African Stories

During my time in Senegal I kept a journal, sometimes faithfully, sometimes less so. This entry is dated simply "late June". I wrote this about 3 or 4 days after moving to the village of Bafata.
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We (the Casamance 6 - me, Ken, Rich, Chuck, Mar, April) left Thies at 6 am one morning for the Casamance, Bob C. driving. Rick T. was going to drive, but he tried to drive us to Jack's party the night before and it became clear that he didn't know up from down in a clutch! So we had him replaced. No offense, Rick, but you can't drive. Arrived in Ziguinchor to find nothing much happening, so Ken & I took off for Cap Skirring and a damn good time, if you forgot the sand fleas (30 on the right hand alone - ouch!) and the crab attacks! We slept out on the beach. It was cool and clear and quite comfy. I didn't particularly mind the sand, either. We ate at the Le Paillote hotel - 1700 CFA menu (whew!) every night (except the first, when knowing no better, we ate at this nasty spot in the town which wanted a buck each (250CFA) for serving us 1 chopped tomato each. HAH! Upon our return, we found that M. Kamara, the Inspecteur Regionale, refused to introduce us to the Governor in any form except that of a complete group. Rich and Chuck having already shot off for Kolda, this was at present impossible. Gov. not so important anyway!

So, then went off to Sedhiou, the Dept. capital to see M. Denis Badji, our Chef d'Equipe, with Ken and his multitude of baggage. Denis was willing to take Ken out to his village, which was nearby, but he was short on time and asked me if I couldn't get Kamara to take me to Bafata, since it is a long way from Sedhiou.

I took a pirogue across the Casamance River to Yatacounda and from there a Car Rapide whisked me off to Zig, where Kamara spent 4 days telling me he couldn't find a car and hinting that it was Peace Corp's responsibility to get me out there. Bullshit! So Andree took me out, and here I am. In Bafata. Normally, the volunteer is supposed to hang out for a couple of months and learn the language, get the lay of the land, but under the influence of influence, c'est a dire que the villageois wanted to waste no time, we have already held 3 town meetings and I've made a pilot trip to the Chef de CER in Diatacounda. BANANAS. There's the key word. They want bananas. But let's take this more or less chronologically, eh wot?

I got here the day before yesterday with Andree. Naturally, the Wolof soldiers in the nearly military camp felt obligated (from nothing else to do, I reckon) to stop us and search everything. We were very nice, and after that hassle, we continued on. I got the school teacher to help in translating since very few people speak French here, and we continued on to where i stayed during the live-in, at the first elder's place. My baggage was unloaded, Andree left, and there I was, alone in a small African village which was destined to be my home for the next 2 years. Hmmm. Food for thought, that. That's longer than I've stayed still for some time now. The next day, being yesterday, I toured the banana field with the chief's son and some others to look at it and get an idea of its size. Next, Th - no wait, first we had - no, no, no , we saw the field the FIRST day. That's it! The first day, then yesterday at 8 am we had the first riotous meeting to decide when to start work. We decided to see the Chef de CER first (thinking then that it was the Chef d'Arrondissment, but it turns out to have been the Chef de CER). Yesterday afternoon, we decided on 120 persons to do the brush clearing work, whenever it would start. This morning, me and this guy (I call him mentally "noloti, which is Peul for "how much" since I can't remember his real name, although it sounds something like that) went riding off - they loaned me a bike - to Diatacounda to see the Chef de CER. He was a young Wolof idiot who had just gotten up when we got there and appeared at the door in his shorts. Every other word was "Vous avez compris?" as if he doubted that either of us could really understand the profundities that were issuing forth from his mouth. Well, we did and what it came to was this: We had to put in a request to the Agent des Eaux et Forets, who would subsequently come out to look at the area and give his approval (we hoped). This we did, and we were on our way. That's the end of today's business, except for a brief report to the town council under the mangoes, recapitulating what transpired. I seem to have slept for the rest of the day, having been exhausted from the bike ride of 18 kms plus side trips to surrounding villages - visiting noloti's friends.

This place is beautiful. It's rained a few times already, and everything is very green. There is an abundance of trees, plants, and general vegetation, not to mention insects, lizards and animals. I have a feeling of unreality about being here. Listen, here I am living in a round hut with a pointed roof made of millet stalks. From every corner and at any time (from about 5 am on) I hear women pounding millet in wooden bowls. Half naked women and totally nude kids are everywhere speaking an incomprehensible gibberish - which soon enuf I will be speaking also - and laughing and pointing at the Tubob. Some younger children bolt in fright at the sight of a white man (Hmmmmm - I'll sue!) The wasps, one of which is examining me now, make ours look like a piper cub next to a B-52. There are only 300 people in this village, about 1/2 Balant, 1/2 Mandeng. I'm living on the Balant side of town. Bafata is also divided into 3 parts, with 2 Balant chiefs and 1 Mandeng. The Mandeng are Muslims; the Balant "Catholic or Pagan" by their own admission.

It's going to rain ce soir. What if I have to shit? I'm going to march out en brosse in a Casamance downpour. I'm going to be flattened by the rains, deafened by the thunder and burnt to a crispy critter by the lighting? Probably. Speaking of thunder ... the breeze is, however, nice, and in spite of all the attendant misery, I think I'll like the rain, having grown up with a little of it.

Introduction

2005-10-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

In 1977 at the tender young age of 23 I joined the Peace Corps. I had tried to join when graduated from high school, in 1972. But the recruiter told me that I had to either have a skill or a college degree. I opted for the college degree, got one in Near Eastern Language and Literature, and in 1977 I reapplied and was accepted.

I wanted to go some place where I could practice my Arabic language skills. I originally signed up for a tour in Yemen on the southwestern tip of the Arabian peninsula. That post would not open for another 6 months, and being an impatient and impetuous lad, I couldn't wait. The posts that were open at the time of my acceptance were in S. Korea, where I could teach English, or in West Africa, where I could choose to teach English, do "community development," or select from a host of other interesting sounding jobs.

I chose to go to Senegal in West Africa, and applied for a job doing "community development" in a remote post. I put "community development" in quotes because nobody could explain to me just what it was. The most specific description I ever got was that it involved assessing the needs of a village and then helping them to meet them, whatever THAT meant. After spending more than 2 years at it, I still can't give a more specific definition!

The time I spent in training and later in the small village of Bafata was one of the most memorable times of my life. Standing in my village, surrounded by mud huts and hundreds of miles from anything I had learned to consider "civilization," I often felt like I had walked through some kind of portal into a National Geographic picture. It took some time before I could see beyond the differences between myself and the Africans, and begin to see that there were really far more similarities. The differences were many and obvious, but ultimately mostly superficial. The similarities were less obvious, at least at first, but ultimately more numerous and much more profound.

The stories that follow are a chronicle of some of the experiences I had during that time. After writing many of these, I unearthed a journal that I had kept while in Africa. It has been interesting reading, deciphering my handwriting from a bygone day and laughing at how my memory has sometimes changed the story. Some of the stories that I remember vividly I never wrote down. Others, I had forgotten completely until I read about them. Most I remember fairly well, and usually consistent with what I wrote at the time, at least on the key points.

Going To Africa

2005-10-07T10:49:00.000-07:00

The Peace Corps
When I went into the Peace Corps I learned that my training was to last 4 months.  In February and March, 1977 I was to be in Putney, Vermont on the campus of Windham College.  Then I would travel to Thies, Senegal for another 2 months of in-country training.  In June, I would be posted to a remote village somewhere in Senegal, where I would engage in "rural development."

At the time, I had no idea what rural development was supposed to be.  I joined the Peace Corps because I enjoyed travel.  Not the sort of tourist travel I'd been treated to while growing up, spending a few days here, a day or two there and always slave to some insane itinerary loaded with museums, historical sites and restaurants.  I did not (and do not) find that sort of thing enjoyable at all.  I preferred to go to a country and live there for a time - at least a few months.  I wanted to get to know the people, learn the languages, and see the sights at my leisure.  The Peace Corps seemed ideally suited for that.

When I was going through the interview process the recruiter told me that while the stereotype of the Peace Corps volunteer was some young idealist parachuting into a remote village where they had never seen a white man before, the reality was different.  When the Peace Corps started in the early 1960s, that's how it was.  But it soon changed as the organization gained experience and a track record with the governments it was working with.  When I signed up, most volunteers served in the cities, teaching English for the most part, as well as other things.  For example in my group we had an engineer who was to be teaching at the University of Dakar, and an entomologist who was to be teaching a group of Senegalese scientists.

Only a few volunteers were sent to remote posts any more, and those were carefully screened.  One thing the Peace Corps had learned was that most Americans couldn't survive remote postings and suffered a variety of mental ills that made them ineffective.  Some flipped out completely and had to be evacuated, what we called "psych-evac."  Despite the careful screening, there were a couple of volunteers in my group who lost their marbles and left them in Africa when they were psych-evac'ed.

I wanted a remote posting.  I wanted to be immersed in the most foreign culture I could find, with no fear of being yanked out of it and being made to rush around visiting museums and snapping pictures of cathedrals.  Since I had a degree in Hebrew and Arabic, I thought it would be nice to go someplace where they speak Arabic (my Hebrew was already fluent at the time, having spent 18 months immersed in Israel.)  I looked longingly at the map of Yemen, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.  I choose Yemen as my destination.  Unfortunately, the middle eastern posts had just been filled, and there wouldn't be any openings there for another 6 months.  The only ones coming up were in S. Korea (teaching English) and Africa (pretty much everything was available there.)

Never a patient person, I couldn't wait 6 whole months.  The recruiter said, "They're Moslem in Senegal."  I had never heard of Senegal.  I thought it was an island in the South Pacific somewhere.  Visions of tropical beaches and hula girls dancing in my head, and figuring that Moslems must speak at least some Arabic, I agreed and signed the dotted line.  It was much later that I discovered that Senegal was in West Africa.  It does have many miles of beautiful beach, but no hula girls.

I was approved for a remote posting.  I had no idea where in Senegal I might end up, the postings weren't finalized until the Thies portion of the training.  It could have been in the north, in the heart of the Sahel, the sub-Saharan desert wasteland that is advancing at the rate of about 7 kilometers per year.  Or it could have been in the lush, heavily forested southern Casamance region.  I didn't care.  It was all exciting to me, especially since I had started out not even knowing where Senegal was.

I was going to Africa!  I knew nothing at all about it.  In my school, the only thing we learned about Africa is that it was where the slaves came from.  "Roots" had not been published in those days (it actually came out while I was in Senegal,) and Africa was just the "dark continent," land of mystery, pygmies, Watusis who danced strangely, and primitive and superstitious people.

