I went round to visit a friend the other evening, and as I was sitting there waiting for him to come back from some errand, gazing around the room, I was reminded of how different life is for many Senegalese city-dwellers from our life in UK cities.
His home is a single room, about 8 feet square, with a lockable metal door and one window. The window does not have glass – that is only for the wealthy – but is a square hole quite high up in the wall, with a metal ‘door’ that can be swung open to let in light and fresh air. A flimsy floor-length curtain (of a kind of cheap chiffon-like material) hangs across the wall where the door and window are. This gives some privacy when they are open, and helps to keep out dust, mosquitoes and flies. Unusually the walls are painted white – more commonly they would be turquoise. The floor is bare concrete.
Inside this room, most space is taken up by a mattress on the floor, covered with a kind of furry blanket (in green, yellow and purple…), with a pillow in one corner. This serves as settee as well as bed. There is no mosquito net. Next to the mattress is a big plastic bag stuffed with folded clothes, and beside that a neat row of six pairs of shoes (rather more than most men here have, I think).
Against another wall is a small collection of containers – one I can see contains body lotion (which all Africans use, men as well as women, or their skin dries up and flakes), the others look empty – and a tray full of upside-down glasses. These will be used for serving tea: the West African way, which is black, very strong, and sweet. There is also a small gas burner with a teapot perched on top. Then the prize possession, I imagine – a stereo system (radio, cassette and CD player, with speakers), although I don’t see any cassettes or CDs in the room. At the moment the radio is on.
Finally, in the corner next to the door is a water container (maybe 40 litre capacity?), a small plastic cup in a metal bowl, and a plastic water container with a spout – shaped like an old-fashioned kettle, in purple and yellow stripes. This water will be for drinking and hand-washing
Bathroom facilities are communal (I didn’t visit but will typically be a hole-in-the–ground toilet, with the ubiquitous stripy plastic kettle-shaped container floating in a stripy bucket of water for cleaning oneself afterwards).
This room is one of a row of five, with the same number facing across a small courtyard (the latter used for socialising and some cooking), the whole compound being walled in with one lockable metal door. Many single people live in such accommodation, costing about $60 a month to rent, as it is all they can afford.
In family compounds the rooms of adult family members are often similar to this – and often shared, with two brothers or sisters, or mother and daughter, sharing a double mattress.
We had dinner sitting on the floor. Well, I perched on the side of the mattress, he sat on the concrete. The food was bought on the street, and eaten with the right hand from a communal aluminium bowl. We had fried fish in a sauce (probably made from onion, stock, tomato paste and various local seasonings such as netetou which have no English name – and on this occasion no chilli or hot pepper at my request) served over white rice, with a few pieces of baguette on the side. The Senegalese love their rice.
I find eating with my hand quite messy, as I’m forever dropping bits of food, but the locals seem to drop a lot too so I guess that’s just a part of the process. Only they never seem to drop it on their clothes like I do. I also find the fish difficult, as they are never filleted – you just get the whole fish, with the head, tail, etc – not too difficult with a knife and fork but with one hand, when covered with sauce, I struggle. The locals don’t have a problem as they just put big chunks in their mouths and then spit out the bones, but I’ll never learn to do that; fish bones in my mouth make me gag.
We shared a half bottle of red wine with the meal, local Senegalese wine at $3 a bottle (always served cold), that gives me a headache the next day. Many Senegalese, being Muslims, don’t drink alcohol, so would have something sweet and fizzy (like Coke or Sprite) instead.
Not an exciting event to post about, then, but it occurred to me as I sat there that such things that I take for granted now are outside of the experiences of most of you reading this.
In fact I remember the first time I ever shared a bowl of food the West African way – in Mali in 2000 – and how little I knew of local customs at the time. As a female guest I was invited to start, and the bowl of hand-washing water, with a cake of soap, was passed to me. I was so conscious of all that I had read about not using the left hand that I made this convoluted attempt to wash my right hand only, keeping the left hand well out of the water. Everyone sat there very politely, saying nothing, but when I passed the water to my neighbour, he proceeded to wash his hands – both hands – in the normal way. They must have wondered what on earth was wrong with me; I still feel embarrassed when I think about it today.
