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Leila and Baby Ranger
Poor little thing; his feet didn't hit the ground for days with Leila around! Happy Independence Day! (July 4, 2007)
Hello Dear Friends and Family, (June 22-23)
I am sitting in a hotel room in Johannesburg, South Africa and nursing a nice glass of red wine. I was wondering if I should take this opportunity to enjoy a good book, or catch up on the blog. I opened the last draft I had written and it was dated April 26, so the blog won! Most of what I’d put in it is very outdated, but will still be news to most of you. I don’t actually have internet connection in this room but that is likely a good thing as it will keep me from getting too distracted; although, I am simultaneously watching a South African version of “Dancing with the Stars”, and it makes me miss my dad since we always liked to watch ballroom dancing competitions together. My phone is not working so I can’t call my honey or my babies, so maybe if I write about them, it will fill up the empty quiet room.
I have jotted notes on a sticky titled “blog stories”, the greater part of which I cannot decipher, and the vast majority of
Tuckered Out!
Finally at peace; no bugs and a full tummy! those remaining I have no idea what I was talking about at the time; so although I tried to seize the moments as they passed, I’ll have to try to dig down into the old lady memory bank and come up with ideas afresh!
The School
As mentioned in the last blog, the children started at Dakar Academy, a private Christian School run by Americans. We met a few folks along the way who have been very helpful in our settling-in process by providing great information on where to purchase things, and how to find help; but we haven’t gotten to know anyone really well. Keagan and Kaijah were in the same class, and seemed to fare well. The kids came home from school one day and were excited that they were taking French. I asked what they had learned and Kaijah said, “le T-shirt”. I kind of chucked and asked if there was anything else, so she said “le jeans”. Then I asked if they had learned any words that weren’t actually English words; so Keagan got this really serious look on his face-total concentration-then he raised one brow, cocked his head to the side and said in
Princess, Ranger and Keagan
This is at our new house; look how much he has grown! the cutest, most unbelievable Inspecteur Clouseau kind of French accent, “le pull-over”. I just about died of laughter! So apparently, they were learning clothing! They have forts on the periphery of the school grounds and with permission the kids can play there after school; you know Keagan is all over that! It is a boarding school as well so there are always children to play with. He’s driving us crazy wanting to go in the summer, but we have so much to do with settling-in that we haven’t had a chance. I am not even sure who is here over the summer, but next week they are hosting a VBS and the children will attend each morning; they will love that. Leila could not get into school as unfortunately, Dakar Academy does not have a pre-k. The local French school does, but we could not get her in as the director seemed to be on perpetual holiday when we moved here and the school kept telling us registration was in May. When we returned in May, they told us the school was full. DJ was a hit socially and made a lot of friends; he was always coming home late,
friends in tow and he attended quite a few after-school events; that was nice to see. Academically, I think the school was a bit more challenging than he had expected. Since the summer has started, we haven’t seen much of the friendship crew so I suppose most of the families are on furlough.
