trying to fill my time - a visit to the market

Well today I should have been in Jeddah, at the start of a tour of Saudi Arabia, but like most other trips planned for this year, it was cancelled and I am spending this holiday period at home in Senegal.  Fully aware that things could be a lot worse (I could be in the UK... ) and that I therefore cannot complain, but also aware that this is the first time in my working life that I have 'wasted' leave from work by staying at home.

We can still travel around Senegal, but with a recent spike in cases (78 new cases reported today - not many in a country of 17 million, but much higher than we had been seeing until around a month ago), the government has closed the beaches, gyms and swimming pools, prohibited all live music and large gatherings, and required all entertainment venues (including restaurants and bars) to close by 11pm.  So a recent idea to take the bus to St Louis to see the Christmas parades was thwarted, and there's little to do here in Dakar right now.

However it occurred to me that I had never been to the big HLM market - the best place to buy fabric, and somewhere a foreigner can walk around without being hassled in the way that they are in the centre of town, although pickpockets and opportunistic thieves are apparently common.  So I went there this morning, the market within walking distance from home at this relatively cool time of year - carrying nothing except a little money well-hidden in a tight jeans pocket under a long Tshirt.  No camera!

I managed to find the famous fabric section, and looked in particular at the various wax fabrics on sale.  Suddenly there was a bit of a commotion in the corner of the square I was in, with a few young men running into the square.  "A battle" I heard someone say, but the young men looked reasonably happy and we all went back to what we'd been doing.  Not long afterwards, however, when I was browsing along one of the narrow, twisting alleyways of the market, it started to feel a bit tense.  People kept looking back in the direction I'd come from (although I could see nothing of interest there), and some were packing up some of the wares they had out the front of their stalls.  I couldn't find out what was going on, as no-one around spoke French and I have only around ten words of Wolof.

It seemed to calm down again, and I continued browsing, but then noticed people packing up their wares again, and I was beckoned to the back of one stall.  Whilst I was there, quite a number of young men ran past, and I noticed that many of them were carrying lumps of broken paving stones in their hands.  But then they passed, and the hand gestures showed me that I could go back out into the alleyway.  As I continued, however, I could see that people were still packing up, and looking anxiously along the alleyway.  Some stall-holders were pulling down the shutters, and locking up - and again I had to duck into a stall as some stone-carrying youths ran past.  I heard someone refer to lacrymogene (tear gas in French - I guess there's no Wolof word for that) - it clearly was time to either find my way out of the market or persuade someone to shelter me behind their shutters.  I saw a local woman try (and fail) to persuade a stall-holder to let her hide inside, so decided to leave, and eventually found my way out to the main road.

There I saw stones all over the place, barricades lying on their side, and heavily-armed riot police around.  No smell of tear gas, however, and no sign of all the young men I'd seen running through the market earlier. 

Talking to the security guard on my building, and checking an online local newspaper, I later discovered that this had been part of an ongoing dispute between the (unlicensed) street-vendors and the authorities who kept trying to 'move them on' from the places where they tried to set up.  There had (at some point) been an exchange of stones and tear gas from the two sides, as well as tires set alight.  It seems that I had picked an interesting day to visit the market although, perhaps fortunately, had missed the main part of the action!

trying to see owls


With 12 days of annual leave still to use up (or lose) before the end of December, and international travel still being so difficult, it seemed like a good time to travel within Senegal - after all, there was a waterfall down south that I hadn't seen, and a few birds that had eluded me so far.  So I contacted the best-known birding guide in the country with a list of the birds I most wanted to see (plus the waterfall) and asked what he could do.

He responded very quickly with a suggested itinerary and price, which I accepted, so a few days later he turned up in the hired 4x4, and we set off on the long journey south.

The first stop was at the lodge in Wassadou on the River Gambia.  I spent a few days there on my own just over a year ago, and to be honest the guide didn't really show me anything that I didn't find myself last year, but still it is a nice place to spend a few days and this year the hippos were close to the lodge.

From there we went further south, via Kedougou to Dindefelo, a small village only 7km from the Guinea border, famous for its waterfall.  He told me that he might change the itinerary planned for the return, omitting the night in Kedougou.  I queried this, said I thought that was a known spot for one of the owls (top of the 'wanted' list I'd shared with him).  He wasn't aware of this, but admitted that he hadn't in any case brought a spotlight (without which you cannot see owls after nightfall, and clearly he didn't know of any daytime roosts).

By this time he was starting to complain about joint pain, grimacing as he tried to make certain movements.  He admitted to me that he had been suffering from some kind of arthritis-like affliction since April, for which he'd had numerous tests and tried various medicines, but so far without a diagnosis or anything to cure it.  He'd decided to take me on as a client so as to see whether he could guide a trip though the pain - and it was becoming apparent that he could not.

On the morning of the walk to the waterfall, for which a local guide (from the village) is compulsory, he backed out half-way there, telling me that the pain was too great and he could not continue.  For this particular walk it didn't matter so much - there may have been some Bar-breasted Firefinches around, I suppose, but probably no owls...

The waterfall was pretty, and I managed a quick swim in the pool (although I didn't stay in for long as the water was really cold!), and wandered slowly back to the village.

Late afternoon, the scheduled time for the next bird walk, the guide suggested that if we walked really slowly, he might be able to cope.  But to see the nightjars we should have been climbing up the escarpment, not meandering about near the lodge at a snail's pace.  Early the next morning he called my phone and told me to get up and meet him near the car as an owl was calling.  It was indeed calling, from high up in a tree, but without a spotlight we couldn't see it.

