In Photos - Portraits of Dakar

People whose lives have touched mine during my stay in Senegal.

In Photos - Gorée Island

One mile off Dakar’s southeastern coast, Gorée Island was once a hub in the Atlantic shipping route. Portuguese traders first settled the island in the 15^th century, but the French gained controlled two hundred years later and ruled until Senegal’s independence in 1960. Today, Gorée is mainly residential. No cars cruise its dirt streets, and the quiet island life is a welcome respite from the crush and bustle of Dakar.

Inhumane Relations

Those who have spent many years in Africa complain that journalists often tell the same story about the continent: Poverty, violence, corruption.

Of course, if these stories exist it’s because they spring from some truth. There is much violence here. Corruption by the carload. And poverty. Poverty in the streets of Medina, Dakar’s old city, and poverty in the back alleys of Plateau, downtown, once you step away from the sushi restaurants with their $60 plates of raw fish. There is poverty in Les Almadies, the rich quarter in the northern section of Dakar, where mansions go up daily and glossy Mercedes cruise through pot-holed streets. But you have to know where to look. Or, really, you can look everywhere, because the poverty is there, right smack in the middle of the bright new homes and fancy cars. It’s just easy to forget about.

We go out on a Monday night to a swanky restaurant done in straight angles and gleaming silver. We order $10 cocktails and sip them slowly, like we belong in the place. We are mostly foreigners, UN staffers and NGO administrators, people who are just passing through. In our hometowns—in New York or Brussels, Montreal or Oslo—we would never go to such a nice place. We would never fit in. And in Dakar, we don’t fit in either. Because places like this, places with names like Alkimica and Alcove, done in chrome and glass tile, they are not for us. They are for the Senegalese upper class, the men who rule the government, who own the businesses that run Dakar. The restaurant is packed with these men. Their Porsches are parked out front. Most of them live nearby or downtown, in the chic quarters where the power never goes out. They rarely pass through Medina, hardly ever stop to see how the other half lives.

So, yes, there is poverty in Senegal. Unsettling, seemingly irresolvable poverty. But there is wealth, too. Wealth so great it makes you catch your breath. Makes you ask how the two coexist, this vast richness alongside deep scarcity.

The great literary journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski spent a lifetime on the African continent, chronicling the beauty and complexity of this place. In The Shadow of the Sun, he writes about the famine in Ethiopia during the mid-1970s:

I walked to the center of the town, to the market. On the square stood stalls with barley, millet, and beans, ones with lamb, and beside them others selling onions, tomatoes, and red peppers. Elsewhere, bread and goat cheese, sugar and coffee, cans of sardines, biscuits and wafers. A market is usually a crowded, bustling, and noisy place, but here all was silent. The vendors stood motionless and idle, now and then only swatting half-heartedly at flies. There were flies everywhere. Dark, thick, churning clouds of them, irritated, frenzied, furious. We fled to the side streets to escape them, for they had instantly thrown themselves at us, and there we encountered a different world — empty, in final agony. On the ground, in the filth and the dust, lay emaciated people. They were the inhabitants of neighboring villages. The drought had deprived them of water, and the sun had scorched their crops. They had come here, to the town, in the desperate hope that they would be given a sip of water and would find something to eat . . . We returned by way of the market, with its sacks of flour, slabs of meat, and bottles of mineral water: for the great famine was the result not of a shortage, but of inhumane relations.

La Pouponnière

During the week, I volunteer at an orphanage in Dakar with Lucy, another Rotary scholar. We help out in the nursery, holding babies and handing out bottles before putting everyone down for a nap. Sometimes Lucy convinces her husband Okwen to join us.

The lesser things

I spend my afternoons at the gas station at the end of the street, a mini-mart where you can buy corn flakes and imported beer. The store has plastic tables where customers sip café au laits and eat pizza ordered from the counter. There is wifi and a generator, which means a way to charge computers whose batteries have run dry in our days without power. Needless to say, the place draws quite a crowd.

