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Published: October 17th 2005
Dakar
Malian Market. This is near the train station where the one train from Dakar to Bamako leaves from. The market is full of stuff from Mali, that comes in twice a week.Monday October 17, 2005
Here we are in Senegal, finally settled and feeling comfortable…well as comfortable as you can get in 100 degree weather. We’ve had a very eventful ten days, we’ve been so busy getting here and becoming acquainted with the city we haven’t had much time to keep a travel log. So, we’ll start from the beginning. This is going to be a long entry, they certainly won’t all be this long, and we promise to keep on top of it a bit better than we have so far. This is definitely the most eventful time we’ll have here, so it’s the most packed entry we’ll have!
October 6 - 8, 2005
The trip over here was a total gongshow. We left Pearson to fly to JFK in New York on a 40-seater plane. That was totally unexpected, but pretty cool. We had an hour and a half lay-over in New York before the seven hour flight to London. Once we arrived in London at 9:20am, we quickly hopped on the train to get into central London so we could book the rest of our safari trip at the travel agent in King’s Cross. It was
Goree Island
Typical street on Goree Island. really weird being back in London, we were obviously jetlagged, as we were even nostalgic for the tube! That didn’t last very long, especially after waiting for the circle line for 15 minutes… After quickly spending any last money that we had at the travel agent, we hopped back on the Heathrow Express. Our flight to Milan was meant to leave at 4:30pm, but it was delayed by over an hour. That was just fantastic, especially since the Alitalia people wouldn’t let us check in for the flight from Milan to Dakar until we arrived in Milan. We realized after that this was because they knew there wasn’t a hope in hell of us actually making the connecting flight. So, in Milan, after watching our flight leave without us, we were shipped off to the very nice Ramada for a “last night in civilization” compliments of Alitalia. They booked us on the next flight for Dakar, which was the next day at 8:30pm. Unfortunately they kicked us out of the room at noon though, and we spent six hours sitting in the lobby of the hotel before being transferred to the airport. We weren’t really allowed to leave, but didn’t
Magueye's House
The bathroom at Magueye's... have anything to do either, cause all of our bags were still “checked,” Regardless, we arrived in Dakar at 1:00am, one day late, but completely ecstatic that our bags actually made it, despite the fact that they were checked all the way from Toronto to Dakar. Marian and Alex were there with Magueye (The director of Senevolu) waiting for us. When we walked out of the baggage claim area there were thousands of people lined up. Luckily, not many of them were white, so Marian and Alex stuck out like a sore thumb. Most flights come into and leave Dakar in the middle of the night, so that seems to be the busiest time for the airport. We were astounded by the heat and especially the humidity….even in the middle of the night. We were taken back to the Hostel, “Via-Via”, where we caught up with Marian and Alex and got settled.
October 9, 2005
Our orientation was well planned out, but also extremely flexible. A lot of care was taken to make sure that we were comfortable and getting the most out of our experience. The first day we had our Wolof lesson. We went to the
Lac Rose
John and Alex floating in Lac Rose. Very salty, but most definitely not pink... University where they train secondary school teachers, and learned many sayings that were necessary, like “how are you?” and “that is too expensive” etc.
