traditional rites - initiation of the boys of the Bassari tribe

Not fully satisfied with a life spent drinking wine or coffee with friends in local cafes/restaurants with occasional days working on the To Do List, I was pleased to discover that the initiation ceremonies of the adolesecent boys of the Bassari tribe were taking place this month.  A real trek to get to the small town of Salemata (40 minutes in a shared transit van; 20 minutes pushing my way through an overcrowded street market; 2 hours in a 'waiting room'; 14 hours in an overnight bus with continuous music and quite a few stops including police checks of our ID; quick taxi ride to the shared taxi station where there is only a 30 minute wait until there are seven of us; 90-minute drive in the seven-place taxi; 30-minute wait with a log to sit on thanks to a kind family; 10 minutes on the back of a motorbike taxi to my very basic accommodation), and then a 4km walk on dirt tracks (including one very steep hill) in 42C heat each day to get to the small village of Egath where the initiation was taking place ... but definitely worth the effort.

The first day involved a lot of dancing by a big group of young men in traditional colourful outfits (performing the Yanguët dance), whilst those a couple of years younger, in the (to me) bizarre 'traditional' attire of football kits, had their hair braided before doing a dance performance of their own around the village.  It was noisy (whoops, whistles and a traditional wooden flute), colourful, and plenty of honey wine, palm wine and millet beer was consumed.  I was the only tourist there.

The next morning I got up very early so as to depart Salemata at 6am and avoid the worst of the heat for the walk there - but also to be sure to catch all of the action on this the main day of the initiation.  Or at least most of the action, as the physical combat between the initiates and their older initiated opponents is off-limits to female spectators, unfortunately.  But for me, again, the main attraction was the colour and spectacle of the dancers - who first appeared out of the trees on a distant hillside, making a sound I cannot describe, so as to remind the boys of what was to come.

Whether these (the Odkwëta od Khëmër masks) were the same guys who had danced the previous day I cannot say, as they remained masked all day apart from during the combat which I couldn't watch.  There were dozens of them, who came slowly down the hill towards the village behind a guy in a different mask - the 'grandfather' of the troupe I think someone called that mask.  Pretty much like the dancers of the previous day, they performed a kind of foot-stomping dance to the accompaniment of flute, whistles and the strange sounds they made themselves.

Meanwhile, the family of each of the 42 initiates slit the throat of a male goat they had brought, as a sacrifice, and cut it into appropriate pieces, after which the boys went off to take part in the combat and the men to watch.  While that was going on, the women prepared lunch - goat meat, of course.

During the afternoon there was a further sacrifice, this time of cockerels, with the feathers then woven into the hair of the now shirtless young initiates to show that they had completed the combat.  Suitably adorned, the boys paraded around the village, where they were presented with big blocks of a kind of cake made with sugar and peanut butter - and of course more alcohol, which had been again available all day.  They were also given gifts - banknotes attached to their hair with safety pins, and long bolts of fabric draped over their arms.

After a long break (to allow time for the consumption of more goat meat and more alcohol), the dancers returned, this time accompanied by drummers, to begin a long night of continuous celebration.  By this time though the heat, the alcohol and the lack of sleep had got to me, so I made my way back to Salemata for a short night's sleep before beginning the long trek back to Dakar.

As this initiation process takes place for three weekends in a row in three different villages in the region, I suppose if I had planned it better I could have stayed on, spent the intervening week hiking in the hills looking for birds and chimpanzees before watching the whole thing all over again in a different village (apparently the one taking place in Ethiolo this weekend will be bigger), but in any case I am really glad to have had the opportunity to see this - reminding myself that people in much of the world are going through all of the challenges related to the COVID pandemic whilst I was in what seemed like a different universe.

Lucky me!

a different lifestyle

So having lived alone for the last three years in a two-bedroom, two-balcony, duplex apartment with 24-hour guard service (all paid for by my employer), I have now, as an unemployed/retired person (a lady of leisure??), moved into a very small apartment with four other people.  I have my own bedroom and en-suite bathroom, but share a small entrance hall cum living room, a very small cockroach-infested kitchen, and a tiny balcony (aka the smoking space for the rest of my flatmates).  We do seem to have reliable electricity and internet, although sometimes there is no water.  Oh, and there is a cleaning lady who comes every day, but who only speaks Wolof.

My flatmates are from Senegal, France, Syria and Switzerland, and the French-Syrian couple have a kitten - thankfully I love cats.  Both the conversation and the food has been good (the Syrian is a keen cook and loves to cook for others).  However the Senegalese lady who sub-lets to the rest of us fell out with the Syrian guy last week, and after a dramatic day full of shouted accusations and insults, with both parties going to the police, the French-Syrian couple have to move out - which is a great shame.  We'll see whether the Spanish lady who will take over their room is such good company.

It's a very different way of life ... kind of like being in a student flatshare ... but so far I'm enjoying it.

I've had a fair bit of admin to do, dealing with my former employer (returning equipment, getting exit forms signed off, etc as well as a 'goodbye' lunch and presentation the day after my contract ended) and with the company who will ship the bulk of my possessions back to the UK, not to mention time spent setting up a local telephone account and mobile money account, and settling into my new accommodation.  I've been quite busy.

I've managed to fit in a little relaxation, including in a couple of different restaurants along this coastal part of Dakar, chatting with friends over a few glasses of wine, and saw a couple of live music performances before Ramadan started yesterday which puts an almost complete stop to live music for the month, sadly.

