The morning is still dark as I sit in my Ndiaga Ndiaye on the way to Rufisque. The single light bulb hanging from a failing red wire illuminates me, casting a grand silhouette, maybe four times my size, on the passing scenery.

The past few weeks I have been getting a wealth of opinions on aid projects in Senegal from different people. Always associated with the white foreigner, the missions seems to be like my shadow-bloated, by inefficiencies and lack of follow up. There is plenty of money being thrown into the aid pot. For if you have a cause, there is likely to be someone supporting it, from environmental protection to helping school children to mental illness. The main difference seems to come from what creates the shadow. Is there something concrete behind it, or is it just the wind?

The first popular path is the politicians route where one procures the aid funding (from the government or an aid organization), creates a project that is usually focused around “sensiblisation” (informing part of the population), obtains volunteers, feeds and gives shirts to these volunteers with half of the funding, and finally keeps the last half of the funding to fill up the coffers. Corruption is rampant in almost all developing countries and on the rise in Senegal specifically. However, there are some projects where only the government can sufficiently address the problem. As private organizations who give to the campaigns though, NGOs have the opportunity to see exactly where their money is going and what it is doing.  For their caused can be worthy, but if the money and effort do nothing but further a fraudulent system, what is the point?

The next path is a half support system, represented perfectly in my apprenticeship site of the Village des Tortues. It was created with the help of SOPTCOM, the European Union, the Senegalese government, and other donators. Currently my host father acts as the representative of SOPTCOM for the Village, working there around twice a week. The major issue within the Village itself is the structure that now exists. It was started, and can now subsist and function by itself, but there is no real room for improvement. Every now and then the government will give money if there is not enough to feed the turtles, or SOPTCOM will donate something or other to help update the Village, like a computer. Both resources give the Village a bigger safety net up to a certain point, allowing it to beg at both ends when there is some dire need, but never really let it progressively function independently. Just like this confused system, the actual impact of the Village des Tortues is buried underneath possibilities and dead ends. Read more…

An account from the morning…

8:00 a.m. – Wake up, get ready for the day, head over to our family’s restaurant to go eat my bread and tegga degga (natural, no added hydrogenated oil, peanut butter, yum).

8:30 a.m. – Find out that the bread has, in fact, not already arrived at Mamour’s Boutique, and so we stop and pass the time by trying to be the first person to find the white, hearse shaped, bread car. There are an amazing amount of impostor cars.

9:15am- People search the other boutiques in town for the remnants of last night’s bread, which isn’t exactly soft anymore. About three people get to eat and go on with their days. Currently the whole village is at a standstill- no one goes anywhere or does much of anything, as we are all playing the waiting game. This would be why people have so much patience here.

10:03 a.m. – Thomas and I spot the bread car, I run to the restaurant to tell Penda (and the waiting customers), and the bread arrives!!!!!!!!! We  cheer, people eat, lives commence, and I go to work.

It’s easy to take something simple out of this situation – like if there was ever a war in Senegal, just go for the bread makers and the whole country would stop – yet it exemplifies so much more. The plain, empty, usually abundant, cheap white baguette bread that is sold here is essential to almost every person and household as a cheap way to get calories. While people eat things like chocolate spread or eggs with their bread sometimes, it is simply not within most families means to make meals, most of the times for huge households, that don’t contain a one food or another that can inexpensively fill people up. Here its rice, couscous for the poorer families (even though it has more nutrients), and bread and, from what I gather, its beans and tortillas in Guatemala. Either way, it is distinct example of the poverty and fragility with which the people around me live. One little thing, like not having the bread delivered, or how yesterday there was just simply no water, can completely change or halt life here. There are no back up plans, no second options to help life continue. For that takes money, space, liberty, ideas, whatever you may- all of which are harder to come by, the poorer you are.

This post by Fellow, Ananda Day has been cross-posted from the Current TV News Blog.

Home’s a pretty big deal to me, its where I feel safe and comfortable, where all my roots are, where I go to relax, breathe, and just be. From what I can tell my new home here in Senegal, which I will be staying in for six months, is just a tad bit different. First, it’s all hustle and bustle. Eleven children (of which three pairs share the same name) divided between two sets of parents in the two parts of the house, a restaurant to run, relatives and friends always coming and going, and cooking and dishes are forever being done. Not quite the same ambiance as my Dad, cat, and I.

Then there is the hierarchy that exists. Bali and Awa clean and cook for the house and restaurant, only the women do any chores, older people get more food and respect, and then there’s the fact that while they think of me as part of the family, I’m still separate from it. Growing up with two brothers and a sister, we all did our equal share of chores, whether it was vacuuming or the dishes. When eating, we were given equal shares of food which were not divided by age or sex. This difference in hierarchy has led me to feel as if I’m playing politics at home, for everything I do has a different significance and every American expectation of equality is out of place. Along that line, independence is a very different thing here. No matter what I do, be it going to the bathroom or work, I am always asked what I’m doing, for permission must be granted to do almost anything (not going to the bathroom, thank you very much). Back in America I have a freedom to go almost anywhere, and a Dad who just wants to know if I’m okay, not what I plan to do after showering. All at once I am the most independent that I have ever been, far, far away from everything that I know, and yet the most dependent as I have rules and expectations from a family and culture that are foreign to me. True, I probably couldn’t imagine a more different home. Nevertheless, I still eat breakfast with my ‘dad’ here, enjoy helping to cook, do my own laundry (it just takes a bit more work here), and have the sanctuary of reading (as I am lucky enough to have my own room). Being here for almost two months, I know that I’m not at home yet. It is possible though, so I’m looking forward to having over four months to find out.

