Dakar, Senegal

Whew, this is a tough one for me. Senegal is both beautiful and horrible at the same time. Give me a chance to explain and hopefully by the end you’ll understand why. The second I set foot on the plane in Belgium which was going to Senegal, I had an inkling I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. The plane was literally full (save one French family and myself) of African men all above six feet tall, all dressed in standard Muslim attire, and all speaking a language that was not French, not English, and not anything I could figure out based on a similarity to another language I’d heard, it was mostly Wolof. When I got to the airport in Senegal, it was still their warm season, which means heat so heavy it lays on you like a damp wool blanket, and you sweat while your taking an ice cold shower, even the shaded areas were painfully hot. There were tons of people milling about speaking something between French and Wolof, and they all wanted to take my bags and help me through customs. They were so intent on helping me that they refused to let me through customs in just any old fashion, I had to give them larger and larger sums of money in order that they not turn me over to the officials, for what reason I was never sure. Once outside I had the same treatment, my ride was not there(they expected me later), and my phone card, which is apparently the common case, did not work there. I refused to change money with so many people around and such seemingly relaxed security, so I made friends with one of the porters and he helped me out with the calling and getting my ride there. Here I should mention, there are distinct personalities in Senegal, those who take you in care for you, treat you like your one of their family members, and those who see you as nothing but a tourist and imagine you have buckets full of money just waiting to be handed out. Unfortunately the problem is, no matter how little money you think you have, you do have more than them by a significant amount, so how can you really tell them otherwise? Yeah, complicated situation to be in. That’s how it is in Senegal though, lots of great people who would never ask anything of you, will help you with anything and everything you want or need, and will never complain to you about the actually quite severe problems they have going on in their lives, and then lots of people looking for you to help them because your white and you speak English or French, so they think you can automatically and continuously give and give and give with no end. It would be nice if you could, and oftentimes I felt myself trying while I was there, but the thing to remember is that no matter what you give it can never be enough, they will always be wanting, they will always be suffering, so you must do as much as you can and as much as you feel right doing, and be able to let it go after that. Not as easy as it might sound.

I lived in Suffolk’s housing there during my stay, in an apartment off campus with several other students from a variety of African countries. I had chosen Senegal, not only because it was a third world country that may not have the type of funding richer European countries would (which would mean their programming for the homeless mentally ill would either be scant, non-existent, or at least creatively implemented), but also because of the significance of the family in African societies and because it was one of the few African countries that I was sure had a mental hospital to begin with, and in my mind, it was a little safer than others at the time which were suffering from uprisings and much anti-American sentiment based on who they thought Americans were, and the view they believed American had of Muslims after September 11th. That being said then I didn’t expect to find much, but I did expect to find something, and there was something, not much, but something.

A lot about my findings and a lot about Senegal in general made me feel like someone was holding me upside down and all the blood was rushing to my head. I felt dizzy and nervous and like I had everything in life from my perceptions to the way I ate my breakfast all totally wrong. Its hard to really explain just how different Senegal is, but just to give a few external examples, when you eat fish, mostly it’s the whole fish- eyes, teeth, gills, scales, it smiles at you in fact, when you eat with a family you eat out of a communal bowl and you eat with your hands, they laugh if you use utensils. Frequently the family will push all the portions of meat to your side of the bowl so that you as the guest get the “best” parts, if you’re a vegetarian its awkward but for me personally when that happened I took it and ate it, whatever the meat was regardless of the fact that I'm strict vegetarian- I didn’t want to offend someone who was giving me the largest part of what little they have. Beyond this and more subtle perhaps, is the fact that when someone calls you brother or sister they mean it. I lived with 19 of my closest brothers and sisters while I was there, you share everything- when you have food to eat you make sure you have enough for everyone in the room or you don’t eat it, you don’t need to ask to use their things- just use them and tell the person you’re using them( I always asked and I recommend asking, but I got that treatment from them), you mock and tease each other, if you had a mother to run to with complaints about how this one pulled your hair you just might do it- that’s how close you are. Its like nothing you’ve ever felt and nothing you will ever feel again, especially because you do get so close and then you know you have to leave them and go back to your posh American life style and leave them to their baobab juice, sandaled feet and hotter than hell African sun. It was because of this I started to hate myself in a way. I cried at least once a week out of joy and sadness over this fact, I wept like a tiny baby with one of the best friends and brothers I ever made the day I left and he cried right along with me telling me I had to go, that I couldn’t save Africa on my own and I couldn’t choose to live the way they live when I have so many other opportunities open to me.

