Daouda for president

This week has seen the beginning of the end for our project. Material for all our building is in place and all should be finished in ten days time. Hopefully more on all of that, with pictures, after we've visited all of the sites for the last time.

On Tuesday we took fifty talibes on a trip around Dakar. First we visited l'Assemblee National, where we were allowed in to look at the chamber and given a talk in Wolof. Next we had a look at the Presidential Palace, a very tall mosque by a beach and finally climbed a hill for a view over the whole peninsula. Here are some of the kids watching a plane come in to land....

Two days later we began a ten day school for the talibes. By the time it's finished, we'll have hopefully taught a hundred of them to make bead jewellery and design and make t-shirts. We also play a lot of football, climb trees and I wrestle with ten at a time.

Aside from our fun at the school, this week we have mostly been entertained by.... Daouda Ba (above). I think he's worth a bit of description here for an insight into our day to day work. His job must be described as unknown, though he does work for the NGO in some capacity. He's slightly shorter than me, likes Pink Floyd and reggae and moves very slowly so as not to expend too much energy. He doesn't play football and can't swim, however he does referee when needed, though in typically languid fashion. He spends a lot of time reading his preferred newspaper, Le Pop, in various locations, for example, daaras, buses, meetings and on a free mat he scored from the mat factory. This year he is still quite angry that last year a volunteer let a woman pray on his Le Pop, the ground was wet and I'm told it was ruined. His favourite lunch is rice and fish. He has a Doctorate in making tea. When he prays or, "goes to see god", he offers to say hi to god for me, which I accept with thanks. Daouda also spends a lot of time accusing other people of being promiscuous (a Sai Sai in Wolof), and claims that he is not because Senegalese women are so forceful that he has no option in these matters. He also definitely doesn't like the president and is willing to shout at anyone who does. He's agreed to come surfing with us next week. Seriously though, he's a really great guy and very funny, most of the time intentionally.

Next time I'm going to try to persuade one of the others to make a guest appearance here, hopefully to give a different perspective and add anything I've forgotten. I sense they might be reluctant, but watch this space....

Lastly, here's a picture of a Dakar beach at sunset and Kherou enjoying his afternoon nap.

Saint Louis and Meetings

We spent last weekend in Saint Louis in the North. It was the first town established by the French in West Africa and has a crumbling colonial beauty to it. It's also an oasis of calm and reggae compared to Dakar's bustle and mbalax. So, pretty much the perfect place to go for a short break. We even spent the last night between the estuary of the Senegal River and the Atlantic, which are seperated by a 100m wide sand barrier; beach, trees, crabs, house on stilts, mint tea, tasty fish and cool water...... Here's a pic from the town.

Work was (perhaps naturally) slow when we came back and we got a bit frustrated, which again served to reaffirm the extreme healing power of meetings! Yesterday we planned our way out of a hole by discussing priorities for our time and budget and setting a deadline for the final decision, which will involve another meeting on Friday. Nice! Also, in some over zealous preperation, I even put together a time vs. money spent graph with a volunteer happiness curve thrown in. It forecasts some accelerated spending, increased happiness, volunteer productivity and better all round results. I think it had the desired effect at the (hopefully temporary) expense of some respect.

A couple of times during the meeting, guys from the NGO stuck their heads in the door, just enough for us to see their looks of bewilderment induced by our exported British bureaucracy in full flow, with suitable amounts of paper, files, water bottles, happiness graphs and such.

The result of all these meetings has gladly been a plan of how best to spend our remaining money and time. I notice I might have been a bit light on the details of the project, so here's what we're actually doing out here. In previous years volunteers have spent the majority of their fund on the daaras in Dakar. This year we have continued to do this, while appreciating that this aspect addresses only the symptoms of the problem. With that in mind, we've set aside a very large part of the budget on projects which address the causes, by either preventing the daaras from appearing in Dakar in the first place, or returning them to their original rural locations.

