Back at last!

To all my faithful and loyal readers:

Please excuse my extreme neglect of this blog within the last 6 days. The SIT group went to Saint-Louis, the first settlement in Africa of European explorers/sailors, for a six-day adventure/vacation. First, please allow me to summarize the last 6 days:

 

Thursday:

9h – everyone gathers at the school. We load luggage, eat, get on the bus, nothing special. On the way out of town we stop for fuel, drinking water and snacks. 12h30 – we stop in Thiès for lunch. The restaurant is called, “Pamanda,” after the French emigrant proprietors’ daughters. Our salads have vegetables, and raw ones at that. How long has it been since I’ve eaten raw veggies? Since living in the states? 14h30 – some people need to relieve themselves so the bus pulls over under a baobob tree. If you’ve never seen a baobob tree, or a picture of one, try to find a picture online. (I will be posting pictures of the boabob tree with the bus parked under it as soon as the Internet becomes fast enough to do so.) 14h40 – we return to the bus, picking the thorns from the brush out of our pants. 16h – the bus arrives in Saint-Louis at the hotel, which is a vibrant red with blue accent colonial remnant right on the Sénégal River. The ornately decorated yellow room, which is on the 3^rd floor, looks across the river to the historic bridge and mosques on the continent. 18h – the group goes to the beach. From the parking spot, the waterline is nearly 50 meters. The beach, though polluted and partially developed by grass-huts and small villas, is beautiful in its own way. Sand, complete with little crabs and seashells, extends as far as the eye can see. At first, we are taken aback by the breathtaking images of the ocean, then the vendors come out of the huts en masse like crabs from their shelters. Though they claim merely to want to present their goods, they will try to talk to beachgoers until they buy something. If a person is so audacious to tell a vendor that they are not only uninterested in their products, but also uninterested in a drab, broken-English pseudo-conversation, this person will quickly be dubbed “rude” or “cruel”. This sales culture is one small aspect of being a foreigner that is both difficult and obligatory to accept and patiently ignore. 20h – an upscale dinner on the hotel’s dining room – a lavish deck that extends 20-25 meters out onto the river, complete with tables, sitting areas and even two yachts. The meal, which was a choice between chicken, beef, or vegetables, was served in three courses, including two scoops of ice cream for dessert. Compared to the delicious yet monotonous ceebu jen (Senegalese dish with fish and rice) most of us have been eating on an almost nightly basis, the restaurant’s offerings were a more than welcome surprise. 23h – the group retires early to their (air-conditioned) rooms for rest and recovery.

 

Friday:

8h30 – breakfast. Plain croissants, chocolate croissants, coffee, tea, orange-mango juice. 9h – class starts. We are privileged enough to have a guest lecturer, a historian, who talks about the role Saint-Louis played in colonial history. Many of the players and historical sights are topics of our research projects. 12h – free for lunch. We find a hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon type place in the central most part of the island. The food is terrible but cheap. 13h – my group is assigned to “L’école Khayar Mbengue,” a school started in the Colonial Era by Gouverneur Faidherbe whose frequently changed name and function has played a major role in Senegalese education since the early 19^th century. We go to the school to take photographs and conduct interviews. Taking photos and conducting interviews on a school whose front gate opens onto a major street is no easy task. I stand in the middle of traffic, receiving ridicule and scorn from Saint-Louisians, endangering my safety, all for a poorly taken photograph that doesn’t truly show the stature and striking elegance of the old building. Interviewing is always the same. Kids come and try to snatch your notebook or your water bottle, people see your water and ask why you aren’t fasting (it is custom to fast during the month of Ramadan), guards or interviewees demand money for their answers and time, etc. This process, though cumbersome, becomes a little more efficient each time it is practiced. 16h – we wrap up work for the day and drive (on the bus) to a remote spot on the Senegal River. From there, the group boards a Pirogue (a Senegalese fishing boat made from wood, painted with vibrantly colored images and texts of “Alxumdulilaye” [thanks be to God] and the name of the boat), drives 10 km down the Senegal River (down is North in this case, but closer to the river’s mouth) towards a remote beach.  INCREDIBLE! There is not a single person nor piece of trash to be seen for miles. The water is clear – no cooler than 80 degrees Farenheidt. The man-made banks with evergreen trees, installed to protect both the river and the beach from erosion, provide a ‘natural’ barrier between the group and the rest of reality. For 2 hours we are in complete, undivided euphoria. 20h – the group returns, we eat dinner and continue work on our project. The roommates and I have a few drinks before a dull but necessary Wolof study session.

 

Saturday:

9h – class starts with another lecture, this time from an established Saint-Louisian author. His lecture recounts the evolution of the Saint-Louisian novel, from the Colonial Era to present. 12h – free again for lunch, nothing delectable but who cares? We eat for next to nothing. 14h – research on the history of L’école Khayar M’Bengue, as well as on Khayar M’Bengue himself, at the neighboring museum’s library. We decide to prepare a skit for our presentation. 16h – back to the beach we visited the first day. 20h – A sub-group eats dinner in a French restaurant. Without a doubt – this is the best meal I’ve eaten since I ate at Watercourse the night of my departure. Cheese salad, mustard olives, bread with oil and black pepper, lobster ravioli (yeah, you read correctly, we sure did have lobster ravioli) in a rich herb cream sauce, ice cream served in a wooden boat with sprigs of mint, beer and wine, and finally miniature espressos. If the fine food wasn’t enough, the smiles on the sun burnt cheeks of my colleagues, the laughter, the winding down after a few very intense days, and the shimmer in everyone’s exhausted, drooping eyes, was enough to make this night a very special one.

 

Sunday:

We are technically free; however, my group hasn’t finished preparing for our presentation. We rise relatively late – the sun lazily peeks over the combination of smog and an October dust cloud the Sahara has sent across the mainland. We work slowly but with determination. Luckily we finish early enough to have not wasted an entire free day. Another visit to the beach leaves our skin slightly darker, our nostrils swept clean and our spirits optimistic. Dinner is average.

 

Monday:

9h – presentations take place until… 12h –presentations are finished. We all learn about the history of the island through our studies of particular buildings and historic sights. Lunch comes, cheap and tasteless as usual. The ominous dust continues to lurk above the darkening continent. The group is collectively tired and sleeps until dinner. 20h – we eat dinner out on the deck above the Senegal River: vegetables, fish, meat, chicken, fruit, wine, bread, etc. The group recounts its time in Saint-Louis.

 

Tuesday:

We rise early and start the drive home. 11h30 – we arrive in Thiès and eat pizza at the same restaurant from earlier. 13h – the drives continues. 17h – We are still driving! We have returned to Dakar but the traffic is striking. The driver tells us that there have been rains and that since our departure gas prices throughout Senegal have doubled. This is quite normal. Bus drivers are advised to refuel the night before their departure, in case of such a rapid economic shift. A professor recounts a previous village stay in which the group was stranded until gas could be delivered because the morning of their scheduled return, gas prices has sky-rocketed above and beyond the group’s feasible costs. 19h –ish – finally we are back at the SIT office in Dakar. We check our e-mail and return to our respective families.