Storms
I remember watching thunderstorms in the UK when I was young, and counting how many seconds elapsed between a flash of lightning and the clap of thunder that followed, to work out how many miles away the storm was. Here you can’t do that. I laid in bed in the early hours of this morning as a thunderstorm passed through, but the lightning was flickering constantly, and the thunder rolled and rumbled and crashed without a break for a good twenty minutes. Just a pity that I am in a bungalow with a ten foot high wall around it – how I would have loved to have watched that storm from a fifth floor window.
Before I came here to live I had the idea from somewhere that a storm would somehow “clear the air” leaving it cool and fresh. However what actually happens is that as soon as the sun comes back out and its rays hit the water lying on the ground, that water is evaporated back upwards, with the effect that you are in a steambath for the next few hours. & so it was today, so I gave in and put on the air conditioning, shutting up all the windows and doors to keep in the cool air.
During the storm last night I nearly jumped out of bed with fright as there was an enormously loud clattering, crashing sound from within the bedroom. At first I could only think that the house had been struck by lightning, but in fact it turned out that my curtain pole and curtains had fallen off the wall. They’ve been there three years so in fact this is about par for the course. There are two equally likely causes: bad workmanship (put up by the same highly recommended joiner who made my coffee table with its cracks and bowed legs that developed as the wood dried out after delivery), or rough treatment by my maid.
Gloria, my maid, is probably little different from other women here, to be fair. She’s certainly not the only Senegalese woman I have seen trying to remove dust from a table top by flicking a tea towel at it – which not only allows the dust to fall back onto the table but also risks breaking any nearby ornaments. A while back she broke my newly purchased metal sieve by whacking it against a cockroach (which no doubt trotted away unharmed). She also doesn’t really ‘see’ things in the way I do – books are taken out to be dusted and put back on the shelf upside down (no, she can’t read the English writing on the cover but she can see if a picture is upside-down), and an Indian miniature which I bought on a holiday in Rajasthan, hand-painted on camel bone, now has smudged paint where she has clearly picked it up with wet fingers.
Last week she presented me with one of my favourite shirts with a tear across the shoulder. I try not to be bothered when she damages things, to tell her not to worry, that ‘accidents happen’, because I know how bad she feels about it. But this time she could see I was upset, especially as it was the second shirt she had torn through her rough handwashing in just a few months. She offered to take it to a tailor for repair and I let her do so. I have a washing machine, and I’ve told her so many times that I prefer things washed in there, but like most Senegalese women she doesn’t think machines get things really clean, also she can’t bear to let dirty washing accumulate until there’s enough for a machine load, so she continues to ignore my pleas and washes everything by hand.
I suppose I should put my foot down and instruct her to use the machine rather than pleading with her, but I’ll never be comfortable treating a maid like a servant, the way the Africans here do. So she continues to run my house the way she wants to.
But to end on a positive note, I am happy to report that the power cuts I wrote about last month have reduced substantially.
Before I came here to live I had the idea from somewhere that a storm would somehow “clear the air” leaving it cool and fresh. However what actually happens is that as soon as the sun comes back out and its rays hit the water lying on the ground, that water is evaporated back upwards, with the effect that you are in a steambath for the next few hours. & so it was today, so I gave in and put on the air conditioning, shutting up all the windows and doors to keep in the cool air.
During the storm last night I nearly jumped out of bed with fright as there was an enormously loud clattering, crashing sound from within the bedroom. At first I could only think that the house had been struck by lightning, but in fact it turned out that my curtain pole and curtains had fallen off the wall. They’ve been there three years so in fact this is about par for the course. There are two equally likely causes: bad workmanship (put up by the same highly recommended joiner who made my coffee table with its cracks and bowed legs that developed as the wood dried out after delivery), or rough treatment by my maid.
