Posts filed under 'Senegal'
Phonecards and Peanuts: Looking at Micro-finance through the Macro Lens
Ilmari Soininen
KF9 UIMCEC Dakar, Senegal
Topping up one’s phone credit is never a problem in Dakar – on every street corner you will find one, or usually three or four young men hawking the same exact Orange Telecom cards. They offer the exact same cards, in the exact same spot, at the exact same time. Peanut vendors are equally ubiquitous, often stationed only a feet away from each other, selling the same peanuts, in the same 50 Franc increments.
These vendors often rarely have many other avenues for generating income. Many come from the countryside, where subsistence farming is usually the one and only option. They prefer the hustle and bustle of the city. They prefer the 500, 1000 or even 2000 CFCA (between US$ 1-4) they can make a day. Who can blame them.
But when you add up all of the thousands of phonecard, peanut (cigarette, tissue, fruit …) vendors, you begin to see why this country, and indeed many of its neighbors, are still so poor. (more…)
9 comments 15 November 2009
Geopolitics and giant goats: thoughts from a week in Dakar
“Africa lite” is how a retired career diplomat once described Senegal to me. Glancing at a map of West Africa he may have a point. Bloody diamond-fuelled conflicts in Sierra Leone and Liberia, violent Islamic extremism in Mali and Mauritania and the recent military coup in Guinea make Senegal look like a bastion of stability, even in light of the resurgence of a separatist movement in the southern region of Casamance (recent news).
Further, despite relatively weak institutions and inescapable corruption, Senegal has had a rich history of democratic elections. The transition of power in 2000 to the current president, Abdoulaye Wade, was smooth and peaceful despite fiery campaigning. Looking back to the previous change of guard is perhaps even more telling: in 1980, President Senghor became the first African head of state to ever step down voluntarily. Pretty amazing.
But enough geopolitics, let’s get to the giant goats. (more…)
8 comments 12 October 2009
Microfinance through New-York-Colored Glasses
By Abby Gray, KF6/7, Togo & Senegal (now in New York)
In Dakar, this ad provoked vandals to rebel against the culturally inappropriate image. In New York, it wouldn't get a second glance.
If you have to deal with culture shock after 8 months of living in West Africa, New York is one of the most dramatic places to do it. On one hand, the vibrancy and energy of pedestrian-filled, trafficky New York streets isn’t all that different from the dusty “rues” of Dakar. Colorful fruit carts still grace the sidewalks, and overhearing conversations in foreign languages is a daily occurrence. On the other hand, skyscrapers and giant billboards of half-naked models are everywhere, as are exorbitant price tags on everything from purses to sushi dinners.
Having completed my official Kiva duties, I am now doing research at the Financial Access Initiative (FAI), a microfinance think-tank of sorts. It’s a consortium of researchers from NYU, Harvard, Yale, and Innovations for Poverty Action, focused on expanding access to quality financial services for low-income individuals. (more…)
4 comments 14 July 2009
Signing Off from Senegal
My memories of the last eight months away from home are a jumbled mass of color, freedom, fear, patience, frustration, and energy – raw, shifting memories that have not yet arranged themselves into neat, packageable stories that I can pull from the shelf at parties when I get home.
Watching Obama's Inauguration Speech on the Togolese Roadside
I have tested my sense of self against new backgrounds, ripped away the familiar context of home to hold my idea of “Abby” up to bright new lights. I have sometimes been ashamed of my reactions to new stimuli, and sometimes proud. Catching myself swearing under my breath at street children who asked a little too aggressively for money was not my finest moment; insisting that the Kiva Coordinator not fudge the dates to make loans eligible for Kiva’s website redeemed me.
I have learned about how microfinance operates on a day-to-day basis and about the difficulty of managing work and relationships across distances and cultures. Telling an MFI employee she did not have the IT competency necessary to be the Kiva Coordinator and watching her eyes tear up was my first real introduction to the uncomfortable realities of managing people. These challenges of human nature, of judgment, failure and success, cross all cultural boundaries.