The Family
Our family seems to be growing by leaps and bounds - On Sunday, April 29, we decided to drive around and investigate the neighborhood around the church a little bit and we happened upon a puppy that was being chased and shooed away by a group of men eating at a little roadside restaurant. The children have been asking for a dog for years, so every holiday brought delivery of a plastic, stuffed, or electronic dog. We rescued “Ranger Jack”, chock full of fleas and ticks, so much so, that we couldn’t get anyone to pick him up and hand him to us in the car. DJ and I got out of the car and wrapped him up in DJ’s shirt. He went right to sleep on his lap. Our first step was a two-round bath with dish soap to get all of the
Our House
Lots of room for visitors! grease and oil off of him, and then a good scrubbing with flea soap. Afterwards, he went right off to sleep. He slept for two days; I was worried that the soap had poisoned him, but then I figured it was the only time in his short little life he’d had any peace with no fleas, ticks or worms - not to mention that he had a full stomach as well! With Leila home as a playmate, she plum tuckered the little guy right out too! He had to take to hiding under the couch to get a moment’s rest! The vet estimated him at 6 weeks old; he still didn’t even have all of his teeth! We went to get puppy supplies and that afternoon Leila said, “Mama, thanks for letting us have a dog that poops!” I guess you can only get excited about so many stuffed puppy dogs! Ranger has grown by leaps and bounds! He has outgrown his harness, gotten all of his teeth and more than tripled in size! The vet was amazed between his first visit and his follow up just two weeks later! He said, “I’ve never seen an African dog grow like
At the Beach
Djibo, the kids and Grace (the pastor's daughter) this; that day he found you was the luckiest day for this little dog!” On the gross side of dog ownership in Senegal…he developed several big lumps under his skin, one on his face and a few on his side; we were worried so Djibo took him to another vet by our new house and she squeezed out giant white worms! I was so glad I wasn’t there because I knew if I’d seen that I’d never be able to get the image out of my head; although he felt compelled to describe it in detail. How nasty is that? Apparently, fly larvae living in the sand penetrate the skin and the worms form inside; the only way to cure it is to squeeze them out…like giant zits! Anyway, now Ranger is a big boy, and growing by leaps and bounds. My task for Jburg is to find him a collar since he has outgrown his harness.
UNCLES -- Today marks the one-week anniversary of having Djibril’s two little brothers with us in Dakar. Yacouba, 21, has come to continue with his studies as we discovered the schools in Niger have been blocked, so he has not advanced a grade in three years. He is six years older than DJ but next year they will be in the same grade level. The school we planned to put him in is not accepting new students, so we are searching for other private schools as options. Oumarou, 24 has come to help us with our house, to serve as a guardian and to explore what he might want to be when he grows up so hopefully we can help move him along in getting there! Yacouba looks so much like Djibril, a little carbon copy! The second day he was here, he came walking down the stairs and Leila went running to him calling, “Daddy, daddy!” Everyone was looking as he scooped to pick her up and she got right at his face, probably ready to plant a big kiss on him and she stopped short and just said, “OH!” Everyone burst out laughing as she added, “You’re not my daddy, where’s my daddy?” Djibril was standing behind laughing. They are getting used to our “American culture” home with the prayers and the sit-down family meals. The second day I was back from Niger, we were having dinner and Yacouba starting laughing and shaking his head so I asked him what was going on. He said, “Every time we eat here it is like being in a restaurant!” The kids thought that was funny, but coming from Niger I can see how that is true for him. I see a lot of Djibril in Oumarou but more so with expressions and gestures. It is funny seeing all of them together. DJ is really taking off on the French with those two here and of course I can’t even begin to keep up with all of the Zarma! I’ve set up the boys on a program with the kids. They started doing an hour of French per day and an hour of math. The first day they did all things at the table, like, “Please pass me the salt”. Keagan is always too shy at the table to ask his uncles to pass him anything which was the catalyst for the lesson topic. Yacouba is really impressed with Keagan’s and Kaijah’s capabilities in math. The other day the three big boys decided they were going to have a fashion show to see who looked the best all dressed up. They raided Djibril’s closet and got dressed in shirts and ties. When Djibo brought out the suit jackets they were beside themselves. It was funny for me taking photos - I had to cut out the feet in flip-flops so as not to destroy the effect!
KEAGAN -- All of the children seem to enjoy Dakar, but Keagan seems to miss his friends the most. He talks about Zach and Reed all the time and seems lonely more often than the others, but he is doing better with his uncles here. I brought him a slingshot from Niger and the big boys have spent a great deal of time setting up targets and teaching him how to use it. It has been very special to watch. One day I was watching from the window and caught Keagan putting his arms around them both outside and planting little pecks on their cheeks; I can tell that the time and attention is very special to him. Funny how you rarely need words for true understanding isn’t it? Everyone seems to like it here; I asked them all what they thought and Keagan said, “Well, Dakar is pretty nice, except for all of the people peeing on the walls!” And that is a fact; you do see a lot of people peeing on the walls!