Gloria, my maid, is probably little different from other women here, to be fair. She’s certainly not the only Senegalese woman I have seen trying to remove dust from a table top by flicking a tea towel at it – which not only allows the dust to fall back onto the table but also risks breaking any nearby ornaments. A while back she broke my newly purchased metal sieve by whacking it against a cockroach (which no doubt trotted away unharmed). She also doesn’t really ‘see’ things in the way I do – books are taken out to be dusted and put back on the shelf upside down (no, she can’t read the English writing on the cover but she can see if a picture is upside-down), and an Indian miniature which I bought on a holiday in Rajasthan, hand-painted on camel bone, now has smudged paint where she has clearly picked it up with wet fingers.
Last week she presented me with one of my favourite shirts with a tear across the shoulder. I try not to be bothered when she damages things, to tell her not to worry, that ‘accidents happen’, because I know how bad she feels about it. But this time she could see I was upset, especially as it was the second shirt she had torn through her rough handwashing in just a few months. She offered to take it to a tailor for repair and I let her do so. I have a washing machine, and I’ve told her so many times that I prefer things washed in there, but like most Senegalese women she doesn’t think machines get things really clean, also she can’t bear to let dirty washing accumulate until there’s enough for a machine load, so she continues to ignore my pleas and washes everything by hand.
I suppose I should put my foot down and instruct her to use the machine rather than pleading with her, but I’ll never be comfortable treating a maid like a servant, the way the Africans here do. So she continues to run my house the way she wants to.
But to end on a positive note, I am happy to report that the power cuts I wrote about last month have reduced substantially.
African Renaissance
I’m not sure how I’ve managed to get to August 2010 without writing about the African Renaissance. This is the name given by the President, Abdoulaye Wade, to the giant statue (apparently higher than the Eiffel Tower) that now looms over the northern suburbs of Dakar. The official opening awaits the completion of the interior (museum in the base and restaurant in the summit) but in the meantime no-one can ignore its presence, not least because of the controversy surrounding it.
The £18m cost has of course been criticised by many living in a country where basic needs like electricity, clean water, health and education have not yet been met. However there are rumours that it was financed by a donation from a businessman grateful that the government had sold him some land at an enormous undervalue.
It was constructed by North Koreans, which might explain the kind of Stalinist feel to it. It seems rather odd that the woman is showing so much leg and breast, in a traditional Muslim society where such displays of flesh, particularly the leg, are totally unacceptable. Local imams have voiced their disapproval.
Local artists have questioned why there was no Senegalese (or at least African) artist involved. The design came from a Hungarian student, the story being that the President ran a competition a few years back, on the internet, for a design for an African statue, with a prize of a few thousand dollars on offer. Neither the competition itself, nor the winning entry, were well publicised. However the winner was never paid his prize money, as a result of which he has never signed the document waiving his rights from any use of his design nor the requirement to maintain confidentiality. All rather unfortunate for M. Wade who has claimed the right to 35% of all takings from entry to the statue on the basis that “I am the designer, the one who conceived it”.
Of course the Senegalese are unhappy about this, but as with other unfairnesses in their lives, they seem to have accepted it. Perhaps this attitude explains why Senegal, alone in the region, has never experienced a coup.
So what is the point of the statue and why ‘African Renaissance’? Apparently M. Wade sees it as a money-making tourist attraction (for Senegal as well as for his retirement fund…), and as representing the hopes and aspirations of the younger generation. In that case I think it is rather unfortunate that it is pointing, not inland towards the great continent of Africa, but across the Atlantic Ocean towards the USA.
Power cuts and protests
We’re getting into the humid, rainy season now. Not so much rain yet (although it has been pouring down all day today) but the air is thick and sticky, the mosquitoes are out in force and as usual at this time of year the power cuts have started.
This year they are much worse than usual though – two to three cuts a day, each between three and eight hours long. I have a generator, but it uses lots of fuel which on the one hand is very bad for the environment and on the other hand is very expensive (I don’t believe our donors give their contributions thinking they will pay for an expat to have her air-conditioning on) so I use it as little as possible. Last night, thanks to a good laptop battery I held out until 9:30pm, sitting there watching a DVD and listening to music in the dark, until the mosquitoes just got too much and I switched on the generator so as to power the little stand-up fan I have by my chair to keep the mosquitoes away. I will use the generator when I really have to but cannot justify it just to enable me to make a cup of tea or listen to the radio.