Boy, was I in for a surprise!

Putney, Vermont
In February, 1977 I flew to Putney, Vermont.  We were put up in a dorm on the Windham College campus.  I don't remember why school wasn't in session at the time, but it wasn't, and we had the place to ourselves.  The training program was a new, experimental one in which they took volunteers destined for several West African countries and spent 2 months teaching French, culture and history of West Africa, tropical medicine and other topics.  We had full days of study, but not a lot of homework.  So we spent our evenings at Shamans, a local watering hole where we often got roaring drunk, loud and boisterous.  The owner of Shamans loved us.  Since school was out, he would have had no customers but for us.  We were a rowdy bunch, and that was fine with him!

My roommate was a volunteer also headed for Senegal named Rocco.  Rocco was a former Golden Gloves boxing champion.  When I say "former," I mean "yesterday."  He was built like Muhammed Ali, moved very lightly and with his New Jersey accent he gave the vague impression of being a mobster.  He wasn't of course.  In fact, he was one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet.  He was a construction foreman and was going over to help the Senegalese learn to build buildings.  I remember that Rocco drank raw vinegar straight from the bottle.  He said that it was good for the stomach.

In February, Putney is cold.  In fact, the area was under about 5 feet of snow when I arrived there.  There was still snow on the ground in patches when we left at the end of March.  By that time, most of the snow had melted though, and "mud season" was in full swing.  That was the first time I'd heard of mud season.  I recall that a group of us was headed into town (the campus was a little ways outside of Putney.)  I needed to get something at a convenience store that was across a small field.  There was no easy way to drive there without going a long ways around, so I hopped out of the car with the idea of jogging over there, making my purchase and running back to the car.  As I headed into the field, someone yelled "watch out for the mud!"  By the time they'd finished "watch out ..." I was ankle deep in mud.  By the end of the word "mud!" I was in it over my knees.  In my sheltered life so far, I'd never seen mud that deep!  With a lot of sucking sounds, I pulled out my legs and gradually made my way back to the car, where they told me to walk back to the college.  After all, who wants someone caked in gooey mud from the thighs down sitting in their car?

In late March we all boarded a plane for Senegal.  While most of the people I'd trained with were going to other countries, they were all going to Dakar, where they would get their connecting flights.  I remember the flight being very long and uneventful.

Map courtesy of CIA Fact Book

Dakar
Nothing could have prepared me for landing in Senegal.  You could have told me all about it (and they did during the training,) but I still would not have understood.  You see, there was nothing in my experience to compare it to.  I'd lived in Israel, England and France.  But none of those were anything like this.

The first thing that hit me was the light.  The African light is far more intense than sunlight in more northern climes.  Sunglasses merely made it tolerable so that I didn't have to squint my eyes closed.  The light was everywhere.  And with it was the heat.  It was probably only about 90 degrees, but it was a different sort of 90 degrees than I'd experienced.  First, I didn't expect it.  After all, it was only late March and it simply doesn't get to be 90 degrees in spring.  It isn't done.  Then there was the fact that there was no humidity.  This was dry heat, so getting off the plane and walking onto the tarmac, which was visibly radiating heat, felt like walking into a kiln.  I think I got sunburned in the minute that it took me to walk to the terminal.

When we got off the plane we were immediately surrounded by Africans asking to carry our bags.  We had been not to part with our belongings if we ever wanted to see them again.  Don't give them to porters, friendly Africans, taxi drivers or anyone.  Hold on to them through thick and through thin until we got to Thies.  I later learned that this was good advice.  Now, most Africans are not thieves or dishonest in any way.  But the airport draws all sorts.  Some of the folks who met us with the hands grasping for our luggage were honest folk trying to make a living.  Others were thieves playing in the airport grabbag, eager to see what kind of haul they would get from the gullible new arrivals.

We were processed through customs without incident.  I remember that experience as being very confusing.  There was a lot of color, the bright light was everywhere, even in the shadows, it was swelteringly hot even in the air conditioned terminal, and people were speaking the strangest languages and wearing the most colorful clothing I'd ever seen.  I was very happy that I was simply following a guide who knew what she was doing.  I would have been utterly lost and probably become victim to one of the helpful thieves.

The Senegal volunteers said farewell to the others who were headed into other countries, and we boarded a bus to Thies.  Dakar is a major city, sometimes called "the Paris of Africa."  Of course, Abidjan in the Ivory Coast is also called that.  I suspect travel agents may be behind that phrase.  But Dakar looks very western with hotels and shops and apartments and government buildings.  On that trip we didn't see the poorer sections, which look like a shanty town with thousands of huts build from aluminum and asbestos "toll" (corrugated building material), open cooking fires and dirt streets.  That's the "other" Dakar, the one where all the Senegalese drawn to the big city with promises of untold wealth and ease tend to end up.

There is only one paved road in Senegal, or at least there was at that time.  Looking at a current map, It looks like they've built more in the meantime.  At that time, the road ran from Saint Louis (pronounced, "san looey") in the far north down through Dakar and then south through the Gambia to Ziguinchor and then east toward Tambacounda.  There was a spur that went from Dakar to Thies, a distance of about 30 miles.  All other roads in Senegal were dirt and most were not really roads at all.  They were just tracks that cars, or more commonly (and intelligently) land rovers would use from time to time.  But I didn't know that while we were riding from Dakar to Thies.  I thought that the city of Dakar looked very civilized, and the road was lined with palms and carefully manicured and landscaped making it look a lot like roads in rural southern California.  Except for the intense and pervasive light and heat of course, which make California look dark and gloomy even on its brightest day.

Thies
Thies is the second largest city in Senegal, after Dakar.  Our training program was housed in an abandoned French army barracks on the edge of town.  This was our home for the next two months.  Most of the volunteers were going to be stationed in northern Senegal, so they would be speaking Wolof.  Those of us going to the Casamance region would be speaking Mandinka or Diola (pronounced "jo'-la",) although it didn't hurt to learn some Wolof as well.  Wolof was spoken throughout the country since the Wolofs were the majority tribe.  The capitol of Dakar was in Wolof country and the government, while including members of other tribes, was largely Wolof.  There was a certain amount of cultural and social tension between the Wolof and Serer tribes in the north and the Mandinka and Diola in the south, but at that time there was no violence and the groups got along well enough.  A few years after I and my group left, a "cold" civil war broke out between the Casamance and the north.  Today, tourism to the Casamance region is restricted.

I was hooked up with a Fulani speaker and started learning that language.  The Fulani are mostly a nomadic tribe that herd large herds of cattle along trade routes north and south, ignoring borders.  They consider cattle to be wealth, and I was told that a Fulani would starve to death before slaughtering his cattle for food.  That struck me as odd, but then it probably would never occur to me to eat a stack of dollar bills even if I were starving.  So perhaps it isn't that strange.  As it turned out later, the people of Bafata, the village I was eventually sent to, did not speak Fulani.  They spoke Mandinka, and were very proud of their Mandinka heritage.  They were not happy when their Peace Corps volunteer showed up knowing only Fulani, and no Mandinka.  More on that later.

In addition to learning the native languages, we learned agricultural techniques used in the region, and were introduced to the Senegalese bureaucracy and international aid organizations.  We would be working with bureaucrats to get permits and access to resources, and the aid organizations would help with information and would provide some materials as well.  For example, when I helped my villagers plant 40 hectares (1 hectare = about 2.5 acres) of bananas, the banana suckers we started with came from such a group.  In order to learn tropical agriculture, we planted large vegetable gardens and tended them over the 2 months of training.  We also learned aviculture and raised 100 chickens, along with some sheep.  At the end of the training, we slaughtered the animals, harvested our vegetables and had a feast.

Two stories from the days in Thies are "Hot Pepper" and "Spotlight."

Hot Pepper

2005-10-06T10:02:00.000-07:00

During the training program in Thies we ate in the manner of the Africans, squatting around a large, communal bowl filled with rice and other goodies, and eating with our right hand.  It was considered very rude to use your left hand.  In fact if you did happen to stick your left hand into the bowl, everyone else would leave.  You see, the left hand is used for wiping after using the facilities, and for other "dirty" things.  The right hand is used for eating, shaking hands and "clean" things that require contact with others.

Among the Mandinka there is one exception to that rule.  When bidding someone farewell as they leave on a long journey, it is customary to extend the left hand.  This is an ancient tradition indicating that you wish the traveller well.  Apart from that exception though, the Mandinka also followed the tradition of shaking hands and eating only with the right hand.

One day early in the training in Thies I was squatting around the communal bowl with my classmates and a couple of Senegalese who were teaching us.  I did not recognize all of the vegetables in the bowl and so was trying each of them.  I would reach in with my right hand, grab a clump of rice and a veggie, squeeze it into a lump and stick it in my mouth.  I came to a vegetable that looked sort of like a flacid bell pepper.  I pushed it around a bit with my hand, looking at the Senegalese teachers for any reaction. Seeing nothing, I picked it up and mushed it around in my handful of rice, again looking up for any clue whether this was something I should or shouldn't be eating.  Seeing no reaction, I popped the rice ball into my mouth.  The vegetable had a sweet taste, much like a nice, ripe bell pepper.

At least, it did until I started to swallow it.  Then it started to burn.  The fire in my mouth and throat got steadily and rapidly worse until my whole head was on fire, steam was coming out of my ears, and tears were pouring from my eyes.  Every pore was gushing sweat as I looked around desperately for relief.  First, I guzzled what was left of the apple flavored soft drink called Apla that I was drinking.  Then I started grabbing any drinks nearby, to the surprise of their owners.  Having drunk everything in sight, I started cramming large handfuls of rice into my mouth to stem what was now a very, very intense pain.

My last memory is of giving up on the rice and deciding to go to a refrigerator in another room across the courtyard to find more soft drinks.  As I stood up, my vision went gray.  It looked like an iris was closing until I could see only a tiny circle of light in front of me.  Then, even that disappeared and I passed out from the pain.

Apparently I did not fall down, but continued on my mission to find more soft drinks.   The next thing I knew, my vision irised open again, I was covered with sweat, standing next to the refrigerator with my head tilted back and a bottle of Apla at my mouth as I guzzled the cool drink.  Looking down I noticed several empty bottles at my feet.  The refrigerator had been secured with a padlock, which it appeared that I had broken off (the latch was hanging forlornly off the door, having been bludgeoned with something - presumably the rock that was lying at my feet.)  As realization dawned that I had obviously made it across the courtyard and into the break room with the refrigerator only to find it locked, and had then broken the lock off, I noticed another volunteer standing next to me, head back and swilling a soft drink.  I croaked, "hot pepper?"  He nodded, finished up his drink, reached for another and whispered "half."

