In Which a Genie Proposes Marriage

For a change of pace we decided to have Storytelling Time instead of a tea debate one day. We went to a lot of trouble to find a village storyteller. First we found this marvelously ancient woman who only spoke Pulaar. The idea was to have the students translate the story into French for us and exercise their brains that way.

Anyway, Ancient Lady took out a little bucket of red-hot peppers and started breaking off their heads (snap, snap, snap) as she talked to us. Meanwhile her thirty grandchildren were clustered round staring at us, as if we had three heads. Well, staring at me. I don't exactly blend into the surroundings, you know. Then Ancient Lady starting shaking her head and gesticulating fiercely, and I could tell she was refusing our request. "Oh dear," I thought. And then I thought, "OH MY GOD! What is that!" One of the small grandchildren had suddenly released a torrent of orange vomit from his mouth, as calmly and naturally as if it was nothing more serious than a burp. I looked around in confusion. Was no one going to care for him? Everyone was acting as if nothing had happened. I started to panick. What was wrong with these people? Then one of the older children swept up Vomiting Child in her arms and carried him away. Okaaaaaaay......... I thought. I had to bite my lips to restrain slightly hysterical laughter. It was all suddenly so surreal.

Then Emma stopped talking with Ancient Lady and started talking with her son. I stood there feeling useless and smiling a lot at everybody. Finally, Emma and the man shook hands, seeming very satisfied. Emma finally got around to translating. Ancient Lady could not come to the library to tell a story, because her mother was sick. (I was frankly astonished to find out her mother was still alive. Ancient Lady herself looked about 106.) However, Ancient Lady's son was able to tell stories perfectly well and was happy to come to the library tommorow. His name was Mr. C.

We had gotten used to having 12-20 people showing up for the tea debates. However, only two students showed up for the storytime. They sheepishly made excuses for their absent fellows, as Emma and I exchanged glances. Apparently listening to a village storyteller was not nearly as exciting as I had hoped. To me, African storytellers are very exciting. But for me they're something new.

Anyway, we decided to go ahead and tell stories anyway, thin audience or not. With me and Emma and our friend Cody, it made five people anyway. And the story Mr. C told was wonderful. It went something like this:

Once upon a time there was a king who had two wives. One wife came from a noble family, and the other wife was a slavewoman. He was very kind to the noblelady, but the slavewoman and her son Samba always had the worst of everything.

One day the king fell very ill. Nobody could find the medicine which would cure him. So all the children left to search for their father's remedy. They wandered their separate ways through the forest. Samba was in the deepest, darkest part of the forest when he met a genie in the form of a beautiful woman. The genie told him, "I know where to find your father's medicine."

Samba became very excited. He began to press the genie, "How? How? How can I find my father's medicine?" But the genie smiled her mysterious smile and said, "To my knowledge there is a price." Samba offered to pay anything. He said, "I would be ashamed to return home without my father's remedy."

The genie explained she was looking for a husband. If Samba promised to marry her, she would tell him how to find the cure. So Samba promised, and she told him, "You must slaughter a bull, tear it in half, and leave the halves lying out in the middle of the forest, dripping blood. A giant vulture will come to feast on the meat. You must grab ahold of the vulture's legs, and it will fly off and carry you towards the cure."

Samba followed her instructions, and sure enough, a giant vulture came to feast on the bull he killed. Samba swallowed his fear and seized ahold of its legs, trying not to breathe in its terrifying stench. The vulture carried him away to a strange and beautiful tree. Samba filled his pouch with a harvest of the tree's marvelous leaves. Then he climbed down and started on the path for home.

At the edge of the forest, he met his half-siblings, the sons of the noblewoman. "Rejoice!" cried Samba. "Our quest is over!" He showed them the marvelous leaves and told them the story of the genie. Listening, they became very jealous. They began to whisper among one another, "If Samba brings back the cure, he will gain incredible status in the family. Our father will place him above us." And so they hatched a plot.

They told the youngest, cutest child to pretend to be very thirsty. She cried out, "Samba! Samba! I am dying of thirst! Fetch me a drink of water!" Now, even though Samba's half-siblings usually treated him like scum, he still loved them very much. And he especially loved his little sister. So he bent over the well to fetch a drink of water for her, and then the two elder siblings snatched his pouch of magic leaves, pushed him in, and went away laughing.

A potion brewed from the leaves cured the father quite miraculously. At Samba's home there was great rejoicing. Everyone feasted and sung the praise's of the noblewoman's sons. Then the noblewoman went to the king and whispered to him that the slavewoman, her co-wife, was a witch. His illness had been caused by the evil spells the slavewoman had cast on him. The king went into a towering rage and banished the slavewoman to live in the graveyard until she starved.

Meanwhile, Samba was at the bottom of the dark, muddy, well, his nose barely above water. He screamed and screamed for help until he had almost no voice left. Just as he was beginning to despair, the face of a kindly shepherd peered over the edge of the well. He pulled Samba out of the well, and Samba staggered home covered in mud. When he arrived, everyone threw stones at him and said, "Go live in the graveyard with your mother." No one had the slightest interest in listening to his story.

So Samba went to live in the graveyard with his mother, feeling generally pissed off. They lived off the meager supplies of bitter roots they could scavenge from the ground. Meanwhile those jerkface siblings were eating cow's meat every day. Things were looking pretty hopeless, when the genie arrived in a gorgeous palaquin with golden curtains, carried by four golden-collared slaves. Everyone rushed out to greet this regal princess. She explained her role in finding a cure for the king, and told them she had come to claim her groom.

But when they brought out Samba's elder brother, who had carried the pouch of magic leaves, she curled her lip in distaste and cried out, "That isn't him! That's not the person I showed the cure to! Where are you hiding my fiance?" So a great search began. They started showing her all the young men of the village, demanding, "Is this your fiance? Is this your fiance?" She kept shaking her head and saying, "No, no, no. Where is my fiance?"

The last person they showed her was Samba. You see, even though Samba was abused and mistreated, he was still the most handsome young man in the entire village. So the genie was able to recognize him easily. She proclaimed, "This is him. This is the son who cured his father." And the whole story of treachery, deception, and betrayal came out. The king was outraged. He made Samba crown prince, and proclaimed that from now on, Samba's siblings would be his slaves. Samba's mother was released from slavery, and returned home in a blaze of glory.

The genie then explained that her mission had been to restore justice to the kingdom. The whole business about the marriage was just a ploy. All she actually wanted was to give Samba the chance he deserved. She then evaporated in a puff of colored smoke. Samba and his mother lived happily ever after.

I was a little disappointed that he didn't marry the genie. I suppose an ordinary human marrying an immortal magical being would have caused problems. But isn't it a little heart-breaking that she just disappears like that? It made me want to write a sequel in which Samba pines away for love of the genie that has deserted him, and goes on a quest to win her hand.

We decided to have another tea debate on the morrow, since those had better student turnout. We thanked Mr. C and apologized for the thin audience. Fortunately, he didn't seem to mind. I told him that I had LOVED his story and he went away smiling.

In Which I Decide I Don't Really Want Four Husbands

The second tea debate began with the exciting topic of polygamy. We managed to coax a few of the female highschoolers to come to this tea debate, but they were unwilling to speak up in front of the boys. Everyone kept encouraging them to talk, but they would only smile shly and giggle a little. Finally I said, "All right, this question is ONLY FOR THE GIRLS. Would you be less happy if your husband took a second wife?" One girl said she could only find happiness as the sole wife of her husband. The other girl said it depended on the husband. If her husband treated her and her co-wife equally, she would be happy with her lot. After giving these two contrasting points of view, the girls slipped out of the room, perhaps in order to avoid answering more questions. At least, up until I forced them to talk, they were listening with evident enjoyment.

