home again

I'm looking out my desk window at the snow, struggling to reconcile the speed with which bodies can be moved around the globe.  My mind's not here yet, certainly.  The trip was easy.

Mostly, it was easy because the election results were seen as positive, and people were quite happy in Dakar last night.  Many people were out walking and shops were open and there was a sense that democracy had done what legal maneuvering and protesting had not, sent President Wade a message that his efforts to seek a third term would not succeed.  He still appears to have the most votes with 34% by one count, but another candidate is close behind w/ 27% and the others have already pledged to unite around whoever had the most votes to defeat Wade.  So, there will be another election in March, and much political discussion until then, but my sources feel like a change is now assured, and there was a sense of celebration last night.

I look forward to seeing you  all soon.

j

Election day

It's a quiet election day here, so far.  People have stocked up on food, prepared for the worst but hoping for better, of course.  Discussion at dinner last night suggested President Wade can't win, but many people still fear he'll steal the election, that the countryside vote will still carry him, or that some unexpected deal or trick will happen and enrage people.  On the TV and radio news, the voices are tense.  The former president of Nigeria was on the TV last night trying to broker a last minute deal to arrange delayed elections and an orderly transition.  Twitter feeds are tracking poll station crowds and transportation problems.  Nothing significant yet.   If there is accurate polling information predicting today's results, it doesn't seem to be public knowledge.  So everyone waits- anxiously.  Mme Diop is walking around the house with a portable radio to her ear.

I'll be spending the day with Mamadou in Rufisque, a town just outside of Dakar, and then having dinner at Pape's house and getting on a plane at 2:30 this morning.  I'll be home Monday morning.  I'm very much looking forward to it.  I don't expect to be adding things here until I switch to work on my digital literacy project.  I have to admit writing into this virtual space has been interesting (that word I forbid students to use for it's useless ambiguity), albeit strange as feedback comes so episodically and obliquely.  I have enjoyed sharing my trip here with those of you who enjoy reading it.  Thanks.

John

goodbyes

On the first day I started this w/ an entry on the coffee shops- local guys (always guys) who serve coffee (ok, Nescafe, or cafe Touba) on many corners from rolling carts.  I mentioned then that Abou sold his from a cardboard box.  He's still doing so, but I've worked with him to prepare a microcredit loan application w/ a local agency.  He's written a couple drafts of the proposal and I've passed it to the director of the organization.  He's there six days a week from 7 AM until his hot water thermoses run out.  Jobs here remain impossible, and people do things like this all the time for a few dollars a day.  A student today told me he worked as a janitor for 1500cfa/day.  Just over three dollars.  I hope to see a picture of a new coffee cart sometime soon.  Insh'allah.

Babocar or 'Homicide' as he likes to be known (I've renamed him 'Daisy') is my strongest student.  He'd read an overview of the rest of The Scarlet Letter and was quizzing me today about the meanings of the events while we walked.  He's also the only Wade supporter in the class, but he's gotten pretty quiet about that.  Today several of the students met for the last time to say goodbye.  The didn't know about the four US college programs in Dakar, so I gave them contact information, introduced them to Ryan who lives in my house from one of the programs, and even stopped to random girls from the SIT program on the street and made introductions.  They plan on proposing conversation groups or perhaps even study groups to one or two of these groups to continue their work together. Given the general disregard and dysfunction of the university system, they know they need to take initiative.  They were so appreciative of our class, and I damn near got teary about saying goodbye to them, although they didn't like my hugs preferring 'gangster' handshakes and shoulder slams.

goulash

Back from the beach, I enclose one more picture of boats in Guinea Bissau, mostly for myself.  And the goulash was part of the nice last night dinner at a sweet French restaurant in Cap Skirring that served locally made cheese- a rarity here.   As I write a pro-Wade event is going on down the road- at his party headquarters.  It's all politics back here in Dakar.  The schools are all shut down now, even the private ones.  Mme Diop has stocked up on food for the weekend.