When I had finally recovered and returned to lunch, I glared at the African teachers and demanded to know why they hadn't said anything.  "You saw me pick up the pepper, and you saw me look around.  Why the hell didn't you say anything?" I demanded.  One of them looked at me with a large grin and said, "I wanted to see what would happen.  I've never seen anyone actually eat one of those before."

As something of a prankster myself, I had to admit that I may have done the same thing if our roles had been reversed.

Spotlight

2005-10-05T10:06:00.000-07:00

The training program in Thies was fairly gruelling.  We studied and worked about 10 hours each day, and had little time to visit the town or take in the sights.  One day we had an evening off and decided that we'd go into Thies and hit the bars.  One of the other volunteers and I were going to follow on after the rest of the group, which was going in an overloaded Peugot pickup truck.

The central courtyard area of the barracks we stayed in during training in Thies.

At about 7 PM they were getting ready to leave.  My friend Rich had just gotten out of the shower and clad only in a towel was walking back to his room to get dressed, with me following behind.  The pickup truck full of rowdy volunteers ready for a night on the town turned on its lights and was headed out.  For a moment, it was facing us and we were caught full in the glare of the headlights.

The imp in me took control and without thinking, I reached forward and snatched the towel from around Rich's waist, leaving him standing there in the full glare of the spotlight in his birthday suit.  His look of utter astonishment was met with howls of laughter from the revelers in the truck as they drove off to Thies.

Forever after, Rich promised me that he would get his revenge and that one day I would receive a hot pepper enema.  Whenever I saw him after that, he would tell me that the women in his village were stirring it up and slowly boiling the peppers into palm oil for maximum absorption.

I never did get that enema.  I suppose that one day, there will be a knock at my door ....

Bafata

2005-10-04T10:13:00.000-07:00

Senegal
I was in the Peace Corps in 1977-1979.  I spent February through May, 1977 in a training program with 2 months in Putney, Vermont and 2 months in Thies, Senegal.  Only about 40% of those who started the training program survived the entire 4 months.  Those of us that did scattered to our various assigned posts in June, 1977.

I was posted to Bafata, a village of about 60 people in the far southern part of the country, known as the Casamance region.  Bafata was actually three villages, all called Bafata.  I never did find out the why of that. To add to the confusion, there is a larger city called Bafata in Guinea Bissau, the country just south of Senegal.   Of my 3 villages, one was Mandinka.  These are the descendants of the largest tribe in West Africa.  A few hundred years ago, their ancestors were running the Mali empire, a government that spanned all of West Africa and which rivaled the Roman empire in size and sophistication.

Hidden in the greenery is a rice paddy. If you were to walk straight ahead you would soon find yourself hip deep in mud!

Their empire did not long survive contact with the west however.  The first westerners to reach Senegal were the Portuguese in the 14th century (could have been 15th, I don't remember.)  The Portuguese made contact with the Wolof tribe, a down on its luck fishing tribe that didn't get along with the Mandinka, and had been marginalized at the edge of the empire.  But their new friends gave them guns, among other western gifts and suddenly, they weren't marginal any more.  In the end, to make a long and complex story short and simple, the Mandinka empire collapsed and the Wolof are now the ruling tribe in Senegal.

The Wolof live in the northern part of the nation, an area known geographically as the Sahel.  To my eye, it looks like the Sahara - endless miles of rolling beach with no ocean.  Desert.  But to a biologist, it is a far cry from the arid and lifeless Sahara.  There is water to be found, if you know where to look, and the area is teeming with life.  It isn't a good place for human life, but other critters like it just fine.  And of course, the corpse of the occasional hapless human provides water and food for a lot of those critters for weeks!

Senegal is divided by two rivers running east to west, the Gambia and the Casamance.  The Gambia river is actually in the nation of Gambia.  During the colonial days, the British and the French divided up the area to suit their own political sensibilities and without any regard for the ethnic makeup of the locals.  So the British got an area extending 12 miles on both sides of the Gambia River.  The Gambians, while being from the same tribes as the Senegalese, speak English and The Gambia is modelled on the British political system. The Senegalese speak French and the government in Dakar is modelled on the French political system.  The area is often referred to as "Senegambia," reflecting just how artificial the political division is.

Politics and colonialism aside, the Gambia River does divide major tribes as well.  North of the Gambia are the Wolof, Serer and Fulani.  South of the Gambia are the Mandinka, Djola, Malinke, Mankine, Balant and others.  The Mandinka and the Diola are large tribes in the south.  The others have only a few thousand members each.

BafataBafata
Bafata was divided into 3 villages.  One was Mandinka, one was Balant and one was a mix of Malinke, and Mandinka.  The Mandinka were Moslems, worshipping the one God, Allah and studying the word of the Prophet in Arabic.  They were literate, and the children learned to read and write Arabic from an early age.  I had grown up with the usual American stereotypes of the illiterate African.  I remember one day as I was about to leave for a few days to do some business in a nearby city, I was very surprised when one of the teens in the village handed me a note and asked me to deliver it to a friend of his along the way.  The note was clearly written in Arabic, but I couldn't make it out (I knew Arabic at the time.)  He explained that it was Arabic script, but the note was in the Mandinka language.  Just as we use the Roman script to write our English language, they had borrowed the Arabic script to write their language.  I did some reading on the subject after that and learned that the Mandinka had been literate since converting to Islam in about 900 CE.

The Balant were animists.  They worshipped their ancestors, and believed that trees, bushes, rocks and animals all had spirits, or "animus" (a Latin term.)  Well, they didn't so much "worship" their ancestors as revered them.  They believed that after dying, our spirits stick around and are available to help their descendants.  Respect for the ancestors is a big part of their culture and their religion.

Getting to Bafata
My trip began in Thies, in the northern part of Senegal.  I had to get to Ziguinchor (pronounced "zig-in-shore"), a long ways south.  I took a "taxi," which is not like a taxi here.  This is an old, beat up car that the owner uses to make money by carrying passengers for hire.  You dicker over price, and the driver tries to squeeze in as many people as he can possibly manage.  Plus the luggage, which goes on top of the people, on top of the car and in the trunk.  It is not uncommon to ride with people who are taking chickens, goats or sheep with them - in the taxi.  It is not a comfortable way to travel.

One of the hallmarks of Senegalese cabs is the fact that the shock absorbers are shot.  That makes the ride a rather bumpy one.  And being as hot as it is in Africa, and even hotter with all those people crammed together, the smell becomes a bit heady.  The trip to Ziguinchor takes from 6 hours to 3 days, depending on the whims of the cosmos.  The car may break down - make that "will" break down.  How long it takes to fix it depends on whether it breaks down near anything, what breaks, and whether the driver actually knows anything about car repair.

There are two ferries to cross on the way, crossing the Gambia and the Casamance rivers.  Both date from the 1950s.  They can carry about 10 cars at a time, plus pedestrians, cattle, goats,  sheep, chickens and children.  They often break down in mid-river, causing the ferry to float with the current until the engine starts again, or the passengers are rescued.  Rescue is in the form of locals putting out in their pirogues, or dugout canoes and bringing back everyone that they can.  At least twice while I was in Senegal, the ferries floated a good ways down stream before they could be fixed.  Fortunately, this never happened while I was on them.

A ferry crossing the Casamance River to Ziguinchor.

As you can imagine, the ferries did not exactly adhere to a schedule.  They just ran all the time until they broke.  Then they didn't run again until they were fixed.  Could be hours.  Could be days.  Could be weeks.  Hunker down and wait.

On arriving in Ziguinchor, the taxi let me out in the taxi gare (pronounced "garr", meaning "station" in French.)  This was a big, dirt lot in the middle of Ziguinchor.  I had directions to the "Peace Corps house" about a mile away, so I grabbed my bag and walked through the sweltering afternoon heat, taking in the sights, smells and sounds.  Ziguinchor was a lot different than Thies or Dakar, or any of the northern towns.  For one thing, the north is all desert, dry and arid.  The south is forested, humid and damp.  In the north, pretty much everyone speaks Wolof.  In the south, folks speak Wolof only reluctantly.  The main languages are Mandinka and Djola.  There was a lot of French in both the north and the south, but in the south, there is also an awful lot of Portuguese Creole as well.  The people look a lot different than the northerners, and dress more colorfully.  While Thies was built by French colonists, Ziguinchor was built by the Portuguese and the architecture is very different.

The Peace Corps house was a second floor apartment near the riverfront.  It had two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen and large living area.  A long balcony opened off the living area, overlooking a busy main street that led to the river in one direction, and the taxi garage and the open market in the other.  The house was sometimes very busy with all of the rooms full, and people sleeping on the floor or sofas in the living area, but usually there were not a lot of people there at any given time.  The Peace Corps house, or "animation house" as it was known (what we did is called "animation rurale" in French,) was a flop house for volunteers, not a permanent habitation.  This was where the volunteers posted to remote areas stayed when they came into town to pick up mail, talk to government functionaries or just to socialize.  It was also the first stop for new volunteers heading to their villages.

After a day in Ziguinchor, a couple of other volunteers who had been in-country for a couple of years took me out to Bafata in an old Peugot pick-up truck.  We drove about 60 kilometers south of Ziguinchor on the only paved road in Senegal (at least, at that time.)  After consulting some directions and talking to some passers by in the middle of nowhere, the driver turned off the road seemingly at random, and we started bouncing cross country.  I later realized that we were actually on a well travelled "road," but you could have fooled me!  Of course, it was well travelled by feet, but rarely travelled by wheel.

The road to Bafata.
Another 15 kilometers and we came to an open area, then a cluster of mud huts with pointed, thatched roofs.  We got out, they unloaded my stuff, and because it was getting late, they headed back leaving me standing alone, the sole White man in a sea of black faces smiling expectantly at me.  I vividly remember being privately embarrassed that my first thought was, "I hope they aren't going to eat me."

When I first arrived in the village, despite the 4 months of intensive cultural training I'd just been through, I was still a bundle of stereotypes.  There simply isn't any way to get ready to live in a culture so different from your own without actually doing it.  And sometimes there is no way to get rid of - or even recognize the stereotypes that we carry with us until they smack us in the face.

They didn't eat me.  In fact, I later learned that there are no documented cases of cannibalism in Africa at all.  That's another of those stereotypes.  Sometimes those stereotypes come from other tribes badmouthing their rivals.  One day after living in the village for over a year, I was walking out to the road with one of the Mandinka village elders.  He was disparaging the Balants and said (in Mandinka - I spoke the language decently by that point,) "They are bush people.  They eat people."  He didn't mean that literally, it was "just an expression," as we say.  But I was surprised to hear the comment and broke out laughing.  I think he was a little offended.

