Saturday evening. Hotel de la Poste, St Louis.
Sitting, supping a beer, watching the Uruguay - Germany game, (Allez! Uruguay!) And finally a minute and the opportunity to get online.
Last Tuesday, then, Professor Youssepha Diop had talked about the role of women in Senegal. Fascinating insights and discussion. The traditional role, the perfect wife, polygamy, excision, etc. The professor then showed us around Dakar to demonstrate its social, architectural and commercial transitions over the years. We started in the sprawling Sandaga market through whose encumbered streets cars and taxis tried to navigate. You name it, you can buy it here! The labyrinthine, laden, internal parts of the market reminded me of the Walled City or even Stanley market in Hong Kong before they disappeared; in the same way Sandaga will one day. Already commercial centres were being built adjacent to the stalls to encourage a move by the merchants. Better for traffic flow and so on, but better for ambiance? One is persuaded to buy at every step and Yousepha advised us that a final price of 1/3 the asking price was appropriate. Glad I have my tough negotiator with me, in the form of Laura!
On to embassies, palaces and the IFAN museum which is full of masks, information about rituals and recreations of villages from all over Africa; the most impressive of course being the Dogon who we will see next week!!
Back at the Baobab centre that evening I met Gary Engleberg, Director, who gave me more information on how ACI could help me put together a language/service trip together for my students next June. The programs are truly personalized and global in their outlook. We talked about connecting with a lycee in Dakar.
Off to Copacabana round the corner from ACI for a beer and the match. The usual Teranga here: an irresistible, delectable dish of either mussels or fried fish is offered on the house with your (very cheap) beer. Then home to a smaller family gathering at dinner tonight; the men are rarely around. Spicy peas and juicy lamb eaten from the communal dish with a piece of baguette. As there will be a big ceremony in Touba, spiritual center just inland, at the end of the week for one of the marabouts, spiritual leaders, the women and a visiting son set to, to peel and grind vats of ginger, oranges, beans, making juices, sauces and pastes till gone midnight.
Breakfast is always good: coffee, baguette and confiture. At 7 or 8 in the morning, after morning prayers that are initiated by the muezzin at 5am, an army of young girls and women appear in the courtyard to wash dishes, wash clothes, iron clothes, (with the form of iron that you fill with hot coals,) clean and scrub, The Senegalese are scrupulously clean and well presented, always, at all times and everywhere. They are all impeccable, (never sweaty with hair stuck to their heads, like me sometimes!) and very beautiful in the way they hold themselves and in their colourful pagnes and boubous.
Wednesday, professor Lamine Kane described Education in Senegal: again, fascinating insights into the griot tradition and the colonial education, which still pretty much exists today in spite of many reforms. There have been many strikes over the years among teachers’ unions, even during the new Wade era. We then visited a Middle School and were very impressed, as usual, by how well disciplined and respectful children are here. I talked and established contacts with many teachers who do so much with so little. We then visited the Cheikh Diop University and visited the library building full of students swotting for final exams. The building is splendid although could use some maintenance and some improved resources.
After another delicious grilled fish at Baobab, off we went with Samba to HLM market to buy pagnes and boubous and headscarves for our visit to La Grande Mosquee where we climbed a minaret for marvelous views over Dakar.
We then returned to our last night en famille where the preparations for tomorrow’s family trip to Touba continued, with the cutting of pastry and the frying of hundreds of beignets in a huge, portable gas fryer that was set up in the courtyard...which of course we got to taste!
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