Outside, too, there is a multitude. Young children who carry begging bowls made from tomato tins. They ask you for cent francs—100 CFA, which doesn’t buy much in Dakar. A few spoonfuls of yogurt. Four pieces of candy. With 300 CFA you can buy a mayonnaise and French fry sandwich. With 500 CFA, the man at the sandwich stand will add a fried egg. He leaves his empty ketchup containers in a tree beside the stand at night. The begging children fish down the plastic jars and pass them around. They scrape their hands against the inside walls and lick the residue from their fingers.

When I leave the mini-mart, I hand out my change until I am depleted of 100 CFA coins. It’s never enough. Each week there are new faces demanding cent francs. Lifetime staff in the international aid community talk of “compassion fatigue,” the way working in ceaseless poverty wears on them over many years. I’m not there, but my own reservoirs have run dry by the end of each day. I’m sorry for the children I see outside the gas station; I watch them watching the man next to meet eat a slice of pizza. My heart breaks for the woman who sings to her baby beside the road, displaced people who have no place to go. I’m sad for the teenager who sells cell phone cards outside the ice cream store. I can’t imagine he makes enough coins in a day to buy a cone. I pity, too, the lesser things, the new litter of kittens who lived in the trash pile on the corner. I watched them die, one by one, until there were none left. My roommate and I fed a kitten from an earlier litter for a while. We debated bringing her home, but we know we are both leaving within the year. Then what would we do with her? Now when we look for her, she’s no longer in the usual spot. I like to think some kind soul took her home, but it’s hard to fathom in this place.

Report from Abidjan

An article from the UN’s news service agency on the violence in Ivory Coast, where the Rotary West Africa District Conference is scheduled for April.

ABIDJAN, 8 March 2011 (IRIN) - As reports by Human Rights Watch and formal documentation from the UN Human Rights Commission decry the worsening human rights situation in Côte d’Ivoire, many Ivoirians IRIN spoke with in Abidjan are appalled by recent acts of gruesome violence.

“We are seeing any and all forms of killing,” said an Ivoirian human rights activist who requested anonymity. “It’s sheer horror we’re living here… People are being burned alive and hacked to bits with machetes,” he said, adding that the violence seemed to be spiralling out of control.

Lassina*, 29, a cybercafé manager in Avocatier-Abobo neighbourhood (part of Abidjan’s Abobo District), said he has twice seen people burned alive. The latest incident he saw was on 5 March. “I heard cries from outside. When I went to see what was going on, youths were brandishing the burned bodies of two gendarmes like trophies.

“Not only is the country far from exiting its crisis, we have to deal with horrifying scenes like this,” he said.

The “betrayal” of Ivoirians’ hope that the 28 November second-round presidential election could be a first step on the road to peace and stability is contributing to the level of violence, said Rinaldo Depagne, senior West Africa analyst with International Crisis Group.

“That door was slammed shut; hope has vanished and now there is an absolutely dreadful state of desperation,” he told IRIN. “This degree of violence is quite unusual for Côte d’Ivoire; we didn’t even see this during armed conflict in 2002 and 2003 [the height of fighting following an armed rebellion].”

With such open displays of violence, Fatoumata Diaby, a 32-year-old housewife in Avocatier-Abobo, said she worries about what children are seeing. "I am shocked at how young girls and boys are witness to these horrific scenes... Human dignity crumbled in this country some time ago now. I wonder whether human life even has any meaning for Ivoirians any more. People are so thirsty for vengeance that they will slit someone’s throat without giving a damn."

Fabrice Danon, 35, a mason in Anonkoua-Abobo neighbourhood, is among hundreds of Ivoirians who have set up community self-defence groups in the past two months. He said one night armed men came and attacked his post. “They shot in the air, then attacked us. The head of our group was shot; as he was dying the armed men slit his throat with a machete. His body thrashed about like an animal’s. I was beside myself. Things have completely crossed the line."