Sunset Behind a Baobab, the National Symbol of Senegal
I have changed in many ways. After struggling for months with my pocket French dictionary, and then, this morning, listening to myself rattle off yet another training in French on sending journal updates to Kiva lenders, I felt like I had tangible proof of how I’ve grown since September. Other ways I’ve grown are less easy to put a finger on, and most will continue to be elusive for many months to come.
10 comments 26 May 2009
Won’t You Be My Neighbor…And Give Me a Good Credit Rating
"Tea"
Over tiny cups of scalding, frothy sugar water that Senegalese people call “tea,” I have a chance daily to sit around with my fellow MFI employees and talk microfinance. The other day, I was sipping my tea with Moussa, a loan officer, and he told me about how credit is established in Senegal. Now, in America, a credit rating is a logical thing, based on the percent of your total credit you’re using, the type, duration and size of your credits, and your delinquent payments. In Senegal, it’s done a bit differently…
Kiva Fellow: So, Moussa, in America, every person has a credit rating, which is based on a formula and makes it easy to estimate how likely it is that they will repay a loan. Does that kind of thing exist here?
Moussa: (Laughing.) No…Your country is a lot more advanced than ours. We don’t have the ability to do that kind of thing here.
KF: Ok, so how do you decide whether or not to give someone a loan? I know the person has to have a savings account with IMCEC, and they have to provide certain things as collateral or have another person to pledge to back them up if they don’t repay. But is there anything that helps establish credit-worthiness? [This conversation was in French, and I’m being very kind to myself in the eloquence of my translations. I sound a lot more like a 5-year-old.]
Moussa: Well, first of all, we can look at their history with IMCEC. Sometimes we start by giving a smaller loan, and if they repay it well, their second and third loans can be larger. Then we look at the business plan to see if it looks profitable. But, we also talk to people who know the client to see what they have to say.
Moussa, IMCEC Loan Officer, with a Kiva Borrower
KF: You mean, you go to their neighbor’s house and ask them if the client is a good guy?
Moussa: Yeah, basically. I mean, we wait until the client isn’t around before we talk about him.
KF: That’s nice of you. And what if the neighbor just happens not to like the guy? What if the neighbor is actually the one who isn’t a good guy?
Moussa: Yeah, that can happen. Which is why we talk to more than one person. For example, say there is a store in the neighborhood where everyone goes to buy basic items like soap and sugar. The owner of that store usually sells things on credit at the end of the month when people are running out of money. We can ask the store owner for some information on the client – does he repay these purchases on time? We also try to have at least one person on the Loan Committee from each neighborhood to get another perspective on the clients.
KF: Wow. So it really pays to be nice to your neighbors! And you loan officers really need to know everyone in town!
Moussa: Yep!
***
It’s pretty incredible to me that the system works this way, or, more specifically, that the system actually does seem to work this way. With a write-off ratio of less than 1% of all loans, IMCEC seems to be doing pretty well. Maybe American banks should have considered the “neighborhood” aspect of credit – for all its imperfections, the Senegalese way of evaluating creditworthiness might provide a more meaningful and accurate perspective than the impartial, formulaic system we use.
Furthermore, in conclusion, next time you live in Thies, Senegal, and you feel tempted to throw a wild party and annoy all your neighbors with the noise, think twice. Afterwards, you may mysteriously be rejected for every microloan you apply for.
That is, of course, unless you invite them all to your party and give them free food and drink. Just imagine how the credit will flow then!
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I am a Kiva Fellow, Class of KF6/7, serving three months in Lome, Togo, and three more in Thies, Senegal. Please check out my current MFI, IMCEC, and see all of their fundraising loans here!
5 comments 29 April 2009
Another Way Microfinance is Changing the World
Imagine that you’re a young West African woman. You live in a small village, and you had to quit school at a young age to help your parents take care of your brothers and sisters, so employment prospects are slim.
Your grandmother approaches you with a job offer. She tells you that, with the career that she has in mind, you could make up to $200 a day, along with gifts of palm oil, yams, and chickens. You would be carrying on a family tradition, a religious tradition, and a cultural tradition, and the people in your town would respect you and your work.
