Tour du Sénégal

First of all, I’m sorry these updates have gotten so sporadic, and in effect, LONG. Despite the much wider availability of Internet in Senegal, I have WAY less free time here than I did in Uganda. Of course, this all changes tomorrow morning when I head to the village, but needless to say I won’t be sending emails from there…….

Things have been pretty busy around the office for me. The organization I’m working with here, le Centre Vivre et Apprendre, is in the process of merging with Earth Rights Institute, where I intern in LA, and I’ve been working on updating their website (a new one, not launched yet) to have the new name, all the proper information, etc etc. while simultaneously aggregating all this info into a print version to archive. Sorry, didn’t realize how boring that sentence was until I finished it. Anyway, I’m also helping write up all the French and English incorporation documents for the non-governmental organization (NGO) establishment process in Senegal/the US, which is pretty interesting.

Outside of work, the past couple weekends I’ve luckily been able to hang out with my host family and the other interns and see a bit of Dakar and Senegal. A couple weeks ago Natalie, Salah and I went to L’Île de Gorée with two of our host brothers. Gorée is an island off the coast of Dakar that in colonial times was the launching point for the slave trade out of Senegal. Africans would be kidnapped from their villages — usually by rival tribes looking to make a quick buck off the Europeans — and brought to Gorée to be put on ships to the New World. No one knows for sure but many historians as many as half of those forced to make the journey died on the way, and those that did make died as slaves in the Caribbean or America. Despite its kind of horrifying history, it’s actually an incredible beautiful place, with brightly colored colonial homes and hidden windy paths lined with flowers. The island itself is very tiny, but there’s still a very vibrant community there. There were kids playing football (soccer) everywhere and tons of people on the beach and boubou-clad women on every corner selling African crafts to the tourists (us). I took a million pictures, which I will upload at some point in the next 1/2/12 months.

Last weekend was double booked for sight-seeing. On Saturday, Natalie, Salah, our British friend Lucy and two other interns from the Eco-Village Institute packed into a hired “sept-place” (seven seater taxi) and headed to Touba, the holy city in the center of Senegal. Senegal is a Muslim country, but Islam here is definitely unique. Most Senegalese Muslims are Sufi and belong to one of four spiritual brotherhoods, each headed by a council of marabouts. The marabouts supposedly have a mystic link to Allah, and they are incredibly respected and influential in Senegalese culture. Everyone here wears gris-gris, which are little leather pouches or silver rings that have tiny scrolls with verses of the Koran written them inside. The marabouts either bless or curse these, and I’ve had more than one person implore me not to ever take a gris-gris from anyone, as it may be cursed.

Anyway, the biggest brotherhood in Senegal is the Mouride brotherhood, which was founded at Touba. All over Senegal, you’ll see graffitied paintings of the two most prominent historical leaders of the Mourides, Amadou Bamba and Baye Fall, and their names are scrawled across walls, taxis, and buses everywhere you turn. Amadou Bamba was the founder and all the successive caliphs have been his descendants. He’s buried at Touba in the grand Mosque, which is one of biggest mosques in Africa, if not the world. It is HUGE. We hired a guide to take us in, which first required all of us girls to cover up completely from head to toe. Wearing a veil and a floor-length skirt was pretty interesting in the Senegalese heat… but the Mosque is absolutely GORGEOUS inside so it was well worth it.

After a long ride back from Touba, the next day Natalie and I and three other interns/consultants at the Institute decided to make a trip to les Îles de la Madeleine, a national park site also off the coast of Dakar. The islands in all are pretty small — the minor being so tiny you can’t really even land on it — and completely uninhabited, aside from the red-billed tropicbirds that nest of the cliffs and a healthy community of baobab trees. The islands were absolutely beautiful, and we spent all day swimming in the blue cove, hiking around the arid cliff top, and lazing in the sun. I had a really fun time watching the schools of tiny fish swim around and watching snails and sea urchins creep in the tide pools.

So tomorrow I’m heading off to Lahel, a TINY village that’s so far north it’s nearly in Mauritania. Josie, an intern from NJ, and I are going to be working on a reforestation project up there. An explanation from my notes:

“In the early 1980s, the Senegalese government granted a heavily forested, ecologically diverse area of northern Senegal surrounding the village of Lahel to Guinean businessman for the creation of rice
fields. After completely deforesting the area, the Guineans left with the timber but never followed through on the creation of the rice fields, leaving instead a barren desert completely void of trees, plants, or animals. As a result, the village of Lahel is now subject to debilitating dust storms exacerbated by increasing desertification due to global warming.”

So yes, we’ll hopefully be helping to deter the debilitating dust storms. Not too sure yet on the specifics yet, but that’s kiiiind of how it goes in the village. We’ll be spending nearly two weeks without electricity, running water, or contact with the outside world. Needless to say, we’re packing a lot of books.

This post is quickly becoming a novella, so I’ll leave you at that. Expect a VERY interesting update about village livin’ in two weeks.

Lots of love from Senegal.