Happy Halloween! We will celebrate the day with words starting in ‘H’

Hypocrisy.
I am a hypocrite, and I am aware of it.
Example! I think microfinance is an amazing tool that has the capacity to bring aid to impoverished communities. I also think that humans are doing some pretty destructive living here on Earth, and the closer they get to what we call "civilization", the worse it gets. The farther, more remote villages here in Senegal (albeit, those with fewer medical facilities, schools, and western influence) also seem to have the healthiest relationship with the earth. Their populations flux with the natural shifts in the earth's capacity to support them. Yes. That means they die sometimes.

...so should these communities be offered the medical resources and educational tools that might come from a fuelled economy? (resources that I have happily enjoyed the luxury of all my life...)

...should these villages be 'protected' from outside influence...purposefully left alone with their 'harmonious' earthly living (natural...meaning they die early and often but sometimes not til they have seen that fourth generation)

...and who am I to be making these decisions? As of now, it seems NGOs and money-wielding governmental organizations are making these calls... and they are some pretty big ones. I am lost on the issue...decidedly hypocritical. I'm working on it.

I came to Senegal ready to experience poverty. (I think in my head I translated that to sickness, sadness, and broken families). I have yet to see that poverty. Yes, people are sick, but I am too and I've learned that you get pretty accustomed to it. The life expectancy is younger, but then again people seem to spend a lot more time laughing and drinking tea together than sitting in front of glowing computer screen (the author is blushing in acknowledgement of another point of hypocrisy). Families are not broken. No, they are stronger than most American families I have encountered. Life is very, very joyous here...especially in villages.

So how do I feel about foreign aid? What do I think of the Peace Corps? And microfinance?
Well...I still like all of them. I like the heart and soul and purpose of them. I like the people involved in them and the feeling you get from working with them. I like the purpose they offer and the lives they unite. Do I like their outcomes?

What happens when you build a hospital near a village? Health.
What happens when you build electrical lines near a village? TV.





…and now a small Halloween tribute to my favourite girls:

Goblins alleycats witches on brooms!
Wind (men) in the trees singing scary tunes!
These are the things that are heard and seen…
in the dark of night on Halloween!

boo!

I write to you from the very European city of St.Louis. Looking out the shuttered window of this air conditioned cyber cafe, I see dusty red walls and second-story balconies. I'm reminded of Barcelona.

Just returned from my second village stay, this time in the Wolof village Keur Demba Kebe, 9km outside Thiès. Once again, a blur of contradictory experiences...

True Senegalese Teranga. Our oversized white bus (aptly named the 'Toubab'mobile) pulls into the center of the village, where we find every woman and child from the surrounding villages waiting to greet us. As we exit, cheers and laughter errupt; we are quickly led to a circle of benches. The seeming Queen Bee of the village orchestrates the shifting bodies of hundreds of villagers around 14 students. Under her flawless direction, we are soon packed in tight with smaller children filling the 'comort zone' spaces that we white students inadvertantly leave between us.

The village chief arrives. Flanked by two elders in fez and sunglasses, he delivers a hearty welcome while seated in a plastic lawnchair (an oft-coveted item in the villages. As a guest of honor, I was given my own lawnchair for the duration of my stay). "The village sees this as an opportunity to share with you and to learn from you", the chief says, "One day, our children will come to stay with your families." The women begin to cry and clap. "Thank you for coming."

My name is called. A woman across the circle runs to me and embraces me. Her smile is contagious. My little Wolof establishes that this beaming, blue and orange-clad woman with gold earrings and white, white teeth is Umi Ndong - my new mother.

At dinner time I eat not once, but three times, under the light of the stars and moon.

I initially gather with the elders around their bowl. It is too dark to see our dinner, but the taste is familiar: ceebu jen, (rice and fish... the national go-to dinner... the Senegalese equivalent of highly celebrated meatloaf). Just as I have eaten my fill, a woman yells "Ndaye Mbay!" (my new name). I obediently follow the cry, which has come from another dinner gathering. I am told to sit and eat, and I do. "Ndaye Mbay!" Another dinner, with another section of the ever-expanding family. One child stands next to this dinner crying and vomiting on himself. No visible response comes from the family, other than to hit the child when he gets too close to the bowl.

