The Beach.

I've decided not to completely abandon this blog (just yet) but continue to post the memories/stories/rants/wise philosophical insights that I've been gathering and meaning to post this whole summer. It's a good idea for me to keep them all here together, where I canepr look back on them in one place. [Not required reading for anyone else, however, as it will probably be a little disjointed and ramble-y].


Let's start with a depressing story, shall we?

During the time I spent in Dakar, in between village trips, I tried to get to the beach as much as possible. I love to swim, but it was also nice just to be somewhere where I could see and hear the ocean. Very stress-relieving. Of course, nothing in Dakar is completely stress-free, especially for a toubab who is out in public. Walking down a street can be mentally hazardous, let alone hanging out in bikini next door to a mosque. Even so, it was worth it to have the brief respite from work and French and Wolof to head to the beach in Yoff with my fellow interns. Luckily for me, the beach was only about 15 minutes walking from my homestay, so it was easy to head over for a few hours after work or on the weekend.

I’ve been to quite a few beaches in Dakar, and all over Senegal, but for being so close to me, Yoff beach was beautiful and fairly clean. At the main entrance there seemed to be millions of people crowded into a few hundred yards, but head down the beach a ways and it was practically empty. My friends and I would “rent” one of the “huts” for the afternoon, to have some shade and a safe place to put our stuff. My friend Jane went to the beach practically every day, and we always went to the same establishment. They knew us very well, especially since it was the tourist off-season and they didn’t often have many customers. We’d buy food or drinks from them sometime, but mostly we just paid the $3 for the mat and hut and talked with them a little.

As I mentioned before, there is also a mosque on the Yoff beach. I don’t know if I wrote here about the time when I was exploring Yoff, walking near the mosque, and a woman came up to me and told me that “one didn’t wear pants here”. I explained that I wasn’t going inside the mosque, and she said, ‘No, the whole neighborhood. You can’t wear pants here.” I was coming from work wearing long khaki slacks that were neither very tight nor very revealing, and a “work” shirt, so I was completely taken aback and angry. However, when I went back to my homestay mom and complained about the whole thing, she told me that there was some sort of neighborhood ordinance that had just been passed banning pants on women. The mosque that I had been near is located just down the beach from the place where my friends and I spent our time. I’d never really noticed the irony of Senegalese and foreign young people cavorting about in scanty bathing suits right next to the mosque, I have to admit. And the area where my friends and I planted ourselves day after day was certainly more popular among tourists than Senegalese women. However, the beach was always covered in Senegalese men working out in the sand. Other than feeling awkward about being watched and approached all the time (which seemed no different than anywhere else in Dakar), I honestly hadn’t thought twice about our presence on the beach, or near the mosque.

That is, I hadn’t thought about it much until the beach burned down.

Sorry to be melodramatic. But that’s how the information was given to me, as well. I’d just returned from a village stay and proposed going to the beach. “Okay,” said Matteo, “but we can’t go to Yoff, because it burned down. How ‘bout a different beach?” [except imagine that with a really thick British accent, of course.] I was just as surprised as you, trying to figure out how a beach could burn down. I’ve always thought that sand and water were two excellent substances with which to put OUT fire.

Apparently, on the night of a semi-important Muslim celebration, some local men showed up at the businesses on the beach with knives and fire (Torches? Lighters? No idea, so I’m obviously picturing the mob scene from Beauty and the Beast. But it’s probably more like a drunken frat boy mob, actually.)

From what I can piece together, the owners tried to stop them, but were threatened with knives. So instead the owners took their stuff hurriedly out of the main building and watched as the men burned their livelihood to the ground. I thought maybe everyone was being over-excited, and it had just been a small fire. When I got to the beach, everything looked normal as I headed down towards our normal place – but a few businesses down from ours the hut/beach cabanas just disappeared. Instead, all I could see was some leftover burned logs, blackened sand, and torched shacks. Depressing, horrifying, doesn’t even begin to cover it.