Several villagers from Bafata mugging for the camera. The grain drying on the foreground is millet.
My introduction to the village was hampered by the fact that in training, they had taught me the wrong language.  I had learned Fulani, the language of a nomadic tribe that is found pretty much everywhere in West Africa.  There are Fulani (also known as "Peul") in every village.  They usually run a store or engage in trade, buying from their nomadic relatives and selling to the locals.  This means that they are always the minority and are outsiders, which means that they tend to be looked down upon by the other villagers.  So when I had gone to Bafata a month earlier for my site visit and started speaking Fulani, the villagers looked a little miffed that I hadn't had the courtesy to learn their language.  The Mandinka villagers spoke Mandinka and the Balants spoke Balant (two very different languages.) I did have a good time bonding with the one Fulani family in the village though.

The site visit lasted a week.When I returned to training, I brought this little problem to the attention of the training administrators.  They were mightily embarrassed.  Unfortunately, they couldn't find a Mandinka teacher for me, so they hired a Bombara teacher.  Bombara is very similar to Mandinka, sort of like American English and British English.  When I returned to the village for my permanent stay and started speaking Bombara to the villagers, they smiled and nodded their heads, saying, "Ah, Bombara."  Unlike the Fulani experience though, they could all understandd Bombara and started teaching me how to say the same things in proper Mandinka.  "The Bombara say it like that, but we say ...."  It wasn't long before I was babbling away in Mandinka.

Bafata was divided into 3 villages.  One was Mandinka, one was Balant and one was a mix of Malinke, and Mandinka.  The Mandinka were Moslems, worshipping the one God, Allah and studying the word of the Prophet in Arabic.  They were literate, and the children learned to read and write Arabic from an early age.  I had grown up with the usual American stereotypes of the illiterate African.  I remember one day as I was about to leave for a few days to do some business in a nearby city, I was very surprised when one of the teens in the village handed me a note and asked me to deliver it to a friend of his along the way.  The note was clearly written in Arabic, but I couldn't make it out (I knew Arabic at the time.)  He explained that it was Arabic script, but the note was in the Mandinka language.  Just as we use the Roman script to write our English language, they had borrowed the Arabic script to write their language.  I did some reading on the subject after that and learned that the Mandinka had been literate since converting to Islam in about 900 CE.  Another stereotype gone!

The Mandinka language is nothing like Arabic.  If find both languages to be beautiful when spoken, but they don't sound at all alike.  Mandinka is comprised of a short, crisp words that I found easy to hear in a sentence.  Even before I could understand the language, I could repeat sentences verbatim.  That made it easy to learn vocabulary.

The Balant also have their own language, completely unlike Mandinka.  I have read that Balant is a subgroup of the Diola language, but it doesn't sound anything like Diola, either.  Balant is a very labial language, all spoken in the front of the mouth with lots of "b" and "p" and "th" sounds.  I found it hard to understand because all of the words seemed to run together.  After living there for several months and recruiting a villager to help me learn the language, I finally figured out that the language was semi-tonal - the inflection of a word changed the meaning.  After that, even though I'm somewhat tone deaf, it got a lot easier to understand.  I never did become fluent in Balant though.

One of the first decisions I had to make was whether to live with the Balant or the Mandinka, both of whom were lobbying for the honor of having the toubab stay with them.  "Toubab" is a term for "White" commonly used in West Africa.  Apparently, it is used as a slur by Africans living in France, so the French take exception to it.  But in Senegal I never heard it used derogatorily and I never took offense at being called "toubab."  It was simply a way to refer to white folks.

I finally made the politically incorrect choice to stay with the Balant.  The Mandinka were the larger tribe and the village chief was Mandinka.  But the Mandinka didn't drink alcohol due to their religion, and had some strict dietary restrictions.  I chose the Balant because they were more laid back, and threw better parties.  Back in those days, that mattered more to me than it does today.

The Mandinka live in square or rectangular houses with angled roofs that more or less resemble the way we build here.  A Mandinka building can have several rooms in it, and can even have two floors.  In Bafata there weren't any two story buildings though.  The Balant build one room, round huts with conical roofs that taper to a point.  They build them around a communal kitchen hut, where there is a fire always kept burning at least as embers and all of the kitchen gear is kept.  Each extended family unit has a kitchen hut, with the family members' huts clustered around it.  This is called a compound.  There were several compounds in the Balant part of town.  The Mandinka also eat communally in family units, but of course, their architecture is different.

I was given a round mud hut with a grass roof tapering up into a cone.  I had a small back yard area fenced in with a fence made from palm leaves and fronds.  A metal pail filled from the well served as a "shower," which was actually a daily sponge bath.  The facilities consisted of a latrine they had dug just for me (they'd heard that toubabs preferred to crap into a hole in the ground, but couldn't figure out why.)  The villagers sometimes used the latrine, but more often did as they had always done, which was to walk a minute or two out of the village and use a convenient bush.  The crap vanished after a day or so because of all off the insect life in the area.

I have a lot of Bafata stories.  After all, I lived there for two years.  It was more than 25 years ago but I remember it fondly like it was yesterday.

Green

2005-10-03T10:19:00.000-07:00

Senegal had two seasons, described by a fellow Peace Corps volunteer as "too hot," and "too damned hot."  In the books though, you'll see them called the dry season and the rainy season.

The dry season is just that - dry.  Living in the Casamance it wasn't as bad as those living further north in the Sahel.  At least there was the Casamance River a few miles away, and a lot of shallow streams that had small fish, seemingly consisting mostly of bone.  The villagers would turn the streams into rice paddies by damming up one end and causing a large, wide, shallow pool to form.  They would plant rice in the mud, getting 3 harvests per year.

Hidden in the greenery is a rice paddy. If you were to walk straight ahead you would soon find yourself hip deep in mud!
But there was no rainfall for about 9 months out of the year.  When I say "no rainfall," I don't mean "not much."  I mean none at all.  Not a drop from the sky.  The sky was deep blue all day, every day with rarely even a wisp of cloud.  Being so close to the equator (17 degrees north,) the area gets the sun's rays much more directly than we do in Seattle.  This is because of the Earth's tilt.  Also because of that tilt, twice a year the sun would be directly overhead - something that never happens north of the Tropic of Cancer (or south of the Tropic of Capricorn), and which Seattle will never experience.  When the sun is directly overhead, you cast no shadow.  As amazing as that is, it tends to get lost in the fact that it is just too damned hot!

The primary color during the dry season is brown.  I lived in the Casamance region in southern Senegal which is predominantly forest.  There are huge trees with boles 30 feet and more in diameter.  There are "iron trees," so dense that the wood sinks, and can't be cut with regular wood working tools.  It needs metal saws and tools to work it.  During the dry season, that's about all there is though.  The forest floor is quite bare and brown.  Lake beds are dry dirt, so dry that it seems there has never been water there.  Dust is everywhere.

At some point in late May or early June the rainy season begins.  It starts inauspiciously.  If you don't know what to look for, you wouldn't notice it.  No sudden monsoon comes pouring down.  Instead, the first sign is just a hint of moisture in the air, the barest reminder that somewhere, there is water.  It means the rain is coming in a few days or perhaps a week.  It also means that if you get up early the next morning, you will see something magical.

The dull brown, dusty earth will be covered with small tiny, pink flowers.  These will last for less than a day before dying.  But for a while, there will be life and color where before there was only dirt.  The first time this happened, I thought it was just a pretty fluke.  The next year, it happened again, and I learned from the villagers that yes, this happens every year.  One told me, "The rain will come soon.  Maybe a few days.  Then the crops will grow."

When the rains actually start, it is nothing like the famous Seattle rain.  We get frequent drizzle here, but downpours are rare.  In Senegal during the rainy season, it rains every day for 20-30 minutes.  But what a rain!  The term "downpour" doesn't come close.  It is more like standing under a waterfall.

One day I was walking from Bafata II to Bafata I (my village was really 3 villages, all named Bafata and divided by a wide, communal field full of mango trees, where the folks had parties, meetings and the like.) As usual, I was being harried by a gaggle of happy children who just loved to follow the toubab (African term for a white man) around to see what he was up to.  The toubab was an unending source of amusement and oddity.  About midway across the big field between the villages, the kids all started looking behind me and pointing, saying in Mandinka, "Look it's ..." and a word I didn't know.  I looked around, expecting from their behavior to see a lion, or some wild animal.  But there was nothing.  When I looked back, they were running pell mell away from me as though the furies were after them.

I was a bit alarmed by this.  I looked back again, but still there was nothing coming.  I searched the ground for a plague of snakes or perhaps driver ants on the move.  Still nothing.  Then suddenly, it hit me.

I don't mean that I suddenly understood (although that happened as well.)  I mean that what the kids were running from actually hit me, as in *smack* at about 30 mph.  It was rain coming down in sheets.  It staggered me, then as realization dawned, I started laughing.  The kids knew they couldn't outrun it, and when it caught them they started laughing and dancing like it was the most fun they'd had in their lives.  They often responded that way to things - the villagers I lived with were a very happy people, and the kids gave definition to the word "joy."

That was how I learned to look for an approaching line of slightly darker soil and bending grass, as well as for plagues of snakes, ants and wild animals.  But I can tell you, that first time I got hit by the rain was quite a surprise!

Once it starts to rain, the predominant color changes from brown to green very quickly.  Things start growing instantly.  Like those little pink flowers, plants grow up overnight.  About a gajillion different types of grass start growing, and within a couple of days the brown is gone.  In between the huge tree boles there is a lawn - all of the grass started growing at the same time, so for a while it is pretty much the same length and looks a lot like a badly mowed lawn.  After a few days, the differences between the varieties start to stand out and it takes on the look of my neighbors yard at our old house.  He never mowed his lawn.

The forest during the dry season.

By August, the grasses are well over six feet high.  Obviously, it is no longer easy to walk off the trail.  It takes a machete to cut through the stuff.  There are several varieties of what we called "saw grass," with serrated edges.  That would cut a person easily, drawing blood so we quickly learned to treat the African bush with respect, and walk carefully and deliberately through it.  And of course, the higher the grass, the more the snakes loved it for the cover it offered.  So it was good that when we did cut through it, we made a lot of noise with our machetes.

The grass grows quickly during the rainy season. This shot was taken 2-3 weeks after the rains began.

But it was a lot easier just to stay on the well worn trails during this time of year.

