grateful for every Wednesday laundry day when we can scrub out the sweat and start again, we can't help but feel under dressed everywhere we go 100% of the time.  And, you only need to tell us once which of the clotheslines in the backyard become tightropes for the largest ants in the world, come 3PM each afternoon.

This week in particular, the pressure to be a la mode got turned up a notch.  In 10ish days (the moon has yet to settle on the exact day), Senegalese will celebrate "Tabaski", a post-Ramadan, slaughter-a-goat, dress-like-there's-no-tomorrow, festival.  It's the time of year that guarantees at least one new item of clothing for most Senegalese, because Tabaski is a time to be presentable in the eyes of God.  (And, on a clear day, many of these outfits can be seen from space.)  Like a September back-to-school shopping frenzy, Dakar moms are hitting the fabric stalls to purchase new cloth for the local tailors to turn into dresses, shirts, traditional boubous, and four piece ensembles.  Me, I just want something a little cooler than the pants I dragged across the Atlantic.

Just the tip of the fabric iceberg.

In Dakar, specialty markets exist for just about everything -- fish, artisan crafts, vegetables, knockoff Gucci watches.  The HLM Fabric Market crams literally hundreds of small stalls, each with dozens of reams of fabric, into a dense city block.  Girl, we're talking everything from green sequins, to orange eyelet, to artistic fabric dyed in every hue imaginable.  The traditional "vax" fabric is waxed, then beaten until it shines and becomes as stiff as a starched collar.

After a particularly crappy day of French, it was seriously gratifying to venture into this labyrinth and emerge an hour later after negotiating for enough meters of fabric for at least a few skirts.  As someone who is neither seamstress nor much of a shopper, this was a total coup.

With reams of fabric in hand, my neighbor Sophie took me to her local tailor. As we walked, we passed at least 30 other (though obviously worse?) tailor shops, each with one or two old Singers and (usually) a male tailor at work on a new (usually female) outfit.  

In the US, when I drop off my dry cleaning, there's usually a process for entering my phone number into the computer and a print out of my items and day of reclamation.  Here, I left three pieces of cloth in a plastic bag, I spun around once for the tailor to get a sense of my dimensions, and I gave him a deposit for the thread that he would use.  He told me to come back next Wednesday, and maybe he would be done, "inchalla" (god willing).  Today is Wednesday, and God was apparently willing. 

Cultural Sensitivi-tee-hees

Studying French with a headlamp -- sans electricity

One of the things that we love most about being away from home is the constant reminder of how similar people are -- even amongst incredible differences.  We all want to be loved, we all want a sense of belonging, and we all laugh at universal bathroom jokes and slap-stick comedy -- even if your bathroom is a hole in the ground.

These are the things that we've recently been reminded of that are just plain funny in any culture (and we've seen them all this month):

1) Getting your boubou caught in the cab door and riding down the street with it flapping in the wind.

2) Emerging from a field of grass with toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your flip flop.

3) Farting in a room full of fans pointed directly at you.

4) Being asked by multiple Africans if you have a tapeworm.

5) A language that is easy to confuse the words for "man", "pee" and "yogurt".

Facecakes -- how do they do that?

6) Women in leopard-print skirts and zebra-print pumps.

7) The changing of the guard at the Presidential Palace.

8) A horse-drawn carriage transporting goats and Coke.

9) Slapping someone's forehead but missing the mosquito.

10) Facecakes.

Pretty(ish) in Pink(ish)

There is a lot of pink in our Dakarois life.  

We live in a pink house with pink curtains and pink towels,  rented from a woman named, appropriately, Rosie.  We can't make this up.

Continuing the rouge trend, this weekend we headed two hours northeast of Dakar to Le Lac Rose, the pink lake.

This lake is actually pink.  Lac Rose is a dirty reddish white from the mix of incredible salt content (40%) and cyanobacteria found in the water.  At the south end of the lake is a small community of salt harvesters and those who make their living off of the pink lake tourism. We were definitely the activity of the day for the local children, which was actually quite fun for all of us. 

Dozens of salt harvesters dredge the lake with salt baskets, pulling out wet lumps of gray-white salt, which is then mounded along the water's edge in crumbling ten foot salt pyramids.  Besides peanuts, salt is one of the few staples that is able to be produced in-country in Senegal.

While in their small boats, the salt harvesters use a salve of shea butter to protect their hands and arms from the corrosive effects of the salt -- which is understandable considering that after a short drive around the lake in an old WWII military jeep (no pink Cadillac for us), we could actually lick the salt off of our lips.

