Celebrety Guest Blog: A Visit from the Other Half

"Are you crazy? Your first trip outside of the US and Canada, and you picked Senegal!?" - more than one of Jennie's fellow PCVs

When I arrived in Senegal, nearly unable to communicate with anyone for lack of local language, in the midst of a transportation strike that almost led Jennie and I to walk 3 or 4km from the airport to the Dakar Peace Corps Transit House, and dead tired from lack of sleep on a 9-hour overnight plane ride, I thought that this remark was a quaint joke. 12 days later, I realized that every time I heard this statement (and I heard it loud, and often), it was said with an appropriate mixture of disbelief, indignation, and admiration. 

Disbelief, that I seriously would choose to go to Senegal before traveling to any other more desirable destination. Indignation, that I seemed to be enjoying myself in a location that most of these PCVs have been languishing in for at least six months. Admiration, that the bonds of my friendship with Jennie would bring me there, no questions asked. Looking back, on one hand, they all were right. I am crazy.

On the other hand, this trip was an opportunity I wouldn't dare trade in for a trip to any nicer, more accommodating, friendlier foreign country. I had many cultural shocks, the kind that come with traveling in a country where women are not equal to men (and are objectified beyond Western comprehension), where foreigners (specifically caucasians) are discriminated against, and where being both white and female is quite precarious. I also had many experiences that I consider priceless - I've been retelling them over and over for weeks, and have the punchlines all figured out so that these tales sound as far-fetched and surreal as the most ridiculous fisherman's yarn. All of it has provided me with a renewed sense of gratification for living in a civilized, modern country.

My first day in country was a strange experience, riddled by an overwhelming sense of disbelief. I couldn't communicate with anyone. Jennie was speaking three languages at some points to communicate with locals. We spent much of the day at Liberté Six, Dakar's Peace Corps Transit House. For me, that was a blessing, as I was recovering from dehydration, jet lag, and general exhaustion. For both of us, it was a smart option, as it was the first day of a country-wide transportation strike, protesting the rising price of gasoline. We were lucky to get a cab to Six from the airport (and only got one because it was 7am, and no one else was around). When we decided to go to Marché San Daga, a local street market, we jumped in a clando, a private car that just happened to be heading to the same place. The marché was overwhelming, and we didn't stay too long. Instead we went back to Six, took a nap, and then I had Jennie open her suitcase of goodies that I brought her - and gave her a true prize - a Chipotle burrito. Yum!

This is what a PCV looks like having her first Chipotle burrito in two years.

Luckily, the transportation strike ended by the next morning, and we were able to escape from Dakar, and be on our way to a camel-riding campement in the desert wastelands outside of Lompoul. However, even getting there would prove to be a challenge, by Western standards. First, a taxi to the Dakar garage:

And this is a good looking taxi.

Then, a sept-place (French for seven-seat) taxi to the garage outside Kebemer:

Imagine a driver, seven passengers, and all their crap squeezed in there.

Then, a two kilometer walk into Kebemer, followed by a wait at the local ceeb shack for the one lunch service. (Close to a two-hour wait, because we got there at noon, Senegalese lunch is at 2, and they only serve one thing until they run out.) I did get to try ceebu jën, the national dish of Senegal - marinated fish cooked with vegetables, over rice made with tomato paste. The vegetables were carrot, Chinese turnip (weird), bitter tomato (disgusting, but if you don't eat it you're a witch), sweet potato, cassava and cabbage. After lunch, we headed to a local taxi stand, and waited another two hours or so for our mini-car to fill up with people headed out toward Lompoul:

Ours wasn't painted so pretty, but it was just as full of people!

Of course, just as we thought it was full, with just our two wooden benches lining the inside, enough people showed up for the drivers to decide to cram in a third bench. Then we had to wait for that to fill up, too. Finally though, we made it to Lompoul, and caught a campement-provided toubab car (Peace Corps slang for any car that is less than 30 years old, still has shock-absorption, and the seats all match) out to the campement.

A view of the tents in their dune valley.

We hung out for the afternoon and relaxed (after traveling from 9am to 4:30 pm, we deserved it!), had a beer, and took some fantastic pin-up shots on the dunes. The campement dinner was fantastic, and we spoke to the guy in charge about riding camels first thing in the morning. However, it just was not meant to be! When we got up and went to track down our camels to ride, the campement manager had forgotten. He got on the phone with his camel-herder, who hadn't gone out to the dunes to find them yet. A half-hour later, the herder called back to say that they were missing. Um, what kind of camel campement loses their camels? The manager apologized a bit, but we didn't really care. I still got a photo with a camel for my mom though.

