Things That Make a Person (Like me) Cry.

Much has been said about Africa and its problems: Famine, poverty, inequality, corruption, civil wars, ethnic tensions, subjugation of women and underdevelopment. Granted these are problems one can apply to any country, even the U.S. But they are obviously way worse here. Some of them really break my heart.

Poverty is one of those things. Since I got here I first learned that poor parents, (I am talking about people who don’t have any money, not people who live on like $.50 a day) often send their kids to ‘schools’ in Dakar. These ‘schools’ basically send the kids to the city to beg for money on the streets, markets, highways and corners. These kids are the same ones we see on the commercials. Dusty haired, split lipped, tattered clothes, no shoes, or something that used to be shoes, and extremely sad faces. They approach you anywhere there is lots of commercial activity. They have sad little coffee cans that people put change in. They hold their sad dried hands out and plead with their eyes and mouths toward you. They follow you around the market. In traffic jams (highways and city streets) they come up to your car lightly, and sadly, tap your windows for change. Once in Rufisque a kid trailed us for two blocks tapping our window. His face looked as though it had spent a lot of time crying. Sometimes you can see them playing around with their fellow beggars or walking on the way to and from their posts. I imagine they do a lot of just wandering. I often see them and really want to start crying at how heartbreakingly fucking unfair it all is. How these kids have nothing to dream about, what will become of them, will they see adulthood? If they do, what kind of person are they gonna be? I less want to help them then destroy the fuckers who brought them into the world and/or sent them out to the streets to live life. I also realize that it is not at all a realistic way of thinking or acting, also there is very little one person can do.

I got my start as an activist in environmental issues. My first campaign victory was starting a recycling program on my campus. Since then I have worked on a lot of other issues and helped raise a lot of money for progressive causes and efforts. Coming to Senegal and seeing the state of the environment here makes me extremely sad. It is also slightly puzzling. The puzzle being conflicting social values at work. Muslims are very neat people. They do ablutions 5 times a day, they believe Allah is very jealous, so they like to be clean and neat for him. Muslims dress up on Friday, wear cologne and enjoy looking very nice. The Senegalese also excel at this with women and men being the sharpest dressed people around. So it is a puzzle that they treat their environment like shit and let it look that way too. Yes, yes, back in the day most people dumped their trash (organic matter) in the front yard, or on the street, it was no big deal because it was gone the next day. Then, like in the US, along came plastic. Ugh..it is every fucking where. Back in the 80’s people used to joke that the national flower was the blue plastic bag, because you could look everywhere and see them clinging to trees and bushes all over the country side. Well now they are black or clear. They come in all sizes. People go to a boutique and can buy all of the following in a small baggie: sugar, sow, Nescafe, butter pats, an egg or eggs, basil, water to drink, cooking oil, a cigarette(s). And this is just a partial list, I have not seen all the things a store can put into a single baggie. The trash is just around everywhere. While at “resort” area we visited outside of Dakar, we were sitting on a beach when a local woman with a large bucket on her head walked out to the ocean and dumped her household trash into it. Try and picture my face. I wanted to beat the shit of her. But wait she tops if off when she joined her 3 neighbors in hauling 3 buckets full of beach sand away. I was told that this is one of the prime causes of beach erosion. People sell their own beach out for money. But they are just the small time operators. Often you will see police ‘ticketing’ giant rigs who have tons and tons beach sand as their payload. The sand is used later at construction sites. People who know about the “broken glass theory” would see plenty of broken glass here. The notion of public cleanliness and personal cleanliness do not meet and when plastic is thrown in, ugh…it’s an environmental disaster.

Why my guard has a Machete.

My guard has one because he is guarding our house. Dembo lives outside of Dakar and works thru the night watching our house. He has worked here for many years. He generally sits on a chair, smokes and guards. He doesn’t read, sometimes he eats and sweeps the front part of the house. He often does not wear a shirt, since it is pretty hot right now. He is basically there to be a presence. Most guards work at night and I imagine it is frac’ing lonely. They sit in front of apartments, businesses, houses, and embassies. Mostly the sit alone and wait all night. Some are in groups, some smoke. Most wait.

The machete has a ubiquitous place in Africa. The look of the hard rusty curved steel conjures images of mass murder. Here it is pretty commonplace. It is used by Muslims to prepare a goat for Eid ul-Fitr (practiced here in Senegal as Korite) or the breaking the Ramadan fast, and used also by guards to protect houses.

Some guards have a machete, some have large knives, but most don’t have anything but a flashlight, some Jom and lots of Mun.

Who hires guards? Well the obviously rich people do, tubaab’s do, and business like banks and electronics stores. We live in a house with two apartments. We rent from a widowed American professor who was married to a Senegalese artist named Kalidu Sy. She lives in the U.S. so there is a guard here to keep an eye on the place year round. Once Dembo caught a guy who used the construction going on next door to get in. Dembo yelled out and people came a running and they (the neighbors) beat the crap out of the intruder. Our maid thinks they killed him.