I think everyone really enjoyed the chance to express their points of view. The Senegalese education system doesn't encourage discussion; its based on the old French model. So everyone was really excited to join in. We just had to get the ball rolling, then sit back and enjoy the ride. My opening question was based on something I'd read in a biography of Muhammed. "Muhammed gives each man the right to up to four wives. But he also gives a warning that its difficult to treat your wives justly if you have more than one. What do you think of that?"

I think they sort of misunderstood me there, because their response was to protest indignantly that Islam was a just religion. Which is kind of missing the point. Muhammed was born into a staunchly polygamist society. If he had attempted to outlaw polygamy, he would have had trouble finding followers. Later in his life, marrying the daughters of his friends was also a techique he used to consolidate alliances. But the bickering of his many wives caused him extensive personal problems. It seems clear that the monogamous period of his life was a happier time for him. Based on this information, I'm pretty sure Muhammed was trying to deliver a gentle and oblique warning to the men of his society. At least this was the picture the biographer painted for me. But since I wasn't a Muslim, I decided to just shut up and let them talk.

They mentioned the difficulty of providing financially for many wives and children. And even if financial resources were sufficient, emotional resources might be lacking. Is it possible for a man to truly love more than one wife? they asked. Can he distribute equal amounts of kindness to both of them? And even if he is equally kind to both, will the wives appreciate his efforts? Or will they grow jealous over imagined slights?

"I think polygamy stems from dissatisfaction," said one teenager. "A man sees that his wife cannot do something, she does not have a particular skill or trait. So he goes off and marries another woman who does have that skill. Then there's a sort of division of labor among wives, each wife doing what she does best."

They also brought up the possibility of wives neglecting their children because they are so busy competing for their husband's attention. Placing all the choicest morcels on the husband's plate, pampering him, and fussing over him, ignoring their children in the pursuit of their husband's sexual favors. This idea seems to me more like a male fantasy, than something women would actually do. The idea of having people competing to spend time to you may seem nice in theory, or in your imagination, but in real life it must be very stressful.

To lighten things up I asked if they knew any co-wives who were close friends, like sisters. They said this did happen from time to time but a relationship of competition, or rigidly polite formality, was more usual. They also said sometimes children would fight about whose mother was best, or who had the most status in the family. Polygamy has consequences for the entire family, not just the wives. Someone said that Muhammed had given instructions to "Reproduce and multiply the race of Islam," and polygamy enabled men to have more children, "Even thirty," someone said. So I asked if it was important for a father to know and understand his children. I got blank stares. Then I added, "If you have thirty children, is it possible to know your children......." and they all started nodding in understanding.

Then someone said very authoritatively there were twice as many women as there were men in the world. Therefore, it was a man's duty to take as many wives as he could, so no poor woman would be left husbandless. I'd come across this point of view before, in discussions with my Senegalese classmates in Daker. Sydney, the feminist of the group, got irritated to the point where she looked up population statistics on the internet. There are more women than men in the world, but the disparity is nothing like that huge. Its just a few percentage points of difference. But the bulk of Senegalese men-- even in urban areas like Dakar-- blithely ignore these statistics, convinced there are huge populations of single women waiting to be rescued from their unlucky state. Its amazing how powerful these myths can be, if they fit in with what people want to believe.

I tried flipping the argument on its head, saying, "What about the poor men who will be left wifeless, when other men take all the wives?" They scoffed at me, and said, "That would never happen. There are way more women than there are men." In retrospect, I think I should have hammered in this point a little more. Of course any society will reward financial prosperity with sexual success to some extent. But polygamy legitimizes the monopoly of sexual success by the wealthy to a much greater extent. In our society, even if you're the governor of New York, you are not technically entitled to any more booty than the humblest farmer.

On the positive side, I think polygamy does a lot to eliminate hypocrisy, guilt, and secrecy. Having two wives seems so much more honest and wholesome to me than having a wife and a mistress, and lying to one about the other. In my experience it is possible to genuinely love two people at the same time; but whether it is possible to satisfy both people, is a question more open to debate.

On the whole, the tide of the discussion seemed to be flowing against polygamy. Everyone was talking about the problems and very few people were bringing up benefits. But then Emmanuel asked a very insightful and probing question (he has a talent for those.) He said, "If you could have any number of wives, how many would you choose to have?" The boys all looked at each other, and then a ripple of "Four!" (the maximum permitted by Islam) ran around the table. Then everyone cheerfully laughed at their own hypocrisy. It was a good moment.

People are the same the world over. Take us Living Routes students. We like to rant about materialism and consumerism, and preach the whole "money can't buy happiness," sermon, but I don't think there's a single one of us who would refuse a million dollars if it was offered us, no strings attached. People rarely refuse to pursue their own self-advantage. That's not something to be cynical or disappointed about; that's something to laugh about. There's a certain comforting predictability to it, after all.

I tried to close the discussion with a joke. "Before coming here, I had planned on having four husbands. But after hearing all the arguements today, I think I'll stick with just one." I've never had a joke fall so flat in my entire life. They stared at me, with, "We must have heard that wrong!" looks on their faces. My partner and classmate Emmanuel, the sole person who apppeared to have understood, looked embarassed and hastened on to the next subject before they could have time to think about it. Well, Emma, you should be relieved. I'm a BARD student. I could have told them I wanted four wives.

(In case you're wondering, Emma actually is his nickname. He doesn't care that its a girl's name in the US. Namuri, on the other hand, grew enraged when I nicknamed him, Na-na. I thought it was cute, like calling him Minty. Na-na is Wolof for mint. It is also French slang for "woman." I pointed out to Namuri that he was Wolof, not French, and he protested indignantly, "I am a Citizen of the World!")

The next topic was Emmanuel's invention, and an ingenious one. He asked, "Do you think it will be possible to develop Guede-Chantier into a Utopia?" First he asked them if they knew what a Utopia was, and they said, yes of course. I got really excited when I heard the word Utopia. You see, in a way it's my quest for Utopia that ultimately led me to Africa. I was researching Utopian philosophy when I first heard of ecovillages. I signed up for this program because they said, "Study Abroad in an Ecovillage." An ecovillage isn't an attempt to create Utopia exactly; its more humble than that. Ecovillages simply search to invent new, and rediscover old ways for humans to live in harmony with nature and with one another.

In a way I've been misled about the whole ecovillage thing. The suburb of Dakar where we study is called, "Yoff," and in all their propaganda materials, they call it "Eco-Yoff--" as if affixing the prefix "eco" on it would actually make it ecofriendly! If you talk to the natives about Eco-Yoff, they say, "What the hell is that? We live in Yoff, you crazy toubab!"

Our classroom building is the headquarters of the ecovillage network of Senegal, and since I've came they've installed this beautiful permaculture garden with bannana trees and all sorts of lovely things. But the reason they were installing the new garden when I came, was because the government paved over their old garden with the ugly six-lane highway I've complained so much about. People get killed on this highway because the funds for the pedestrian overpass were embezzled. Its really the most frightening road I've ever seen; whenever I cross it I feel like I can't wait to leave Senegal. I watch the woman with the babies on their backs, or the fat old ladies in their long gowns, clamber over the high concrete barrier in the center of it and I just wince. Its so horrendously symbolic in a way. One lone, pathetic bastion of eco-friendliness in the middle of a concrete river, being slowly overwhelmed by the rising tides of traffic and modernity.