As we rounded the lake, we veered off over a sand dune and found ourselves right at the Atlantic ocean again -- more salt, but less pink, oh and a few more camels.

Our Two Husbands

Marriage has been on my mind a lot recently. Can you blame me? I get about 3 proposals each day from Senegalese suitors looking for "American woman."

Bug spray & boyfriends-- two important deterrents.

Sara is obviously the smarter one of the two of us. Before leaving the States, she read in some Lonely Planet book that it was a good idea for female travelers to invent a fake husband who would be arriving "tomorrow" --Johnny Depp was suggested-- to fend off unwanted advances.  We talked about how this would be a good thing for us to do, given that we didn't want to attract any unnecessary suspicions since we would be traveling in conservative countries.  Without pause Sara yelled out, "I call Jon Paine!", a mutual (and spoken for) friend. The two of them cuddled up on the couch together and snapped a photo; one that, when not folded up in Sara's passport, is perfectly positioned on the nightstand for any visitors to note.

Let me call you sweetheart...

I, on the other hand, struggled to find a man at first. I felt like goldilocks: he's too "just not that into me", he's too "er, related", and he's too "unconvincing".

At first (like 15 mins), it didn't matter that I wasn't "married".   As long as one of us was married, no one would suspect that we are a couple.

But now, I'm realizing I'm just an idiot. When Sara gets asked, etes-vous marriee?, she promptly replies "oui!". When I get asked, I stupidly tell the truth.  "You can marry me and be happy," says every cab driver. To be honest, these Senegalese men are not bad with their pick-up lines:

1. I loave you.
2. I am baarrahko baama number two.
3. Why not?

The ring fits perfectly.  It's clearly just for me.

Now, after the 50th proposal, I'm finally beginning to out wit the witted:

1. You want to find an American woman? Go to America, there are beaucoup de women there who, too, won't understand what you're saying.
2. No, I'm not looking for a Senegalese man. Why not? Because it's a big world and Senegal is a small country, tu comprends?
3. I don't do sister wives.
4. Après.
Note: for some unknown reason, "après" is the magic word of all magic words. A street vendor selling "raybands" will follow you for 25 blocks with "non mercis", but give him one "après" and he peels off like a Blue Angel at an air show. They don't ask "after" what, and they don't ask how I will find them again "after" I've finished doing whatever I'm going to do.

Just think Sara wasted $10 on the fake wedding ring she bought at Dulles Airport. "Honey, if you're looking for fakes, I've got some nice ones in this case over heeer."

48 Hours in a Dakar Weekend

We've now been here for two full weeks, and we're starting to get the hang of weekends in Dakar.  It's a late night city with lots going on, and since these are the few days we have without French class, we're trying to soak up as much as we can on samedis and dimanches.  This weekend was a full-on mix of food, music, new friends, history, religion, and a little bit o' culture.

Friday night, we met up with a fellow San Franciscan, Courtney, who has been living in Senegal for four months.  After taking a one-bar commission from the chocolate gift pack we delivered from mutual friends, we had a lovely night of drinking South African wine and eating Dakar-style tapas at the north end of the peninsula.   Courtney wasn't our only new friend, as we realized that the restaurant is also the watering hole for some local turkeys (Dark Crystal, anyone?).  After dinner, Julienne and I peeled off for some live reggae. Note: we got to the club at 12:15am, the band went on at 12:45am and people started pouring in as we were leaving at 1:45am.

Sunday, we met up with Courtney again near the Palace du President for a day of tourist romps.  On our way to breakfast, we waved to octogenarian President Abdoulaye Wade and his motorcade, which apparently was co-sponsored by VW and Jeep.  Wade has been a frequent topic of conservations. The unilateral constitutional changes, a half-French son for a potential running mate and typical developing world cronyism to make for interesting election year pontificating with every person we meet. More on Wade in future blog entries, but we're sticking to just the happy haps for the weekend.

Sunday brunch at Patisserie Eric Kayser included pastries that were gleaming with sugar.  Courtney had pain du chocolate, Sara had a croissant aux abricots, and Julienne had a sesame roll with balsamic vinegar (?!?!?!)

After brunch, we commenced a short trip to Ile de Goree, a small island about 20 minutes by ferry from downtown Dakar.  When we arrived at the ferry terminal, the neon temperature display registered a miraculous 51 degrees C in the sun.  We were all stunned, as it didn't feel any hotter than 49.5.  The island is one of the few places in Dakar sans da cars, so it was a welcome respite.  The water was warm, the island was beautiful and the cat to person ratio was a low 1:1.  I can't believe it took us two weeks to swim, but it was well worth the wait.