This has been going on for two weeks now (the cuts started as soon as the World Cup was over) and it is incredibly frustrating even for someone like me with a generator. My maid says she has to rely on candles – which are expensive – and that many people end up sitting in the street as there is nothing they can do in the house. Of course it also has a terrible impact on many people’s working lives. Dakar’s thousands of self-employed tailors, for example, who cannot earn any money if there is no electricity to power their sewing machines, and those who rely on supplies of ice to keep their produce fresh (such as the women who go to the port each day to buy fish, which they then hawk around the residential areas in little cool boxes).
There have been many demonstrations around the country, an office of Senelec (the national electricity company) ransacked, and last week one protestor was killed in a demonstration that turned violent. Tomorrow a big march is planned to the head office of Senelec, which will probably end in more violence.
I kept asking people why this was happening, and there were no clear answers, but yesterday a statement was released explaining that this resulted from the purchase of some sub-standard fuel which has jammed the generating machinery. I wonder what the reaction would be in the developed world to an answer like that! They also said the problem would be resolved by the end of the month. Tempers are short and patience is wearing thin throughout the country, so I can only hope the end of month comes quickly.
This year they are much worse than usual though – two to three cuts a day, each between three and eight hours long. I have a generator, but it uses lots of fuel which on the one hand is very bad for the environment and on the other hand is very expensive (I don’t believe our donors give their contributions thinking they will pay for an expat to have her air-conditioning on) so I use it as little as possible. Last night, thanks to a good laptop battery I held out until 9:30pm, sitting there watching a DVD and listening to music in the dark, until the mosquitoes just got too much and I switched on the generator so as to power the little stand-up fan I have by my chair to keep the mosquitoes away. I will use the generator when I really have to but cannot justify it just to enable me to make a cup of tea or listen to the radio.
This has been going on for two weeks now (the cuts started as soon as the World Cup was over) and it is incredibly frustrating even for someone like me with a generator. My maid says she has to rely on candles – which are expensive – and that many people end up sitting in the street as there is nothing they can do in the house. Of course it also has a terrible impact on many people’s working lives. Dakar’s thousands of self-employed tailors, for example, who cannot earn any money if there is no electricity to power their sewing machines, and those who rely on supplies of ice to keep their produce fresh (such as the women who go to the port each day to buy fish, which they then hawk around the residential areas in little cool boxes).
There have been many demonstrations around the country, an office of Senelec (the national electricity company) ransacked, and last week one protestor was killed in a demonstration that turned violent. Tomorrow a big march is planned to the head office of Senelec, which will probably end in more violence.
I kept asking people why this was happening, and there were no clear answers, but yesterday a statement was released explaining that this resulted from the purchase of some sub-standard fuel which has jammed the generating machinery. I wonder what the reaction would be in the developed world to an answer like that! They also said the problem would be resolved by the end of the month. Tempers are short and patience is wearing thin throughout the country, so I can only hope the end of month comes quickly.
Immigration
Reading what I could before the recent UK election, I could see that there was clearly an undercurrent of concern about immigration. It was rarely mentioned officially, as it seemed that an open debate on the matter carried too much of a risk that the racists would make their views heard – and no-one wants those aired publicly in the world’s press – but clearly the concern was there.
I couldn’t help but think about the way I am treated here, as an immigrant.
I am doing a job which some would argue could be done by a Senegalese (although it was advertised here, without success) – but no-one has once complained to me about that. Thanks to the generosity of the Senegalese government, I don’t pay any tax here (international staff at our NGO have a special exemption) – and no-one has once complained to me about that either, not even our local staff here who do have to pay tax. I am partly responsible for higher prices for the locals too, as like other people wealthy enough to have a freezer (mostly the foreigners) I stock up on kilos of tomatoes and vegetables in May, freezing them ready for the rainy season when there are none – this causes the price to rise a month earlier than it would without us, but no-one ever complains. Nor does anyone ever suggest, at least not without a twinkle in their eye, that I learn the local language, Wolof.
Then just recently our Regional Finance and Grants Analyst was asked to attend a meeting in our international head office in the UK. She was refused a visa. I heard she was in tears over it, and I felt so embarrassed – and ashamed. To enter Senegal the British do not need visas at all, we just get a stamp in our passports on arrival, at no cost, which gives three months in the country.