Sounds good, right?
So, it’s no wonder that many African women still take up work in the practice of female genital mutilation, despite the fact that it is illegal in many countries.
According to the World Health Organization:
- Female genital mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or injure female genital organs for non-medical reasons.
- An estimated 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM.
- In Africa, about three million girls are at risk for FGM annually.
- The procedure has no health benefits for girls and women.
- Procedures can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later, potential childbirth complications and newborn deaths.
Senegalese babies in a rural village. FGM procedures are mostly carried out on young girls sometime between infancy and age 15, and occasionally on adult women. (Photo courtesy of Liz O'Donnell, KF7)
Many women who work as “excisors” are unaware of the medical complications caused by FGM. Furthermore, the tradition of FGM is often believed to be a part of Islam, but actually has no religious basis. Often, once the excisors learn the truth about FGM, they decide to change their careers.
Ouraye Sall, from Senegal, is one of these women. “Ten years ago I could never have imagined that I would be a leader in a movement to end the ‘tradition’ that most women in my community have undergone. Not only did I believe it was a religious obligation, but I myself was the one who operated on girls in all the surrounding communities.” Oureye is now an advocate for ending FGM in Senegal. “Ever since I learned that FGM is not required by Islam and that it is a violation of girls’ and women’s rights, I stopped practicing.”(1)
But, what options do these former excisors have, once they decide to renounce their lucrative careers?
Here’s where microfinance comes in! There is a growing movement to link anti-FGM health education campaigns with microlending programs that help provide alternative income-generating activities for former excisors. These women receive microloans to start new businesses, and agree to attend informational sessions on the dangers of FGM.
According to the advisor of one of these programs in Togo, the former excisors are not the only ones to receive the FGM-linked microloans. She says, “if you attack the supply of practitioners, but you don’t reduce the demand, then FGM will continue. Only some of the women who get loans are cutters. The others live nearby. We must work with the entire community.”(2)
In Gambia, a tiny sliver of a country situated on the West African coast, the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices affecting the health of women and children offered $200 microloans to 19 former excisors last year in a public ceremony as a part of the Alternative Employment Opportunities Project. The recipients vowed to discontinue their former work and to help protect female children from FGM. The loans were followed by training on microfinance and management of small scale business enterprises. The women planned to use the money to enter into a variety of income-generating activities, including animal rearing, petty trading, and pottery.(3)
While microloans provide an alternative for the former excisors, it is up to the women themselves to make the difficult decision to renounce their former careers, and to stick with their decisions. According to the president of the Benin-based Women in Law and Development in Africa, “I cannot tell you how many public declaration ceremonies we have had with women swearing ‘never again’. When we do follow up, we find they are back at it.”(4)
As the saying goes, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” And it becomes even more complicated if the water is a microloan with 20% annual interest. And if the horse has to work in the hot sun selling peanuts for 5 cents a bag in order to pay back the water/microloan.
Nonetheless, the rate of FGM is declining, and microfinance provides a key component that enables the change.
Just one more way microfinance is changing the world.
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(1) “Ending female genital mutilation and cutting in Senegal.” UNICEF.
(2) “Can microcredit turn FGM/C cutters to new trades?” IRIN.
(3) “D100,000 Award For Female Circumcisers.” FOROYAA.
(4) “Can microcredit turn FGM/C cutters to new trades?” IRIN.
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I am a Kiva Fellow, Class of KF6/7, serving three months in Lome, Togo, and three more in Thies, Senegal. Please check out my current MFI, IMCEC, and see all of their fundraising loans here!
2 comments 31 March 2009
The Everyday Exotic
Call me a skeptic, but I’m generally not one for clichés. You know how sometimes you read about situations where even though people don’t speak a common language, yet somehow, everyone understands each other? That’s not exactly my experience in Senegal. While the official language here is French, which I speak passably, the more common language is Wolof, which is spoken by the Wolof people and increasingly, almost everyone else in Senegal, though depending on where people are from, they may speak one of a dozen other languages on a regular basis. I spend a lot of my time confused.