After breakfast he told me that we would have to abandon the trip as he could not continue - so we started the long (two-day) drive home.  He also told me not to worry about the money - that I would be reimbursed.  But when the conversation turned to the detail of the reimbursement, it was not an easy one.  He started by asking me how much money I thought I should get back.  I told him that the simplest way of calculating this seemed to me to be to use the number of days; I'd paid for 12 but would be back on day 8, therefore was owed for 4 days - one-third of my holiday and therefore I expected to get one-third of my money back (being $600).  Oh no!  The vehicle - by far the most expensive element of the trip - had been hired (and paid in advance) for the full trip, and he would not get any refund for that.  Plus he had miscalculated when he priced the trip originally and included nothing for himself.  He started to go into the specifics of the cost of different elements and I interrupted to ask him how much he thought I should be reimbursed.  $300, he said.

I had some really mixed reactions, as on the one hand he had been dishonest by not being upfront about his physical condition when I contacted him, not giving me the choice as to whether or not to take a risk on his health (which I wouldn't have - there's another guide I could have used), and I was also conscious of his failing to bring a spotlight for the owls.  But on the other hand, he was in a lot of pain with a condition that the doctors had so far been unable to properly diagnose and cure, and which might stop him from ever working again, at least in his specialist field.  He had also told me that with the virtual halt in tourism to Senegal resulting from the pandemic, he had not worked since March.  So I finally told him I'd take a refund of $200 - at which news he cried.  I wasn't sure whether he was crying in gratitude for my generosity or in frustration with my lack of generosity, and still have conflicting thoughts as to whether I should have held out for the $600 or let him off completely.

a very short break in Africa's most dangerous country (apparently)


With all of my organised holiday trips from April onwards cancelled (well, postponed until next year), I decided that I should try to persuade one tour comany to retain a small part of one trip - just an optional add-on for maximum three people, for a two-day trip, that I thought might be feasible - and I succeeded.  So I have just returned from an entirely illogical trip that involved three and a half days of quite expensive travel for just one and a half days of actual holiday - but am enormously happy to have done so as the psychological boost of going away, and to somewhere new, has been huge.

 

So where have I been?


Somalia - to Mogadishu!


Not your run-of-the-mill destination, but a really interesting one and it being somewhere that nobody I know has visited somehow made it feel more of a major trip.  

It is not somewhere that is yet safe to wander around on your own, so the three of us were accompanied throughout by a rota of guides and drivers, with two vehicles and four armed security guards.  So many of the 'sights', from monuments to the ruins of buildings left from the 1991 civil war, were seen only through the car windows (tinted so that people on the street could not see that there were foreigners in there), and we had to be back in our hotel (in the green zone of the city) by 5pm, with my pleas for a taste of the nightlife (Somali tea and shisha pipes, I understand) being met only by a trip just down the road to a gelato place, with us and the guide the only ones there ... but overall it was still an enormously enjoyable and worthwhile trip.

We were able to get out of the vehicles to visit the fish market, which was another step up from most I've visited before (so many sharks, and enormous swordfish), to wander around a secured beach, take a short boat trip, and look at the fishing boats by the remains of the Italian lighthouse.  We also went to the roof of the tallest building in the city (so that one of my fellow travellers could get some good shots of the city from his drone), although passing through a news office on the top floor to get there, I was unable to get the foreign correspondents working there to explain to me why they had a flipchart in the room with the points "I'm a gay" and "Are you gay?" written on it in English.

I would have liked to have been able to interact with more locals - such as the group of women enjoying sitting on the sand with the waves washing over them (all fully covered and veiled, of course) - but even the different perspectives I got from talking to the guides were interesting.  From questions about the motivations of Al Shabab (ideological - ie a stricter version of Islam - according to one local, or just a local version of the mafia there to make money according to a visiting member of the Somali diaspora) to the impact of the recent rapid development of the city (when I asked the guy from the diaspora what the locals thought about them coming back and buying up the land to put up new buildings, he admitted that they were resented - even hated - by those who had stayed on through the civil war), I learned something about the place although was left wanting to hear more.

I was surprised to see no evidence of any Chinese interest there (must be the only country in Africa where they don't appear to have a presence!), but it was interesting to see the other influences, both historic and new.  This ranged from the Italian influence on the cuisine (cappuccinos and lattes, pasta dishes, and superb ice cream), the more prosaic legacy of the UK (from the three-square-pin power sockets to the "UK aid" sign showing that the fish market was constructed with money "from the British people") to the growing Turkish interest in the country (including an enormous, and beautiful, Turkish mosque recently built in the green zone).

Also very interesting was the extent to which the country has taken to mobile (digital) money, so much so that the country is now almost cashless.  It was almost impossible to get change from any purchases we made, and took a great deal of persistence to eventually get myself a Somalian banknote as a souvenir (the largest denomination - 1,000 Somalian shillings - worth 4 US cents on the black market and with a 98% chance of being counterfeit although that doesn't stop people using them as that is all they have).  I was suprised that even the beggars there use mobile money, holding up signs providing their number should you want to send a digital donation their way.

At the end of the trip, our hotel screwed up and failed to provide our airport transfer at the scheduled time, so by the time we got to the airport we were too late for our flight.  We were provided with another night at the hotel, and meals, but as the guide and armed guards were not available we were not able to go out of the hotel.  I have to admit I was quite tempted, as the hotel is in the green zone with multiple checkpoints all around it supposedly keeping it safe, but I followed the instructions and stayed inside, sorting out and uploading my photos.  I realised that I had made the right decision when late in the afternoon I heard several rounds of gunfire from just a couple of blocks away, followed by a circling helicopter and plenty of shouting in the streets; even looking out from my small balcony seemed too dangerous at that stage.

certainty returns

Job certainty, that is, as due to "extensive feedback" my employer has decided not to cut my post, after all.  So the last month of worry and up-and-down emotions has all been for nothing (well, except that it prompted me to get some old emails backed up, I suppose - that will need doing eventually).  Although with some of that feedback coming from my own staff, it is wonderful to discover that I am so valued by them - that is cetainly one positive outcome.

