So much has happened in the last five days, and I can’t figure out where to begin this one, so for a momentary lack of creativity (and a bit of exhaustion) I guess I’ll go at this chronologically. I went to Dakar this weekend, needing to connect with a handful of people and a city I won’t see for a couple months. I went to a market I’d never been to before, but was as charmingly hot, dusty, and noisy as ever. A real If You Can’t Find It, You Don’t Need It kind of place. The vendors sell mostly used and some new clothing - heaps of it that are shipped from the West. It’s quite unlike most other Dakar markets, which are typically nebulous, for lack of a better word. Just stall after stall after stall and sometimes not even stalls along really labyrinthine paths that lead you to no where except into other pockets of small-time commerce, clustered around no real center at all. (Prokaryotic-like actually does it some justice, if you don’t mind getting biological about it; and by prokaryotic I mean, as you can imagine, all the cell junk sans nucleus). It never fails to strike me as something miraculous, that when I finally reach the outskirts of it all, there’s always a taxi driver who know where in God’s name we are. But the market I was at this weekend was, to my surprise and slight dismay, linear. Bought jeans with some blingin sparklies on the behind to wear clubbing! Intermittently through the next 24 hours I went to a quiet beach and an outrageously expensive Thai restaurant, danced till 4 in the am at a jivey bumping club, got hassled by greedy, underpaid cops for not having “papers,” (for the record, I had mine!), met some gentlemanly gars riding tandem on a moto who kindly bought us a bottle of water and paid half the bribe money, had the most deliciously hearty breakfast, the kind I’m still thinking about, and made it home to Thiès not only in one piece, but with a full belly and fond memories. Traveled back via sept-place, which is an ingeniously efficient form of carpooling amounting to something like a station-wagon carrying seven people plus driver quite uncomfortably but for very little cost, and if lucky, comes with a cute Moroccan man who will sing suras all the way. Made it home to find our quaint little jungle bungalow had been landscaped to smithereens (people have no respect for shade) and my room ankle-deep in water (reservoir issues).
And that was only the beginning of the journey! Yesterday I sadly left some amazing girls in Thiès and commenced my biggest adventure yet, which will have me working in the Ziguinchor region for the next two months. I’ve been traveling with the NGO’s computer technician and some other people I still find quite lovely despite being squished in a mini but air-conditioned pick-up with them for the greater part of the last 2 days. We spent the night at the regional office in Kaolack, having tea and chatting under an immense and quiet sky. Took our time getting on the road this morning, a road full of potholes (where it was paved) - so full of potholes in fact, the speed bumps seemed redundant - but nonetheless, a road which would carry us through The Gambia (a rough looking place) and ultimately to point Z - Ziguinchor.
So here I am in my new digs, which I’m quickly falling in love with, as I feared. The name Ziguinchor (which Europeans pronounce Zee-guin-shore, and locals something more like Zigi-chor) is derived from Portuguese, meaning "to sit and cry"; many captives were taken from this area during the age of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. When you ask people what’s Ziguinchor like? People invariably tell you: “green.” And green it is! So green you’d imagine the grass would glow in the dark. Such a contrast from the dustier north I came from, whose landscape is persistently turning to shades of gray. The town reminds me of a rusty Key West (maybe because of the uncomfortably long-and-slow getting here, maybe the mangroves). It is situated on a river, and the smell of salt and fish gives away the economy. Unlike the rest of Senegal, the dominant ethnic group and language is not Wolof, but instead Djola and Mandinka. In reality, the people here speak at least 3 different languages fluently. Djola society is traditionally unhierarchical, and while I’m still learning what exactly that means in terms of social structures, one principle thing it implies is they’ve been somewhat resistant to foreign authority imposed in their homeland in the past. (Fortunately, conflicts are almost unheard of today).
The people at the regional office gave me a warm welcome, an invitation to live at so-and-so’s house, and a watermelon. So that brings me to the present tense! What’s a girl to do in a new African city, but test the water? Literally, to make sure it doesn’t give her dysentery or something similarly awful in the middle of the night. If you’re wondering, it’s got a funny taste which could be either chlorine or something more insidious, but as of now I’m feeling good. Really good.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Friday, October 19, 2007
Article on Informal Education from www.irinnews.org (publication of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs)
SENEGAL: New efforts underway to educate in local languages
DAKAR, 14 September 2007 (IRIN) - With formal education systems crumbling in much of sub-Saharan Africa, educationalists are looking more to informal systems of education taught in local languages.
"Every child and adult should be able to learn in their own language, especially in the face of staggering failure rates from the French education system," said Sonja Diallo, director of Associates in Research and Education for Development (ARED), a non-profit group based in Senegal that promotes learning in African languages.
She points out that it takes about 300 hours to make a student literate and learn basic maths skills in their own languages, whereas reaching grade six in the formal system takes a total of 7,000 hours.
