Photos from Senegal

I finally downloaded my pictures from the camera I borrowed from work. Posting them here is much more arduous than posting them on Facebook, so click here to see them.

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One of the great things about travel is that it reminds me to be grateful for the many things I take for granted at home. When my parents lived in Botswana in the 1980s, they were often told "life is hard in Africa," which has become a little inside joke in our family. But the truth is that life IS hard in Africa. As much as I feel disturbed, disgusted, even ashamed of the country of my birth, returning home from 17 days in Senegal reminds me how lucky I am to have been born here and not there.

Since my arrival this morning, I've been savoring some of the little things: taking a long, hot shower with loads of water pressure; brushing my teeth with tap water; coffee that tastes like coffee; a subway that whisks me across the city without worrying about traffic. OK, that last one is an exaggeration--I've been waiting for the subway for 15 minutes now. I hate the MTA. But it's still easier than getting around Tambacounda.

Airports Suck

The staff of South African Airlines are surprisingly friendly, in stark contrast to the airport staff. The man at the entrance to the check-in area tried to tell me I had to go somewhere else to get a paper ticket until the SAA guy nicely took my passport and started asking about my bags, very politely, in perfect English. We joked about my cousin Wilt, and he said he'd believe me if I said i was related to Bruce Willis. I keep hearing this, but I don't see the resemblance. I take it as a compliment, even though he's a whole lot older than me.

Now I'm in line for immigration. Almost to the front after 30 minutes. The French people around me are amazingly pushy. Why? Two women—African, but speaking English so not Senegalese—tried to jump the queue because their flight is about to leave but the nasty woman guarding the line steadfastly refused to let them through. Why do people so love to use their power to make people miserable?

I hope there are open stores once I get through immigration and security. I still have three hours or so til my flight.

Cursed

It seems my flight to New York just left Johannesburg for Dakar, just over two hours late.

Waiting...

Although I’m still at my hotel in Dakar, I feel as if I’ve already entered the world of air travel: not quite here, not quite there, waiting to leave, waiting to arrive. It’s 7:00pm, back at the hotel after a day at the office. My flight is at 2:55am, so I need to get to the airport around midnight. That would leave enough time to go into the city or something, but Levent, one of our team, has a midnight flight, so seeing the sights would mean separating from the group. And I don’t really have the energy to explore an African city on my own, at night. So I’ve entered an air-travel holding pattern. Dinner at 8:00, then some time to pack, and wait some more before heading to the airport to wait for my flight.

Neocolonialism

Feeling very colonial today. We started out with a meeting at USAID. Everyone put on the best clothes they brought on the trip (except for Carol, who popped down to the Meridien hotel down the street to buy something new, since her luggage is still on the way back from Tambacounda). Why is it more important to look good for US government officials than Senegalese government officials? The USAID compound has more stringent security than airports: no laptops, no cell phones, no cameras; x-ray; metal detector. Truly a fortress. Once inside, the health officer we met with, a blonde thirtysomething woman with a bit of the Midwest in her voice, was extremely welcoming and helpful. But the experience still left a sour taste.

Back to the hotel for lunch because it's close, easier than going into the office for the afternoon. The restaurant at Le Lodge is a formal French restaurant, with nothing light on the menu, and prices to match. Of course, the three-course meal took two hours to get through.

After an afternoon of work, we set out for sunset drinks and dinner at the Pointe des Almadies. Gin and tonic seemed like the only appropriate drink for such an occasion (even though this was a French colony, not British), enjoyed with a starter of Vietnamese spring rolls (not as good as my late Aunt Phoy's, but not bad for Senegal). I learned a Turkish word: yakamos, moonlight on the water. It was lovely.

Frogs

Last week in Dakar, returning to the hotel after a day at various meetings and stuff, the gentleman at the reception desk asked me about the frog in my room. I told him, yes, I had noticed it. (I didn't do anything about it, figuring it would leave the way it came when it was ready.) "Did you bring it?" he asked. Um... no. He wasn't convinced; according to him, there was no way a frog could make it up to my second floor room on its own. Assured that I was not intentionally keeping a frog in my room, he sent someone up to remove the frog. I hope he was taken somewhere comfortable.