KAIJAH -- We toured the city to buy insecticide treated mosquito nets. Kaijah wanted to sleep on the bed of the first one we put up and she begged, “Mom, please let me be the first seven year old girl to ever experience this”; I told her there had been many before, so she added, “in the Chekaraou family”. I remember in Peace Corps, being out in my village and getting my net tucked all in around me and how secure and protected that made me feel…no skeeters, bugs, rats, bats, I was so untouchable! At least now I don’t have to deal with the army green nets! Kaijah has had a good week. Grace (Pastor Sam’s daughter) is out of school finally and she is spending the first week of her break at our house. You may recall that Kaijah is my ‘nature girl’. She is the first to pick up rocks, sticks and dirt. I’ve told her since before our arrival, “In Africa, to be clean is to be healthy.” She didn’t really believe me…until…well, remember those worms that Ranger had? Yes, you guessed it…when I got home from my last trip Djibril told me Kaijah had these bumps on her stomach and we needed to call the doctor. Let me preface it by saying, anything that bites, has bitten Kaijah. She must be the sweetest tasting thing in Dakar because she is constantly filled with mosquito bites, and mysterious rashes and bumps. So, when I looked at her stomach, I thought she’d gotten spider bites; the center was white like infection or puss, but no…they were worms! Same thing, only this time I saw it with my own eyes instead of having it described to me by Djibril. And I can honestly say, that is a sight I’ll never forget. You can’t imagine what it is like to see worms squished out of your daughter’s stomach! Gross just isn’t a big enough word! All those Guinea worms I pulled were much longer than Kaijah’s little worms, but none of those spaghetti noodle worms came out of my daughter, and these two did! She screamed like we were lopping off her limbs, and after it was over, she went right into drama queen mode, explaining the whole event and adding some elaborate details for Keagan and Leila who had been waiting anxiously at the door. After she had calmed down and the doctor covered the sores she said, “Mama, remember how you told me that to be clean is to be healthy?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “I believe you now!” So she only had to get a case of worms to figure out that, at least for this week, I am not the village idiot!
DJ - He seemed to settle into school the fastest socially; but academically I think the school is far more challenging. He is going to have to work hard over the summer to catch up. But with his uncles here, his interest in French has really taken off. The evening I got back from Niger he spoke to me only in French. We had a family meeting with the ‘big boys’ a few days ago and did it all in French. He didn’t say anything, but did paraphrase what we’d said, so he understood the vast majority of the conversation and I was really amazed by that! He is really, really smart…now we just have to get the motivation level as high as the intelligence level and we’ll have a winning combination! We haven’t found a soccer league but there is a standing game in the field right outside our door at 6:00 p.m. every day so he and both of his uncles play. One day he came inside and announced, “I really love this neighborhood.” I was glad to hear that. We chose an area that is all Senegalese. I didn’t want to be in a missionary or ‘ex-pat’ neighborhood because I felt like my kids would miss out on the true Africa experience if all of their friends were English-speakers from the school. Our neighborhood is mostly Wolof, although among the older kids you can find some French speakers.
LEILA - Princess Leila. At first, she really had a chip on her shoulder because she wasn’t getting to go to school like everyone else. I think she really grew to enjoy the time with mom and dad though. She is closer to me than ever. When I got back from Niger she told me, “Mama, thanks for coming home from your trip!” It is so hard to leave her now that she actually pays me some attention! Yacouba and Oumarou think she is hilarious, firstly because of the energy level and secondly because she is so spoiled by her daddy that you don’t even have to speak English to pick up on it! We’re still not sure what we will do in the fall since the school is no longer accepting registrations. I’d like to put her in a French one for sure though. Her birthday is coming up and she got her heart set on a toy, that of course, when we went back to get, was gone. I went to Toys R Us in the mall here in Jburg after my release from the hospital (that story below), and got her some things for her 4th! Can’t believe my little heart attack is four!