The village holds a dance and dresses the students in traditional Senegalese attire. We look very, very silly. I am wrapped in several miles of lime-green material. Head to toe. Then, along with the beating of drums, the cheers and suggestions of women and children, the laughter of fellowToubabs playing dress-up, and the orchestrations of the Queen Bee, I dance. Lumba lumba lumba la!

A trip to the field reveals a startling fact: my village grows all the produce that they consume and sell (peanuts, bissap, millett, limes...) in sand.

An afternoon is spent shade-hopping; tracking the suns movements by the movements of our woven mat as it follows the dark patch beneath a tree. The women sift through rice, carry buckets of water on their heads, wash laundry, pound millett, cook dinner, and shell peanuts - all with babies strapped to their backs. The young boys play with two marbles. A toddler dances. The men return from the fields with the goats and carts. All wait anxiously for the sun to finish setting so that the regae tape can be played on the portable radio while we break the fast with bread, tea, and bissap. A Ramadan day is coming to a close.

I didn't bring a time keeping device with me, instead I left it up to the family rythms to format my day. Village life is slow in a way that I haven't experienced since the summers of elementary school...On day one, each moment feels eternally long. The following days pass without warning or reason, far too quickly. Nothing ever 'happens' and nothing needs to; outbursts of laughter or the passing of a car punctuate the days.

Umi Ndong is one of the most incredible women I have met in Senegal. Radiant, intelligent, and eternally capable (3 vomiting children and a dinner to cook? No problem.), she spent her days slipping quickly and gently between daily activities...never hurrying, but always productive. She looked up often from her work to make eye contact with each of her children in the surrounding area: a non-verbal check-in. She would smile at me and thank the Lord for the day...for the dinner...for wellness...for my presence. Others couldn't help but gravitate towards her soulful, grounded way of being.

Umi cried as I left and I cried too. I gave her my earrings (which my mumsy in the U.S. gave me...somehow the exchange from mother to daughter to mother felt fitting. She looked beautiful in them.) She gave me a hand-sewn handkerchief and a peanut-corn cake.

Teranga. Alxamdulilla.

When discussing gender roles with with my Peul Bande father, I asked him:
"Are women good with money?"
"No, of course not."
"Who is in charge of the communal village collection system?"
"My wife! She is the president of the women's society"
"And what funded the new machinery in the peanut field?"
"The communal pot. The women decided to buy the machinery."
"And have the machines improved the condition of life here?"
"Yes.They have brought in more money."
"Are women good with money?"
"No. Women are not intelligent."

From November 7th to December 7th, I will be set free to roam Senegal in search of primary-source information on the topic of my choosing. Right now...leaning towards microfinance.
(Woah there! Talk about words that I would not have expected to come flying from my mouth...or out of my fingers, rather)

Before leaving for Senegal, I ran across a few lines of text highlighting Senegalese women's tendencies to set up miniature "insurance" systems within their social groups. Once a week, each woman puts a small percentage of the family's income into a communal pot. The pot is then given monthly to a family who needs it, the money rotating between the involved families over the course of a year. This system creates both a monetary safety blanket for families in crises, as well as a fund for possible familial business ventures.
What's so incredible about this system? From what I've heard from the locals, you can find a version of it in EVERY Senegalese setting - from Thiés to Etchwar, from towering cities to 12-hut villages - almost always run by the women.

In Boundou Kodi, (my Peul Bande village), it was the women's savings pot that had funded the new farm equipment that increased cultivating efficiency, in turn providing the means to send two of the children to school in Kedougou. Back with the Samb family in Dakar, it is the women's communal pot that will fund our upcoming baptism. (...as soon as Aunt Lefatou's baby is born. Can't give an exact date as it is culturaly inappropriate to ask. A roundabout questioning of when we might expect a baptism revealed that the due date may be soon!)
Self-starting microfinance lends power to otherwise dominated women. As in the above conversation, in rural settings, women are not seen as intelligent beings (and are treated as such).

