Senegal!

This one’s long. And I mean really long. Like the make yourself a cup of coffee first long. Just thought I’d give you a heads up :)
We got into Dakar last Thursday night and it was hot! It doesn’t help that we have to wear pants. I still haven’t gotten used to the heat over a week later. It’s really humid and always more that 30°C sometimes 40°C so you feel sticky and sweaty all the time. I’ve never been this hot in my life! But enough complaining about the heat. You’re all probably getting mad at me and thinking, “Well Sarah, here its -30°C and snowing so don’t complain!” though I must say I think that I prefer the snow to this disgusting heat. I’m also finding that my French is coming very much in handy. Though I don’t speak Wollof, the native language, most people will speak French fluently so I’m having a much easier time than others with no French skills whatsoever.
On Friday we went to a center where nurses are trained to meet with SYTO (Senegal Youth Travel Organisation) students that we will be working with during our time here. We did some icebreaker games and it was so much fun! It was amazing how much we have in common. Around lunch time we were allowed to leave with them so that they could show us around Dakar. My group took us out for lunch where they served yassa, a traditional Senegalese dish with chicken or fish in a really good sauce on rice. They also took us to the beach where we went swimming with our clothes on because no one brought swim suits. We thought that it was a good idea until we were told by our SYTO friends that we couldn’t take a taxi back to the boat like that so we had to walk a long ways. It was worth it though. The only problem is that now I have a very salty pair of pants and we don’t get laundry until after we leave.
Saturday was again spent with the SYTO students. We went back to the center and there was a guest speaker in the morning who talked to us about the dying art of storytelling and shared with us some of the important Senegalese values. We went out for lunch with the SYTO students and in the afternoon there was a youth forum organised by the SYTO kids on topics such as culture, politics and youth employment in Senegal. It was really interesting to hear about what they have to say on topics such as religion, polygamy and education. There are so many different things about the culture here due to the fact that almost everyone is Muslim.
Sunday was a port program. We took the ferry to Goree Island, and island just off the coast of Senegal. It was here that millions of African slaves were kept before they were shipped across the Atlantic to the US, Brazil, Haiti and other countries. It’s hard to guess at its dark history just by looking at the island. There are brightly painted houses and a beautiful beach. It actually looks like something off of a Caribbean postcard. We got a tour of the island from one of the island’s 1000 residents. We visited the slave houses and saw where they were kept before they were shipped across the Atlantic. It was horrible some of the stories that we heard. We saw the door of no return, the door that the slaves passed through to board the boats and never come back. It wasn’t all depressing on the island though. Goree is home to the most prestigious school in Senegal, for girls chosen from across the country because of academic excellence. It was founded by a Senegalese author. It also used to house one of Senegal’s best medical colleges. The island was incredibly touristy. There were vendors everywhere and people constantly trying to sell you art, sculptures, jewellery and other random touristy stuff. We took the ferry back to Dakar after spending a good chunk of the day on the island and a group of us went to a bakery. Here we bought ice cream cakes and took them back to the boat. We ate them all sitting on the dock beside the ship. I felt sick and after our ice cream fest we all had to lay on the dock in the fetal position. It was great!
On Monday we met up with the SYTO kids again to work on our projects. We were separated into three projects: microfinance, health and agriculture. I was in the microfinance group. We visited the SEM office (Senegal Eco village Microfinance Fund) who provides microfinance group loans to people who are living in an eco village. We got a presentation as to what microfinance is, what an eco village and what SEM does. It was very interesting. We also met with the people in charge of the SEM office in Dakar. I was the only one in my group that spoke French fluently so I was asked to do a short presentation on what Class Afloat is and what we do. Afterwards, because I had done the presentation, a lady that had been one of the founders of SEM wanted to talk to me. She was really nice and it was amazing that she chose to talk to me.
Tuesday was our project day! The microfinance group took a two hour bus ride into an eco village outside of Dakar. We got there late in the morning. It was a rural village that the government had invested in to turn it into a sustainable eco village. There are lots of very innovative agricultural techniques that are being used in order for them to grow their food more efficiently. For example, with the new drip irrigation they went from using 10 litres of water every day on a certain crop to only 1 every two days. We got a tour of the village during which all their agriculture and sustainable techniques were explained. Being a bit of a tree hugger, I found some of the little things that they did to make themselves completely sustainable amazing! The people from the village followed us around during the tour. I missed quite a bit of it though because I was talking with some of the little kids from the village. They were so cute! They wanted me to take pictures of them so I did however immediately afterwards they all crowded around the camera wanting to see what the pictures looked like. This was a huge source of amusement and pretty soon even the mom and the grandmother were looking at the pictures, laughing at some of the funny faces that the kids were making. In the afternoon we sat down to ask the villagers questions. The people of the village had applied for a microfinance loan and therefore a SEM representative and a man