That’s the thing about Africa, or at least Senegal, its raw emotion, when you get right down to it there is no mistaking the love and hate that exists there (I also got stones thrown at me my last day there). You know how people feel, they may not say it but they don’t have to, you can see it, and they are strong, man are they strong. Even the people who are trying to just take your money because they think your only a tourist, even the people who insist upon calling you toubab (white person) when they know your name, there is a strength and a good will there that cannot be mistaken. They mean you no harm, they are just trying to get by and you might just be the way they can do that. They’ve seen more hurt and pain and hunger than anyone I’ve ever met and they still greet you with a smile. I had neighbors who lived down our dirt road inside literally four aluminum walls with a tin roof and a blanket as a door, I never saw them eating but when they did they always offered some to me with huge grins, they wanted me to come eat with them and share in their wealth. Its almost disturbing because you expect them to break down, to hate life, but they don’t, as many of the doctors I talked to said when I asked them how people get by “god is their insurance”… “if you see a man with a broken down barely working car and ask him why he has such a car, he will say god is great and that is why” because at least he has a car, not too many others can say that.

Speaking of cars another thing of note about Senegal is their transportation system. There are buses with fixed rates but they don’t come too often, there are car rapides which technically have a fixed rate for a certain distance but if you don’t know it your in trouble, and the taxis will try to charge you whatever they think they can get, typically 2/3rds as much as you should be paying,( same price hike incidentally with souvenir vendors and other vendors unless they are within the concrete walls of a shop, which you don’t see too much of, the markets are all open and out on the street).

The thing about the culture that most people at home don’t get is that its not what your geography books or history books would have you believe. Your not living off lizards and running with gazelles (in fact Senegal has no real wildlife except stray goats and horses and yes tons and tons of lizards, get used to seeing them in the shower). There are pizza joints and clothing stores and internet cafes, its just that people have sacrificed other things in order to have these amenities. You might find someone who hasn’t eaten for a week to buy their son or daughter the latest shoes. That’s just how it goes sometimes there. There are even night clubs, hell we had a party at my apartment almost every weekend just to let off steam and celebrate being able to celebrate. Most of us didn’t have enough money to celebrate but when we pooled all our funds we came up with enough to be happy over and that’s how it goes at least on Suffolk’s campus. If you go out into the country you find things very different though, people are just sitting around because there is nothing else to do, no jobs, no really good farm land, and children are barefoot, have reddened hair and dried out scalps from malnutrition, spots where their mothers cut away their hair because they got ring worm.

Don’t get me wrong though there are beautiful things and places in Senegal, the beaches are pure and wonderful, you can watch the fisherman drag in their catches from their longboats, there is a beautiful lake called Lac rose which is pink and 10 times as salty as the ocean( a little touristy in one section and in another section it’s a work place, they mine salt from the lake to sell). There is Gorree island which is where all the slaves from Africa were shipped first in order to be sorted, and its got magnificent trees and flowers and water and sand and houses and you wonder how anyone could live there now but they do, I saw it as a kind of a triumph over the terrifying past of the island. To see some of these things like Gorree and the slave houses on it, they will charge you more because, as they tell you quite honestly, it’s the price for white people. And sometimes it seems wrong and becomes angering, but at the same time they make so little anywhere else, can you really blame them, and after all it was our European ancestors fault that the island is associated with what it is. Maybe it’s just a small bit of justice, least that’s how I see it. Speaking of money matters, just to put it briefly I took $700 dollars with me, I paid my translator $100 dollars for my interviews(as no one really speaks English) and I left with $100 still in my pocket, all told that sounds like about $500 used while I was there, and I bought a lot of souvenirs for people and (permanently) lent people money while I was there. I never wanted.

There is just so much to say about Senegal, this doesn’t cover half of it. Ask me about the little girls who would always stare and smile, the ones who were happy just touching my hair, putting it behind my ear for me, shaking my hand, touching my skin (in the more rural areas the little ones don’t see whites too often). Ask me about celebrating the end of Ramadan(Senegal is primarily Muslim) with a friend of mine and her family, or my choice to wear a kerchief upon my head on the Muslim Sabbath (Fridays). Ask me how none of my male friends approved of my going out at night on my own and always wanted to escort me. So much happened that I hated and so much happened that I loved, I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything, ever. Its something you need to see and take in with your own two eyes. I had a lot of difficulty the first few weeks I was there because things didn’t make sense, things didn’t seem fair, things didn’t seem to jibe with the way the rest of the world operated, but in order to really see Africa you must open your heart wide, as wide as you can and just accept it all. If you try and exist there without opening your heart it will break you open and tear you apart, if you see it with your heart and not just your eyes and/or American perceptions of the way things should be, Africa will stay with you forever, it will be you brother, sister, mother and father, it will take you in, albeit occasionally begrudgingly, and it will never let you go. There are certain smells and sounds that will forever be etched in my head as Africa, certain people I met whom I couldn’t remove from my heart if I tried with all my might, and I am grateful for every millisecond, every person who handed me a kind hello or a resentful truth. It is an experience that turns your world on its head and leaves it there for a good long time.