This is an ongoing conversation I've been having with my sister, Maryellen, on facebook. I thought some of you might be interested in my responses to her questions. I love you MaryEllen!
Maryellen: (asks me about school)
Me: My school is actually really easy. Sure, its in French, but I can speak French pretty easily now and I don't have to write too much. Writing in Fench is definitely more work. But they purposefully don't give us very much homework so that we can do a lot of learning outside of the classroom -on the street with the people. They know that we want to have time to learn about Senegalese culture. :-)
Maryellen: Thats good, whats the other launage your learning????
Me: Wolof. That's the language I'm learning. For a long time nobody ever wrote in Wolof. They only ever spoke it, but in the last couple hundred years it has been turned into a written language also. Its fun because its completely different from english, spanish, and french, which all have latin roots. Wolof uses some french words and some arabic words, but otherwise it has African roots. :-) I like it.
Maryellen: Thats cool :D does it sound really different? You'll have to speak it for me! I wanna hear it now. [...] So how are you? Like how is it when your just at home with your family?
Me: Well, I'm doing pretty well. At home with my host family, I'm constantly having to be careful not to do something that will offend them. Like, when they're eating around the communal bowl, I can't lean over to check and see if there is meat in the dish to see if I'm supposed to join them or if I should wait for another plate to be brought out for me that is vegetarian. Its hard figuring out what is expected and what is inappropriate, but when I remember to laugh at myself and joke along with the others, its a lot of fun. My host brother, LouLou, likes to tease me and joke around. Since I had a run-in with my family on Thursday about food and I mentioned that I was just checking to see if the communal bowl had protein, he will joke to me every meal, "so, is there enough protein on your plate?" or, "ooh, yum! look, its protein!" They just don't understand why I would be vegetarian, but I laugh with them because I understand that they're just playing. My host mom is nice, but when she gives suggestions it sounds like she's angry and yelling at you, so I have to remind myself every time she gets like that that she's not mad -its just her way of talking. A lot of the host mom's are like that here; its the culture. There are two two-year-olds who are constantly playing and laughing and crying and getting into trouble. I love them so much! We play all sorts of games together. There's also another host student here, Britta, from the US and she's really sweet, but we both do our own thing. Its good because that way we don't spend all our time talking in english together at home and, instead, are able to practice our French with the family. But she has a lot of fun playing with the kids, too. There are always a lot of people around. There are about 10 people currently living in our house and we'll usually have a few guests drop by for every meal. Sometimes, there'll be 15 of us eating together, and that's not weird here. Family is very important here, so my host mom lives with her grown children and their kids, the two-year-olds, and a couple of maids who do a lot of cleaning and make the meals with my host mom and sister. But my cousin Assane is my favorite because he helped me put up a mosquito net over my bed and laughs with me and is easier to talk to.
Maryellen: So your family seems nice! :D I wish I could meet them sometime. Why arent you supposed to lean over and see what if the dish has meat or not? So how much time do you spend at home and at school? Do all the kids and teens go to school everyday? And is there anyone my age in your host family? Do most people in Senegal go to college? What does your family do for a living? Do you have to do chores and what do you guys do for fun? -- Haha, that was a lot of questions :D
Me: I'm not supposed to lean over the dish because its considered rude. They expect me to wait until I'm called to eat and not be nosy about what everybody else is eating.
I spend a couple hours every morning at school before coming come for lunch for an hour or so. Then I go back to school again until 4:30 or 6:30 pm, depending on the day. I usually stay at school later to do homework and take advantage of the internet connection. Then I get home in time for dinner at 8:30. On the weekends, I go out and do different activities, but I hang out at home sometimes, either playing with the kids or talking with my family or doing homework. So, I spend a lot more time a school than at home.
Most all kids and teenagers go to school monday through friday, but there is a whole bunch of kids who live on the streets. They are called talibe and they beg because they have no parents taking care of them. Its complicated, but basically there is a fake religious leader called a marabout who is supposed to be taking care of them and teaching them the Coran, but instead of having the kids beg only around meal times and then calling them back to study, like they would have done in the villages in the past, he just takes advantage of the kids by making them bring back money to him in the evening. And they don't learn about their religion. Its sad. As for other kids, some of them work instead of going to school and even those who do go to school are sometimes in classes with 100 students for one teacher. The education system here is in a really bad state.
Nope, there is nobody your age in my family.
No, very few people are able to go to college. And even if they do go to college, the education is not as good as ours because the professors keep on going on strike because the government doesn't pay them regularly like its supposed to. The government doesn't work very well because it's corrupt. The politicians are greedy and the president is constantly changing the constitution so that he can have more power.
My host mom is retired. My host brother works at a bank and my host sisters stay at home and raise the kids. My host cousin is out of work, but that's pretty normal. 50% of the population here has no formal job. Many of those people work "informally" by selling fruit or books or towels or just about anything on the street, but a lot of those people just have no job. Its really troubling.