Take last week. I went out into the field to a village called Mbousnack. When I first got out of the car, and a few women broke into spontaneous dance of welcome, pointed to their hearts, smiled widely, and said “amie” (“friend”, in French), well, yes, that I got. I was clearly a welcome presence, though I’d done nothing to deserve this. But later when several of them pointed to their knee, I could only guess: Knee trouble? Kiva loan paid for knee doctor? Or perhaps it’s Serer (the language spoken in that particular village) charades – “sounds like knee”?
I have to admit, I had no clue. In these situations, I smile enthusiastically, take whatever info I have, and fill in the gaps based on my best guess. I’m sure they did the same. I can only imagine what they think I said all afternoon.
The agenda for the day was a monthly meeting, and there was a lot of business to be conducted –- 5 month loans repaid, monthly intra-group loans settled and commenced– all in all, quite a lot of money changing hands. The meeting dragged on for quite a while. With a group of 50 women and meticulous hand-written record keeping to keep track of it all in three separate sets of books (Caurie’s books, the village bank’s books, and each woman’s individual book), this can take many hours.
For you, dear readers, I will spare you the full process, and show you just a clip:
This went on for a while.
I’d gone to Mbousnack to interview some Kiva clients for journal updates and also to get some video footage of a group meeting. The value of the electronic equipment I brought into the village was twice that of Senegal’s per capita GDP: my trusty (and now dusty) Macbook (to show Kiva’s clients their profile page on the website), a professional-grade video camera to take footage for media purposes, a cell-phone sized Flip video camera for journal updates, and a digital SLR to take still photos.
Within the first half hour, I’d completed the client interviews, a special challenge in this village: in order to write the journal update in English, I’d ask questions in French, which were then translated by the driver (also engaged as my translator) into Wolof, and then the client would answer back in Serer (another major language in Senegal, and the one most widely spoken in this village). Later I had to ask the Caurie accountant (who is from a Serer-speaking area and therefore understands) to translate from Serer back to French so I can write my English language update. A tower of Babel indeed.
This is the one that started it all. She looks like a troublemaker, doesn't she?
Well, I’d done all that, and the payments and repayments were still going on. So I pulled a chair into the shade, bought some peanuts from a Kiva entrepreneur, and took a seat to wait it out and started chatting (if you can call it that – a few words and a lot of hand movements and pointing) to the women next to me. I had a good time miming various things and each of us talking to the other in a language we knew the other wouldn’t understand. When in doubt, smile widely at a young child, and hope she doesn’t run screaming. I showed the women my digital camera. One of the women asked me to take a picture of her baby. This started a bit of a trend.
One hour and 120 frames later, I’d taken the picture of every child under the age of 2 in the village (except for the one that cried whenever her mother brought her within 10 feet of me), and thanks to the wonders of digital technology, was able to show them their portraits as soon as I’d taken them.
After my tour of duty as the village photographer, I took my seat again. The payments were still going on at the table in front. I surveyed the scene in front of me. Maybe started to nap a bit – the day was heating up and I hadn’t slept that well the night before.
Then it struck me: “holy crap, I’m in the middle of a National Geographic spread.” It’s got all the elements – women in colorful traditional dress with babies strapped to their backs, sitting on the ground under a shady tree, chatting to their neighbor, next to a thatched-roof village, surrounded by a dusty plain of brush and baobab trees.
Right out of National Geographic, no?
Village bank meeting in Mbousnack
Kiva entrepreneur Mai Astou Sène and her wares. I bought peanuts.
Only it also struck me that it didn’t really feel so foreign to me. One, because I was there. That kind of takes away from the exoticism. But also, because I realized that even though I couldn’t understand a word these women were saying, it really didn’t seem all that fundamentally different from any other gathering anywhere else in the world. People get bored, chat with their neighbors. Nurse their babies (OK, that was different – some women went to pick up their payments with a baby still attached to their breast. Just try that at your local Bank of America branch). Put some money in. Take some money out. Munch on snacks. Joke around. Go to the bathroom. Stretch.