Ile de Goree has some important historical significance, too.  One of the reasons that we were interested in traveling in West Africa was to deepen our understanding of the history of the Atlantic slave trade here.  The visit to Goree's Maison des Esclaves was our first glimpse of what a "point of no return" looked like, and we can just begin to imagine the larger slave 'castles' across the West Coast of Africa.

Merci, weekend, see you again in five. 

There's a Thin Line Between Friday Night and Saturday Morning

[SPOILER ALERT: CUTENESS AHEAD]

You can't spend more than five minutes in Dakar without feeling the influence of Islam: the short skyline is peppered with the minaret towers of neighborhood mosques, men and women dress in traditional Arab garb, and all of the mini buses have praise Allah painted on their front hood.

Mosquee de Divinitee along Dakar's west coast was built in 1997.
The inspiration for the location and design came to the local
marabout in a dream.  He was most likely on the anti-malarial
Lariam at the time. Women are only allowed on the first two floors.

For the past two weeks, we've been piecing together bits of awareness about Muslim culture and practice in Senegal.  In addition to the very loud, bitch of a bird that calls from outside our window each morning at 6:15, we also wake to the sound of the morning call to prayer.  Our professor adjusts class schedule to go to the nearby mosque for Friday prayers, and there are public ablution stations set up for Muslim men to wash their face, hands and feet before prayer on small mats on the sidewalks five times a day. 

Yesterday, our French school organized a lecture on Islam in Senegal and took us on a tour of a mosque and to visit a Koranic school.  While neither of us expected two straight hours of 1500 years of Islamic history in West Africa, we appreciated a greater explanation of the Islamic influence that is everywhere in Senegal.

To spare you the mind-numbing details that we sat through, here are the highlights:

1. Islam was peacefully introduced into Senegal in the 11th century through trade.
2. As the religion spread, holy wars of conversion broke out.
3. By the mid 19th century, most all of Senegal had been converted to Islam (either by persuasion or jihad), away from traditional animist practice.
4. Differences in practice divided Senegal into five brotherhoods (Islamic sects) that are still intact today.  You can tell which brotherhood a person belongs to by the cut and color of his clothing.  (Sort of a universal statement, isn't it?)

5. Today, 94% of Senegalese are Muslim, although the country is secular.

Shoes stay outside when the boys recite the Koran at school.

Students memorize their prayers

Koranic etch-a-sketch

No one-laptop, one-child program at Koran school.

 

 

Maybe #110?

Ranked #109 of "109 Things To Do in Dakar" by Lonely Planet travelers, we nonetheless ventured into the Soumbedioune Marche aux Poissons at dusk to watch local fishers bring in the day's haul -- which can be up to 2 unregulated tons per small boat a day. 

The beach was crowded to the, er, gills, so we stayed for just a quick glimpse of colorful pirogues and slippery eels.

Eating fish gumbo for lunch today took on a whole new meaning.

Why yes, that is a box of eels.

Occupy Ave Bourguiba

Every morning, we wake up to Facebook posts, op-eds and articles about the Occupy Wall Street protests.  We have enough internet access to follow along quite well with news from around the world.  We are called to close our bank accounts and open new ones at a local credit union, to support protests in financial districts across the US, and to join forces with our Mock-upy Sesame Street comrades.  (Damn you, 1% of cookie monsters!)

While the global reach of US financial systems cannot be ignored, we, like many educated Americans, do not feel the inequitable disparities on a daily basis.  Or do we?

By pure coincidence, the place where we're staying is a 10 mins walk from our French school.  And, four times per day, we snake through the neighborhood, "Bonjour"-ing our way along streets, alleys and playgrounds.

In the morning, we see butchers setting out their meat for the day and fathers walking their daughters to the "bilingual" school (where most children are actually tri-lingual in French, English, and Wolof).  We see women sweeping the sidewalks with bundles of palm fronds and taxi drivers jockeying for riders.

Stopping for goat meat at the djibiterie

Dad taking daughter to school = excellent.

We also see children, lots of children, sitting on the curb.  While education in Senegal is "free" and "compulsory" for anyone under the age of 16, the public school system doesn't have the capacity to educate all of the children, only about 70%.  And generally, we know where in the global markets those children, especially girls, who don't go to school and who never learn to read or write will end up.  No where.  For those who are able to obtain education (the BAC degree is the high school equivalent), jobs outside the market are few.  Our home is cleaned weekly by a woman with a university degree.