My host mother told me that, on the positive side, they had caught the men almost immediately. She said it was the women who had grabbed three of the men that very night, before they could run off. Others had been caught later, and 22 men were in custody by the time I was hearing about it. When I got to our normal spot, the owners were cheerful and friendly as always. I heard their story and tried to tell them how sorry I was for what had happened. “Don’t worry!”, they said, “Please, don’t worry. We’ll have this all back up for you in no time. We’ll rebuild them very fast! Everything for you, we want you to be happy here!”.

Which, although an overwhelmingly nice sentiment, only makes you more guilty when you are already contemplating whether the arson was an act against scantily-clad swimming tourists like you. The owner seemed to imply to us that the men who had burned down his business were doing so on the orders of the marabouts (religious leaders). Obviously, I can’t say one way or the other. My host mother scoffed at that idea, and seemed to think that it was just unemployed young hooligans with too much time on their hands and violent tendencies. However, the businesses that were burned were next to the mosque, and the arson ended further down the beach, away from the mosque.

The upside to this story (okay, there isn’t really one), is that, as mentioned, the area was already being rebuilt by the time I was there. When we worried outloud about how they would pay for this (insurance probably not so much) someone vaguely said something about a relation in France helping pay for it. Although it was a pretty depressing sight for the next few weeks until I left Dakar, we kept going back to them. The Senegalese men and women in bathing suits did not seem deterred either, although the crowds were much less after the arson.

I don’t really have anything else to say about this, without getting too philosophical or tangential. It was certainly the closest to any kind of religious fundamentalism I’ve ever seen in Senegal, and it was completely shocking for me and the people I was with. I think it was fairly shocking to my Senegalese family and friends as well.

I can't seem to find many pictures from before the fire. Here's one from afterwards. The mural on the wall is still there, but you can see the building behind is all burned out. They've already constructed a few new structures for shade, as you can see, and one of the owners is sawing wood for more in the picture.

Back from Diourbel

I got back from Diourbel on Friday - been sort of busy recovering since then! It was a good trip, but Diourbel is incredibly hot and dusty and mosquito-y. Also my anti-malarial-induced nightmares were really acting up, so I wasn't seeping very well. As a result, I'm a little bit sick, mostly dust-induced allergies. But I'm happy to be back in Dakar, have spent a lot of time with friends at the beach this weekend. I can't believe how soon I'm leaving. Of course I feel like I haven't seen half of what I meant to, and there's so much left that I want to do. However, I'll be really happy to be home. I miss my family and friends a lot (not to mention air conditioning, American food, normal running water, etc, etc.)

Diourbel was one of the places I've been before, last November, so it was really nice (and weird) to be back there. I got to see Astou Ndoye, whom I interviewed last year. She's doing really well, and is basically just as awesome as she was last time. Her kids are, of course, a little bigger, which is always weird to see. And she's even more involved in the eco-village. Astou is really smart and driven, and last I talked to her she was talking to me about her micro-loan. Now, however, she is looking to take on more responsibility within the ecovillage, and maybe help organize micro-loans for other people, or help out with the solar ovens project they have going on. Really, I can't stress enough how awesome she is.

A really cool thing I got to do in Diourbel was that if I interviewed a micro-loan recipient at the ecovillage headquarters, I showed the recipients their Kiva page. It was ridiculously amazing and bizarre to show the borrowers their kiva page, and the little pictures of the kiva members who financed their loan. They were sort of into it, but not as much as I was. I was like, see, isn't this AWESOME!? The money comes from all over the world, but not from rich donors, but people like you and me! We are all helping eachother and it is a circle of life and beautiful global community and ...
And Astou, or whoever, would be like, yes, thank you, that's interesting - can you tell me why I haven't gotten my second loan yet? I've got peanut seed to buy, so it'd be really great if you could tell the people in Dakar to hurry up and give me another loan already.

Can't say I blame them, but it was still fun for me to make the Senegal - NGO - Americans - Kiva - Senegal connections.