But anyway, Guede-Chantier is perhaps more genuinely on the ecovillage path. And Emmanuel's question sparked a raging debate on the possibility of village development. Everyone started saying, "Young people have to participate in government! Our elders need to give us a voice!" They were passionately indignant about the elder's monopoly of power. Then they started talking about corruption and embezzlement.

"Where does the money for the schools go?" they asked. "Where does the money for the pharmacy go? They eat the money! They eat the money! There are these old men with these big fat stomachs, and they just eat the money and become even fatter." As far as descriptions of embezzlement go, it was a pretty vivid one. The idiom, "eat the money," is kind of a hilarious one; it makes me think of some ugly old man ravenously stuffing 10,000 franc notes into his mouth.

"But we can't just sit here and complain about embezzlement," cried out one of the students. "We should do something about it. We CAN do something about it. It's the responsibility of us, the young people, to organize and put a stop to this. We have to say No. We have to confront the embezzlers and ask them where the money is going."

It was amazing to listen to this young man talk. He spoke, not as if he was speaking a group of friends assembled in the library, but as if he was addressing a crowd of millions. His phrases rang out and filled the room. Each sentence he punctuated with a punch of his fist into his hand, as if his ideas were nails he was hammering into our brains. When he finished speaking, people looked at each other and then a ripple of smiles ran around the room.

But then people began to bring up objections. "What if the person's who's embezzling is your friend's father?" they asked. "Then accusing him of embezzlement is a pretty socially awkward situation. That's the problem; everyone's so interconnected. If you say anything bad about anyone, you're sure to be insulting a relative, or a friend of a friend."

I was getting more and more interested. I said, "This exact same problem exists all over the world!"

"That's why Guede-Chantier is a microcosm of the world," said one of the quieter boys, smiling to himself.

"I still say we can do something," insisted our rabble-rouser, our young politician. 'The young people have power!" What a dynamic fellow he was. If he doesn't grow up to be someone very powerful and influential, I'll eat my hat.

Soon after, Emma decided to wrap up and summarize the discussion. "I hear many differing viewpoints here," he said. "Some people think Guede-Chantier can develop. Others point to the obstacles in our way." He then stopped and smiled. "But I encourage you to be optimistic, and remember the words of Barack Obama, 'Yes we can!' If we perservere through the difficulties, we are sure to achieve success."

Everyone burst out cheering at that, and I beamed at Emma. I felt so proud of him at that moment, I wanted to hug him. You see, Emmanuel isn't the sort of person who likes to take charge and step into the center of things. He's usually standing at the edges, observing. He has a tendency to speak in this quite little voice. But this was a real leadership moment for him. He had created this discussion and managed to turn it into something that was really inspiring. To me, the "Yes We Can!" slogan seems really cheesy by now. But to the Africans, Barack Obama's name is like a magic incantation. He's their inspiration, their proof that one of their own can succeed. Since his father comes from Kenya, they don't even really think of him as an American. To them, he's an African.

Anyway, I was really impressed by Emma's ability to channel the discussion and bring it to a soaring conclusion. But to my surprise, he wasn't finished yet. He glanced at his watch and said, "I think we have a little time left. So let's move on to the next topic. What about early pregnancy?"

I glanced around. The female highschool students had popped out the room. I opened my mouth to say, "Can we really discuss this when the girls aren't here?" but the discussion was already moving full steam ahead.

"Shouldn't early marriage, and forced marriage, be part of this discussion?" someone suggested. Apparently these are big controversies in the village. But somehow his suggestion got forgotten in the hubub.

To my surprise, the students seemed mostly disposed to blame parents for early pregnancies. "They should explain sex to their daughters, but they don't," everyone said. I told them I had learned about sex in school, and they nodded in approval. "That's the way it should be," they said, "But it isn't." To my surprise, nobody seemed to be mentioning contraception. So I started to talk about condoms, but Emmanuel quickly hushed me up.

Then my roommate Soda arrived. She had come to visit our tea debate, and put in her two cents. I was relieved there would be at least one female Senegalese opinion in the room. "You have to educate the young girls so they can act responsibly," Soda said.

"But what about the young men?" I asked. "Don't you have to educate them too? Don't they also have a responsibility for what happens?"

Soda smiled, her patient, explaining-things-to-the-ignorant-toubab smile. I usually don't mind that smile, but for some reason today it got on my nerves. "What you have to understand, Charlotte," she said, a touch condescendingly, "Is that a young man has nothing to lose. He can just do something and run away. Its the young girls who have to take responsibility."

"That's not right! Men should take responsibility too!" I said, getting more and more irritated.

"But that's just not the way things are, Charlotte," said Soda. I bit my lips in frustration. As Sydney would say, today I was learning a lot about "Gender Roles." But I can't pretend their irresponsible men is a problem unique to Senegal. The injustice is built straight into our biology. Its the woman who carry the damn babies.

God! I wish I was a man!

In Which We Have Our First Tea-Debate

Part of our cunning plot to draw students into the library, and get them accustomed to using it, is to have tea-debates within its walls. Tea is a huge Senegalese ritual; they make it in a tiny kettle with a ton of sugar, and serve it in little shot glasses. They fill two shot-glasess half-full, and then gracefully pour long streams of tea from one glass to another, in order to make the tea foam. Then they give you this pretty little glass half-filled with foam and half-filled with this delicious brandy-golden tea. Sometimes they boil fresh mint in it too. Its like drinking liquid candy. Whenever I try to make the foam, I spill boiling water all over myself, clumsy American that I am. Its kind of a skill. But maybe its all right, because its usually the teenage boys who make the tea for the family. Tea parties are very manly here.

We're vexed that the bulk of students who come to our tea debates are boys. We want to have a feminine opinion, but they're hesitant to come, and even more hesitant to speak up in front of the boys. And before you say, "O, what a sexist country," let me tell you something. Even at my "enlightened liberal arts college" I've noticed that boys are far more willing to speak up in class than girls. If you don't believe me, try keeping a tally of how often the boys talk and how often the girls talk. Its shocking.

Anyway, for our first tea debate, we asked the students to suggest topics. They brought up all sorts of great controversies, like early pregancy and polygamy and forced marriage, but they also brought up the whole environmental issue. So we started off by talking about the Protection of Nature. I told them what an ecovillage was, and none of them knew about Guede-Chantier being an ecovillage. The decision to become an ecovillage was made by the village elders, probably so that they could wangle grants out of the Senegalese Ecovillage Network. "Ecovillage" is a Western idea. But "protection of nature," is a more global idea, and we found that the students were very well-informed about it. Emmanuel kept asking them, "What can WE, in Guede-Chantier, do to protect nature?" and they had all sorts of great ideas, like solar ovens and economizing on wood and phasing out chemical fertilizers and planting trees. I asked them if men was there to serve nature, or whether nature was there to serve man. And they replied, quite intelligently, "A little bit of both, but man needs nature more than nature needs him."

