Leslie and I made a mutually favorite comfort food last night: tuna noodle casserole (with canned green peas, onions, dehydrated cream of mushroom soup, and cheese). Leslie said was suffering from what she dubbed as "Africa Sickness" - i.e., gastrointestinal uproar – so we decided that comfort food was needed, stat. Even though a liter of water mixed with ORS and the BRAT (bananas, rice, applesauce, toast) diet would probably be better for a digestive system that was on strike than tuna noodle casserole, the TNC seemed to fit the bill.
Maybe it’s the missing fall at home that made me crave comfort food. I miss making pumpkin soup and apple cobbler, sitting cozy by a fireplace, bundling up in an extra fleece, seeing who will make it to the World Series, watching the leaves change color and gradually drop from the trees, piling up on the streets. It's still hovering around 90F daily here, and it feels hotter than the first week after I arrived. Someone said it’s like the mini hot season before it starts to get cooler, but I don’t know if it’s true.
It was slightly cooler for one brief evening last week, so that I finally felt somewhat comfortable, but clearly it had signaled to locals that the cold is coming. Leslie and I came home from dinner, wearing t-shirts, to find our guard sitting in an ankle-length wool coat.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Marionettes
I collapsed into bed last night and slept until 11:15 this morning. I awoke to my housemates (two students from the university at home who are also working on research projects here) exclaiming, “You’re alive!” I think the toll of traveling, moving here, beginning a new project, adapting to a new environment, speaking French, and the heat here have exhausted me, so I’ve been sleeping a lot and taking it easy.
Today was the celebration of the end of Ramadan and much of the city was celebrating with a day-long feast of sheep or goat, rice and sauce. The French Cultural Center (the CCF) in Bobo sponsored a “spectacle” this afternoon, which was a show of marionettes – some 20 feet tall – and drumming and music, and then a parade through Bobo. There was one character in a monkey mask who frightened all the kids along the way, and as the parade passed through neighborhoods downtown, families would come outside of their homes to watch, and many to join. We walked along the red dirt roads and under the leafy green trees, past mud-brick square homes to a large open field next to a school, where the marionette players constructed a makeshift stage and produced a show with live music and lots of dancing.
Afterwards, my housemates Katie and Leslie, and I walked back towards the CCF and stopped in the garden café there for a cold beer on tap, which was heavenly since it was frosty. It was really comfortable to sit there, under a canopy, enjoying a slightly cooler afternoon than yesterday’s unforgiving heat, chatting about the high points of a great brunch, since we want to host a pancake breakfast for our Burkinabe co-workers. Although we don’t have maple syrup here, we decided that we could make pancakes and it would be okay to serve them with powdered sugar and jam, or stacked with sliced bananas. We were in the middle of pondering what we would put in a frittata when it looked like the sky would open up any minute with a downpour, so Katie suggested we head home. Then we walked over to buy a watermelon and took a taxi home, arriving just as it started raining.
Today was the celebration of the end of Ramadan and much of the city was celebrating with a day-long feast of sheep or goat, rice and sauce. The French Cultural Center (the CCF) in Bobo sponsored a “spectacle” this afternoon, which was a show of marionettes – some 20 feet tall – and drumming and music, and then a parade through Bobo. There was one character in a monkey mask who frightened all the kids along the way, and as the parade passed through neighborhoods downtown, families would come outside of their homes to watch, and many to join. We walked along the red dirt roads and under the leafy green trees, past mud-brick square homes to a large open field next to a school, where the marionette players constructed a makeshift stage and produced a show with live music and lots of dancing.
