I concluded the in-field section of my research today by attending an actual groupement meeting. This one took place at dusk, in a warehouse, at the ocean's edge. 112 local fishing women attended the meeting, sprawling across chairs, on the floor, on top of tables, standing, sitting, lying down.

One room. Much yelling. Several women turned to face Mecca at different points during the meeting and proceeded to engage in their entire evening prayer process. A woman next to me in green took to banging the table she sat on whenever a statement did not particularly please her. Yaram Fall - my connection to the organization, and the orchestrator of the evening's events - expertly navigated the room, weaving from group to group gathering comments from smaller voices. The majority of women was not listening a majority of the time. This did not seem to bother anyone. Suddenly, a chorus of "waaw!"s errupted ("yes!"s) and a new city-wide committee of transformatrices was ordained. Yaram looked releived and the rest of the women looked towards the door. (Dinner awaits back in each of their houses).


On the way home, Yaram and I stop to talk with a neighbor. We exchange salutations in Wolof: Peace be with you! (And also with you)
How are you? (Wonderful)
And your family? (At home.)
And your day? (Peace only.)
Thanks be to God! And your husband? (I don't have one.)
*GASP*
(not a surprising reaction...but it's funny in this case because: )
YESTERDAY YOU SAID YOU HAD ONE!

Oooh...caught in my own little game by Yaram! My rule recently, for safety's sake, has been to tell all questioning men that I have a husband. I let my guard down with women, however, and tend to vary in my response, depending on the situation. In this case, I had a witness to yesterday's lie (told to a too-friendly man) listening in on today's truth.
Thankfully, Yaram understood and actually thought my responses were both humorous and probably necessary. She explained everything to the Wolof-speaking neighbor and we three giggled. As we left the scene, Yaram leaned over and said
"My friend just said that you seem Senegalese."
I laughed and replied that it probably had to do with my bubu (I wore a bright turquoise bubu today in order to "blend in" at the meeting)
She replied: "Deedeet. Ce n'est pas les vêtements. Senegalaise nga."
(No. It's not your clothing...You're Senegalese.)

That might be the best compliment I've received, to date, in Senegal.

(and I tried to keep it fresh in my mind as I walked 15 blocks home showered by kissing noises and shouts of "Toubab!!!!" Toubab = white person. Usually mockingly screamed by children, at anyone lighter skinned than they.)

Thanksgiving: Senegal style

10:00am Stare dubiously at single gas flame intended to cook all of Thanksgiving feast.
10:30am Pie production begins
11:30am Pie tins do not exist in St.Louis.
1:00pm Our dinner is still alive and well in its coop
2:45pm Dinner takes its last breath.
3:00pm Binta makes miraculous stuffing! Kitchen starts to smell like home.
3:15pm Dinner has cancer. Ben says: "This chicken has a tumor...Do we eat cancerous animals? I mean...if I had a tumor, would you cut it off and eat me?"
3:20 False alarm. Tumor was actually Dinner's stomach.
3:30 Carnage/Biology Lesson
3:35 Lots more respect for 'Butterball'
4:00 Root mash manages to pull through with pumpkin pie-type flavor. Plus three points.
5:30 Construction of make-shift oven, using soup pot and three forks. Dinner re-named 'Tripod Bob' (Stare doubtfully once more at single gas flame.)
5:45 Dance Party (girls only. Ben takes a breather. Too much carnage.)
7:30 Tripod Bob smells goooooood. Looks good too.
7:45 Family Picture!
8:00 Dinner is served.

End product: A beautifully done herb chicken (slightly smokey in flavor), spiced root mash, stuffing, salad (wow, in Senegal?), gravy, green bean casserole, pie, and 4 very full, very pleased Toubabs.


Happy Thanksgiving!

Every night and every morning, children ring my doorbell. They wear tattered clothing and carry their empty tomato cans, asking for money, water, bread...anything. If we don't respond, they push their eyes and fingers up against our first-floor windows. They yell inside at us, talk to us, mock us, or simply repeat soft phrases in Wolof over and over.
My response varies with my mood. As a rule, however, I do not give to these children. They are a part of the Talibé, a small force of young boys who - in theory - are gathering donations for Islamic school. In reality, they are children who are beaten every evening if they do not bring back enough money (usually 200 cfa, or 40 cents) to their Marabout. Most have been sexually abused by men with money. Families see the Talibé as a way to teach their sons the Koran while getting them out of rural villages. Many never hear the ugly side of the story. Others still consider it better than not learning the Koran at all.
Somewhere inside of me, I think: If the system didn't generate money, it wouldn't exist. So I don't give. My brain is fine with the decision.
My heart, on the other hand, feels every knock on our door and every ring of our doorbell. My eyes may seem cold as I walk down the street, avoiding the pleading stares of young boys, but I can't really fool myself. I care. A lot. I can't turn that off...and a part of me wants to give these boys water or bread...another part knows that my roomates would not appreciate the response that would generate (nor would I, really...)
I read a story once about a priest being presented with a young boy who was a runaway and convict. The priest spent all night pouring over his Bible, trying to decide what to do with the boy. In the morning, the authorities came and took the boy away to be executed. The priest then knew somehow that the boy was, in fact, God. He would have known sooner had he put down his book and looked into the boy's eyes.
My head is buried in my studies right now...