Then we progressed to the topic of illegal immigration. Whenever I think about illegal immigration, I always think of the Statue of Liberty and the poem at her base welcoming the hungry hordes to America, the "land of opportunity." The Statue of Liberty is such a liar. Our current immigration laws (especially after the Patriot Act) are pretty damn unwelcoming. And I hate to think of them shooting Mexicans at the border. I read a newspaper article about that once, but when I talked about it with my Bard friends, they were all like, "The US wouldn't shoot people who are just trying to visit!" Ha-ha. Yes they would.

Needless to say, the perspective from the Senegalese side is quite different. To them, illegal immigration is viewed as this risky and dubious adventure that can reap great rewards. From time to time, people leave on these mysterious journeys and come back with their pockets overflowing with dollars, buying new houses and cars and all sorts of shiny toys. Everyone is jealous of them and wishes they were so rich and lucky. But at the same time, they cast a suspicious eye on the person who is bringing back the dollars. Its viewed as a sort of cheating. Why didn't you stay home and earn an honest living? Who KNOWS what you were doing there abroad? Maybe you were doing some sort of ignominious or unclean work.

Also, they are well aware of the dangers of illegal immigration. Boat-owners will take bribes to let you stow away and then shut you up in cartons without food or water. People will perish trying to trek across the desert from Africa to Spain. There's always the police. And then there are the difficulties of orientation when you arrive in the new country; the utter confusion as you try to acclimatize yourself and figure out what's going on...... It just shows how hard life is here, that people are willing to risk all that in order to better their situation.

There was a lot of moralizing at the table about how much better it would be to scrimp your pennies and start your own business in Senegal. If you leave your country, you lose track of your family, you lose track of your values, you lose track of what really matters. People talked about friends and relations who had visited France and came back to Senegal with a high-and-mighty attitude. The tradition here is to have the family eat from one plate (sometimes with hands, sometimes with spoons.) But when people come back from France, they're too good to eat out of the common plate. They whine that its too dirty and they complain about the people who use their hands. Its only one example, but there's all sorts of little things like that.

So much for my opinions. "Everyone should have the right to come to America! Its so unjust that we shut them out!" That's all very well-and-good, but there's a built-in-arrogance to that point of view that I hadn't recognized previously. My assumption was that everyone wants to visit America, that life is better in America than elsewhere. I never thought about immigrants losing their culture and heritage, being cut off from their families. Something sad I heard during the debate is that often its the least favorite child of the family who will undertake the dangerous adventure. If the parents love their siblings more, they will take off to bring back treasures from abroad and win some respect in the family that way. Its often the outcasts who are most willing to take the risks.

The general consensus at the table seemed to be that illegal immigration was only for people who were greedy or desperate. Leaving your country is a painful and wrenching thing. People do it for money or status or (less ignobly) as a recourse against starvation.

I was really pleased in general with how willing the students were to express themselves and how eager they were to share their points of view. We decided to have another tea debate the very next day.

In Which I Buy the Best Book Ever

The time between the second and third visits to Guede-Chantier was somewhat flustered. So many preparations to make, so little time! And Emmanuel is a great project partner, but he gets tired easily. I was always saying, "Let's do this! We have to do that!" and Emmanuel kept trying to make me chill out. Finally he smiled and said, "Wow, Charlotte! You Canadians, you really love to be busy! Canadians, they never sit still."

This was really funny to me, because I'm not even a real Canadian. I'm used to saying, "I come from Canada!" all the time, because that's where my family lives now, but I was born in the USA and I study there. It just goes to show: when you go abroad, you're the ambassador of wherever you come from. Even if you're a total nonconformist, everyone will assume that your personality represents your place of origin.

The principal errand we did was to make a pilgrimage to the Bibliotheque Libre de Dakar. "Free Library," is a bit of a misnomer; they did charge us for the books. Nevertheless, as sustainable development folks, we got the cheap bulk rates. As far as I could gather, they were an NGO whose aim was to provide reasonable prices for people trying to equip African libraries. Most of their stock was donated by Canadians. I even found a brightly colored beautiful children's book that was donated by my Canadian bank-- small world, eh?

We were stuck in several traffic jams on the way there (the French call them embouteillages, or bottle-ups.) During one traffic jam a dusty street child came, jumped through the door on the back of the bus, and begin singing. It is not an exaggeration to say his voice was transcendently beautiful. I've never heard such gorgeous music in my life. He sang a prayer in Arabic, echoing, wailing, haunting. The divinity of it was such a contrast with the masses of ugly cars and sweaty people. People passed little coins towards the back of the bus to reward him for his efforts. Mere trifles-- the Senegalese equivalent of nickles, pennies, and dimes. He collected them in his hat. Then, when the traffic jam started to clear up, he bowed, jumped off the back of the bus, and was gone forever. It was good entrepeneurship, but risky; buses probably had thicker crowds than he could find elsewhere. Still, its a wonder he wasn't run over.

When you find talent like that, in the midst of poverty, its a little bit like finding a pearl mixed with the stones lying on the beach. It catches your eye, you stoop to admire its luminous glow, and before you can reach out to touch it, the waves have swept it away again. To be tumbled endlessly in the shifting waters. By chance, on that very same bus ride, I happened to be seated beside an interesting man who worked for an NGO that helped street children. They tried to organize volunteers to give them lessons on useful skills. "But we can never find funding," he told me. "We have no access to the higher-ups in government-- that's the problem. And we're always sending emails to all these foreign aid organizations, but they never answer." Having had much the same troubles with my library project, I nodded in sympathy. "My cousin adopted two street children," the man continued, "Gave them a room in his house and everything. But two was all he had room for. There are so many-- what can you do?"

I asked him something I had been curious about for a long time. I knew there were two categories of child beggars. There were those who were simply homeless, and there were those who worked for the marabouts. Since zakat (alms-giving) is an obligation of Islam, the marabouts were able to use street children quite easily to raise funds for their religious organization. I asked him which category of children had the harder life. He told me things were very hard for both kinds of children, but at least the ones under the protection of the marabouts were less likely to be abused.

After we came back Emmanuel and I had lunch together and I was flipping through our shiny new purchases (all of them in French, most of them with pictures.) All of a sudden, I came upon the most wonderful book in the world. It was entitled, "The Zloukch." It was simply epic. Its about a boy named Zachary who dreams he is not like all the other little boys. He dreams of being a breeder of dragons at a firework factory. He dreams of living under the sea with a noble sea-horse steed. He dreams of living in the trees and being friends with all the animals. You see.

At school, Zachary's teacher asks all the little boys and girls to draw their favorite animal. The rest of the children draw normal animals like horses and cats and dogs. But Zachary spend the entire afternoon attempting to draw something beyond the bounds of imagination, something that defies description. Something called...... a ZLOUKCH. The other children are very intrigued to hear Zachary is drawing a Zloukch. They ask him, "What is a Zloukch? Where does it live? What does it eat?" And then the teacher (what a bitch, in my opinion) shows up and tells everyone that Zloukchs do not exist. So everyone starts making fun of Zachary and decides he is "nettement nul,"-- a total loser. A real zero.

BUT ZACHARY REMAINS UNDETERRED BY THEIR CRUEL MOCKERY!!!!! ZACHARY HAS FAITH IN HIS OWN VISION!!!! ZACHARY IS TRULY INSPIRED, AND THE LAUGHTER OF THE IGNORANT MASSES CANNOT MAKE HIM FAINT OF HEART!!!!!!!!!! (Please note, this is not a direct translation. This is the tale of the Zloukch a la Charlotte.)