The three local college programs have put their students on short leashes, if not quite as short as the tethers on these city sheep. The CIEE program would be on spring break, but they've forbidden students to travel in the country. They're not happy.  So these photos, well they're rather random returning to the city photos I've liked but not found occasion to use. This laundry gets hung on a main road on Sundays right next to the open sewer ditch which is below the railing.  The

 contrast between grand projects President Wade has promised or completed contrasts starkly with basic needs like closing sewers that go unmet.

For some reason I don't understand, coiffures often use pictures like this to advertise their shops.  I love both the retro look of the images and the cuts.  Given that backwards hats or rasta dreads are what seem most popular, these feel even more dated.  The 'check drop' or 'sagging' as we might call it, wearing your jeans way low on your backside, is also big, and a newspaper even had an article mostly focused on the horror of girls sagging, too.

But all conversation now is about the elections.  In a facebook poll, Wade comes in 3rd at 15%.  The tailor I visited today to pick up some sewing launched into tirade against the president.  There are many rumors flying around about last minute political "deals," about the fraud already being found in voting cards, but mostly about what will happen on Monday if Wade 'wins.'  For most people I speak with in Dakar, no Wade victory is possible fairly or acceptable politically.  I did see more evidence of pro-Wade graffiti and posters and t-shirts when I was in the south this week.  One strange rasta local launched into a harangue about how Wade was a 'real man' and that's what the people wanted.  A French woman who lives here suggested another theory is that Wade and his crew have 'assez manger' (stolen enough money to satisfy themselves) and that a 3rd term might result in less corruption than new politicians who haven't begun to 'manger.'  It's harder to think of a more cynical political calculus, but that reflects some of the desperation here.   With many schools and shops already closed before the Sunday election, the city feels very quiet, as if holding its breath.  This burned out Citroen remains in a local street from the first protests two weeks ago. Most people think if President Wade somehow manages to declare victory after Sunday's election, there will be many more burned things around Dakar starting Monday.

vachement intelligent

‘Vachement’ was popular, figurative and untranslatable slang for ‘cool’ or ‘great’ when I was in Aix-en-Provence many years ago.  Literally it means cow-like, but that doesn’t really help understand the usage.  But the cows on this coastline seem the coolest ones I’ve ever seen.  They know the beach is cooler, and move down to the water line during the day to chew their cud and maybe even to enjoy the view.  They’re often more numerous than people this year as it’s a particularly bad year for Senegalese tourism given the elections.  The cows, however, don’t seem bothered by much of anything, and they leave the beach at night for the scrub forest nearby, I’m told.  It rather changes the connotations of the word- bovine.

Running on the edge

While I tried to describe my run along the corniche in Dakar earlier, my runs this week feel even more difficult to capture.  I’m accustomed to the perfect morning temperatures of Senegal in February- 60’s at dawn rising quickly to 70’s.  The sun is warm, too, but not as searing as later in the day.  Running in shorts and t-shirt feels perfect nearly every day, so much so that I don’t really notice it anymore. There’s no gauging the temperature and layering appropriately as Minnesota requires.

But running on the beach constantly amazes.  Unlike the chaotic images of Dakar, the essential simplicity of the boundary between ocean and land defies description.  The strip of hard, dark sand between waves and the row of shells extends to the horizon.  It’s a clear, straight path.  Yet once I leave Senegal crossing into Guinea Bisseau, a border with no sign beyond the apparent end of habitation, I’m suddenly absolutely alone.  Low sand dunes roll on the shore as waves roll in from the Atlantic.  After reaching a point covered in gulls, the coastline arcs inward creating a shallow bay to the next distant point.  Knowing how every 100 sq meter patch of sand in Spain has a six story apartment building filled with retired Brits, and how Morocco’s and Senegal’s coastlines sprout ostentatious new hotels or villas, this sudden expanse of perfect and perfectly empty beach seems baffling.  In fact, I’ve often wondered when the moment passed, some second Turner thesis, the closing of world beaches to all but the rich, occurred.  Who was the last teacher to buy a house on some ocean coastline?  When did that moment pass forever?  Clearly legal and political differences somehow protect this property. I cynically doubt it’s protected intentionally.  And if I could buy a piece, I couldn’t afford to come and visit it.  Omar, the native Guinean who runs a little resto/bar on the beach (and bears a passing resemblance to Omar in “The Wire”) said Guinea Bissau is known for drug trafficking and makes border crossing difficult.  I guess that might help explain the emptiness

