I arrived in Dakar the Saturday before last and it is the big dirty. Stepping off the plane brought a barrage of heat followed by an assault on the nasel passage which is pretty typical of this kind of city, anything less would have been dissapointing. Since then the city and country have slowly revealed some of their idiosyncracies, many more endearing than annoying, and will no doubt continue to do so.
The first part of last week was spent at the NGO we will be working with, ENDA Graf, acclimatising and finding our feet. We met the whole team at ENDA , visited central Dakar twice, learnt a bit of Wolof and about Senegalese culture and even found time to swim at the local beach (which we later found out is just about the most dangerous beach in the world, owing to it's unique combination of quicksand, riptides and presumably large prehistoric seamonsters. For people for whom the idea of driving on the right side of the road is open to interpretation, the Senegalese have universally shown a humourous fear of a beach which doesn't get deeper than 1 metre until you get 40 metres out. I think this is one of those endearing idiosyncracies, and probably owes more to the fact that hardly anyone can actually swim). Other than that, we discussed the successes and failures of last year's project and overall regained an appreciation how great a group we have, to blow our own trumpet (rootittoottoot), and we're still great even if I do use too much parentheses (woohoo!).
The problems with last year's project made us slightly apprehensive about, and well prepared for, our opening meeting with the NGO team and their top man, Moustapha. As it turned out, I think we were mutually impressed by lessons apparently learned and we left with an optimistic feeling about our project this year.
Wednesday was moving day. We were first introduced to our host families in our new neighbourhood, Guediwaye, a suburb 10km North of Dakar city centre, before being shown to our lodgings for the summer. Apart from some problems arising from the interpretation of 'Jill' as a boys name (with much ensuing laughter) and a forced adjustment to the arrangements, the whole thing went brilliantly and we are all very happy in our new homes.
My family consists of Daedi, a twenty something brother who I share my massive bed with; Ibrahima, another twenty something brother; Ibrahima's wife Hadi and their son Kherou (who is also the best looking 18 month old in the neighbourhood, which is quite a feat); the lovely mother who's name I've forgotten; two uncles (though one might be a cousin) and various other members and friends who saunter in and out. All in all it's a really great place to live, and the fact that the toilet is a hole and the shower a bucket makes it all the better, as I'm always keen to test myself away from some of the acquired sensibilities of life in the UK. I look forward to my morning shower with relish, the water is just cool enough to be refreshing after a hot night and warm enough to avert goose bumps. No fiddling with any dials for five minutes to get the right temperature while shivering in the cold bathroom (yep, the burden of choice now apparently extends to our shower temperatures). And what else does your mum ask when you call home, the food, wow. I naively anticipated an abstenious diet for the summer but have been consistently shocked with giant portions. With my family these are served up in a big communal dish which we all dig into with our (right) hands until scraped clean. If anything there has been too much to eat, this is made worse by consistent insistence that we eat more, with words not always enough, much tummy rubbing and face making are also needed to resist this aggressive hospitality. And weather, well, HOT.
Here are a few pictures from around the neighbourhood, I've been promised one with my family tonight.
On our first night in Guediwaye we were invited to a giant baptism. Not baptising a giant, a normal baby, but with lots of people all dressed up, a tent, dancers, drummers, a DJ, a TV crew and 100 kids climbing all over the new neighbourhood celebrities (read white people). Here's Marie overlooking the baptism party and Peter being accosted.
The next night my brother Daedi took us to a local wedding which was fantastically confusing. It was in a house crowded with people which Daedi had to push us through, all of whom were looking on from any elevated position available as some elder women spread some kind of grain over the bride's dress and shook it slowly off. Next the women pushed past the crowd with the bride in tow (towel over her head all the while) towards the bedroom, where the groom sat on a bed surrounded by yet more people, all screaming and shouting. We then met the elder men who all sat in the living room, doing the rounds and shaking hands. Nothing could prepare us for that and the looks of bewilderment on our faces definately amused the gathered crowd. Anyway, I had a great time, even if I didn't know what was going on. Ace. I think it has since emerged that this was the dowry ceremony, though this remains uncertain. We were then allowed to look at the beginnings of a Senegalese memorial service, 13 years after the guy had died, with all the Marabouts (priests/teachers/superheroes) due in attendance.
These episodes, combined with discussions we'd had with some ENDA staff, gave us an introduction to religion here. Unfortunately my 8gb allowance would not allow me to explain what I percieve to be the complexities of religious culture in Senegal. Certainly their existence is linked to the plight of the children we're here to work for, I suspect more detrimentally than positively.
This week we've started going round the daaras (religious schools and houses for begging children) that the NGO have marked out for us. Seeing these places hasn't been too shocking, as we all expected bad conditions to some degree, but sombre didn't do the first two justice, they were downright awful. There were 15 boys aged between 6 and 15 allocated to one tiny room, sleeping on mats which they wet anew everynight, in many cases in a scabies and tape worm induced terror. They wake up each morning only to beg for money on the streets, and then beg for their lunch in the neighbourhood. The two boys who weren't begging due to illness wore permanent expressionless faces. I just thought about my childhood and how absolutely wonderful it was in comparison and felt quite sad and angry. Anyway, I hope I can convey how affecting the reality of it is without exaggerating, we were all a bit quieter on our walk to the next ones.
Thankfully, after seeing 6 more daaras that day, it turned out the first two were by far the worst. The other daaras left us feeling optimistic about any difference we can make in our 8 weeks. Here are some pics of kids from the happier daaras.
Tomorrow we're meeting to figure out what exactly we'd like to do with our time and money. We've inherited activities and responsibilities from previous groups and will continue with them according to percieved priorities. But also hope to come up with some new ideas. I shall keep you in the loop.
Well I hope life wherever you are is great. I'll leave you with a picture of a child who seems to have acquired a halo, and that great African pictorial cliché of our quiet parly under a tree (yes, that IS a school on the left and it IS that slanted/about to fall over).
Oh the daaras sound harrowing- at least it sounds like hope for a future for some of them.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog post Paddy, keep it up :)