Salaamalekum (Greetings) / Malekum Salaam (answer)
Na Nga def (how are you) / Maa Ngi Ferekk (fine)
It was really interesting, and the boys seemed to do much better learning it than Marian and I. Afterwards we went on a tour of the Sangada market, the biggest one in Senegal. Having our guides, Mustafa and Ousman, was great, especially because we went through areas of the markets and the city that we probably wouldn’t have ventured into without them, but are incredibly happy we did. The drive through the city before we arrived at the market was amazing. Dakar is described as the “country club of west Africa”, and while it has beautiful vistas of the ocean, lots of interesting restaurants and some really nice areas, it is still polluted, dirty, crowded and obviously very poor. Even while in the areas of extreme poverty, however, personal safety is never an issue. We took a taxi back to Magueye’s house for dinner. The cars here are incredible. Ninety percent of the cars look like they have been in a crash-up derby, and seatbelts are irrelevant. Rules of the road are ignored completely, but it’s so crowded that no one can go fast enough to get seriously hurt. Considering the quantity of cars on the road, the lack of formal rules leads to a surprising efficiency, with little waiting at intersections and roundabouts. There seem to be many informal rules, and people are always yielding to each other and allowing others to pass. We have been in one “accident” where our taxi scraped by another standing car, both drivers examined the damage from their seats in the cars, gave the thumbs up, and continued on their way. The cars are all in such total disrepair, that a scratch on the bumper is irrelevant. Anyway, that night we came back to Magueye’s for dinner and had the “national dish” (rice and fish, with a sort of unidentifiable sauce), which we have since learned is called so because it is the only dish served in Senegal. Sometimes the fish or meat changes, but otherwise it’s the same thing for lunch and dinner. We all sit in a circle on little stools with our spoons, and eat out of a single large bowl. The head of the family, breaks up the fish or meat, and sort of “flicks” it at the spot in the bowl in front of each person. You just eat the part right in front of you, and he just keeps dumping stuff in front of you as you eat. I like to sit beside John so that if I don’t like something, I just flick it his way. The meal was surprisingly good, although, it may perhaps get a little old to eat the same thing twice a day by the end of the six months. After dinner we had Senegalese Tea. It’s a huge process to make the tea, first boiling pretty much equal parts of water and sugar. Shot glasses are used to drink it (I think because it’s so syrup-y that you can’t drink more than that!). One shot glass is filled with the tea, while the rest is left to brew longer. Mustafa then quickly pours the tea back and forth between two shot glasses, like a bartender would, to create a froth in both cups. He does this with each glass, sometimes pouring from as high as 18 inches, without spilling a drop. Then the tea is poured into each glass, with a large amount of froth on top. (We now realize we should have brought a latte maker as our gift). Everyone has three cups of tea, the first is supposed to be “as bitter as death”, the second “as good as friendship” and the final is “as sweet as love”. The Senegalese enjoy the whole process, and like that it takes so long to make, giving them more time to visit with their guests. After dinner and tea, we returned to Via Via (our hostel) for the night. To be completely honest, that night we discussed the possibility of heading up to France (to work on our French) with dreams of varied cuisine and western toilets (we’ll discuss the ‘thing’ they call toilets here, in a bit).
October 10, 2005
We awoke for the second day of our orientation with a renewed sense of hope and optimism. After trying to register at the Canadian and American Embassies (but realizing that it would Columbus Day and Thanksgiving for us), we toured a different part of downtown and saw some nice areas. Our walk took us past the Presidential Palace, the National Assembley and many diplomats’ houses. We forgot to mention before that it is Ramadan here right now, so 90% of all people are fasting during the day. This includes our guides, who don’t eat or drink anything from sunrise to sunset each day. This means we usually feel pretty bad about guzzling water and asking to eat lunch during the day, but we are barely cut out for the heat as it is, let alone if we were to stop drinking. For this month, however, life around here pretty much stops after 7 pm, when everyone gets ready to break the fast with dates and coffee before dinner. After an exhausting day of walking around in heat that our Canadian blood is just not designed for, we headed to the beach for a dip before dinner (a process that I forgot to say before, lasts for about four hours). The beach is not what we imagined, but still incredibly nice to have close by. We haven’t seen a single surfer, and the beach is fairly covered in garbage. There are a couple of spots where we think raw sewage is being drained into the ocean, so we try to avoid those parts. The undertow is quite strong, so we mostly just wade around and cool off. It’s nice to just sit on the beach, as it’s just about the only place in Dakar that you can find a breeze. Everyone keeps promising us that the cool weather is coming, but it feels like it’s getting hotter not cooler.
