pics from goree and dakar

Cathedral in Dakar, photo by Mim (Mike's mom)
Art gallery at Goree

Beach on Goree Island, photo by Mim

mike's parents do dakar (and don't die)

So let’s start with the most recent stuff. As I said, Aziz and I are back in Dakar, and have been sharing an apartment with two other Americans who have turned into good friends in the past few weeks. They are an older professor/architect couple who are extremely welcoming and accommodating (with a million interesting stories from their many crazy adventures living abroad). When we first arrived we were working on a report for the grant committee funding Mike’s research, but soon afterward we began playing hosts for a group of French friends from Wassadou and then Mike’s parents (see pic of Mike with his dad at Ngor beach and tree of birds at national park).

We had a good time showing them around Dakar and Saint Louis, and they managed to stay healthy and in good spirits the whole trip! When we picked them up at the airport, I had forced mike to take antibiotics for what was a pretty nasty little stomach bug. Though pretty out of it for the first few days with his parents in Dakar, he perked up and was in good health by the time we got to Saint Louis. (below was their view from the hotel balcony in St. Louis)


Their first day in Dakar, we checked his parents into a luxurious downtown hotel (www.savana.sn), where they were more than happy to stay for most of the week. Their delight was heightened by their expectations, which, let’s just say, were low. We walked along the beautiful and somewhat deserted cliffside area and then grabbed croissants at a fancy patisserie in the city. At this point Mike’s dad took the opportunity to get a quick nap in at the table.

Afterward, newly caffeinated, we checked out the downtown cathedral, which we’d never actually seen from the inside. Angels with dreadlocks/braids grace the outdoor columns, and stained glass windows add color to the otherwise white interior. Mike’s dad took a second opportunity to nap on a couch when we stopped at the American embassy. Later we took advantage of the hotel’s Olympic size swimming pool (I’ve never seen a bigger one) and stopped by the French cultural center. The CCF is an interesting mix of Dakarian and French culture, with local Senegalese artist displays and handmade crafts as well as French performers and speakers. We checked out a semi-permanent exhibit of birds made with recycled materials, and I actually noticed that the artist was sitting right there. I chatted with him a bit, and asked him if I could stop by to work with him sometime, which he agreed to.

For lunch, Mike’s mom got a bit of a shock when she was served fish- a whole fish- at an upscale Senegalese restaurant. I don’t think she’d ever come face to face with her fish before. She took it in stride, though, and we had a nice meal. Later we took a bus through some of the crazier downtown market areas. It was nice to show Mike’s parents Sandaga market from up high in a bus, instead of getting tossed around in the middle of it. We stopped on the way back to our apartment to see the fish market near Soumbadjiounne, the artisnal market on the Corniche (the busy highway next to the ocean, normally filled with joggers and commuters but currently under construction). As it was the end of the day, the parents and we got attacked by frantic sellers hungry to make a sale before heading home. Probably not a great first market experience, we later mused. Anyways, we brought them back home to meet Ken and Liz, who were hospitable as usual, and they managed to stay up until we sent them in a cab back to their hotel- not bad for a first day across the world!


The next day we whisked them away from the hotel for a day of sightseeing on Goree Island. The island, right off the Dakar coast, is a somewhat strange mixture of touristic beauty (beach, well-maintained colonial buildings, nice restaurants, artisinal villages) and historical ugliness. Goree Island is marked by the House of Slaves, where empty chambers and corridors were once packed with shackled bodies, headed for the US or Europe. It is hard to put yourself into that state of mind when you are visiting the museum, as the rest of the experience of Goree is so pleasant. Taking a ferry to the island, watching artists in their workshops, walking the sunny cobblestone streets, you could forget the whole premise of the Maison des Eclaves and think you’d landed in a small, forgotten, and, inexplicably, black villa. The famed “point of no return” (a small but final door through which a disputed number of slaves left their homeland forever) becomes a contradictory tourist attraction- so now Goree locals make a living showing mostly wealthy white French and some African American visitors through the old slave quarters, while souveneir-sellers crowd the exit, hoping to make a quarter selling you a necklace. Bizarre.

The island is undeniable beautiful, though, and we enjoyed our day there and a nice lunch on the beach. At night we heard traditional Senegalese kora music, which Mike’s parents liked enough to get the CD of. On Saturday we headed to Mike’s drum teacher/friend, Pape’s house for lunch. We had the traditional Senegalese cheb bu djien, rice with fish and vegetables. The family went all out to prepare a huge meal, complete with desert, which was clearly a sign of their happiness and honor to host his parents. I think that we had either forgotten about the extent of Senegalese terranga (hospitality) or not realized what a special thing it would be for them to welcome his parents. Mike’s dad was definitely touched by the lengths they went to. We ended the visit with them singing/playing some music for his parents.