The local gossip:

Ladies and Gentlemen, hide your flocks.
This morning, a taxi slowed to a crawl in the middle of a busy St.Louis street. An unidentified passenger exited the vehicle, seized a nearby goat (adult, male, beige and ivory, last seen grazing), thrust it horns-first into the back of the taxi, and sped off. Local authorities have contacted radios with the message, which is now being broadcast across Northern Senegal.

Can you hear me now? Baxhna!
Last Wednesday evening, I found myself in one of those very interesting situations in life... This time? A Mauritanian cell phone smuggling scandle. To my surprise, I was in the very same car as a heap of Motorola cellphones who were trying to make their way from Mauritania into Senegal via a small black suitcase (what a fun place for a very real cliché). The border patrol was thrilled to find the cell phones, and even more thrilled at the monetary prospect they posed. Two and a half hours, one dinner, and lots of money exchanging later, the cell phones got their wish and were set free to roam Senegal (oooh bad pun). The guards got an unexpected bonus, and I learned how 'supple' the senegalese legal system is. My advisor (who happened to be party to this whole ordeal) explained to me that everything in Senegal is quite negotiable. (Oui, comme je vois...)
I wish I could tell you that part of this adventure involved actually going to Mauritania, however all attempts on my part to hop a pirogue across the river into foreign land proved futile.

What was I doing in a car full of smuggled goods?
In fact, I was in the process of interviewing rural Senegalese groupement members who live near the border. That day, I met:

• A Mauritanian refugee, now vice president of her groupement:

"We must reinforce ourselves, we women, integrating ourselves into the development of Senegal, and not behind it."

• Katy Cissé, a girl who started her own groupement at the age of 17 :

"This is why I formed the group: I left school for my parents; I came to work with them in the fields. I was alone, I couldn't work; so I formed a groupement to bring others together with me, to regroup them, to give them a style of life."

• A 56 year old women who firmly stated:

"Men used to be in our groupement, but they never paid their dues on time! They would use their loans to either eat or buy another wife. They are not just. They can never really be part of Senegal's development. Not how they are now."

• ...I also met my advisor's friend who teaches judo and sells cell phones on the side. On this day, he traveled to Mauritania...(see above.)

I have held 31 interviews in the past two weeks in French and Wolof (translation necessary at times...all the more fun!). These interviews have spanned economic specialists, NGO managers, and groupement founders. The majority, however, have been with hard-working rural women with big ideas and incredible ingenuity. I am in awe of the Senegalese farmer right now - she is, very truly, the one that keeps this nation going. My research originally centered around whether or not microfinancing works in rural Senegal: particularly what motivates people to pay back (or not pay back) a loan. That question has become null and void. Groupements will ALWAYS pay back their loans. (As banking goes, these rural villages, even while strapped for resources, have perfect loan histories.)

My research now examines the microfinanced groupement's role in Senegal's development. If my results so far are any indication, it's pretty exciting. These women know how to ORGANIZE! (As a dabbler in mass-organization, I stand stunned by their efficiency and drive.) I now understand why Project Hunger moved all their Senegalese offices into rural areas, working solely with groupements: the groupements get things done in this country. School house needs building? Check. No electricity in the village? They will petition for a loan-matching partner. Bad sanitation? They will hold seminars to educate local families, then will mobilize the community to seek new latrines.

Next up? Spending some evenings with a groupement of fisherwomen down by the wharf. I hope my results will smell as good as my clothes...

Once upon a time...
On the eve of three weeks of self-directed research, I woke up at 8am, knowing only that by 9am I would be at a Shell station, suitcase in hand, and that by that evening, inchalla, I would be in St. Louis with a roof over my head. Little did I know, the trip would go seamlessly (sauf a minor car accident...just a scrape and some exchanged, very pointed alxamdulillas between our chaufeur and the other) and that by that evening I would find myself with a beautiful roof over my head, tile under my feet (white tile!!!) and the regional manager of the Hunger Project, (who works exclusively with rural women's groupements in developing self-sustaining micro-credit systems) as my landlord and project advisor.