Wolof Glossary
Tubaab –White person
Mun- patience
Jom- courage.

Sept Places

Sept Places is a rapid transit in a car from one city in Senegal to another. You start by getting yourself to a transportation depot in downtown Dakar. It is kind of like grand central station on steroids and on its worst day ever. Way too many people, no working sanitation or trash removal, followed by foot vendors selling you gifts and food for your trip. It is very very crowded. Oh and there are no signs to tell you where things are, who is going where or when. Once the taxi man gets to the station there are 4-5 kids and teenagers tapping and rapping on your window to carry your bag or offering to tell you where the cars to St Louis are parked. Once the cab makes it to where the cars to St. Louis are parked you get out and more kids are there to try and take your bag to the Sept Place cars parked a mere 4 meters away. ‘Sept places’ is short for ‘seven seats.’

Our car has two spots left meaning there are a total of 8 people on this trip. The car is about what you’d think a car like this would be like. Most of the windows don’t work, the seats are covered in dust and dirt, the shades are tattered, the floor has an 1inch of sand, the arm rests are holding on to the door with one bolt, the windshield is partially cracked in 7 places. The car is probably a 1995 Peugot that has not had basic maintenance since it was purchased. Part of the car exhaust comes in to the car, where I am sitting of course. The muffler will crack as we arrive in St Louis. During a 15-minute stop, the car needs water, used for coolant, and a push from some of the locals to get us back on the road. It was not gonna be a happy or easy trip.

Back to the depot. The car is loaded and 10,000 CFA ($23) gets two people and our bag to St Louis. But we have leave first. Our fellow passengers have to buy some things. A watch, some good luck, bananas, and tissue. One woman does not have change so we encourage her to buy something so she can pay the driver, but she is not sure what to get. So after about 15 minutes of all of us sitting in the car (it is 7:45 AM ) we are getting under way. My legs are already cramping. ☹ A watch is still being haggled for while we pull away. Given the amount of people and cars around we don’t go too fast so the guy is able to walk and sell. Now we are moving. Dakar highway west to the industrial zone, then north out of Dakar and open highway. We hit the 5 lane speedway that, after 10 minutes, is jammed because we are 5 miles from where it turns in to a one lane street. We reach the industrial zone of Dakar after an hour goes by and I have inhaled enough air pollution to turn my self into a Clean Air Act violation. Now we battle Saturday morning traffic thru the Zone to head north and out. The driver makes his first gas stop, my legs are relieved. Surely once we get out of this; it is only 3 hours to St Louis. 9 AM now…St Louis by noonish?


One hour later we finally hit open road. Dakar is behind us, the air is cooling the back of the car, but now my legs are really cut off from circulation. Riding in this car in this seat is like “riding’ bitch’ with really long legs. I start to wonder if this trip is worth it. We pass cars, cars pass us. We jostle with buses and motorbikes, and the exhaust from some of the busses gets piped right in to the open window. The baby riding in the woman’s lap in front of us is being a great sport. Better then me. Ignorance is bliss.

We make our next stop just to cool the engine. How the driver knows to do that is unclear since his fuel gauge, engine temp gauge and odometer gauge don’t work. But he is a generous fellow. He gave money to 3 street beggars to increase the luck of our trip. I wish he gave more cause it is now 10 AM Dakar is barely behind us and spending 2 ½ hours getting less than 75 miles is pretty shitty progress so far.

We reach the ½ point around 11:30 and in about ½ hour we stop and need that push I told you about earlier. It’s a good time to tell you how tolls work on a 1 lane highway. At some point the driver pays and they are given a slip to leave at the other end of a town or ‘tollbooth.’ It is common for drivers to just go 50 km/h and let the payment slip fly out the window for the ‘toll collector” find. Pretty fast system huh?

After wedging my feet into some place under the chair in front of me, my leg fatigue seems to have gotten better. Now my neck is a little stiff because I am resting my head on the car ceiling. Ever since our shove off our fellow car mates are very upset. We should have been to St Louis by now and they let him know that. He also knows that too and expresses it by averting his awareness from the road. He speeds, passes cars approaching hills, tailgates and drives worse then his worst before. Cooler heads prevail and we remain quiet the rest of the trip. I just wished his driving cooled too.

We arrive just outside St Louis to their transportation depot were we get another cab to St Louis. It is worth noting that St Louis is 278 km (172 miles) from Dakar. It took us door- to-door 7:15 AM to 2:00 PM about 6 hours and 45 minutes. TIA.