I don't have any chores because they kinda think of me as a guest and we have two maids. I take my clothes downstairs every wednesday so that the maids can handwash it all, hang it up to dry on the clothes lines to dry, and iron it before giving it back. My host mom will start cooking lunch at 10am in order to serve it at 1:30pm and the second maid is constantly sweeping with this little hand-held broom made of long, whispy bristles and scrubbing. So, there's a lot to be done, but I just keep my own room clean and, lately, have started washing my own bowl and spoon on the tub. The maids laughed when they saw me doing that for the first time, but I do it anyway because I know they like it and it makes me feel better.
For fun, I go surfing, talk to mom and dad on skype, go to the market with my friends, hang out and talk with my senegalese friend, make little trips out of the city, run errands, go to the beach... But my host brother and most other people go out clubbing on the weekends. We also go to concerts and other cultural events sometimes.
...
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Photos! Gorée Island, etc.
Sunset view from school.
Senegalese money: the CFA franc.
Gorée Island. Known for its historical role in the transatlantic slave trade.
A view of Gorée Island from the boat.
My hand over my first communal eating bowl experience in Senegal during orientation week. Let me say, my host family doesn't tend to go all out with this sort of hand-eating. Mostly they use spoons or forks, but if they do use their right hand (never the left) then it is usually for the fish and doesn't end up being quite as messy. :-)
Photos! Obama and Toubab Diallo
Obama icecream!
Yes We Can!!! This is in the neighborhood of Wakkam.
Megan and the amazing architecture at the artist colony in Toubab Diallo.
Toubab Diallo! *chorus of angels starts singing softly*
Me batiking in toubab diallo.
Photos! Bassari Region Photos Continued...
Itty-bitty goats!
Dindenfelo. This is a fairly large village with over 15,000 inhabitants, but its oftentimes difficult to draw a clear line between nature and town.
Megan, Ed, and our fabulous guide/my savior Jibi behind a waterfall.
Alfonso the monkey!!! (and my shoulder)
Alfonso!!! :-D He's got his eye on Megan's peanuts.
Photos! Our Trip to the Bassari Region
Megan, Kate, and I standing on a mushroom termite hill with our guide, Alfar, in the area surrounding Dindenfelo.
Kate, Ed, and I taking a quick reprieve on the way up "mountain."
A custard apple tree!!! This is for you, Pintos!
The whole crew at the top of a hike: Kate, Me, Megan, and Ed.
And welcome to our life: one week absolutely crammed full of peanut-butter. Mind you, this is even more hard-core than organic! This stuff is straight up; no sugar, salt or nothin! Yum! We ate the whole tub!
Just One Week of Many: Midterms, dispensary, and malaria.
This last week midterms crept up on me. Who knew that “une devoir,” literally translated as “homework” or “a project,” would turn out to be a straight up in-class essay about the history of Islamic confreries in Senegal and their relationship to politics and the development of the modern state?! (If you’re curious about that, by the way, you know who to ask. ☺ ) Add to that a French grammar exam on Monday and you’ve got yourself a whole lot of studying going on this week for what seems like the first time this semester. It feels good to be busy in a productive way. Of course, that’s the American in me speaking out in preference of productivity from amidst a cloud of the slower-paced Senegalese life-style.
Today I went back to a health clinic dispensary that I had worked in the Friday before vacation. To sum it up in three pretty words: abscesses, worms, and screaming children. (Make that four words.) Lets just say that a lack of hands leads to even novices jumping straight into cleaning and bandaging wounds –and you haven’t seen a real wound until you’ve started working in a Dakar dispensary where awful skin infections are the least of it and only the straight up stitches are saved for the trained nurses. I brought my friend Andy and he actually fainted, which is not altogether surprising considering the combination of overwhelming smells, sights, and emotions coursing through that little white room on a muggy Friday morning. Somehow, all of us working there manage to keep up a relatively jaunty air in the reprieves between the cries and screams.
To complete an already full day of bandaging, I took part in the organizing of the CIPFEM study session this evening wherein we helped the girls with their homework and then started a Dreams and Goals Collage project that we’re going to finish next week. It went really well, but I’m surprised I’m not already conked out asleep because it was an exhausting day.
Well, this weekend is looking to be equally academic with a Wolof test coming up on Monday and a Society Culture and Society paper due on Thursday. But I’ll be balancing that out with a little visit to a local market with my friend Soraya on Saturday and some playground climbing on Sunday with my rockclimbing withdrawals buddy Megan and an on looking Senegalese friend, Hassane, who I’m sure will be laughing at us the whole time!
Megan, by the way, has just been diagnosed with malaria, which is not as serious as it sounds. She’ll just be taking some extra medications for a while so help her get over the chest pains and fever. Since she is the first person in her host family to have ever had malaria, we’re thinking of having a little celebratory cake with little mosquitoes drawn on it! Personally, I want to be part of the cake decorating committee!
I love you guys! Take care of yourselves!
