Bronze Sculpture and preparations for Kedougou!

Today marked the last day of our bronze sculpture workshop at the Village Des Arts. The process of making a bronze sculpture is really quite fascinating. First, the artist makes a model out of hot beeswax, sculpting it as it cools and melting additional pieces on (it's like playing with clay that doesn't dry out your hands). Next, additional pieces of wax are added to the model to allow the bronze to flow through in the pouring phase. Then the model is dipped in a mixture of quick-dry plaster and sifted dirt, and a mold is formed around each piece. After these are dry (about 30 minutes), they are placed in the fire overnight so the wax can drip out. The next day, the bronze is prepared. Essentially, the artists had set up a blast furnace in which they melted down scrap faucets, knobs, and anything bronze they could get their hands on. The fire burned green, and watching the molten metal being poured into the molds was one of the cooler things I've seen since coming here.

Our pieces aren't quite ready yet, as the imperfections and extraneous pieces need to be ground off, but we'll have them back after we return from Kedougou. I made an attaya glass, a bracelet ($10 says I never wear it) and a Kora player that I'm pretty proud of.

We also got our clothes back from the tailor, and I'm about as happy with the results as I could possibly be. A custom-tailored shirt for $12? Yes, indeed. Pictures to come later. Maybe in the form of a Picasa web album. I don't know.

We leave bright and early tomorrow for Kedougou, and I'm super excited to do some hiking, see some waterfalls and have another awesome village experience. I got placed with Elizabeth in the village of Etchwar, which sits atop a mountain. The people living there are of the Badik ethnic minority, and they're Christian animists, which should be really interesting to see. I've been told to expect a lot of palm wine.

Also, as I've been told that Kedougou and the surrounding regions are incredibly hot, I decided to shave off my beard. It's so much cooler already.

I get back to the Dakar area on the 7th, and I won't be posting again until then.

And that post was really disorganized, and written very haphazardly.

Ups and downs

Since my last post, a French Canadian, Jean-Philippe, has started renting a room with my homestay family. He's currently visiting Dakar as a tourist, and looking at possibly getting a job here long-term. It's been nice having him around for a number of reasons, aside from some additional company. Firstly, he's much more talkative than I am, so it's really forced me to step up my level of interaction with my family. Secondly, he's allowed me to realize just how much progress I've made since coming here. I often don't feel like I've accomplished much, but the reality of the matter is that I've simply been progressing so gradually that I haven't noticed. The fact that he comes to me from time to time for advice on Wolof, places to go in Dakar, cultural differences and more has helped me realize the knowledge I've gained in the past 6 weeks.

There was also a somewhat strange moment when I showed him a photo of my family, and pointing out Ryan, told him that this was my older brother, who was 27. He seemed puzzled, asking for clarification: "He's 27, and he's older than you?"

When I told him I was 20, he was shocked. I'm fine with looking a few years older than my age, but this is getting ridiculous.

Anyway, kora lessons were this week, and it's been one of the more enjoyable parts of my time here thus far. The instrument itself is made from half of a large calabash covered in rawhide affixed with upholstery tacks. There are 21 strings, broken into a set of 10 on the left side and 11 on the right, which are attached to the neck by leather bands that are moved up and down to tune. The thumb and index finger of each hand are used to pluck strings individually or in groups. The instrument itself is tuned to the key of F major.

From what I understand, Edouard, our instructor, is one of the best Kora players in the world. He plays concerts everywhere from South Africa to Denmark to Asia. Long story short, I enjoyed the lessons so much that I ended up buying a Kora from him. I'll be getting it in about a week.

Earlier today, I was in a bit of a slump. I felt like I hadn't really accomplished as much as I'd liked to have by this point in the program in many respects. I didn't feel like I knew enough Wolof, I didn't feel like I knew my way around the city as well as I should, and I didn't feel ready to be turning in a rough draft of my ISP proposal a week from today.

However, things started looking up when we had our last Kora lesson. Though the melody we focused on this time around was a bit harder than the previous two, I still enjoyed it immensely. After school, I went back home to have one of the better evenings I've had with my host family. In short, I'm finally starting to feel at ease and I've been able to insert myself more frequently into their conversations. Over dinner this evening, my brother proposed a particular legal conundrum for my cousin, who's studying law:

A man goes into the city to buy a sheep for Tabaski (the big festival taking place on November 28th). The man discusses with a sheep vendor and the two come to an agreement on a reasonable price. At the moment that the money is being exchanged, the sheep eats the buyer's banknote. Whose property is the sheep?

