In Which Some Wishes Are More Successful at Taking Off than Others

I'm letting my blog lag far behind the course of actual events, which is terrible.... Its kind of overwhelming to be beset by so many new experiences. Before you have time to process the first thing, you're already coping with the next thing. But I don't want you guys to miss any of the highlights of my experience. So I'm just going to put myself in a time machine, take myself back a few weeks, and try to catch you up. This particular entry covers the interim between the first two visits to Guede-Chantier.

We have guest lecturers come into our class on a fairly regular basis. But one day I showed up for class and there was nobody there to teach us a lesson. We hung around talking and chatting and drinking our delicious cups of coffee. The other students seemed to be fairly chill about the absence of a prof. But I was getting all anxious and impatient, "What the hell is happening here?" Going with the flow is not one of my skills.

Finally they came and told us we were going to the professor's house. I could only roll my eyes as they bundled us all into taxis. What, our guest speaker was so lazy he couldn't even be bothered to leave his house to come talk to us? I huddled glumly in my corner of the taxi, upset at this departure from the usual routine, while Rokhaya and Soda babbled happily away in Wolof.

"Why do you think they're dragging us all the way across the city?" I asked them sulkily at last. Soda laughed comfortably, not in the least concerned. "Maybe the teacher wants to show us something at his house," she said.

This, in fact, turned out to be exactly the case. I brightened up all over as soon as I entered the door. We were in a beautiful little courtyard garden. Dark green vines with gorgeous pink flowers covered the walls. Fruit trees with tall upright leaves grew up out of the floor. I could smell the faint stench of dead fish and fertilizer, but also a delicious perfume that reminded me of fresh rain. Most interesting of all, the red brick tile floor was torn up in places. There were small piles of gravel resting next to the holes from the cement that had been chipped away, and newly installed pipes were running out of the holes to irrigate the garden.

We then passed into one of the most beautiful houses I have seen in my life. Sculptures and paintings everywhere, and chandeliers that had glass bells in the shape of white flowers. Jessie whispered, "I gotta marry me someone who will buy me a house like this." We all greeted our kind host and squidged ourselves into sofas. He started talking enthusiastically in French about organic agriculture, and the politics of sustainability. Then he showed us his second courtyard garden, in the back of his house. He said, "My neighbours think I am crazy because I have two gardens, but I love my plants." He explained how he would plant his trees into boxes buried in the earth. That way, the fertilizer he added would be trapped by the box and not leach away into the soil. He told us he wished it was mango season so he could show us how delicious his mangoes were. He leaped up to pick us some medicinal seedpods to look at.

His perspectives were an interesting mixture of the scientific and the spiritual. He had grown up in the woods, with his father teaching him about different plants. Then he moved to the city and got certified as a biology teacher. But, "school is useless," he said. "I never learned anything in school that I didn't already learn from my father, in the bush." I love people who are a mixture of romantic and practical. This man was clearly practical since he had raised enough money from the businesses he started to buy his giant gorgeous house. He had even obtained a post as a government official, in recognition of his various accomplishments. But this hard-headed business sense was combined with a certain mysticism. "When I leave my house on a journey, my plants feel it. They miss me!" he said, caressing the leaves of the nearest tree as fondly as if they were the hands of a friend. As for me, I would love to believe that plants have emotions and know how to miss people. Even though the more likely explanation is that he takes better care of them than the interim gardener. When they wilt, are they missing HIM, or the dead fish he so assiduously arranges over their roots?

He thought the best way to maintain sustainability in economic development was to incorporate spiritual and cultural elements. He gave a wonderful example. In his home village in Casamance, there was a sacred grove. Whenever anyone died, they would bury them in the sacred grove and plant a new tree in their bodies. According to their spiritual beliefs, the life force of the person would be sucked up and become part of the tree, so in a very physical, very real sense, the person would BECOME the tree. And the people of the village would cherish and tend the tree very tenderly, because it was the new reincarnation of Grandma. Then, when the government sold the rights to the sacred grove to lumber companies, the villagers felt as if mass murder was taking places. All their ancestors were being killed a second time.

Modern science tells us that forested land serves a number of invaluable functions, such as preventing erosion and absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. Trees help people to survive. Here's one case where the heart and the head are remarkably agreement, where traditional spiritual practices and the most sophisticated conclusions drawn by our modern computational projections are in accord about what needs to be done: SAVE THE TREES. Maybe that's what he meant when he said, "School didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know." I don't know. I still like school anyway.

What he had to say about Senegalese culture was fasinating. He thought the Senegalese had wandered to far from their roots. They were always trying to imitate other civilizations. First it was Islamic culture, and then it was European culture, that they tried to fit over themselves like a borrowed suit of clothes. He said as long as the Senegalese were trying to be someone else, instead of trying to be themselves, they would never make progress. Its an interesting viewpoint, although I'm not sure I agree with it.

At the end, I asked him, "You say sustainability recquires widespread cultural change. But how can we create that change? How can we raise awareness?" He chuckled and seemed immensely pleased with the question. "That's exactly the question we should be asking," he said. "What it boils down to, is you have to start with your own lifestyle, and your circle of friends and family. Me, I have five children. One of them is living in France, driving a big car, going against everything I've taught him, you know..... but another child has really embraced my ideals! Personally, I think one out of five isn't bad at all."