At first, such an empty beach feels almost spooky.  Today I turned to check a shark’s head and noted a white pickup behind me.  Pickups here seem associated with government functions, and I assumed some border patrol and readied my ignorance.  Should I speak in English?  Play just arrived tourist?  I remember I have the phone number of Mamadou’s brother, the mayor of Ziguinchor, in my room with my passport.  But neither will help me if I get picked up by a Guinean border patrol speaking Portugese.  When the truck passes it has Senegalese plates, pulls a boat behind, and soon turns to launch it from the sloping sand.  With vehicles crossing the border unofficially, I relax knowing a runner was below the radar.

And so I continue southward running from one country to another along suddenly empty edge of this large, overwhelming continent.  I hear my daughter’s voice wondering if this will satisfy my wanderlust, recognizing the power of that wandering that brought me to Senegal, that disregarded the warnings about Casemance’s rebellion, and now crosses national boundaries to run on this stunning empty beach.  Clearly, this is the end of my trip, the farthest point from home, the most stunning landscape.  This destination, the one I’ve run to twice and hope to reach twice more in my remaining days, feels like some marker, some extremity, some sign.  The emptiness, the unmarred coastline, the perfect arcs of water meeting sand, the white gulls rising and swirling spiritlike into the sky.  Even the ethereal voice of Bon Iver singing about Wisconsin winter fields seems oddly apt.

But what do I see?  What have I found at this farther point of my trip? What’s beyond the sun’s glare and ocean’s haze?  Ahh, if only, right?  If it were a real sign, what would I find on the perfect beach?  What vision would I faint before?  What stranger would appear from the dunes and what would he say?   Of course, there’s no answer yet.  I’ve read the values of journeys appear after you return, and I hold to that comfort now.  Certainly, I hope the message wasn’t borne by the thin, bronze white haired Frenchman who rounded gull point clad only in tiny bikini and red beret as I was leaving.  One of those retired colonists or children of colonists  (does the make them post-colonists?) who live or retire here in luxury afforded more easily than in Paris.  Is this the message,  my own Francophile fate?  Am I to end up out here on the edge of a continent, and do I have to wear one of those French bikinis (on looking at the picture below taken the next day, the word ‘thong’ seems more apt) even smaller than the ones the Québécois wear in Maine?  I look down at the sand as I round the corner and pick up my pace as I head back. 

Gilligan's Island

I couldn't help thinking about that damn TV show when I saw these palms leaning over the water.  Really, who's been colonized?  But of course these places are not empty like that island was.  And yesterday I took a pirogue tour around several islands on the inland waterways behind the beaches at Cap Skirring.  

Mamadou, our guide

 Before that, however, I started my day early, thinking I’d get out for a run on the beach before leaving for the trip.  However, I was too early (no surprise there), up and out before the sun had really started rising at all.  In fact, if I ran south, I really couldn’t see my feet.  Going north, the two lights from Club Med created enough reflection on the damp sand to let me see the ground. So, with coffee an hour away and my running shoes on, I started out in the pitch dark on the damp edge of Africa.  Of course, running blind is plenty disorienting, and although I trusted the flat sand, it also felt particularly odd as I turned south once I’d reached the rocks and headed toward Equitorial Guinea with palm trees slightly silhouetted by the rising sliver moon on my left and the pounding waves on my right. I still don’t quite know where the border was as it was too dark to see any signs.  I turned around when I reached the point and soon had enough light to move more comfortably.  I never quite warmed up however, and I tired soon, no doubt more from strange disorientation than from effort.

 After breakfast, I took a day-long pirogue trip among villages and islands in the mangrove swamps and rivers that drain coastal lowlands into the Casamance river.   I went with two French people and two locals as guide and driver, which made for a leisurely day without feeling too touristy.  Like the boundary waters, you move in a Kevlar canoe hand made pirogue from through green landscapes that start to blur after awhile.  I’m assuming mangrove is the only thing that can grow in the salty marshy soil, as there’s absolutely nothing else in the low areas.  Some coastlines or islands rise above the swamp, and the soil there grows the palms, baobabs and the few other plants native to or scratched out of the sand here.  