Maids Literacy Course

Things have been pretty hectic here, recently. Some more GENSEN interns showed up a few weeks ago, so I've had a lot of people to talk to and hang out with, which has been great. Another SEM intern came a few days ago, as well, although we're not really sure what he's doing yet. As for me, I'm continuing my Kiva & SEM updates. However, the maid's literacy class is not going so well. It's been so long since I posted that I never really talked about the class.

In Dakar, maids are called "bonnes". They are mostly 15 (or so) year old girls who come from the rural villages to live with and work for Dakar families. Both homestay families in Dakar that I've lived with have had maids. They're not just for the rich, or even well-off. The maids cook, clean, and do laundry. Sometimes they help take care of the younger children, although that isn't their main role. Almost all of these young women are illiterate, and most of them do not speak French. Some come to Dakar for a season, during the vacation, so that they can make money to continue their studies and stay in school. However, most of them seem to have no better options than to work in Dakar for awhile, and then return to the village and marry. Most of them will never learn French, and never learn to read.

A Fulbright scholar a few years ago set up a literacy program for some of these women. Sounds great, but of course, unless a program like that is partnered with a very stable NGO, after the original funding dries up and the Fulbright scholar leaves things tend to go to hell. So right now, even though this program was sort of partnered with GENSEN, they are in danger of failing. Ibrahima, the teacher, hasn't been paid in months. (Although sometimes flaky and prone to not showing up for class, he's kind of a saint. He's told us that even if we can't get enough funding to pay him he will continue to teach the class for free, because these girls deserve an education.) The elementary school whose rooms they use (Class is 6:30-8pm three times a week) is going to start charging them for the space, and they can't afford that. The classrooms are falling apart as it is, the girls are great but don't always show up, and never on time, and they have no curriculum to speak of. GENSEN has decided they want to cut this program loose, so a fellow intern is looking to find another, bigger NGO to work with them.

Does anyone reading this blog have any connections with Oxfam, or big global NGOs that fund women's literacy initiatives?

I'm trying to help them out, in various ways. Mostly, though, when I go to the class to sit in on a lesson, I end up teaching the whole class. This happened twice last week, when Ibrahima didn't show up. I didn't have a lesson or anything planned but I just sort of improvised as I went along.

The thing is, I love teaching. It's not What I Want To Do When I Grow Up, but it's one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done. I'd love to come back here and teach these girls to read and help set them up with supplies and an actual curriculum. But I'm not sure, with only a few weeks left here, what I can do for them.

Anyway, I'm in Diourbel now, doing more updates for SEM & Kiva, and visiting my friend Ellen, who is a peace corps volunteer here. I wrote about her last time. It's nice to see her again, and Diourbel is hot but nice. Very mosquito infested. I'm going to get my hair braided. Appropriation of culture aside, it's too hot to have such long hair without braids. :)

Sorry for such a disjointed post, but wasn't sure when I'd get to update again!

XOXO,
Robin

Fake Blog Post

This is not an update! Even though I owe you, gentle readers, many. Baal ma! (Sorry). I'm having a bad day, though, with some computer problems and an uncertain prognosis for the Maids Literacy class I was helping out with. Still, I always find something interesting in the Times to take my mind off it.

Op-Ed Column, "Rebranding Africa", by Bono

Interesting article. I'm excited that Obama will be in West Africa, even though he won't be in Senegal. Here is the comment I posted to the article:

Dakar, Senegal
July 10th, 2009
1:41 pm
I am an American college student interning for the summer in Dakar, Senegal. It is my second trip to Senegal, which is the only place I have traveled within the continent of Africa. Reading over the article and the comments, a few things struck me.

I, too, was wary of the title of the article, and the concept of "branding" and "re-branding". However, I don't disagree with Bono on any one point. He is not suggesting that it is a good idea for Americans to make generalizations about Africa - only that since the "Western" population seems to make so many generalizations anyway, we might as well make them well-rounded generalizations. I agree with the people above who have remarked on the concept of speaking about Africa as though it were one country and not a diverse continent with many countries and a multitude of both problems and progress. Educating Americans, among others, about the positive happenings in African nations like Ghana will help lead to a further understanding of how different each nation is, and the diverse issues each state needs to address.

