Mosque de la Divinité at sunset my last week, Mermoz Bay: Dakar

Salaam malekum, Mr. Sun! Bah mal, I’m wondering if I could ask you a favor or two.

Could you be sure to be kind to my family in Thissa Mass? Come and go gently so their crops grow well. maybe give their harvest days some cloud, you both could use a break.

I want to thank you for your mild and warm glow these past two months. But, if you ever notice me forgetting your power, please come and take the place of the Rocky Mountain sun and give me a swift, burning kick in the ass with your rainy season, unbearable heat. I don’t want to get too comfortable in my cushy life.

And, I know you’re busy keeping West Africa hot most the time, but on a day when I’m thinking about my home in Dakar, probably in the midst of snow banks and snobby and ignorant classmates, can you just shoot one, tiny ray my way? Knowing you still exist will give me the hope I need for the day.

If you’re ever missing my pale skin off which to reflect, I’ll try my best to get back to your kingdom soon.

Now, for your cousin, Madame Lune, could you call her over? Oh, bonsoir, dear! You’re looking aglow this evening. You know how important you are for my Dakar family, deciding when they will celebrate, when they will fast. You’ve lightened many nights without electricity and you took my breath away with your orange garb in Lac Rose.

Now, if you could spare a moment and push some of the gentle tides from Mermoz bay through the St. Louis Seaway, I hope that my cousins in Detroit will know your reality.

When you turn your face away from the Darkarois and look to your children the stars, could you please request a dance from them? Their crossing of the sky gives the youth below you an excuse to wish. You know as I do many people here are in need of a wish.

And, when you have a some spare time, could you escape and visit me? I’m afraid that I will forget to call for Korité if I do not see your fullness next fall. It won’t be the same to see you suspended above the mountains and not the lighthouse in Mamelles, but I know I’ll recognize you and  it would be comforting all the same to feel connected again.

To be connected to your country (and yours, too, Monsieur Soleil).

You’ve been kind and harsh and outstanding these four months.  Please do what you can for me now that I must leave, and I’ll keep you in my heart wherever I end up.

All my love, (je ne vous oublierai jamais!)

Molly Aicha Mbaye Maher

Last night, my yaay (mother) started sing-songing a phrase to my baby nephew Pape, this is how he learns new words. “Dinaa naam lo Money! Money dinaa naam lo!” –I’ll miss you, Molly! Molly, I’m going to miss you!

Quickly, everyone started chanting along and soon everyone in the floor level was melodically enticing me to tears.

It was so endearing and really indicative of my time in this house: loud, hilarious, cheerful, unpredictable, musical, embracing, kind and hard to react to.

Here’s a few of the items I wrote down today to think back on, lest I ever start to forget this place:

-how everyone in the house is always taking everyone else’s shoes to walk around in, I never find my own

-How our one maid, Daynaba, will dance in front of me when no one else is around. She’s started to talk to me in Wolof, though she knows I understand only parts.Today when I started packing she came and asked if I would ever come back, and why wouldn’t I just stay another day?

-How at any given moment one of my sisters will jump out of their seat and start dancing wildly, shouting “Ah waayyye!,” music videos are always on the TV enticing them to sway their hips and stomp their feet

-How, when leaving the computer lab or lounge after classes at my campus, I’ll approach the part of the wall that ends and lends an open corner that is always aglow with the richest, most inviting orange-pink in all the world, emanating from the Atlantic Ocean sunset, people in nice bubus milling around below as they head to their evening classes or playing basketball on the university courts, sheep and goats surely grazing behind

-Watching everyone in their beautiful bubus on Fridays, the holy day for Muslims, a constant reminder of what day of the week it is

-How many times someone nearby has said (Toubab, moom, am na xalis! (that white girl, she’s rich)). Never forget the weight of your privileged life. Find a way to lighten this, or suffer its burden when you realize you have not.

-When randomly I’ll find dismembered feet on the back staircase or random animal parts in the freezer, and think absolutely nothing of it.

-Fruit stands that stay open late on weekend nights and butiks that open late in the morning, there’s always someone on the street even when I’m coming home from dancing at 4 or 5 a.m.

-How awesomely warm, but not aggressive, the sun has been since the rainy season left and it’s cooled down.

-Turning a corner and seeing a giant baobab tree rooted between houses, it’s twisted trunk and long limbs creating a meeting space; or encountering a surprise mbalax dance and drum circle at the end of a block on any given night; or a random fooseball table surrounded by kids that’s migrated a block for no real reason.