(...sometimes things just work in Senegal.)

I spent this morning sitting on a stool across from Khady (a maid at the Samb house). I washed my clothes in two buckets. She cut onions and potatoes into bowls. We exchanged Wolof and French and English. She wanted to know how to say 'partir' in english (leave, to go). With this bit of knowledge, she called each family member in by name, then dismissed them.
Bachir? LEAVE!
Maam? LEAVE!
Lamine? LEAVE!
She laughed and cackled and cried, wiping her smiling tears with diced-onion-covered hands. For a few moments, she overcame her position as Khady, the maid, who responds to every call of every member of the family. She became Khady, the playful, but fed-up woman, finally expressing her wish (albeit in another language) for some peace and quiet.
No one did leave, as no one understood the order, but she winked and I giggled. I went back to scrubbing, and she to cutting. I wonder if that wish will ever make it into Wolof.

Uffda! (No, Mrs.Null, that's not a swear word...but my Grandma does say it all the time.)
I do forget sometimes that this is not only my first living outside the US, but also my first time living in a big city. Since coming here, Senegal has certainly taught me the hard way about citylife.

Groping? Check.
Indecent Exposure? Check
Theft? Nearly Check. (I yanked my belongings back and yelled at him 'til he ran away. Kind of a surprise reaction on my part...but it worked.)

I'm second-guessing including this as an entry right now, but, no, I think it needs to stay. This is just as real, just as relevant as my thousands of other beautiful moments here.

It's true that I am jumpier in Sénégal. I think this new jumpiness is 3-fold:

1. The above-mentioned incidents most certainly factor in
2. Anytime it feels like there is a bug on me...there generally is. And it's usually bigger than anything I've ever seen in the states...
3. Oh yes, and I'm taking a hallucinogenic malaria medication. Generally this has translated into fun, vivid dreams, but sometimes it gets a bit out of control and blurs that middle-of-the-night line between dream and reality. A little scary.

So, I now sit in a cyber, heart still thumping from the near-robbing that took place just twenty minutes and three blocks ago. I'm trying to decide where this blog entry wants to go...

• Another soothing memory of playing with the Samb children? (Bébé Chiekh has taken to falling asleep in my arms every other night while we watch the rest of the family watching a Brazillian soap-opera)
• An anecdote about the man sitting next to me wearing a knit winter hat? (this is funnier when seen from the eyes of a girl who sleeps every night, sans blankets, with a fan pointed directly at her on high)
• The inspiring interview I had this morning with the director of the Centre Africain de L'Entrepreneuriat Feminin?
• or...

...hmmm... maybe I'll just say that if you're reading this blog I probably love you very much and am excited to see you again. Yesterday and Tomorrow I will think about how little time I have in Senegal, how much I have yet to learn/see/do...But Today I'll let myself sit with the thought that I do miss home a bit.

I do look forward to feeling safe walking down a street... and I do look forward to saying goodbye to the bugs.

Today feels very, very familiar, a little like Thanksgiving.
Ramadan is over (the moon told us last night.), and today we celebrate Korité.

Morning. The family communes, sleepy-eyed, on the terrace, where Maam pours each of us heaping portions of chilled lait-caillé and steaming millett.

Women don their pagnes and the men their bubus. Heads were shaved or tressed last night (quick diversion tactics saved my scalp...my fine blond hair tends to react rather wimpily to the braiding process).

I sit with the other teenaged and twenty-something women, peeling and dicing onions, carrots, turnips, and garlic. There are no cutting boards. I dice three onions, a carrot and a turnip in my hand.

I spy a bloodied chunk of paper the size of and shape of several bowling balls wrapped for christmas. Fresh sheep.

Lunch is an overflowing platter of color. Pickles, eggs, bright green spicy peppers, crimson sausages, water chestnuts (to which "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" (my new favorite book) just paid a lovely tribute.), onions and garlic, the afore-mentioned sheep, and as always, a bed of rice.

Youssour Ndou (famous Senegalese singer) and glass bottles of cool Coca Cola accompany the afternoon. Alia and I feel festive and buy the family cookies from a nearby boutique.

and now... a pause. The world catches its breath and examines its too-full stomach. I'm reminded of the post-Thanksgiving feast time when the family disperses...some to wash dishes, some to take walks, some to fall asleep in their mothers laps, some to sit silently and watch.
(...and some to quickly document the experience.)