Yes, there are differences. Big ones. I can’t email the photos because there are no computers. And even if there were, there’s no internet connection. And even if there were, there’s no power. There’s poverty, health issues, lack of infrastructure, the list goes on. But at the end of the day, everyone pretty much wants the same things: some money to live on, good health, an education for their kids. Maybe a color TV.
As Kiva Fellows, we’re fortunate to have a unique window into places to which few travel – El Alto, Bolivia… Koumantou, Mali …anywhere in Tajikistan, and meet people whom few meet. Because this is our day to day, it’s easy to forget how unique an experience this is. But because we’re here for several months, we also have the time to digest our encounters, to put them in context, to get over the shock factor and dig beneath the surface a bit more than if we were just passing through.
It’s a cliché to say that people are the same the world over. But even this skeptic will concede that there’s some truth in that.
(Just to end this post on a cute note, here’s a selection of my mother and child shots from Mbousnack. All together now: “Awwww…..”)
Mothers & children of Mbousnack
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Liz is a Kiva Fellow, working with Caurie Microfinance in Thies, Senegal. Learn more about Caurie, or view all their currently fundraising loans here.
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15 comments 26 March 2009
Why I Can Buy Maimouna a Sprite
Today was my first day of work at IMCEC, a Senegalese MFI based in Dakar. I’m working out of their offices in Thies, a smaller, hotter, dustier, and boringer city about an hour and a half from Dakar. IMCEC currently manages the Kiva partnership in a very decentralized way, and is having a lot of trouble meeting their $80,000 a month fundraising limit – in January they only posted $7,500-worth of loans on the Kiva site. What a waste of free capital!
Happily, they just hired a woman to manage the Kiva process. It’ll be my job to train her and to help IMCEC set up a system that takes advantage of the interest-free capital provided by Kiva in the most efficient way possible. What a fun challenge!
Me with Madame Mbaye, the new Kiva Coordinator
In the meantime, I’m living with one of the IMCEC employees, Marie. After work today, I decided to go for a walk and explore the neighborhood a little bit.
It’s easy to forget that you’re white when you walk around with your African friends and coworkers. This is not the case, however, when you walk around alone.
Every male between the ages of 8 and 28 feels it is necessary to yell things at me that I don’t understand. It’s even more frustrating because some of them are legitimately nice, and if I don’t respond, it’s ME who is being rude. So, I do my best to choose between complete ignorance, a slight smile, or a polite “Bon soir.”
During the short two-minute walk from my house to the little soda shop, one guy earned a response by addressing me with a polite, “Bon soir, mademoiselle.”
“How nice,” I thought.
“Bon soir,” I said.
“Mademoiselle, ou madame?” he asked, as we passed each other (i.e., am I married?).
Sigh. I turned my head behind me to look him directly in the eyes and said, “Madame.”
Then we both laughed, and I felt ok about life. As I turned onto the main road, a little girl started walking next to me, maybe 9 years old. I said hi, asked her what her name was (Maimouna), and kept walking. At the store, she stood next to me the whole time. She was very polite, not asking for anything, and I think not expecting anything. I chose a Sprite for myself, two for my homestay family, and an extra one.
Now, after being in Africa for four months, I am tired of constantly being torn about whether to give or not to give. I’ve seen various philosophies that my friends and acquaintances have adopted. Some give constantly, always buying gifts of food or alcohol or n’importe quoi, and, surprisingly, earning the genuine love and respect of people around them. Some never give, complaining about the annoyance kids who “guard” their cars while they are in the parking lot and then ask for a bit of money afterwards. My Togolese friends used to give regularly to the people begging on the sides of the road, literally throwing change at them as we passed.
The other day I was in a pick-up truck in the absolute middle of nowhere with a Senegalese friend. We passed two women and two children on the side of the road. I have to admit – I didn’t even see them there. My friend did, however, and he stopped the car. “Can we take them?” he asked me in French.