I am not the only one intrigued by this... Le Centre Africain de L'Entrepreneurait Féminin (CAEF) has taken this idea and run with it, pairing these rural women's self-starting money know-how with small loans and Sénégal-specific economic education. The result: blossoming village-based businesses that promote commerce, health education (as demonstrated by a women's group that is using its proceeds to hold malaria-awareness block parties) and community.

Villages are learning self-sufficiency.
Women are taking advantage of their brainpower.
Children are sleeping under mosquito nets.

...and I'm getting excited.

(Have any knowledge on microfinance and impoverished nations? I'd love to talk to you!)

Allez Lions, Allez!!!
Invigorating - but bittersweet - afternoon at the stadium. Senegal vs. Mali.
Moving on to qualify for the World Cup requires both a win on our part and a loss for Togo. Thus, scanning across the half-packed stadium, (which seems to have been sized in a cookie-cutter fashion, more like the size that a national stadium "should be" and less like a relevant size for the smaller crowd of fans blessed with money and transportation to attend the matches), one sees a sea of red, yellow, and green jerseys, peppered with silver rectangle radios transmitting the most recent results of the Togo-Congo match.

The national anthem begins (here I find myself thinking of listening to our national anthem with Dad and the Vikings...lazy Sunday afternoons spent eating red pepper, shouting at the TV, and snoozing). I am struck by how ill-fit the song seems to be for Senegal. Strong, stoic, trumpet-laden, and with a thumping beat, it would have made John Philip Sousa proud. It seemed to only make the Senegalese crowd uneasy; about one in three people knew the words, and even then they only mumbled them half-heartedly. This surprised me. Generally in Senegal, you KNOW when someone likes a song, as she will demonstrate this for you via a loud sing-a-long or by busting out an mbalax dance in rythm to said piece. This fact holds true whether the song is live, on a radio, or on tv as the jingle for a butter commercial. (More on advertisements in another entry...) In conclusion, I feel like the national anthem has less to do with Senegal and more to do with the aftermath of french colonization. I'm waiting for the mbalax national anthem.
The game starts. The crowd is seated and multitasking. Eyes on the field, ears up to portable radio speakers, noses taking in the odors of bodies packed in, (3 bodies to every 2 seats in shady spots), hands clenching another's, mouths of christians, jews, and non-ramada-ing muslims chewing peanuts, oranges, and sweetbread.
Senegal Scores Once! Twice! The crowd leaps wildly to its feet. Drums pound out the mbalax I yearned for earlier. The scorer and his teammates pose flamboyantly for expectant cameras. A group of men circles together, fanning the center of the circle excitedly...my friend Maren looks concerned and wonders aloud whether they are trying to start a celebratory fire right there in the stadium. Further investigation reveals efforts to revive a woman who has fainted from heat, excitement, and - if I may interject a western
Ramadan-inspired opinion - dehydration. (During Ramadan, most Muslims will not eat or drink between sun-up and sun-down)

Excitement grows as radios transmit the news: Togo is behind by 3 points!
Halftime. Loaves of sweetbread distributed. Seats renegotiated. The crowd returns, anxious. Togo begins to regain lost ground. Without a radio of my own, I find my reactions to the game incongruous with those of the rest of the crowd. I cheer for a complicated play towards the end of the game - the rest of the crowd remains seated, mumbling. Togo has pulled ahead. Senegal scores again! No matter. Togo has won. Half the crowd is gone. The game continues.

Apologies for the sudden ending of the last entry - still adjusting to buying set amounts of internet time...