This morning in Tamba, a very similar frog was hopping around my room. None of my traveling companions have had frogs in their rooms; apparently this is something unique to me. I asked Abdoulaye what frogs signify in Senegal, and he assured me that they are always a good thing—where there are frogs, there must be water nearby, a pretty big deal in a country as dry as this one. So I'm choosing to believe that being trailed by frogs around Senegal is a good omen. Keeping my eyes peeled for more.

Bumps in the Road

Back in Dakar after another day on the road. I knew I was going to be moving around a lot, but wasn't quite prepared for the amount of time I have spent in a car.

We came from Tamba to Dakar in two cars. About a third of the way, the other one (a truck, actually; I was in a landcruiser or something) ran out of water in the radiator. Seems it was missing a cap, so the water was evaporating away. Not a good thing. Some kind of temporary solution was fashioned using a cloth and a plastic bag. The next town was no help, but the one after that had an auto shop, where a replacement cap was eventually found. Disaster averted.

Soon after the radiator crisis was solved, Carol, one of my travel companions, realized that her suitcases were not in either vehicle. OOOPS! After several phone calls (thank G-d for cell phones!), we enlisted the help of USAID staff who were at our hotel in Tamba to bring the luggage back to Dakar with them on Friday. It's actually something of a relief to know that this very competent woman who's been working in Africa for over thirty years, unfazed by anything, can make such a mistake. I went through the contents of my bag mentally and decided that if I had been the one sans luggage, I would have just left it all in Tambacounda. I need a new suitcase anyway.

The people in this country continue to insist on speaking French. Or worse, a bunch of other languages I understand not at all.

Damned Roads Again

I wasn't going to whine about the roads anymore, but I can't help myself. We spent nine hours driving today to spend about two hours talking to people. Six of the nine hours were on roads that required four-wheel drive. I suppose it was worth it to see Dianke Mankan, one of the destinations. It wasn't that exciting to see, but the sheer remoteness of it is remarkable, three hours from the nearest paved road. And not such a small town either: about 10,000 people.

The day was pretty grueling, but it could have been a lot worse: We could have been among the many people we passed, making the journey by motorcycle, bicycle, or on foot. So maybe a 4x4 with weak air conditioning isn't so bad after all.

Another Day, Another Hospital

At the Tambacounda hospital, one is greeted by a multitude of posters warning of the dangers of spreading disease by shaking hands. One poster even says "here, we don't shake hands." Though I understand shaking hands is one of the top ways to move a virus around, this seems a little extreme. I guess the hospital administrators think so too: The first thing we did when meeting anyone—doctors, nurses, the hospital director—was shake each and every hand. And after reading all those signs, the first thing I did upon returning to the car was take out the hand sanitizer.

After the hand-shaking, we sat down in the director's office to say hello. The plan was to essentially pay our respects, then split into two teams—three people to stay with the director, three of us carry on to the next stop. Just as we were getting ready to go, though, M. le Directeur offered us refreshments. Of course, we couldn't turn him down, even though we were really not thirsty, and had places to go, people to see. So we sat back down, waited another ten minutes or so for our Cokes and Fantas to arrive, then spent another ten minutes or so drinking them leisurely before we could be on our way. What exactly did this little ritual accomplish?

Next stop: Goudiry health center. While waiting to talk to the midwife, we interviewed a couple of the clients waiting their turn. Well, Abdoulaye, our man in Dakar, interviewed, while Susan and I watched, since the health center clients don't speak French, of course. One of them, in fact, spoke only Peul, so a nurse's aide translated Abdoulaye's Wolof. I can't imagine what these women thought about being grilled by a doctor from Dakar in front of two toubaps (white people). And I don't know what purpose my presence served, but I enjoyed the air conditioning. (Tambacounda forecast for tomorrow: 102 degrees Fahrenheit.)

Bike Blog

Bill Strickland, executive editor of Bicycling magazine, and one of the bike boys in Tambacounda, has his own blog. Check it out for a more detailed account of the bicycle assembly excitement at the beginning of my trip. He went from here to Uganda for a story about a former child soldier. Who knew there was so much about African development in Bicycling?

Five More Days

OK, I've officially had enough of Senegal. Rather, I've had enough of being away from home, being in Africa, being on my own... it's time to go home now. Two more days of listening to people being interviewed; one day of driving; two more days of putting it all together in Dakar.

I feel guilty about not being entirely happy to be here. It's really an amazing opportunity, and I am genuinely glad to have come here. And, although it's been grueling at times, I do find it much more interesting and rewarding to visit a place for work—meet with people doing interesting things, talk to actual Senegalese people—than to visit as a tourist and see only the surface (at least I'm getting one layer further). But I've had enough.