In the afternoon walk home, we see the same butchers, now surrounded by flies after a day in the hot sun, still selling their meat.  Without refrigeration, will they take a financial loss because they bought too much from their supplier?  Or, will they try again tomorrow, cutting away visibly spoiled sections while brushing away the flies?  

Butcher shop operating without refrigeration or water.

Life's a beach.

Through all parts of the city, we see sand, piles and piles of orange-white sand.  This sand, most likely, has been mined illegally, stripped from Dakar's beaches at a rate of more than 400 truckloads a night.  The long term significance is two-fold.  First, sand mining is causing tremendous environmental degradation.  As the coastline is shifting, marine wildlife patterns are likewise changing; shorelines are succumbing to massive erosion.  Second, the reason why sand piles are everywhere is because they're used in basic construction materials.  To save money, people make homemade cinder blocks using part cement, part sand.  As you might expect, these are not nearly as strong or durable as pure cement blocks.  In the short run, this allows for cheaper and faster construction, but as the world saw in Haiti, poorly built structures with compromised materials do not fair well in earthquakes or other natural disasters.  Although Dakar is not on an active fault line (neither is Washington, DC), the potential destruction and loss of human life is great.

The story of Senegal in the context of the global economy is not unlike that of the majority of countries in the developing world -- extreme poverty, high rates of illiteracy and exploitation of natural resources.  Clearly Wall Street, while an ocean away, can be felt on the city streets of Senegal, where the majority of people don't have bank accounts, let alone funds to deposit in them.  They occupy their streets every day with fruit stands, boulangeries, cell phone "credit card" shops and Nescafe kiosks. 

Le Weekend

It's hard to imagine that we've only been here a week.  Perhaps it's because time on the African continent passes slower than in North America (unsubstantiated claim), or it's because we're actually awake more hours of the day because it's too hot to sleep. 

As you might expect, it takes us longer to do things in Dakar than it does in the US.  The pace of life is slower here, businesses keep irregular hours, we spend 5 hours a day in French class, and let's face it, we let ourselves wonder/doddle/follow the sounds/find our our way.

One of the best decisions we've made thus far is to make a daily list of "manageable" objectives, so as to not frustrate ourselves with our own inefficiencies.  Sara, being an expert to-do list writer and a generally effective person, has had to tone it down a notch when it comes to planning.

Objectives for the weekend

Not what we expected to see when we turned the corner

Friday:
1. Eat Thai food (done)
2. Plan the weekend (done)

Saturday:
1. Buy French/English dictionary (done)
2. Hear traditional Senegalese music (done)
3. Visit patisserie (done)

Sunday:
1. Do French homework (not yet started)
2. Eat yassa poulet (done)
3. Write blog (in progress)

Overall, a great weekend had by all.  Not only did we do all the fun things that we set out to do, but we also met some new friends (Mali's new Minister of Foreign Affairs), tried new food (street stall beignets), and learned how to exchange empty beer bottles for full beer bottles.

Honestly, I'm worried that our success this weekend of meeting our objectives has gone to our heads: tonight we made a 5 x 9 matrix of next week's schedule.   Beeeeg things are to come!

Typical Thai condiments

In Wolof, Obama means "US President"

This picture makes the band look a like church (er, mosque) choir

Is anyone surprised?! She's with the band.

Traditional yassa poulet from Chez Roger. Click here for a link to the recipe!

Our First Night in the Pink House

When we got to French class this morning, our teacher asked us to take out a piece of paper and write a short essay about our first night in our new house.  Immediately, I thought, "great, today's blog entry!"  Here is the English translation and some pictures to fill in the blanks:

Our first night in the pink house was very good.  It is a nice house with two rooms and two fans.  It needs more fans. We sat under the mango tree, but it was too hot there.  In the evening, we talked with Abdou, who lives in the adjacent studio apartment with his girlfriend Sophie.  They will have a baby in one month.

With Abdou, we talked about government, politics, people, education, and why George Bush is a mother f***er.  During this time, we drank beer. We did not have dinner.  It was too hot to eat.

At 11:30pm, we went to sleep, but we could not sleep.  There was no air conditioning.  The bed was made like a sponge. 

Early this morning, there were strange noises.  The birds are bad singers.  The garbage man was here.  He honked a lot.  The people gave him garbage.  He honked some more.  More people went to him. 

Now, I am tired.  I hope that it is not hot today, because I want to take a nap during this class.

***

Our stret

Every cul de sac needs a basketball oop

Abdou and Sara sitting under a tree.

Cl-ASS

Walking home for lunc