Goodness. I am overwhelmed by how much information flew out of my fingers in the last entry, and still further overwhelmed by how much still needs to be said. (Where were the details of the two village dances i attended? And that moment, floating on my back staring up at the water cascading over a cliff? And why did I bypass the ride ON TOP of a car rapide through the backroads of Africa???) I need to confess to you right now that many things - including important, life-changing, soul-shifting things - will be left out of this document. As much as I want to pull you into this experience ...every part of it ... I know that I can only provide a fleeting taste. Do savor it, as I certainly am.
A longer entry will have to wiat, as Ramadan started today and dinner will therefore be provided right at sundown to the famished masses of the Samb household. If I want a place at the bowl, I best run.

I've just had my happiest week, to date, in Senegal.
(You know you're a Colorado girl when... it takes a mountain top to make you feel like yourself. )

Senegal is much, much more beautiful than I have given it credit for. Both land and people. As our bus rolled away from the exhaust, bustle, and dirt of Dakar, a very different Senegal emerged:

• NATURE. Dr. Seuss-inspired fields of chunky baobabs, thick with bulbous fruit; baboons, pheasants, and warthogs scurry from their road-side basking spots; Colorado-like expanses of blue, blue sky big enough to watch three different storm systems tumble acoss; red rocks and electric green grass; mountain hikes each day leading up to enclosed tumbling cascades, mountain-top animist villages, or the biggest baobab in western Africa; mosquitos and bed bugs. (and itchy arms, legs, ankles, toes...)
• Thatched roof villages of no more than a few dozen huts pepper the valleys
• Women turn to one another, laughing and chatting, while ambling down a major road with 5-gallon bowls of peanuts balanced atop their heads
• Poverty...When it rains, the roof washes away, and there may or may not be money to fix it. When it doesn't, the crops stop growing, and there may or may not be money to buy other sources of nourishment. Not scary, just real.
• Self-Sustained lifestyles. (eat, wear, cook with, and play in what you grow and make.) Inspiring.
• Wandering into small market, I find myself surrounded by crowd pressing in toward the village's holy medicine man. Stocky, shirtless, hair sticking in every direction, covered in intertwining gris-gris (luck charms). He demonstrates his powers by slowly sharpening a sword then pretending to cut his own belly, neck, and eye with it. Suddenly a nail goes up his nose and he pauses to discuss the medicines he is selling.
• When all else fails, sing. Head, shoulders, knees and toes...Hore, ballawa, kopi, tepe (sung with the peul bonde tribe).
• When one is offered a hair braiding at 10:30 am, one might assume this will not interfere with an appointment at 4pm. This is not a safe assumption.
• Accepted into two new families, first a diallonke family in Kedougou: the chef de quartier, three wives, and 25 children. Renamed me Bintou Camara. First night, pouring rain drove a herd of us into the hut that I understood to be my bedroom for the evening. Two hours of laughing, photo-sharing, and exploration of language barriers...suddenly the lights are out and it is time for bed. Confused, I try to count the number of differing breath patterns present in the room in order to discern how many people are staying in the one-room hut. I find out in the morning that there were 7. 2 on my bed, 3 on the other, and my 50 year old mother and a 3 year old child on the floor. This was normal.
• Went with new aunt to baptism. 50 men sitting and praying on one end of a courtyard. 50 women chatting, singing, dancing, and shaving the newborn's head on the other. I am accepted and welcomed. Fed often. Smiled at. Invited to take photos. Suddenly the warm, smiling woman next to me (who had patiently explained all aspects of the baptism to me and often gave me reassuring squeezes of the hand...reminded me a lot of Ruth K!) takes a plate of yellow powder from a passing woman, presses her thumb into it, and smears it across me forehead. I have been blessed. Later, I am led into a back room and suddenly the newly shorn, now sleeping baby is in my arms. The mother smiles.
• Second family: Chef de village for the Peul Bonde tribe with four wives (two inherited after death of older brother) and ten children. Life here is non-stop, from dawn until well after dusk, and yet it moves at the slowest pace...inexplicable. We sit for hours. Every part of every meal can be directly traced back to the land

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