& now I am expected to carry on as if none of this happened, as if I didn't spend the last month trying to persuade myself that I didn't want the stupid job anyway ... now time to build myself back up again to being a hard-working and motivated employee.  Here again, the support of my staff throughout this makes a huge difference, as I am of course very motivated to do the best I can by them.  Plus I've always been one to do whatever I am doing to the best of my ability, so even whilst the motivation fell, I still tried my best.  But it has been hard.

Looking forwards, though, it is such a relief to know that I won't be faced with a return to the UK just as they start to move in to the cold and dark days of winter.  As their COVID cases start to mount again, and lockdowns return.  Just why is it that sub-Saharan Africa is doing so well against the virus??  It's true that we have a very young population, and so there might be many more cases than we know about, affecting young people who remain asymptomatic and thus never get tested.  But on the other hand, the trace-and-test regime here for contacts is very strong, and those testing positive are moved to isolation facilities even if they are asymptomatic, thus restricting the virus spread.  Rules are rules, so like everyone else here I wear my mask down on my chin as I walk the streets, pulling it up to cover my face as soon as I go into any shops or other busy places - although I've mostly spent my time at home, working with my laptop at my dining table, so my exposure to any potential virus-carriers has been low in any case.


From home I have taken far too many photographs of the early morning sky from my balcony (I haven't had the will-power to do anything involving any commitment, such as starting a book), but I was so happy when the place where I go swimming re-opened (again) last weekend, and in celebration I swam 80 lengths of the pool - 2 km!  Which of course doesn't help with the weight situation - I have lost so much weight, clearly my home diet is insufficient but this is only apparent now that I don't spend 60% of my time away eating hotel breakfast buffets (how I miss those!!) and restaurant dinners.  Most of my clothes no longer fit, which is not a problem for the five days a week I am indoors working at my dining table, but for the one to two days I go to the office, and even for quick trips across the road to the supermarket, I am struggling to find anything I can wear.  Maybe I need to start drinking more wine!!

uncertain times

 


Still trying, as we all are, to squeeze some enjoyment out of this strange year, I accepted an invitation from someone I hardly knew to spend a day out of Dakar, some 60km away, where he was going to visit his parents.  The picture above was taken from his front door.  There we had time for a walk along the beach, as well as a walk through the fields to where his father was tending aubergine, pepper and peanut plants.  It was pleasant.

& I suppose the year hasn't been too bad, in the sense I that I have been kept busy with work, as well as sorting out personal admin (backing up old photos and personal emails, for example).  Now we are into the depths of the rainy season - and a particularly rainy one, with as much rain falling yesterday as we normally get in the whole three months, leaving many suburbs flooded (and indeed the whole of the peninsula where Dakar is located was cut off from the rest of the country for a few hours, until the floodwaters subsided) - which means high humidity as well as rain, so even the thought of walking around the streets is less inviting than normal.  Our museums, live music venues, national parks and beaches remain closed, and gyms and swimming pools have had to close their doors again as the number of cases in the country continues to (slowly) rise.  So, in the last year of my contract, I cannot make the most of my remaining time here - so frustrating!

Making the situation worse is the knowledge that my contract may even be cut short, with COVID-related falls in the funding of our organisation leading to large proposed cuts, including a 30% reduction in my department's budget.  I've been formally told that my position is one of those at risk, although at the same time I know that there are people lobbying to retain it.  So I sit and await the outcome of consultations on the proposals, not even able to make the most of what might be my last few months here because of the measures in place to stop the spread of this stupid virus.  Hence my focus on backing up personal emails, and so on.

I have also been mulling over what I might do if this job does end soon.  Whether I would go back to the UK.  There are certainly things I would appreciate about going back - reading somewhere today about a glut of figs in Europe right now had my mouth watering! - but as I've been backing up the old emails, I've been reading them, and have been reminded about the things I don't really want to go back to.  The long, cold months of winter (cold to me, who has had fourteen years of life in hot countries), the lack of sunlight (hard to imagine now that it can really get dark at 4pm!!), and the current politics of the place which I know would infuriate me.  Then I wonder whether it would be possible (practically as well as financially) to go and live for a while in Morocco, or Croatia, or Istanbul, or to go backpacking around eastern Europe or south-east Asia.  I can get quite carried away with the possibilities ... and then have to remind myself that I may still get to keep my job.  It's a difficult mental balance between on the one hand convincing myself that if I lose my job it won't really be a bad thing, and on the other hand retaining my motivation to stay!

Hoping that they announce their decision soon as the uncertainty is probably the worst thing, even though I know that every day that goes past without a decision being made, is another day of living here in this warm climate, and another day of earning a salary.

enjoying the local cuisine

 

Not a particularly well-composed photo, as it was only supposed to be a record shot for my own memories, not something to share.  But then I thought about how good some of the Senegalese dishes are, and how important hospitality is in this country, and decided that I needed to share it as there is no way I can do this dish justice in any attempt to describe it.

For a start, the dish - thieboudienne as it's called locally - is usually translated for foreigners as "rice and fish".  Yes, the basis of the dish is broken rice, and it contains fish (typically grouper or snapper), but it also has a great variety of vegetables (in the case above, it has carrots, cabbage, sweet potato, yams, bitter tomato and aubergine), often other seafood (eg the prawns and crabs above), plenty of onions, tomato and tomato paste, local ingredients such as yet (some kind of mollusc, typically fermented in sand) and nététou (fermented locust beans) and other seasonings.  The lady who made the one above told me that it took her around three hours.

It's eaten out of the platter it is served in - either with the fingers or with a spoon - each person digging in to the rice nearest to them but with those close to a bigger ingredient typically cutting chunks off and delivering them to other diners - and the host(ess) sharing out the fish.  Typically any foreign guest will find huge piles of everything placed in front of them!  It's commonly agreed to be the national dish, but there are plenty of other local dishes such as chicken or fish yassa (in a sauce of onions, lemon juice and dijon mustard), and mafe (a kind of peanut sauce).  All three are delicious.