It was as close as I could get!

We had a long way to trek - we needed to get from the campement to Kaolack, about 140 miles. Again, for Western travel, not such a big deal. But for Senegalese travel… this would be an exercise in patience. We took the toubab car back to Lompoul, and somehow managed to catch a ride to Kebemer almost immediately in a Peugeot minitruck full of logs. Think this thing, but full of logs instead of luggage: 

The front seat wasn't terrible...but the back was ridiculous!

Halfway to Kebemer, however, the engine stalled out. No amount of banging on engine parts with wrenches would fix the damn thing, either. We managed to snag a ride on a new minitruck, this one full of cabbages and people. We were hanging out the back of it (Jennie more so than I - I'm still not sure how she didn't fall out) for a good 12km or so, into Kebemer. Instead of walking to the garage, this time we took a lovely charrette:

Ours was actually hitched to a donkey. Also, not quite so picturesque.

And at the garage, we couldn't find anyone going directly to Kaolack. So we were going to be routed through Thies first - on a mini-car. A gutted out and retrofitted bus with more seats that it should humanely have, these things are uncomfortable, crowded and stop at just about every road town they pass. PCVs lovingly refer to them as Alhams, after the phrase 'Alhamdoulilah!', which is painted on the front of every single one:

Alhamdoulilah! This bus made it 85k to Thies without breaking!

We rode the Alham towards Thies, stopping nearly every kilometer to let someone off. And at one point, the driver pulls over into a small road town and just says, "We're not going all the way to Thies anymore, because I don't want to drive a half-full bus." Luckily, when he had his change of heart, there was another half-full bus in the road town. So we jumped on that one, and this one stopped every half kilometer, all the way to Thies. We had left the campement around 9:30am, and got to Thies around 5pm. A full day's work, this business of traveling in Senegal. After a quick bite to eat at a toubab restaurant named Big Faim, with real, Western toilets, and toilet paper, and hand towels, and soap, and wi-fi, and beer, and the Senegalese equivalent of hoagie sandwiches, we needed to get to the Thies garage to grab a ride to Kaolack.

We headed out into the street to flag down a taxi, but every one listened to where we were going and said no. What the hell was going on? We could see a bunch of people walking toward the direction of the garage, and no cars heading that way. Sirens were blaring though, and it didn't sound good. Finally when we got a car to take us, Jennie got an answer: the president Abdoulaye Wade, was giving a speech, and most people heading there on foot were going to protest. The gendarmes and the police were there en masse, and if a riot broke out, the taxi drivers didn't want to be anywhere near it. Well, luckily this guy took his chances and delivered us safely to the garage. We grabbed another sept-place to Kaolack, and spent the next three hours crammed in a third seat that had no business being in that station wagon to begin with.

We got into Kaolack late, and spent some time with Jennie's good PCV friends before passing out in our lovely roof-top mosquito netted bed. The next day, we tried to exchange money, and got turned away since we didn't have our passports on us. Then, we headed to the indoor Kaolack market, the biggest of its kind in West Africa. A veritable maze of stalls covered in corrugated tin roofing, with only unevenly floored, narrow alleys as passageways between them, we got lost in it, turned around, and generally took three times as much time to find things as necessary. But we did some great souvenir shopping, as well as trying local beignets, and picking up some wonderful looking ribbonfish to bring home to village. We also stopped by the vegetable market for 15 pounds of vegetables, and the artisan village to put in orders for some pieces from Jennie's leatherworker. 

In the afternoon, we took a taxi down to Keur Sossé, the road town closest to Jennie's village. From there, her host mom sent out a charrette to get us and all of our stuff. Sambande is a village of 500 people, and after the overwhelming first four days of my trip, I was ready to just chill for a while. And so chilling is all we did. We read on the Kindle I had brought from America, preloaded with a hundred books. We talked and caught up on the past two years of each other's lives (letters don't always cut it). We sat around and lazed and vowed not to travel for the next couple of days, unless it was by walking.

Outside of hut

Inside of hut

The days in the village passed by kind of quickly. We had Jennie's brothers and sisters help us make a pinata for a handwashing demonstration the next day. I taught the kids how to play five-hundred with a frisbee before the handwashing demo, and took lots of photos of them making silly faces. At the demo, Jennie used glitter to show how les microbes get transferred from person to person through hand-shaking or not using soap to wash hands.