Meanwhile, the 21st century is really pretty amazing. I'm sitting here in the middle of nowhere in eastern Senegal but have been checking in daily with friends and family. More than daily, in fact, if you count the text messages on and off throughout the day. Quite a contrast from 21 years ago, when my parents were in Botswana for a year: I spoke to them every few weeks, when they were in town. They would call my dorm room and have me call back; we'd talk for a few minutes, usually with a terrible delay; and it would cost a fortune.

Mom is still traveling around the world: her blog posts beginning today are from Cochabamba, Bolivia, where she's doing a homestay while studying Spanish. Pretty cool. Unfortunately, her Bolivian SIM card doesn't seem to allow her to send text messages, so we can only communicate the old-fashioned way, by email.

Map

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Book Review

Today was devoted to driving from Kolda to Tambacounda, along another bumpy road (actually the same bumpy road as yesterday), badly in need of repair. Back at the same hotel as last week. The woman at the desk recognized me, asked about the bike boys, and even gave me the same room. Kinda nice, actually, to be back somewhere somewhat familiar.

Since I don't have any new observations about Senegal, today's post will be a book review. I managed to read a little bit during first part of the ride. I've been trying to get through The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud, because it came highly recommended by a dear friend whose judgment I trust. It's about three Brown alumni in their thirties, living in New York, struggling with not living up to the high expectations they have for themselves.

Unfortunately, the three main characters—and all of the people around them—are uniformly unsympathetic. Their existential angst is not so much about how they can make the most of the many advantages they were born with, but about why they are not as successful and famous as they ought to be, given their obvious superiority. At least that's how it plays out to me, up to page 173, when I decided I didn't want to spend any more time with these self-absorbed, superior people.

Messud's writing doesn't do much for me either, filled as it is with endless strings of dependent clauses, seemingly inserted to display her own intelligence and deftness with a keyboard, or that of her characters—for whom a clever turn of phrase or surprising idea is more important than a heart—so that by the end of many sentences I couldn't quite remember the beginning, and didn't really care to.

I think I'll go back to Inheritance of Loss or Life of Pi.

Rest

For the first time on this trip, I didn't get up until 8:00, giving me a full eight hours of sleep! Yippee! Leaving soon for Tambacounda, a five- to six-hour drive.

Musings from Kolda

Like many hotels around the world, the custom at the Hotel Hobbe in Kolda is to leave your room key at the desk when you go out of the hotel. But the system here has an interesting wrinkle: when you return to the hotel, the keys are nicely lined up on the desk so that each guest can find her or his own key. It does make it easier, in a place where service is... let's call it leisurely.

Another day battling Senegalese highways. Almost 3 hours each way today to reach Velingara to visit a health center and a health post. At least I'm not driving. Not sure how I feel about how comfortable I've become with having a driver waiting around for me all the time. It feels very colonial. At least Masali, the driver, sat with us at lunch today.

Another day asking people all kinds of questions about their jobs, trying to figure out why the contraceptive prevalence rate is so low around here. The clinics we've seen have all been in pretty good shape, staffed with well-trained people who are committed to their work. But they are not accomplishing their goal of getting women to use contraception. They cite statistics that 60 percent or more of women want to have fewer children, or at least wait more time between children, but in parts of the region, only two percent of women use any contraceptive method. Why? Although there are some problems with availability of services, that doesn’t seem to be the issue. The stigma attached to family planning has been a recurring theme, tied very closely to the relative powerlessness of women in this country.

The whole point of this trip is to figure out what we can do, and so far, that has me at a loss. We have heard a few times that what is needed is to change the men here. In the context we’ve been working, the goal is always to work on men’s attitudes toward contraception, in order to increase the acceptance of contraceptives, and there for increase its use—thereby reducing maternal mortality, population growth, and all kinds of bad things. Personally, I’m not particularly interested in contraceptive prevalence or total fertility. But I am interested in the underlying issue, women’s right to exercise their right to control their own lives.

But how to do that? And what is the appropriate role for a bunch of foreigners to play in such a process? EngenderHealth has a program called Men As Partners (MAP)®, which has been pretty successful in several countries working with groups of young men to challenge their thinking about gender norms, relationships with women, sex, violence, masculinity… And we and other organizations have been successful at making at least incremental changes in the attitudes of the men we work with. But I can’t help but question both the efficacy and the appropriateness of a bunch of white people coming in and telling Africans how structure their society, how to relate to each other.