That really made me laugh. I agreed with him that you should try to lead by example, and convince your nearest and dearest to live by your principles. But I have a personal theory that your nearest and dearest are the HARDEST people to convince, not the easiest. See, your family knows you. They've seen your triumphs, but they've also seen your screw-ups and your mistakes. They know that sometimes you're full of bullshit. They have no glorified illusions about you. Its sort of like the Senegalese saying that, "No one is a prophet in his home town." Which is quite literally true-- Muhammed's teachings were horribly received when he preached them in his home town. In order to obtain recognition for his ideas, he was forced to immigrate to another city and start preaching there-- and there people listened to him. In order to convert his home town, Muhammed was actually obliged to go back there with an army. Its been awhile since I read Muhammed's biography, but I'm pretty sure I have those details right. See, to the people in his home town, Muhammed was just the ordinary dude who'd been selling them their beans (or whatever it was) for the past 10 years.

But on the other hand, when you do convince the people you love, you tend to make a deeper impression them than you would on a passing stranger who was dazzled by your eloquence and charisma or whatever. Maybe in the end, its best to work on both fronts.

But the problem of getting people to all move in the same direction is not a simple one. It really is like herding cats. For example, there's the solar ovens. We had a lecture on solar ovens given to us by an NGO expert. He traveled around, building these nice ovens and convincing people to use them. He said getting money or materials was not too tricky. But the problem is, Senegalese women have the habit of opening the pot many times to add bits and pinches of different spices. If you open a solar oven's lid too many times, all the heat disappears and the food takes hours to cook. THE MOST DIFFICULT PART ABOUT THE PROJECT was just convincing the woman to change the way they did their cooking, and add the spices in a block instead of in little bits and dirbbles.

Isn't that crazy? Getting finances, no problem. Building dozens of ovens? We can do that. But getting people to change a lifetime's entrenched cooking habits? Practically impossible. In fact, it was so much of a problem that the solar oven project was not really successful in Senegal. That was surprising to me, that what seems like such a "little" thing could stand in the way of a good idea. But actually, similar things happen to thousands of development projects worldwide. I think no matter what you're trying to do, the most difficult factor will always be the human factor.

I'm becoming more aware of sexism living in Senegal. Men in the street will make little kissing noises and call me, "Ma cherie," and "Ma belle," (my dear and my beautiful.) I ignore them, but some of them even have the brazenness to scold me for ignoring them. ("Hey, what's wrong with you, lady! You stuck up or something?") Also, in the village, the village elders tend not to direct their words at the female students if there's a male student around. I never really had problems with sexism in the USA or Canada, so what can I say? Its an adjustment.

We had a lecture on "Women in Development," given by a female Senegalese NGO worker. In one village, she tried sitting under a shady tree with the village elders, and they tried to charge her a fine for it, "Because women don't sit under this tree." She was a bit of a fiery feminist, so she said, "If you won't let me talk to you under your tree, well then I'll just take myself and my pile o' NGO funding somewhere else," and then they changed their tune. I like how she didn't take any shit from them, but the fact she was coming to their village to give them things gave her leverage.

The most interesting story she told us about the projects she had witnessed was the story of the village well. One nice NGO noticed that women were hiking kilometers to fetch water, so they decided to help out by digging a well in the village square. When the well was completed, the women were very polite and grateful. But they only used the well for a few days, and then they went back to taking their kilometer-long hike to the other well. The NGO was perplexed, but whenever they asked what was going on they got evasive answers. Finally they had the idea of holding meeting where no village men were present, and found out the truth.

The women used the water-fetching time as social time. They liked the distant well because there were no men within earshot. The well the NGO had built was right in front of the banyan tree where the the men liked to sit. Getting water from that well, the men could hear every word and they didn't feel at liberty to talk freely. I love this story because of the way it hammers in the moral-- always, always, always, TALK to the beneficiaries of your "charity," BEFORE you do it, even if the need seems crystal clear. If I had to name a top cause of failure of development projects, I would say a lack of communication between the do-gooders and their "victims." "Solidarity not charity," should be your watchword, otherwise your efforts will go wonky-shaped and it will all be in vain.

Sometimes our classes are a little disorganized and random, but I think we get the chance to talk to more interesting people than we would with a regular progam. And one day Ousmane randomly brought this dirty little boy holding a cage of birds into class! We looked up from our computers and papers, dumbfounded. What was going on?

Ousmane smiled. "In Senegal we have the tradition, that if you set a bird free, you get to make a wish, and the bird carries it up to Heaven," he said. "Who wants to make a wish? It costs 100 CFA" (about 20 cents.) A little flutter of excitement went around the room. Sydney was the first to buy a bird to set free, squealing as she felt its scraggly brown body wiggling against her hand. She went out to the balcony and watched it fly away, and Ousmane said, "Well, that's one more thing that's free in the world."

A little sarcastic flicker of thought reminded me that the bird had probably been captured in the first place for the purposes of the wish-making industry. So we could hardly claim to be great philanthropists, setting it free...... I decided to make a tiny wish. I didn't want to give the small, ill-used bird the burden of carrying a really heavy wish to Heaven. Best to give it something lighter, something it could carry and still fly with speed.

A word about street children. Some of them just hold out their hands and look pitiful, but others have gimmicks they use to earn money. I listened to a street boy the other day who leaped onto the back of a crowded bus stalled in traffic. While we waited for the traffic jam to clear, he sang us a prayer in Arabic in what is honestly the most beautiful voice I have ever heard. I slipped him a few coins and a lot of other people on the bus did too. Other children will dance. Once, I even met a group of them who had banded together to form a choir. I supposed the bird-releasing business is a good way for them to make money, even though it is tough on the birds to be stuffed in the tiny wooden cage. There are charities to help street children, but they have trouble getting funding......its one of the saddest things about Africa.

The dingy little sparrows crammed in the boxes are destined to fly free. On the other hand, nobody's going to give those grubby little children a chance to fly away from the crowded, noisy streets of dusty Dakar.