Of course I understand that we cannot just open our borders to everyone who wants to come in. But the unfairness of the current system – reflecting the unfairness of the distribution of wealth and power in the world – makes me so sad.
I couldn’t help but think about the way I am treated here, as an immigrant.
I am doing a job which some would argue could be done by a Senegalese (although it was advertised here, without success) – but no-one has once complained to me about that. Thanks to the generosity of the Senegalese government, I don’t pay any tax here (international staff at our NGO have a special exemption) – and no-one has once complained to me about that either, not even our local staff here who do have to pay tax. I am partly responsible for higher prices for the locals too, as like other people wealthy enough to have a freezer (mostly the foreigners) I stock up on kilos of tomatoes and vegetables in May, freezing them ready for the rainy season when there are none – this causes the price to rise a month earlier than it would without us, but no-one ever complains. Nor does anyone ever suggest, at least not without a twinkle in their eye, that I learn the local language, Wolof.
Then just recently our Regional Finance and Grants Analyst was asked to attend a meeting in our international head office in the UK. She was refused a visa. I heard she was in tears over it, and I felt so embarrassed – and ashamed. To enter Senegal the British do not need visas at all, we just get a stamp in our passports on arrival, at no cost, which gives three months in the country.
Of course I understand that we cannot just open our borders to everyone who wants to come in. But the unfairness of the current system – reflecting the unfairness of the distribution of wealth and power in the world – makes me so sad.
Jazz at St. Louis
St. Louis is a beautiful, decaying old city in the far north of Senegal, located on an island near the mouth of the River Senegal. It used to be the capital, under the French, but has long since been crumbling away into the sand. It’s partly that the revenue from tourism and fishing is nowhere near enough to fund the maintenance/restoration of the old houses, but a greater problem is the way their ownership has passed down through the generations – not to a favourite son or daughter but to all the offspring equally. Now some are owned by several hundred people, and getting them all to agree to spend money on the house, or to sell it, is a major undertaking. Only when a balcony threatens to collapse onto the people walking below does the government step in, and several buildings look beyond repair. I would imagine the serious threat to this low-lying island of sea level rise doesn’t help.
However the sense of decay does add to the atmosphere of the place. One crumbling warehouse (roofless and windowless) makes an impressive backdrop to a display of old wooden masks and statues, so what would elsewhere be just another tourist shop here becomes a kind of gallery. There are real galleries, too, in the city – of textiles, and of modern African art. & above all there is music. A jazz festival has taken place here every year for the last couple of decades, with a number of big names playing the specially built ‘Quai des Arts’, but a thriving “off festival” (off-Quai?) scene has developed too so that many restaurants and bars host live music during the festival and throughout the year.
I’ve never had the time available to go for the full four days of the festival, and this year was no different, but I decided to go up for the weekend, to catch the last couple of days of Jazz 2010.
So on Saturday evening I was in St. Louis, ready to enjoy a selection of trios, quartets and quintets from around the world. On the way, I stopped for some prawns in garlic with a glass of red wine in a local restaurant – and before I had finished my meal three musicians were warming up next to me to play in the restaurant. N’Dar Afro-Jazz. They were so good that I spent three hours enjoying their performance and never made it to the official stage. & when they finished at midnight their leader took me to another venue nearby to watch a selection of local acts playing different types of traditional West African music. I got back to my hotel at 3am.
On Sunday evening however I was determined to get to the main stage to see the final night of the official festival. Three different groups performed, the final one made up of Pharoah Sanders on saxophone and William Henderson on piano, accompanied by some local drummers. My knowledge of jazz is not great (I never forget raving to a colleague about some jazz drummer I’d seen at the Village Vanguard in New York many years ago – “Roy Haines!” he said, “What, THE Roy Haines?!”) but apparently this saxophonist is well-known and has played with greats such as John Coltrane. He was good. Afterwards there was an official jamming session backstage, which I only left – reluctantly – at 3.30 to get my pre-arranged taxi share back to Dakar.