Second, the concepts of "aid" and "development" are often tossed around, especially when we talk about U.S. financing programs in "developing" countries. Dambisa Moyo has recently received a lot of attention for her book, Dead Aid, which criticizes, I believe, American foreign/economic policy towards Africa. Although Moyo comes on a bit strong, I think that an increased effort must be made to scrutinize where American money is actually going. When we supply mosquito nets, are we driving a local pharmacy that sells them out of business? Is the money ending up in the hands of corrupt local officials? Are NGOs starting well-intentioned programs that will founder if the NGO loses interest or funding? I have seen villages where NGOs had introduced solar panels - but once the NGOs folded a few years later, the villagers had no way to get broken solar panels fixed, or update their technology. We need to make sure that economic aid is creating local jobs, sustainable profits, and environmentally friendly business practices.

Lastly, full disclosure: I am interning for a micro-finance organization. While the micro-credit initiatives here in Senegal are not perfect, I have seen many things that give me hope for the future. Kiva.org and their local affiliates are doing an amazing job of making it easy to fund entrepreneurs all over the world with the click of a mouse.

I hope that President Obama makes mention of micro-credit initiatives in his speech, and talks about the need for bottom-up development. We, as Americans, can throw money at the worlds problems all we want (and, sometimes, I think we should) but the real "development" is going to come from within the countries, and the continent. The keys to this, IMHO, are education and empowering women. (I'd love to be a fly on the wall if Bono and Nick Kristof ever get to talking about those subjects!)

/rant&ramble. Hope to see more columns like this in the future. Let's not wait for celebrity guest columnists to see articles about these topics!

Mboumbaye Micro-Management (and other news)

I've been quite delinquent in posting, I know. To make up for it, I've finally finished posting my pictures from Saint Louis and the Jazz Festival to facebook. (If you don't have a facebook and want to see them, post a comment and I'll put the link up.) It didn't take very long at all - I uploaded the pictures from work, while I was working on other things. I think the internet connection must be much better at the office than it is here in my homestay.

I have a new neighbor, a new SEM employee. Matteo was born in Italy, traveled all over, spent quite a bit of time in London and speaks fluent English with a very thick British accent. He met John Fay, founder of SEM Fund, in China, and found out about the organization. He's been hired as a consultant of sorts, for environmental initiatives. He just got here a few days ago, so he's literally still figuring out what he's going to do for the next six months. It's quite pleasant having someone to speak English to (I'm afraid I've basically talked his ear off for the past 12 hours, straight) and to show around. He lives in my homestay with me, in the room next door. I just helped him get his mosquito net put up.

Funnily enough, he arrives on the heels of two American girls who showed up at the office on Monday, asking for information about visiting the ecovillages. One of them, Meredith, has been corresponding by e-mail with John Fay, who told her to come to the office once she got to Dakar. I was instructed to tell them about the ecovillage I'd just come back from and the other ones I've visited, to see if I could help them figure out where they wanted to go. I ended up talking with length about the ecovillages, helping them plan their stay, taking them to buy appropriate homestay gifts, and getting a delicious western-style lunch with them (they wouldn't let me pay!). It was a lovely afternoon - I didn't feel at all guilty about playing hooky from work for an hour or so to show them around the neighborhood, because the ecovillages desperately need more tourists coming and visiting. I was happy that they decided to go to Mboumbaye and stay for a few days. I'm hoping to see them again this weekend, when they get back. The weirdest part? Over lunch I mentioned that I'm attending Connecticut College... both Meredith and her friend Danica have younger siblings that have graduated from CC. Meredith's brother just graduated this year, so we were both at graduation three weeks ago and didn't know eachother then. Only to meet in Dakar! How bizarre.

