Kedougou

It is always hot somewhere, and I just happened to be in one of the hotter places in Senegal for out time at the villages. Well, I am getting used to the fact that there isn’t any air conditioning in the house or at SIT, this is problematic though when it is 100 degrees outside and not much cooler in the shade. Our first night of the trip, we stopped in a place and stayed at a hotel that consisted of little huts, air conditioning in the rooms and a swimming pool. Yes ladies and gents, a swimming pool. I have yet to see one and here is it, on a road that has so many pot holes we have to drive half on the side of the road and half off, there is a hotel that has not only air conditioning and hot water, but a giant swimming pool. This was a big event for everyone and I would have been just as excited, except for the fact that there were so many bats diving down towards it to get the bugs, that you could see their splashes more frequently than the people swimming. Coming from an area where there are lots of bats, well I just don’t do bats. They are welcome to splash around with all the little buggies around and even in the water, but I will be fine just observing. It was actually really cool to sit and watch because you wouldn’t even see the bat, you would see and hear the splash, but there would be just a blur to go along with it. The stars in the areas even outside of Dakar are AMAZING. I could sit and look at them for hours and never get sick of seeing so many of them. I learned that star in Dialonké is lo-lo and it makes me only love them even more.

We arrived in Kédougou and we ended up staying in similar huts for the first few nights and it was interesting to see what new things we could find every time we entered the room. In a constant battle with the creepy crawlers, they will always out number you… Our first full day there was on Tuesday and after lunch we went to the Bedick village and hiked up the mountain. It was so beautiful there and even with all the heat, it was so wonderful. The hike wasn’t really explained to us very well, and while one professor told us it was more like a hike, others told us it was over and hour and pretty intense. The hike wasn’t too long, but it was far from a walk in the park. It was pretty much straight up and when you have been sitting on a bus for two days, well your legs need a little more time to get used to moving around. I am learning more and more that in order to not go crazy from the lack of ‘straight forward’ answers, you have to be prepared for anything. So many people are so laid back and often have very different ideas about what you can expect, and with not two people giving similar answers, well it can get tricky knowing what to expect.

It was absolutely amazing at the top, and not only did we get to climb around on some of the cliffs, but I found people who made pottery in the village and with some help got to talk to them about possibly going back for some of my ISP. Many of the people that went up the cliffs with us got vertigo and ended up coming back down, but it was so amazing, and if some of the guys hadn’t explored so haphazardly, well the bees wouldn’t have gotten so mad…and our fun would have lasted much longer. It is the places like that I could sit forever and never get tired of looking out over the vastness. Especially in places where you don’t see paved roads, or suburbs, but baobab trees and a few collections of small huts spread out in the distance.

When we came back down the mountain, a woman was stacking a load of pottery to fire, and although she didn’t speak French, I was still able to get the message that I wanted to watch for a while and she smiled and motioned for me to come closer to see. It was awesome to see someone who was about to fire pottery without the big kilns or all the necessary equipment that I have become so accustomed to seeing and have spent so much time learning. I would have stayed and helped if we hadn’t had to leave, but since I was not only obviously a tourist, and obviously didn’t look like I knew what she was doing or the specific way she was doing it, I had to enjoy while I could, and know that hopefully I would be able to come back and find out more, and maybe even.