How Storms are Different Here than There

In the developing world storms are very different. Everything here stops and braces. The storms come in very angry and opens up tons of water on us. The water goes everywhere. It comes in through the ceiling, the windows, in your office and up the toilet. The water has to be corralled, and squeegeed, mopped and bucketed. Then you wait for more water to come and repeat. Outside the roads are gone, sidewalks are covered in soot and mud. Walkways are rivers, your front door is a small pond and the neighborhood is a lake. Only new cars and trucks can be seen trying to pass. The one or two brave/desperate/silly/dumb souls out in this are barefoot and look like sponges.

Dogs run at full speed and then the power goes out. When it is dark then you notice the smell. You know that smell too, cause it is the smell of sewer water. It is creeping in to the apartment across the living room, and in to the bedroom. Light a match to burn the trace methane and continue mopping.

When the angry rain is done you have to head out. Your family’s house is filling with water and you’ve got to help bail them out. Your feet, ankles and thighs are now drenched. You pass through streams and rivers that were grass beds and sidewalks where the goats eat and people did their business. You try not to think what your feet are now soaking in as you navigate across the least deep stream you cross. As you arrive at your destination you grab a pot, use the stream gushing from the roof or hope the hose works to wash your feet and thighs. The mud and soot and rain and leaves and paper and pebbles and everything rinse off your toes and heels and foot.

Things I’ve Seen

Things I’ve Seen

While here I have set myself a task over being observant in eyes and ears and mouth. I am surprised; by the things I didn’t expect to expect to see.

I have seen more butterflies here in the past week then almost all of the past decade of my life. Some pretty exotic birds too.

I have seen more men urinating, including one woman, in public then all the Mummers days parades I have been too.

I have heard people greet each other with “how are you” more in the past week then all of last year. Here it is “Ca va” and “Alhamduilay.” Everyone is greeting everyone all the time. The shop keeper, the secretary, the office person, the person selling phone cards on the street, the waiter, the taxi driver.

I have also eaten more dishes of fish and rice then I did my whole life. Fish is the national dish here so it is not a surprise.

I have seen more taxi cabs outside my window then I ever have seen. Gotten more invites to come over for a meal. There is a Sengalese word for hospitality called “teranga” which I have experienced a lot of.

I have seen open sewers, cows and goat and horses on streets and sidewalks, and lots and lots of dark people.

I have also seen that African poverty is really, really, really fucking real.

Dakar Capitalism

Almost anything you need/want or don’t need/want can be found on the streets of Dakar. The shops, the stores, the boutiques, the market, can all be found just by walking down a road, approaching a round-a-bout, turning a corner, near an alley entrance or just walking out your front door. This kind of capitalism is exciting, and scary.

Exciting is a word I is use with some reservation. You can haggle with anyone, bargain for anything, and mutually agree to something. Since there is not a set price for anything, I would find it hard to get ripped off. Though it certainly happens. What one buys is what one has agreed too pay. As the saying goes “don’t like the price, take your money elsewhere.” It’s exciting for me to haggle. It has theatrics that appeals to my love for winning. I love to win. To walk down the street and be able to haggle for a taxi ride, haggle for a baguette, and bargain with a guy that has 20 pairs of boxers shorts on shoulders is “win” for me.

This kind of capitalism is also scary. There are no ordinances, regulations, codes, or price control, and lots of competition. Vendors, if one can call them that, operate everywhere. On the street, taxi will honk at you from the opposite directions on highways to get your business. Fruit stands operated near open sewer lines. You can, though, buy 1 of anything: a cigarette, beer, a calling card, half a stick of butter and a tea bag. The eggs I bought for our Saturday breakfast were all partially covered in bird shit. It’s challenging to clean of a side of egg enough to get it out of the shell and into a bowl without it passing any fecal matter. Some of the most prominent hawkers on the street are children of various ages. They sell phone cards, offer to shine your shoes at your front door, and offer to carry your bags 1 block down the street. In some cases kids are around to offer professionals the chance to pay them to do their job.

An Apology

Subject: Garrison Keillor apologizes to Republicans:

"Having been called names, one looks back at one's own angry outbursts over the years, and I recall having at various times referred to Republicans as 'hairy-backed swamp developers, fundamentalist bullies, freelance racists, hobby cops, sweatshop tycoons, line jumpers, marsupial moms and aluminum-siding salesmen, misanthropic frat boys, ninja ditto heads, shrieking midgets, tax cheats, cheese merchants, cat stranglers, pill pushers, nihilists in golf pants, backed-up Baptists, the grand pooh-bahs of Percodan, mouth breathers, testosterone junkies and brownshirts in pinstripes'.

I look at those words now, and 'cat stranglers' seems excessive to me. The number of cat stranglers in the ranks of the Republican Party is surely low, and that reference was hurtful to Republicans and to cat owners. I feel sheepish about it."