-Two or three men sittin gon a cement bench that is built off the wall of a building, posed up like they may never leave, shakin gthe sleeves of their even more traditional bubus as they point and discuss, walking passers-by that they will greet.

-the shocked look on older Senegalese faces when you understand a bit of Wolof.

-Drying clothes on a line, blowing gently in the wind on top of a neighbor’s roof

-Constant presence and noise of all types of animals, particularly our three sheep that live in a pen on the roof, my bed placed directly below it.

-walking extremely slow because I can

-Lax (Millet grains formed into clumps and sweet/sour milk/yogurt stuff) every Sunday night for dinner, watching Yaay turn the grains in her hands in a large metal bowl for a whole hour that evening, slowly adding water and creating small clumps

-The sweet taste of Bissap (like hibiscus) juice and the great tang of a lime after a spicy dish of ceebujen (fish  and rice)

-Electricity cuts! And how people will grumble the whole time, saying “Abdoulaye Wade” (the president) every few minutes

-Fat women who will inevitably point to the bench on the car rapides (small communal transport buses) to sit where there is no space, their jaye fondés (big butts) resting on top of their neighbors thighs

-The pawing hands of traditional lutteurs (wrestlers), their gris gris (blessed amulets) tied about their bodies, sand having been superstitiously placed on their chest

-Being able to buy underwear, mint leaves, and headphones in a 20 yard area

-Eating grapefruit for 75 cents every single day

-Cheeky talibé (young male beggars who were traditionally students of the Koran)

The rest is more personal, and so would do you no good. But, overwhelmed with the impossibility of saying goodbye or explaining this place in all its proper splendor, I hope this gives a further taste.

from my first week, I see this several times a week...

I’m having a blast this week, minus the homework that I’m having to complete, even if I don’t do an amazing job 16 pages takes a while.

Last night, for example, I went to see a concert as part of the program. It was a concert to present various Haitian talents, including well-known Wyclef Jean. I got to the location, at the foot of everyone’s least favorite monument. The stage they had constructed, which had seemed to me before a very nice setup, now had a large temporary construction in front of it, allowing only those “VIPs” fortunate enough to enter to see the stage itself. There was a large TV screen playing a live feed for all other viewers, but being so close to the stage itself it seemed silly to have to watch on a screen. What’s more, the sound was barely audible from behind the barricades, the acoustics not well accounted for.

I was there with some American friends and some other students who study in both the English Language Institute and the Business Program at Suffolk with us. One student from Benin was trying to convince me to go up to the guards with my SLR camera (looks slightly professional) and my white skin and ask to enter, because he wanted to see if it would work and he wanted to get closer.

Because I am both slightly shy about some things like this and because I am very, very furious about the disadvantages placed on the local patrons, I refused.

He was frustrated, and so was I.

the report offered to diplomats planning to relocate temporarily or long-term in Dakar.

Read more in this helpful book: African Women & ICTs, get some Twitter action through @ICT4D and check out Eldis’s one-stop-website on the topic.

Information Communication Technology for Development:

Gender and a Ugandan case

The dawn of the digital age has come for the entire globe. Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), born and nurtured in developed countries through the past century, have restructured the exchange of information, practical production, and social constructs. Parallel to general development trends, the use of ICT for development purposes, both with a focus on actual service delivery and on the social implications and improvement because of access to ICTs, have vastly increased. These efforts have already changed certain aspects in the way of life of communities around the globe. In the past perhaps fifteen years, women in rural villages of Uganda have acquired cell phones, farmers in remote areas of India have begun the use of mapping technology for agricultural improvement and governments and development agencies have launched programs for the positive growth of ICT in developing nations.

In many ways, ICT for development has brought positive change to countries. In theory, ICT should also be a liberating and strong developing force for women, offering opportunities for education, open communication, economic growth, and participation. (Hafkin 3) However, what was often the case in early IT implementation was a regard for gender not thorough enough to actually promote female participation. In fact, in many cases the projects served to further deepen gender disparity because females could not utilize the new resources freely. In some cases it led to increased burden or stress for women. For example, in Zambia the easier and cheaper access to cell phones have offered women the opportunity to have their own mobile communication outlet. But, because of the pre-existing social constructions, husbands of these women often because jealous and distrusting, sparking controlling and harmful behavior and diminishing the women’s overall freedoms and reversing the ICT progress if husbands decided to take away the phone. (Melham 33)