Devils
Some 90% of Sierra Leoneans are supposedly a member of one of the country’s secret societies. Not that their existence is secret, nor an individual’s membership (I saw a number of men with rows of raised marks on their backs – the scarification that indicates the society and their rank within it), but the content and meaning of the ceremonies and initiation rites must not be revealed to non-initiates on pain of death. The societies are powerful, both in the sense of favouring their own for jobs (rather like the Freemasons) but also in the magic that can be learnt by those who go through many stages of initiation.
One of the few public manifestations of the magic of these societies is on major public holidays – including Easter Monday – when some of the society “devils” appear in the streets.
When I asked about this most people responded by describing the Easter parade. I guess this probably originates from the devils, but is now more like a carnival procession. Although I would have been happy to see it, that wasn’t really what I was looking for. Anyway, killing time in the morning (the parade being late in the afternoon – as it turned out, too late for me to see before I had to leave for my flight) I wandered around the streets of downtown Freetown, an area I hadn’t seen before.
Then, coming towards me along the street, I saw a small group of men. Some in jeans and T-shirts chanting, and playing clangy metal instruments, but quite clearly the three men in front of them were devils. They had bare torsos and wore long grass skirts, with a white cloth wrapped around their middles and another on their heads, and the one at the front also had a red headdress. But what was most striking was that they, and the white cloths, were smeared with what appeared to be blood. I got closer, and then could see that the flesh on the arms and chest of one was pierced with knives and porcupine quills – clearly it was real blood. & the devil at the front appeared to have a large dagger through the middle of his body, the handle sticking out at the base of his back and some eight inches of blade protruding from his stomach. This couldn’t be real – could it?
I looked into his eyes and they were bloodshot and staring into some place where I don’t think I want to go. & I was reminded of a Chinese harvest festival I saw in Malaysia many years ago, where I watched a man slice his tongue in half lengthways while in some kind of religious trance. So I know that it is possible to rise above bodily pain and trauma, and people I’ve described these devils to all assure me that what I saw was real and not a trick.
The Sierra Leoneans ascribe it to magic. I don’t believe in magic (or religion, or anything else that seems to run counter to common sense and evidence), but the belief in magic is so prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa that just occasionally I find myself wondering if perhaps this continent works in a different way from other parts of the world and there is something here beyond what we can see and touch.
One of the few public manifestations of the magic of these societies is on major public holidays – including Easter Monday – when some of the society “devils” appear in the streets.
When I asked about this most people responded by describing the Easter parade. I guess this probably originates from the devils, but is now more like a carnival procession. Although I would have been happy to see it, that wasn’t really what I was looking for. Anyway, killing time in the morning (the parade being late in the afternoon – as it turned out, too late for me to see before I had to leave for my flight) I wandered around the streets of downtown Freetown, an area I hadn’t seen before.
Then, coming towards me along the street, I saw a small group of men. Some in jeans and T-shirts chanting, and playing clangy metal instruments, but quite clearly the three men in front of them were devils. They had bare torsos and wore long grass skirts, with a white cloth wrapped around their middles and another on their heads, and the one at the front also had a red headdress. But what was most striking was that they, and the white cloths, were smeared with what appeared to be blood. I got closer, and then could see that the flesh on the arms and chest of one was pierced with knives and porcupine quills – clearly it was real blood. & the devil at the front appeared to have a large dagger through the middle of his body, the handle sticking out at the base of his back and some eight inches of blade protruding from his stomach. This couldn’t be real – could it?
I looked into his eyes and they were bloodshot and staring into some place where I don’t think I want to go. & I was reminded of a Chinese harvest festival I saw in Malaysia many years ago, where I watched a man slice his tongue in half lengthways while in some kind of religious trance. So I know that it is possible to rise above bodily pain and trauma, and people I’ve described these devils to all assure me that what I saw was real and not a trick.
The Sierra Leoneans ascribe it to magic. I don’t believe in magic (or religion, or anything else that seems to run counter to common sense and evidence), but the belief in magic is so prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa that just occasionally I find myself wondering if perhaps this continent works in a different way from other parts of the world and there is something here beyond what we can see and touch.
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