The discussion became incredibly heated and spanned multiple other similar scenarios. I mostly sat listening and thinking, but eventually came to a decision and shared my conclusion:

In this situation, the two men should exchange information, and wait one day and one night. If the sheep didn't chew too much, the seller will get the banknote back, at which point he can give the sheep to the buyer.

Tomorrow, we'll be going to the tailor to get garments made from the fabrics that we bought at the market last week. I'm pretty excited for getting some awesome shirts tailored on the cheap.

What's been up

It's been a fairly quiet week since coming back to Dakar. It turns out there's an ex-pat ultimate Frisbee group that gets together every Thursday, so I'm going to try to make it to that this week now that I have some athletic footwear (and theoretically some free time).

Last night, we decided to take our first venture into Dakar's nightlife. Coincidentally, it also poured rain for the first time this month. We ate dinner at Just4U, a restaurant/bar/club that's supposed to be "the place to go" for live music in Dakar. Around 10:30 or so, a guy started playing some mellow stuff on guitar. I wanted to stick around, but everybody else had other plans in mind. We ended up going to a place called Pharaoh's Beach (no cover charge!), which was tucked behind the artisan market that Milo and I got ripped off at earlier when doing our study on recycled art. After crossing flooded alleyways on makeshift bridges (milk crates and wooden planks), we managed to make our way into the club. It was actually quite a cool place--We were seated out on a pier overlooking the ocean. It wasn't until around 1:30 that people actually started showing up and dancing, and by the time I left (about 2:30), things were really only starting to get underway. Basically, people party really late in this city. It fascinates me that people can sleep in so late the following day, too, given the intense heat that starts once the sun comes up.

Also, the gender ratio in that club was hilariously disproportionate. There were probably 10 men to every woman.

Tomorrow, we start our music and dance workshops. I've elected to learn Kora, a harp-like instrument. I'm really looking forward to it.

About Saint Louis...

Now that I feel like typing again, I'll briefly discuss some of what went on in Saint Louis, as well as some additional information about the village.

A few things I forgot to mention about the village-

First, my host brother Masila, who was able to help because he spoke French, worked as a Wolof literacy teacher for Tostan, an NGO with various branches around Senegal, including one in Thies. I'm pretty sure I ran into five or six other people in the village of five households named Tala Mbaye. Not speaking much Wolof, it was hard for me to understand exactly in what way these people were related to my immediate family.

The compound I was in was surrounded by a reed fence, though the buildings themselves, save for the kitchen, were all cinder block and cement. If I'm not mistaken, these new buildings were constructed within the last two or three years. My room was a separate cinder block building with a corrugated metal roof that easily got 10 to 15 degrees warmer during the day than it was outside. Outside the village was a beautiful field where the villagers grew bisaap and several other vegetables and grains.

The toilet was really not much more than a hole in the ground inside a cement stall, but at least it had a door. A large wasp and a colony of red ants had made their home in it, but after the first day I didn't really care that much. The shower next door was less a shower and more a stall with a hole to the outside for drainage. Shower water had to be taken from the central pump and placed into a bucket.

The village itself was really a welcome respite from the noise and pollution of Dakar. I woke up with a centipede in my bed one morning, but that didn't really bother me as much as I expected it to.

Following our village stay, we spent the night in Thies in a hotel, where we got real showers and some decent food. The next day, we left for the former colonial capital of Saint Louis, which proved to be an incredible contrast of positive and negative experiences.

We holed up in the Hotel Sindone, which was an incredible, high-class little hotel along the waterside. In addition to the fact that all the rooms had air conditioning (which proved to be a life saver when the outside temperature peaked at over 100 degrees) and hot water, there was also a bar and restaurant attached that served some amazing food. We didn't do much the first night other than rest up.

The next day, we had a lecture from Louis Camara, a famous writer from Saint Louis who talked about the history of literature in the city and the important role that Saint Louis had played in the development of Senegalese literature. Following the lecture, we split off into groups to study particular historical locations in the city. Sonya and I chose to study the Khayar Mbengue elementary school, which was originally a French school founded with the purpose of educating the sons of Senegalese chiefs in French in order for them to act as interpreters and bearers of French culture. The architecture of the school was particularly stunning, but it was also interesting to learn about the role that education played as a more subversive method of control. Overall, Sonya and I were surprised by how many people we encountered that held generally positive attitudes toward the French and towards colonialism.

The same day, we visited a museum next to the hotel, which turned out to be less of a museum and more of an incredibly posh guest house. We were all baffled when the owner invited us back to swim in the pools there that night. He even bought us drinks. I can safely say it was the happiest that a lot of us had been in a long time.

Also, there were thousands of bats that lived in and around the governor's palace, and it was pretty crazy to see them take off at night. Some of them would swoop down and pick insects out of the pool.

