Kolda or Bust...Better Not Jinx It

I awaken suddenly to rapping on my zinc door. “Who wants what at this hour?” I think. It’s still dark out and I can only assume it’s Moussa, my good friend and counterpart, waking me up to water our tree nursery. I sit up with a start and an expletive remembering I’m going to Kolda today, and since the skin infection on my shin still hasn’t cleared up after 3 weeks of antibiotics, I won’t be biking the 30 km from my village on the border of Guinea-Bissau to the paved road. I will have to take a car up to Diaobe, a large weekly market town to the north, before continuing another 90 km to the regional capital. I curse my phone as I check the time to see it’s 6:30 am instead of the 6 am I had set my alarm for.  Must have turned it off and fallen back to sleep; some things never change. Moussa insists we have time to water the nursery before I have to meet the car at the town center. He talked to the driver the night before anyway, so I will have a spot saved – most likely the front seat. We water the trees group by group with him pulling the nearly 17 m at the well and me shuttling the water through to behind my hut where roughly 1400 trees await. We have guava, mango, papaya, citrus, and three species of thorny live-fencing trees.

About 7:15 we head off down the road to find a lone station wagon with a number of people milling about around it. Like Moussa had arranged, the front seat has been reserved for me, and with about ten people standing around I assume it won’t be long before we leave. The station wagon, known commonly here as a “Sept-place” for the seven passenger spots in the car, can have up to eleven passengers inside the car: three in the front passenger/console seat, four across the middle, and four in the back. This however does not represent a full car. I’ve seen up to an additional fourteen loaded on the roof. I refer to these as “Vingt-cinq places,” and only for the lack of transport and distance do Pakour drivers get away with this severe offense in the face of the military checkpoint before Diaobe. Just once I even saw a guy ride on the passenger side of the hood! We load up a few more on top, I wish Moussa well and thank him, and we’re off.

Travelling from my village to the regional capital of Kolda requires a 40 km leg plus a 90 km leg punctuated by waiting at a garage to switch cars.  The first leg of 30 km north to the paved road along a rocky clay (latterite) road going from gaping pothole to gaping pothole, in a “sept-place” takes about 45 mins to an hour in the dry season (November-May) and 1 hour to 1.5 hours when the potholes give way to ponds during the rainy season (June-October). On a bike I can cover this distance in 1.5 hours. One infamous driver is known for taking this route at Mach 3, but since the accident that sent the car rolling down the latterite, most passengers opt-out of getting a ride from him. I don my cloth head wrap to shield myself from the dust, and the ride is rather agreeable.

As we get close to our destination, I take my headphones off and get into “Diaobe mode.” Diaobe consists mostly of a 2 km stretch of road flanked by vendors as far as the eye can see. Wednesday is “Louma Day” (weekly market) and Diaobe is transformed into the largest outdoor market in all of West Africa. Disembarking from my “Vingt-cinq place” I’ve zipped up all the pockets in my backpack, my camera bag hangs in front of me where I can see it in my periphery, and I clutch my laptop a little bit tighter.  I ignore the countless calls of “my friend,” “americain,” “toubab” and walk at a brisk pace through the market, much faster than anyone around me, trying to stay in the middle of the road where foot traffic is lowest.  This can prove difficult to maintain, however, given that on Louma Day the congestion can be so bad it could take up to ten minutes to cover the 2 kilometers of national highway in a car. I stick out, but I know it and I keep moving keeping one eye over my shoulder. I’ve heard of volunteers having the bottom of their bag cut out by attempted thieves, and even of a motorcycler alerted by his passenger as someone tried to swipe his cell phone from his shirt pocket while negotiating the crowded street.

Making it to the other end of Diaobe I relax with sigh at seeing the familiar garage workers Mammadou Baalde and Mammadou Jang; I’ve been here a few times. Greeting them with a smile they show me to an empty car pointing out that the car in front just filled. The more spacious front seat is a mixed blessing. I’ll have to wait until enough people come along willing to pay the slight premium for faster transport with the sept-place as opposed to the slower white bus known locally as a “Ndiak Ndaye” or “Alhum” in Peace Corps volunteer speak for the “Alhumdilulih” (thanks be to God in Arabic) painted on the hood of every single one in the country. Generally on Louma Day travel to and from Diaobe is easier with the increased market traffic. I wait about an hour, and the car is full (only seven passengers this time).

The second leg of 90 km starts with 40 km of perfectly paved brand-new road followed by 50 km of the worst road you’ve ever seen in your life. In simple quantities: it takes 2-2.5 hours to cover 90 km (60 mi).  The drivers covering this stretch of road are either the most skilled navigators or the biggest off-road junkies there are.  Literally swerving from one shoulder to the other attempting to avoid the worst potholes I can’t imagine ever succumbing to seasickness after going through this. There are also four military checkpoints along the road to Kolda.  I remember the first few times being a little unnerved by the man wielding an M-16 peering in our car, but such is the standard here. Most often they ask for identification and tell us we can move along.