Afterwards, my housemates Katie and Leslie, and I walked back towards the CCF and stopped in the garden café there for a cold beer on tap, which was heavenly since it was frosty. It was really comfortable to sit there, under a canopy, enjoying a slightly cooler afternoon than yesterday’s unforgiving heat, chatting about the high points of a great brunch, since we want to host a pancake breakfast for our Burkinabe co-workers. Although we don’t have maple syrup here, we decided that we could make pancakes and it would be okay to serve them with powdered sugar and jam, or stacked with sliced bananas. We were in the middle of pondering what we would put in a frittata when it looked like the sky would open up any minute with a downpour, so Katie suggested we head home. Then we walked over to buy a watermelon and took a taxi home, arriving just as it started raining.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Bon Arrivee
I wish I could somehow bottle the feeling I have right now and store it for the bumps in the road during the coming year and a half. I’ve felt genuinely happy to arrive in Bobo and am excited to begin to settle into my new home and to dig into this project. It’s a really nice place to start, having everyone exchanging ideas and bringing their own thoughts to the table. We’ve established ground rules of speaking whichever language you feel most comfortable (French or English) and asking when you don’t understand. So far, the system seems to be working well and no one seems too shy or proud to call time-out and ask for clarification. I have a feeling that people still find my grammar rather amusing since sometimes a smile will creep across the face of the person I’m talking with and I am suddenly aware of some error in how I phrased something, although not always sure what unless the other person corrects me.
It’s been really nice to reconnect with several people from the research center who remembered me from my visit here in July. In addition, I’ve met new people with whom I’ll be working over the next several months. All of the Burkinabe greet me warmly, first with a handshake, saying, “Bon arrivee!” and then four air kisses on my cheeks, alternating left, right, left, right. Without fail, each person asks about my travels into town, my family and friends at home in the US and the folks working in Dakar.
I arrived in Ouagadougou, the capital, late on Monday night, but right on time – 11:00 pm. That was a pleasant surprise since the last time I had flown on the same route, the flight arrived at 3 am. I had left Dakar convinced that it would be delayed again. (I shouldn’t be so pessimistic.) I flew with a co-worker from Dakar to Bamako and enjoyed having company for the first stretch of the trip. From Bamako, the flight to Ouagadougou is just over an hour, and from the air, as the plane approaches Ouaga, the ground is spotted with bright blue-hued lights (perhaps halogen?) stretching outside the city center, then yellow lights in the middle of town.
I was surprised to find the road from the airport to the hotel, dry with no evidence of the recent flooding that devastated other parts of the city. From the very little I saw of Ouaga and the outskirts of town (on the west-bound road to Bobo) the following day, you wouldn’t know that the capital had been flooded just two weeks earlier, so I have to assume that it was a different part of town that was the most affected. On September 1, nearly 12 inches of rain fell and destroyed the homes over 100,000 people in the capital, most of whom are the city’s poorest. They have been displaced to temporary shelters and have lost nearly everything.
I had a ticket and was scheduled to leave Ouaga at 8 am on a flight to Bobo, but arrived at the airport to be informed by an agent there that the flight had been cancelled. The driver of the hotel shuttle took me to the bus station for the local company, TCV, and waited while I purchased a ticket for the next bus, leaving at 9 am. I lucked out since the 9 o’clock was a VIP bus, meaning that there are only 4 seats in each aisle, as opposed to 5 seats on the non-VIP bus (but squashed into the same width bus).
The bus left promptly at 9:05 and I had a window seat. The girl sitting next to me was about my age and was grooving to the music playing on the bus. When we stopped in Barolo, I asked her where the toilets were and she said to follow her. We stepped off the bus into a crowd of women and children selling nuts, bananas, sesame biscuits, chewing gum, cold sodas, and individual packets of tissues. She waited for me as I jumped over the puddles of water and tried to avoid slipping in the mud, and led me to the toilets: 3 stalls behind a corrugated tin door with ‘Femmes’ written in white paint across the door. The stalls were simple pit latrines, without a roof and with 3 sides each, i.e., no door where you did your business. My seatmate handed me a tissue, the last of her packet, and disappeared to the other side of the wall.