The situation of ICT is pertinent particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa for several reasons. First, ICT is frequently used as a means for rural poverty elimination; an issue that women in this region are very familiar with. Furthermore, in all demographics of Sub-Saharan Africa, “women have the lowest participation in the world in science and technology in all education levels.” (Hafkin 6) Increased familiarity with any form of ICT will increase the likelihood of female participation in technology development, which requires the best the citizens can give, male or female. (Melham Also, with “e-government” becoming a popular trend amongst Sub-Saharan African nations, such as NICI policy in The Gambia, the opportunity for the female voice to be present in and informed about politics like never before makes access to communication technology pressing. (Islam 3)

It is nearly undeniable that with these timely opportunities and the counter-productive situations like that in Zambia, along with the low ratio of female to male participants in many ICT initiatives because of other socio-economic constraints, encourage an engendered approach to and evaluation of ICT for development in Sub-Saharan Africa. (Melham 5) In order to effectively create and implement positive ICT for development projects in this African region focused on the participation and benefit of women and girls, it is important to look at a few of the main obstacles of ICT in recent history. One of the main issues facing the use of Information Communication Technologies as a means of engendered or gender inclusive development is that traditionally data collected, by either government when related to policy or outside organizations when related to development work, had no segregation by sex. (Hafkin 4) In this way, governments or development agencies saw positive numbers with out the realities behind them, which were most frequently a situation of alienation from ICT for women community members. (Hafkin 4) Another inherent issue is the lack of female presence in policy and decision-making. The majority of Sub-Saharan African nations have traditional roles in which men are dominate in all levels of politics and participation. In this way policy development and implementation have largely neglected the concerns of women. (Litho) Females in this region tend to have lower literacy rates and receive a lower level of education than male peers, making even accessible ICTs difficult to use. Lastly, general obstacles for ICT development tend to become magnified when approached by females. Issues such as lack of resources like consistent electricity, the cost of use of ICT, and socio-cultural obligations that limit time and activity tend to restrict females in a household more than men. (Litho)

In the past ten years, development projects can be seen that address these issues in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is widely accepted today that ICT is a development tool that is “neutral and useful to all regardless of gender, social, economic, or political context.” (Litho) Because of this point of view, ICT for development is “now being promoted by governments and development agencies as a tool having the potential to empower the marginalized, especially women living in rural Africa.” (Litho) In some cases, new projects have even been created to alleviate problems from originally gender-neutral initiatives. Such a project has been created in rural Uganda: WIRES.

In Uganda, women are the majority of the population and many of these women reside in rural areas. Because they are the majority, their role in socio-economic strength is paramount, but is often ignored because of social status. Over the past decade, the creation of telecentres was a major cooperative between NGOs and the government. In the planning stages of the telecentre system, gender had been a thought. Telecentres are multi-platform hubs in rural areas that offer internet connection, landline telephones, computer access, and more depending on regions. However, women did not consume the successfully created ICT centers in the way hoped. Using the Social Construction of Technology viewpoint of development and technology (SCOT), one researcher has identified some obstacle points to female usage and why the development of this program had not effectively considered the “realities” of the region in which the ICT would be implemented.

First, the researcher found that women used mobile phones much more largely than computers, as is also a trend for both genders in Uganda. “Women are reported to be uncomfortable with especially computer related ICTs,” including e-mail and Internet, while they find the mobile phone “accessible.” (Litho) Women surveyed reported feeling uncomfortable using the facilities in the presence of local men. Their domestic schedule made walking the long distance to the telecentres difficult, leaving mobile phones as a much more convenient form of communication. Because of their low-income levels, virtually none since husbands hold household earnings, women did not have the disposable income for the fee of entry into the telecentre. Lastly, their literacy levels are lower than those of men, and even if they used telecentres despite these challenges and a large technophobia, women would not easily find the information they seek.

These facts in mind, the researcher says one will find only men surrounding computers in the telecentre, with women sometimes gathered in a second room in the facility. He attributes this real failure of inclusion to the planning. “The international agencies possibly based their model on western concepts…without consideration of the environment to which the technology was being delivered.” (Litho) Conversely, the researcher presents the new, counter project, WIRES, as an inclusive ICT. WIRES is a female-only environment that offers a CD-ROM to its visitors. The CD-ROM includes audio-visual materials, making it accessible to illiterates, and uses the local language. The CD-ROM is designed to present ideas about bettering personal economic practices, with relation to their own family and production levels. Its goal is to reduce rural poverty in Uganda by empowering its women. As of the time the researcher published, women using the WIRES resources said they understood the materials and benefited from them. (Litho)