Finally arriving in Kolda I grab a taxi, and I’m off to the Peace Corps Regional house for (normally) more reliable electricity and running water. I could use a western-style shower after my 6 hour, 120 km (75 mi) journey.

Pulaar and Wolof (But French Just In Case)

Pulaar is a great language for navigating the south of Senegal and even West Africa in general. As the second most prominent language on the whole continent, I was pretty content with it as my given local language. Before installation at site in the southeastern arrondisement (sub-regional city) of Pakour in the region of Kolda, I spent two months living with a Pulaar family in the big city of Mbour. Residing about an hour and a half outside of Dakar, the family made a concerted effort to only speak Pulaar during my stay, but in reality they would have been much more comfortable mixing in the most popular Senegalese and more northern prominent language of Wolof. A fact that would later be confirmed upon my future visits to their compound.

When travelling in Senegal you are hard-pressed to find Pulaar-speakers north of the The Gambia. Among the many other ethnicities (and consequently languages) including Sereer, Mandinka, Jolla, Bajaraanke, and Bambara the vast majority of people will also speak Wolof.  Generally the bigger the city in Senegal, the more Wolof you will find. Also, any national or international office or business (banks, post offices, mayor’s office, community rural, governmental officials, Orange Phone Service, police, gendarme, military) anywhere in the country will most likely be run by Wolof-speakers.

Travel is also, for the majority, run in Wolof/by Wolof-speakers. When you walk into a garage, hail a taxi, negotiate for baggage prices for a car, bus, or mini-bus, you are likely working with someone that either learned Wolof as his first language or is accustomed to dealing in Wolof.  It is for this reason that the Peace Corps prefers to reserve sites far from the capital for volunteers with a strong French background. Those volunteers will then learn a more minority local language while being able to rely on their French, the official national language, for travel.

I studied French for 12 years before coming to Senegal but had never been to a French-speaking country and was thus afforded with a wealth of vocabulary but a lack of fluency and confidence in my proficiency. Since my arrival, I have solidified the fluency I’ve been striving for, however, in my opinion, this does not suffice Senegal.  With one glance a vendor or apprenti (ticket seller on the back of a vehicle) has sized me up as an ignorant tourist, and French-speaking only serves to confirm this prejudgment.  Immediately I become the subject of inflated prices and ostentatious speaking.

Fortunately my living situation with 5 Wolof-speaking teachers has afforded me a convenient and quick means of picking up the language.  When conversing with them, we all speak French, Mr. Gaye (an exceptional English teacher) and I can speak English, they teach me Wolof, and I teach them Pulaar. With a lot of patience on their part, now I can even hold down a conversation in Wolof.  This fourth language has become my travel language of choice.  In Wolof, I’m no longer some touristy Toubab (westerner/white person) lost in the world hoping for someone to hold my hand. In Wolof, I’m an insider who has his wits about him…and I can always fall back on French when things get hairy.

A Kolda Thanksgiving

Tobaski Pics

Trainings and Such

Part of being a Peace Corps volunteer is finding that imperfect balance between the amount of work you execute (e.g. number of trees grown/planted) and the amount executed by host-country nationals (HCN). It would be very easy to grow a bunch of trees myself and then hand them out or just go plant orchards on my own. I wouldn't have the back and forth trying to determine what the HCN really wanted to do. I wouldn't have to make sure they attended the training at every step, and then executed every step correctly. But the more work I take on, the less likely it is to continue on after I leave or after Peace Corps leaves the community. Trees might be considered "Amadou's (that's me) trees" and won't be cared for. HCNs might expect from my replacement the same handouts I gave during my service. (To the left is my back yard and the trees I have in my nursery).

Over my first year at site I have really taken this philosophy to heart and insisted on not ever forcing doomed projects on people, handing out trees or tree sacks to anyone who stops by, or working in someone else's field without their help. I've also executed a number of trainings and demonstrations to get people learning the process work.

My first training was establishing a cashew tree pepineer (Pictured Left). This included preparing the soil mixture, filling the black plastic tree sacks, treating the seeds, and setting up a nursery site. With trees started in the nursery you can get them growing a month or two before the rains are established, so they are already healthy and strong before outplanting, when they can really take off.

I have since also completed trainings in citrus and mango rootstock bare-root bedding. This involves direct seeding citrus or mangoes in a germination bed to allow for adequate establishment and selection of the best seedlings to transplant into tree sacks before grafting the following spring and eventually outplanting. If there is a multi-step process, I give them the first step in a training and then tell them to come find me when they're ready for the next. This effectively weeds out those that aren't really interested in working on their own.
Malaria killed 780,000 people worldwide last year and continues to be a serious issue in Senegal. In my host family alone 6 people contracted malaria this year alone. PC Senegal has made great strides in bed net distribution and preventative action. I completed two trainings on preparing mosquito repellant based on leaves of the locally available neem tree. You simply boil the water; add leaves, oil and soap, and then stir to cool. The lotion is quite effective and inexpensive. This was my best-attended training.
The following day my host mother Jennaba (right), my friend and workpartner Moussa (left), and my namesake Amadou (center) got together to try out the process and make the lotion themselves. I'm told another who attended the training is now making it and selling it in the bigger city of Velingara.