(walking around Saint Louis)

Along with our French friends from Wassadou, we headed up to Sunday mass at Keur Moussa monastery. Famed for Gregorian-style chant mixed with traditional African instruments and their tasty goat cheese, we thought it would be a nice place to see mass on the way to Saint Louis. It was a bit less lively than I expected, though a peaceful break from Dakar, and we got to sample the yummy fromage de chevre. Not bad. Once in St. Louis we took things easy and watched (or in my case spaced out during- can’t seem to focus on soccer-) a world cup game.

On Monday we explored a nearby national park called the Langue de Barbarie, where we took a pirogue around to witness the most birds I’ve ever seen in one place in my life (including the Galapagos). It looked kind of like someone had made thousands of plastic pelicans and set them up for us to ride by- except that they moved. We had a nice time touring around the park and had lunch with our guide at his family’s restaurant (see pic of guide in colorful Mauride bifal bubu).
On Tuesday we said goodbye to our French friends and had dinner back in Dakar with Mike’s host mom from five years ago, who made an elegant feast that we once again weren’t expecting. Wednesday was a relaxed day on Ngor beach, which was packed by Dakar’s youth. We managed to escape the crowds by hiking up to the clifftop, where I snapped the adorable photo of Mike and his dad, aww. The boat back was equally packed, and everyone got a kick out of us, the only toubabs on the boat. Thursday was a relaxed day of souveneir purchases and even ice cream at the famous “Creamy Inn,” which Mike and I had managed to avoid up until then. We sent Mike’s parents off at midnight, and I recovered from a small fever I’d managed to come down with.

All in all, I’d say we did more than enough in a week to last us for the next month or so. The last few days have been mostly running errands and downtime, but this coming week we are trying to analyze the data we took in the village. I will also be looking for some new projects to get involved with, potentially teaching classes at the computer lab, getting involved with another NGO, or tutoring English. I think we have decided to stay in Dakar for a while, so that helps logistically. We are lucky to be able to stay with our friends for another month, and have even learned to like Dakar again, after some initial skepticism (coming back from the country was total culture shock; we kept wanting to talk to everyone we passed in the street and expecting everything to be cheap and easy, etc.). On the agenda for the last half of our time hear: potentially a trip to Louga, to visit our griot (musicians and dancers) friends there, a trip to the beautiful Cassaamance region, a visit to the Gambie, another trip to Wassadou... we shall see.

(more birds at the park)

PS. As I mentioned, the last half of our stay in Wassadou was great, busy with visits from our American friends and lots of research. Unfortunately, all of those pics are being held hostage on Laye’s computer in the village, so I’ll have to show you what I’m talking about later- patience my dears.

last fling in wassadou

(left: cute baby at the medical center)




(right: dancing with some good friends there, at our going away party)






more pics and stories of wassadou coming soon!

long time no blog

Chers amis, long time no blog! Sorry for the long wait, but Aziz and I are back to Dakar now from the village, which means I can finally write a decent update and fill you in on what we've been up to. Briefly, we had our American teacher friends, Bec and Andrea, out to visit us in Wassadou at the end of May. The visit went really well, and we even took them to the huge animal reserve near us (pics soon). After they left, we were incredibly focused on our research for a month (details soon), and decided to stay in Wassadou up until the open house at the NGO where we were volunteering. After the open house we rushed back to Dakar (in air-conditioned luxury, thanks to a doctor from the NGO who drove us back) to settle in before Mike's parents arrived. They are here now, and I think are having a great time in spite of their initial concerns (partially driven by heaps of advice on what not to do in West Africa). I promise more, and more frequent, news and pictures soon. Mike's dad is standing next to me, and has informed me that he can't go home because the Red Sox haven't lost since they've been away- coincidence? He thinks not.

toucanish oisseaux

more pics soon

On rentre de Mali

So we made it back to Wassadouuuuuu! Home sweet home, for the moment. We are oh so happy to be back doing the rural relaxation thing and not the overnight busses and broken-down train thing. Not that it wasn’t, um, fun. Just a bit taxing.