It was this part of the book that made me realize that Zachary and I are truly kindred spirits. I cannot count the number of times my ideas to change the world have been greeted with laughter and heartless mockery. But like Zachary, I remain fearless in pursuit of my dream. I give not a fly's whisker for all these naysayers. You can tell me that Zloukchs do not exist, but I will never, ever, EVER believe you. IF NEED BE, I WILL CHASE THE GLORIOUS ZLOUKCH TO THE VERY ENDS OF THE EARTH!!!! YEA, TO THE VERY ENDS OF THE GALAXY I WILL PURSUE IT!!!!!!!!!!

But anyway. In the book, the other children go to play with puppets, leaving Zachary all alone at the drawing table. He makes sketch after sketch, but none of them succeed in capturing the Zloukch. One by one he crumples up his sketches and throws them away, until he is surrounded by snow-drifts of ripped-up papers. He draws and draws until at last.........

"YOUPI" he screams (French for Hooray.) "I have it, I have it, at last I have it!" He leaps to his feet, scattering papers in every direction, and dancing around with joy. Everyone crowds around to see this Zloukch he has finally succeeded in drawing. I wish I could scan the page of the book for you, because Zachary's Zloukch is truly a thing of wonder. It's a friendly-looking giant rabbit-mouse with three ears, colored in blotches and stripes and polka-dots of orange, blue, and yellow.

I don't why, but none of Zachary's classmates appreciate his clearly great artistry. Quite the contrary, in fact. "Tout le monde avait le fou rire," says the book sadly. (Everyone had Mad Laughter.)

And so everyone leaves for home, while Zachary remains staring forlornly at his picture of the Zloukch. It is then, when everyone's eyes are elsewhere, that the miracle happens. The Zloukch peels itself off the page and comes ALIVE!!!!! IT'S ALIIIIIIIIVE!!!! The final page of the book is a picture of Zachary and the Zloukch walking happily hand in hand together.

I was so excited about this book that I started telling everyone I met about it. "I think it has a good moral," I said.

"What's the moral?" my classmates demanded, somewhat puzzled.

I shrugged. "I don't know........ If people laugh at your dreams, your magical friend will arrive and kick all their butts?" I imagined further, unpublished pages of the book in which the Zloukch uses its fire breath and laser eyebeams to demolish the houses of everyone who wished Zachary ill. Everyone agreed that the moral was indeed a good one and I should make every effort to share this book with the children of Guede-Chantier.

I think I'll leave you there..... The next entry will began recounting the events of the third and final visit to Guede-Chantier.

In Which I Defy the President in a Sexy Red Dress

Three weeks in Guede-Chantier gives me a lot of free time between project meetings. So I'm going to take advantage of it by catching up on my written work. That way I'll have blobs and blobs of blog entries to upload when I come back to Dakar.

Preparing for my second visit to Guede was incredibly stressful. For one thing, I was sick with food poisoning. For another thing, the first visit had made me realize I was working within certain uncomfortable and unpleasant limitations. I was a stranger, in a way a sort of intruder in the village. I really wanted people to like and accept me, but I wasn't sure they would. My family was warm and welcoming, but doing projects with the villagers was another matter entirely. Older men had a tendency to ignore me and talk to Emmanuel. They smile at me as if I was a cute little mascot, instead of someone competent and sensible. I think I become even more loud and assertive in an effort to compensate.

Brooke says there are often problems with American woman and Senegalese men working together, since American women tend to overstep traditional gender roles within Senegalese society. I often get the feeling that I'm not being taken seriously. I also get harassed when I walk alone in Dakar. Strange men will call me "Ma cherie" (my dear) and "Ma belle" (my beautiful) and follow me down the street. If I respond politely to their questions, they cling to me like glue and I can't get rid of them. If I ignore them, they get angry at me and accuse me of being snobby. When I complain about this phenomena to my male friends, they laugh and thinks its funny. "What's wrong with being called beautiful?" But its not funny for me! Its scary! It's getting so I'm afraid to walk alone in Dakar. More than anything else, its the way they look at me. It makes me feel like prey.

Sydney, who is somewhat more adventurous and outgoing than me (and also very blonde) has had worse problems. Once a stranger walked up to her and kissed her on the neck! Luckily one of our Wolof-speaking classmates was there to defend her. Jess also had a stranger touch her without permission. She grabbed the arm that touched her and screamed at him in French, "You NEVER touch a woman you don't know!" It happened right in her neighborhood, and when the neighbors heard her screaming, they all came out of their doors and started collectively chewing out the person who harassed her. Jess said it was heartening to have her neighbours rally around to defend her like that.

The upshot of this is I've become a lot more feminist since coming to Senegal. I think in order to become really passionate about feminism you have to experience poor treatment. Its made me really touchy about words like "sexy," too. I snapped at my boyfriend for calling me sexy, but the poor guy was only trying to be nice to me. Then he told me I was the most beautiful girl in the world, and I started bitching, "Why does it always have to be the most BEAUTIFUL girl in the world? Why not the most SENSIBLE or the most COMPETENT girl in the world?"

The Wolof language has at least six or seven words to describe different kinds of sexiness. The word "Pacha," means voluptuous and curvy. My friend Aissetou told me to compliment me that I was "Very pacha." I replied "No, no, no!" Then, after a little reflection, I replied, "Maybe a little pacha. But not much." For some reason everyone thought that was hilarious. Now whenever anyone wants to tease me, they start calling me "Pacha." For some reason it really embarasses me. I cover my face with my hands and start blushing and babbling, "No, no, no!"

So finally one day Aissetou asked me why I didn't want to be pacha. It took me awhile to figure out the answer. "Its because I want to be judged by my character," I told her finally. "I'm worried that if people are distracted by sexiness, they won't notice what I'm saying. I want people to listen to my ideas and take them seriously."

Aissetou nodded wisely, "You are right Charlotte, you are very right," she said. "I have noticed myself, when girls talk, often men are looking at the Boobies instead of at the face." I love the way Aissetou says "the Boobies." I don't know why slang words are so much funnier when used by non-native speakers.

"I want people to pay attention to my inside, not my outsides," I continued to explain. "L'interieur, pas l'exterieur."

"Is this why you do not wear make-up or....." and here, Aissetou made flapping gestures indicating the chest region. "Low-cut blouses," I decoded, nodding.

Aissetou sat up and shook out her thick black braids. "Your philosophy makes very much sense, Charlotte," she decreed imperiously. "Maybe from now on I will be more like you."

What a digression from the next episode of the Library Saga. Anyway, as I was trying to tell you before I got distracted by Other Matters, we returned to find a glum Mr. Saal. Five or six students had signed up for library cards, three or four books had been checked out, but very little had changed. "I could lie to you and tell you everything has been fixed," he said. "But what good would that do?"

"I'm glad you're being honest with us Mr. Saal," I said. I looked around. At least the library seemed marginally cleaner.

"It's all the student's fault," said Mr. Saal, and then went into a long rant about how the students didn't have any Culture and were uncivilized and all that. This is a concept that comes up fairly often in conversation with Senegalese people. It makes me uncomfortable whenever I hear them describing one another as uncivilized. I think it's part of the French colonial legacy; if a French man looks up his nose at you and says, "O!!! Vous etes si sauvage," (you are so savage!) often enough, maybe you start to believe it.

This time I was more annoyed than usual by the "Senegalese are so uncivilized," rant, since I suspected the real problem was Mr. Saal's tendency to keep the library door locked. A locked door, even if it technically opens on request, is a real discouragement to potential library-browsers.