Of course being part of a group of three toubabs with guides doesn’t mean we move unnoticed through these little Diolla villages.  Of course, these aren’t the kinds of places readily visited without pirogue and guide.  I was struck by the fact that having water everywhere doesn’t change the villages.  The salt water isn’t useful for watering, of course, and the soil seemed as sandy and deep here as it is elsewhere.  Still, as the first picture shows, there’s a sort of tropic paradise look to some of these places.  They seemed more open, cleaner, and more organized than villages elsewhere.   One was a Malian village, populated by a Malian family for generations.  According to Mamadou, they have a fetish tree they make sacrifices to, and bury their dead on the mainland as the ground here won’t accept bodies and spits them right back out.  Clearly, the Malians have a bit of a rep here.   

On another island we visted an abandoned Breton style church and graveyard from the 1890’s, and a maison des esclaves that served as a transfer station like the one in Goree.  This one was much larger, however, and unrestored.  ‘The door of no return,’ as it’s always called, where slaves were herded onto boats, had the same ominous feel however, despite or perhaps because of the children walking outside of it.

As internet is hard to find here, I don’t expect to post again until I get home on Friday.     

a la plage

(This was written a couple days ago.  Less wifi here than I thought).

Et quelle plage!  Both drumming and the surf work out different beats from the beach, and once again I’m find myself asking- why do I live in the Midwest?  From the boat coming in this morning, we watched pelicans roosting along the shoreline and river porpoises playing in the wake. 

  

Although the misty haze washes out the pictures, this beach goes for miles in each direction.  Just a kilometer or two south, Equatorial Guinea starts, and perhaps 20 kilometers north is The Gambia.  The mostly empty white sand beach feels endless and the longhorn cows sleeping on it make it feel African, somehow.  Fishermen in the village north of here bring in their catch all day long, and people come out to buy conch, flounder, some whiskered sort of catfish, and a few others I couldn’t name. 

On the advice of a couple French people I met in the taxi, I’ve landed well at beachfront place with a large common area for morning coffee and after dinner tea and conversation.  My room has a porch that opens onto the center courtyard.  The rooms facing the ocean were taken, but at $25 a night, I’m pretty happy.  There is a Club Med (Club Merde, the French called it) with a large manicured grounds and guards on the beach.  In town tonight, the guys who follow and befriend you here seemed more insistent and harder to shake.  Somehow, I attribute that to having a Club Med in the area, fairly or not.

Tonight I talked politics, protests and media distortion with the manager and his two friends.  They feel that the violence in this area, the Casemance, get exaggerated on the news, just as I’ve felt the protests in Dakar get exaggerated in the camera lens.  Yet watching the news on the boat coming down, even I felt the street violence Friday afternoon and evening looked worse.  In one clip, three policemen were in the back of a pickup truck watching a crowd which threw rocks and drove the policemen to take cover behind the truck.  They played it multiple times during the broadcast, and there were grins and laughter at the image each time it came on.  Clearly, there’s no love lost between the police and the people here. 

I left early to catch the boat yesterday, fearing that the protests would back up traffic near the port which is a half kilometer to the Place D’Independence where the tear gas and plastic bullets were flying again.  Yet the conflict remained pretty localized, and there was no problem moving about town.  Now getting out of Dakar feels like a good call, and I’m glad to have a few days here before heading back to Dakar and then back home.  

in the markets

Today's lack of pictures will balance yesterday's post, but I really wish I could have taken some.  It was market day here.  After a frustrating visit last week looking for fabrics, I knew I needed some local help to negotiate the negotiating.  Pape's wife, Asoou, was glad to join me, and we set out this afternoon to look for a few things.

First, we headed back to the same shop where I saw the simple woven fabric that I'd admired last week.  Most things here are very bright and colorful and much of the fabric comes from China, of course.  Sometimes that includes the objects made specifically for the tourist trade with their cliche 'African' images of animals and women carrying things on their heads.