from the government wanted to talk to them about how to go about receiving a loan and what they would be using it for. The idea of SEM is to not give out individual microfinance loans to a single person but instead group loans to a small group of people. This ensures that if one year there is a bad harvest for example and one person is incapable of paying their loan, there will be others who can help them. The whole village had applied for a loan so that the women could make cheese to sell with the excess milk from the cows. We also got to split up into smaller groups and interview one of the women in town. We, with the help of a few SYTO students, asked her what her life was like, why she lives in an eco village, ect. I interviewed Myriam. She has three children. She invited us into her straw hut so that we could see what it looked like on the inside. This was quite an experience for me. I guess that I thought before going to this village that the people in Africa live in straw huts because they can’t afford anything better and that they’re unhappy there. This really isn’t the case at all. There was a queen sized wooden bed complete with bedside tables and a dresser inside this hut. Myriam was happy with her home and her hut was comfortable and practical. This was really different from the typical Western perspective towards African countries. All in all my project day was incredible. I met some of the nicest, most inviting people ever in this eco village and had a great time.
On Wednesday the teachers decided that we had earned a sleep in day. Yay! I discovered however that after growing accustomed to waking up at a certain time I am no longer capable of sleeping in and I woke up at 8am which was a bit disappointing. There was a group of us that decided to drive out to Lac Rose that day or Pink Lake for all you non- French folks. We caught a small bus for really cheap with the help of a very friendly SYTO student. We had the bus all to ourselves for the day! The bus ride took about an hour and a half. When we got out to the lake our tour guide (yes the bus also included a tour guide/body guard/bartering helper/friend!) took us for a traditional lunch of maffe which is peanut sauce on rice. We also visited the local artisans market. Then it was time for swimming! I would recommend google imaging a picture of this lake so that you can see just how pink the water is because I didn’t get the best pictures:P It was pink because of algae I think. Anyways the lake was also extremely salty. Kind of like the Dead Sea. We had so much fun just floating around. I could float vertically, and my shoulders would be out of the water! It looked like I was standing. When we got out there was a local lady who had brought us fresh water to rinse off. It was really nice of her. It got weird though because the water lady set up some jewellery to try and sell us some. Another lady set some up as well but apparently the water lady had dibs on us because when I picked up a necklace from the second lady, water lady comes running in, yanks the necklace out of my had and pulls me over to her blanket. There was then this huge yelling match between the two ladies and a bit of a catfight. We all decided to run back to the bus. We drove away but as we were leaving we noticed that the crazy water lady had jumped onto the back of the bus! The tour guide and the SYTO guy went over and opened the back door to make her get off but she started screaming and wanted to shove past and onto the bus, insisting that one of us had stolen something though no one did. In the end the tour guide yelled, “Accelerate!” to the bus driver. He gunned it as the tour guide shoved the lady off of the bus and slammed the door. We looked out the back window and watched as the crazy lady ran after the bus with the other lady laughing her head off in the background. What a gong show!
Thursday we had a port program in the morning with shore leave in the afternoon. In the morning I visited a street kid’s center. It was for boys from the ages of 5 to 18 that had been found living on the streets. They were given food, a place to stay, medical care, school, activities, counselling and really anything that they need. There are some volunteers there that so things with the boys such as crafts, tae kwon do, music and basketball. The main goal of the center is to try and unite these kids with their families, because many of them had just gotten separated. There is also mediation between families to find out how the children had gotten separated in the first place. We got a tour of the facility and then we sang some songs with the boys. It was really fun. They were so cute and they loved learning new Canadian songs, as well as teaching us their Senegalese music. In the afternoon I just went out for internet which was when I posted that Morocco blog.
Friday was our last day in Senegal. There was shore leave in the morning so I visited Marche des HLM, the main fabric market in Dakar. The fabrics were amazing! So many vibrant, African prints. You were even able to get clothes made on the spot but we didn’t have enough time for that. In the afternoon we had to go back to the ship because there was an open house and reception on the boat for all those people who we had worked with during our time in Dakar such as all the SYTO students, the people from SEM and many more. Sadly, as soon as I got back from the market I got really sick. I’m pretty sure it was heat exhaustion. So I slept through the whole thing. Apparently the really sweet lady from the SEM office was looking for me too :P I ended up staying sick for most of the sail to Cape Verde which leads me to believe that I actually had the flu and not heat exhaustion . The sail was really short so I’m not going to write an entry for it. I’ll just put some stuff here. We saw a sea turtle that had migrated all the way from South America which was cool. It was massive. Also, we needed to conserve water before going into Cape Verde so we could only take saltwater showers, no freshwater. That’s all really. Sorry about the lack of pictures I actually didn’t take that many in this port.

Goree Island

A little girl who followed me around the ecovillage

Myriam, the lady that I interviewed