On Saturday night, a few of us went out to see an afro-jazz concert at a nearby bar/restaurant, which was really great. There was one man in particular who it seemed had had too much to drink and was making liberal use of the dance floor. Following this concert, we were invited by some people we had met the previous day to a club for an international sort of dance party. I left with a few others before things really got underway, but it was interesting seeing how people there approached dancing. Whereas club dancing in the US is taken pretty seriously, there didn't seem to be a lot of people getting too into it. I did, however, get to see the opportunity to see Senegalese men dance for the first time (officially, dancing is forbidden for men by Islam). It was weird.

I can't really talk about Saint Louis without mentioning just how touristy the place was. Street vendors were everywhere selling mass-produced "art"--Masks, elephants, drums, paintings, necklaces, bracelets, etc. To these people, being white meant being rich, and they wouldn't take no for an answer. I eventually ran out of money part way through our stay in Saint Louis due to most of the ATMs being out of commission. When people tried to sell me things and I told them I didn't have money, they universally never believed me. There were some people on the beach who laughed when I initially told them I didn't have money, and then seemed borderline offended when they found out it was true. It got to be very frustrating, and I came close to snapping at people a few times.

One of the worst offenders was a man who called himself Joe the African. He called me into his little shop "just to look," which universally never actually means that. He tried to get me to buy some necklaces, to which I replied I didn't want any. He then suggested I get some for my girlfriend. When I said I didn't have one, he made reference to the large number of girls in the group I was with and then proceeded, in the most vulgar way imaginable, to ask if I was a heterosexual. He then went on to describe his sexual exploits with his four wives. Needless to say, I didn't buy anything from him.

Overall, though, Saint Louis was very pleasant, and I wasn't crazy about coming back to Dakar. Unfortunately, it seems that I didn't take a single picture there. I don't really know what I was thinking. I'll try to get some from other people on the trip.

Many many updates

It's been a good long while since my last post, as I thought it might be. I'll try to keep this as organized and brief as possible while I hit all the major points.

We finished batik up, and I'm fairly pleased with how one of my pieces turned out. It's a beach scene with a kora and tama player. I also made a shirt with a djembe player on it, and a blue cloth with red cracks, but I'm less pleased with how those turned out.

On Friday, we went to the island of Gorée, a tiny island which was a major hub in the Atlantic slave trade. Upon arriving, I was immediately struck by what I felt to be the strong contrast between the island's gorgeous architecture and its horrific history. Our first stop on the island was a boarding house where slaves were kept in pretty abysmal conditions before being shipped out to the US or Europe. There were some other tourists there, and it was weird to see them taking photos smiling in front of the slave quarters. We then visited a museum dedicated to women in Senegal, which was apparently the first of its kind in West Africa. There was a lot of interesting stuff there, but the heat made it a little hard to concentrate at times. After lunch, we wandered around the island for a while, and Jeannie and I got the opportunity to visit the old French fort on the top of the island, which has been converted into an artists' studio. After visiting another former fort that now functions as a sort of museum of anthropology, we headed back to the mainland. Overall, I was surprised by how tourist-y the island was. The locals seemed really eager to capitalize on the presence of visitors, and nobody seemed particularly eager to acknowledge the island's history.

The next day, we left for our village stay. I was put in Keur Demba Kebe with Allie and Sonya, and I got to stay with the very wonderful Mbaye family, who named me Tala for the duration of my stay there. While most everyone in the village spoke only Wolof, I managed to survive by recognizing key words and getting help from my host brother, Masila, who spoke French. Additionally, there was a Peace Corps volunteer who had been living there for the past couple of years, so she was able to do some very helpful translating when she was around.

The village itself was comprised of four adjacent compounds along the road from Thies, with a fifth across the street. None of the compounds on our side of the road had electricity, and water came from a tap in the center of the village. In the three days that I was there, it's safe to say that I did very little compared to an average day in Dakar. Men would generally work in the field in the mornings while women would do housework, and much of the rest of the day was spent lying around in the heat. It was nice not having a TV running 24/7, the food was pretty good, and the night sky was absolutely beautiful without the lights of the city nearby.

On our last night, we had a sort of dance party in the larger central village of Keur Sadaro. I'm certain I made a complete fool of myself, but such is the life of a Toubab. It was especially odd considering Muslim men don't dance at all, so I initially wasn't sure if I risked offending anyone by dancing. However, it became clear that the opposite was true--I risked offending people by not dancing. On the plus side, I did get to wear some of the ridiculous clothes I bought in the market a while back.

Also, we went to the former colonial capital of Saint Louis. Because I'm getting sick of typing, I'm going to save that for a separate post.