So we did a bit more awareness-raising. Some classroom tours. I waved my arms and told them using libraries made you Super-Intelligent. They laughed at me. That was fun, but things were pretty frustrating on the whole. Once we were told to come meet the principal at 9:00. We waited in the library all day, and he didn't arrive. It turned out he was on a journey and his subordinates were ill-informed about his whereabouts. Things could have been worse. We met him the next day and he was a very nice man.

"This is my first year as principal of the school," he told us. "So I haven't been up to much yet. This year, the library is my principal project."

"Have you purchased a library card?" asked Emmanuel.

"No," the principal admitted with a blush.

We tried to talk to the teachers some more, but the problem was, they kept going on strike. Strikes here are so weird. I always think of strikes as "not going to work until your employer satisfies your demands." But here, strikes are more like an excuse to take vacations. The way it was explained to me, the government is supposed to pay the teachers extra for invigilating exams, but it doesn't. So in revenge, the teachers take time off whenever they feel like it. A Friday here, a Monday there..... lots of long weekends for everybody. The students get to help their parents with the tomato harvest, the teachers get to sit in their shady houses and drink tea..... a win-win situation, for everybody, including the government, who can feel justified in not delivering the extra wages to "those lazy strikers." Everybody, that is, except for the poor sustainable development students, who keep showing up for their appointments only to be told, "Sorry..... everyone's gone home...." This happened to us over and over again.

But it wasn't just us. Everyone, (the compost group, the community garden group, the food processing group, the ecology education group) was having similar trouble getting their village partners to show up for meetings. It's a passive way of resisting change. Nobody wants to be impolite to us, so they won't tell us "NO," to our faces, but they find other ways of manifesting their noncooperation. Little by little, we're winning their trust, but its a process.

I tried to forget my worries about the library in the enjoyment of being with my host family. The baby of the family had progressed from futile wriggling to high-velocity crawling in the short time I'd been away. However, he still needed to perfect his technique. He tended to propel himself with furious kicks of his left leg while letting his right leg dangle uselessly. He used his new-found mobility to get up to all kinds of mischief. His nickname is, "John McCain baby," because he was born during the campaign and his family decided he looked exactly like John McCain. Ha-ha! It's true! Except for being a black little baby, Muhammed is John McCain's identical twin. Did I forget to mention the baby's real name is Muhammed?

Our family is well-off enough to have a television and sometimes I think it gives them awfully strange ideas about the outside world. Kalidou (the nine-year old boy) is sitting in his little chair all the time with his eyes like six inches away from the screen, and it drives me crazy. Stop watching those cartoons, Kalidou! Look at them-- they don't even come from your culture! Everyone in them is white!

Houleye (the three-year old girl) seems to be a bit more active-- she's always running around and dancing and singing. She sang me the Senegalese National Anthem, and I was really impressed. She doesn't understand any French, but her grandma helped her to memorize the syllables by route.

We like to draw pictures together, me and Houleye. We're really good friends. One time she was getting bored and I rolled up some construction paper to make a telescope. Only she didn't think it was a telescope; she thought it was a megaphone for calling people to prayer. So she put it up to her mouth and started howling, "Allah Akhbar!!!" (God is great.) So young, and already steeped in both nationalism and religion. I could only sigh. Back in Dakar the mosques blast that on their stereos five times a day. Its enough to drive you crazy, except I'm kind of getting to like it; it reminds me I'm in Senegal.

I love my host mother so much! She's the grandmother of Houleye and Muhammed, and except for the Dumbledore spectacles perched on her nose, looks exactly like the stereotype of an African matron; a generous figure swathed in blousy, colorful fabric, a warm voice, always a child on the knee, always laughing. But below that warm and cuddly surface, there's a keen and piercing intellect. She's a teacher and successful business woman and has written a number of beautiful poems in her native language, Pulaar. She's my proof that you can be a career woman and a family woman at the same time.

She asked me what I was writing just now, and I told her I was writing a letter for my family back home. She said, "You must tell them that your mother in Guede-Chantier sends them lots of love and kisses! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah!" And she made kissing noises. I said, "Its funny you should say that, because I was just in the middle of describing you." And she said, "You must tell them that I am very old and ugly and fat." She's so funny that way. Its the African sense of humor. You wouldn't believe how much people joke around over here.

But let me tell you about the elections, because that was really a bit exciting. I was just pacing back and forth in the street in front of my house when a big group of woman came walking by dressed in these perfectly beautiful dresses. "On va danser. Vous dansez?" They kept telling me over and over, happily. (We're going to dance! Are you dancing?) I had an esprit ouvert (open spirit) that day, so instead of refusing I just laughed and said, "Pourquoi pas?" (Why not?) So I walked with them down the street and came to a HUGE gathering of people of all ages and genders. They were seated on mats around the edge of a big circle. In the middle of the circle, a young man with a microphone was speechifying energetically. I asked my new friends what he was saying, and they told me! "He's saying you should put your vote on the yellow ballot. He's saying that the green ballot is bad." I saw he was waving around a yellow piece of paper. Unfortunately, it was all in Pulaar, so I missed all the finer nuances.

My host sister, Awa, then magically appeared behind me with Houleye in her arms. "Fancy meeting you here Awa!" She tucked Houleye in my lap and I watched people wave their arms and jabber away in Pulaar for awhile. I had the impression that nobody really cared for the speeches, but were just waiting politely for the music to start.

Dances in Africa are really something else. The crowd forms a huge circle, and you wait for people who are brave enough to enter the circle and start shakin' themselves around. Strangely enough, the older woman usually lead the way. They waggle their behinds, they shake their fists, they swirl and twirl their voluminous skirts, they kick up their heels in the dust, they dance as if they were on fire with joy. It doesn't matter if you're eighty and shaped like a ball, you'll still bounce with the best of them, and people will cheer you on! African clothes are really rather flattering to the older female figure (you look like you're draped in flags, or maybe like you're a grand old ship with the wind in your sails.) And people are more colorful than whole gardens full of flowers.

I have trouble imagining a forty-ish American woman dancing with zest and gusto in the center of a cheering crowd. It's different here. Here, you don't have to be young to be beautiful. And the young people don't isolate themselves. Teenage boys will play happily with babies. Teenage girls will dance on the same floor with women old enough to be their mamas. Adults and children, married and unmarried, old and young, can all enjoy themselves at the same event. Its not like the US where people rarely socialize outside their age group.

During the whole length of our second visit in Guede-Chantier, people were preparing for the local elections. This meant that we would frequently hear the booming of loud music and speeches from some part of Guede-Chantier. Or we would go to a meeting with our village parteners, only to be told, "Sorry, they're all at the rally." Everyone was very excited, because Guede-Chantier had finally become big enough to have its own mayor. First they would choose which party they wanted in power. Then they would have a second round of voting to pick the mayor among the men of the winning party.

Anyway, all our host families were really hoping Ousmane would become mayor. You know Ousmane from my former blogs. He's the director of our program and one of my favorite teachers. He doesn't teach any of our regular subjects, but he's been trained by "Living Routes Ecovillage Study Abroad" in what I like to call the "hippie curriculum." So whenever we have something random, like a lesson on the "Gaia Theory" or a film on "Nonviolent Communication," he comes in to teach us. He also taught French class a couple of times when our regular teacher was absent. We had some of the usual grammar stuff, and then he threw up his arms in the air and said, "Hey everyone! Name as many animals as you can think of!" Something like fifty French animal names went on the board. Then he said, "Okay, I'm going to teach you what these animals say in French." (Did you know that animals speak differently in France than they do in the US?) He had all of us making animal noises until we were laughing like crazy. It was the best French lesson ever.