What you might notice from the picture above is evidence of alcohol consumption!  In fact, of the group I ate this with, the only person I noticed not drinking was the African-American amongst us.  Certainly in Dakar, all of the supermarkets have a well-stocked alcohol section, with wines, beers, liqueurs and spirits held in much greater quantities than required to supply the 5% of the population who are Christian.  In fact the Muslim leaders here do not talk about alcohol and the population happily drink - although I've not seen evidence of excessive drinking.

I have to admit though that this platter above was a rare special treat for me, and there is no way I am going to make the effort and take the time required to prepare any of the local dishes for my own consumption when I can rustle up some pasta in a tomato and onion sauce in fifteen minutes!

marking time

 

As the COVID cases continue to rise, with an increasing proportion coming from community transmissions rather than through follow-up of contacts of known cases, the government has started shutting us back down again.  My walk to the swimming pool this morning was in vain, as it turns out that gyms, pools and beaches were all shut down by a government proclamation this weekend - likely to be for a three-month period 😭.

Bars and nightclubs have also been closed again.  I suppose I should be grateful that I went to a bar - my first time during 2020, I think - on Friday evening for an expat social do, and managed to strike up potential friendships (numbers exchanged) with a couple of people there.  Just in time, before it became pretty much impossible to go out and meet new people once again.  Also yesterday I visited someone I met at one of the same expat events a year or so ago, following increasing interaction on facebook, and got on well with his wife plus exchanged contact info with another guest.  So perhaps my social life will pick up even as the opportunities to go out diminish once more.

It's sad that it has come to this, as the government were dealing with this rather well, but they gave in to the various pressures to relax various parts of the restrictions they had put in place, with the inevitable results.  I don't know anyone here who has been infected, so the pandemic itself still all seems rather distant, but seeing what is going on elsewhere in the world we know we cannot be immune, and with the low level of testing here you have to ask what is the true extent of the problem.  The age profile of the country helps us, as does the hot, humid rainy season that we are now well into, but I can only see things getting worse.

So apart from my two outings this weekend, and my now curtailed weekly swim, I have continued to do nothing here but work, look out of the window at the sky (the photo above being one of many I have taken over this period), and enjoy mango season, now sadly coming to an end.

I know I mentioned in my last post that my department would be sharing news in early August of job cuts, but as yet they have not done so although the cuts will still go ahead.  It's unsettling - for me more than my colleagues as I am the only one in my department for whom losing my job would also mean losing my current home.  I guess it is on my side that my employer has decided to extend our organisational international travel ban until 31 December (out of concern over the safety of flying allied with an expressed duty of care to staff) as I would have a good argument that they could not fly me home before that date even had they wanted to end my contract in, say, October.  But I try to push the thoughts from my mind, as the world is so uncertain at the moment that I could not plan what to do next - where to go - even if I knew that I were to be amongst the victims.

and the pandemic drags on

Another month or more has passed since I last posted here, and really there is nothing to say.  Cases here continue to rise - although at nothing like the rates in the Americas - and even the President is currently in quarantine after one of his ministers fell sick with the virus, but life still goes on pretty much as normal.

Something like 95% of the population wear masks on the street, I would say, but we wear them on our chin, ready to pull up should we see a policeman (whilst they were never made compulsory on the street, there is still pressure to wear them) or should we go into any more crowded area.  The night-time curfew has been cut back so now covers only 23:00 - 05:00, and restaurants and bars have re-opened although still closing very early so that staff can get home by 23:00.

Last weekend I actually got out to see some live music, as a restaurant had organised a 'mini-festival' on their in-house stage.  I turned up at 15:00 to see Philip Monteiro play, followed by a few other bands, staying until they closed at 21:30.  I ate an over-priced meal (with a small glass of house wine costing the equivalent of $6.85!!) - but it was worth it just to get out of the apartment/supermarket bubble I've otherwise mostly been stuck in.

To my great joy, many private swimming pools have now re-opened, although with strict controls on the numbers allowed in at one time, and changing facilities not yet available.  So yesterday, with my reservation made a few days earlier, I turned up at the pool and got in the water for the longest swim I've ever had (just short of 60 lengths) as I just did not want to get out of the water.  I had discovered that I missed swimming enormously, and I've moved it to the top of my list of non-negotiables for my eventual retirement!

Of course I miss travelling too, although I've not had too much time to think about it as I have been working harder than ever.  Late nights, weekends ... but as there has been nothing much else to do, I haven't really minded.  Our borders are still closed to all except goods and evacuation/repatriation flights, and given the number of COVID cases coming in with the repatriations, I don't think the government will be in any hurry to open things up more.  Thankfully my employer announced that this year, international employees will be allowed to carry an additional 15 days of leave forward into next year, so I don't need to worry as yet about 'wasting' leave.

That's if I'm still here by then, as we have been hit by the economic slowdown as much as anyone else as a result of which our department has been told to downsize; we should know by early August who is to be cut.  In some ways I'm quite vulnerable, as I'm now the only expat left in my department, and you do have to wonder whether they will see the value of paying the costs of my being out in West Africa (my rent, medical insurance, annual flight home, etc) when I can't actually travel to any of the countries any more but am working online from my dining room table!  On the other hand, I'm one of the better performers and certainly the hardest working of the management team in my department.  A bit concerning, but there's nothing I can do to influence the decision so I just have to make the most of the mangoes - and the swimming pool! - whilst trying not to worry.

life goes on (nearly) as normal



I was just re-reading my last post, and reflecting that little has changed here.  We now have fifteen times the number of cases we had when I posted that in March, but still, less than 2,000 cases in a country of 17 million people is not too bad.  & recovery rates so far are high, and also quite fast, with the controversial hydroxychloroquine being the treatment used here (and I think in much of francophone Africa), in part probably because the French doctor who produced the study has strong links with Senegal having grown up here.