There were lots of grasses, but not a lot of flowering bushes.  So during the rainy season, there was every shade of green imaginable, and several that were unimaginable.  Living in the African bush gave me some appreciation for how artists must see the world.  I recall one day during late July, the midst of the rainy season when everything was growing at light speed, I looked out at a vista that included rice paddies, cultivated fields, bamboo groves and forest.  Everything was green, but there were so many greens that it was as if there were a full palette of colors.  I had no idea before that green was such an incredibly rich color.

Mamba

2005-10-02T10:20:00.000-07:00

When I lived in the tiny village of Bafata in Senegal, I learned that most of the snakes in the area were lethal in one way or another.  The only non-poisonous snake I knew of was the boa constrictor.  Large and slow moving, these wouldn't pose much threat unless you found yourself being squeezed in their coils.  Anyone dumb and slow enough to let that happen shouldn't be reproducing anyway.  Most of us have an evolutionary purpose of reproducing to increase the species, or providing support to society so that the species can flourish.  But anyone who lets themselves get caught by a slow moving snake like a constrictor serves a different purpose:  food stock for other species.

Always good to know one's place.

There were other, more dangerous snakes in the area as well.  The green mamba is a bright, emerald green snake 5 feet long or longer.  It is lethally poisonous.  The best thing to do after being bit by a green mamba in the African bush is to get off the trail and sit down.  That way, your body won't block other traffic.  If you can make your way farther into the forest, you may spare others the stench as you decompose as well.  Courtesy is always a virtue.

I never saw a green mamba, at least not that I know of.  They tended to blend in exactly with the surrounding foliage.  I did see the shed skin of a mamba once.  It was along side the trail between my village and another.  I nearly missed it, being green against green.  But since it didn't actually have a snake inside it, it rustled and fluttered slightly in the breeze and that looked odd.  Looking closer, I recognized it for what it was.  This one was about 5 feet long.  I know, because I held it up to myself, in awe at the length of a snake that until then I'd imagined as being about 2 feet long.

Even at 5 feet, a snake can't eat a human and they aren't any more interested in running into us than we are in running into them.  We had spent about 4 months in stage (French for "training") before going to our respective villages, and the teachers had warned us about snakes like this.  They told us to always wear long, thick pants like jeans, heavy socks and leather boots.  This way, we would lessen the chance of getting bit while walking in the bush.  They also told us to never, ever leave the trail if we could avoid it.  Snakes hide out in the brush.

They were idiots.  It gets up to 130 degrees F in Senegal with over 100% humidity.  The first time I saw the humidity level over 100% I thought it must be a mistake.  I asked a meteorologist about it later.  I thought that 100% humidity meant you were in the water.  He explained that no, what it actually means is that the air is completely saturated with water vapor and can't hold any more.  It also means that is probably going to rain pretty soon.  To me, it meant that it was too damned hot and muggy, that sweat was rolling off of every body part, steam was rising from the ground and the place was getting perilously close to being uninhabitable by human life.

The idea of wearing denim jeans, heavy socks and leather boots in this climate is sheer lunacy.  It took me about 30 seconds to decide that I'd rather die horribly from a snake bite than be boiled alive inside my clothes.  Fortunately, the Africans had some experience in the matter.  They also thought that wearing a lot of clothes was stupid.  they tended to wear shorts and sandals.  They also didn't always stick to the paths, often taking shortcuts through the bush to get from point A to point B.

How did they avoid snakes?  They know that the snake finds humans more annoying than edible, and will only bite a person if surprised.  So they don't surprise them.  They let them know they were coming by carrying a long walking stick and whacking the bush with it.  They also tend to sing a lot as they walk if they are alone, and to chat with one another if they aren't.  That way, the snake knows there's a big animal galumphing its way and it can slither out of the way.

I followed this advice, wearing shorts and flip-flops for 2 1/2 years in the African bush.  I never encountered a live snake.  I'm sure that many encountered me, and moved away before I encountered them.

Cobra

2005-10-01T10:21:00.000-07:00

The only snake that I encountered that was still inside its skin was a spitting cobra.  That was more excitement than I really wanted as the spitting cobra is also a lethally venomous snake  Unlike the mamba, it can spit poison at its prey and hit the eyes up to 30 feet away, or so I was told.

I had been living in the village of Bafata for about a year and had volunteered to host a new Peace Corps volunteer.  During training, the new volunteers stay with an existing volunteer for a week to get an idea of what living in a remote African village is like.  The idea is to weed out folks who don't realize what they're getting in to.  On our program, we lost nearly 60% of our volunteers at that point.  I don't think that later groups had quite that attrition rate, but some folks always decided they couldn't take it, and left.

I no longer remember the fellow's name who came to stay with me, but he was a nice young man in his 20s, eager to save the world.  I wanted to show him how the villagers and I planned and carried out a project, so we had decided that we would put a new concrete apron around one of the village wells while he was there.  The apron is the area immediately surrounding the well.  The villagers had simply dug out the space, put in a lot of ironwood and other branches, then filled it in.  Of course, the area was constantly muddy and the wood tended to rot.  Not very sanitary for drinking water.

As a first step, the villagers started digging up the existing dirt and branches, when they ran into a problem.  I was explaining the facts of life in the village to the new kid when the shouting started.  I explained to him that they were excited because they had uncovered a snake.  We walked closer and saw a jet black, triangular piece of snake about a foot long coming out of the mud.  I told him that this was a spitting cobra, easily identifiable by its color and shape, and judging from the fact that it was about as thick as my thigh, it was a big one.  The villagers were rushing off to get spears to kill it.  I suggested that we might want to back off a bit.  When they started spearing it, it was bound to get mad and fight back.

A spitting cobra will flare its hood just before spitting, so there is some warning.  I told the new kid that if he saw that happen, he should cover his eyes and look away.  The poison that it spits doesn't kill, but it will scar the corneas permanently and cause blindness.

The villagers started spearing the snake with vigor.  It came boiling and seething up from its cool, damp resting place, furious at this intrusion.  It stood straight up, looked me in the eye and flared its hood.

Why me?  I have no idea.  Did I turn away?  Hide my eyes?  Nope.  I stared at it like a deer in the headlights.  Distantly, I heard one of the villagers yell in Mandinka, "It's going to spit."  Just as I saw its tongue flick (meaning that it was spitting,) I was tackled at the knees by one of the village teens.  He had seen that I was apparently mesmerized by the snake and decided that it just wouldn't do to have the village white man blinded like that!

It was embarrassing, to say the least.  I got up, dusted myself off and explained, "I just wanted to show you what could happen if you don't look away.  Next time you run into one of those, you'll know."  He nodded seriously, unable to figure out whether I was joking.

Blind Biking

2005-09-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

When leaving from Ziguinchor to return to Bafata it was important to allow at least 2 hours to make the trek from the road to the village.  From Ziguinchor, I would take a taxi to Djattacounda, a small village about an hour's drive away.  The untrained eye would not see a village there - it would look like I was getting out of a taxi in the middle of nowhere and walking into the bush.  And indeed I was - because that's where the trail began that would take me to Bafata about 10 kilometers later.

A few months into my stay in Bafata I decided to purchase a bush bike.  A bush bike is a one speed bicycle with a steel frame.  They are fairly ubiquitous, and as bikes go, also fairly immortal.  The Africans weren't very good auto mechanics, but they could keep a bicycle going forever.  None of the fancy graphite alloy frames, closed hubs or specialty rubber for the brakes and tires.  Nosirree, just a steel frame, some steel rims and some 800 lb solid rubber tires did the trick.

In fact, the fancy American touring bikes wouldn't last 10 minutes in the African bush.  An alloy rim would be bent like a pretzel, and the frame would probably disintegrate like my sunglasses did.

About those sunglasses.  I had purchased a pair of custom made, prescription sunglasses specifically made to withstand the heat and humidity of Africa.  They lasted a week, then fell apart.  Literally.  Obviously, the fellow who made them had no idea what Africa was like, or what African heat and humidity will do to western technology.

So the bush bike was not fancy, had no frills, but would survive a collision with a truck.

One day I got a late start from Ziguinchor.  I didn't leave until about 4 PM.  Now I knew that was too late to get the village before dark, but I was in serious denial, insisting that I could do it if I just pedaled really hard and really fast.  I was an idiot, but then, who isn't from time to time?

The taxi dropped me at Djattacounda at 5:30.  In Senegal, the sun sets at the same time every day, never varying more than 20 minutes or so.  So I knew that shortly after 6 PM it was going to get very, very dark.  African nights aren't like American nights, except perhaps in some very rural areas.  There is no light pollution.  When the full moon is out, you can literally read by it.  And you will cast a shadow by moonlight!  When there is no moon, you can see quite well by starlight so long as you aren't in shadow.  The shadows are jet black.

But this was the rainy season, and as I exited the taxi I noticed that not only was it 30 minutes to nightfall, but that there were dark clouds in the south.  That always means only one thing:  Rain in about half an hour.  I knew that it was at least an hour to the village, but still I refused to find shelter in Djattacounda.  I figured I'd just bull on ahead.

Did I mention that I was an idiot?  Well, I was.

I hopped on the bike and started pedaling like mad, trying to make as much distance as I could before it got dark.  It wasn't more than 100 feet before I was reminded of why it would take an hour no matter how hard I tried to go faster.  I hit the sand trap.  This was a patch of loose sand on the road that no bike could cross.  Wise men got off and carried the bike over this 25 foot bit of ground.  Fools pedaled for all they were worth in a vain attempt to cross it by going really, really fast.  And like all of the fools before me, I instantly bogged down in it, coming to a stop about 5 feet into it.  I got off and carried the bike across.

But being a fool, I pressed on.  Before long, it was getting dark.  I noticed that it was actually getting much darker than usual.  In fact, I couldn't even see the pedals any longer, much less the trail that I was pedaling along at top speed.  This was because it was not only night, but cloudy so there were no stars and no moon - and no light at all.  It was pitch black.  It was blacker than closing your eyes in a dark room.  And still I pedaled on.

You see, I found that I could remember the trail vividly, seeing it from memory.  I was barefoot and could feel every bump, twist and turn of the trail and knew exactly where I was, where the holes and grooves were, when to veer left, when to head straight on, and when to veer right.  It started to pour down sheets of rain, but I pressed on.

African downpours include thunder and lightning.  This isn't the wimpy stuff I've experienced in the states.  The lightning is blindingly brilliant, and the thunder, which invariably happens at the same time as the lightning flash, makes your ears ring for a long while afterwards.  It is sometimes so powerful that your teeth rattle and you can feel it in your bones more than hear it.  As I rode along the occasional flash of lightning would illuminate my path, and the thunder would try to knock me off my bike.