When I walked out, I was surprised to find her waiting for me, and more surprised when she said that she had paid the 25 CFA each for me and for her. She paused at a cart where men were grilling meat outside and I asked if she was going to eat. She nodded so I motioned “two” to the guy behind the grill and exchanged a few coins for a black plastic bag filled with grilled beef and onions and a couple of toothpicks wrapped in brown paper. She asked if I wanted bread, and I nodded when I turned and saw the “village bread” (as we’ve come to call it) – fresh soft white mini baguettes – for sale from a woman standing behind me.
We boarded the bus and took our seats, and spread out our lunch to share. I nibbled on the meat, much of it was really tough or really fatty and I tried my best to covertly sneak some pieces into the tissue in my hand while I saw only one bone sitting on a tissue in her lap. After I had finished and we tossed the remnants and the bag into a plastic trash bin circulating the bus, she offered me a piece of chewing gum, the brand which is named ‘Hollywood’. Her name was Alice, and she was traveling from Ouaga to Bobo to see a brother, then on to Bamako a few days later to visit another. We watched a few African sitcoms playing on a DVD on the bus, and I understood only a few of the jokes, but those that I got were pretty funny. I was pretty amazed by how effortlessly she responded to my questions and her willingness to make the trip for me a more pleasant one.
I went for a run this morning before heading to the research center and it was already hot at 7:30, almost unbearable. I passed groups of men sitting drinking tea in a roadside stand, women sitting on tiny stools fanning a fire over which to fry doughnut balls by the side of the road, phone card stalls and hair salons opening up. I passed one man fixing a motorcycle and he looked up as I passed and shouted, “Courage!” and smiled. Young kids yelled, “Toubabou! Toubabou!” It’s really cute how the kids here do a little dance and outstretch their arms like a scarecrow and shake their hips when they shout “Toubabou!” which is the same as “Toubab” (foreigner) in Dakar, but the extra “ou” on the end is somehow more endearing.
It’s been really nice to reconnect with several people from the research center who remembered me from my visit here in July. In addition, I’ve met new people with whom I’ll be working over the next several months. All of the Burkinabe greet me warmly, first with a handshake, saying, “Bon arrivee!” and then four air kisses on my cheeks, alternating left, right, left, right. Without fail, each person asks about my travels into town, my family and friends at home in the US and the folks working in Dakar.
I arrived in Ouagadougou, the capital, late on Monday night, but right on time – 11:00 pm. That was a pleasant surprise since the last time I had flown on the same route, the flight arrived at 3 am. I had left Dakar convinced that it would be delayed again. (I shouldn’t be so pessimistic.) I flew with a co-worker from Dakar to Bamako and enjoyed having company for the first stretch of the trip. From Bamako, the flight to Ouagadougou is just over an hour, and from the air, as the plane approaches Ouaga, the ground is spotted with bright blue-hued lights (perhaps halogen?) stretching outside the city center, then yellow lights in the middle of town.
I was surprised to find the road from the airport to the hotel, dry with no evidence of the recent flooding that devastated other parts of the city. From the very little I saw of Ouaga and the outskirts of town (on the west-bound road to Bobo) the following day, you wouldn’t know that the capital had been flooded just two weeks earlier, so I have to assume that it was a different part of town that was the most affected. On September 1, nearly 12 inches of rain fell and destroyed the homes over 100,000 people in the capital, most of whom are the city’s poorest. They have been displaced to temporary shelters and have lost nearly everything.
I had a ticket and was scheduled to leave Ouaga at 8 am on a flight to Bobo, but arrived at the airport to be informed by an agent there that the flight had been cancelled. The driver of the hotel shuttle took me to the bus station for the local company, TCV, and waited while I purchased a ticket for the next bus, leaving at 9 am. I lucked out since the 9 o’clock was a VIP bus, meaning that there are only 4 seats in each aisle, as opposed to 5 seats on the non-VIP bus (but squashed into the same width bus).
