But the trip. I'll try to summarize our activities as briefly as I can, though I already know this post is going to be loooong. Fasten your seatbelts.
We left the WARC at 7 AM on Wednesday morning and started our slow journey South towards the Saloum Delta. The drive was wild- once out of Dakar the scenery changed dramatically. We passed salt marshes and large desert like expanses, as well as stretches of grassland dotted with huge, gnarly baobabs and tall palm trees. We drove through smaller towns as well as past villages, sometimes as small as just a few huts. (Yup. Huts. With thatched roofs and donkeys and goats running around and everything.)
We stopped for lunch in Sokone, where Professor Sene was born and raised, and where his family still lives today. His brother is the mayor of Sokone, and though he wasn't in town, he let us eat and rest for a couple hours at his gorgeous house. Below- Professor Sene addressing our group and introducing us to his family, a bunch of girls chilling on mats before lunch, and watermelon with Lisa and Claire in front, and Sean, myself, and Rachel in back. Watermelon obviously lead to seed spitting contests- I held the lead for a long while til Superman Sean spat one halfway to Toubacouta and we called it a day.
We poked around the Sokone market before leaving town, which was WONDERFUL! The main difference between le marché in Dakar vs. Sokone was the lack of obnoxious street vendors in the latter. In Dakar, as many as 5 or 6 vendors will follow you around literally for an hour, pointing out likely stalls and offering ridiculously inflated prices, no matter that you never asked for their help. "I'm your friend, lady!" they'll say- if you choose to ignore them, they often go so far as to ask you why you hate all Senegalese people or why you're racist. In Sokone, I was left peacefully alone to browse the stalls, and ended up buying 6 meters of absolutely beautiful fabric for 4000 CFA, about $9 American.
En route to Toubacouta from Sokone we spotted a soccer game on the side of the road and convinced Waly to let us get off the buses to take a peek. Reggaeton music was blasting from loudspeakers, and it was generally a good time. Photo below.
A lot of the roads were absolutely terrible. Though Toubacouta is only _____ km from Dakar, we didn't arrive until around 5 PM. We did make a couple stops, but the drive was telling of the difficulty of travel in this country. One of our buses got stuck in the mud a little ways down the road from the hotel, and we had to get out and push! We finally arrived at our hotel, which was beautiful. I shared a small bungalow with Rachel and Rebecca, who are great, and the group spent the rest of the evening in the pool and eating dinner.
On Thursday, we met up with 5 or 6 Senegalese students from Toubacouta who ended up accompanying us on a lot of our activities over the next few days, and then spent the day touring Toubacouta and some of the neighboring villages. We met with the Prefect de Toubacouta, an official appointed by President Abdoulaye Wade to oversee Toubacouta and many surrounding villages. We also met with le President de la Communauté Rurale, a man elected by the people (all Senegalese citizens over 18) in the same district.
We visited la poste de santé (health center) in Toubacouta, which was a real shocker. There was one nurse, one midwife, and four other assistants to serve the 9000 inhabitants of the district of Toubacouta. The poste had an ambulance, but it hadn't been working for over a year. It was stocked minimally with medications and supplies, but trips to Dakar to restock are only made infrequently. Also, there's a huge problem nationwide with vaccinations and other medications which need to be kept cold- refridgerated trucks aren't exactly common here, and once these supplies are delivered, frequent power outages make it nearly impossible to keep them cold. Lastly, the roads in the district are so poor that seriously sick people often can't make the trip to the poste, especially after a heavy rain. It had rained the night before we visited, and the nurse explained that he would be traveling himself to the villages in the afternoon so that he could care for sick who might not have the means to get to the poste.
In the afternoon we drove to a village called Soukouta and met with a women's group based in that village. With a small initial grant, the group had undertaken projects that yielded some profit, and had eventually saved enough to start a self-run bank in the village that gave micro-loans to members of the community. Super awesome! They are currently focusing on replanting mangroves in the delta, which we actually got to help them with the following day.