“Of course,” I said.
We drove them to the nearest town, which is where we were going anyway. It was far – maybe half an hour or more. As they got out of the car, the sun was setting. If we hadn’t helped them, I have no idea how they ever would have gotten where they needed to go.
As the last woman got out of the car, she said something in Wolof, the local language.
“What did she say?” I asked, as we started on our way.
“She said that we will never know what we just did for them,” my friend told me.
***
Back to the soda shop. I considered all the reasons not to give my little friend a soda – I don’t want her to think that every time she sees a white person, she might get something from them. That is a real, real concern for me. I also don’t want to make myself feel good just because I do something that involves literally no sacrifice and that I am able to do just because of where I happen to have been born.
So, I can’t give Abozu my camera. But sometimes you just want to buy a little girl a soda. So I handed Maimouna the Sprite and told her to study hard in school.
I haven’t figured out my life philosophy on giving or not giving. But there are lines we all have to draw, and when you’re drawing those lines, it doesn’t hurt to remember that you might never know what you are really doing for someone else.
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I am a Kiva Fellow, Class of KF6/7, serving three months in Lome, Togo, and three more in Thies, Senegal. Please check out my current MFI, IMCEC, and see all of their fundraising loans here!
11 comments 13 March 2009
Kiva in Senegal
My name is Liz O’Donnell and I’m one of the new Kiva Fellows. I’m currently working with Caurie Microfinance based in Thiès, Senegal, about an hour and a half east of Dakar (which unlike Bamenda, Cameroon, is really easy to get to from the US – a seven hour nonstop flight from your choice of New York, DC, or Atlanta).
I arrived in Senegal recently and while I have yet to go out into the field to meet Caurie clients, I wanted to share with you a video that I found helpful while trying to understand microfinance in Senegal, and the daily life of the borrowers here. The video was made by a Kiva partner here in Senegal, SEM: Senegal Ecovillage Microfinance Fund. Now that I’m here, I can say that it gives a good picture of village life, not to mention a taste of Senegal’s wonderful music:
SEM is one of three microfinance partners here in Senegal, and each partner operates under a different model (read more about SEM from a 2008 Kiva Fellow).
While SEM relies on the ecovillage concept, Caurie works exclusively with village banks – groups of 30-70 women – who join together to take out a group loan. There’s also UIMCEC, where another fellow just landed (literally – within hours of this post being published), so you’re sure to hear more from Dakar soon.
One thing I do want to highlight about Caurie is its status as MIX Market “5 diamond profile of the month” for February 2009 on mixmarket.org, a web-based microfinance information platform that provides data on hundreds of MFIs (microfinance institutions), microfinance investors (including Kiva), and other partners. The 5 diamond rating indicates that the institution has displayed the highest level of disclosure in terms of data relating to impact and finances. Caurie’s MIX Market profile is located here.
There are currently 333 5 diamond profiles so Caurie is rightfully proud to be selected for the MIX Market’s homepage this month. If you’re interested in the nitty-gritty financial details of certain organizations or countries as it relates to both microfinance and macroeconomics, I highly recommend taking a look at MIX Market. Note that the MIX Market profile for each Kiva partner can be accessed from the individual partner pages found on Kiva.org.
But beyond several great Senegalese partners, Kiva’s also lucky to have a full-time employee based in Dakar, Anne-Laure Behaghel, who is Kiva’s Partnership Development Specialist (PDS) responsible for West Africa. So we’ve got 3 microfinance partners, 2 Kiva Fellows, 1 PDS … and maybe a partridge in a pear tree? (Actually, partridges can indeed be found Senegal, but pear trees, not so much.) As the microfinance sector in Senegal is quite large – according to 2003 data from the Dakar-based Central Bank of West African states (BCEAO), nearly 40% of Senegal’s population (which is currently estimated to be 13 million people in total) has borrowed money from microfinance providers — there is certainly room for the organization to grow here. But Kiva is definitely starting from a strong base.