Love and hugs,
Jocelyn
Today I went back to a health clinic dispensary that I had worked in the Friday before vacation. To sum it up in three pretty words: abscesses, worms, and screaming children. (Make that four words.) Lets just say that a lack of hands leads to even novices jumping straight into cleaning and bandaging wounds –and you haven’t seen a real wound until you’ve started working in a Dakar dispensary where awful skin infections are the least of it and only the straight up stitches are saved for the trained nurses. I brought my friend Andy and he actually fainted, which is not altogether surprising considering the combination of overwhelming smells, sights, and emotions coursing through that little white room on a muggy Friday morning. Somehow, all of us working there manage to keep up a relatively jaunty air in the reprieves between the cries and screams.
To complete an already full day of bandaging, I took part in the organizing of the CIPFEM study session this evening wherein we helped the girls with their homework and then started a Dreams and Goals Collage project that we’re going to finish next week. It went really well, but I’m surprised I’m not already conked out asleep because it was an exhausting day.
Well, this weekend is looking to be equally academic with a Wolof test coming up on Monday and a Society Culture and Society paper due on Thursday. But I’ll be balancing that out with a little visit to a local market with my friend Soraya on Saturday and some playground climbing on Sunday with my rockclimbing withdrawals buddy Megan and an on looking Senegalese friend, Hassane, who I’m sure will be laughing at us the whole time!
Megan, by the way, has just been diagnosed with malaria, which is not as serious as it sounds. She’ll just be taking some extra medications for a while so help her get over the chest pains and fever. Since she is the first person in her host family to have ever had malaria, we’re thinking of having a little celebratory cake with little mosquitoes drawn on it! Personally, I want to be part of the cake decorating committee!
I love you guys! Take care of yourselves!
Love and hugs,
Jocelyn
Two Twenty-year-olds: Face to Face and Worlds Apart
There we are; two twenty-year-olds who are worlds apart and face to face, looking into each others’ eyes in the health center’s treatment room. I found him face down on the wet pavement a few hours before, the rain smattering over his dark frame –plastic sandals, khaki shirt, and raggedy black backpack. Is he dead?! His trembling stills my initial alarm and my pink umbrella serves as a beacon to the passing cars that halt and unload, their passengers crowding around. No one knows if he’s epileptic and everyone is using their cell phones to call for help, but the boy starts pushing himself to standing. Stumbling and haltingly, he rises and shuffles along the sidewalk, clutching his stomach as the crowd looks on fretfully and a man in white follows him to offer a supporting arm.
I end up accompanying the boy and this man in white to the nearest health clinic where I can do little more than provide a comforting hand on the shoulder and offer my gym towel as a makeshift hat for heat-retention. By the time he is allowed to see the doctor, he has regained enough energy to be able to explain his situation in a mumble of responses; he is a Guinean and knows no one in Dakar. He has no family and no connections. It becomes apparent that he collapsed out of exhaustion because his situation of unemployment and homelessness had prevented him from eating anything for two days. The nurse enters and is not happy to see him: “I know you,” she spits out in dismay. “You were here five months ago. I know this one, doctor. Last time I paid for his medicine, food, and bus fare back to the Guinean embassy, and here he is again! What are you doing back here? Why aren’t you with your family?!”
Guinea is in a state of utter chaos and political conflict wherein the police are shooting civilians in the street in reaction to some worker strikes a month-or-so back, so it comes as no surprise that a young man, disillusioned by pain and violence, would seek refuge in neighboring Senegal, with its reputation of political stability and its flourishing capital. But what does he find upon his arrival in Dakar?: a welcoming committee of fifty-percent unemployment and utter helplessness due to his lack of familial connections in a society where relatives are everything. Nonetheless, the nurse shouts, “You go back there to your family! This nice man [in white] has paid for your food and medicine, but you can’t stay here! If you come back I’ll have to call the police!”
What’s sad is that there are many more like this young man –many more refugees from political violence and societal disfuntioning. But the nurse is right; Dakar has too many problems of its own to truly aid this multitude of displaced, impoverished people. But what is even sadder is that one of these times, there might be nobody there to find that boy, and he might never get up.
So I stand there looking at this young man, knowing that there is nothing more I can do for him, knowing that the cycle of pain within which he is submerged is one that is not easily broken. I know that, in his eyes, I am an emblem of wealth and an embodiment of his unattainable dreams. All I can do is wish him luck from the bottom of my heart and go back to what I was doing before: walking to the expensive gym and back into my world of privilege and security. I leave the clinic of distress and black skin, finding my way to an arena of a slightly lighter complexion where hip-hop music booms and ipods abound. Looking around me, I feel oddly out of place.
~Oct 23, 2009
I end up accompanying the boy and this man in white to the nearest health clinic where I can do little more than provide a comforting hand on the shoulder and offer my gym towel as a makeshift hat for heat-retention. By the time he is allowed to see the doctor, he has regained enough energy to be able to explain his situation in a mumble of responses; he is a Guinean and knows no one in Dakar. He has no family and no connections. It becomes apparent that he collapsed out of exhaustion because his situation of unemployment and homelessness had prevented him from eating anything for two days. The nurse enters and is not happy to see him: “I know you,” she spits out in dismay. “You were here five months ago. I know this one, doctor. Last time I paid for his medicine, food, and bus fare back to the Guinean embassy, and here he is again! What are you doing back here? Why aren’t you with your family?!”