On Wed, the 27 of February, the morning started out early, as most have since I have gotten here, and it was the first time I got to wear shorts for an event other than running. We were going to drive to a village about 2 hours away and then hike up to a waterfall and enjoy a swim and then after a picnic. We jumped in the back of a vehicle since most of the other students were filing into the cabs of the vehicles, and on we went. Ah. Ignorance is bliss. We went “off-roading” on some of the bumpiest, dustiest, rough roads I have ever been on. It was wonderful. I had to not only put a lot of effort into holding on the bars (we were sitting on seats with cushions on them that had been welded into the back end), but to keep from smiling since my mouth would fill up with the red dust almost instantly. It was fantastic and not only did we get to see some monkeys alone the way, but our drivers seem to be in the mood to compete for who was in the front, since obviously those bringing up the rear would get all of the dust kicked up, and in the dry season, this becomes so thick one can barely see. We made it to our destination, and not only did everyone else think it was amusing that we were covered in dust, minus the areas our sunglasses covered, but our drivers thought that it was hilarious and felt the need to get other people they knew from the village to come and look. I never saw myself other than in photos, but well, they do it justice I am told. We hiked up the other mountain, and it was not as inclined, and as we hiked, the trees became denser and streams began to pop up out of the rocks that seemed to make everything around us cool down. We reached the waterfall, and well, pictures will never do something so beautiful justice. It was amazing. Beautiful. Breath taking. After looking at so much dust, and sand and so many shrubs and leaf-less trees for so long, to be around ferns and lots of vibrant green is an event to behold.

Everyone started to take off layers to jump in, and I realized how stupid I had been to not wear my bathing suite under my clothes… Thank goodness Eryn did too! We snuck away and found a rock to change behind, well it blocked us from the people who were at the waterfall, which included some French tourists as well, but not from the people who were coming up the mountain… I just hope they were not too offended… The water was absolutely freezing and how something can stay so cold in such hot temperatures is one of nature’s wonders that will never cease to amaze me. It was so nice to feel somewhat cleaner as well as to not be sweating consistently. We jumped in, jumped off everything e could think of, and when it was finally time to leave, no one was very excited to go.

The ride back, people of course fought to ride in the back, and I was glad to share a back seat that was all the way cushioned, with only one other person and be able to relax a bit out of the dust and direct sun. It was wonderful and exciting to be bouncing around in the dust with the other students, but then again, a bum can only ender so much!

Thursday morning we left for the stays at the villages, and Paige, Will and I stayed with the Diakanké people who live right along the Gambia River. I was pretty nervous when we left and right after we arrived, but in the way that you are very excited and unsure about what is to come. Paige and I shared a hut together, and I have gotten used to smaller beds and smaller rooms, so to have the entire hut to ourselves with two huge beds was somewhat surprising. We lived with the ‘president’ of the females in the village, a woman named Ami-Kaba. I am not sure how to spell her name or most of the other words that we learned in the village, so I wrote them phonetically. She was incredibly nice and was willing to teach us anything we wanted to know. She had several children that lived in the area (none of the family stayed with us in the hut) but I am not sure how many exactly. It was pretty difficult with the limited ability to speak French that both of us had, so for the most part I observed a lot of what was going on. The bathroom consisted of a hole in the ground, and that was pretty tricky at night, not only because it was also where I had to take a bucket shower, but also because that is where most of the cockroaches congregated. Lucky me. Where is granddaddy when you need him to pluck them up and throw the little buggers in the toilet. Oh, never mind. They lived IN the toilet. I came to this realization on the first night after I had taken a shower and was brushing my teeth, and had my flashlight. This was a bad move for me especially since I can’t just sit and do my thing without shining the light everywhere. Well I figured out there were a few moving in the straw that had been used to construct the walls around it, but then when I kept looking I discovered that there was a flock of them down in the actually hole. It was about that moment in time that all the bathroom adventures were short and to the point, especially with so many things living under me.

The first day there we went on a tour of the gardens that the villages keeps up and it was pretty amazing to see the women carrying huge blue buckets down to the river, filling them with water, and then bringing it back onto of their heads. It is only the women that take care of the gardens and it was incredible to see how hard they worked all day long. After lunch Paige and I got pretty antsy, and although she went wondering off first, I eventually got brave enough to go off on my own and by the time we ‘met’ up again, we each had a following of the younger boys who wanted to talk to up and take us everywhere and show us everything. The younger boys had to be my favorite because they, like most other people in the village, were just learning French so they spoke it very clear and very slow so I could I understand them much easier than people in Dakar. Two girls saw us with this huge crowd of boys and wanted us to come to their garden, we went with them and the group of boys followed us for what seemed like forever to get to these smaller gardens. It was so much fun because not only did all 8-9 of these boys decided it was their duty to teach me how to skip rocks properly, but these girls let us try carrying the buckets of water from the river to the gardens on our head. OMG. Those buckets are so heavy and fit is so hard to navigate with them, and of course I spilled it all down my front, but it was so fun and everyone got good laughs out of it. It was times like this that wearing my flip flops was a good idea, and I can't say that in during the entire time that we were in the villages my feet were ever clean. That might have been what I loved about it too though, we didn't wear shoes most of the time, and we got to get dirty as much as we wanted:)