The bus left promptly at 9:05 and I had a window seat. The girl sitting next to me was about my age and was grooving to the music playing on the bus. When we stopped in Barolo, I asked her where the toilets were and she said to follow her. We stepped off the bus into a crowd of women and children selling nuts, bananas, sesame biscuits, chewing gum, cold sodas, and individual packets of tissues. She waited for me as I jumped over the puddles of water and tried to avoid slipping in the mud, and led me to the toilets: 3 stalls behind a corrugated tin door with ‘Femmes’ written in white paint across the door. The stalls were simple pit latrines, without a roof and with 3 sides each, i.e., no door where you did your business. My seatmate handed me a tissue, the last of her packet, and disappeared to the other side of the wall.
When I walked out, I was surprised to find her waiting for me, and more surprised when she said that she had paid the 25 CFA each for me and for her. She paused at a cart where men were grilling meat outside and I asked if she was going to eat. She nodded so I motioned “two” to the guy behind the grill and exchanged a few coins for a black plastic bag filled with grilled beef and onions and a couple of toothpicks wrapped in brown paper. She asked if I wanted bread, and I nodded when I turned and saw the “village bread” (as we’ve come to call it) – fresh soft white mini baguettes – for sale from a woman standing behind me.
We boarded the bus and took our seats, and spread out our lunch to share. I nibbled on the meat, much of it was really tough or really fatty and I tried my best to covertly sneak some pieces into the tissue in my hand while I saw only one bone sitting on a tissue in her lap. After I had finished and we tossed the remnants and the bag into a plastic trash bin circulating the bus, she offered me a piece of chewing gum, the brand which is named ‘Hollywood’. Her name was Alice, and she was traveling from Ouaga to Bobo to see a brother, then on to Bamako a few days later to visit another. We watched a few African sitcoms playing on a DVD on the bus, and I understood only a few of the jokes, but those that I got were pretty funny. I was pretty amazed by how effortlessly she responded to my questions and her willingness to make the trip for me a more pleasant one.
I went for a run this morning before heading to the research center and it was already hot at 7:30, almost unbearable. I passed groups of men sitting drinking tea in a roadside stand, women sitting on tiny stools fanning a fire over which to fry doughnut balls by the side of the road, phone card stalls and hair salons opening up. I passed one man fixing a motorcycle and he looked up as I passed and shouted, “Courage!” and smiled. Young kids yelled, “Toubabou! Toubabou!” It’s really cute how the kids here do a little dance and outstretch their arms like a scarecrow and shake their hips when they shout “Toubabou!” which is the same as “Toubab” (foreigner) in Dakar, but the extra “ou” on the end is somehow more endearing.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Changing Gears
It’s been nice to see familiar faces and places in Dakar. After work on Friday, I went for a run on the beach up to the fish market, dodging flying soccer balls, fish heads scattered on the sand, and running by horse-drawn carriages and past little kids yelling, “Toubab! Toubab!” I was surprised to see so many soccer games underway so late in the day since it’s Ramadan and most of Dakar’s population is fasting daily until sundown.
I had dinner with a few friends later that night at a Thai restaurant that was really quite good. They served a decent pad thai, spring rolls, and satay with an excellent peanut sauce. There were bits of tofu in the pad thai, too, which was a treat since it’s hard to find here.
After dinner we went to Just 4 U, a well-known club in Dakar that had been closed for the last few months that I was here previously. There are live bands every night of the week on the outdoor stage and although we stayed only for the warm-up band (who played until 1 am), the music was fantastic and it was a beautiful night to sit outside. I thought the lead singer could be bound for Broadway, the way he sang and the way he carried himself.
I’ve been hit harder by jet lag this round than another other trip I can recall, and have been exhausted this weekend because I’ve been up for hours at a time during the middle of the night all week. On nights when the power was out, I’d go to bed at 9:30 and sleep a few hours, only to find myself wide awake at 1:30 am and unable to fall back asleep until 4 am. Finally, after giving into sleeping as much as my body decided it needed to this weekend, I’m feeling better, although still lethargic. I went to bed around 2 am on Friday night and dragged myself out of bed at 1 pm on Saturday afternoon!
