Senegal Part 3

I was in Senegal for a Peace Corps training on malaria prevention. I was honored to be selected from Peace Corps Rwanda’s new team of Regional Malaria Volunteers. The training was a 10 day “boot camp” in Senegal’s second city, Thies. Thirty volunteers and Peace Corps staff members from all over Africa were there to learn about malaria and how to fight it in their communities.

Some people that have done the training are not huge fans of it, but I thought it was a really impressive program. The training consisted of a lot of classroom time where we learned about epidemiology, malaria transmission, prevention techniques, etc. We had skype calls with a variety of impressive figures in the malaria prevention field, and others who were not directly involved with malaria, but still had relevant areas of expertise. For example, we had a call with a man who has become well known for his use of crowd-sourced mapping, which was used effectively in a variety of situations, such as disaster relief in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. I remembered seeing him once as a guest on The Daily Show. We also left the training center for visits to health posts and to the home of a man who had come close to eliminating malaria in his community. In the evenings, we had discussions about case studies we had been given before the training. The days were long, but pretty interesting. Plus, we usually had time for a beer or two at the Catholic bar nearby.

The food was great, and I loved the fact that we ate on the floor from big, communal bowls. Floor-sitting and communal-eating are two things that are severely lacking in my life in Rwanda. The dishes were usually typical Senegalese dishes like maffe (thick peanut sauce with goat or beef), yassa (onion and lemon sauce with chicken) and theboudienne (red rice with vegetables and fish). Occasionally we had western dishes like pizza and salad, which I didn’t mind too much.

Halfway through the conference we got a day off to go to the beach. This, I didn’t mind either. It was in a rural area, away from the crowds of Dakar and the Cap Vert Peninsula. There was almost nobody on the huge stretch of, foreigner or local. The sparse village was set far back from the beach and there were only a couple of homes and restaurants nearby. It was the rare kind of beach atmosphere where I wouldn’t mind settling down for a bit.

I have learned over the years that I am not the typical beachgoer. Most people are there for the sun and sand. I am clearly there for the water. While everyone else was laying out there towels, and tiptoeing around the edge of the surf, I was careening into the garbage-choked water. I think it was a seasonal thing, but the water was so heavily laden with floating plastic debris that it was impossible to avoid contact with them. With so few people living in the area, it was clear that the garbage was floating in from Dakar. It was less than ideal, but I was confident that the salty sea had cleaned the garbage pretty well.

We had little free time in Thies, but any time we  got to lunch early or didn’t have an evening discussion, I made an effort to explore the town. Mostly I stayed in the market area, since it was the closest thing of interest to the training center. The outer edge of the market was stinking and filthy. I imagine it is because it was where the fish trade was happening. Lots of the women sat with meat grinders, shoving chunks of fish into it and grinding it to a stringy pulp. It looked disgusting, but I don’t doubt that the ground fish could be turned into many delicious things. My favorite part of the market were the frozen drink sellers. Mostly they sold frozen hibiscus juice, or baobab fruit juice, but my favorite was the mint frozen yogurt. They made this by taking the thickened, sour milk and mixing it with a powdered mint drink mix. So refreshing in the dry Sahelian heat. The market wasn’t particularly remarkable, but I did find good deals on cloth and picked up some tea glasses and giant bags of hibiscus and café touba (spiced coffee) to take back with me.

At the end of the training, we got a ride back to Dakar. Some people were leaving early in the morning and Peace Corps had supplied them with pretty swank hotel rooms. People like me, however, weren’t leaving until the next afternoon and we were on our own. That night some of us had a small balcony party at one of the hotel rooms (it was a really nice room) before heading out to a concert. The concert was my idea, though I didn’t know if people would actually want to go. In fact, I kind of didn’t want people to go because I would feel responsible if they didn’t like it. When the party broke up, some went to a club and the rest came with me to the concert. It was a free concert held in a huge public plaza. Headlining was Daara J Family, my favorite Senegalese hip-hop group (ok, the only one I really know), who I had just seen two weeks earlier. Their performance was so good, though, that I didn’t mind seeing them again.

The concert was sponsored by Nescafe and there were booths all over distributing free cups of the instant coffee. It is interesting to see how much more marketing there is for Nescafe in Senegal than in other African countries. It seems to be because Senegal is one of the rare countries that has a coffee culture that doesn’t need Nescafe, and Nescafe can’t handle it. Café Touba, the strong, spiced coffee, is sold everywhere and is far better than Nescafe. Nescafe appears confused and frustrated by this, since it has little competition in the majority of the world and is just the default coffee. They have gone as far as making an instant coffee flavored with lemon and ginger to compete with Café Touba. I don’t know if it has caught on.

There seemed to be an endless stream of openers. Some were great, and some were mediocre. The people that had joined me were enjoying it, so I was at ease. By midnight we were growing a little impatient to see Daara J Family, though. They didn’t make it to the stage until 1:00. Again, they were fantastic. They didn’t end their set until close to 3:00 AM. We were exhausted. When we got back to the hotel, I managed to snag a bed from a volunteer that was already leaving for the airport.

The next day, Matt, my compatriot from Peace Corps Rwanda, and I went to the beach in Yoff. Being a Sunday, the beach was bumping. It was a nice last day in Senegal, enjoying something that we did not have in our country of residence. Our day was cut a little short, as we were told we had to get picked up for the airport at the Peace Corps office, rather than just go to the airport (which is in Yoff) directly.

As I approached the front doors of the airport, a man in plain clothes with some sort of ID tag hanging around his neck motioned for me. He asked for my passport. Although you must show your passport to enter the airports in Kigali and Bamako, this seemed strange. My passport and ticket were in my hand so I just quickly flashed it and tried to move past. He told me to stop and said he needed to look at my passport. I asked him why, then asked to see his ID. He was not expecting this and just started to back away. I realized he was clearly a hustler and as I started to motion to a nearby police officer, he hustled out of there quickly. I really wonder what would have happened if I had given him my passport. I also wonder how often people actually do give him their passport. I also wonder if I really look like that good of a target for a scam.

Anyway, Senegal blew me away. I was terribly disappointed to be leaving its friendly people, vibrant arts scene, urban swagger, awesome food and beaches. It is definitely one of the countries high on my list to return to if I have the chance.