Guinea is in a state of utter chaos and political conflict wherein the police are shooting civilians in the street in reaction to some worker strikes a month-or-so back, so it comes as no surprise that a young man, disillusioned by pain and violence, would seek refuge in neighboring Senegal, with its reputation of political stability and its flourishing capital. But what does he find upon his arrival in Dakar?: a welcoming committee of fifty-percent unemployment and utter helplessness due to his lack of familial connections in a society where relatives are everything. Nonetheless, the nurse shouts, “You go back there to your family! This nice man [in white] has paid for your food and medicine, but you can’t stay here! If you come back I’ll have to call the police!”
What’s sad is that there are many more like this young man –many more refugees from political violence and societal disfuntioning. But the nurse is right; Dakar has too many problems of its own to truly aid this multitude of displaced, impoverished people. But what is even sadder is that one of these times, there might be nobody there to find that boy, and he might never get up.
So I stand there looking at this young man, knowing that there is nothing more I can do for him, knowing that the cycle of pain within which he is submerged is one that is not easily broken. I know that, in his eyes, I am an emblem of wealth and an embodiment of his unattainable dreams. All I can do is wish him luck from the bottom of my heart and go back to what I was doing before: walking to the expensive gym and back into my world of privilege and security. I leave the clinic of distress and black skin, finding my way to an arena of a slightly lighter complexion where hip-hop music booms and ipods abound. Looking around me, I feel oddly out of place.
~Oct 23, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Inspiring Reflections from Heather
This wonderful post is from my friend Heather's blog. In her own words, "My name is Heather and I will be living in Jinja, Uganda with Light Gives Heat this summer, doing my senior internship and having my eyes opened to a hope that doesn't make sense." Several elements from this entry resonate with me on a very deep level. She has agreed to let me share this with you:
What Heather expresses here concerning issues of being viewed as walking money by virtue of your skin tone and nationality applies to Senegal and the entire region as well. Many of us students here have received requests for financial assistance and more than one divorce has come about between American students and locals when the issue of green cards came to the surface. Honestly, you have to wonder why you're suddenly so desirable and popular in certain social contexts; I can tell you this, its not because they appreciate my intellectual capasity, because that hardly communicates through the mild language barrier. And it can't be by dress, because I'm grungy compared to the lovely ladies dressed to the nines who stroll down the dusty streets here. No, I am tubab, and thus I am a resource.
Regarding image and expectations, it is truthfully critical to walk into any experience with the least preconceived notions as possible. If you don't, then your job is to deconstruct them on site. I did not come to Africa expecting to find happiness gurus who could maintain eternal positivity in the face of poverty, but I certainly did have a certain notion of Africa as this incredibly "different," dare I hazard the word "exotic," locale. It is wonderfully to walk down the street these days and suddenly realize that I'm on another continent because, frankly, it doesn't seem that odd 99% of the time. Its not Africans and Foreigners here; it comes down to people -a bunch of people who happen to be in the same place at the same time, striving for something in life and seeking to connect with others through the process. Sure, I constantly run up against cultural differences but, as Heather says, people are people. It is so simple and yet so profound.
* * *
Below I have included my response to Heather's entry and her reactions thereafter:
Heather:
My last sunrise in Uganda threw amber-gold watercolor onto the clouds I love.
My friend Caitlin asked me to tell her the biggest thing I am taking away from my time here in Uganda. An inordinate number of souvenirs aside, there is a lot I am bringing back in my perspectives, my desires, and even my eating habits. I have grown immensely more comfortable with the person I am and confident that that person can not only survive, but even make a positive impact in the world. I have gained an unlikely tolerance for eating large amounts of food and drinking multiple sodas in one day. (I hope that I don’t suffer from cravings for carbonated, caffeinated sugar-water when I get back. I wouldn’t be surprised if I did.) I’ve gotten used to thinking in terms of acres, dry and wet seasons, tribal politics, and selling charcoal to pay for school fees.
But Caitlin asked for the biggest thing, the single greatest impact this small, beautiful country has had on me. It is a realization that came to me within my first two weeks here, yet it has continually shifted shapes and reasserted itself in unexpected ways. The simplest manifestation is this: people are people are people. The most obvious symptoms are the ones I recognized first. People here, like people in America, like (probably) most people on Earth, need food, want to care for their children, like to have nice clothes, and either are proud of the house they own or worry about paying rent. Oh, and they like to be happy. I think the difference here might be that most Ugandans don’t seem to depend on external circumstances to make them happy as much as Americans do. They don’t feel entitled to the material goods that are supposed to “give” them happiness; they may be discontent with their standard of living, but they decide to be happy with what they have. Women decorate the half of their one room house that is partitioned off as their living room as proudly as if it were a Victorian-age parlor. Children amuse themselves to no end by transforming junk into toys; some string and an old iron become a boat to tug around, and a bicycle tire rolling along the dusty ground is fun in and of itself.