I went to an orphanage yesterday afternoon with a couple of girls who work in the Dakar office and who live next door to the apartment where I’m staying here. The orphanage, run by Catholic nuns, is in town and cares for 86 children who are orphans. I spent two hours playing with 1- to 2-year-old children in a large, bright, open room filled with about 20 children and another 7 or 8 volunteers (most of whom were young Senegalese women, as part of their internship to become health workers).
The head sister greeted us upon arrival and thanked us for coming and suggested that we divide ourselves between the newborns, who needed to be held and rocked, and the young children. The minute I stepped into the playroom, 3 children crawled over to me and one climbed into my lap. All of them smiled back when I exchanged toys with them or tickled their bellies, even just looked at them with a big grin. There were dozens of toys available for the children, and some of the toys looked new. A few children seemed nearly ready to start walking, so I walked around the room with them, supporting them as they stumbled along, learning to alternate one leg and then the other, slowly gaining strength to continue. Others seemed desperate for attention – one boy barely detached himself from my leg as I walked around with another child, and he’d climb right into my lap if I sat down.
I was exhausted and dehydrated by 5pm, when the children returned to their cribs and had diapers changed and it was time for them to be fed, but so impressed by the facility’s cleanliness and organization. It’s heart-wrenching to see such bright, loving children without permanent homes, though encouraging to see that they are living in a place where the staff seem very kind, caring, and devoted to the children’s well-being.
West Africa has elements of what people thing of as classically exotic Africa, or what usually makes headlines outside of this poor region, but there are other parts that stand out for me. Nutrition research here is different and I constantly question my assumptions of what we define as feasible. Nutrition and health services are vastly different from those that I am familiar with in the United States. After working in a neonatal ICU with state-of-the-art technology and highly specialized care, I feel dumbstruck by the differences in clinical services available in some of the places I’ve visited because the need for basic health care is so great and I’m constantly amazed by the resourcefulness of some communities in working tirelessly to make such services available.
Dakar, the capital of West Africa, is a big city and I’ve found that it’s easy to feel lost in a large place. However, in a city of 3 million people, there are always new parts of the city to discover, and new people to meet. Sometimes it was hard to live in such a transient city. I made several acquaintances whose company I often really enjoyed; but they were transferred to a different work posting in another town or another country before long, or perhaps were already occupied with family obligations and/or their own lives locally. In general, I don’t like being skeptical of people, but I often felt cautious of people I met randomly in shops or on the beach, reluctant to end up a naïve American who was taken advantage of after hearing stories of bad experiences. But overall, the challenges posed here are interesting and I’m grateful for the experiences here and for the friendships I’ve formed. My French teacher called today, unexpectedly; she was in the neighborhood and so she popped by for a brief visit. It was really fun to reconnect.
I started this blog because coming to Africa was a dream come true and, to me, life here is fascinating. I enjoy writing; the process of reflecting upon a story, refining it, and sharing with others, learning more about my experiences in the process (although it’s taken me a while to upload all the retrospective blog entries that were sitting on my hard drive as Microsoft Word documents for the past few months). I wanted to chronicle for my family and friends my encounters with people here, the things that sparked my curiosity, and those that were different from – or surprisingly similar to - life at home.
I leave for Burkina tomorrow and look forward to the next phase of living in Africa. It’s hard to believe that almost exactly a year ago I landed here for the first time. Although Dakar is a more familiar place now, there’s still so much to be discovered here and in other parts of the continent. I’ve visited places that I’d only imagined seeing, and have met people who surprised me with the most generous hospitality, and still feel like I've just scratched the surface. The lure of Africa – and my curiosity about it – remains.
I had dinner with a few friends later that night at a Thai restaurant that was really quite good. They served a decent pad thai, spring rolls, and satay with an excellent peanut sauce. There were bits of tofu in the pad thai, too, which was a treat since it’s hard to find here.
After dinner we went to Just 4 U, a well-known club in Dakar that had been closed for the last few months that I was here previously. There are live bands every night of the week on the outdoor stage and although we stayed only for the warm-up band (who played until 1 am), the music was fantastic and it was a beautiful night to sit outside. I thought the lead singer could be bound for Broadway, the way he sang and the way he carried himself.