It was a pleasure to watch Asoou work the men in the shops. We moved smoothly from shop to shop, always greeting people, chit chatting, moving on if the merchandise wasn't appropriate, and engaging in all the expected social part of the market before starting unhurried negotiations when something looked worth the time.  I quickly realized that instead of starting at half their starting price, I really need to go to a third or less.  And of course she knew what prices really should be.  So, for example, I got four fabrics for well under the initial asking price of just one of them at the first stall we visited.  

Ocaisionally, she challenged them on their 'toubab' pricing saying that 'teranga' (A strong Senegalese tradition of hospitality) required that guests get treated fairly in the marketplace.  Clearly, this was an extension of the concept entirely alien to their way of thinking.  One even went so far as to say she should let them overcharge me, and I actually agreed in a way.  A sort of sliding fee scale makes some sense and corrects some much larger economic injustices in small ways, but of course I want a deal as much as anyone.

One of the markets was a large, covered market with jewelry stalls around the perimeter and produce, spices, meat and fish in the center.  It felt ancient with narrow pathways between high stacks of baskets and shelves beneath a low, dark, dirty ceiling.  It made me want to do some food shopping and then cook dinner, but she laughed at the idea asking mockingly, "Do you know how to cook?"  I don't think she believed that I do.  Outside this market, we tucked into the Nigerian grill area, where pairs of men roast small beef brochettes over open charcoal grills.  They sell them plain or in sandwiches at about 10 for a dollar served w/ roasted onions, mustard, and seasoned corn meal.  I desperately wanted a picture of the dark, smokey scene, but didn't want to wreck the moment.  It was the kind of place I never would have found, or if I had stumbled upon it, I would have been hesitant to enter.

Now that my days here feel like they're drawing to a close, I felt surprised that I hadn't discovered these markets and curious about what else I've missed here.  My morning started this way as well as I ran up the lighthouse road, a route I've passed most mornings for a month, but somehow didn't consider running up until today.  The view across the north end of the peninsula was stunning on this clear day.  Suddenly, even six weeks feels like far too short a time to begin to see, much less understand this place.

more whimper than bang

More spectators than protesters by far

The speakers on a truck in the street

 I'm mostly going to let the photos tell this story.  It feels like one I've seen too much here already. Flashy headlines and lots of buzz about a protest that lacks support and ends abruptly.  Some online comments suggest that the resistance has lost momentum.  I'd have to agree after today.

A sock seller stops to watch

A photographer works no man's land

Police line and tear gas gun

After last night's failed occupy effort, the M23 marched to the Place D'Independence. The spectators were at least twice as  numerous as  protestors.  After about 20 minutes of speeches the police used tear gas and the water cannon to disperse the crowd.

There's the water truck, again

Selling washclothes to cover your face against tear gas

The cops chased groups around side street for another 30 minutes, firing more teargas affecting many people downtown who weren't involved at all (Yes, myself included). The streets were filled with people talking afterwards, but it felt more like excitement than anger.  And given the dissonance between media coverage and participation, it feels like the passivity will allow President Wade to continue restricting opposition with impunity.  I guess the Occupy Wall Street movement wasn't much more successful maintaining its platforms for protest, either.  

economics i missed in macro 101

 Many election posters on walls and glossy commercials during the African Cup soccer tournament seem to chant the word 'development.'  As a political or advertising mantra for growth and progress, it means all things to all people. On the street, however, means improvement in what Senegalese regularly refer to as 'les difficulties' of living here- the grinding poverty of daily life.

Long ago working in restaurants, I quickly realized that the tips earned on $100 meals at Muffaletta were disproportionately greater than the tips made by waiters working the 1:00 AM drunk shift at Perkins.  It seemed sort of like a scam, somehow.  I served better food, worked shorter hours, and made more money.   Later, that general principal seemed to apply equally to careers in the finance and teaching fields, for example.  As there was so much more money moving through finance, simple proximity to the flow earned more money, whereas education always paid poorly regardless of effort.