Let’s start at the beginning. The first day of our voyage we hopped a car rapide (large truck filled full with folks) to Tambacounda and then took a horse-wagon to the parking lot where one finds cars to the frontier. We waited several hours after buying the ticket to actually get moving, so that by the time we made it the 3-4 or so hours to the border it was already afternoon. The border crossing went smoothly, but afterward we were crammed into a neuf-place (station wagon that seats 9 people, not to say comfortably) for the journey to Kayes, which has the distinction of being the hottest city in Africa (though I’m not sure it’s any hotter than Wassadou).


We were enjoying the beautiful late afternoon scenery- golden hay fields interspersed with amazing baobab trees (with so much personality, they look like old men to me)- when the real adventures began. One of the neuf-place’s tires had broken, so we got out of the car to let the driver fix it. We were making light of the situation and even enjoying the scenery when all of a sudden people started running and yelling. I got moving and realized that we were being followed by the most aggressive, angry bees I’d ever seen (‘Africanized’ killer bees anyone?). The strangest part was that they were going for people’s hair, which was bad for mike, as he has a lot of it now. I had somehow managed to escape without being stung, but looking back I realized that Mike was covered in bees. He was yelling for help but no one wanted to go near him. I looked around to see what the others were doing and ran over to swat the bees out of his hair with my hat- this did little to dissuade them. I realized that everyone had their shirts over their heads and yelled at mike to take his shirt off. Once he had it over his hair I managed to kill a few that were still inside the shirt just by whacking him on the head (this must have been a sight). We kept running (maybe a ½ mile or so) until the bees seemed to have disappeared.

Every once in a while we would get hit again, and then we would run again, but the real problem became how to get back to the car and change the tire, as all of the bees had gathered there. A passing truck threw us a box of matches, and the other passengers started a fire to get the bees away from the car. I first thought this was a good idea, too, but soon realized that they had done nothing to contain the fire, which spread like crazy over the super-dry, brittle landscape (while we were in no danger from it, it certainly burned a good deal of the forest). As I seemed to be the only one concerned about this, I soon stopped asking people what to do and tried to focus on how we could make it to Kayes.

At one point a fellow passenger informed us that we would be sleeping there that night until we could fix the tire and move on. Let’s just say we weren’t overly excited about this prospect. We had stupidly not even brought any bug spray in our smaller bags or anything to put on to cover up entirely. Though we eventually made it out of there, this was not before we found a man lying completely incapacitated in the woods near the road- his face was covered in hundreds of stings, the stingers still there as evidence. A few of us started to pick them out but soon realized that this was useless given the quantity of stings. I was pretty terrified when I saw this, because I thought he was one of the passengers in the car who had just been incredibly unlucky; as it turns out, he was just some random guy who had been lying there and possibly the reason that the bees were so angry to begin with.
After some time we all piled back in the car (it was dark by then) with the semi-conscious stranger. Unfortunately, a ton of bees were still in the passengers’ seat, which made the hour or so that it took to get to Kayes extremely neurotic (we were trying to kill killer bees in the dark without turning on the flashlight so that the driver wouldn’t get distracted by the light and get into an accident, ayayaya). The whole time we weren’t exactly sure how bad the situation was, if those bees’ venom was anymore dangerous than bees at home, etc. I figured I was ok, but Mike had been bitten up at least 5-10 times, with a few on the face near his eyes. In the end we made it to Kayes (where we were traumatized further by a taxi driver who kept trying to raise the price on us) and into an air-conditioned room where we tried to get a grip and go to sleep. (pic is of River in Kayes)

Needless to say, we weren’t overly excited to get back on the road the next day, but mike really wanted to get to Bamako and just stay there for a while, so we hopped the noon bus there. The 8-9 hour journey over the “improved” road took 15 hours en fete. We were at one point informed that we would again be spending the night on the side of the road, as there was a problem ahead. We rented a mat and got comfy. In fact we didn’t sleep there, and ended up in Bamako at 4am. After more taxi haggling we finally we made it to the Lebanese Mission in our guidebook, where we collapsed. Though the place was a complete dump we made good friends with the workers there. We even stayed another night, despite the lack of floor, bathroom that hadn’t seen a sponge, and abundance of critters (mostly lizards). Needless to say, we changed “hotels,” moving into a Japanese hostel where we met some more friendly folks.