Some explanation needed there I guess. Basically, a daara is a Koranic school which parents are obliged by religion to send their children to, nearly all villages in Senegal have them. The holy man responsible is called a marabout. Sometimes due to rural poverty, for example the parents not being able to pay for the education, or in the worst cases owing to simple greed, the Marabout will take the kids to Dakar that they might beg of the relatively wealthy people there, to obtain money for their education. Many marabouts take their religious duty seriously and are driven by desperation, others exploit their village's children for personal gain. Each marabout seemingly holds such an esteemed position in rural society that he does as he wishes. At the extreme end, there are 'high up' marabouts who have vast networks of beggars and are personally wealthy and powerful. These men often command more religious respect and, with their following, genuinely sway elections at a whim.

All of which is both fascinating and infuriating. Fascinating because, why read about centralisation of power through religion in Medieval Europe when a similar example confronts me as I stroll through the sandy streets, institutionally more secular but practically, just as influential. The infuriating aspect is obvious.

Here's the UNICEF angle on it, which has been influential with us. And underneath, a picture of l'Assemblee National.

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/senegal_34961.html



Our work in Dakar has been about relieving the children's difficult situation in the daaras here, where possible with well intentioned marabouts. Elsewhere, we've made a few trips out of town to assess potential preventative and returning projects, which we've now begun work on also. So that's how the project stands right now. I'll let you all know how it all finishes up.


After all this I could do with a holiday, so planning on my trip around West Africa with my family and girlfriend begins in earnest tomorrow, I smell an adventure.....

I'll leave you with a typical Senegalese street scene, complete with sand road, and man walking with foam mattresses on his head.

Dakar and Zoo

Just a quick post as we've got the next week packed full of ambitious plans which will hopefully make blogging pretty difficult.

This week has been a productive and enjoyable one. On Monday we organised a trip to the zoo for the talibes and caught up with some supplementary medical visits. Then at night we had a difficult meeting with the guys from the NGO, about money, what else? Anyway, that went really well for us so, feeling good, we spontaneously jumped on a bus to Dakar. Here's Rhona sticking out of the window while speeding along on a balmy African evening.

Having already described the ensuing events in an email to Joanna, I'll paste it here out of pure laziness.

"On Monday night we went in to Dakar for some drinks, found a Chinese restaurant where the people were actually Chinese but spoke French and lived in Africa. After that confusion we bought some cigars and found my favourite bar in the world yet, bought some whisky and beer before the old dude behind the bar slapped on some techno and turned it up to the max. He even let me behind the bar to get photos with him. Then at 2.30 Rhona and Marie wanted to go swimming so we went down to a hotel on the sea and jumped over the fence. I was pulling SAS moves as we snuck through a closed cafe, only to come up right beside a sleeping security guard in his plastic chair and military hat. I stopped and stayed still but Rhona and Marie ran/giggled their way up behind me, waking him up. He and I both shat ourselves; I put my hands up and he said wow wow wow. I was ready to go to jail but Rhona then popped out 'can we go to the beach' in French and he thought we were guests so said oui oui oui. I was still on all fours from the crawling! But I just got up and bit my tongue hard not to laugh as I walked past him. So then we jumped off the pier, swam a bit, then said goodbye to the guard before snaking behind a bush and jumping over the fence again......."

As a disclaimer, all fun is counter weighted by hard work and, again, the views expressed above are not representative bla bla bla.......

Tuesday saw more medical visits in the morning (ouch) and more planning for our trip. By Thursday the zoo was upon us. We gathered up 50 talibes, packed them into a bus and set off. The zoo itself was a pretty depressing place (small cages and enclosures were full of stale water and litter), not to mention slightly disconcerting. The two pictures below couple to give you an idea of my apprehension.

After the zoo we all got in a big circle and sang Senegalese songs, clapped and danced, they even made me go in the middle to laugh at my interpretation of Senegalese dancing. Later we played various games before catching the bus again. The kids all seemed to enjoy it, and it gave them a day off from begging, which can't be a bad thing. Here's one guy ready to go home.

So tonight we have another meeting to verify our big plans. Firstly going to Saint Louis in the North for the weekend, visiting an area called Kaolack, where we hope to have some schools built and learn alot more about the Talibe situation, on Monday to Wednesday. From there we plan to return to Dakar for a day or two before heading of to some more villages we're involved with for a few days. And then! Holding a ten day summer school. Busy busy. I'll leave you with testament to the fact that after a tiring day at the zoo, Peter can sleep anywhere.