On Saturday, le 2 Octobre, I woke up in anticipation of fall break. Me being the paranoid person I am, I worried that all of our plans were going to be somehow ruined. We had booked a mini bus the day before to take us from Dakar to Mbour and had to partially pay up front. At first the driver wanted us to pay up front in total, but that was too sketchy and we managed only to pay partially up front. I dragged my bags across Mermoz (my neighborhood in Dakar) to campus to meet up with everyone else, wrought with worry that the driver/bus would take the money we gave him yesterday and run. Thankfully, he showed up and the twelve of us piled into our party bus. At this point, my next worry was getting to the rental house, as we did not actually arrange to go directly to the house, but a hospital in Mbour where the landlord would meet us. We met him and arrived at the house safely, alxumdulilay.
Now, before I continue, I feel it is worth mentioning that I had every reason to be very paranoid. Our fall break plans had already completely fallen through once, almost twice. Of course, my original hope for fall break was to somehow get to Timbuktu, but after conducting a little bit of research I learned that it takes at least a week to get to Timbuktu from Dakar. Thus, getting there, seeing the city, and coming back within ten days would have been virtually impossible. Not to mention, the cost of a visa to Mali alone was enough to nix my plans. (Zach: I apologize I did not heed your “DBAP,” but it seriously would not have worked.) Anyway, as I wrote in my previous entry, our plans to visit the Cassamance were not approved due to recent violence in the area. We had dropped 31,000 CFA on the ferry tickets to get there and back (over $60). We managed to switch the dates of the tickets, so now we are going for a whirlwind weekend tour of Zinguenchor, the capital of the Cassamance (this area is safe, supposedly), in the middle of November. This is not the ideal situation, but at least we did not completely lose that money. In regards to fall break, the “don’t trust anyone” message from orientation did not leave my brain. If the landlord had not shown up, our entire break would have been ruined.
The house was breathtaking, at least in the first impression. The beds were very comfortable, there was air conditioning in all of the bedrooms, the upstairs and downstairs had a giant porch, and the backyard was connected to the beach. I was expecting that we would have the house to ourselves for the week, just like how my Frisbee team gets beach houses for spring break each year. It turned out that the family that keeps up the house (the actual landlord is some guy in France) actually lives on the compound of the house in a small house next to the garage in the front yard. This had positives and negatives. Positives: the husband, Felix, acted as a guard at night and during the day, so we did not have to worry about people breaking into the house; the wife, Faatu, cleaned the house during the week and cooked our meals for us; the four-year-old daughter, Aminata, was super cute and hung out with us all the time. Negatives: being American college students, we were somewhat expecting a spring break-esque week, and now we had the responsibility of keeping the noise down and not just waiting until the end of the week to clean up after ourselves.
Unfortunately, we quickly learned that power outages are not limited to Dakar. In fact, for the first half of the week we were in Mbour, I estimate that we lacked power about 90% of the time. This was not much of a problem during the day, but it made the nights pretty much unbearable. The fans and air conditioning in the bedrooms relied on electricity, so without power the rooms became very stuffy and hot. The only thing more uncomfortable than being in a super hot room with little airflow is being in said room under a mosquito net. I quickly gave up on the mosquito net, which caused me to get eaten alive. I seriously have never seen so many insects in one place. By just the second or third day we were there, all of us looked like we had a bad case of chicken pox all over our legs. There soon was a shortage of cooking gas, making it difficult for us to make dinner (Faatu prepared our breakfast and lunch everyday). By the fourth day we were there, the water had also stopped working. This ended up being the breaking point for a few of us. If it weren’t for the ocean right next to us, we may have lost it completely.
The ocean was super warm, almost to the point of it being weird. Swimming was quite relaxing most of the time, although we had to deal with some serious creepers. Very few women go to beaches in Senegal, so a group of 20-year-old white girls must be quite the sight. Sometimes men would just not leave us alone. Even if some of the guys from our group were with us, we would still get harassed. Soon we realized that if we swam out far enough, we would not be followed. Thus, I got a bit of exercise treading water. The creeping did not end after we left the beach, however. Men would still follow us around even in town. I started to get really frustrated, and I wondered why they would not leave us alone… Mbour is a popular vacation spot for Europeans, and I saw a few other toubabs walking around. Then it hit me: Mbour must rarely see toubabs under the age of 65. None of the Senegalese people in Mbour believed us when we said we were American. Many said that they had never met an American before, and then asked us if we personally knew Obama. Of course, saying we were American also attracted some unwanted attention, so by the end of the week we were making up all sorts of fake identities. A few times we said we were French, which one man responded to by asking (in French), “Why don’t you speak better French then?” A few of the girls in my group who have really fair skin were called Swedish a few times so they finally just went with it and started speaking fake Swedish/gibberish to each other. This backfired when we were trying to ward off creepers by saying we were German, because the creepers spoke German as well. One my friends meant to say, “I only speak Spanish,” but instead said “Yo hablo espanol… seulement” (three words in Spanish, followed by a French word… unconvincing). Not all the men were creepers; some were really cool. We could usually figure out if someone was a creeper or not within the first five seconds of interaction with them. If they gave us a menacing stare, called us something like, “la plus belle,” or tried to touch us, they were creepers. Then there were others who genuinely wanted to be friends with us, such as a semi-professional wrestler named Harlem and a few guys from the Baye Fall community. Harlem looked very intimidating at first, but ended up being a gentle giant: he is at least six and a half feet tall and built like a WWE wrestler. The Baye Fall guys just chilled and drummed and danced on the beach for much of the week. One of them spoke English and introduced us to himself and his best friend, a tennis ball. I have never seen one person so amused by one inanimate object for such a long period of time. He would dance holding the ball, he would walk around balancing it on his head, he would continually toss it around, and if he trusted you, he would ask you to play catch with him. The Baye Fall are known for smoking a lot of marijuana, and there was indeed a strong smell indicating its presence. They were so peaceful and seemed to always be happy and having fun though, and a few of us joked that we would just stay in Mbour and become a member of the Baye Fall.