I'm leaving tomorrow for a village called Louly Ngogom and will hopefully be back on Saturday. Then I'm hoping to spend my weekend hanging out with Matteo, Meredith, Danica, and Ellen (my peace corps volunteer friend) who will be in Dakar for medical checkups, etc. It should be a wonderful weekend. Ellen is staying until Tuesday - I'm looking forward to introducing her to Matteo (got all these names straight, guys?) because he is interested in the solar ovens project that her Peace Corps site (the Keur Gu Magg ecovillage) is implementing.

So that's what's coming up... as for what I've been up to since I last wrote, I've been sick but also doing actual work! I spent about four days in Mboumbaye, interviewing/talking to the men and women who have received micro-loans from The SEM Fund. Most of them were financed by Kiva.org, so here are the links to their Kiva profiles. You can see that they have started paying back, but soon the page should include the updates that I've written. (I'm not sure what soon means... in a few days, or a few months?)

The interviews went well, although the village stay was far from perfect. I had a run-in with some obnoxious 7-10 year old kids, which somehow left me feeling humiliated and depressed. The "cultural difference" thing is hard to remember when you're trying to figure out why an entire country of kids seem to be brutally rude and poorly raised. However, the family I was staying with, and the young girls who taught me hand games and shell-tossing games were warm, clever, and kind, and more than made up for any trouble I had.

As for the actual micro-loan recipients, I found their stories very similar and positive, with one exception. Most of the groups divided up their micro-loan and the individual members used the money to advance their personal small trade, business, agriculture, etc. However, one group decided to use their loan for a group venture: building and stocking a chicken coop to sell poultry to local villagers. Thus far, the plan has failed spectacularly. It appears to have been thought out fairly well, and the chicken coop was well built, but there have been several economic problems (such as markets and storage for the poultry) that have been impossible to overcome. I think it is highly likely that they will default on their loan, the full sum of which is due in November. This loan was financed through SEM donors, not through Kiva.org, so you won't see my write-up of the situation online. I will post it here, if I get permission to, however, and anyone interested can ask me for more details. It's a little depressing, but the borrowers are fairly blameless and have learned a good deal about their local market from the experience. They have a better idea for a future loan (if they ever get one) that reflects what they've learned about the situation, and they are committed to continuing to sell what chickens they can to pay back the loan, no matter how long it takes.

So here's my question for you all: Who are you, and what do you want to read? It's hard for me to figure out if anyone reads this blog (besides my immediate family, of course) so I never know exactly who I'm writing to. If you read this, leave me a comment! Let me know what you'd like to hear about from Senegal (the food? the goats? the plumbing? interesting wolof idioms?) and what is boring you to tears. Should I stop linking to so many articles about kiva? (Wait, just ONE MORE, I promise!)

I really have to go to sleep now, but I want to put in a quote from the above article that I thought was sort of cute:

Some guy in Mongolia needs feed for his cattle? You and 50 total strangers front him $25 each. A cabbie in Beirut needs to fix his taxi? Maybe 50 other people chip in online. A beauty salon in Tajikistan is running short on supplies? Point, click, loan money.

Metaphorically, it's not giving someone a fish, and it's not teaching someone to fish; it's helping a fisherman patch a hole in his rowboat so he can get on with life.

More pictures to come very soon... although I bet I'd update sooner if people left me comments and told me how much they loved me. What? A travlin' girl needs love!

Avec amour et persévérance,
Robin Mariama

Quick and Shameless Plug...