Walking the streets of Dakar, it feels like that same basic principle defines much of the difference between developed and undeveloped world.  As soon as you step outside here, the crush of people working to make a living presses in on you, sometimes unpleasantly.  The young male phone card sellers feel most omnipresent, sometimes five in a block waving plastic sheets of recharge cards in your face, seeking your eyes, hoping you need a refill.  The older female peanut sellers, conversely, work quietly at their tables coating peanuts in melted sugar and spices over charcoal burners and silently offering them in tiny bags for 50cfa.  If you include tiny grocery stores and outdoor markets,  

it feels like most economic activity here still happens in the street with improvised shelter, minimal water and no electricity.   Sometimes the sea of hawkers feels like an obstacle course or video game to be negotiated when I try to get somewhere.  Other times, the energy reminds me how it feels to come up out of the Holland Tunnel  and feel the palpable buzz of NYC.

While some street vendors like coffee and snacks seem obvious, others defy logic.  What are the chances that this shoe salesman has both the style and size that a
 customer needs?  And why do they all line them up in straight lines instead of grouping them by gender or style?  And why not put them closer to the wall?

This tile shop on the edge of a roundabout on my running route keeps two men busy making and selling concrete tiles.  Located near the wealthy Les Almadies neighborhood, many gardeners also sell plants and pots here for gardens in the new houses being built nearby.





 


And while this nearby artist makes a large claim for a small hovel,  the 60's counterculture figure Stewart Brand suggests that the energy of  mega cities and smaller ones like Dakar embody more creative solutions than endemic problems.  Despite that hopeful reframing, the difficulty of life on the streets here feels like some sort of monstrous, unfair scam. Of course it's the same one I appreciated when waiting tables and resent when working in schools.  The same basic injustice that fuels the Occupy movement.

Part of being here is about relearning this ancient economic law one more time.  But when I mentioned in class yesterday that would be returning home in two weeks, and a sweet, quiet boy in the back of the class said, "Take me with you," it was just about more than I could bear.

Occupy the Obelisque

Class yesterday felt a bit tedious.  Struggling through the language and sentences of The Scarlet Letter, we were all feeling a bit tired by 4:30, so I asked about the headline in the papers that said this would be a tense week in Dakar.  They laughed about it, knowing well the papers here prefer the inflammatory to the factual in most cases.  But that launched us back into a political discussion, specifically one about the relationship between citizenship, activism, and the Senegalese mind set.  This was all colored by a deep cynicism/fatalism which I questioned pretty aggressively.  Is the ubiquitous "Insh'Allah" (If God wills it) more language or psychology?  Does it create passivity and fatalism?  The response was mixed and discussion was difficult.  It became impossible after one student admitted he was a fan of President Wade.  The class exploded.  Senegalese conflict tends to be loud and aggressive- but rarely escalates beyond that.  I've seen this among kids in the streets as well as adults.  Yesterday it came to my classroom.  I tried to descalate, to encourage people to listen.  They were trying to convince me, talking to me not each other, and I said, "You need to work this out among yourselves.  I'm leaving in two weeks.  This is your country."  That seemed to hit them, although the rage over a "Wadiste" in our own ranks was still hard to accept.

 While I've sensed a general settling into the campaign here with newspaper coverage of the candidates dominating the front pages of the papers, the opposition groups M23 and Y En a Marre have decided to use an Occupy Wall Street / Tahrir Square technique, no doubt invoking those moments intentionally but also seeking to create an ongoing point of conflict and dialogue. Their language suggests they realize the violence of the earlier protests was a problem, and they emphasize peaceful protest more than ever now.   Tonight, they plan to occupy the Place de L'Obelisque,

but this is what awaits them.   At this point, the only people occupying the place are the reporters waiting for some action to fill their papers, web and tv screens.  The stroll around with impunity while the Senegalese walk around the edges of the square watching.  The M23 and Y En A Marre members were nowhere in sight when I left.  This armored police water truck is probably the one that ran over the student a couple weeks ago.  I've also seen it in the Place D'Independence downtown when protests were threatened there.  It seems to be the police showpiece.  Perhaps a hundred gendarmes ringed the square, some in trucks, some standing, and some, like this group, taking advantage of bus stop benches to wait for whatever happens tonight.  A Reuters photographer I spoke with said it's too cold tonight, nobody will come out, and that the action will happen tomorrow when the opposition has planned a march to the Place D'Independence, close to the president's palace.

wa(de)faced

Popular frustration with President Wade continues to show up on his billboards.  I've seen others that I couldn't photograph at the time.  I've only one opponent's sign defaced so far.  The protests have continued peacefully but without as much attention.  Wade has predicted victory in the first round on February 26th, and a few people have said there will be violence afterwards if that's the case.  Others have said he can't win, but many fear a fair election is impossible.  

