Toubacouta

Toubacouta, a very small city southeast of Dakar, but there is so much about it that I experienced to describe in one blog post. To start, our group of 18 plus Waly and Korka, who work with the program (very cool people) took a “toubab bus” on the highway towards Kaolack for a four day long fieldtrip outside of Dakar. We had a full itinerary with visits to a poste de santé (public health station), a national park (an estuary with mangrove trees), a performance by a Mandinka dance/theater troupe, a roundtable (well, round “mat”) discussion with groupements de femmes in Nema Baa (women’s agricultural and business co-ops), and a lecture by the former mayor of Sokone (a slightly bigger town) about decentralization and development in his experience. In between all this excitement was time to relax poolside at the hotel (it would have been a richer experience to stay with families in the village, but this may have been a logistical issue, in any case, I’ll take a pool even if the water was a bit murky and there were some bugs and I’ll take the first air-conditioned night I’ve spent in Senegal since our first night in the country).  

It was such a treat to eat authentic Senegalese meals with the family of Dr. Sene, the director of the MSID program, at the home of his brother and to meet some of his extended family, including the second wife of his father, who was not a young lady) and interesting to say the least to interact with a few Senegalese students, born in the area, but studying in Dakar who showed us around the village. In order to keep this blog post from getting too out of control lengthwise, here are some of the highlights of the trip

-          Meeting the groupements de femmes, in Nema Baa. These women literally work around the clock to raise vegetables and grain as well as caring for their families. In this part of Senegal, as in many others, agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, but made exceptionally difficult due to impassable or poorly maintained roads, and lack of linkages to value chains where transformation of products provides a much high margin of profit. As the women brought up in the discussion (in Wolof and Sereer, translated to French by Waly), their life is improved by pooling resources within the group, but from what I’ve seen, real potential for a life that is not plagued by back-breaking work needs better infrastructure, but alas, one of the many problems of “development,” is how to logistically move all actors from political and economic point to point when it’s not in everyone’s best interest, and often the poorest take the worst losses.

-          Watching a local soccer league game and a performance by the Mandinka dance and theater troupe. It was great to see whole communities be able to take a break from exhausting work and have the time and energy for great community bonding events. The dance/theater performance was really well done, lots of variety, and it was neat to see that even during the drama, they used a folk story in which characters spoke mainly local languages (Wolof, Mandinka) but other characters, would “comment” in Wolof, French, or even English to keep all audience members engaged. These performers were in such excellent shape, you wouldn’t believe their stunts unless you saw it, especially the fire-eater and the glass man (dancing on broken glass?!?!?). Grace, one of the group, will be doing her internship with this band, and pretty much everyone is jealous of her.

-           Visiting the national park, wildlife refuge, and planting mangrove seedlings. We stopped off at headquarters to talk to the ranger a little about the park’s history and current objectives. Then, since there was no gas at all in the town, and the mangrove area we were projected to visit required a motorboat, we put off the proposed seedling trip to visit a wildlife refuge. It felt very touristy to ride around in a random-looking safari vehicle, but it was fun to be 10 feet away from two rhinos and see some different animals. Later in the afternoon, the gas somehow made its way to the boat motor, and we were able to take a pirogue out to the mangroves. The pirogues are like long wooden canoes. Ours seated all of the group, plus the students and a small crew. Fun times were singing random songs in the pirogues as we cruised through the water, watching people harvest oysters and the satisfaction of getting to do some highly organized semi-independent work with my hands, sorting mangrove seedlings and planting them in rows. Getting to the mangrove seedling bed was another story… a story involving knee to thigh deep mud embedded with crabs… i.e. lovely bleeding cuts covered with black mud.

All in all it was an intense experience, but a good time to get to know everyone in the group better (and play old cards games like in band tour days). It will be very different in a week when I will be “on my own” i.e. not in the same city as other group members when I will be transitioning from Dakar to St. Louis (in the north on the coast) for my internship.

I hope all is well with you, your family, friends, work and study, Miss you, and hopefully I won’t be offline as much next week.