I made it almost all the way to the village before the inevitable disaster struck.  There is a part of the trail where it becomes rocky, and there is a deep gulley on the right side where years and years of torrential downpours in the rainy season have worn a path.  On the other side of a small, smooth rocky ridge is more sand and dirt.  Most folks get off and walk their bikes over this stretch.  The only way to ride it is to balance carefully on the top of the ridge.  I could easily do that during the day, but it wasn't day and I was pedaling full speed through the rain while blind as the proverbial bat.  A voice in my head kept saying, "Okay really, this time I mean it.  Stop. Get off.  Walk over this stretch.  Really!  Stop now!"  But I pedaled on.

I could see the ridge in my mind's eye and feel its every bump and rill through my feet.  I could make it!  Only a couple of hundred feet of this and ...aaaaahhhhuuuuggggg... splash!  crash!  There was a jolt, a sensation of spinning around, and I was on my back stretched out, holding on to the bicycle frame for dear life in the gulley, as the rushing water was pulling me downstream.

After a moment of panic it occurred to me that the gulley was only a couple of feet deep and fairly narrow.  If I let go of the bike, I would get wedged in it, and could get up and step out.  I did that and immediately found that I had no idea where the bike was.  A flash of lightning helped, and I retrieved the bike from where it was wedged in the gulley.  I started walking toward the village until the next flash of lightning.  I was surrounded by trees.  I had walked clear off the trail and into the forest.  At night.  In bare feet.  Surrounded by snakes and things that don't mind the rain a bit.  Uh oh.

I turned around and waited for the next flash.  When it came, all I could see were more trees.  Egad!  How did that happen?  If I'd walked into the forest from the trail, then when I turned around I should have been facing the trail, not more trees!  "Okay," I thought.  "I'll turn 1/4 circle each time and wait for the flash until I see the trail."  I did that and after making a full circle, still saw nothing but trees.

Well this just didn't make any sense.  Standing there in the pouring rain, in the middle of the forest I started thinking about stories I'd heard of African witchcraft causing people to get lost, never to be seen again.  Had I pissed off any powerful shamans?  I racked my brain.  Couldn't think of anyone, so I decided to try turning and waiting for the lightning again.  By this time, the storm was tapering and the flashes were farther apart.  This time I turned in smaller increments each time.  Eventually, a flash showed me a glimpse of the trail through some brush.  Whew!  I headed over there until I felt the trail under my feet, then headed toward home - on foot.

When I finally came into my compound in Bafata my adopted family were squatting under their low hanging eaves, as the Africans do when it rains.  Burahma, my host and adopted brother, displayed a brilliant grasp of the obvious by commenting (in Balant,) "You're wet."  I didn't quite know what to say that insightful remark, so I replied, "It's raining."  Burahma and his family peered out from under the eaves, looking up at the sky.  "Yes, it's raining," they agreed.

I went into my dry hut and changed my clothes before joining the family under the eaves.

Moon

2005-09-29T10:33:00.000-07:00

The custom in the village at night was to socialize with the neighbors, and folks would wander through the village from compound to compound, exchanging gossip, picking up news, and generally enjoying one another's company.

I had been out and about and had just returned to my own compound, where I found a group of men standing and staring at the moon.  The moon was full that night, and as bright as a spotlight beaming down on the village.  It was easily bright enough to read by.  I joined the group and idly commented, "That's the moon."

Many conversations never reach the depth and complexity of that statement, but I thought I'd leap right in on this one.

The men grunted, one of them saying, "Ah!" as though this were a revelation to him.

Talking about the Moon with the toubab was not so unusual when you realize that the Africans all knew exactly one thing about the United States:  We had put a man on the Moon.  Having been a French colony, they were pretty familiar with the French, and to a lesser extent with other Europeans.  But they knew nothing about America - except that we'd put a man on the Moon.  And they were mightily impressed by this fact.

Of course, it didn't hurt that they also knew that Americans came out and lived with them in their villages, wore their clothing and spoke their language.  This was in sharp contrast to the French.  By and large, the French that the Senegalese villagers had met were of the view that the Senegalese should live in the european style, speak French and wear western clothing.  I recall one time in the open market in Ziguinchor.  After I'd been haggling over something or another with a Senegalese fellow, he referred to me as American.  I asked him how he knew that, since the great majority of toubabs in Senegal are French.  He said simply, "Ah, but the French never learn our language or wear African clothes."  The fact that I was wearing African clothing and speaking with him in his own language gave me away.

This reminds me of another, completely unrelated story, which I'll tell anyway.  Many years after my Senegal experience, I travelled to Salzburg, Austria for a graduate law school program.  The airline managed to lose all of my luggage, so I arrived in Salzburg at 11 PM on a Friday night, as the airport was closing, speaking not a word of German and with only the clothes on my back, which happened to be a suit and tie.  The airline wouldn't be getting back to me until the following Monday, so I thought I'd head for the shops and see if I couldn't pick up something more comfortable over the weekend.  So off I sallied, in full regalia on a Saturday morning, looking for shorts and a t-shirt.

I was standing in line in a shop and overhead the owner speaking with a couple ahead of me in English.  When it came my turn, he addressed me in French.  I spoke French well, and we concluded our transaction in that language.  As I was leaving, I asked him why he had addressed me in French?  I knew he spoke English, and since I was an American it seemed odd that he would choose to speak with me in French.  He looked a bit surprised, and remarked matter of factly, "Only the French wear suits on vacation."

But back to the Moon in Africa.

Everyone in the village knew that Americans had walked on the Moon, and one of them had actually watched it!  At the time, he had worked in the electrical generating plant in Ziguinchor.  They generate power by burning not coal, or natural gas, but peanut shells.  Senegal produces prodigious quantities of peanuts, so the peanut plant produced equally prodigious quantities of discarded shells.  They had built what we would call a co-generation plant, taking advantage of the waste to generate electricity for the city.  At the time that Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, the peanut plant had a television and everyone gathered around to watch the historic event.

Since Armstrong was an American, and I was an American, it stood to reason that I knew everything he knew.  They began to pepper me with questions about the Moon.  Actually, like many American boys at the time I had quite an interest in the space program, so I really did know a lot about the Moon landing.

They asked if the Moon was too far away to walk.  That is, if it weren't mysteriously hanging in the air like that.  I explained to them that the Moon is many times farther away than America.  That was mind boggling to them.  America was farther away than France, and that was the farthest thing they could imagine.  They had heard of people who had gone to France (there were Senegalese villagers who had fought in WWII,) but they'd never heard of anyone going to America.

One fellow wanted to know how you could walk on something so small.  I explained that it only looked small because it was so far away.  Actually, it was quite large.  I then told them that the Earth was also round like the Moon, but it was so large that it didn't look round when you were standing on it.  They were all astonished at this revelation.  Some didn't believe it.

I plunged ahead and said that there is no air on the Moon.  They looked perplexed.  Air is everywhere, I was politely told.  I turned to the fellow who had seen the landing on TV and asked if he remembered what the astronauts were wearing.  He described their bulky spacesuits.  I explained to the incredulous group that they wore all that gear because they had to bring their air with them.  This caused some consternation.

I told them that the gravity is less on the Moon.  Nobody knew what gravity was - there's no word for it in their language.  I explained that it's what makes us heavy so we don't fly off.  On the Moon, we would be lighter and would bounce like dry leaves.

By this point, I figured I'd confounded them enough, so we changed the subject.  Most of them probably didn't believe everything I'd told them, since it was all impossible anyway.

Bugs

2005-09-29T10:30:00.000-07:00

Bugs in Senegal were not like bugs anywhere else.  They tended to be larger and more vicious than anything I'd encountered before.  My buggy experiences living in Bafata ranged from ants that draw blood when they bite to flies that can draw blood through a thick t-shirt, from giant bees on leashes to cicadas the size of a bird.

Tsetse flies
One example of an African bug is the tsetse fly, commonly associated with sleeping sickness.  Sleeping sickness is a wasting disease, the primary symptom of which is great fatigue and listlessness that causes the victim to sleep.  Ultimately, if untreated the victim will sleep forever.  Fortunately, in Senegal these flies carried a form of sleeping sickness that only affected horses, but not humans.  Because of that, there were no horses, mules, or donkeys in the region.  They did not seem to affect other animals though, so there were plenty of sheep, goats, cattle and other 4 legged critters.

The tsetse fly is larger than the ordinary house fly, and even larger than what we call a "horse fly."  You can generally hear them coming.  They are quite loud, and when they find a victim, they head straight for him with single minded determination.  The tsetse fly will bite you through a t-shirt, even a thick one, and will draw blood.  They are painful, nasty pests.  The only good thing about them is that they don't swarm, and I tended to run into only 1 or 2 of them at a time.  They are also slow and easy to swat.

Cicada
In the village I lived in a round mud hut about 15' in diameter.  I had a little "back yard" area about 6' x 8' built of palm fronds and supported by the walls of the hut on two corners, by a wooden post on a third, and by a small mango tree on the fourth corner.  The mango tree provided both shade and additional privacy as its branches and leaves extended almost the length of the fence.

One day I was standing back there when I heard a loud "burrrrrr" sound like someone revving up a Cessna single engine plane behind me.  I whirled around in surprise, but the sound abruptly stopped and there was no sign of any plane.  I had learned that a lot of the wildlife in Senegal tended to blend in very well with the background, so I carefully scanned everything.  The last thing I wanted to do was to accidentally run into something big enough to make such a loud sound.  That sound had been very close.

I spotted what looked like a grasshopper sitting on top of the palm frond fence.  The only problem was that grasshoppers aren't that big.  The grasshoppers in Washington and Oregon are pretty small, about an inch at most.  I had lived briefly in Switzerland when I was 6 and seen larger grasshoppers, but they were only about 2 inches long.

This monster was at least 8 inches long.  At first, and against all logic I actually thought it was a plastic model.  But then I saw its multifaceted eyes moving around and its mandibles working back and forth and knew that it was quite real.  In some amazement, I walked up to it and looked more closely.  The eye facets were big enough that I could see light reflecting from each one.  It seemed to be looking at me, which was no wonder.  After all, I had just walked up to it and was now looming over it.

I started to reach out to touch it, but thought better of it.  A moment later it suddenly put out its wings and with a loud roar like an airplane, it took off.  A couple of months later I was in Dakar on other business and I ran into another volunteer who was an entomologist - a bug scientist.  I described the insect to him and asked him what it was.  He answered, "That was a cicada.   They swarm every few years and eat everything."
Holy cow!  I can hardly imagine a swarm of those things.  They certainly would be devastating to crops and people alike.  I mentioned that I had thought about picking it up.  He told me it was good thing that I didn't.  "Remember," he said, "they have an exoskeleton and they are very, very hard.  If those mandibles got your finger, they would take it off without any trouble."

