FIRE!

I think it was around October.  The rains had ended until next year, the peanut crop had been sold and the millet and rice crops had been laid in for the winter.  About a third of the villagers had replaced their straw roofs and everyone was settling back for the lull between the harvest and planting the next round of crops.  I headed into Ziguinchor for some project or another, or perhaps just for a few days in a larger town than Bafata.

When I returned to the village I noticed that something was amiss as I rounded the last part of the path, bringing the village into view.  The first thing that I noticed was that the villagers were all mingling in the large village "square."  This was an acre or so of grassy area with a few mango trees and a one room school house built by Catholic missionaries.  Usually, the only time the villagers congregated there was at night if there was a party or a feast.  But it was morning, and the villagers looked distinctly unfestive.

Upon seeing me approach, some of the villagers walked toward me.  One of them was saying something in Mandinka.  He was very upset and speaking fast.  The only word that I understood was "fire."  I looked at the village again and was surprised that I hadn't noticed it before.  The roofs of many of the buildings were gone; the mud bricks of the huts were charred black.  As the villagers crowded around me, the scope of the tragedy became clear.

The rains had ended in August.  By October, Senegal is tinder dry.  Each compound, or grouping of huts where the extended family lives, shares a common kitchen hut.  The kitchen hut has a fire pit where coals are kept smoldering on a continual basis.  The villagers don't have matches or lighters, so whenever someone wants fire, they grab a handful of straw out of the roof, go to the nearest kitchen hut, and stick the straw into the coals.  The straw ignites and they carry it back to wherever they wanted to light a fire.

On this particular day, the embers in a kitchen hut had gone out and a young girl went to another kitchen hut to get fire to reignite her own kitchen coals.  As she was walking with the lit straw in hand a gust of wind carried a spark into a nearby roof, which immediately blazed.  Sparks leapt from roof to roof and hut to hut, decimating almost half of the village.  Nobody was hurt, but the property loss was huge.  They had just sold their peanut crop - the cash crop for the entire year - and all of their money was burned.  They had also just laid in a millet and rice harvest - their food stores for the next several months - and that burned to ash as well.  Their clothing and bedding was also destroyed, along with pretty much everything else they owned.

The villagers reroof their huts about once every 3 years or so, with about 30% to 40% of the village reroofing in any given year.  The use locally grown straw for the purpose.  Only a limited amount of straw is grown each year, and when that's gone, there isn't any more until the following year.  Since this happened after the reroofing was done for the year, the only remaining straw available was in high demand and very expensive.  But the villagers had no money due to the fire.

Fortunately, they had their very own toubab to help out.  I told them that I would be gone for a few days, maybe a week, but that I would bring back help.  Within an hour of arriving I had turned back and headed for Dakar.  I had little idea what I could do, but I planned to head to Dakar and do some scouting.  There had to be something I could do!

It took 2 days to get to Dakar.  Upon arriving, I checked first with the Peace Corps administration for some guidance, then began the rounds knocking on doors of relief organizations.  Getting help was much easier than I'd expected.  Within 2-3 days I had obtained the loan of a truck, a contribution of several thousand CFA (the local currency,) and enough used clothes to fill the back of the truck.  The truck and petrol were courtesy of the Peace Corps.  The rest was all through the good graces of the Catholic Relief Services, or CathWell.  Once I told them that the Balants in the village were Catholic, they were generous to a fault.

And the Balants were Catholic.  Sort of.  Living with them, I realized that in practice and belief they were really still animists, the religion of their ancestors.  But one day, the Catholics had come to the village and encouraged conversion.  As an incentive, they promised to build a school in the village, where they would teach the children French and give them a western education (reading, writing, arithmetic, some history.) They also promised to build a small dispensary and train one of the villagers in how to run it.  The Mandinka remained steadfastly Muslim, but the Balants  converted, though only nominally, and the Catholics delivered.  I have since learned that this is a tried and true missionizing tactic used by the Catholic church for hundreds of years.  They take the long view, realizing that each successive generation will be a bit more Catholic than the one before it.  So at least at first, they are willing to accept a nominal conversion and to provide services as an incentive to cement that conversion unto future generations.