In Abobo-Dokui neighbourhood, 33-year-old bus driver Maurine Koné said he could not believe he was in Côte d’Ivoire when he saw his nephew’s brutal murder. “Youths pulled him out of a bus and slit his throat. When I saw his body my legs gave out on me. This human slaughter is inexplicable."

He added: "But the moment of revenge is near. One must be patient.”

Asked whether the violence is at a point of no return, the human rights activist said it is still possible to avoid the worst - but only with a commitment to a peaceful settlement on the part of Alassane Ouattara and Laurent Gbagbo. He said for now few people apart from some religious leaders are actively calling for calm, out of fear from both sides.

The problem, he said, is there is no neutral mediator. “Given that the UN and the international community have declared unbending support for Ouattara, they cannot move things towards peace because they are partisan.”

He said on the one hand the Ouattara camp does not think it has to back down, because they have the categorical backing of the international community; on the other, Gbagbo will not yield either, as he holds the reins of power. “And keep in mind, the electorate is split just about 50-50.”

Meanwhile, the sharply partisan media carry diverging accounts of the violence, depending on who is attacking whom.

“Moral collapse” screamed the headline of a pro-Ouattara newspaper on 7 March, for an article about women reportedly shot dead by security forces during a march calling for incumbent Gbagbo to step down. A pro-Gbagbo paper on the same day carried the headline: “Alleged murder of women in Abobo - a grotesque fabrication”.

(*not his real name)

Read the article online here.

More unsettling news

A second man set himself on fire in front of the presidential palace last Thursday. Local papers say Senegal is poised for an uprising like the ones sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, and many of us are holding our breath here in the capital.

Worrisome news from Dakar

Man dies after setting himself on fire in Senegal

BY RUKMINI CALLIMACHI

ASSOCIATED PRESS

DAKAR, Senegal -- A man who set himself on fire in front of the presidential palace in Senegal on Friday died from his wounds hours later in the latest self-immolation on the African continent.

Witnesses said the man stood on the sidewalk and doused himself with a flammable liquid, possibly paint thinner or gasoline. It was not immediately clear why he set himself alight, but Abdoulaye Loum, who was at a bus stop nearby when the incident occurred, said the man was holding a piece of paper in his hand which he held up as the flames swallowed him.

The man collapsed to the ground and was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment. A statement read on state TV late Friday said he died at the capital's main hospital.

A private radio station said the man was a soldier and that he was wearing his military fatigues when he set himself on fire.

This self-immolation comes on the heels of similar protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria and Senegal's neighbor to the north, Mauritania.

Tunisia's mutiny that ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was touched off by a struggling 26-year-old university graduate who lit himself on fire after police confiscated his fruit and vegetable cart in December. Other self-immolations then quickly spread elsewhere in northern Africa and the Middle East.

Senegal is a moderate Muslim nation with one of the most established democracies in the region, but the country is facing its worst power outages in a decade and the cost of living has spiraled. There is growing discontent over octogenarian President Abdoulaye Wade's attempt to run for a third term, as well as the increasing influence of his son.

A U.S. diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks warned that father and son appeared to be "preparing the way for a presidential dynastic succession."

An hour after the incident, traffic had gone back to normal. Pieces of the man's burnt clothing lay in a charred circle.

Read the story online.

Christmas in Dakar

My mother flew from Southwest Florida to West Africa to spend Christmas and New Year’s with me in Senegal. We visited the enormous African Renaissance statue, whose $27 million price tag has caused controversy in a country that still lacks basic infrastructure. We drove outside of Dakar to visit the animal reserve at Bandia, where giraffes munched on leaves alongside our Jeep and water buffalo lounged in the shade of acacia trees. We saw rhinos and zebras and antelope. Oh, my. And, of course, we ate—boiled shrimp, grilled fish, chicken stewed in sauce. Dakar offers many edible delights, and we tried them all. We celebrated the New Year downtown, welcoming 2011 in a crowd of international and Senegalese friends.

In Photos - Tabaski

Today we celebrate Tabaski, a Muslim holiday called Eid al-Adha outside of West Africa. Tabaski commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, and Muslim families in Dakar slaughter a sheep in honor of the religious holiday.