That said, I really do believe that people—including women!—have an absolute right to control how they live their lives. I’ve worked in human rights long enough to have considered—and rejected—the “cultural” argument against universal human rights. I feel very strongly that while the codification of human rights was done in the West, the core values are universal. So I guess my question is one of means: What role can I, a white man born in the USA, play in supporting women in this deeply sexist society to have control of their bodies and their own lives and bodies at the most basic level?

My questions are not new, of course. Any thinking person working in development must wrestle with them on occasion.

Meanwhile, perhaps we’ll write a few trips to Tokyo into our proposal, so we can lobby the Japanese government to repave the roads.

Africa

At the halfway mark of my trip, I’m about ready to go home. But the work is getting more interesting, and I’m sure the next week will pass quickly.

Although I have worked in development for quite a few years now, I am as guilty as many inhabitants of the North, I think, of holding a simplistic view of Africa. In my mind, I see big, chaotic cities surrounded by vast swaths of land filled with villages populated by uneducated starving masses. In short; anarchy.

I was reminded today (and for the last week) that the truth is much more complex. Yes, there is an element of chaos, but there are structures in most countries that not only bring some order but are also successful in delivering a vast array of goods, services, and information. This week, I’m learning all about the health system in Senegal, which has its problems but is quite well organized. Each region has a hospital; each district has a health post; each major village has a health post. I saw a map today that showed every village in the region of Kolda, color-coded to indicate what kind of facilities each had—complex, certainly, but hardly anarchy.

The other word one always hears in reference to African countries is corruption. Of course, I can’t really tell what’s going on beneath the surface, and there is undoubtedly graft all over the place. But the people I’ve met this week—including lots of government officials—have for the most part been extremely knowledgeable and evidently deeply committed to improving the health of the people in their communities and their country.

That said, I was also reminded today that working in development, one must learn to accept a certain level of unpredictability. We have two working days here in Kolda, which is very tightly scheduled. Today, our plan was to have a brief meeting first thing in the morning with the médecin chef, the top ministry of health official for the region. From there we were to go to the local health center. Then, in the afternoon, one group would visit the hospital while another would visit local NGOs.

Well, the médecin chef wasn’t there; in fact, there was nobody at his office. So we went next door to the offices of the bit US government–funded program in five regions, where we talked to the local coordinator who was afraid to say anything at all for fear of pissing off his boss in Dakar. Then we went to the health center, where we were able to convince the midwife to talk to us, even though she was on her way out to a village, but had to cut our interview short to let her do her job. We rushed from there to the hospital, only to learn (after having been there almost an hour) that the midwives there were all gone until late in the afternoon. Late in the afternoon, one group went back to the hospital while another went back to the health center and then to visit one local NGO. We didn’t cover quite as much ground as we had planned, and we most certainly didn’t follow the plan for the day, but we did learn a lot about family planning in Kolda, which was the goal.

Tomorrow, the plan is to split in two groups again, and take off in opposite directions from the big town to visit rural health centers and health posts. I will try to maintain calm when it doesn’t go as planned, and trust that whatever we learn will be useful in some way.

Crossing the Gambia

Today was devoted to getting from Kaolack to Kolda, where we're scheduled to start assessing reproductive health needs tomorrow morning. And travel in Senegal (and I suppose in most of Africa) means constant concern about the quality of the road.

The route to Kolda required us to go through the Gambia, a narrow strip of land on either side of the Gambia River, completely surrounded by Senegal. Apparently, the Brits decided they needed a river around here, so they created their own little colony, which is now its own little country.

The first phase of today's trip, from Kaolack to the Gambian border, was realllllly bumpy, but somehow I managed to sleep through much of it anyway. The trip through the Gambia took about two hours, a combination of more bad roads and a ferry ride across the river. The crossing itself only took about ten minutes, but with waiting, loading, and unloading, the river accounted for almost an hour of our time in the country. The ferry itself was not so different from the ones in British Columbia—not the big monsters that ply the Vancouver-Victoria route, but the smaller ones that go to the Gulf Islands. It was about the same size as the one that goes between Quadra and Cortes Islands, maybe a little smaller, certainly a little more run-down. But the experience was quite similar: waiting for the boat to dock, watching the cars come off, driving on and pulling up as far as the attendants says as he packs in as many vehicles as possible, feeling the wind and enjoying the scenery as we rode across the river. Even the smell of the fuel had a comfortable familiarity to me.