Ngor Island

 Somewhat randomly, I decided to head to Ngor Island a small place just a few hundred meters off the peninsula physically, but definitely further psychologically.  Like Goree Island, it has no vehicles and sweet walking paths.  It's much small than Goree, however, and wonderfully low key.  It has some art galleries and a few resident artists as well, and some were quite good.  Surfing and surf kayaking are big, and it was also mostly clean as well.

This picture doesn't do the scene justice, but this apparently domesticated pelican follows his owner around the island.  I'd seen them earlier standing around, and was surprised enough.  Later, however, they walked down to the beech together, got a fish from someone who was cleaning them, and then walked back home, apparently.  The man is holding the fish here, but the pelican was following him before this as well.  It's really a gigantic bird,

Below are a painted wall w/ a doorway that opened onto the sea, and a found object sculpture that felt more lively than this picture does justice.

The Scarlet Letter

 Before starting class today, I stopped upstairs and found Pape buried in papers.  He was reading and marking from these stacks that look incomprehensible to me.  And yes, he's on strike, and yes, there are no classes going on, but Phd candidates are still taking oral exams and other students still have to pass to the next level which is what these papers are from.

Here are some of my students reading The Scarlet Letter.  We're still getting through about four to five pages in a two hour class, with reading, reading aloud, paraphrase, translation and discussion.  Today's question was why does the text, and presumably Hawthorne reject Puritan law?  If it's the law of the religion and the state, and if Hester broke it, then doesn't she deserve the penalty?  This more conservative voice was quickly countered by some others, and that lead to a good discussion of church state separation.

The hardest part of the class is the fact that these desks are fixed to the floor and immovable.  It's impossible to get into a circle, and only a few of them have joined me on the bench in the front of the class facing the others.  It's a new concept that most don't really embrace.

not reassured

This billboard by the university suggests somebody else isn't so reassured by President Wade.  I saw another that was partially torn.  A conversation today suggested that if Wade 'wins' the 50% he has said he will get on the Feb 26th election and that he needs to avoid the runoff election in March, all sorts of chaos will be unleashed.  It could make getting to the airport on the 27th a bit difficult.  We'll see.

random 2CV

It doesn't take much of a reason to include a shot of a sweet car like this.  And while I'm being random, feel free to leave a comment or send me a note if you're reading this.  This blogging thing is feeling rather one sided.

teaching again

Arriving early, I stapled the copies of The Scarlet Letter and Of Mice and Men with a borrowed stapler.  Then I found a wet rag and wiped some of the dust from the table tops, benches, and even some of the floor in the corner of the room we use for class, wishing I had a hose and brush to really clean the windows, walls and floors.  I moved a couple of the benches that weren’t fixed in the floor to form a circle, or rather a triangle with two long benches angled facing the immobile bench/table combinations.  I opened the shutters and a window to let some air in the room, although dust blew thick off the screen onto my Xeroxes and books and backpack.  I wrote the titles of the books, their publication dates, and the authors’ names on the copies, and then waited for my students to arrive.  It felt a little bit like that first day as a teacher, being ready early, being unsure just what to expect.  Would they be on American time or Senegalese time?  Would I gain or lose students?  The class was entirely voluntary, after all.  Would they really be willing and able to endure Hawthorne’s dense writing? I had no idea.

On Monday, I asked what they hoped to get from this class, what they hoped to do, how often they hoped to meet.  We agreed on two hour classes focusing mostly on literature and conversation, with some asking for writing help as well.  Hawthorne was the only text common to all their masters level English Literature programs, and it was the most difficult, although the English Literature students read Dreiser, too, and not even Sister Carrie.  A text lit students at home woudn’t read outside of Phd programs.   Afterwards we shifted into political discussing the teachers’ strike, the possibility of a lost year, the elections, and the protests that have shaken the city some.  Only one student had participated, all the rest suggested it was too dangerous.  Allou described his participation in the first protest, admitted to some rock throwing, and seemed empowered by it. 