On the other side of the coin, many Ugandans are by no means content with their lifestyle, as they will bluntly tell you; expecting you, as the almighty and rich mzungu, to enable them to become as materially blessed as you are. I will never be sure whether strangers I met wanted to talk to me because I’m white, because I’m a girl, because they think I have money, or because they were just being friendly. To a lesser extent, it has been hard not to be suspicious of the true motives of friends I have made here. If I were black, or if they knew I was poor, would they be as interested in me? There is no way to separate the quality of my experience here from the color of my skin.
In this way, as well as some others, many of my expectations and subconscious idealizations about Africa in general and Uganda in particular have been shattered, leaving the familiar knowledge that people are people. People in Uganda aren’t, as I longingly imagined, poverty-stricken gurus of how to live life happily with few possessions. I held this ideal as the object of my passion, love, and desire before I came here; if the ideal isn’t true, what do I love, what am I compassionate about, what do I desire to learn? The challenge, I have realized, is to allow the picturesque to fall apart, revealing a basic, common, real-as-murram-dirt humanity. The choice is exposed: do I continue to search for the pure, simple, poor yet happy Acholi widow on whom to bestow my love and hopes for the secret of joy? or do I love reality despite its unsatisfying and disillusioning flaws? I have chosen to love. The pain I feel at the idea of leaving this place in twelve hours is all-too-real evidence of this.
The challenge of loving reality in the face of crumbling, imaginary ideals has been both reassuring and disappointing. It means that there is no secret to happiness that cannot be found in my own life, in my own culture, because no such secret lives here in Africa. At the same time, I feel let down and lost because my search for how to live in joy without material possessions has hit a dead end. I can no longer strive for asceticism as the sole standard by which I should find true joy; no such standard exists.
Yet even this disappointment contains its own hope and the seed of a new challenge. If Africa does not hold all the answers, then maybe America has a few of its own. Maybe I can live the life that I long for within my own culture and country, not longing for some ideal environment within which I can easily find true contentment. At the same time, a new obstacle faces me. As some of you might know, I have tended to be overly critical and pessimistic towards the thriving American culture of consumerism. My justification for this was the juxtaposition of my country with that of the mystically simple joy in the face of difficulty I saw in Africa. That joy has indeed proved to be mystical, though a real, imperfect joy still exists here. However, I can no longer judge myself, my friends and family, and my culture against an imaginary standard. Try though I might, I cannot pretend that America fails to be strong against the allure of materialism while Africa succeeds. Like any serious relationship, true love exists when you choose to love the reality, not the ideal. I have learned to love the reality of Uganda. The hope I have found here is to learn to love the reality of America.
Apwoyo matek, Uganda. Amari bene wubibedo icwinya kareducu. Thank you, Uganda. I love you and you will be in my heart forever.
~Heather, from her blog The Greatest of These Is Love (9/15/09)
What Heather expresses here concerning issues of being viewed as walking money by virtue of your skin tone and nationality applies to Senegal and the entire region as well. Many of us students here have received requests for financial assistance and more than one divorce has come about between American students and locals when the issue of green cards came to the surface. Honestly, you have to wonder why you're suddenly so desirable and popular in certain social contexts; I can tell you this, its not because they appreciate my intellectual capasity, because that hardly communicates through the mild language barrier. And it can't be by dress, because I'm grungy compared to the lovely ladies dressed to the nines who stroll down the dusty streets here. No, I am tubab, and thus I am a resource.
Regarding image and expectations, it is truthfully critical to walk into any experience with the least preconceived notions as possible. If you don't, then your job is to deconstruct them on site. I did not come to Africa expecting to find happiness gurus who could maintain eternal positivity in the face of poverty, but I certainly did have a certain notion of Africa as this incredibly "different," dare I hazard the word "exotic," locale. It is wonderfully to walk down the street these days and suddenly realize that I'm on another continent because, frankly, it doesn't seem that odd 99% of the time. Its not Africans and Foreigners here; it comes down to people -a bunch of people who happen to be in the same place at the same time, striving for something in life and seeking to connect with others through the process. Sure, I constantly run up against cultural differences but, as Heather says, people are people. It is so simple and yet so profound.
* * *
Below I have included my response to Heather's entry and her reactions thereafter:
Heather, this is an absolutely beautiful that strikes a chord in me on so many levels. I hope you don't mind if I ask everybody reading my blog to please come and see this entry; it speaks volumes to what I hope to communicate little by little through my own entries.
How are you coming along in your project of learning to love America in all its imperfectness? What you say about breaking illusions as being the real process of learning is absolutely true.
Isn't it wonderful to know that we are all just like anybody else? And yet, so unique individually and culturally? The layers of difference and commonality are endless, enmeshed, and ever-shifting. Beauty incarnate.