Parc National Niokolo-Koba

At 4am on Thursday I met three guys from England driving the return leg of Sierra Leone to London after working at a hospital there for two months...We decided to go to the National Park for the night...

Here are some pictures from the trip (blog post upcoming)

And then he went to the trunk to get a tire iron...

I was in Dakar about a week ago to complete my mid-service medical appointments where they run a number of tests to make sure Senegal isn't killing me yet. Dakar always offers a number of big city headaches you would never run into in regional capitals, much less a village. One of them is the obstacle of negotiating a taxi fare wherever you're going. As a white foreigner I have a sign on my back that says I have a whole lot of money, and anyone and everyone should try to get as much of it out of me as possible. Fare negotiations always start with something ridiculous like 4000 or 5000 CFA. I often throw out the Wolof karma proverb, "Luway def bopem," and the entire dynamic of the conversation changes: I am no longer a tourist, I speak some of the most prominent local language, and there is no way you're getting 3-4x the fair price like you're accustomed to with other foreigners. We joke around a bit more in the small amount of Wolof I speak, usually calling each other "sai sais" (thugs), and in the end we settle on around 1000-1500 CFA for the fare.

Around 4pm on Sunday afternoon myself, Jesse, another Peace Corps Senegal volunteer, and Virginia, a former Peace Corps Togo volunteer picked up a taxi in front of the "Liberte VII" Peace Corps transit house in Dakar negotiating the standard 1500 CFA price to the "Brioche Doree" bakery round point in Ngor Village (northwest Dakar) as the waypoint to go another ~200yds to the Peace Corps Senegal office. Nearly every taxi driver in Dakar knows this waypoint and has no trouble getting to it.

We negotiate the price, load our bags in the trunk, and depart for Ngor. Along the way I ask the driver if he speaks any Pulaar so maybe we can have an actual conversation, but he doesn't. The beach comes into view and we arrive at the first round point in Ngor with the driver pointing out a different bakery as the destination. I remark to him, in Wolof, "no, no it's the next round point. The round point with the Brioche Doree. It's not far." The driver starts to grumble to himself a bit in Wolof that I don't understand, but we continue nonetheless. About 20 yds before the target round point I tell him to hang a right to continue on to our destination, and he loses it. He's yelling in Wolof about how expensive gas is, and if I wanted the fare for 1500 it would have been the round point ~150 yds back. Trying to stay calm I tell him it's just a litte further. We take the right turn at the round point, and I tell him, "it's the next left." Well that was that...

The driver stops the taxi and starts yelling in Wolof how I need to pay him 2000 CFA now, and he's not taking me any further (at least that's all I understood). Again I tried to stay calm, "it's just a little further on the left." He gets out and goes to the trunk, and I think, 'well he's going to throw our bags out on the street and try to get rid of us.' He lifts up the bags and pulls out a tire iron from the trunk. The thought actually crossed my mind for a split second, 'well the car was rumbling a bit, maybe he needs to mess with the tire...' I quickly remembered, "no, I've heard this story before..."

He came around to the front passenger seat, tire iron in hand, and yanked my door open. "Give me my money! You need to pay me 2000 CFA!" At this point I decided to switch to language I actually speak and said, "calme-toi..." His response was a quick, "dugama (I don't understand)." French would now be useless. This was going to be interesting as I was the only one in the group of 3 who spoke any Wolof, and it was about exhausted at this point. I turned to look for the input of my friends and we decided the office wasn't that much further. We could just walk. We got out of the taxi, and went around back to grab our bags. The driver was still wielding his tire iron and staring us down. "He didn't take us all the way to our destination, so I'm only giving him 1000 CFA," Virginia remarked. 'Good luck with that,' I thought...

Virginia handed him the 1000 CFA bill, and the driver started yelling, but his Wolof exclamations were about as effective as hers in French. He grabbed onto her bag to thwart her escape, and she grabbed onto the tire iron to keep him from getting any ideas about using it. Suddenly the car started rolling down the street on its own, and the driver had to abandon his grip for a moment to stop it. It wasn't enough time to get away as we started to walk, so the stand off continued. Finally at this point the local foot traffic saw this loud tug-of-war taking place, and around 10 people (some French, some Senegalese) showed up to see what the problem was.

They quickly tried to tell the driver to calm down and get between us and him. "What did you negotiate for a price?" I was immediately asked. They knew the problems tourists had getting a fair price. I explained how we had negotiated for 1500 to this round point and he got angry out of nowhere for having to go past the round point with the first bakery (he clearly didn't know where he was going). A Senegalese man quickly snatched the tire iron from his grasp, and that was out of the equation. "Just pay him the remaining 500 CFA and it will be over," they said. I didn't want to set a precedent for being able to scare extra money out of tourists (which is clearly what he was trying to do), but I could reconcile he had taken us to the negotiated waypoint even if it wasn't our destination. I gave him the remaining money, they removed his grasp from Virginia's bag, and we quickly walked away while the yelling continued. I kept an eye out behind us, but we made it to the office without any further issues...