Loaded with the benficence of the Catholics in my truck, I headed back for Bafata.  A motor vehicle arriving in the village was always a Big Event.  When they heard the truck approaching, word spread like ... well, like fire, and the entire village had turned out in the square and was waiting by the time I came into view.  When they saw that it was me, and that the back of the truck was heaped with clothing, they started yelling and running toward the truck.  I stopped, got out, and yelled for order.  They stopped and listened.  I pointed to a couple of the village elders and asked them to take charge of distributing the clothes.  I also exhorted the villagers to let the folks who had lost the most have the first choice.  Then I asked the highest ranking elder, named Yaya Drame, to come with me.

We walked a little ways away from the crowd, which by now was zealously hurling clothing around.  I had singled out Yaya partly because he was the most respected leader in the village, and mostly because he was immensely responsible and honest (which led to him being the most respected leader in the village.)  I pulled out a large wad of cash - more money that anyone in the village had ever seen before.  You see, the village has an agricultural, barter economy, not based on cash.  They grow or make everything that they need to survive and trade with one another or with other villages for anything else that they need.  Thus it has been since time immemorial.  They grew peanuts as a cash crop only because the Senegalese government required it, but they used the cash largely for luxuries.  They generally made less than $100/year from their peanuts.  The wad of cash I handed Yaya was over $1,000 - a king's ransom by their standards.

I told Yaya that this cash was to replace the food that folks had lost, and to buy straw to reroof the huts that were damaged.  I told him that there should be plenty left over, and that he was to figure out how much cash each person had lost in the fire and give them that amount.  I knew that I could trust Yaya completely to be fair and not play favorites or to line his own pockets.  Knowing the man, I seriously doubt that either option ever even occurred to him.  By the end of the week, the food had been purchased, the damaged huts were reroofed, everyone had more money than they'd had before, and Yaya came to me with a bundle of cash.  He explained that they had bought rice, millet and other things to replace what had been lost, so everyone had what they'd had before.  He then accounted for the cash that folks had lost from their peanut harvest and had refunded that money to them. He had also gotten a decent price for straw and all of the huts that had suffered fire damage had been reroofed and repaired.  He still had money left over, which he wanted to return to me.

I suggested that the meet with the other elders and figure out what the village needed.  I told him that he should apply the money to that.  A few days later, he again came to me and said that they had handed out some additional cash for worthy projects, but that there was still money left over.  They had no use for the rest of the money, so he wanted to give it back.  You see, not having a cash economy the villagers really didn't think in terms of what to do with cash.  And I have to say that being the only person with money for hundreds of miles around, living in a barter economy, your options for spending cash are pretty limited.  So after some polite tussling, I ended up with the money.

There was an embarrassing week or so during which villagers would turn up at my door with gifts of fruit or other things in gratitude for my help.  Most of this I donated to my host family, and we feasted well for a while.  The village slaughtered a goat, which was a very big deal, and we had a village feast.  There was music, lots of drumming, balafones and dancing.  And at least among the Balants, a lot of palm wine.  The Mandinka were Muslims, so drank their powerful tea but no alcohol.  Being a Balant myself (at least nominally,) I drank the palm wine.  You'll have to forgive me if my memory of the rest of the evening is a bit hazy.

A couple of weeks later, I returned to Dakar to return the truck.  After doing that, I showed up at the Catholic Relief Services office again.  The office was manned by only one fellow, who recognized me and asked me how it had gone.  I told him the success story, then pulled out the wad of left over cash, handing it to him.  I said that it had been donated to help people in need, and since my village didn't need it, he should give it to someone who did.  The look of shocked surprise on his face was priceless.  He sputtered and stuttered, and even spluttered a little, then managed to get out that nobody had ever tried to return money before.  He had no procedure for that.  It couldn't be done!  It would screw up his books!There Would Be Questions!  He would have to Explain Things To His Superiors!  

I asked if I couldn't just donate it.  He said no, they don't take donations here, they just distribute them.  Nobody donates in Senegal.  They donate in France and Europe and the US, but then it goes to Senegal and other countries.  They don't donate in Senegal!  In the end, he utterly refused to take the money.  He suggested that I keep it.

I stood out on the street for a while in the hot sun, blinking in the vicious Senegalese light and contemplating the morality of the situation.  I finally decided that I'd done all that I could to return it, had been told to keep it, so I would.

I used the money to buy a moped, which is one of the many, many examples in my life illustrating that I am not to be entrusted with large sums of money, major purchases or investment decisions.  This remains true today, by the way.  But the story of how the moped became an albatross is one for another day.