It seems like most of the time in the village was spent going place to place with new people we met, and we saw so many cool places because of it. It is a strange concept for me to put so much trust in people I don’t know, especially when the ‘stranger-danger’ thing has been so impounded into my head. But in the end, being in the village was a time when I felt completely safe and didn’t really worry about any of my stuff or whether or not the people that we would stop and talk to were going to be vicious or out to take advantage of us. Everyone was so eager to just talk and find out about you and show you something that was special to them, it made the whole experience that much better. The food however was not great… we ate the same thing every day for each of the meals. It was good for me though, and to really experience living in a place that has limited access to things very quickly, even for a brief period of time, was an eye-opener. The people often gave us more than they had to eat or even drink, and for them, food wasn’t a social event, it was a necessity to make it through the day. It was quite wonderful to be around those who were so giving of the little that they did have, and I can’t help but wonder how that will in turn play off when I get back to the states. It is a weird realization that even with my family in Dakar, no one eats themselves sick because they can, and no one sits around for hours talking over huge plates of food, it is something to eat, and you eat it so you can get the things done that you need to.

After getting back from the village stay we took a field trip to the river and got to see HIPPOS! We got there and there was a group of women and children that were bathing so we didn’t think we would see any because of the noise. I seemed to ‘get off the beaten path’ more often than not and most of the time… people followed me. We ended up seeing them in these places, and when we tried to get closer it proved more difficult than not. I ended up being about 40 feet away from them, and I have to say, I almost wet myself from excitement. There were so many of them and they seemed to keep popping up like submarines from under the dark water. There were even some little babies. When they would yawn everyone would gasp, and I couldn’t help but think how strange this huge group of white students looked being so close to these creatures that could snap us in half. It was after that though that we all decided it was probably better to go…
The day before we left, we went to another one of the Bedik Villages and went for a hike as well as to see the oldest Baobab tree in Senegal as well as the oldest woman. The tree dated back to about the 13th century and the woman was about 119. The tree was so incredibly amazing and I probably sat in awe of it for about 20 minutes… which is a long time to sit and look at one thing. I love how the baobab trees there were able to just grow and nothing was being built on them or really around them, and they had all the room to spread up and out without fear of being cut down for power lines…. We weren’t able to climb it because of all the bees, which I think is becoming something they tell us when they don’t want us climbing things, which is understandable since many people in this group are quite antsy when it comes to so many big trees around that would be great for it. The oldest woman however, not that cool and she ended up cursing us since we didn’t bring her enough money… She said that a swarm of bees would follow us down the mountain stinging us… what is with the bees?

I was sad to leave, especially when we had to get us at 4 to eat breakfast before we left, and it was somewhat bittersweet to be leaving somewhere so wonderful. The bus ride back sucked, except for when we stopped to pee in the bushes… which we did a lot… and there was a troop of wild monkeys. They were really cute and although no one attempted to pet them or really even get close, they found us far more interesting and took to climbing on the bus, going through or things, and eventually stealing snacks from people. Then again, who would steal free food from a bunch of toubaubs who are just asking for it?

There seemed to be so many wonderful places we visited and each one with something special about it that only makes me fall in love with Senegal even more. I can’t even imagine the things that there wasn’t time for, or the places that we missed along the way, or the people we didn’t meet. It is a bittersweet ending to a trip that was altogether the best experience I’ve had since arriving in Senegal. There are so many things to come and so much more to experience, but I have to say that Kédougou will always be dear to my heart.