We had the bonne chance of arriving in Bamako for an international percussion festival, corresponding exactly to the week we wanted to stay. This meant we got to see great music and dancing for anywhere from 0-1 dollar every day, and even met up with some musician friends from Dakar. They are a dance and drumming group from Louga, extremely nice and talented folks. It was cool to find them because we were actually missing Senegal a lot, and hanging out with them was a nice break from the unfamiliarity of Mali. The ladies of the group decided to braid my hair one morning, which seemed like a great idea. They did a good job, but it is so tight that it really takes some getting used to. Unfortunately I came down with a decent fever the next day, so having tight braids all over my head was a really bad idea. Fortunately, the fever wasn’t malaria (I took a quick, cheap malaria test at the local clinic) – I soon realized that it was some kind of stomach issue-related and rested a bit easier. Unfortunately, this hampered our travel ability a bit, and we decided not to move on farther than Bamako.

The capital city of Mali, Bamako was an interesting mix of things, certainly much more rustic than Dakar. Few streets were actually paved, and the amount of poverty was much higher. At the same time the rich are perhaps richer, or at least the tourists, evidenced by several giant luxury hotels around the city. We found people to be a bit less overtly friendly and also less aggressive to sell things there than in Dakar. It was definitely hard to be thrown into tourist mode at first, as we had gotten quite used to living as residents in Senegal and not as “toubabs” with no clue as to the local language and customs. We learned a few words of bambara but obviously did not attempt any level of mastery. The percussion festival made our stay really nice, though, and I even made a hoop and danced a bit at one of the afternoon concerts. One day we hitched a ride on the local boats along the impressive niger river.

For our journey home we took the train, dubbed the “last great train ride in West Africa,” according to our guidebook (thanks pedz!). The guide describes the goreous scenery from the train and then goes on to describe its habitual slowness, crowdedness, and general tendency to arrive several hours-days behind schedule. Sounded like a winner to us, so we bought the tickets and showed up the next morning at 8 am, as told. Surprise surprise, the departure time had been rescheduled to 5:30 pm. At that point we had checked out of the hostel, and were carrying our ridiculous backpacks around with us. Luckily we had left 3 days to get back to Senegal from our 2 week visas, so the delay was not as dire as it could have been. After some debate we decided to lock our bags up and head for parts of the city we had not yet seen, a museum and botanical garden. When we made it up the hill exhausted, we found two young boys who were going to the nearby zoo. Curious, we followed them and payed the 25 cent entrance fee. It felt kind of like gawking at an accident- didn’t seem right but you couldn’t help but look at the wild animals in tiny cages a few feet (if that) from your nose. There were enormous dr. seuss-like birds that I’d never seen before, jaguars, lions, and hyenas. The kids led us around and then followed us out. They took us to the gardens nearby and then back to the centre ville, where we had lunch. In the end, it was a nice last day in Bamako, if a bit exhausting given little sleep and my accidental overdose on antibiotics- go me! (nothing serious)

The train was a whole other story. We started boarding maybe sometime around 8 or 9 and didn’t leave the station til 10 or 11. The boarding process was basically chaos mixed with chaos. The lady across from us went out and back on at least 5 times, bringing all sorts of odd containers onto the already cramped luggage rack (not to mention 2 kids who were too big to be riding in her lap but had no assigned seat per se). Both she and the elderly man across from us turned into friends by the end of the 2 day voyage, though. The man was so sweet; he kept translating into bambara for us when we wanted to buy food and drinks in passing towns. Mike and he shared many a cola nut (a sign of friendship here).


(Niger River in Bamako, sunset)

All in all, the trip was an adventure for sure. When we finally made it back to Tamba we waited in the station another 4 hours in the stifling midday heat for the car rapide back to Wassadou. I had never been so smelly and dirty in my life, or so happy to take a shower and eat che-bu-dien. Senegal bi neexna! (Senegal is great!)

Joyeuses Paques and start of spring to all! Above is a picture of le campement near le fleuve Gambie, which we biked to to watch les hippos et les oiseaux (the hippos are great to watch, they pop up from the river and wiggle their ears and then plop back in). I am finally putting up some photos of the area, but I don’t have any that really capture the amazing birds here yet. We’ll be working on that. I’ve been watching tons of them on my morning hikes up to the hills across from the medical complex (I try to leave around 7 and spend an hour or two hiking around on the small trails- everyone thinks I’m crazy of course, but it’s the best/only time of day to do anything that remotely involves physical activity). It’s so nice to get up and get right into nature, especially with the iridescent blue birds, black and white cartoon-like toucans, and other assorted aqua, red, black, and yellow birds that accompany each walk. They are truly spectacular (no binoculars necessary).