Monday afternoon we went to downtown Mbour on horse drawn carriages. There aren’t any buses or car rapides in Mbour, but there are tons of horse drawn carriages. These carriages are essentially just one giant wooden board put on top of two wheels. I felt like I was going to fall off several different times. We were quite the spectacle: a bunch of toubabs on a horse drawn carriage. A few people even took pictures of us. We went to the “coming of the fishermen” which apparently is a big deal… Once a month a bunch of fishing boats come to the port of Mbour to drop off the fish they have caught. Anyway, I could smell this place way before even arriving. I don’t know why I didn’t realize that the place would reek of fish before getting there, but I was quickly wanted to kick myself for it because the smell that I dislike most is the smell of fish. In addition to the smell being stronger than I ever imagined possible, you could actually taste fish in the air. When I looked at the ground, all I could see was all the fish guts and skeletons blanketing the ground. I literally had to focus all of my energy on not gagging and/or throwing up, and I really thought I was going to lose it. I felt a little better when everyone else seemed to be having a similarly hard time. Unfortunately a man came up to us and decided to give us a tour of the market, stopping every ten feet to explain in depth each type of fish or boat. I must have looked really sick because at one point he asked me if we should take a break so I could sit down. I did not want to be rude and explain that the fish was just too overwhelming for me, so I pushed onward. Once we left the fish market/shore, I took one of the deepest breaths of my life.
On Wednesday morning, we toured Bandia, an animal reserve full of giraffes, zebras, monkeys, rhinos, impalas and birds. One of the first animals I saw was the same type of bird as Zazu from the Lion King. I yelled out, “Zazu!” and pointed at the bird, and our guide started laughing. “Oui! C’est Zazu!” When we stumbled upon a warthog, the guide just pointed and said “Pumba!” This of course is the name of the warthog character in the Lion King. I did not really know how to react to this man knowing all the names to the Lion King characters. It probably means that Americans and/or Europeans come to the Bandia Reserve shouting the names of all the characters in relation to the animals. Needless to say, I found it pretty funny.
Thursday we toured the Delta region in Senegal. It somehow took us three hours to get there by van (it was only supposed to take about an hour). It was interesting to see some of the smaller villages, but at the same time somewhat awkward. I’m all for local tourism or avoiding the major typically touristy cities, but something about going and walking through these villages did not settle well with me. Here we are, a group of Americans, walking through a village that would otherwise be minding its own business. Our guide tried to encourage us to take pictures, but somehow taking pictures of people in their daily lives seemed very patronizing to me. I know that I would not want a group of foreigners disturbing the peace in my village and snapping photos of me as though I were some kind of prop or attraction. One man came up to me and asked me what my favorite part of the village was. I replied that I liked all the baobabs, because they do not exist in the United States. Upon hearing this, the man insisted that I take baobab fruits/seeds with me and start a colony in the US. I tried to explain that this was illegal, but he then repeatedly told me that there was no way that Obama would outlaw baobabs. Then I tried to explain biodiversity and how baobabs would interrupt the natural species of plants and animals in North America. Then he told me that I was just close-minded for believing that. We ended the conversation by agreeing to disagree. On the way back to Mbour we passed a group of kids playing what seemed to be tag or some kind of running around game. When we got closer we saw that the person who was “it” was actually a boy running around with a potato sack on his head holding – I kid you not – two machetes. He kept banging them together and running around chasing the other kids. Meanwhile, our guide just laughed and waved to them, not noticing our mortified faces.
The culture and behavior of people differed tremendously from Dakar to Mbour. I can’t help but think of the analogy that Dakar is to Senegal what Chicago is to the State of Illinois; people in Chicago act much differently than people in downstate Illinois, just like how people in Dakar have different mannerisms than the rest of Senegal. During orientation week, we were taught that the Senegalese have the concept of “Teranga,” or hospitality. This seemed like a very positive thing during orientation, but now that I have really experienced “Teranga” I can say that it is really overwhelming. Sometimes (most of the time) I really like my space, and I do not feel like having a conversation with every person I pass on the road. Also, people can be really pushy. The whole idea that “everything belongs to everyone” seems to be abused when random people come up to me on the street and say “Give me 100 Francs”. Since there is no real concept of private property here, people did not seem to have a problem with just walking into our backyard and sitting down and talking to us. I had a hard time dealing with this at first, especially when some random guy just decided to take a nap under one of the trees of the backyard for the entire afternoon. By the end of the week, I didn’t find it surprising when a person I had never seen before was standing in my backyard asking for a glass of water. Also, gender roles were very apparent in Mbour. Women were generally nowhere to be found, while men were always hanging out in the beach and the streets. Polygamy is legal in Senegal, which means that men can have multiple wives (although a maximum of four) but women can only have one husband. This has its roots in Islam, but I can’t help but wonder how a country like Senegal expects to develop and achieve gender equality if practices like this exist. Simply judging from how most of the men on the beach acted towards us, it is obvious that there is a serious lack of respect for women. I do not find this too surprising, but it still is upsetting. In sum, I feel that it was a very worthwhile break. Leaving Dakar and going to a more remote part of Senegal was much more of an educational experience than anything I have learned in a classroom.
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