If only I'd thought about that when I rescued that drowning rat!  Ah, but that's another story.

Bee on leash
I was walking outside of Bafata taking in the sights one day when I saw a boy about 12 or 13 years old walking along.  He appeared to be holding something in his hand, but I couldn't see anything at first.  As I got closer, I could see a large bumble bee bumbling ahead of him.  He had his hand out in front of him as though he was directing it.  It turned out that he had it on a slender string, almost a thread.  The bee did not seem fazed by this.

I watched as he walked off down the path.  Later, I asked a villager about this.  He said that some young kids like to catch the bees and tie a thin thread around their middle and walk them around.  It's a kids thing, he explained.  It gets old in a hurry.  I said that it must be hard to catch the bee without getting stung.  He shrugged, as though that was an easy thing to learn.  Perhaps it was, but it was something that I never learned!

Walking stick
Senegal is the only place that I have seen a walking stick in the wild.  After seeing the stick, I can honestly say that it was probably not the only walking stick that I've seen.  It was just the only one that I actually knew was a bug and not a stick.

You see, the walking stick looks exactly - and I mean exactly like a stick.  When it is still, I can't tell it apart from a stick.  It even has appendages that look like leaves.  The only way that I can tell that it isn't a stick is if it moves, or if it is out of context, such as on somebody's shirt.  After seeing the walking stick I kept a vigilant eye out for others, but never saw one.  I probably was looking straight at them a few times, but never noticed.

Ants
I have several ant stories.  For now I will say only that there were millions of these insects around, in every size and type.  There were little teeny ones that would form lines so dense you could pick them up (carefully using a stick) and they would form a single, long mass.  There were huge driver ants that marched in regimented formations 2 abreast, with sentries running along the edges.  These all had huge pincers and could easily draw blood if they pinched you.  In fact, the Africans sometimes used them to suture wounds shut, or so I was told.  I never actually saw that done.  I did follow the driver ant columns a few times though, to see where they were going and what they were going to do.  One column marched straight up to and into a termite mound and came out bringing termite larvae with them.

The termites built huge mounds up to 8 feet high.  If you broke a piece off or stuck a stick into one, then waited a few minutes you would see termites show up to inspect the damage, then retreat.  After a few more minutes, more would turn up to start repairs.  They were remarkably organized.

One day I had walked about a mile from the village and was sitting against a tree at the edge of a copse, reading a book.  I noticed out of the corner of my eye that there was a line of small ants going up the tree just inches away from me.  Typically, ants don't deviate much from their path, but they were inside my "personal space," and I was uncomfortable, so I thought I'd move.  Besides, it was getting pretty hot out there in the sun, so I thought I'd move into the shade of the copse of trees.  I carefully took note of the line of ants on the ground and stepped to one side of them.  I was surprised to discover that my foot was instantly covered with ants of all sizes and colors.  I then noticed that while I had been focused on one particular line of ants, the entire forest floor was covered with ants of all kinds.  I had never seen anything like it.  Usually ants kept to their own kind and either avoided or attacked others.

But I didn't pause to think about it for long.  I had already started to take my next step, but suddenly realized that if I continued on into the grove of trees, my feet and soon my entire body would be covered with ants.  With images of Leningen rushing through my mind, and unable to suddenly reverse course at that point and go back out, I turned my next step into a leap onto a fallen log.  That log was some ways away, but I executed a flawless leap worthy of any cartoon superhero, landing perfectly on it although it was round, bumpy and slanted at about 45 degrees.

Remember that there were already ants on the foot that I had planted on the forest floor.  Those included driver ants, and they were headed up my pants leg.  I began furiously batting at my pants.  I figured that I'd head them off at the knee.  If they got higher than that I was going to be in trouble!  I lost my flip flop in the battle, but I successfully held the line and defeated the invading hordes.  The driver ants had taken their toll though, and I was bleeding from several wounds.  Another, smaller breed of ant had also been biting me and leaving small, red, very painful welts.  I was not a happy camper.

I looked around and discovered that I was an unhappy camper on a fallen log in the middle of a grove that was infested with ants.  It was at least 10 feet to the edge of the grove.  I was sure that I'd never jumped that far before, and from my precarious position on the log, it would be a tough maneuver.  The only alternative was to wait until the ants went away.  Even if I were inclined to wait it out (and there was no place to sit on that log,) I thought nervously about how long it would take the ants to decide to come up the log after me.  And besides, I wondered, what's up here that is causing them not to come up here?  That was a bit worrying by itself.

In the end, I leapt.  I figured that if I missed and landed in the ants, I could just run like hell until I was out of the copse, then start whacking at myself again to get rid of any ants that had gotten on me.  In a stunningly acrobatic move, fueled by adrenalin and desperation, I actually cleared the 10 feet and all of the ants.  With one bare foot and one flip flop, I marched home to Bafata, occasionally stopping to pick off some misguided ant that had gotten into my clothing.

Mosquitoes
There isn't a lot to say about mosquitoes in Africa except that there are a lot of them.  There are anopheles, which carry malaria, and aedis egypti, which carry yellow fever, and a host of others.  Mosquitoes only come out in particular light and temperature conditions, usually in the cool of the evening.  It would not be possible to survive a night without mosquito netting.  Some of the Africans use sheets, and it gets very, very hot in there.  I used the traditional mosquito netting, which was a lot cooler.

Mosquito netting has some drawbacks.  If you tear even one strand of it, mosquitoes will find the hole and come in.  Holes have to be sewn up immediately.  When I first got to the village, I used some thread that I'd brought for clothing repair.  But one day, a villager gave me a better idea.  He was perplexed by my dental floss, and was turning it over and over, looking at intently, trying to figure out what it was for.  Suddenly, understanding dawned.  He looked at me and said in Balant, "I know what this is!"  He pointed to the mosquito netting, then to the floss, then to a hole in the netting, and then made sewing motions.

Suddenly I knew what it was for as well.  After that, I used dental floss to repair the netting when it needed it.

Mosquitoes were ubiquitous enough that every morning any surface of my body that touched the netting during the night would be bitten.  This tended to be the backs and palms of my hands, and the bottoms of my feet.  I can safely say that mosquito bites on the palms and the soles of the feet are the worst!

The upside of all this was that when I came back to the states, mosquitoes here have no effect on me.  I can get bitten over and over and they never raise a welt or cause an itch any more.

Elevator

2005-09-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

Author's note:  I've been surprised to hear the elevator part of this story in various forms from other people.  In fact I've heard it often enough that if I didn't know that it had actually happened, I'd think it was an urban legend.  Perhaps all of the stories originated with this one.  Or perhaps this is a common example of culture clash between technological and non-technological cultures.

This story happened to another Peace Corps volunteer named Jeff.  Jeff was posted to a village outside of Kaolack (pronounced "cow-o-lack"), a Wolof village in the northern part of Senegal.  All of us that were living in villages had been adopted by African families, our hosts.  We adopted an African name with our host's family name and became a member of the family.  This was important as many of the greetings involved using the family name and a non-African name simply confused things.  So I was Jibril Biaye, with Biaye being a Balant name.  This sometimes raised eyebrows since it was unusual for a white man to have an African name.  But generally the eyebrows had already been raised when they learned that I spoke a couple of African languages.  So by the time they learned that I had an African name, there were no more eyebrows to raise.

I spoke Balant and Mandinka, languages spoken in the southern Casamance region of Senegal.  But Jeff spoke Wolof, a completely different language.  One day, Jeff took two of his African brothers to the big city of Dakar.  Neither of his brothers had ever been more than a few miles out of the village before.  I'm not sure that either had ever even been to Kaolack, with a population of about 100,000.  The village population totalled fewer than 100, so Kaolack would be a big city in its own right.

Kaolack is a distinctly African city.  But Dakar is not only bigger (population about 2.5 million, with 1 million living in the city proper,) but is very western.  Downtown Dakar looks a lot like downtown Paris with shops, paved streets and sidewalks, cars, traffic lights and any number of things that you won't normally see in a traditional African town.  An African who had spent his whole life in a small village would feel very out of place.  Culture shock doesn't begin to describe it!

Jeff wanted to show off "his" culture to his brothers.  So he took them first to the shore.  Dakar is a port city with a lot of beautiful sandy beaches fronting the Atlantic ocean.  Jeff was surprised when neither brother would cross the line from pavement to beach.  After come coaxing, one of them came a little ways onto the beach, but the other was not to be persuaded and would not even come onto the sand.

Jeff asked them why they wouldn't come down the water?  One, staring fixedly out to sea in amazement, said, "It never stops moving."

Neither man had ever seen the ocean before.  In fact, neither had ever seen a lake, or any body of water larger than a puddle.  Remember that these men were products of the Sahel, the subsaharan desert of norther Senegal.  The sight of seemingly endless water, constantly moving in waves to the shore frightened the bejeezus out of them.  It turned out that they were afraid that the ocean waves would get them, take them out to sea and they would never be heard from again.  So they kept a healthy distance.

Abandoning the idea of teaching them to swim, Jeff took them to a restaurant to sample western food.  And not just any restaurant, but the best one in Dakar.  It happened to be at the top of the tallest building - all of 6 stories - where it commanded a wide view of the city and the surrounding area.  They walked into the lobby and Jeff parked his two brothers near the elevators while he went to chat with a staff member about the reservations.  He was gone for a couple of minutes, but when he returned neither of his brothers would get on the elevator.

As one of them explained it, they had been waiting for Jeff when a part of the wall they were facing opened and two men walked into a small room.  The wall closed again, and a few minutes opened again.  But the room - which had no other exits - was empty.  The men had obviously vanished into some nether realm.

Jeff tried in vain to explain to them that it was only an elevator and would take them to the restaurant on the top floor, but they weren't having any of that.  They refused to get into it.  So they went to a different restaurant on the ground floor.

You might wonder how it is that Jeff's brothers would not accept his explanation, or at least take his word for it that they would be safe, since Jeff had taken elevators many times before without incident.  The Africans, or at least the villagers, understood that things were different for white people than for them.  I was often told by the folks in Bafata that "that's true for white people, not for us."  I have no doubt that Jeff's brothers were convinced that Jeff would get out of the little room at the restaurant, while they would vanish away into the spirit realm, never to be seen again by living soul.

And they weren't taking any chances!

Ice

2005-09-28T10:32:00.000-07:00

There was a young boy about 14 years old in my village.  His name was Vieux Mane (pronounced "man-ay'").  "Vieux" means "old" in French, but is also a proper name in Balant.  Vieux spoke French very well, having been educated at a small Catholic school near our village.  It was easy to start thinking that he was basically western until something would happen that would remind me that he had grown up in a small African village.