The family where I lived for my first two weeks in Dakar invited me to join them. I missed the killing in the courtyard, but I was there for the butchering and the bloody clean-up. I also got to taste a grilled delicacy - sheep testicles. Some photos from Tabaski and the neighborhood.

Poverty in Senegal

I am a feeder. If I eat a mango, I slice off sections for the people around me. I buy beignets for my study abroad friends, and I bring madeleines to the office to share. There is happiness in the simple pleasure of giving food.

My feeding also extends to animals. In the villa where I live, the madame keeps a black Labrador, a silly thing that rolls on her belly the instant she meets you. But she has a deep bark that keeps the curious away. In the mornings, I tuck away a portion of my buttered breakfast roll, and when I come home at night, I feed the bread to Blackie. She wags her tail and lets me rub her belly then sneaks off to wolf down the snack.

On a recent morning, the bakery was out of the usual soft rolls, so I bought a baguette instead. That night, Blackie and I went through our usual routine: Wag, belly rub, bread. She crept away to the dark backside of the house with the dry baguette hanging out of her mouth.

I was boiling water for tea the next morning when the girl who cleans the villa stepped into the kitchen. Her name is Rama, and she is 15. When I wake in the mornings at 7:30, she is already at work sweeping the courtyard. She scrubs the tiles while I eat breakfast. When I come home in the evenings, she’s chopping onions or washing the laundry in large plastic tubs. I bumped into her once at night, asleep in the kitchen. There are four unused beds in the villa—bedrooms for when the madame’s children visit from France and Canada—and yet Rama sleeps on the floor.

I pulled the tea kettle from the gas burner, and she stood in the doorway.

“I saw you gave the dog bread last night,” Rama said.

I thought: busted. I wondered if she would chastise me for feeding Blackie people-food.

“The next time you have bread left over, you shouldn’t give it to the dog,” she said. “Wrap it in a bag and save it for me.”

I looked at her, and a hard, tight knot formed in the back of my throat.

“The madame gives me money every day, but it’s not enough for breakfast,” Rama said. “I don’t eat in the mornings.”

I thought of all the times I sat on the patio with my tea and roll while Rama swept at my feet. For her day’s toil, from sunup until after sundown, she earns just enough to cover her evening meal. In a country where almost 50% of the population is unemployed, the madame knows she can get away with paying those rates. This then is the face of poverty in Senegal. Not because there is not enough—in this household, there is plenty—but because those who have enough refuse to share with those who don’t.

I asked Rama if she wanted me to buy her breakfast. She lowered her eyes to the counter and nodded her head in a quick jerk. I bought her a roll that morning and the next one, too. But I’m moving out of the villa soon, and Rama will be back to fending for herself.

May the Earth Lie Lightly Upon Him

Friends do not come easily in Senegal. Not Senegalese friends, anyway. There is too much suspicion—on both sides—too little in common. The men you meet want to see if the rumors about American girls are true. The women look at you from the corners of their eyes, disinterested at best.

But true Senegalese friends are just that—true. Kind, helpful, and generous. Moussa Diallo was my first real friend in this country. A journalist, like me. We were the same age. He lived with the family where I first lived when I moved to Dakar, a son or cousin, some family relation that was never quite clear. We spoke in the evenings before dinner, going over the day’s news, and he brewed tea after the meal so that the conversation could continue. He showed me how to navigate the city’s bus system and helped me with my Wolof homework. In the hardness of this place—the stink of the open sewers, the men who call you bitch on the street—Moussa was a bright, bright spot.

Three weeks ago, I came home to find out that Moussa had been taken to the hospital. Malaria, they said. Then, two weeks ago: a cerebral hemorrhage. No one spoke the truth, that Moussa was dying of AIDS.

On Tuesday, I got this message from another student living in the house: “Moussa is dead.”

I came home quickly, and already women from the neighborhood filled the house and spilled out onto the street. They sat in rows of white plastic chairs, the kind many families here own, to be brought out for baptisms and other family events.

