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Published: December 8th 2005
Our bathroom
You know the bathroom’s going to be gross, so you hold it and hold it until you HAVE to go. But then you have to try and restrain yourself, because the harder you pee, the more it splashes. Choose door A, you pee on poop and deal with the disturbing possibility that poop water could splash on you. Door B means peeing in a hole. That’s fine when it’s not stopped up, but most of the time it’s stopped up which means other people’s pee splashes on you. Incidentally, this is also where you take your bucket shower. Part of the CIEE program in Senegal is a week in a rural village. We went in small groups to various areas outside of Dakar. Each group worked with an NGO. I decided to work with Aprofes, the organization I’d visited with my gender class.
Libby, Elizabeth, and I left Dakar in a
sept-place early Tuesday morning. When we got to Kaolack, we took a taxi to the Aprofes office. A woman named Absa welcomed us. Over lunch, she explained that we would be going back to Mbamb, the village we’d visited during our class fieldtrip.
When we got back to Aprofes, we met with another woman. We had been instructed to give her an envelope from our director in Dakar. She opened it in front of us and we saw it had almost $400 inside. The woman explained that it was for our car, driver, gas, mattress rental, lodging, food, guide, and other expenses. I asked if it might be possible for us to spend a day in Kaolack at Aprofes. She was hesitant at first, but after manipulating the numbers some more, she decided it was doable.
Eventually the driver arrived in a jeep to take
us to the village. Absa lives in Kaolack, but she came with us as our “guide.” We bought a bunch of bottled water, and then we took the badly paved road toward Ziguinchor. After about half an hour, we turned off onto a dirt road. We arrived in the village 10 minutes later.
The car took us directly to the compound where we’d be staying. It was made up of 4 semi-connected buildings of 3 or 4 rooms each. We were staying in an isolated hut at the edge of the yard. It must usually belong to a boy, judging by the posters. The walls were covered in an odd collage of Senegalese soccer players, rap stars, marabouts (religious leaders), Brittany Spears, and public health posters.
It was dusk when we arrived and totally dark by dinner time. Since there is no electricity in the village, we ate by flashlight. Dinner was served in traditional Senegalese fashion. Our host, Miriama, put a big platter on a woven mat on the ground, and we formed a circle around the food. The meal was really good—chicken and veggies on top of couscous. They offered us spoons, but since they weren’t
using them, we didn’t want to either. Instead, we took turns washing our hands in a bowl of soapy water and rinsing them in a bowl of cleanish water. Although we learned to eat with our hands during orientation and occasionally do it at home, it’s still a bit of a challenge. You’re supposed to form a ball of couscous (or rice) and chicken in your hand before bringing it to your mouth. But it just doesn’t stick together right for
toubabs… The Senegalese women enjoyed laughing at us and attempting to improve our skill.
We slept on the cement floor of the hut on thin floor mattresses. It was so noisy! The roosters crowed at the full moon all night, the frustrated donkey next door wouldn’t stop braying, and women started pounding millet before dawn. I had trouble sleeping and woke up stiff. It seemed like it might be a long week.
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