After meeting with the women's group, we drove to a village called Ndoumboudj (say that 5x fast) to visit a cas de santé (Mom- literally a "health hut" :-). Le cas de santé represents health care on a smaller scale than the poste de santé in Toubacouta. The hut had only one room, and only two volunteers. Neither had any official medical training, and the hut was stocked only with very basic medicine for ailments like fever, pain, and diarrhea. Many mid-sized Senegalese villages have un cas de santé, though villagers with more serious sicknesses must travel to la poste in Toubacouta, the regional hospital in Kaolack, or even all the way to Dakar.
Below are some pictures from Ndoumboudj- Olivia and some locals sitting under the village's arbre de palabre, or discussion tree. Many of the villages had big trees like these, with roughly hewn tables and benches under their branches. Local disputes are discussed here, and no one leaves the table until the group reaches a consensus. Next we have Jasper and Waly outside of the cas de santé, some outside the cas, and a shot of a hut and a donkey.
After leaving Ndoumboudj, we drove right to the border of the Gambia, just so that we could all say we'd been to the Gambia. It was great- just across the border everyone spoke English, and I went to the bathroom in a police station and saw a prisoner in a cage! (Seriously.) Below is the physical barrier between the two countries, and Rachel and Rebecca, my roommates, leaning over the dividing line.
On our schedules for that night, all that was written was "Séance de lutte traditionnelle." (Traditional wrestling.) We started off in the buses, singing songs lead by our Senegalese student guides all the way, with NO IDEA what we were in for. We drove out into the middle of a field and parked on one side of a tall concrete wall. We walked through the gate and all stopped dead with our mouths hanging open. I was overwhelmed by the stench of sweat in the air, as well as the sound of a woman nearly screaming songs in Wolof over the microphone to the beat of 6 or 7 drummers. There were around 600 people sitting and standing, but mostly dancing around a sandy clearing lit only by two naked light bulbs hanging on a string and one long flickering fluorescent bulb.
In the clearing were several dozen extremely muscle bound Senegalese men, most of them wearing brightly colored thongs, strutting around, dancing, yelling, pouring gris-gris (good luck water, basically,) down their barely-there bottoms, and pounding their chests. In amongst the strutters were pairs actually wrestling- they would face each other and take a football lineman stance, then start smacking each other on the head until one got aggravated enough to really grab the other one. No kicking or punching was allowed, so pairs of men would struggle, trying to push and pull the other to the ground. The first to fall lost. Pairs of wrestlers frequently crashed into the audience, and audience members leapt into the ring every other minute to dispute wins, losses, and unfair match ups with the referees.
It was one of the most wildly unfamiliar sights I have ever seen, I'll never forget it. My camera's flash wasn't strong enough to get many good pictures, so you'll have to use your imaginations a bit. Below is one lutteur strutting his stuff in the ring. This was a pretty typical uniform, minus the shorts. Next we've got a wrestler who would sit about 5 feet from me when he wasn't wresting or strutting- we called him Jane Fonda, which sounds a lot like Djay Funday, (probably not spelled right,) which means "big booty" in Wolof. Jane Fonda did, indeed, have a massive booty. He actually ended up winning the whole tournament! Under Jane Fonda is a boy who kept showing off his dance moves, and in the background two lutteurs mid combat. Sort of hard to make out, I know. Lastly we've got the official lutte drummers, who beat those drums the entire night. They were amazing.
Oooooookay. I've been working on this post for a couple hours now, and I'm only on day 2. My fingers are bloody stumps from typing, so I think I'll finish tomorrow, but enjoy the pictures from the rest of the trip and I'll 'splain tomorrow.
Jane Fonda wrestling? Triangulated bathrooms - love it. Lotsa fabric?
ReplyDeleteAll good - keep going!
Love-
Hannah
So, what are those other photos of? Let us know, let us know!!
ReplyDeleteLove
Mom