The mood of the population has certainly changed though.  On the few occasions when I go outside, I do not wear a mask until I arrive at a place where it is compulsory (to enter the supermarket, for example).  There seems no point to me in getting hot and uncomfortable behind a mask when I am simply walking along the street minding my own business, not touching anything or interacting with anyone.  But I am just about the only person left, at least in my part of town, who does not wear one in the street, and the silent peer pressure is starting to get to me!

I have not heard of any recent protests over the semi-lockdown we have, with everyone in the country seemingly on board with it.  The government has taken steps to support those in need, with food parcels delivered in the poorer parts of the city, and a month's free electricity to those using below a defined limit (I think this is meant to target the poor, but as a keen environmentalist who therefore tries to minimise her use of fossil fuels I also qualified!).  So it was quite surprising, and disappointing to many people, that the president just announced yesterday some loosening of the restrictions we have, in particular allowing churches and mosques to re-open.  One can only assume that he has bowed to pressure from the religious leaders (particularly as we are in the month of Ramadan when Muslims try particularly hard to be good), but it certainly will mean more contact between people, even if they enforce a one metre distance between attendees as I understand he is asking for.

I hope that having done well so far, the bulk of the Senegalese people will not change their behaviour as a result of this change, but my local colleague shared with me today that his countryfolk "lack discipline", so we shall see.

As for me, whilst sad about missing out on planned work trips and holidays, and worried about the prognosis for travel over the next few years (more restricted, more expensive...), I have coped fine with the situation.  You would think that working from home and mostly interacting only with the staff in the supermarket and the guard on my building's front door (apart from a few phone calls with my parents), I would be feeling lonely - starved of human contact! - but that hasn't been the case.  If anything, I feel better than I normally do in that respect, which I can only assume is because I know that during this period I am not missing out on a social scene since no-one else is going out either!

I've been for a few walks around locally, and on Saturday walked rather further in my totally incorrect assumption that we were shortly to face a tighter lockdown.  I ended up at Ouakam beach - a small beach used by fishermen to store their boats and land their catches - where I'd never been before.  I watched a couple of boats come ashore, landing their catches which included an octopus and two guitar rays.  As you might expect there were cats around the place, and being Senegal there were also sheep (they are everywhere), and one lone pelican who apparently has based himself there as he has some injury that prevents him from living a more normal pelican life.  In fact in most respects it was a regular Senegalese fishing village - except for the masks.


Senegal responding to the pandemic


Given the way things have developed, you won't be surprised to read that I didn't get back to Touba - indeed the Kazu Rajab was cancelled, along with all other religious pilgrimages for the next month, and indeed all gatherings of more than 50 people.  Which includes the gathering of the faithful at Friday prayers.

The power of the Mourides, which I mentioned in my previous post, came to the fore briefly as the government put in place measures to react to the pandemic.  A handful of imams ignored the ban on Friday prayers at the mosque (indeed one made a public pronouncement that matters of life and death are in the hands of God and not for man to try to interfere with!).  Video footage from Yoff, in the northern suburbs of Dakar, went viral - where the police went in to arrest the imam, and the faithful rioted (well, watching the footage, I'd say the bored, unemployed, young men rioted...) - but it was noticeable that no police dared to enter the Great Mosque in Touba, where prayers also went ahead.  Despite Touba being the place with the most cases in the country.

It was a delicate moment, I guess, but there were conversations behind-the-scenes, and the leading lights in the various brotherhoods here have now all endorsed the government's approach.  This was another moment when I felt quite proud of this country.

It will be fascinating to see how they deal with the coronavirus.  So far we have some 120 cases, nearly a quarter of which originated from one man - a "Modou-Modou", the term used here for Senegalese who emigrate to Europe, especially Italy, where the majority go.  He returned to visit his family in Touba, and seems to have been one of the super-spreaders, I think.  Poor guy was interviewed in hospital and said how embarrassed and ashamed he felt to have brought the virus in.  I'm not the only white resident of Senegal who feels a little relieved at this, so unlike in a couple of other countries in the region we are not (at the moment anyway) being targeted by angry locals as 'virus-carriers'.

The government here should have shut the airport earlier, as so many cases have been brought in, but they left it too late as we have already reached the stage of community transmissions (although only a handful as yet), meaning the virus has spread beyond the chain of known contacts.  So what does the government of country such as this do, at this stage?  They have banned large gatherings, they have shut schools, national parks, theatres, etc, they have drastically restricted the number of people allowed in a vehicle at one time so as to enforce social distancing there (and all bus passengers are supposed to wear one of those stupid masks!) - and they have introduced a night-time curfew, from 8pm until 5am.  Of course these measures will help, but the virus does not go to sleep during daylight hours when people are still out-and-about.

However, the consequences of a daytime lockdown are scary.  Many people here (I'm sure I read somewhere 60%) live from day-to-day, that is, they earn enough in a day to buy food for the next day - and that is all.  They have no savings, no cupboard full of stockpiled food, no access to credit, and there is no social welfare system - that's one of the main reasons the birthrate is so high, as your children are your insurance policy for when you get too old/infirm to go out each day hustling to earn money somehow.  So a lockdown means that either these people starve, or we get serious social unrest.  Plus any cutback in activity (including the current effective closure of restaurants, bars and the tourist trade) will result in more unemployment, more poverty and more childhood malnutrition.

Additionally, we have to consider that the poorer section of the population (the majority) live in cramped accommodation where it is not possible to maintain the required distancing.  Nor do they have easy access to clean water, and will not spend money on soaps and sanitising gels if they do not have enough to eat.  Thus the major elements of the public health measures recommended by the World Health Organisation - social distancing and hygiene - are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to implement here. 