Yesterday we launched into Hawthorne’s vocabulary, long sentences, and symbolic description.  It was a tedious slog in some ways- reading silently, then having volunteers read aloud and try to paraphrase roughly, before I would walk them through each sentence encouraging them to use words common to French, reading it aloud myself, and finally translating into French when necessary.   Yet the two hours passed quickly and they seemed engaged and appreciative.  I offered extra classes on Tuesday/Thursday, and half said they would want to come in daily to do extra work on writing and conversation.  We got through three pages, arriving at the scene where coarse Puritan townswomen talk about the ‘naughty baggage’ (always a favorite line of mine), Hester Prynne, who is about to exit from the prison.  They bemoan the light sentence handed out noting that they would have punished the ‘malfectress’ properly.  And switching into my favorite teacher role, questioning the relevance and accuracy of a text, I asked them, ‘How are girls here who cross social/sexual boundaries punished?’ and ‘Are those boundaries the same for both genders?’.   Immediately, the class shifted to French and started arguing about double standards and girl gossip.  If there had been a bell, it would have rung right then.  Instead, I said we’d come back to this question in the text, and that I looked forward to hearing how Hawthorne’s story matched their experiences.  The conversations that connect the books to our lives are always the ones that make the work (in this case the very difficult work) worthwhile.

Politics again

On the day after Rick Santorum’s hat trick in the bible belt, it seems fitting to return Senegalese politics.  While I take great pleasure in the rare Republican inability to anoint a candidate, in their beautiful self-destruction this year, their more classically democratic public squabbling, a similar failure of the Senegalese opposition to unite behind a credible candidate has left some bloggers to conclude that Wade will win reelection, perhaps on the first ballot Feb. 26^th.  The campaign has officially started now, although that seems to just mean ramped up.  Large trucks loaded with massive speakers like this one troll the neighborhoods blasting music that if not compelling is at least attention getting.   Although I didn’t catch the show, this parade included 30 or 40 guys on rollerblades who were resting after some kind of performance I just missed. 

A new crop of billboards have sprung up overnight, and President Wade has a large number of them.  Again, the hand gestures, facial expressions, dress and slogans feel both similar and different from our own stripped down, stylized visual approach to visual candidate branding.  In these billboards, it’s hard not to start w/ the most disturbing one.  Wade’s face, which has a botoxed lack of expression, (at lunch today the WARC staff thought it was photoshopped) stares out with the joker’s rictus-like smile from the first Batman movie.  His hand gesture- is it beneficent?  Is it crying ‘halt’ as if to try and stop himself from running again?  But the Big Brother-like slogan, “He's the one who reassures” feels most creepy.  Senegal’s apparent inability to enforce the constitution, to stop a candidacy that seems eastern European in falseness, to unite behind a candidate or strategy to stop the juggernaut creates a deep sense of fatalism and cynicism in most people rather than reassurance suggested here.  And while Santorum is plenty creepy himself, Visiting the MN sweater vest factory is quite different from sacrificing 87 bulls, giving away 32 radios, and pouring out thousands of bottles of water as proscribed by some kind of spiritual advisor here.  I don’t know whether or not to believe this headline, but my students today assumed it was true.   

Tanor, the guy who’s arm gestures and expression I liked in the first round of posters has gotten a bit clichéd this round, claiming a return to ‘values’ and giving us all a reassuring thumb’s up.  That’s just more empty positivity than I can really stomach. 

Here, Mackey Sall, like Wade poses in alternating western and traditional dress, often is sequential billboards, seems stuffed into both outfits.  While American candidates clothes need to signal both power and the common touch, here this plays as both western and African, perhaps a larger span to bridge.  In both cases, however, his overripe physical quality suggests his widely known corruption, at least according to Pape. 

But the headlines on the newspapers clipped to strings along the VDN highway have settled into normal hysteria, one that suggests an acceptance of Wade’s third term, a relief over the end of violence and a fatalism over the ability of anything else to disrupt the power of an incumbent government that many believe will steal any vote that eventually occurs.