I've been meaning to write for awhile. And now I'm sick, so this isn't the update. Really, update is coming, but I have a fever and was throwing up my anti-nausea medication (Irony?) all night, so I have a good excuse! This is just to say sorry for not saying anything. Er... and to give you this link to the Against Malaria Peace Corps Fundraiser for Senegal that is being organized by my friend Ellen. Well, it's being organized by the Peace Corps in Senegal, but she's the contact on the facebook event page. :p

I met Ellen last year when I visited Diourbel (I think I wrote about that visit and her on this blog) and she was kind enough to share her bed and mosquito net with me then. She was just moving in to her Peace Corps site... I saw her again in Dakar recently, which was lovely, and gave her the peanut butter I had brought from the states for her. (It's weird the things you can't get overseas.) She's recently gone vegan, not an easy thing to do in Senegal, so I'm gad to give her some protein. Hee.
Anyway, this is a good cause, and a cause I can vouch for in terms of money being well-used and going directly to people who need it. Plus I've given so many shameless plugs for Kiva.org (and more still to come) that I figured I should plug something ese for a change!

Okay. Really, more to come soon, once I am feeling better.

What I'm Doing Here

My internship here at The SEM Fund is going well. I thought I would update you all on exactly what I’m doing while I’m here. (Other than enjoying the sun and the music!) I’m hoping that most of the next 8 weeks or so will be spent traveling to the different ecovillages that GENSEN has here in the northern part of Senegal. (They’d love for me to go to Casamance, but traveling back roads to get to villages is exactly what toubabs are NOT supposed to be doing – I think my parents would have heart attacks.) I’m hoping to leave for Mboumbaye on Sunday or Monday. It’s just north of Saint Louis, apparently, which must make it very close to Mauritania, so I’ll have at least 5 hours in the taxi or bus to read Middemarch. Once there, I’ll be meeting with each group that has received a loan from SEM micro-credit. I need to gather enough information from them to be able to write an update for both Kiva.org and for SEM’s own website. (These updates are basically the same thing, and will probably be in English although I’ll also provide a French version.) I need to know background information on the village, the group receiving the loan, the business venture being attempted, and how the repayment is going. I’m going to try not to sugarcoat it – if there are problems then the Kiva journals are expected not to gloss over them. However, what SEM chooses to send to Kiva or publish to their website is up to them, so I’ll be interested to see if they make any changes to what I write.

I’m also charged with taking pictures (I know, do I have the best job or what?) of the businesses and ecovillage staff for the website and for Kiva. Basically all of this sounds like a lot of fun, but I’m anxious to get started. I knew things would be moving on Senegalese time, here, but having someone else paying for me to work here (namely CELS and CISLA and Connecticut College) makes me feel guilty about the pace of things. I’ve spent this week writing out the information that I need to know, having some refresher Wolof classes with my old SIT professor, Moutarou, and reading through the documents and guidelines for journaling that Kiva provides its field partners with. Sorry if this is unclear, it’s hard to keep straight all the NGOs I’m working with. GENSEN and CREPS are basically the same thing, and SEM micro credit is a integral part of their ecovillage system. Then when you add in Kiva, it all gets confusing.

While in the villages, I’m also tasked with figuring out how SEM could best be expanded to fit the ecovillages needs. I think they have in mind buying some equipment to lend out to their ecovillage members (equipment for agriculture, transformation of grains, fabric dyeing, etc). To that extent, they are going to (eventually…) provide me with a questionnaire for the ecovillage staff/members. I’m not sure how long it’ll take to do the questionnaire, so in the mean time I’m just going to go ahead and include it as a question in my interviews.

That’s enough work update for now – I have to get back to work! I’m trying to meet with a group from one of the two ecovillages located here in Dakar. We’re having some difficulty reaching the president on the phone, however… ::sigh:: Still, it’s nice to be back in the SEM office. Everyone is friendly (if exceedingly busy). I forwarded them Nicholas Kristof’s article on microcredit in Africa from a few days ago. Ata, who is from here but attended NYU, is teaching everybody English. Tuesday and Thursday are ‘English days’, and from the sound of it, everyone is really good! I don’t know how much of the article they will have been able to read/translate but I’m curious what they thought of it. Here's the link, for those of you who are interested – the comments are more interesting than the actual blog. He also wrote about microsaving in general before that.

Later I’ll try and post an update with my ‘walking tour of Yoff’, which is the neighborhood I’m living in. Ba ci kanem! (See you later!)