Flies crawled across the tiled floor of the courtyard and rose in swarms when a new woman walked in, her long skirts swirling in a blaze of color. The women wore veils over their heads and lifted the corners to cover their faces. One woman stopped to wash at the outside faucet, as if to rinse away her grief. She rubbed her hands together beneath the running water, crying softly, and then pooled water in her palms to splash over her face. The more she washed, the harder she cried, so that by the time she reached her feet she sobbed in great heaving gasps.

I sat with the women as the hot afternoon turned shadowed and a wind came up as the day gave way to evening. Clouds crept across the sky, and the sunset sent veins of red coursing overhead.

The men went to the mosque for prayers and then to the cemetery for the graveside service. The women stayed behind, lining the alley outside the home. The family handed out bags of crackers and blue mints wrapped in plastic.

When the men returned, an imam rose to speak. The crowd on the street answered him in parts, so that their voices created a low hum of prayer. When the holy man finished talking, the gathered neighbors stood and approached the family.

“Que la terre soit legère sur lui,” they offered as condolence. May the earth lie lightly upon him.

When the mourners had disappeared back into their own homes, the family re-stacked the plastic chairs, to be stored away for the next birth, the next death.

Second-Class Citizen

In Senegal, as in much of West Africa, the concept of women’s rights weighs heavily on the local population. The topic is debated in newspapers, passed between government ministries, dissected by European NGOs. Women’s rights are improving here, they say. Women are becoming a powerful economic and social force. The women of Senegal are on the way up.

The lived truth, of course, is a very different thing.

Women must dress modestly here or risk retribution. They are shuffled to the back of elevators; men push them aside to step out first. Men receive wooden benches for sitting at mealtimes. The women sit on the floor. When a German student staying with my host family offered me his bench one night, he caused a minor revolt. I didn’t take his seat—I knew my place—but even still he got a lecture from the father of the house.

This same father sits apart while the rest of us crowd around the communal plate. There are many of us—small children, students like me, his wife—and we all share the rice and fish. Some nights we only get a few mouthfuls apiece. The father, though, has his own table setting and his own portion of food. His plate is heaped with rice and vegetables and meat. I can hear the stomachs of the children next to me growl even when we have eaten what is offered on the communal plate. Sometimes the father has so much he can’t finish it all.

These are small moments. Wearisome and irritating, but insidious, and they work their slow way into your psyche and show you what it’s like to be a second-class citizen. Still, they are not grounds for anger. That comes later.

It’s a strange thing to hear a man hit a woman. It unsettles on some primal level, goes against the fundamental order of things. When a man hits a woman, all is not right with the world.

The first slap woke me after midnight. I thought I dreamed it, but then I heard sobbing and the hard thwack of a second slap, heavy and full, the sound a hand makes when it comes in contact with a cheek. There was more sobbing. I recognized the tone as Awa’s, the serving girl who works in my host family’s home. There was muffled yelling, and I recognized the voice of the father of the house. They stood in the courtyard just beyond my window. The father spoke in Wolof, so I could not understand what he said, but I flinched at the harshness of his tone. When he stopped yelling, he hit Awa again. She wailed in a voice that made my heart ache. I lay awake in my room until the voices quieted and dispersed.

Now when I walk the narrow alleyways between homes, I think about the women who live behind the iron doors. I wonder if they are respected and cherished, or if their anger is simmering, like mine.

In Photos - Living Quarters

I rent a room in a villa in the suburb of Dakar that is a 20 minute drive from downtown. My host, Marie Therese, is from the Cape Verde islands, a former Portuguese colony 300 miles off the coast of Senegal. Her granddaughters, Laura and Celia, spend the afternoons with us.

Avarice and Generosity

If Africa is the cradle of civilization, as some experts claim, then Senegal is the inventor of the hustle. It’s everywhere here, from the cabbies who quote me a price three times the going rate, to the shop girls who charge me $6 for a $3 bottle of shampoo.