Pinata making

Playing 500

Makin' faces

Using glitter to demonstrate how germs travel from one person to another.

We got our feet hennaed and went to greet the elders in the village, and had a sabaar dance party that Jennie's neighboring PCVs came to. 

Henna

Greeting elders

Jennie dancing

Villager dancing 

Un photo Senegal of all the toubabs dressed up

I got sick, Jennie got sick, and we continued on with our travels anyway. After 5 blissful, simple days in village, we moved on to more touristy pastures. We hopped a taxi back to Kaolack, finally exchanged money, picked up my leather pieces, and self-medicated Jennie so that she could travel somewhat comfortably.

We went to Mbour, an oceanside city south of Dakar. The ride was uneventful, though Jennie was really out of it from whatever she had taken to help with her illness. From the Mbour garage, we took a minibus to Toubab Dialao, where we would stay for a night. Right on the beach, this touristy town was full of people trying to sell cheap goods to foreigners. However, we took an awesome walk on the beach at sunset, and I was able to get a lot of beautiful photos of the not-quite-right vacation home architecture, the sunset over the Atlantic (how strange!), and a gazillion people playing soccer.

Sunset over the Atlantic Ocean

Pretty coastline

Ski chalet beach house??

Mural at our campement/inn 

Misty soccer game

 Taking a shower at the hotel we were staying at was blissful - even without hot water; at least it was running - and once again there was a Western toilet, although you had to fill up a bucket and pour it in the bowl to flush. Also, the hotel flat ran out of water around 5pm. Awkward.

Nonetheless, it was beautiful and quiet and we slept okay on the really crap foam mattress. The next morning we had a hotel breakfast that wasn't nearly as nice as the village ones we'd been enjoying. The machine bread baguettes really didn't live up to tapalapa, at all. However, we were able to get out of Toubab Diallo relatively early and move on back toward Mbour; we took a cab to the local town on the Route Nationale, then a minibus back to Mbour garage, and grabbed a taxi to head down to Warang, where we visited the ex-pat Belgian liqueur distillery, Liqueur de Warang. On the way there, I took this video of what the outskirts of Mbour looks like - a typical scene in Senegal.

At Warang, we tried all of their samples - 5 different flavors, yum! and bought a bunch. I bought Passionfruit, Mint and a Triple Citrus one (lemon, lime and grapefruit, I believe). So delicious!

Distillery building at Liqueur de Warang

Outside tasting bar

From there, we headed back to Mbour's garage, and then took a sept-place to Dakar. It was the beginning of the pilgrimage Magal, where every male travels to Touba for this specific Muslim holiday. There were guys hanging on the top of minibuses, and running along behind them to jump on at the last second - it was crazy, but at least all the crazy was going the other direction. The trip into Dakar was relatively boring, and I think I even got a nap in. From the Dakar garage we were able to get a quick taxi back to Liberte Six (where I started my adventure!) and collapse onto the couches to laze for the rest of the day.

The following day, my second to last, we went to Goree Island, where the French colonialists based their slave trade operations. Only accessible by ferry, the island is a haven of 18th century architecture, fun tourist souvenirs, and small coastal restaurants. We walked around, I took about 500 photos, and bought a couple of souvenirs. 

Ile de Gorée

Ile de Gorée harbor

Our ferry boat was named Beer!

View back toward Dakar

We headed back to mainland Dakar so that we could go to the Marche San Daga again, but nearly every shop was closed because of Magal. So we stopped in N'ice Cream, for some nice ice cream, and then headed back to Liberte Six to relax again. It was almost eerie, seeing how empty Dakar was during Magal, compared to my first days in the same neighborhoods. In comparison, it was overwhelming and uncomfortable, whereas during Magal it was more like any Western city (except maybe New York). 

We went to bed early, so that in the morning we could finally get Jennie to the Med Hut at the Dakar Peace Corps Office. We did that, and got to spend most of our day recuperating in air-conditioning, watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 on endless loop, and checking email on super fast interwebs. Jennie got about 10 different medications, and when we went to dinner with Goza in the evening, she was almost her usual self. Finally we were counting down the hours until I would be leaving, and both of us spent much of the time napping. But finally it was time to go. To the airport I went, and we had a goodbye that was quick and painless so that I could keep grabby hands off my luggage. Ten hours later, I was back on American soil, being collected by my parents to get a thoroughly American breakfast sandwich, and retelling this tale for the first time.