Sorry for not posting for like a week, but the trip to Toubacouta was just too epic to casually blog about. that, and there was a POOL and a real shower so basically no time to sit and blog. AKA, the field trip was pretty amazing. I can’t really remember the minor details so I’ll just hit the highlights.
We stopped in a town called Socone where we had lunch at the house of the mayor who just happened to be the older brother of the director of WARC (West African Research Center, where my program is located). That was really cool. Three of us sat around a big silver plate and ate seriously ALL of the ceeb_u_jen (rice and fish) with our hands. I felt like dying afterwards.
Anyway, seven hours after we left Dakar we finally pulled up to the hotel and it was fab-u-lous. It consisted of 2-3 person cabana/huts, a pool and a bar/restaurant. It was really gorgeous. And really air conditioned. sigh….
By far the craziest thing we did in Toubacouta was attend a “Seance de Lutte.” on the schedule it said we would be attending the seance de lutte and that there would be a wrestling match between Waly (the director of MSID, my study abroad program) and a student and Adji (an assistant of MSID) and another student. We laughed and figured it would be a party like every other one we’ve attended in Senegal: we’d go to someone’s house, sit around, fan ourselves, eat ceebujen, someone would put on music and the toubabs would dance awkwardly. WELL. Let me tell you what a seance de lutte is. It’s a large open circle surrounded by onlookers who are extremely loud and interested in what is going on in the middle . Outside of the circle is a full drum band and a woman singer singing something completely incomprehensible. INSIDE the circle is about 30 beefy men wearing only speedo’s and a thong over the speedo’s, going around the circle doing the strangest dance you’ve ever seen (which i have actually mastered, thankyouverymuch). From time to time the men (the luttaires) face off to wrestle (to lutte). Oh yah, and they carry around wooden daggers (which may or may not have made Lisa a bit terrified, especially when i told her they were for killing all the toubabs). They use the daggers to draw shapes in the sand, however, which are supposed to call forward good spirits. At first sight it was completely terrifying, especially because we had NO idea what to expect. It was definitely a “dear Claire, you’re NOT IN AMERICA ANYMORE” moment. But after we got over the initial shock, it was definitely one of the most ridiculous and amazing experiences of my life so far. And maybe the smelliest; a giant ring of dancing/wrestling men smells palpably of sweat, dirt and testosterone.
While in Toubacouta we also visited a village called Soukuta (i think) and listened to a presentation by a “groupe de la femme” which made me feel so incredibly lazy and worthless its not even funny. Basically this group of women decided that cooking, cleaning, raising the children, selling oysters at the market, and doing everything else under the sun just wasn’t enough, they also had to save the mangroves.
So they got together and formed a group and each family in said group donated a small amount of money. with this money, along with a loan from an NGO, they created their own bank (credit mutual) which gives out micro loans to women within the group. This group of women depends on the mangroves to make a living, because oysters grow on the roots of mangroves and they shuck and sell oysters at the market. Sometimes, however, they run out of oysters on the exterior roots of the mangroves so they hack the outer roots away to get to the inner roots and therefore more oysters. With the bank, however, they can take out a micro loan to rent transportation to a different area of mangroves where there are more oysters. Then they sell the oysters at market and pay back the loan with the profit. The group also receives donations from NGO’s to plant mangroves from time to time. Feel pretty lazy, don’t ya?
Well the cool part of the story is that i also got to plant mangroves. Which, I’m sure you can guess, was so AMAZING. But first it was a tad bit terrifying. What happened was, we were all in our rooms getting ready to go and me and my roommates Lisa and Cate were doddling (me? doddle? never!) and long story short the group left without us. We waited around for people to show up to get on the buses when we realized that they had already left. Turns out they walked. So flashforward to ten minutes later, when we are SPRINTING through a forest and then across an African mudplain, sometimes falling through mud up to our knees. It was one of those moments where you look around and look at yourself and think, “ok. This is not something I ever anticipated doing in my life,” and thank yalla (god in wolof) that you are exactly where you are and who you are in that moment. Read the rest of this entry ?