“You can’t let it get to you,” a friend from the Ivory Coast told me. “Otherwise, you’ll be angry all the time,” he said. “Senegal will age you.”

This seems to be the standard advice: Don’t let it get to you. I learned to bargain quickly—to insist on the right price from cab drivers and storeowners. I ask Senegalese friends the price of everything before I go to the market, that way I know what I should be charged.

On a recent weekend, I went with friends to the HLM market, a section of town that supplies the beautifully printed fabrics women wear here. I had asked a tailor friend for the prices, and she gave me a tutorial on the three tiers of fabric and how much six yards of each quality should cost.

My friends and I arrived on a rainy Sunday morning. Most of the stalls were still closed. We picked through the muddy side streets, past piles of trash pushed into corners. Goats grazed on the sparse blades of grass. Some vendors called out to us from their open storefronts; most eyed us suspiciously. We stood in the road, mud squishing over the toes of our sandals, and eyed the piles of bright cotton. Finally, I found what I was looking for: six yards of fabric printed with a yellow and blue motif. I wanted to have my own pagne made, one of the beautiful skirts the local women wear so regally, like royalty.

From my tutorial, I knew the price of the fabric I wanted to buy. The seller quoted me double. I laughed and shook my head.

“I know it’s worth 4,500,” I said.

He lowered his price a little, but not much. We went back and forth. Finally, he stopped, intractable, at 5,000 CFA. I knew it was still too high, but I loved the fabric. I told him I’d take it.

He pulled out a plastic bag, sullen and angry, and slipped the folded cotton inside. He spit the stick he’d been chewing at my feet. “You must love money,” he said.

“I’d say the same about you,” Isaid. I handed him the 5,000 CFA note, took the bag, and left the store.

Sometimes the Senegalese hustle is more subtle. It happens when the cab driver says he doesn’t have exact change—he comes up 100 CFA short. He can get the change, he tells me, but I know it will involve flagging down other drivers, more discussion and hassle, and I’m already running late. The truth is it’s only 20 cents. So, I tell him not to worry about it. We both know he’s scamming me.

But there are moments of unexpected generosity in Senegal. This happens often when I’m crossing the street. There are no streetlights in this city of 2.5 million, and getting across a road can feel like a feat for Evel Knievel. The locals do it effortlessly, stepping out into traffic, weaving their way through oncoming cars. I stall and hesitate.

“Come, come,” the person in front of me will say, and they will lead the way through traffic. I follow them closely, and together we make it across. This happens frequently here, in the busy downtown and in the quiet suburbs, and I’m surprised each time at this kindness from a stranger.

I’ve seen, too, people give money to the poor on the street, frequently and without hesitation. One night I walked with Marie, the woman who owns my villa, to the fruit stand on the corner. She is assiduously frugal. Once when I did not leave enough laundry detergent for the laundry woman, Marie bought me an extra pack. I reimbursed her that night, but was 5 CFA short, about a penny. She shrugged her shoulders and said it didn’t matter, but in a way I could tell it did. I made sure to repay her the 5 CFA.

At the fruit stand, a woman sat just outside. She smiled warmly at me when we came up the road. I was surprised—people here do not smile at strangers. They reserve a cold hostility for the unknown. The only people who appear friendly on first meeting are the hustlers, the men in the market who want you to visit their shop, the men on the street who want to get your number.

But American habits die hard, and I smiled back at the woman, glad to see a friendly face. She extended her hand to me, palm up, and then brought her fingers to her face, as if to mime eating. I realized then that she was one of the city’s many beggars.

Marie and I bought mangoes and bananas and small, sweet oranges from the fruit stand. We left to go back home, and I turned to say something to Marie, but she was not behind me. She was kneeling next to the woman, pressing coins into her hand.

In Photos - Dakar's environs

We visited Keur Moussa, a Catholic monastery, for a traditional mass mixed with African music. Then we stopped at Lake Rose, where the high salt content turns the water pink in the afternoon sun. Finally, the turtle village on the way back to town.