Love,
Jocelyn
Heather:
thank you so much for letting me know what you think, jocelyn! you are welcome to share this post with anyone...a huge part of why i write is to help communicate what i learn about the world to people who maybe haven't had the chance to learn the same thing. i'm glad you like it. :)
i have had a really tough time learning to be back here and love america. it's been a little over a month, and i'm just now feeling like i'm on my feet again. (it didn't help that i only gave myself a week before school started.) i think that being out of this culture and country for three months has made it nearly impossible to ignore all of the things i didn't like about america in the first place. where before, i could put up with aspects of this culture that annoyed me, now i feel like they are glaring and unavoidable. things that i thought used to satisfy me don't anymore.
although that all sounds super doom-and-gloom, it's like a painful but good pruning. from this i'm learning what can truly satisfy me and make my life as fulfilling as it was this summer. i can have a fulfilling life here; it just means seeking out truly edifying habits and places, rather than numbing out on what my culture tells me is fun.
yes, one of the most humbling lessons and joyful truths is how absolutely human everyone is. it shatters any ideas that superiority or greater wisdom lies in one culture or another. when i find myself wanting to look down my nose at people who seem to be absorbed in materialism, i remember that many ugandans are just as proud and anxious to have and acquire possessions. once my lens of judgment has cracked and fallen away, i can truly appreciate the individual and simultaneously universal beauty in each person i meet, and it humbles me.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Outback Adventures & NGO Work
Blog blog blog!
I have a very good reason for not having written in my blog lately: last week was vacation so I was out in the middle of the boondocks, away from internet access, hiking through the savanna and jungle, visiting little villages and learning yet another local language: Pular. Where do I even start?! So much has happened:
Kate, Megan, Ed, and I made our way via Sept-place and bus to the furthest south-eastern corner of Senegal called the Bassari Region. We were the backpackers; the active bunch the group that was not going on the city-hopping tour around Senegal, nor the Mali trip forty hours away by bus, nor the cultural tours through Spain, Morocco, or Paris. We planned for dirt, sweat, and a whole lot of green because, when you’re living in a city like Dakar, fresh air and trees become first priority for vacation. Then there’s the allure of possibly finding climbing amid the sole rough terrain in all of Senegal and, oh yeah baby, we climbed the highest mountain in Senegal –all three-hundred and forty-something meters of it! On top of one of these mountains -- er, hills -- Megan and I did actually manage to find a patch of climbable rock and it was bliss. Fingers touching rock = heaven.
What else was there to find besides virgin patches of climbable roche?: waterfalls, caves, monkeys, and wasps. The first three were great, but the last one not so much. Amidst the call of baboons, the four of us and our two guides would set off up steep, jungly paths deeply reminiscent of northern Thailand trekking and the sweat would flow. Pausing for a breathtaking view of a cascade, majestically pouring over the verdure of a nearby cliff side, we would continue upwards, perhaps parting the foliage to find ourselves on a plateau with a small village of thatched huts, or maybe winding through with the river only to suddenly perceive the waterfall tumbling beneath us. Meditation came easily in this space, with the roar of water muting both the words of my companions and the murmurs of my mind. But then you have the wasps. They crept up on me as I rounded the corner, climbing this fabulous blocky riverbed rock, and swarmed Ed first. His cry was my warning call to remain still and relaxed –or as relaxed as you can be while still maintaining a firm hold on some juggy rock a few feet off of the ground…just far enough that you can’t reach safety without making a few moves. Ed got away with two stings, and I was saved by my favorite guide of all time, Jibi, who hazarded the wasps to put me on his shoulders and back me away and into safety. I came away with one sting on my arm and a few imperceptible ones on my fingertips. All I can say is that you’ve never been more keenly aware of a wasp than when you watch it hover over your arm hairs and fingertips, knowing that it has registered you as danger and wondering when it will decide to take action. I was lucky as hell, pardon my French, and Jibi didn’t even receive one sting during the rescue mission.
Okay, now you know about the wasps, but I have not appropriate emphasized the sweat. No, that’s an understatement; the SWEAT. Rivulets running down our arms without end -that was our lot for the first day of trekking on flat, un-shaded savanna terrain between the city of Kédougou and the village of Bandafassi. Why would we do this to ourselves? 1) We wanna walk. It felt so good to get my heart pumping again. 2) Who wants to pay for a Quatre-quatre car at 50,000 francs par jour (~$100)?!?! We are poor students. We definitely brought canned food to save on lunches and sterilized shower water so that we wouldn’t have to pay for the bottled stuff. When our guide, Alfar, found out about that, we suddenly started getting free breakfasts at all of the campements. Its good to be a starving student! But I digress; the SWEAT. I never knew the true significance of this word until I perspired my entire bodyweight over the course of three days on that baked, savanna road. The shaded jungle treks, with only demi-rivultes running along the brow and not-quite-so-soaked clothing, felt exceptionally mild on the following few days. Ah! It was good to have to pee again! And dad, your Elmer’s Glue sunblock is the nectar of the gods; t’aint any other goo that’ll stick in spite of those rivers of sweat! (PS Don’t worry peeps; we drank LOTS of water.)
Other highlights?...
Learning some traditional pottery-making impromptu with the women of a hill-top village. I have an open invite to come back, perhaps during my rural visit in three weeks, to learn from them. So cool.