DJIBRIL - He is really ready to settle down. We have had a very slow settling-in process. Firstly, we still don’t have a vehicle assigned to us which is a great source of stress for my husband. You know guys can’t function without the wheels! Secondly, the house contract has been more than challenging as well. The work still isn’t completed, but if you don’t call every day the workers stop coming! It is like they don’t expect to have to show up and finish anything if you don’t call daily to specify that you would love their company for the day! He has put a lot of energy into the house. Djibo is happy; we found a nice little Togolese restaurant right around the corner from our homestead; really good food, but a bit pricey.
THE HOUSE
We have a wonderful villa 1.2 km from the school. It is new, so there are a lot of things to do. When we moved in, we didn’t really have a reliable flow of water or electricity. And although they finally have installed a generator for us, the electric company was supposed to install a panel with a greater output capacity over two months ago, and they have yet to show up for that. The electricity keeps cutting out simply because the house is too big for the panel they installed. If the a/c unit is on in one room and somebody else turns one on somewhere else, the whole fuse gets tripped and the power goes out. Kind of a pain! We have planted nice flowers though, and last weekend we hung up some pictures. The guy will come back after my trip to finish. It is nice; starting to feel like home. The girls are sharing a room, DJ and Yacouba share, Keagan and Omar have their own rooms. Dad has an office - restricted area and of course, I still have a ‘special room’, my sacred sanctuary…forbidden ground to children. The rooms are huge. When we first put our furniture in there, we placed our king-sized bed, two side tables, my vanity, the entertainment center and all of the antique furniture in my bedroom and when Kaijah entered she said, “Mama, what happened to all of your furniture in the boat?” I asked what she meant and she said, “It all got so small; how did itshrink?” It is funny, because in GA, the bed just about filled the whole room and now I have bedroom and living room furniture in there and it still looks spacious! We’ve had curtain rods installed, but don’t have any curtains just yet.
The house had a guardian when it was under construction, but we let him go, figuring there were enough of us in the house and because we needed the bedroom! We have made friends with the neighborhood guards by tipping them from time to time and asking them to watch our house. When I was in Niger, Djibril told me some guy came to the house one afternoon saying he was the local marabout and that most of the parents sent their kids to him in the summer for study. He said all the parents thought of him as the ‘neighborhood father’ and that he had to go to the village to bury his father and needed money. Djibo told him he couldn’t help, but thanked him for the welcome to the neighborhood. Late that night, the guardian from next store saw him sitting on our porch about 11:30 at night so he rallied the other guards and approached him; they guy said it was Djibo that told him to come back for money. The guards rang the bell and Djibril told them the story and the guards told him that the guy was a thief and they proceeded to beat the heck out of the guy. Djibo said they took him around the corner and didn’t stop until the guy was in really bad shape; they went and told him about it after the guy crawled off. It was sort of a weird sensation; I feel badly because the guy got beaten up, but at the same time, I feel glad that the guards are really watching your house! We gave them a really big tip!
Taking out the trash is kind of an adventure…there is no specified day or time; they just drive into the neighborhood and honk the horn really loudly! You just have to go running with the trash. Once we put out boxes and people emerged from every direction…places I didn’t even know people lived; and the boxes were gone in about 3 minutes. When the trash man didn’t come for the bags, the guardian buried it in the middle of the sandy soccer field; when the next guy goes to build a house there he will have quite a surprise.
We have to be careful to lock the gate as we have found kids in the yard trying to walk off with toys, and several times women have shown up at the door looking for work when the gates should have been locked. Aside from all of that; we love our house and our little neighborhood. The kids should be pretty good in wolof by the end of the summer.