I’ve been hit harder by jet lag this round than another other trip I can recall, and have been exhausted this weekend because I’ve been up for hours at a time during the middle of the night all week. On nights when the power was out, I’d go to bed at 9:30 and sleep a few hours, only to find myself wide awake at 1:30 am and unable to fall back asleep until 4 am. Finally, after giving into sleeping as much as my body decided it needed to this weekend, I’m feeling better, although still lethargic. I went to bed around 2 am on Friday night and dragged myself out of bed at 1 pm on Saturday afternoon!
I went to an orphanage yesterday afternoon with a couple of girls who work in the Dakar office and who live next door to the apartment where I’m staying here. The orphanage, run by Catholic nuns, is in town and cares for 86 children who are orphans. I spent two hours playing with 1- to 2-year-old children in a large, bright, open room filled with about 20 children and another 7 or 8 volunteers (most of whom were young Senegalese women, as part of their internship to become health workers).
The head sister greeted us upon arrival and thanked us for coming and suggested that we divide ourselves between the newborns, who needed to be held and rocked, and the young children. The minute I stepped into the playroom, 3 children crawled over to me and one climbed into my lap. All of them smiled back when I exchanged toys with them or tickled their bellies, even just looked at them with a big grin. There were dozens of toys available for the children, and some of the toys looked new. A few children seemed nearly ready to start walking, so I walked around the room with them, supporting them as they stumbled along, learning to alternate one leg and then the other, slowly gaining strength to continue. Others seemed desperate for attention – one boy barely detached himself from my leg as I walked around with another child, and he’d climb right into my lap if I sat down.
I was exhausted and dehydrated by 5pm, when the children returned to their cribs and had diapers changed and it was time for them to be fed, but so impressed by the facility’s cleanliness and organization. It’s heart-wrenching to see such bright, loving children without permanent homes, though encouraging to see that they are living in a place where the staff seem very kind, caring, and devoted to the children’s well-being.
West Africa has elements of what people thing of as classically exotic Africa, or what usually makes headlines outside of this poor region, but there are other parts that stand out for me. Nutrition research here is different and I constantly question my assumptions of what we define as feasible. Nutrition and health services are vastly different from those that I am familiar with in the United States. After working in a neonatal ICU with state-of-the-art technology and highly specialized care, I feel dumbstruck by the differences in clinical services available in some of the places I’ve visited because the need for basic health care is so great and I’m constantly amazed by the resourcefulness of some communities in working tirelessly to make such services available.
Dakar, the capital of West Africa, is a big city and I’ve found that it’s easy to feel lost in a large place. However, in a city of 3 million people, there are always new parts of the city to discover, and new people to meet. Sometimes it was hard to live in such a transient city. I made several acquaintances whose company I often really enjoyed; but they were transferred to a different work posting in another town or another country before long, or perhaps were already occupied with family obligations and/or their own lives locally. In general, I don’t like being skeptical of people, but I often felt cautious of people I met randomly in shops or on the beach, reluctant to end up a naïve American who was taken advantage of after hearing stories of bad experiences. But overall, the challenges posed here are interesting and I’m grateful for the experiences here and for the friendships I’ve formed. My French teacher called today, unexpectedly; she was in the neighborhood and so she popped by for a brief visit. It was really fun to reconnect.
I started this blog because coming to Africa was a dream come true and, to me, life here is fascinating. I enjoy writing; the process of reflecting upon a story, refining it, and sharing with others, learning more about my experiences in the process (although it’s taken me a while to upload all the retrospective blog entries that were sitting on my hard drive as Microsoft Word documents for the past few months). I wanted to chronicle for my family and friends my encounters with people here, the things that sparked my curiosity, and those that were different from – or surprisingly similar to - life at home.