Its things like that which have Pete saying, "Ousmane's missing a few goats." O, but I must explain to you about the goats. Its something akin to, "bats in the attic," or "a few eggs short of a dozen." Except goats are incredibly important in traditional Senegalese society, so they happen to be the metaphor of choice. And its a wonderful metaphor. You can explore endless variations. That's all we did on the bus to Guede: tease each other about how many goats we had. "I think your goats have wandered off." "You better watch out-- your goats are looking pretty sickly to me." Or (should someone happen to say something particularly outrageous) "Oh my God! You must be missing ALLLLLLLLLLL your goats!"

Then someone started asking Alassane his opinion on the goat levels of various persons on the team. The more goats you have the better, you see-- the more sane and intelligent you are. He said that I had only two goats. But he gave Jess ten goats. And I know it was only something small, a silly joke, but I got SO MAD, and SO JEALOUS of Jess. I was outraged over his assessment of my goat levels.

Then later, when I met Alassane in the village, I made a point of refusing to hug him and very coldly saying goodbye. I told him I couldn't hug anyone who believed I only had two goats. Then he told me, "I think you have a hundred, goats, Charlotte!" And I gave him a big hug. Namuri said, "You have to watch out for Alassane, Charlotte. He's a real player. He's telling you sweet lies in order to worm his way into your affections." And I said. "Never, never, Namuri! Alassane is a very honest man. I really trust him, you know."

But then the next time I asked Alassane how many goats I had, he said, "Not only do you have one goat, Charlotte, but it a sick, sick, goat. It is a lame, crippled goat, with......" (here he paused to think) "only one eye and one foot." And then he was smiling triumphantly, and the whole room was shouting the Senegalese version of, "Ooooh, BURN!!!" But I had my revenge when Sydney told him his sole goat was a blind one with no testicles.

So anyway, maybe Ousmane is a few goats short of a herd, but he's really a very nice man. He was born in Guede-Chantier and splits his time between there and Dakar. You have to understand the distinction between "village mayor" and "village chief." The village chief is more concerned with daily manners of governance; settling disputes between people and so on. Village mayors, on the other hand, almost without exception, live in Dakar. Their role is to butter up the central administration and the various NGOs, so that their village will be in for a share of the dough when the time comes. The best mayor is the one who brings the most money back to his village. Of course, most of them embezzle like mad.

I don't think Ousmane would embezzle though, because he really loves his village. Let me sketch his personality a little further. Once I head some loud music and was walking down the street to see where it was coming from. It was another political rally, naturally. I reached the edge of the crowd and suddenly someone tackled me with a hug from behind. I screamed!!! What random Senegalese man was attacking me?? I turned around and it was, you guessed it..... Ousmane, with his usual goofy smile on his face. Oh Ousmane. Then he started talking about the "Free Hugs," video on YouTube. If you've never seen it, you should definitely look it up. Basically this guy gets this idea to write "Free Hugs" on a cardboard sign and walk the streets, displaying it. At first everyone ignores him, then they begin to take advantage of his offer. Soon there are mobs of people hugging him. It becomes this Thing. Soon Free Hug events are being organized in cities across the globe. Its all on film, you should see it.

That was the day I was wearing my pretty red dress that I bought in Dakar for the equivalent of five dollars. Its really gorgeous, its got rainbow tie-dye patterns and rainbow beads and stuff, I'll show it to you when I come back to North America. But when I came back from the political rally wearing that dress, my family was SHOCKED. They were absolutely DISMAYED. It turned out the president had made this big announcement on TV, "Anyone who is not in agreement with my regime should show up to the rallies wearing red!" So unknowingly, unwillingly even, I had been a dissenter. I was mildly amused by the whole event, but my family was distressed for me. I tried to excuse myself by saying, "the dress is more pink than red, really," and assure them I had no intention of returning to the rally. But all the same, I had to go to my room and change to a blue dress before they were happy again. The president has been known to jail journalists who disagree with him, but I don't think I was in any danger really.

I was sitting on the stoop helping Jess peel onions while the final rally was taking place. Ousmane dropped by at one point, all exhilarated from having made a speech. I asked him what he had spoken about, and he laughed and said it was untranslatable. Jess and I howled in protest. "Try, anyway! Try, try!" But then his phone rang, and he gasped, "They need me!" and before we could get another word in, he was swooping away to the rescue like a disorganized, flustered, super-hero.

And the next morning we found out his PARTY had won. But then we had to wait and see whether Ousmane himself would be chosen. (This business of chosing the party first, and then the man, is just the reverse of the way things are done in the US.) So I'm going to keep you in suspense a little. You'll find out when I tell you about my third visit. I have a whole shitload of blogs written, but I think it might be a bit much if I uploaded them all at once. So I'll just post one a day unti I run through everything I've written in Guede-Chantier.

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.

In Which I Describe My Service Learning Project

When we were brainstorming in Dakar before traveling to Guede, I was painfully aware of my own limitations as far as the service learning project was concerned. We were supposed to mobilize our own funds, and as a student, my financial resources are limited. I thought about a lot of different options, but the idea of working to improve the library tempted me the most. Libraries were what Andrew Carnegie built to ease his conscience of his ill-gotten gains. I love reading and I come from a family that loves reading. I truly believe in the power of books to take you beyond your own time and place-- and in doing so, expand the power of your spirit, the range of your imagination. Books are what can make you realize that the world is bigger than your own little village.

Also, unlike other projects, "improving the library" was flexible in size. If I could raise funds for bookshelves full of volumes, that would be wonderful. But if I could only manage to contribute a few shelves, that would be okay too. I wanted a flexible commitment so I wouldn't be put in the position of promising something I couldn't deliver.

I was astonished and a little alarmed by how unrealistic my classmates were during the brainstorming session. They were saying things like, "build a new school building. build an addition onto the hospital." Rather than thinking of their own abilities, they were thinking of the village's needs. Which is admirable and everything, but you need to be aware of what you can and cannot do. I can't blame my classmates for it, because the U.N. does exactly the same thing on a grander scale. It must be a flaw built into human brains.

After my Senegalese friend Emmanuel saw the ramshackle classroom building in Guede, he wanted to "build a new school building." Our teachers told him very gently and tactfully that he needed to be more realistic. I was less tactful. I rolled my eyes and said, "Where are you going to get the lumber for it, pull it out of your pocket?" I don't know why I'm so impatient with people who think all you need is good intentions.

Eventually, Emmanuel decided to join my library project, because even if it wasn't as grandiose as building a new school, it was still in the field of education. And I have to admit it is a relief to have a Senegalese person on the team, to help with languages, navigating the city, etc. Although I worry that I must be a very irritating teammate for Emmanuel because I'm so full of my own plans and ideas. I don't want to steamroller over him in my excess of enthusiasm.

Well, I was prepared to find all sorts of problems in the Guede library. I know that sometimes library projects in Africa fail because people don't bring back books. They told me they would find me a "village mentor" for me, and I could begin by interviewing him. So I prepared a list of questions to tactfully interrogate him on the library's functioning.