October 11, 2005
Our third day of orientation was amazing. We went to Goree Island, which is where the Slave House is located. We took a ferry over to the island, and once we arrived we never wanted to leave. The island itself is small, so there are no cars or even bikes allowed. The lack of car fumes (which are very bad in Dakar, because all of the cars make the white car look like a brand new Mercedes) was VERY nice, and the views from the island were beautiful. The Slave House itself was very interesting. The guides tell stories of the slaves being kept in the house before being sent to the States. It is written in the guide book and in other places that the actual house was a French family’s, and the Slave House today is used as a representation of what may have happened during this period, and as a way to honour all those Senegalese who were sent to North America as slaves. It is documented that 300 slaves were sent from Goree Island each year, and that most of the slaves were sent from Ghana and not Senegal. Despite this, it was really interesting to visit the slave house, with its outstanding views of the ocean, and the view from when you walk in the front door and can see out the back door to the ocean. Goree Island is one of our favourite spots in Senegal so far. The beach on the island was pristine, and very calm, perfect for swimming, and the boys found a basketball court where they were showing off their ‘white guy’ moves. If given the option, we would live on Goree Island for the rest of the time we’re here, but the ferry back and forth each day makes that somewhat impossible. After returning on the ferry back to the mainland, we took the bus back to the hostel. It was good to take the bus with Mustafa (our guide), because it would have been difficult to figure out alone. People are absolutely crammed into the bus, it makes the heat outside seem almost like a Canadian winter, and there is literally no breeze. Sweat just pours off your body the entire time, we have never sweated like this before in our lives.
October 12, 2005
The rest of our orientation included getting registered at the Embassies and getting to know a few more markets and areas of town. A really interesting part of our orientation was the cultural orientation at the university. There we learned all about the different ethnicities in Senegal, how to identify people from different tribes and certain marriage and childbearing practices. Since the Senegalese people believe in witchcraft, there are many interesting traditions practiced here. The marriage ceremony may be one of the funniest. Neither the bride nor groom attends the marriage ceremony (the religious one), as women are not allowed in the mosque, and it is believed that if men wear pants at the ceremony they will be impotent in the future. So, instead, there are representatives sent from each family, to attend the religious ceremony, and the man sits at home with no pants or underwear on. The professor also explained that it is necessary to kill a sheep ( a cow if you’re really rich) after the birth of your first child, two if it’s a boy. You then have a big party, and cook it for everyone to eat. Magueye, our director, also told us that if you get Malaria, it’s okay, because all you have to do is drink black tea with lemon in it. After seeing the looks on our faces, he quickly followed that up with a suggestion that if anyone of us actually got it, we could go to the hospital. Good to know…..
October 13, 2005
We moved into Magueye’s house today. We were supposed to be staying with a different Senegalese family, but when they found out that John and I didn’t have the same last name, they didn’t believe that we were married, so they didn’t want us anymore. We later found out that no one believes that any of us are married (even Marian and Alex who are actually married), because of how old we are. They don’t believe that Europeans (they call us Europeans too) would get married so young. Anyway, it’s worked out just fine for us, we’re living all together, with the director of the program. We are living with him, his wife, who has worse French than us, and his two year old son. The house itself is pretty nice, the rooms are what we would call ‘minimalist’ (meaning, they have a bed and that’s it). So, we’re living out of our backpacks for six months…The bathroom is the source of most of the concern. The toilet is a hole in the ground (a porcelain one, but a hole none the less) with no seat or flusher. We’re presuming that you’re meant to get completely naked while pooping, and just turn the shower on, so the water pours down the drain (that’s the ‘flushing’ part) and your bum gets cleaned off (that’s the replacement for the toilet paper). We did buy some toilet paper in town, which seems to be acceptable, but getting it to go down the drain is a real bitch. Mostly, we’re just trying really hard to go whenever we’re somewhere that has a western toilet. I don’t know how long that will be possible, but it’s working so far. The electricity and water are fairly elusive also. The power goes off all the time, mostly at night, which totally sucks, cause it’s too hot to sleep without a fan. We stockpile water, so when it does go off, we can still sort of wash off. The water pressure is usually too low to get it to come out of the shower, so we’ve been having a lot of bucket showers. The discouraging thing is that the second you step out of the shower, you begin sweating so much, and there’s so much sand and dirt on the floor (even in the house), you’re almost as dirty as when you got into the shower. Consequently, John’s personal hygiene has really hit an all-time low. He hasn’t shaved since we got here, and he and Alex have convinced themselves that swimming in the ocean is the same as showering (please refer to the part where we described trash and raw sewage in the ocean). We’ve also had a solid attempt at doing laundry in a bucket, which went surprisingly well. Our clothes are just filthy all the time, the collars are literally black from the fumes and sweat. So, considering I’d never washed clothes in a bucket with just a small brush, they came out surprisingly clean. the most important part is that they smelled better than they did before.