The type of education that people get in their own languages is also more practical. “People here have found the confidence and skills to keep accounts and organise themselves,” said Ousmane Mamadou Ba, who went through a non-formal education programme in the northern Senegalese town of Podor and now teaches in his native language of Pulaar subjects ranging from animal health to AIDS awareness.
“We've been able to improve farming in the area by teaching farmers how to get the most from their crops. And newly literate local leaders are encouraging our youth to educate themselves about Pulaar culture,” he said. “People have become really interested in reading and learning about themselves."
ARED has produced over 150 fiction and non-fiction books in Pulaar and five other Senegalese languages.
Learning in local languages has gained new impetus and was one of the issues discussed in a meeting organised by UNESCO earlier in September in Bamako to promote global literacy.
The formal system
For Diallo, who presented a paper at the conference, "[Families] sending children to formal schools is a bit like playing lottery with their lives."
"In rural areas families scrape and save to send their kids to school, knowing quite well that they probably won't make it past the sixth grade," she said. A staggering 75 percent of children fail the seventh grade entrance exam and are forced out of the system, she said.
Learning in a foreign language is a big part of the problem, she said. "What we must understand is how incredibly difficult it is for most Senegalese students to succeed in the formal system. A great number of them enter primary school not speaking the language of instruction," Diallo said.
"They are destined to fail from the start," she said.
Moreover, with massive unemployment in formal sector jobs in Africa the formal education system is teaching students skills that are not uthey need to further their lives. "It’s great for those who will make it to formal sector or urban jobs,” educationalist Molly Melching, director of Tostan, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) supporting non-formal education in West Africa, told IRIN, “but for those returning to rural communities they are left with skills they may never use."
Alternatives
Proponents of non-formal education are not calling for the formal education system to be replaced, but for people to be given other options. "Non-formal education is not concretely opposed to the French formal system," Diallo said.
“Instead, it provides an alternative for people who have very little chance of succeeding in a top-down system.”
The alternatives should be designed and structured by local communities, to meet local needs, the proponents say. The education programmes start with literacy in local languages and basic maths skills, and then cover human rights, gender equality, health as well as agricultural issues.
"Communities choose subjects that apply to their lives," Diallo said.
While the programmes do not lead to a degree or certificate, advocates of the system say they are crucial to community driven development.
"It gives them the tools to drive their own development, which is entirely more sustainable than any development initiative imposed from the outside," Melching said.
'Faire-Faire'
In Senegal the government has had a plan in place for more than a decade to revitalise the country's education system through the use of national languages and promoting local cultures.
The plan, called 'Faire-Faire' (make happen), is intended to provide community driven education outside of formal schools. It is an idea that has spread to other countries in Francophone Africa, including Burkina Faso, Niger, Mauritania and Mali.
Fary Ka, a former adviser to the Minister of Literacy in Senegal who now works as a consultant and researcher on non-formal education, has called the programme "an alternative to the failed mirage of formal education which creates civil servants, elites and intellectuals".
Yet of the 18.9 percent of the US$3 billion Senegalese state budget that goes to education only 1 percent of that is directed towards non-formal education programmes.
"It's amazing that more money is not directed towards these programmes," says Diallo. “Non-formal education plays such an essential role in levelling the playing field in Africa.”
DAKAR, 14 September 2007 (IRIN) - With formal education systems crumbling in much of sub-Saharan Africa, educationalists are looking more to informal systems of education taught in local languages.
"Every child and adult should be able to learn in their own language, especially in the face of staggering failure rates from the French education system," said Sonja Diallo, director of Associates in Research and Education for Development (ARED), a non-profit group based in Senegal that promotes learning in African languages.
She points out that it takes about 300 hours to make a student literate and learn basic maths skills in their own languages, whereas reaching grade six in the formal system takes a total of 7,000 hours.
The type of education that people get in their own languages is also more practical. “People here have found the confidence and skills to keep accounts and organise themselves,” said Ousmane Mamadou Ba, who went through a non-formal education programme in the northern Senegalese town of Podor and now teaches in his native language of Pulaar subjects ranging from animal health to AIDS awareness.
“We've been able to improve farming in the area by teaching farmers how to get the most from their crops. And newly literate local leaders are encouraging our youth to educate themselves about Pulaar culture,” he said. “People have become really interested in reading and learning about themselves."
ARED has produced over 150 fiction and non-fiction books in Pulaar and five other Senegalese languages.
Learning in local languages has gained new impetus and was one of the issues discussed in a meeting organised by UNESCO earlier in September in Bamako to promote global literacy.
The formal system
For Diallo, who presented a paper at the conference, "[Families] sending children to formal schools is a bit like playing lottery with their lives."
"In rural areas families scrape and save to send their kids to school, knowing quite well that they probably won't make it past the sixth grade," she said. A staggering 75 percent of children fail the seventh grade entrance exam and are forced out of the system, she said.