MARGARET - We found a young gal who has started working for us. She has never worked before so it is taking a bit of time, but on the upside, she doesn’t have any bad habits to break! She has a degree from the culinary school, so she spends most of her time cooking. Her family is really nice; they are Catholics and one gal in her family just had her first communion. I saw the photos and it was quite the event! Her communion cake was bigger than both of my wedding cakes! She is really cute and before I sent the brothers from Niger, I had a dream that Yacouba fell in love with our house girl and they got married. He had an acne outbreak, which they call ‘boutons d’amour’ (love buttons); so I am having a good time teasing him that his outbreak is because of Margaret. He is kind of shy and so cute; Joel will be mad at me for that!
DAKAR
It seems as though the entire city is under construction. There are so few finished houses. Apparently, it is pretty common practice for proprietors to build a house up to about 85-90% and then stop and wait for a renter; then they get a 3 month rent advance to finish. It is so funny looking at houses with no sinks or toilets installed, wires hanging out everywhere and you say, “I want a house that is finished”, and they say, “This one is done, totally finished, one week maximum!” Maybe it is just me, but given that we saw most of those houses 3 and 4 times and NEVER actually saw any workers, I found this a little hard to buy.
The roads are the same; they are working on building what promises to be a pretty fancy road exchange by our house, so it makes traffic horrible! Just when you think you know how to get around, they change the roads. I’m not sure if they are actually making any progress, but they sure move a lot of dirt around! Many of these construction areas have police officers stationed there, but more often than not they are just hanging out at the side chatting as opposed to directing any of the traffic. Where construction is heavy and lanes change, they seem to stand right at the end of the four lane road holding up a number of fingers to indicate how many lanes are ahead; kind of like they are saying, “Okay these four lanes have to merge into one, so you all work it out yourselves!”
The roads that are paved and do have lines, all have white broken stripes; which, of course if you are in the US, means a one-way road. Most of these marked roads are three lanes, one with traffic going in each direction and one lane in the middle which is lovingly referred to as ‘the suicide lane’. There don’t seem to be any traffic rules; it is kind of like a perpetual game of “Chicken”. There is no actual signage for one-way roads that I have seen, so your only indication if you are going the wrong way is a bunch of people waving and screaming at you. Most of the time there is no place to turn around if you find yourself in this predicament. I’ve only seen one stop sign, and although it seems appropriately placed, I have never seen anyone stop there. Motorcycles don’t stop at red lights; but some cars do…at least downtown. In the other areas, it doesn’t seem that any red light is respected. Many of the drivers have misplaced faith; lots of motorcyclists without helmets on! Driving is not for the faint-of-heart in Dakar. Mom and Joyce would need to be on Valium! My left calf is nice and shapely from riding the clutch. I think I’ve had the car in fourth gear once! An automatic transmission would be a Godsend here! One of my colleagues told me two rules to help, “follow the train”, and “look for the hole”. Basically means stick to the bumper in front of you like you are attached or you’ll never get through, and look for a tiny hole where two cars have enough space between them so that you can get your nose in there and make a new train! A flash of the headlights could mean, “You go ahead”, or it could mean, “Let me go, I’m not letting you pass”; you never really know until you almost end up in a collision! The ultimate move of authority is sticking your hand out the window, indicating that the oncoming driver should yield and let you pass; most drivers can do this with such influence that you feel obliged to stop even though you know it is rightfully your time to proceed. Once you yield, you get a ‘thumbs up’, which means ‘thank you’. Incoming traffic gets the right-of-way when entering a round-about. ??? To illustrate the madness of the traffic and its laws, or lack thereof, I’ll recount the story of one of my colleagues. She was in a around about, and yielded to the incoming traffic, as is the normal procedure, and was subsequently rear-ended by a “car rapide”. (fast car - but there is nothing fast about them!). These are minibus type vehicles, all decoratively painted that serve as the local public transportation system. Most of them have the back doors held on with ropes and they have a running board to allow passengers to jump on and off without the vehicle actually having to stop at any predetermined locations. The running board also serves as extra space where the passengers can stand should all of the seats and the aisles be taken. In any case, since she was in a project car, she and the ‘car-rapide’ in question stopped and called the police. She called the office and a driver went out and waited with the car. She came back to the office, worked for a few hours, picked up some papers and sent some emails and returned to the scene. Seven hours after the call (with the vehicles still blocking traffic mind you), the police officer showed up to write a report. She explained the situation and the officer told her that the accident was her fault. She said, “I don’t understand why you believe that this is my fault, since I yielded to the traffic entering the round point and this car hit me from behind.” The officer said, “Well, yea, but it is your fault, you know those cars don’t have any brakes!” And there you have the rhyme and reason of traffic circulation in Dakar!