& all this is to prevent the spread of a virus which mostly threatens older people, in a continent where only 6% of the population is over 65.

I have no idea what the answer is (and am not necessarily suggesting that we sacrifice a portion of those over-65s to save the rest), but if you can mentally distance yourself from the suffering of individuals and consider the bigger picture, it is a terrible, although fascinating, dilemma for the government.

the spiritual heart of Senegal


The ongoing panic over 'the virus' has even affected me out here in Senegal, as my employer has forbidden all except critical international travel.  Whilst wondering (as regional head of a department whose work necessarily involves international travel) what I am going to find for my staff to do over the next few months, and realising that my own life is about to get a lot more expensive as I suddenly have to fund my own food and drink, and use electricity, water and gas at home, now that I shall not be spending half of my time in hotels, it does at least give me some time to see the remaining corners of Senegal.  As ever, there was work I could have done on Sunday - but with time to do it on Monday, I was able to take the Sunday off.

I'd never been to Touba, Senegal's second city in terms of population but in terms of its influence on people's lives, its most important city.  It's not a tourist centre, and there is no paid accommodation available for visitors as any such places would apparently risk becoming centres for the consumption of alcohol and cigarettes, both of which are banned in Touba.  But the Great Mosque of Touba, consecrated in 1887 by Sufi saint and founder of the Mouride Brotherhood, Amadou Bamba (who also has his tomb there) and subject to constant works to upgrade it, seemed to be something I should go and see.

Unlike many mosques, it is not one you can wander into on your own.  Even standing on the other side of one of the streets around the mosque you have to be properly dressed, so I was soon stopped as I had brought a scarf but had not realised that trousers on women are considered inappropriate.  But only a few yards further along the street I was stopped again, this time by someone in a guard's uniform, and as I explained that I was on my way to the junction to walk away from the mosque he countered that he had already pressed the call button on his phone and did I want to speak to one of the mosque guides, who would provide me with one of the organisation's sarongs before taking me in.  A well-organised place!

The guide appeared quickly, and I asked the price of a tour.  No price.  But an obligatory donation.  OK, well I'd come this far (183km, talking nearly three hours) so I agreed and got kitted up.  Once in the courtyard, he asked me how much I was going to donate.  I told him I had no idea ... as I didn't know whether the tour was going to last 5 minutes or 30, nor how interesting it would be.  He assured me we'd be a minimum 30 minutes but it could be much more if I wished, so I promised CFA10,000 (equivalent to $18) and clearly that was enough, as we actually spent more than two hours wandering around the place, watching the goings on, with him explaining something of the history and religion and me taking lots of photos.

The interior is beautiful, heavily decorated, some of it tiled but there is also a lot of stucco work, plus stained glass windows and generally a lot of light and space.  To be honest I've forgotten now how many people it holds, how many metres high are the minarets, and so on, but that information is probably out there in wikipedia anyway.

The mosque is at the centre of the Mouride brotherhood, which is the most powerful of the various sufi brotherhoods in this very devout country.  Sufism can perhaps be described as a mystical form of Islam, whose followers search for the union of their spirit with Allah in this life, not just in the next - not through the regular ways of orthodox Islam, but through ritual and meditative types of prayer - and in some sufi traditions such as the gnawa in Morocco, through music, or for the dervishes in Turkey and Sudan though their whirling 'dance'.  All of these aiming to take the followers away from the distractions of the material world.

Whilst it stresses the direct relationship between the believer and Allah (this being the distinguishing feature), it does also place a lot of emphasis on the spiritual guide (referred to in Senegal as a marabout), and these are handsomely rewarded for advising their followers, and are heavily involved in business as well as more spiritual matters.

Mouridism is only one of the sufi brotherhoods in Senegal, but the only one founded by a Senegalese, and the most dynamic and powerful due to a large extent to their belief in the sanctity of work and their historical connection with (one could say monopoly over) the production of groundnuts, a major export crop of Senegal.  They also control the transportation sector.  Whilst only some 40% of the population, they have a great deal of political clout, such that all politicians, even those who are not themselves Mourides, seek endorsement from the leader of the Mourides (the grand marabout or caliph) in Touba.

So it was a place I felt I had to visit, given its role in the country.

Perhaps I should have tried to visit during one of the pilgrimages, when several million people descend on the city to pray, but I'm not quite sure how that works as a non-believer.  My guide invited me to come back in a couple of weeks for the Kazu Rajab (the anniversary of the birth in 1945 of the second caliph of Touba), which happens to coincide this year with the date when Muslims commemorate the ascent of Mohamed to heaven.  Apparently there could be 3-4 million people there so it would be a great experience.  This being Senegal, however, my guide also managed to fit into the conversation how I am beautiful intelligent, charismatic ... and should be married to him.  So I think I might have to give the pilgrimage a miss ...

Not to mention that the government announced today 16 coronavirus cases in Touba.  Not being in an "at risk" group, I'm not particularly concerned about the virus, but perhaps it would not be the best time to be in close proximity to several million people!


at the African music festival in Zanzibar


Just got back from a trip to Zanzibar, timed to take in the Sauti za Busara festival of African music.  Some of the music was very good, although ironically my favourite was a Senegalese singer and her band (Mamy Kounaté - and she was also on the same flight back home and even on the same bus as me from Dakar airport into town!).  Some of the more local jazz/taarab/Swahili music was also very enjoyable, and if/when I move back to London I look forward to catching a performance of the Ghanaian/British ensemble Onipa, who were much better live than I'd expected from their online stuff.  The setting helped too, with the afternoon performances in a park in front of the Old Fort, and the evening performances inside the fort.