There are many different scales by which to measure poverty: less than a dollar a day, being able to provide food, shelter, healthcare, emergency funds, stability, etc. Compared to many places in Senegal, my community is pretty well off in that the majority of the population can afford at least their food and house, which is either a gray concrete block or a thatched hut with some form of tin usually attached. When walking home from work, I have two views in front of me. On the right, there is the lush reserve where the different flora and fauna create a quilt of beauty. To my left though, is the plain and gaunt grey concrete wall that seems to never end – changing from wall to wall, house to house, and grey to grey to grey to grey. To be sure, this design is not representative of a culture which is full of so much character and color in every aspect of life. So here’s another face of poverty, shown by the simple fact that putting color into one’s life is almost always beyond ones means.

There are many different scales by which to measure poverty: less than a dollar a day, being able to provide food, shelter, healthcare, emergency funds, stability, etc. Compared to many places in Senegal, my community is pretty well off in that the majority of the population can afford at least their food and house, which is either a gray concrete block or a thatched hut with some form of tin usually attached. When walking home from work, I have two views in front of me. On the right, there is the lush reserve where the different flora and fauna create a quilt of beauty. To my left though, is the plain and gaunt grey concrete wall that seems to never end – changing from wall to wall, house to house, and grey to grey to grey to grey. To be sure, this design is not representative of a culture which is full of so much character and color in every aspect of life. So here’s another face of poverty, shown by the simple fact that putting color into one’s life is almost always beyond ones means.

Well to say the least, chickens are no big deal. I mean really, they are small, equivalent to a soccer ball. You could even kick them if you really wanted to. Rams are really not small, and I’m sure that if you kicked one, that it would kick you back, with sure damage being done. This past Tabaski was a day of Senegalese food and fashion immersion. Read more…

Well to say the least, chickens are no big deal. I mean really, they are small, equivalent to a soccer ball. You could even kick them if you really wanted to. Rams are really not small, and I’m sure that if you kicked one, that it would kick you back, with sure damage being done. This past Tabaski was a day of Senegalese food and fashion immersion. Read more…

When I first arrived in my new family, all I had to go off of were first impressions. In my head I tried to decide how I would describe these people who I would live with for the next six months, both to myself and to others. So that is what I did, I described them with words and examples of what I already knew. A mix of Mrs. Weasley and Cinderella’s step mother, jolly like Santa and his elves but a little less organized, overbearing, honestly naïve, structured, socially concerned, overtly open, all different impressions of different people.

Going into my first weekly meeting with Rachel, I figured that these descriptions would at least give her a view of what I was seeing, or at least what I thought I was seeing. That was not the case though, for I was given a quick reminder of something that I knew but didn’t contextualize: all of my views are those of the west, of what I have known for the few eighteen years of my life. My mental models are unmistakably American, which I know, but it is easily sectionalized. Read more…

Up until this point it’s been all about turtles. French turtle vocabulary, cleaning, feeding, and picking up after turtles, turtle facts (Sulcatar turtles can grow up to 100 kilos and 150 years old), and even a turtle shirt with the eleven specials of Senegalese turtles on it. This past week I finally saw more than turtles as I received my tour of the whole reserve.

Ousman, one of the two tour guides, and I started our walk on the official paths and he taught me about all of the medicinal plants protected here. Curing maladies from gallstones to appendicitis’s, some of the plants have more than three-hundred known uses. While people don’t come here every day to pick leaves or bark, the protected fauna here acts as a hospital and pharmacy for many that cannot and could not afford official medical care. We then reached the brush. While it was not exactly clear, there seemed to be a fairly wide path which was about ¾ of a foot wide. Yep, it wasn’t a path, just the trail left by some flipping massive snake. No big deal or anything, right? At least it explained why Ousman was basically hopping. Read more…

The book Heat by Bill Buford is about his culinary education as he runs through an intense number of first class culinary jobs. He was first an understudy at Mario Batali’s Babbo, then a pasta student in Italy, and finally shadowing arguably the most famous butcher in the word, Dario Cecchini. This past Saturday I underwent a similar first hand education. I can now certainly tell you that I will never be a butcher. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My mentor Awa, 20 years old, and I had our day planned out as we were going to visit her new husband, 30 years old, and his family a couple towns over. When I arrived in the morning ready there was a new plan: cook for the husband and his whole family by the time they visit this afternoon. On the menu were chicken, French fries, and yassa. Yassa is simple. It’s only onions, MSG, and Magic powder which is basically chicken stock. French fries are even easier as you only need potatoes, salt, and a Paula Dean butter-size-amount of vegetable oil. The tricky part had just come through the door, flapping away and trying to escape Awa’s fathers hands. So I watched those three white chickens pecking away as I cried over my onions, oblivious to their imminent fate. Read more…