I leave for Burkina tomorrow and look forward to the next phase of living in Africa. It’s hard to believe that almost exactly a year ago I landed here for the first time. Although Dakar is a more familiar place now, there’s still so much to be discovered here and in other parts of the continent. I’ve visited places that I’d only imagined seeing, and have met people who surprised me with the most generous hospitality, and still feel like I've just scratched the surface. The lure of Africa – and my curiosity about it – remains.
Monday, September 7, 2009
A Week In Dakar
I arrived in Dakar yesterday morning and am staying at my old apartment for the week. It felt strangely familiar, and entirely different from when I landed in Africa for the first time last September and hadn't a clue what to expect. This time, I anticipated the sticky humidity - already unbearable at 5:45 am - the minute I stepped off the plane, the circus at the airport where forming a line to pass through immigration is simply a mass of people pushing towards the counter, and where you're bombarded by random, persistent men wanting to help with your bags in exchange for a few coins. I was relieved to see the driver (my running buddy in Dakar) who met me at the airport and helped me with all of my luggage, including 2 bags of study supplies. Fortunately, the bags arrived intact and passed through customs with minimal curiosity on behalf of the inspecting officer. (He opened one bag, full of needles for collecting blood samples and Ziploc bags for storing the tubes, and seemed more perplexed by the Ziploc bags than the needles. That was an interesting round of charades with my rusty French.)
I slept all day yesterday and then went to dinner at a friend's house with a couple of other friends/coworkers. After walking over to her house, we jumped in the pool to cool off! She recently adopted a street puppy and was trying to convince me to take the remaining puppy to Burkina Faso. Somehow, I don't think there's any shortage of street dogs looking for a good home there, but the puppy is really cute...
I'm in Dakar until the 14th, when I'm scheduled to continue on to Bobo-Dioulasso. The capital city of Burkina, Ouagadougou, is flooded right now - more rain fell in a 12-hour period last week than any month this year - and thousands of people have been displaced from their homes, most have sought shelter in schools, mosques, churches, and government buildings. Apparently the team in Bobo is fine, but I fear the capital is not faring well.
I'm back at the office today, temporarily occupying someone else's desk, and have been welcomed warmly. My Senegalese coworkers ask about my visit home, my family, and my health. Then they ask all those questions again. And again. It's so classic, the rounds of salutations here. I tell them that it was wonderful to be home and that there's nothing nicer than returning home and finding that I feel like I've always been there.
I slept all day yesterday and then went to dinner at a friend's house with a couple of other friends/coworkers. After walking over to her house, we jumped in the pool to cool off! She recently adopted a street puppy and was trying to convince me to take the remaining puppy to Burkina Faso. Somehow, I don't think there's any shortage of street dogs looking for a good home there, but the puppy is really cute...
I'm in Dakar until the 14th, when I'm scheduled to continue on to Bobo-Dioulasso. The capital city of Burkina, Ouagadougou, is flooded right now - more rain fell in a 12-hour period last week than any month this year - and thousands of people have been displaced from their homes, most have sought shelter in schools, mosques, churches, and government buildings. Apparently the team in Bobo is fine, but I fear the capital is not faring well.
I'm back at the office today, temporarily occupying someone else's desk, and have been welcomed warmly. My Senegalese coworkers ask about my visit home, my family, and my health. Then they ask all those questions again. And again. It's so classic, the rounds of salutations here. I tell them that it was wonderful to be home and that there's nothing nicer than returning home and finding that I feel like I've always been there.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Vacances
It’s been 7 months in Dakar (and Bobo) and I’m ready for vacation! Amazingly enough, another friend from home is here for work and we get to visit just in time for a farewell dinner before I hop on the middle-of-the-night flight leaving Dakar! Before I change gears to run another study in Bobo starting in September, I’m so excited to come home for a visit with family and friends. Sailing around Bainbridge. Reading a newspaper or magazine on the couch. Walking through Discovery Park. Trader Joe’s. REI. Anthropologie. San Juan Islands. Kayaking. Carmel Beach. Katy’s Place breakfast. Riding my bike. Point Lobos. Big Sur. Fish tacos and tunaritas. Caffe Fiore. Ballard Market. Bartell’s and Longs. 74th Street. Golden Gardens. Santa Cruz. The Aquarium. Olympic National Park. Uwajimaya. Places and things I’ve missed and look forward to (even if some indeed seem silly, simple conveniences), but none more than everyone I look forward to seeing!