Another half hour after the river-crossing, we reëntered Senegal. The region south of the Gambia is knows as the Cassamance, after the river of the same name that runs through it. People keep referring to the recent civil war in this area, and I’m too embarrassed of my ignorance to ask for details (when? where? who?). Remarkably, though, the roads are beautifully paved, and we made great time from the border crossing all the way to Kolda, with a quick stop for lunch along the way.

So here I am at the Hotel Hobbe (no, not Hobbes). I’m in room 78, which is between room 46 and room 47, across from room 34. No idea why; perhaps there’s a pattern I haven’t figured out. The hotel has a crested crane (I’m told) strolling around the edges of the pool area. And a remarkable number of insects crawling and flying about, but luckily not many in room soixante-dix-huit. Luckily, I’ve been taking my malaria pills every day.

The wireless internet here only works outside by the pool, where there is nowhere to plug in my computer. Since I used up my battery chatting with Amy and Andy, I’m now back in my room, writing offline, so won’t post this until I go back down in the morning. But it seems petty to complain about this inconvenience. Given the state of the infrastructure on this continent, it’s astounding how easy communication has become. My phone was rarely out of range throughout the 8-hour trip here (my Senegalese SIM card didn’t work in the Gambia, but my US one did), and then I spent the evening chatting with London and New York. Now if only they could do something about the roads.

On the Road Again

Back in the “field” with sporadic internet access, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to post this. We had planned to get out of Dakar early in the afternoon, managed to get away a little before 4:00. Our destination was Sokone, on the way to the Gambia, but we didn’t make it quite that far.

One of the people I’m traveling with, a consultant for the other organization on this trip, has a hard and fast rule against driving at night in Africa. It’s a rule that's hard to argue with, and it seems to have served her well, as she has made it through thirty odd years of living in various parts of West Africa and hasn’t died on the road yet. When we realized that we had no hope of reaching Sokone by nightfall, which comes at about 7:00, we decided to stop in Kaolack, a pretty big city 200 kilometers from Dakar.

We still broke her rule, but only by a little. By the time it got dark, we were already into Kaolack, and so not driving very quickly. Even so, the chaos and confusion of the Senegalese streets was magnified by the darkness—I’m sure glad I wasn’t driving.

I’m getting anxious about my role here. We’re supposed to spend Thursday and Friday visiting health facilities and interviewing people to figure out what needs are not being met. But I feel like I have missed so much in the meetings over the last couple of days, and even in general conversation. That’s not a big problem in day-to-day conversation, but now I’m supposed to be collecting data that people will actually be relying on to make decisions. The plan is to conduct interviews two or three at a time, so I guess I’ll just hope that others catch whatever I miss.

Dakar

I really wish I cared about contraceptive prevalence. A couple of official meetings today and lots of talk with the folks from the "sister organization" we're working with here. Mostly talking about who knows whom, who's done what where. "Did you know X, who worked for USAID in Ghana and then for XYZ in Mali? Well, she left ABC last year and now she's the COP at DEF in Ethiopia." "Oh really, then she must know Y, whom I worked with at RST in Burundi." Blah blah blah.

Dakar seems kinda cool, though I haven't seen much of it. The traffic sucks, like most cities in the developing world. But it's on the ocean, which always helps. The road from the suburb where I'm staying to the city goes along a lovely stretch of beach, where many many hotels are under construction. At one curve, there is a big, colorful mosque, right on the beach--what a cool place to pray!

This evening I had a free hour before dinner, so I strolled down the road from my hotel to the Pointe des Almadies, the westernmost point in Africa. Confusingly, the actual point was not marked anywhere, not even a sign that I noticed. There was a parking lot, a beach, a few restaurants, and an "artisans market" for the tourists. I spotted a peninsula jutting out in the right direction, so I walked toward it. But when I got close, I realized that it was inside a Club Med, not open to the public. Is it possible that the government of Senegal has allowed this point to be on private land?

Apparently, such geographic trivia is not as important to the Senegalese (at least based on my sample size of one). When I asked Abdoulaye, my colleague here, about it he said he had never thought about where the exact point was. And then he said he thought the US embassy should purchase the land and turn in into a park. Huh??