La Lutte “La Lutte” has several meanings in French - it’s often used to signify a “struggle” or “fight”, as in “the fight against poverty”. When it comes to traditional wrestling though, La Lutte surely has to mean the struggle the largely female audience has to contain itself. Picture in your mind those well-screened images of screaming women (and men), beating their own heads in hysteria as John, Paul, George and Ringo played inaudibly on a stage in the middle of a stadium somewhere in the states. Now dress the audience in colourful sparkling robes and dresses and dim the lights [View Full Entry]

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The End of Ramadan Korité is the second biggest day in the calendar for Senegal’s majority Muslim population. Also known as Eid Al Fitr, Korité marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan - a month of fasting and prayer which needs to be carefully and sensitively considered when running a four week training programme that coincides exactly. Training schedules have to be weighted towards theory, thought and discussion in the mornings, breaks have to be planned to coincide with prayer times and the afternoons given over largely to practical and stimulating stuff. The lack of materials meant that too [View Full Entry]

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Sunshine At Night “Soleil Pendant La Nuit?” (Sunshine At Night?) was just one of the posters we put up around Foundiougne's market place early on Tuesday morning before the traders arrived. Tuesday is the town’s weekly market and the road outside WAAME’s Centre De Resources is always packed with people, overloaded buses and carts, goats, sheep, donkeys, pigs and hungry looking horses - skin hanging off their hips like a heavy jumper off a wire coat hanger. With only a handful of actual “products” to show people (materials have been and continue to be stuck at Dakar Airport since the 29th [View Full Entry]

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A Storm In A Pirogue My first truly free weekend since arriving in Senegal and I was really excited at the prospect of getting out on the water in a Pirogue, the long narrow motorised canoes which have hit the news recently as desperate people make desperate efforts to reach the Canary Islands. Our pirogue was designed to carry 20 people but felt amazingly unstable with just ten. The ones tackling the Atlantic storms can hold 40 but are often crammed with almost double that number and end up breaking their backs in the Atlantic swells. A beautiful sunny morning with [View Full Entry]

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There’s more to life than goats I’ve been a “resident” of Foundiougne since the 16th September - Two and a half weeks doesn’t make me a fully fledged resident I know but it’s enough for me to start feeling a bit more involved in the town and slightly less obsessed by the weather. It’s long enough for me to know the difference between two different types of Thiebu Dien (The “National Dish” comprising some kind of fried fish, rice of one of two colours, a mixture of obscure vegetables and the all important tamarind sauce which gives it the unique taste [View Full Entry]

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An Introduction To Teaching It wasn’t a good start. A weekend in Dakar to try and find some music and dancing turned into a 5 hour journey in a stress position crammed into an “Alham”, exhaustion, headache, fever, chills and an early night. Decided to see a doctor in Dakar as I had some classic malaria symptoms (and my legs had been completely perforated by mosquitoes in my first week). Dakar on a Sunday morning on the first day of Ramadan was eerily quiet - none of the hassle I had expected and no real need for the padlocks on my [View Full Entry]

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Life with the goats I’ve been in Foundiougne for 5 full days, 3 of them with no electricity, which is ironic since I’m here to teach a group of youngsters how to build, market and sell small solar panels for powering radios, charging mobile phones and charging small LED lamps. Funny, but the first thing people worried about when the power went off was how they would charge their phones if the power cut lasted longer the 1 day “advertised” by Senelec one day before pulling out the fuse. I told Jean-Pierre to take note - big market there for the [View Full Entry]

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Humidity If you could see this intense humidity the way you can see a dense freezing fog solidify the air on a cold January morning, you wouldn’t be able to see past your elbows. The air has a density that seems to block your pores, fills your nostrils, your lungs, your eyes, your ears and your mouth. Your eyes, if they could penetrate the hot fog, would see a thick cloud of chocking black smoke streaming from the trees, bushes and turgid grass. The flowers belch out their chocking dampness all around you, cleverly disguised with gentle perfumes. There is water [View Full Entry]

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The Ginger Starts to Wilt I knew that it was going to be humid. I knew that it was going to be very hot. And I knew that there would be mosquitoes - lots of them. But I really hadn't quite prepared myself for Foundiougne in the rainy season. I remember sitting in the solarcentury office in London back in July as the temperature hit 34.9°C and everyone wilted. I remember trying not to complain, knowing only too well that it was just a gentle introduction to what I’d be facing in West Africa. I probably came across a little smug [View Full Entry]

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Just arrived in Dakar. It's HOT ! Will write more when I have stopped sweating. Yuk. [View Full Entry]

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