The first time we hiked up the hill across from us was with Laye (our surgeon friend), the guard from Le Kinkeliba, and a french humanitarian pharmatician, Christine, who we’ve gotten to know here. In this photo you can see Laye with his stick (to “kill serpents”) in one hand and his cell phone (to “find reception”) in the other. Fortunately and unfortunately, he got to do neither, as there were no snakes and no network anywhere to be found. They did kill a small snake near our hut yesterday (they have to be careful with the babies around), and I took this telling picture of the men in my life- let’s just say they’re not serpent-killers. Meanwhile a worker grabbed a big stick and did his thing. RIP, snake.


Mike and I have been helping with various projects here. He’s been observing and helping with a lot of patient consultations (see Laye with petite patient), and I’ve been painting a lot. A French artist showed up with a bunch of materials last week and said he was going to be making murals, so I decided to join him. He brought a bunch of designs of old African fabrics, and we used those as a base from which to make small paintings many of the huts. The process was fun, and involved mixing something toxic that looked like plaster with a bunch of pigments and latex and working really quickly with each color before it dried. Michel (the artist) kept yelling at me,“allez vite!” Now that he’s left to go back to Paris, I’m working on finishing up with a few more small paintings, but they’ve gotten too complicated (I don’t have anyone yelling at me to hurry up anymore!).

Other than consultations and paintings, we’ve been helping a little bit with Christine’s project on village nutrition. Right now she’s weighing babies, measuring children, and assessing the needs of the villagers in the area in terms of nutrition. The babies are usually scared out of their minds of toubabs (foreigners), as many have never seen non-Senegalese people before. It’s pretty funny. Mike says that a lot of babies from white families cry in the states when they see him or any black person for the first time, so it’s pretty funny now for him; it’s happening in reverse for the toubabs, most of whom are white. You can see the fear in the kids’ eyes in this photo!(left)

We’ve also been teaching English and a bit of yoga, though I hope to get a regular English class scheduled for the village nearby (so many people here want to learn English, but they don’t have anyone to practice with and the English that they learn in school is pretty awful). Yesterday we went to a village’s schoolteacher and his student. Afterward we had attaya, the strong Senegalese tea I talked about earlier, and talked about his impressions of the western media, the US, and all sorts of things. It was interesting to hear what he had to say about the stereotypes he sees about Africa in movies, how untrue he thinks most of the depictions of life are (For instance that everyone is always starving and sick). He was asking us what we thought of America’s politics and culture. Like always (like any American traveling abroad during this administration has experienced), we were put in the place of explaining our views on the president and war. He was happy to hear what we had to say, and unlike some people we’ve encountered (mainly European) was very willing to separate the people from their government and it’s actions. It’s interesting also how everyone here seems to know the expression “time is money,” and suppose that Americans are too busy for stopping to talk to someone (Our greeting is “hi” instead of the Senegalese “Hello, How are you, How is your family, Are you doing okay?”-all of which are mandatory before moving on to anything else). We tried to paint a more realistic picture of life in the US, as people here tend to think that everyone there is extremely rich and that going there automatically means having everything, etc.

As for the research, Mike is also working with some friends to translate the questionnaires we brought with us from French into Pulaar, a local language here (one of about 6). Yesterday evening we went to an Easter vigil (which took 3 hours just to start, and then another 2 in service!), which was in French, Wolof, and Pulaar! I almost fell over in the bench at one point, because I was hot and exhausted and the French was sometimes hard to follow, all of which added up to me falling asleep.


What else…we’ve got some amazing stars here away from the city lights, and I know mike won’t let me off the hook without telling my “full moon” story. A bunch of us were gathered outside our hut chatting, when I noticed how beautiful the moon looked. “It’s almost a full moon,” I said. For some reason Mike proceeded to explain the various meanings of full moon in English; the one in the sky but also what it means to moon someone. Everyone thought that was pretty funny, and afterward a neighbor brought over some peanuts to snack on. Well, when I got up to hand the peanuts to Christine I lost my sarong entirely- it was the slowest falling off ever, but I couldn’t stop it from going cause I had the peanuts in one hand and didn’t want to drop them all over the ground. Fortunately, I was able to keep the front of the sarong on with my other hand. Unfortunately, I happened to be about to get in the shower and was wearing the sarong like a bathrobe. “Now that’s a full moon,” I said to a speechless bunch of doctors and nurses and such (not like they don’t see it every day) and ran into my room laughing. Of course, everyone kept commenting on how it was a full moon the next night, etc, etc. What are you gonna do?


I’ll leave you with a picture of the sunset on my favorite hilltop.