So will I get bored?  Well it's hard to tell as yet.  I have a To Do List, and have so far watched four episodes of Andrew Marr's "A History of Modern Britain", sewn up the hem on a pair of trousers, labelled and filed a part of my digital music collection, and worked my way through the first four chapters of a French text book (a little late in the day, I know, but I would like to improve my French and then dispose of the CDs and textbooks before I move on from here).  I've also picked up a couple of new Wolof phrases.  I think the To Do List will keep me busy for quite a few months, and by late summer I'm hoping that COVID travel restrictions around the world will be lessening, thus giving me the option to move on if I feel the need to by then.  I certainly don't envisage moving back to London within the next year, although it's really too early to know whether or not I will find myself wanting to get back into the world of work.

another form of uncertainty

I've been putting off writing this post for so long.

What I didn't say in my 'certainty returns' post last year was that I was told that my department still had no budget to fund my position, so even though I had been saved from redundancy at that time, there was no possibility of extending my contract beyond its 31 March official end date.  So by the time you read this, I will be unemployed / retired / on a break from work (I have no idea as yet which is the correct term).

Thankfully the amount of day-to-day work I had to do tailed off considerably over my last month in the job, an enormous relief as there was so much for me to think about and organise during that time.  My contract ending meant that I would have to give back/lose my apartment, my laptop, my phone and phone number, my email address, and my medical insurance.  Having quickly concluded that this is not the time to either return to the UK or to put on my rucksack and start exploring SE Asia, I decided to stay on in Senegal - and so needed, before 31 March, to replace all of the above, whilst at the same time organising handover of my work and removal of all of my possessions from the nice, comfortable apartment paid for by my employer.

Medical insurance was easy thanks to advice from other long-term travellers (although a $101 monthly expense that I didn't have previously), and a very good friend helped me acquire a laptop and phone (although I'm already regretting listening to the friend who advised me to switch to an iPhone, which seems vastly more complicated than any of the Samsung Galaxy phones I had through work).  

Other elements were not so easy.  I do now have a local SIM card, and it works - but I have no idea how quickly it is using up the credit I paid in when I set up the account, nor how I add more credit.  I also have a mobile money account - again, with credit in it - but as yet have no idea how to use it.

Organising my stuff was quite difficult and time-consuming.  I had several categories: ship back to London; keep with me in Senegal with a view to eventual travel further afield, therefore to fit into my rucksack (this later reluctantly expanded to rucksack plus suitcase); keep with me in Senegal to use (up) in my new home but not to take on with me afterwards; sell; give away; throw away.  Seeing the price of storage in London (depot space plus obligatory insurance) I was trying to be tough with myself as to what I REALLY wanted to ship home to keep for the long-term, and as the exercise progressed I kept moving things from this 'ship home' category into one of the disposal categories.   It was initially difficult to make the decision to dispose of things that do still have value ... but balancing the cost of storing things versus the cost of replacing them certainly reduced the sentimental aspect.  I also took a good look at those clothes in my wardrobe that haven't been worn for years, and eventually accepted that regardless of their initial cost, I am never again going to need such items as a charcoal grey (designer) city skirt suit, or even those very good quality double-cuff shirts.  In the end it was quite liberating to dispose of so much.

The guard at the entrance to my apartment block was very happy with the flow of gifts (baseball caps, women's clothes which he gave to his sister or kept for himself in the case of larger-sized Tshirts, bandages and other medications, some thirty-odd ballpoint pens I had somehow collected up over the years ... all sorts of stuff), and I was able to sell a few bits and pieces that I advertised online (swimming goggles, an old camera and binoculars, bags, a small number of CDs).  & my new flatmates are happy that I brought a few things with me for general household use (shoe rack, coffee machine, saucepan and frying pan, tea towels, etc) - I'm sure they'll also be happy when I eventually move on and they get my storage canisters, fruit bowl, mug, etc, which I am currently keeping for personal use!

The other big task was to find somewhere to live.  There are a few facebook groups that cover this area, but I had little-to-no free time and in the end viewed only two alternative places.  My choice was influenced in part by price, but more by the personality of the Senegalese lady running the apartment that I chose - a lively, friendly 28-year-old who not only does not want marriage or children (an exceedingly rare choice in this part of the world) but equally importantly who gave directions to the place by reference to the no. 61 bus stop ... the first Senegalese person I have met who can afford taxis but still chooses to use public transport ... my kinda gal!!

I will write more about the new place - and the 180° change in lifestyle from my old life alone in a two-bedroom, two-balcony fully furnished duplex apartment financed by my employer to my new life in what is effectively a student flatshare with four other people and a cat.

the Dakar visual art scene

With all this time stuck in Senegal, unable to travel to other countries, I decided to explore Dakar a little further - and was helped enormously by a city arts festival taking place in many different galleries around the city during December and early January.

The exhibits included both sculptures (like the cormorant above) and paintings, and kept me occupied and impressed for several weeks.  It also opened my eyes to some of the other artwork around the city - that freely available to all as it has been painted on the city's walls.

Such murals are everywhere, with some just pleasing on the eye, others quite clever (this macaw on the right is wearing prayer beads, and the woolly hat which is so common here on older men) - and of course some with political or social comment.

At the same time there was a series of posters appearing all over town, captioned "You are beautiful the way you are", each with a photograph of a person or group of people dressed in a way that doesn't fit the Western world stereotype of what is attractive - other than one on an underground platform labelled 'Europe', with a line-up of waiting commuters of different ethnicities.  Clearly an exhibition with a message.

Looking for further sources I even found a rather nice small stained glass window that seemed to be on the stairwell of a local hotel.

All of this showing how incredibly talented the Senegalese are.  The music from this country is rightly famous (even those not into West African music have mostly heard of Youssou N'dour and Baaba Maal) but the artistic talent really does extend to all the different forms of expression.

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.