A bientot, everyone, and a la prochaine, Dakar.
A bientot, everyone, and a la prochaine, Dakar.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Ouagadougou
Three weeks passed awfully quickly. Last night I had the same feeling I often had after returning home from summer camp – a bit nostalgic for camaraderie in a place that seemed a different reality to me. I left Bobo yesterday and arrived in Ouagadougou for an overnight, waiting for the return flight to Dakar. The Hotel Splendid fared better in the daylight – I checked into a clean, air-conditioned room overlooking the pool and was pleased to find that the wireless internet worked. I felt a bit too enthusiastic for air-con.
I took a taxi to a restaurant off the main rond-pointe which had been recommended by a friend who was a Peace Corps volunteer a few years ago. I was disappointed to find that the restaurant was closed, but that ended up working in my favor because it was closed only for lunch and so I had dinner there later in the evening. Instead, I went next door to an artisan market with a café and, as I half-expected, was followed by shopkeepers all too eager to show me their merchandise. When one lady followed me to the table where I sat down and I asked her for a menu, she split right away. Lunch was mediocre at best and the service lagged, but I was desperate for some energy and it served that purpose (so that I could shop in the market for the couple of hours I had before dark!).
I returned to the hotel in time to swim before the sun set, and then walked back to the restaurant which had been closed earlier and discovered it was a lovely setting – much like the Forge in the Forest in Carmel, leafy and cozy since each table was full. The house specialty is brick-oven pizza and was indeed on par with pizza at home; it was a slice of heaven, particularly after so much rice and sauce.
I’m heading back to Dakar this afternoon and am looking forward to seeing some familiar faces there before leaving for Seattle on Tuesday night. Although it’s taken me a while to warm up to Dakar, I’m finding myself happy to go back, and visit with people and finish some work there. Simultaneously I feel a bit sad to leave Burkina. Where Dakar has the ocean, Bobo is extraordinarily green; vendors and taxi drivers seem more aggressive in Dakar, more personable and quicker to laugh in Bobo; my work in Dakar is very much jack-of-all-trades, in Bobo I feel more focused as I am in charge of a specific project.
I took a taxi to a restaurant off the main rond-pointe which had been recommended by a friend who was a Peace Corps volunteer a few years ago. I was disappointed to find that the restaurant was closed, but that ended up working in my favor because it was closed only for lunch and so I had dinner there later in the evening. Instead, I went next door to an artisan market with a café and, as I half-expected, was followed by shopkeepers all too eager to show me their merchandise. When one lady followed me to the table where I sat down and I asked her for a menu, she split right away. Lunch was mediocre at best and the service lagged, but I was desperate for some energy and it served that purpose (so that I could shop in the market for the couple of hours I had before dark!).
I returned to the hotel in time to swim before the sun set, and then walked back to the restaurant which had been closed earlier and discovered it was a lovely setting – much like the Forge in the Forest in Carmel, leafy and cozy since each table was full. The house specialty is brick-oven pizza and was indeed on par with pizza at home; it was a slice of heaven, particularly after so much rice and sauce.
I’m heading back to Dakar this afternoon and am looking forward to seeing some familiar faces there before leaving for Seattle on Tuesday night. Although it’s taken me a while to warm up to Dakar, I’m finding myself happy to go back, and visit with people and finish some work there. Simultaneously I feel a bit sad to leave Burkina. Where Dakar has the ocean, Bobo is extraordinarily green; vendors and taxi drivers seem more aggressive in Dakar, more personable and quicker to laugh in Bobo; my work in Dakar is very much jack-of-all-trades, in Bobo I feel more focused as I am in charge of a specific project.
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