The organisers also support a carnival parade the day before the music festival starts, and I went along to the square where all the participants gathered and prepared, and then walked alongside them in the parade.  It started in a rather grim part of town, with dismal concrete tower blocks along the route and very few spectators, but the final part was through the narrow alleyways of the old city of Stone Tower, which was much more effective.  The participants were a varied lot, from a small troupe of acrobats, through stilt walkers, to a group of hijab-wearing young school girls.  The most impressive though were those dressed for the Kilua dance, which I know from my later visit to the slave museum in town was brought by slaves trafficked from what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.  You can see one (with the white face paint and feather headdress) in this picture - and the concrete tower blocks behind.


Also in this picture is a banner, which includes the words 'Paza sauti'.  This is Swahili for 'Raise your voice', but was used during the festival specifically as a backdrop message against sexual harrassment.  They never made any attempt to explain this beyond the message on the banner and posters, but as the festival progressed I wondered whether it was related to the expected/desired behaviour during the festival itself.  I was hassled from start to finish.  Local men all wanted to be my 'friend', wanted to guide me through crowded parts of the festival site with their arm around my shoulder or waist, to high five after I confirmed that I was enjoying the music (then trying to keep their arm/hand in contact) - one even told me that he wanted me to be his wife.  It was exhaustting and infuriating and one evening I'd had so much of it that I walked out when there was still an hour of music to come.  At least at that time (around midnight) the little alleyways I had to negotiate to get back to my hostel were deserted - so no hassles from stallholders trying to sell me kangas / paintings / bags / woodcarvings.

Looking around me at the number of mixed race 'couples', with a young Zanzibari clinging to their temporary white partner, I was clearly in the minority in not wanting to participate in this aspect of the festival, so in that sense I could understand the amount of attention I was getting as an unaccompanied woman.  But I'm not some nubile young thing - I'm 57!!  So clearly the desire to couple up with a mzungu is not motivated (only) by physical desire, but presumably also by the hope of some financial gain.  So driven by the relative poverty of those in Zanzibar.

I pondered this on the walk back to my hostel, and went from feeling very annoyed by the local men, to feeling sad, and then frustrated (angry?) at the inequality in the world that drives such behaviour.  If a trader in the UK raised his prices when someone walked in wearing a kippah, he would rightly be accused of anti-semitism, but when Africans raise their prices at the sight of white skin they are not generally accused of racism.  Well, they are sometimes, but it doesn't stick as they come back with the observation that their pricing is just reflecting the reality that whites have more money.  & of course in most cases this is true.  Even white backpackers on a tight budget have more money than many (probably most) of the Africans they encounter on their trip.  Some of that is, of course, the result of the terrible governance within most of Africa (a recent Oxfam report noted that the top 1% of the continent's population owns more than the rest put together), but it was initiated, and is perpetuated, by the unfair terms of trade, etc imposed by the world's big institutions.  There's really nothing that a poor young Zanzibari man can do except to look for opportunities to grab a little bit for himself.

Also on the subject of money, this trip prompted me to wonder how much of it one has to have in order to feel comfortable spending it on things one doesn't really need.  I need to travel, so that is a non-negotiable, but to help me afford more travel, I do it when I can on the cheap.  So in Zanzibar I stayed in a six-bed dorm in a hostel, which cost me $10 a night.  Yes my room-mates and I came in and got up at different times, there were differing views on whether or not to use the air-conditioning, and of course you have to keep your luggage padlocked safely in a locker - but the beds were comfortable, the hostel seemed safe and clean, there was hot water in the showers, a hairdryer in the dorm, and wifi throughout.  There was also a small kitchen, with tea and sugar, and a small outdoor terrace - and other travellers, who I had some interesting conversations with (particularly an Iraqi man and a Ugandan woman) and I spent half a day walking around and visiting museums with one room-mate.

I compared this with the little corner of Stone Town where the luxury hotels are based - eg the Hyatt at $350 a night.  I went into a couple to check out their waterfront cafes, and couldn't help but wonder what it would take to get me to stay at such a place.  Of course they are more comfortable, with way more facilities - but how much money do you have to have saved to feel comfortable spending $350 a night instead of $10?  To spend $15 on your hotel breakfast when for $3 I crossed the street to the market each morning and bought a big juicy mango, passion fruit and sweet bananas  to make myself a delicious breakfast in the hostel kitchen for $1?


fighting corruption

Back from a two-week assignment in Sierra Leone, I finally have a few minutes to record the very last part of my holiday in Cote d'Ivoire, an encounter at the airport as I was on my way out of the country.

By the time of the encounter I suppose I was not in the best of spirits, having got to the airport to find that my flight was not listed on the departure board and finally, after lots of initially fruitless conversations with people, finding that it was delayed by several hours - enough for me to miss my once-a-day connecting flight in Ouagadougou.  More conversations followed, and eventually they were persuaded to re-book me onto a different flight, this one going directly to Dakar but requiring me to wait another three hours before I could even check in.  Thankfully I managed to grab one of the six seats in the pre-check-in part of the airport ... where I was grateful for my emergency muesli bar that I always travel with and the half-bottle of water that remained in my bag.

So, finally in the check-in queue, I was pulled aside by a man in military uniform to be asked what was inside the paper I was carrying.  I showed him that it was not a weapon, but just a wood-carving that I'd bought the previous day in one of the stalls next to the Grand Bassam museum.  He muttered something that I didn't catch about papers and left me to continue my check-in.  At that stage, zipping the rucksack straps into their cover, I put the wood-carving in too so that I didn't have to carry it as hand luggage and risk forgetting it on the plane.

But as I walked towards passport control, the same man appeared.  "Did you forget?" he asked, "Your papers!"  A bit confused, I showed him my 'papers' - airline ticket, boarding pass, passport ... but this wasn't what he was after.  "Your papers for the wood-carving!".  Of course I didn't have any 'papers' for a $20 wood-carving ... and so was told to accompany him to the office.  The office of the Department of Forests and Water, where a besuited gentleman was sitting behind his desk.  They started to talk to me about people smuggling artifacts out of the country, and how I had to have export papers for my little carving.