I’ll be writing about Caurie specifically much more in the coming weeks (you can also read earlier Caurie-related blog entries from a previous fellow). In the meantime, visit the Kiva website to find currently fundraising loans from Caurie, SEM, or UIMCEC.
Or you can take the opportunity during this Valentine’s month to share the Kiva love by purchasing a Kiva gift certificate. I just gave one to my niece and nephew so they could understand exactly what I’m doing here in Senegal. They have yet to choose an entrepreneur, but when they do, I’ve got my thoughts on where they should place their first loan …
- Liz O’Donnell, KF7
4 comments 24 February 2009
What’s in a name?
Well, I’m back in the U.S., which means back to the old grad-student-grind. (There is, however, the new excitement of teaching French 1 for the first time here in Beautiful Berkeley, where I have hardly seen a cloud since my return.) I’ve had a few things to finish up for my Kiva fellowship in Senegal, though, since my last week in the field was spent… in the field. We ran around trying to pack as many interviews as we could into the last few days; but, as if to mock our efforts at productivity, fate struck me with a quick bout of travel-related discomfort that prevented us from visiting our ecovillage clients at Palmerin, where coincidentally there was supposed to be a giant beachside party that week.
Looking back at all the pictures, notes, and data that I now have to make sense of, names and places that three months ago sounded hopelessly foreign resonate with meaning — and return to my memory tinged with nostalgia. “Assane Gueye” is no longer just “ecovillage president, member ISTD group, preschool, Thiaroye-sur-mer” but a hilarious friend and colleague who keeps a smile on his face and the jokes rolling out — the art of teasing, called tooñ or taquinerie, is highly developed among all Senegalese friends and greatly contributes to the fun had by foreigners such as myself — in spite of the fact that his group’s Kiva-financed preschool for underprivileged children is on the brink of closing. Their landlord of three years kicked them out so he could do construction on the building; but the school’s problems had been wearing it down well before that, since many parents cannot afford the $6 per month that the school asks in order to function. The fate of the project is precarious, yet Assane’s cheer and optimism remain steadfast. As he spent his holiday walking through the rain and mud with us (while gently mocking me the whole way) to visit Kiva’s other projects in Thiaroye, a suburb of Dakar that is perpetually jammed with traffic since it straddles the one highway that leads out of town, each client we saw thanked him for his tireless work managing their loans — a volunteer job. But, unlike other persons of community importance who I’ve met throughout Senegal, you would never know from meeting him that he is so respected. Young, unassuming, and witty, his presence reminds you that when your efforts don’t work out, pressing on is not just doable, but doable while enjoying life too.
Assane at the Thiaroye ecovillage office
Or, I could cite the long lists of names which the president of the Ndiaye Ndiaye ecovillage, located several hours southeast of Dakar in the town of Fatick, asked us to diligently record each time we met a group there out of concern for the precise accuracy of our records. Names like Wanguène Sène, Dieynaba Niane, the two Yadikone Ndiaye’s, and Ndiass Diouf (whose group has the unusual activity of making furnaces fueled by cow manure as an alternative to expensive butane stoves) fill this part of my notepad. But such tongue-twisters can be anything but meaningless when I look at them now. One of these groups, which mercifully for me happens to have the simple French name of “Trois Cocotiers,” gave me a heck of a welcome! The women hadn’t all arrived when we first went to their leader’s house to meet them; we waited for a while, but since it appeared they would be taking their time, we left to meet other groups. When we returned an hour or two later, everyone was assembled. But to make up for their tardiness, the women jumped out of their seats one by one and proceeded to dance for a good 15 minutes.
They even sent someone to go fetch the drums to add some atmosphere.
This spectacle more than made up for the beach party I missed in Palmerin.
It is astounding to me to think of how rich my memories of Senegal, a country I knew only through books and the Bissap Baobab restaurant in San Francisco before, have become: foggy ideas and empty names have taken on sharp contours and been colored in with both joy and worry. What will happen to ISTD’s school, or more importantly, its kids?
My only regret is that summers are so short. I can’t wait to go back.
1 comment 8 September 2008
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