Thinking on the example of women in rural Uganda with in the larger context of ICT in Sub-Saharan Africa, and indeed its global trends, ICT is clearly at a crossroads with gender. Timely opportunities for increased participation in government, self-education, and communication must be seized. However, it is my opinion that, as the researcher in Uganda said: “It should not be assumed that the rejection of a technology is due to a lack of understanding by the recipients, it is just that the technology does not work for them.” (Litho) With all of the innovation going on around the world, interactive technologies for development should be created that offer women accessible ways to be involved with ICT. Knowing what is most important to women in rural Uganda, a computer may not be the answer. A woman would do better to have a portable device that is accessible from the home. Participatory ICTs are empowering women like never before, and devices must offer women—even illiterate women—a way to participate, perhaps through audio recording. Solar powered chargers to sidestep electricity shortages are most reasonable. Above all, steps must be taken before turning these technologies over to women to ensure that the social environment in which they are being placed does not cause a reaction that will only serve to increase a woman’s burden or stress at home.

SOURCES

Hawfkin, Nancy and Taggart, Nancy. “Gender, Information Technology, and Developing Counries: An Analytic Study. Executive Summary.”  Washington, DC: LearnLink.

Islam, Dr. Baharul. “Creating an Outer Circle in the Digital World: Participation of Women in the e-Government System.” 12 December 2005. Economic Commission for Africa.

de Jager, Arjan and van Doodewaard, Margreet. “The e-Society Programme of the Apac District, Uganda” May 2008. Hivos, IICD.

Litho, Patricia K. “ICTs, empowerment and Women in rural Uganda: A SCOT Perspective.” 22 April 2005. SSMAC Centre for Narrative Research. http://www.uel.ac.uk/cnr/ICTs.htm

Melham, Samia and Tandon, Nidha. “Information and Communication Technologies for Women’s Socio-Economic Empowerment.” 30 June 2009. World Bank Group Working Paper Series no. 51259.

I finished my last class session ever in Senegal today. I allowed a celebration to ensue (keep in mind I am writing a paper more than 4 days before it’s due, which is a big step for the super procrastinator I am) when I ran into a few students in the nearby gas station market buying a beer and heading to the closest beach. I’m writing my papers a lot faster now that my toes are a little sandy and my nose a little rosy.

The first paper is for Gender and Development and concerns Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D). There is a book available on Google commons that I would recommend browsing through if you have spare time. The topic itself is very pertinent to me and I’m happy to be researching it, but I am not adding much new material from the first version we turned in earlier this semester (had 6 pages, adding 3 with only one new source…)…all my classes are going back as pass/fail credit so I don’t have much motivation to work harder than necessary after learning about a topic.

My second paper is about the book Nervous Conditions and the use of missionary schooling in colonial Rhodesia. That’s more of a task and still have to do a lot of research. 8-10 pages.

The final is a paper on Senegalese Culture and Society, written in French, and requiring research this time. I have selected the brain drain (ou le luitte des cerveaux), but have not gone much further than declaring the topic. 6-8 pages.

Then I have one Wolof exam (not worried about this) and an oral French exam (can’t prepare for this), and I’m done with the first half of my senior year!

While working on these and after, I am hoping to get to several FESMAN events. It is really an amazing opportunity that I want to take advantage of, even if this is a reason we’ve had so many power cuts the past couple weeks.

Next week, I’m hoping to make my host family a dinner to celebrate the end of my time and my sister’s birthday. Anyone have recommendations? I have a stove and oven, but they are never used and I don’t trust them. If I could keep it to things over a gas flame, that would be ideal. Please comment and let me know! Recipes would be much appreciated.

Only 11 nights left…time is flying at a snail’s pace with all these things I’m doing, but the snow flurries I saw just now remind me of the Joyeux Noel I’ll be returning to.

I know I’m very far behind in writing…again…Sorry!

I had an amazing experience on my rural stay. I learned a lot and was confronted with a lot of things my comfortable life has never presented to me, including being the only foreigner for miles and treated like a sideshow joke —though I hope this was not done with malice but rather just for amusement.

I’m a little written-out as I’m still trying to finish a reflection paper in French on this experience, but here are some photos of the village I stayed in called Thissa Mass.

The sun sets on baobaob trees in Thissa Mass

Raskah Sarkho, one of my host sisters

Me going to "help" glean the peanut fields in Thissa Mass. I had no where near the physical capacity of the girls I was with. I will forever be in awe.

My host mother works in the yard of the compound at Thissa Mass

Field of Thissa Mass

xale bi (child)

The project sponsored at Thissa Mass by APROFES (who I traveled through) started a small vegetable garden with its own well to lighten the burden on the women working it.