It was now clear that they were trying to extort money out of me.  I kept it friendly, laughingly telling them that my carving was not an 'artifact' but a cheap copy made in the workshop next to the museum, and that I knew 'artifacts' when I saw them, recounting a story from 1999 when a villager in Pays Dogon (Mali) tried to secretly sell me one of the village masks, how I felt a 'power' of some sort emanate from the mask, how I'd have loved it but it wasn't right to buy it, etc, etc.  & that the shop in Grand Bassam hadn't given me any papers so if these were really necessary then we would have to recall my luggage and take the carving out.  They smiled and said that was not necessary, that they would let me off this time, but in return did I have anything for them?  I tried to look confused and told them that I didn't.  So they tried to clarify their request, asking if I had any money from my home country - dollars or euros.  At that, I launched into another friendly tale about the pound, the euro, Brexit, etc ... but it didn't entirely derail them.  So I decided to tell them (very politely) how the UK has two laws that operate globally for British citizens, one being an anti-corruption law that prevents me from giving money to government officials if it is not in an official transaction with a receipt.  That I wasn't saying that this was corruption, but that it might look like it to someone else, and I didn't want to get into trouble...

At this point the soldier left and was replaced by a different soldier, and the besuited official said he could give me a document.  So he filled in an export form, on headed paper, listing my wood-carving, signed it, and handed it to me.  "So, the payment!" he demanded.  I looked at the form.  "I don't see any amount on here..."  "It's 5,000 francs" (not too much - equivalent to US$9 - but on principle I don't want to ever pay a bribe).  I explained that I could not see that written on the form anywhere, which was therefore not a receipt.  Exasperated, he said I should have got a receipt from the stall where I bought the carving.  "No, a receipt for the 5,000 francs" I explained.

"Madame, I cannot give you a receipt."

"Then I cannot give you money."

I looked at him and he just sat there, saying nothing.  So I got up and walked out of the room, fingers mentally crossed that he would not follow - which he didn't.

I had spent twenty minutes in that room.  In a situation where I know many would have felt compelled to pay.  I'm pleased that I have the experience (and, to an extent, the protection of my white skin) that enabled me to hold out, but so cross that these things happen.  Many Africans moan about their corrupt presidents, but that corruption goes right down through society, and if people pay up it will continue.  On my way into Sierra Leone I saw one man hand over money as he took back his passport from the official in passport control.  Just wish I could do more to stop it, that I could fight it rather than just resisting it on a personal level.

the different faces of religion in Cote d'Ivoire


Besides watching traditional mask dances, my tour group in Cote d'Ivoire also visited a few religious sites.  My favourite was this 17th century mud mosque in Kong, not even mentioned on the tour itinerary so a real treat.  Apparently it is no longer used, but is maintained due to its historical significance; the larger nearby mosque in the same style is still in use.

Much more well known is the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in the administrative capital, Yamoussoukro.  Constructed at great expense, as a near copy of St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, it can hold up to 18,000 people but our guide told me that only around 700 people attend the service there most weeks.  At least the former president who commissioned it (Félix Houphouët-Boigny) had the good sense to 'donate' it to the Catholic Church (to John Paul II who was pope at that time), so the annual $1.5m upkeep is borne by the Catholic Church and not by the people of Cote d'Ivoire.  A bit of a white elephant in my view, some of my group were very impressed by it.  I don't think it is even worth putting a photo here on the blog!

I was more impressed by the snakes and fertility symbols on the fetish hut in the village of Niofon...


In terms of mainstream religious buildings though, I was impressed by the much more modern St Paul's Cathedral in Abidjan.  It has some amazing stained glass windows in a modern, African style such as this one to the right.  The largest window appears to me to depict the African paradise (garden of Eden?), with lush vegetation, elephants, monkeys and colourful birds, and a few Africans bearing bowls of fruit as gifts for some dour-looking white men getting out of a boat onto the beach - white men who in my interpretation are about to upset the existing social structures, impose borders in the wrong places and generally exploit the continent ... thankfully I hadn't expressed this view out loud as our guide explained that they were missionaries who had brought the words of our Lord Jesus Christ to the continent.  Hmmm...



mask dancers and traditional hunters in Cote d'Ivoire



Whilst I once spent a day in Abidjan following a cancelled flight, I knew there was plenty more than the National Museum that I got to see that day.  In particular, the country is well known for a variety of mask dances.  These dances, most commonly associated with funerals, are hard to find on your own - it's just a matter of luck if you arrive in a village when a funeral is happening - so, a little reluctantly, I signed up to a tour.  That way I would see dances organised for the benefit of the tour group - still the same dancers, the same music, and the same costumes, just for a different purpose.

We were a small group of very well-travelled people, so even the long hours in the tour bus involved some interesting conversations, as we travelled the length and breadth of the country.  We saw, I think, six different ethnic groups performing their dances for us, accompanied by musicians playing traditional instruments.  Of course a still photo cannot capture some of the amazing moves, but I can at least show some of the costumes.




As well as watching the mask dances, we also met a group of Dozo, the traditional hunters who also work, when needed, as militias, or 'defence forces' for their communities.  Whilst they are apparently sometimes now employed as security guards and they played a significant role in the recent civil war, their hunting is highly tied up with magic, so their hunting attire is covered with amulets to variously protect them and to strengthen their vision and hearing.  Music is also an important part of their tradition, and after an opportunity to ask a few questions of a group of Dozo, their griot (the singer, who is kind of the group history-keeper through his songs) and a couple of musicians accompanied us in our tour bus into a patch of sacred forest.  It was a bizarre experience driving along in the bus with these guys around us inging and playing music:


The griot had a tremendous voice and a twinkle in his eye, and I have to admit that we three women in the group all kind of fell for him!