We also started our French classes today. All four of us are in the same class…which is weird because we’re definitely all at different levels. It’s working out really well though, much better than we originally anticipated. The only problem we’re really having is understanding the African accent, some words they just say completely differently, making it extra hard for us. It’s hard to explain to them too, since many Senegalese want to believe that they have perfect France French. I think that by the end of the three weeks, our French will be much better. One of our main concerns at this point is that, now that we’re living with Magueye, we often end up speaking English, because his English is so good, and his wife only speaks Wolof anyway. We we’re hoping that we’d really be forced to speak French all the time, which I think we’ll try to do once the effects of the classes begin to take hold.
Since moving in with Magueye, we’ve also started looking at apartments in Dakar. We’re definitely getting the feeling that he’s not thrilled about having us live there for six months, and we’d like some more freedom also. Having four adults move into your incredibly tiny house would be quite an adjustment, and for us, we’d like to be able to come and go a bit more as we please. Culturally, it is really rude to skip dinner or lunch, so we’re often limited in how far we can go during the day, because we have to be back to eat. We’ve been looking into renting an apartment (most of which are holiday apartments owned by people in France) which are reasonably priced, and if we play our cards right, may even have a toilet seat.
October 15 - 16, 2005
This weekend we went to a recreational centre one day, and just relaxed in the pool (it was so nice to cool down for awhile!) The boys played basketball with Mustafa (who reminds us a lot of Will for some reason), our six foot six (180lbs), 25 year old guide. Yesterday we headed to the Pink Lake (Lac Rose). We went with Mustafa and Michelle (an American girl who arrived after us at Via Via). The lake is supposed to be really cool, because it’s pink in colour, but when we got there it looked like an ordinary lake. The guide told us that it was because there wasn’t enough wind (which I’m not convinced there ever will be), to make it look pink. The cool thing about it, besides the colour, is that it’s like the dead sea. It’s so salty, that hundreds of people come everyone year to go out in boats and collect the salt from the bottom of the lake and pull it onto the shore. It dries out in the sun, and then is processed and exported to Europe (or so they tell us, we haven’t done any of our own research on that one). John and Alex went in, and sure enough, they floated on top, just like in the Dead Sea. It was really cool, but kind of disappointing that it wasn’t actually pink…
October 17, 2005
We’re having an easy day today, as yesterday I got sun stroke, and now Marian and Alex are out with a cold. I'm feeling a lot beter today, but we’re taking a break from our French classes for the day, but will be going back to them for the rest of the week. So far we have a really good impression of Dakar. The people are very nice, very welcoming, and will often stop us on the street. Sometimes they want to sell us something, but a lot of the time they also just want to say hello and ask us where we’re from. We’re staying in a suburb of Dakar right now (we’d like to move into the city centre if possible), but everyone here is also very nice. It’s kind of funny to walk down the street, because all the little kids point and yell “tubab” (which basically means “whitey”). Some really little kids look at us and just laugh and laugh. I guess they think we’re funny looking. Lucky for me, I haven’t got really sunburned yet at all (I think that they would think that was REALLY funny). We’re really enjoying our time so far, but mostly looking forward to when it’s going to cool down. It would be nice to feel a little less disgusting all the time. So far though, no major complaints, it’s been a really cool experience and we’re looking forward to becoming really comfortable here, and really getting to know the city.
We’ll be posting more entries again soon. Sorry this took so long to do, and that it was so long. We’ll post entries more frequently, so that they won’t be as long. Pictures take a really long time to upload at the internet café, so we’ll have just a few select ones put on the site, then show you the rest when we get home!
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Emily
non-member comment
So glad you guys are having a great time and surviving the heat. Keep an open mind and enjoy the experience of a lifetime. Miss you lots, XO Em