 

 

Since that week, I celebrated the biggest holiday in Senegalese Islam tradition known worldwide as Eid, but here as Tabaski. It is the holiday of the sheep, and we killed and are still eating three at my house. We had very little school, my Senegalese traditional boubou turned out beautifully and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

This week I’m kind of on a downswing, something that tends to happen no matter where I am. I lost a lot of hair after rural visits, probably as a culmination of a lot of normal factors I’m facing here, and got a pretty nasty-looking scab on my face. These made me embarrassed (though they shouldn’t) and a little nervous (though I know better than to sweat the small stuff like this when I am in the midst of a dream-experience). But I am still healthy and am trying to focus on how awesome my life is instead of the (hopefully) soon-to-be-gone bald spots on the sides of my head.

For Thanksgiving, the students at my school are invited to a huge dinner at the American club nearby, complete with pumpkin pie! So I’ll be missing all of you, but none of the goodies.

We go to St. Louis this weekend, leaving tomorrow and spending one night in tents in the desert. It should be pretty amazing and I’m doing all I can to kick myself out of this mental lull.

When I get back on Sunday there will only be three weeks left until I board a plane, and the thought of actually leaving is blowing my mind.

Needless to say, the approach to education in Dakar and the whole of Senegal is very different from that of the US or any place familiar to me. And, indeed, beating children as a punishment or example to instill order is common practice, just as it is in the home.

With my Senegalese culture and society class, we visited elementary schools to observe a classroom then debrief on what we noticed there (I visited a Catholic, private equivalent of 8th grade class) and to listen to a lecture from a local professor on the history and condition of education, which is a national right in Senegal.

The professor said, point-blank, that the situation in Senegal is “a sick education system. There are many sicknesses.” (His English was totally clear for communication, but his word choice made everything very emotive and entertaining)

The first ailment he mentioned was it’s lack of cultural adaptivity. The national language remains that of colonization, and really the ethnic make-up of the country makes the process of language unifcation extremely difficult, he said. He cited the 1981 attempt to unify under the Wolof language (majority ethnicity), [the 1980s was a period of major Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) imposed by the World Bank and IMF in Senegal and many other African countries] saying that he and his other activists friends fighting to change the school system were not satisfied with this solution. To this day, the issue of students who can pass under the radar of language check-ins, never really learning to speak French correctly, leads to grade repetition.

Furthermore, students in that period were forced to be a “café au lait,” he said. One was neither white nor black, French nor Africa. But rather, as he had done, one recited dictés on winter, central heating, and French ancestors in a village school on the border of Mauritania. Today, as I saw in my class, things are getting a little better, but there remains the issue of the style of education.

To this day the style is very French. Students listen to lectures and memorize pages and pages of notes which they regurgitate back to their professors, having to be prepared for spur of the moment questions, though the answers are all in the paragraphs they memorize.

The professor explained that the education system is largely accustomed to strikes, include student, teachers, and administration alike. In 1988, he said, there was an entire year off (une anée blanche). In 2008, there was 80 days of striking. The Millennium Development Goals and national check marks set a goal of 100% enrollment in schools in 2018 (a feat my host sister mistakingly thinks has already been accomplished).

To meet this goal, the ever unpopular (unless he employs you!) aging, President Abdoulaye Wade has alloted 40% of the total national budget to education, an amount equivalent to $470 million US. However, the professor says that of this 90-95% goes directly into salaries of teachers and ministry employees. Meanwhile, more than 80% of schools are with out electricity, more than 59% with out running water, and more than 25% with no toilets.

Perhaps an increased infrastructure and ensured resources for students would lower the repetition and failure rate of students. Currently, 16% of primary school students will repeat a level. If a student fails 2 or 3 times, they will be removed from the education system, forced into private schools if they can afford it. Or, as the professor’s own son had done, for a cost of merely 5,000 to 10,000 CFA ($10 to $20 US) a new birth certificate can be made making the child younger and able to re-enter the system, what he called “rebirth”.

This practice carries the same name as the eyesore that is Wade’s Renaissance statue, whose shadow my neighborhood hides under daily. It makes me wonder when a real rebirth is coming to this country, filled with opinions and citizens such as this professor who are sick of their “sick education system.”

I will be going through an organization called APROFES. It’s aim is to empower and aid women in many realms. The organization does everything from microfinancing to local plays, support for victims of domestic violence and creation of buvettes at girls’ schools, according to the website.

I will stay two nights in the city of Kaolack where the organization is headed, then three nights in one of their site villages. It should be very interesting and a nice break from Dakar.

I am filling good and digging in more and more here, but still a little stir crazy so this should be a great change of pace to bring me into really the middle of November.

Jàmm ak Jàmm!