He wanted to see Ziguinchor, so the next time I had business in the city I took him along.  He had never been that far from the village before, and had never seen a city the size of Ziguinchor.

I took him to the animation house, an apartment that the Peace Corps provided us for times when volunteers in remote posts would come into town.  It was called the animation house because in French, what we did is called "animation rurale," loosely translated as rural development.  We were "animateurs," which made for some amusing misunderstandings with French speakers who weren't familiar with the area - tourists, for example.  "Animateur" also means "disk jockey" in French, so when I told some folks that I was an animateur, there was a pause, some looks, then the question, "Which station?"

When Vieux and I got to the animation house, my friend Ken was there.  Ken was posted to another village to the north, but was in town for some project.  I had to go to a meeting for a project of my own, so I asked Ken to look after Vieux for an hour or so while I was gone.

About a week or so later when we were back in the village, Vieux came up to me and said, "You remember when we went to Ziguinchor?"

"Yes," I said.

"Well, when you went out your friend Lansana gave me a glass with water."  He called Ken by his African name, Lansana.  My African name was Jibril, or "Jibi" for short.

"Yes," I said.  "He gave you some water."

"Well," continued Vieux, "it had something in it.  It was white and floated around."

Now I've known there to be some pretty noxious white things floating around in drinks in Senegal, so I was getting worried.  Ken was pretty responsible, and I couldn't imagine him giving Vieux contaminated water, but perhaps there was something in the glass that he hadn't noticed?

Vieux continued, "So I drank the water."

What! I thought!  You drank it???

"And when I was finished, it was gone!" He said with obvious amazement.

Understanding began to dawn.  "Was it cold," I asked?  It was cold, he said.

"Ah," said I.  "That was ice."

Ken had put an ice cube into the water without thinking about it.  Vieux was too polite to refuse the hospitality - hospitality is a major cultural value there - but had never seen ice before.

FIRE!

2005-09-27T10:33:00.000-07:00

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.

Chinese

2005-09-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

[Author's note:  There is possibly politically incorrect content to this story.  To those who may be offended by this, I offer this humble suggestion:  get over it!]

About 15 kilometers from my village was another village called Goudump.  Goudump was near the road, and so got more visitors than Bafata, which required a 2 hour walk through the brush to reach.  In Goudump was a wealthy fellow who liked to help his society in various ways.  One of those ways was to host a group of agronomists from the People's Republic of China.  They spent 3 months working with local villages and introducing a new strain of rice that had double the production volume of the native strain.

When I say "native strain," I am taking a liberty.  Rice is not native to Africa, it was brought by the colonizers.  The native grain is millet.  Millet is much more nutritious than rice, and was the staple of the Senegalese for a long time.  But the european colonists felt that rice was better and so foisted it on Africa, with the result that malnutrition and infant death rates rose.

But there is rice, and there is rice.  The strain that the Africans had been growing produced 2 harvests per year.  The Chinese strain was nutritionally richer, and produced 3 or 4 harvests per year, with greater yield in each harvest.  It was clearly better than what they had been growing.

As the westerner in the area, I was often an honored guest of this wealthy fellow (whose name unfortunately escapes me now.)  During one visit, he introduced me to the 15 member Chinese delegation.  I had dinner with them that evening.  Only one of them spoke French, and he spoke it badly and with a terrible Chinese accent making him very hard to understand.

Breaking one of the many lulls in our attempts at dinner conversation, I commented, "I can say something in Chinese."  Years earlier, I had tried to learn Chinese out of a book and had mastered exactly one phrase.  I had no idea whether I was pronouncing it properly.  Chinese is a tonal language, and I'm somewhat tone deaf.  I'd never been able to practice with anyone who actually spoke the language.

He asked what I could say.  I uttered my single Chinese phrase, and was delighted and amused when every single person at the table turned around to look at the door.  Obviously, I'd said it correctly.  You see, the phrase I'd learned was, "There is a man at the door."

During most of my time in Senegal I had a very large, very wooly, very red beard.  This was an oddity in Senegal.  I'm hairier than most westerners, but the Senegalese have almost no body hair and none of them have beards.  One day, in an effort to impress a certain young lady tourist I'd met and who had taken my fancy, I shaved my beard, exposing lilly white skin that contrasted starkly with the rest of my face, which had been exposed to the African sun for the past couple of years.

I thought that when I went back to the village, the villagers wouldn't recognize me.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that they did.  I commented to one of them, "I'm surprised you recognize me.  I thought that all white people looked alike."

He replied, "It's true that toubabs look a lot alike, but we know you pretty well, so I think we would recognize you anywhere.  But do you know who really looks the same?"

I had no idea.  "Who?" I asked.

"The Chinese!" he said.

Burnt Chicken

2005-09-25T20:04:00.000-07:00

Bafata sported a one room schoolhouse that taught local children from several surrounding villages. The only requirement for entrance was that the kids had to be Catholic. No animists or Muslims allowed. A lot of parents declared themselves Catholic just to get their kids into the school. At the school, the children would learn French, history, catechism and other largely western fare.

The school teacher was a Mankine tribesman named Jean N'Deki. He was unmarried and had no family in the village, so he was often lonely and looking for company. One day, a group of us were chatting with Jean in the evening. He invited us to stay for dinner and promised us a chicken. Eating meat was a luxury in the village that did not come around very often.

There were plenty of chickens around - scrawny, small things that had developed resistance against the various avian illnesses in the area, and were very hard to catch. There were also sheep, goats and even a few cattle in the village, but these were rarely slaughtered for food. More often they were used for barter. The village slaughtered a cow only once in the entire time that I was there.

So Jean's promise of chicken for dinner wasn't to be lightly ignored. Besides, hospitality being the major cultural value that it was in that part of the world, it would have been surpassingly rude to refuse. So we all accepted.

We sat around a small fire pit as Jean artfully snagged a chicken and broke its neck. This in itself was an odd start since the usual way to kill a chicken was by slicing its throat. The idea was to cut the artery without severing the head. I never quite mastered it, probably because my delicate urban sensibilities made me queasy every time I killed a chicken anyway, so I didn't get a lot of practice.

Usually, the chicken is then dipped briefly into a pot of boiling water. This loosens the feathers, which then can be "rubbed" off pretty much with just a swipe of the hand. But Jean had lit the fire and simply tossed the entire chicken into the flames. The feathers burned off instantly with a little *whoof*. Jean began talking animatedly to the rest of us. I couldn't believe that he was just going to leave the chicken in the fire, as though it were another log. Fascinated, I couldn't take my eyes off it.

It slowly blackened and turned to charcoal. After about 10 minutes it was a lump of charcoal in the outline of a chicken. At last, Jean took a stick, which he used as a poker. I figured that he was going to take the chicken out of the fire. I consoled my hungry stomach with the thought that there was still probably some meat on the thing deep inside.

But it wasn't done enough for Jean. He simply moved it around, turned it over, and left it in the fire. I was astonished.

After several more minutes he finally took it out of the fire. There was now no meat at all left on or in the chicken. He graciously broke off pieces of charcoal and handed them to us. We politely accepted his courtesy and ate them, nodding and telling him how good it was.

I suspect that each of us was having the same thought as we left: "We have GOT to find this man a wife!"

Peanuts

2005-09-24T09:23:00.000-07:00

The main export crop of Senegal is peanuts. I was told that when I was there the Senegalese government was operating under a treaty with France under which Senegal would produce some prodigious amount of peanuts for export to France on very favorable terms. For the French. This was the cause of some grumbling by the local farmers, who were forced to grow peanuts by the Senegalese government, and were paid a pittance for them.

In Bafata there was plenty of land and no malnutrition. The Casamance region is quite fertile and the villagers easily grew everything they needed to eat, generally rice, millet, sorrel, manioc and corn. The Casamance rivers and streams were rich with an incredibly boney type of talapia (a fish,) which provided protein in the diet. Their building materials were bamboo, dirt or baked mud bricks, and straw. Other than in emergencies such as when the village burned down they produced all that they needed, or traded with their neighbors for those things.

In some parts of Senegal life is much harder and the villagers need all of their fertile land for crops needed for survival. In those areas, the requirement to grow peanuts was a hardship on the villagers. But in my small corner of Senegal this was not a problem.

Since the villagers had an agricultural economy that used the barter system, and which provided everything they needed without relying on cash, it was literally true that the villagers did not understand the value of a dollar, or rather of a CFA, the main currency unit in Senegal and much of West Africa at that time. Everything they got from selling peanuts to the national cooperative went toward luxuries they would not otherwise get for themselves. My villagers made about 20,000 CFA per year, which came to about $100 at that time.

I remember that long before I went to Africa, I had read a National Geographic article describing the poverty in another part of Africa. To illustrate how destitute the people were the article noted that they made only about $50 per year from all their effort. Well, the folks in Bafata made only $100 per year per person but they were hardly destitute. I realized then that the annual per capita income of someone living in an agrarian barter economy doesn't tell you how well or badly off they are. It only tells you how much effort they are devoting to non-essentials.

In the north of the country the tribes had found ways to incorporate peanuts into their diet. A particularly tasty dish is mafe, a spicey peanut sauce usually eaten over rice. But the Casamance tribes had never made this leap into nouvelle cuisine. My villagers would nosh on peanuts as a snack food during the harvest season, but never incorporated them into meals.

Next to my hut there was a large metal barrel that I discovered was full of peanuts that Burahma, my host, set aside each year for himself and his family (which included me.)

The Peanut Barrel

The peanuts were raw, and I don't find raw peanuts to be very tasty. Burahma showed me a low tech way to dry roast them though, making them into a warm and tasty treat. In his usual eloquent manner, he pointed to the peanut barrel, then to the straw roof. He grabbed a couple of handfuls of straw from the roof, tossed them on the ground and lit them on fire with a burning stick from the nearby kitchen hut. Then he grabbed a bunch of peanuts and tossed them into the inferno. The fire less than a minute, blackening the peanut shells and roasting the nuts inside. Burahma immediately reached into the pile of roasted nuts and cracked one open, popping the tasty morsel into his mouth. I did the same and promptly yelped, dropping the smoldering hot nut. The villagers, accustomed to a life of farming and working with their hands, had thickly callused hands so that they could probably handle molten lead without getting burned. I, on the other hand, had the tender hands of a child who had not yet been introduced to the fields.

During my time in the village my hands did become much tougher, but never reached the level of those who spend most of their lives in the fields. But my feet became as calloused as any Africans. I think I grew an inch because of those calluses.