My mentor was quite simply the school official who held the keys to the library and worked in the office next door to it; his name was Monsieur Saal. We cordially shook hands as I swallowed down my nervousness. How often do students used the library? I asked. Monsieur Saal appeared embarassed. He hedged and hedged. Finally, he was forced to admit that not a single student had yet borrowed a book. In fact, only six students even possessed library cards.

I swallowed and took a moment to assimilate that. This was a little more than I was bargaining for. Gradually, I grew to understand the nature of the problem. The library had been created by the students who had visited Guede-Chantier last semester. Someone's church had made quite a substantial donation towards the project. They had painted and renovated the room and filled it with books and shelves. The library had officially existed for two months, and it was quite a pleasant little room. "Bienvenue," (Welcome) was written on the chalkboard in all different colors of chalk. One wall was decorated with a mural of handprints in rainbow colors of paint. Above the mural it said, "Mains du Monde," (Hands of the World.)

But everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. I sneezed as I walked through the room. Then Monsieur Saal said, "Oh dear, the termites have gotten to these books." He flipped through them and I saw that three or four shelves full of books were riddled with holes. The wall behind the bookshelf was streaked with what looked like thick sandy trails, betokening the presence of hungry insects. "The students last semester told us we should buy bug-spray," said Monsieur Saal, "But bugspray, you know, is just so difficult to get....." he clicked his tongue.

"How do the students borrow books?" I asked.

"Oh, all they have to do is knock on my office door and get me to unlock the library for them. But they never knock on my door," said Monsieur Saal, neatly excusing himself from all responsibility.

"Well," I said, as tactfully as possible, "The real problem seems to be there is no librarian." (Remember that this whole conversation is taking place in French, and you will be that much more impressed with me. I am SO glad I studied French hard when I was back at Bard.) "You clearly are already burdened with too many responsibilities. You don't have time to sit there in the library, dusting shelves and lending out books."

"Exactly!" said Monsieur Saal. "I am a very busy man. I have lots of responsibilities at this school."

"Also, I think students might be intimidated to come into your office, and ask you to open the library for them," I said.

"Nonsense! Of course not!"

"If I was a student, I would be afraid of bothering you when you were busy," I said. "Here's an idea; what if we create a team of student volunteers to be librarians? They can take turns lending books and make sure the library isn't neglected. It'll give them a sense of ownership and get them used to being in the building."

Monsieur Saal appeared completely shocked. "Trust.... trust.... students?" he stuttered. "Trust them with the KEY? Trust them with RECORD-KEEPING? That's a ridiculous idea. Students can't handle that kind of responsibility!"

I totally disagreed. I think students are capable of just about anything. But our teachers had told us over and over, before we left to Guede-Chantier, that we must approach our work with a humble attitude. We couldn't just be arrogant Americans, blasting our way into town and assuming we knew everything. "You must work WITH your village partners, trust their judgement, and solicit their opinions," they said. We had two teachers for our service-learning class, one Senegalese man and one American woman, and they both really emphasized this point.

So, remembering what they had told me, I gave Monsieur Saal a dazzlingly bright smile and told him, "This is your village, this is your school. I'm just an outsider. I don't know anything. You'll have to be really kind and tell me what the best way is of doing things."

Monsieur Saal appeared taken aback. "You're not like the students last semester," he told me. "They didn't ask ME what to do. They knew exactly what to do already." He seemed very disconcerted.

Then my teacher (a tall Senegalese man called "As") popped into the room. "Well, how is it going?" he inquired cheerily.

"This young lady is very prepared," Monsieur Saal said. "She had a list of questions written out and everything!" I had the strange impression of being a circus animal who had performed her trick correctly. Blushing in embarassment, I looked at my knees.

Prof As asked a few piercing question and was quickly brought up to date on the state of the library. As soon as he heard no one was using the library, he began to shake his head slowly back and forth. Monsieur Saal now was starting to look REALLY embarassed. "Don't worry about anything," he begin to say, "The library project is going really well, I have everything under control, and even if there's nobody using it now...."

"It's important that people use the library," Prof As told Mr. Saal gently. "It's important."

Mr. Saal's torrent of excuses dried up in the face of this undeniable fact. He rocked slowly back and forth in his chair, biting his lip. The two of them, my teacher and my mentor, begin to talk together. To my relief, I found I could follow their French. Soon it emerged that Prof As was suggesting they create a team of student volunteers to care for the library.

"That's exactly what I suggested!" I cried.

Prof As gave me an approving nod as Mr. Saal renewed his flood of objections. But Prof As cut him short. "I know of a great big library in Dakar," he said, "that runs entirely off of student volunteer labor."

Well, if that was the way they did things in DAKAR, what could Mr. Saal say against it? Dakar was the Big City, and Guede-Chantier was only a little village in the boondocks. "All right, maybe we can organize something like that," he said reluctantly.

"Pick six responsible students, so we can meet with them tommorow," As ordered imperiously.

Impossible. Impossible. Mr. Saal was too busy. We would simply have to wait a few days.

"We're LEAVING in a few days," Prof As pointed out. My gaze ping-ponged from one man to another as they locked their eyes in a staring contest. Mr. Saal was sweating. My face blossomed in a smile as I recognized the dynamic. Prof As. was above Mr. Saal on the dominance hierarchy. He was educated, he came bringing foreigners with him from the Big City. He carried himself with authority and confidence. Also, he was six-and-a-half Mr. Saal caved.

Emmanuel then joined me and we started talking with teachers. I asked them all what books the library needed, and they all said the same thing as Mr. Saal. "We don't have enough copies of each book in the library. There are some books there is only one copy of! We need lots of copies of each book."

I had come to Guede-Chantier anxious to work WITH my villager partners and listen to their suggestions. But this answer was completely ridiculous. They were missing the entire concept of "library." The purpose of a school library is to provide students with a wide variety of fun and enriching books, and teach them to love reading. In a tiny one-room library, you don't want 20 copies of each book. You want as many different books as possible. This is just common sense.

Its understandable to be concerned about textbook shortages, but it was beyond our means to buy a textbook for everyone in the school. The sensible thing to do would be to get a few copies and hold them in the library for reference. In that case, it would be just plain stupid to buy more copies than there were chairs in the library. I hate to say it, but nobody seemed to really be thinking things through. The one sensible suggestion I got was from a geography teacher who wanted an atlas.

Anyway, so this should provide you with plenty of food for thought about Development in third-world countries. The students from last semester did a fantastic job, they really did. Since coming back from Guede-Chantier, I've been in email contact with them. The student who came from the church who made the donation was really upset to hear the library was being neglected. Apparently they set up this huge committee with lots of teachers and officials to make sure the library was well-managed. Everyone acted really enthusiastic and promised to take good care of the library. But then the students go away and everyone forgets about it. And if Emmanuel and I had been interested in something other than books..... say, organic agriculture or food preservation..... what would be happening to the library now? Who would be taking care of it?

But anyway, we had a nice meeting with the student volunteer committtee and started things in motion. Maybe when we make our next visit to Guede-Chantier, we'll see improvements, who knows? I'm actually a little anxious about seeing how things have gone in my absence. Doing things in the real world is hard. Its not as black-and-white as it seems when you read pages full of theory. My first priority is to find fun books. I want to show the kids that reading doesn't have to be a chore, it can be enjoyable. When I think about how much I miss my friends and family and boyfriend, I feel discouraged. But I love kids, and if I can make them excited about something new, I'll consider the project a success.