Getting anything done - Just like in Niger the unspoken national motto is “have patience”, the unspoken one in Senegal is “Oui, oui, c’est possible!” (Yes, yes, it’s possible)…which translated for the rest of you means, “We have absolutely NO idea what you are talking about or how to do it, but we can attempt it, bugger it up and you can pay handsomely for it!” I don’t even have the energy to go into my shower curtain rod fiasco…I’ll sum it up to say that in one of the bathrooms, the bar was actually installed around the toilet! And it gets better from there…
Me - I found a cardiologist. One day I was at an office supply store and mentioned to my colleague that I needed one. The store owner’s dad chimed in and gave me a number for his. Apparently this guy has done three surgeries on him here in Dakar, including stents. I asked the son if he was good and he said, “Well, if my dad would quit sneaking into the kitchen every night to eat ice cream and sweets, then the doctor could take better care of him!” He is really nice, studied in France and lets me go see him for prescriptions without paying for an appointment. He wrote me the equivalent of my meds in relation to what I can get here. One has to come from France, but fortunately when we were buying mosquito nets we found a couple that runs a pharmacy and are well connected and they got my meds from a doctor friend who travelled from France last month. As I write this, I don’t know how many days it will take me to get it posted to the web, but last night I ended up in the emergency room. In my room in Jburg, I started to hemorrhage around 10 p.m. About 2 it still hadn’t stopped to I went to the emergency room. I guess because of all my blood thinners I couldn’t clot so the doctor at the ER gave me meds to do so. About 4 I started vomiting and having a fever. I had been watching some movie on the Hades Virsus (Robert Ludlum novel), (like the Hot Zone about hemorrhagic fever earlier in the evening - hummm…) I got back to the hotel around 9:30 Saturday morning. The bummer was that my phone doesn’t work here so I couldn’t call home, or a colleague or anything! It was a lonely night. I was going to change my flight and just go home to get some follow up care, but I feel better, so I will go along to the meeting in Swaziland.
WORK - I finally had an ‘orientation’ in Johannesburg. I met with some colleagues to get background information on their projects and found that one day was really not enough time. There are some amazing and inspirational people working here! I was given so many manuals that I’ll have to pay excess baggage to get them all home. This also means I should be reading and not working on this blog! I still don’t have a computer for work so I can’t get into the WV email system or databases; I am in a temporary office, but am comfortable, and I am finally figuring out what the job means. The biggest challenge is finding out how all the pieces and projects fit together, and as with any organization, public or private, learning the culture, the policies, the politics and the biggest challenge - the personalities! We’ve had our share of challenges on all fronts. In any case, for the moment, I am out of news; I travel to Swaziland tomorrow and I need to get my presentations done.
We love and miss you all. Thanks for keeping up with us; for reading the blog, sending emails and for your prayers and well-wishes. We’ll be happy to have you when you’re ready for a visit to Senegal!
Blessings…Danielle, Djibril, DJ, Keagan, Kaijah, Leila, Oumar, Yacouba, and Ranger
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jill sare
non-member comment
so great to read about you all!
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I find that blog writing is a wonderful way to process all the new and bizarre things that happen every day. Isn´t it fabulous that even buying bug spray is a major adventure!!?? Lots of love to your whole family. Jill (from Ecuador)