Alfonso the ity-bity monkey at the Dindenfelo campement. You will see pictures of him later. Suffice to say that he actually put his little lips to the lip of some fine china in an attempt to steal come coffee from breakfast. Absolute cutie, little rascal, and wild animal all in one.
Peanuts! I’d never had a fresh peanut before this trip! Sure, I’d already realized the folly that is American peanuts. Pshaw! Those things are stale by the time they get to us. Real peanuts must be had in the country whose main export is peanuts. But in Dakar, I’d only had the grilled ones. Who knew that you ccould have them uncooked, with that lovely green flavor still embedded deep within? Since it is peanut season, every household that we stopped by offered us handfuls of peanuts fresh out of the ground. I found the peanut plants exceedingly interesting, with the peanuts as sorts of fungal-esk growths on the roots. I didn’t get to go out and pick peanuts with my buddies because I was feeling ill, but they got to get down and dirty, pulling up the stalks to uncover the root structures plein de cacahuetes – abundantly full of peanuts. These bundles of plants could be seen pilled on top of shade structures and unshelled peanuts were out drying in every yard. Peanuts were everywhere.
Anyhow, all in all it was a great trip. There is so much to be said, but you’ll have to pry those stories out of me later! Since I’ve been back in Dakar, I’ve become absolutely inundated in business and realized that I need to recover my internal balance. But aside from some mild kinks in the works, I’m really happy with what I’m doing here. I’ve buckled down and decided to study hard at Wolof. It’s getting to the point where I can actually carry on fragmented conversations, but conversations none-the-less. I was getting sick of getting through the lengthy intros only to have my conversant discover that I had nothing else to say and little else that I could understand. I’m doing a lot of work with my internship co-coordinating CIPFEM, the student-founded NGO providing a tutoring and activities program for twenty girls here in Dakar. The girls are absolutely fabulous and we’ve partnered each of them up with a mentor, which is working out wonderfully. One of our volunteers has started teaching them karate and we have plans for doing goals and dreams collages, a soccer game, a leadership project for the older gals so that they can take initiative and teach the other girls, and many many other things. We’re hoping to bring in a local artist, Kan-si, to do a project with them, which I’m really excited about. This Friday we’re hosting a family orientation event so that we can help inculcate greater understanding in the goals of our organization and get to know them. Doing this organizing while simultaneously navigating multicultural interactions between local volunteers, student volunteers, and the girls themselves is proving a real learning experience. There are so many internal needs of this organization to be balanced at once, such as not imposing American values on the girls through our choice of tutoring activities and not transgressing the local volunteers’ need for autodetermination, which has repercussions on a national level, by overlooking their input. We cannot contribute to the persistence of relations of inequality and residual colonial relations by implementing our own ideas without respecting their need for a voice and choice. It is that negation of their choices that perpetuates the colonial mindset in the first place –and even well-meaning NGOs can take part in that continual subjugation of African countries by overlooking the local voices. I refuse to take part in that, but it is a tangled web to navigate in practice.
Well, I’ll be writing more later. Love to everybody!
Peace and hugs,
Jocelyn Price
I have a very good reason for not having written in my blog lately: last week was vacation so I was out in the middle of the boondocks, away from internet access, hiking through the savanna and jungle, visiting little villages and learning yet another local language: Pular. Where do I even start?! So much has happened:
Kate, Megan, Ed, and I made our way via Sept-place and bus to the furthest south-eastern corner of Senegal called the Bassari Region. We were the backpackers; the active bunch the group that was not going on the city-hopping tour around Senegal, nor the Mali trip forty hours away by bus, nor the cultural tours through Spain, Morocco, or Paris. We planned for dirt, sweat, and a whole lot of green because, when you’re living in a city like Dakar, fresh air and trees become first priority for vacation. Then there’s the allure of possibly finding climbing amid the sole rough terrain in all of Senegal and, oh yeah baby, we climbed the highest mountain in Senegal –all three-hundred and forty-something meters of it! On top of one of these mountains -- er, hills -- Megan and I did actually manage to find a patch of climbable rock and it was bliss. Fingers touching rock = heaven.
What else was there to find besides virgin patches of climbable roche?: waterfalls, caves, monkeys, and wasps. The first three were great, but the last one not so much. Amidst the call of baboons, the four of us and our two guides would set off up steep, jungly paths deeply reminiscent of northern Thailand trekking and the sweat would flow. Pausing for a breathtaking view of a cascade, majestically pouring over the verdure of a nearby cliff side, we would continue upwards, perhaps parting the foliage to find ourselves on a plateau with a small village of thatched huts, or maybe winding through with the river only to suddenly perceive the waterfall tumbling beneath us. Meditation came easily in this space, with the roar of water muting both the words of my companions and the murmurs of my mind. But then you have the wasps. They crept up on me as I rounded the corner, climbing this fabulous blocky riverbed rock, and swarmed Ed first. His cry was my warning call to remain still and relaxed –or as relaxed as you can be while still maintaining a firm hold on some juggy rock a few feet off of the ground…just far enough that you can’t reach safety without making a few moves. Ed got away with two stings, and I was saved by my favorite guide of all time, Jibi, who hazarded the wasps to put me on his shoulders and back me away and into safety. I came away with one sting on my arm and a few imperceptible ones on my fingertips. All I can say is that you’ve never been more keenly aware of a wasp than when you watch it hover over your arm hairs and fingertips, knowing that it has registered you as danger and wondering when it will decide to take action. I was lucky as hell, pardon my French, and Jibi didn’t even receive one sting during the rescue mission.
Okay, now you know about the wasps, but I have not appropriate emphasized the sweat. No, that’s an understatement; the SWEAT. Rivulets running down our arms without end -that was our lot for the first day of trekking on flat, un-shaded savanna terrain between the city of Kédougou and the village of Bandafassi. Why would we do this to ourselves? 1) We wanna walk. It felt so good to get my heart pumping again. 2) Who wants to pay for a Quatre-quatre car at 50,000 francs par jour (~$100)?!?! We are poor students. We definitely brought canned food to save on lunches and sterilized shower water so that we wouldn’t have to pay for the bottled stuff. When our guide, Alfar, found out about that, we suddenly started getting free breakfasts at all of the campements. Its good to be a starving student! But I digress; the SWEAT. I never knew the true significance of this word until I perspired my entire bodyweight over the course of three days on that baked, savanna road. The shaded jungle treks, with only demi-rivultes running along the brow and not-quite-so-soaked clothing, felt exceptionally mild on the following few days. Ah! It was good to have to pee again! And dad, your Elmer’s Glue sunblock is the nectar of the gods; t’aint any other goo that’ll stick in spite of those rivers of sweat! (PS Don’t worry peeps; we drank LOTS of water.)
Other highlights?...
Learning some traditional pottery-making impromptu with the women of a hill-top village. I have an open invite to come back, perhaps during my rural visit in three weeks, to learn from them. So cool.
Alfonso the ity-bity monkey at the Dindenfelo campement. You will see pictures of him later. Suffice to say that he actually put his little lips to the lip of some fine china in an attempt to steal come coffee from breakfast. Absolute cutie, little rascal, and wild animal all in one.
Peanuts! I’d never had a fresh peanut before this trip! Sure, I’d already realized the folly that is American peanuts. Pshaw! Those things are stale by the time they get to us. Real peanuts must be had in the country whose main export is peanuts. But in Dakar, I’d only had the grilled ones. Who knew that you ccould have them uncooked, with that lovely green flavor still embedded deep within? Since it is peanut season, every household that we stopped by offered us handfuls of peanuts fresh out of the ground. I found the peanut plants exceedingly interesting, with the peanuts as sorts of fungal-esk growths on the roots. I didn’t get to go out and pick peanuts with my buddies because I was feeling ill, but they got to get down and dirty, pulling up the stalks to uncover the root structures plein de cacahuetes – abundantly full of peanuts. These bundles of plants could be seen pilled on top of shade structures and unshelled peanuts were out drying in every yard. Peanuts were everywhere.
Anyhow, all in all it was a great trip. There is so much to be said, but you’ll have to pry those stories out of me later! Since I’ve been back in Dakar, I’ve become absolutely inundated in business and realized that I need to recover my internal balance. But aside from some mild kinks in the works, I’m really happy with what I’m doing here. I’ve buckled down and decided to study hard at Wolof. It’s getting to the point where I can actually carry on fragmented conversations, but conversations none-the-less. I was getting sick of getting through the lengthy intros only to have my conversant discover that I had nothing else to say and little else that I could understand. I’m doing a lot of work with my internship co-coordinating CIPFEM, the student-founded NGO providing a tutoring and activities program for twenty girls here in Dakar. The girls are absolutely fabulous and we’ve partnered each of them up with a mentor, which is working out wonderfully. One of our volunteers has started teaching them karate and we have plans for doing goals and dreams collages, a soccer game, a leadership project for the older gals so that they can take initiative and teach the other girls, and many many other things. We’re hoping to bring in a local artist, Kan-si, to do a project with them, which I’m really excited about. This Friday we’re hosting a family orientation event so that we can help inculcate greater understanding in the goals of our organization and get to know them. Doing this organizing while simultaneously navigating multicultural interactions between local volunteers, student volunteers, and the girls themselves is proving a real learning experience. There are so many internal needs of this organization to be balanced at once, such as not imposing American values on the girls through our choice of tutoring activities and not transgressing the local volunteers’ need for autodetermination, which has repercussions on a national level, by overlooking their input. We cannot contribute to the persistence of relations of inequality and residual colonial relations by implementing our own ideas without respecting their need for a voice and choice. It is that negation of their choices that perpetuates the colonial mindset in the first place –and even well-meaning NGOs can take part in that continual subjugation of African countries by overlooking the local voices. I refuse to take part in that, but it is a tangled web to navigate in practice.
Well, I’ll be writing more later. Love to everybody!
Peace and hugs,
Jocelyn Price
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