Learning in a foreign language is a big part of the problem, she said. "What we must understand is how incredibly difficult it is for most Senegalese students to succeed in the formal system. A great number of them enter primary school not speaking the language of instruction," Diallo said.
"They are destined to fail from the start," she said.
Moreover, with massive unemployment in formal sector jobs in Africa the formal education system is teaching students skills that are not uthey need to further their lives. "It’s great for those who will make it to formal sector or urban jobs,” educationalist Molly Melching, director of Tostan, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) supporting non-formal education in West Africa, told IRIN, “but for those returning to rural communities they are left with skills they may never use."
Alternatives
Proponents of non-formal education are not calling for the formal education system to be replaced, but for people to be given other options. "Non-formal education is not concretely opposed to the French formal system," Diallo said.
“Instead, it provides an alternative for people who have very little chance of succeeding in a top-down system.”
The alternatives should be designed and structured by local communities, to meet local needs, the proponents say. The education programmes start with literacy in local languages and basic maths skills, and then cover human rights, gender equality, health as well as agricultural issues.
"Communities choose subjects that apply to their lives," Diallo said.
While the programmes do not lead to a degree or certificate, advocates of the system say they are crucial to community driven development.
"It gives them the tools to drive their own development, which is entirely more sustainable than any development initiative imposed from the outside," Melching said.
'Faire-Faire'
In Senegal the government has had a plan in place for more than a decade to revitalise the country's education system through the use of national languages and promoting local cultures.
The plan, called 'Faire-Faire' (make happen), is intended to provide community driven education outside of formal schools. It is an idea that has spread to other countries in Francophone Africa, including Burkina Faso, Niger, Mauritania and Mali.
Fary Ka, a former adviser to the Minister of Literacy in Senegal who now works as a consultant and researcher on non-formal education, has called the programme "an alternative to the failed mirage of formal education which creates civil servants, elites and intellectuals".
Yet of the 18.9 percent of the US$3 billion Senegalese state budget that goes to education only 1 percent of that is directed towards non-formal education programmes.
"It's amazing that more money is not directed towards these programmes," says Diallo. “Non-formal education plays such an essential role in levelling the playing field in Africa.”
Monday, October 15, 2007
A weekend of plenty; and if by plenty you mean: plenty of boubous, plenty of rain, plenty of slaughtered animal carcasses along the route nationale, (plenty of letting down your guard), as well as plenty of family, plenty of warmth, and generosity, and group snoozing, it makes for a kind of weird weekend. Well, only weird in the sense that you get so caught up in the fever of a holiday that’s quite foreign to you to begin with. And quite anticlimactic. Nothing gets done in the week before Korité, except Korité, but at the end of it all, most everyone seemed a little too worn out to make much of it. Stormy weather also always has a way of making the world feel a little unsettled; it’s the depression in air pressure that gives the atmosphere that nervous kind of edge. According to the calendar, we’re right at the tail end of the rainy season, l’hivernage, but it seems like the sky itself has got another, lingering, idea in mind.
Our water’s been cut out for two days now (although it came back for just long enough for me to shower under a pathetic trickle of water; let me self-pity for a second, it's my blog). Last night Cathi and I - ever industrious and giddy - were able to fill up some buckets of water at a neighbor’s house, and carry them back on our heads … did we ever turn a few heads! Sometimes I feel like toubabs (white people) are just purely comical to Africans. I suppose it’s very common for foreigners to come here and, at least once in a while, feel way less self-sufficient than they'd like to be. (AH! water water halleluja … I'm stealing away for a moment to wash vegetables while the glorious flow lasts).
Before I returned with this big bowl of carrots and avocados and tomatoes, and beans … (for one reason or another I’ve been living on white bread and rice for a few days. I can’t help but feel a deep gratification in saying, the bakers are on strike) I think I was going to make some point about how darn funny we are - sunburned and miscommunicating - navigating our way through a society that’s not terribly open-minded and but has nonetheless a sense of humor. Often at our expense … you’d laugh too. (One of my girlfriends, Leah, - gallant in her stabs at Gambian Wolof - somehow misconstrued “are you married?” with “do you pleasure your wife?” ) It’s humbling, a little.
But before I get too far off the topic of water … I want to make a point to say that it is so, so, so, so precious. You think about these things when you go without. And while we can bear the loss for a couple days, while our dishes pile up in the sink, while we can’t sufficiently wash vegetables, while we empty bottles of sanitizer on our hands in lieu of soap and water - for just a few days - we never the less get a glimpse of the aggravation of a problem that is very grave and growing in magnitude. There are close to 2 billion people who live without access to safe drinking water, right now, who live in a state of what the UN calls a “moderate to sever water crisis.” (I was curious, had to google it when the power came back on, haha). Oh man, the luxuries we don’t even think about. Who ever thinks about water as a luxury, let alone a human right?
Our water’s been cut out for two days now (although it came back for just long enough for me to shower under a pathetic trickle of water; let me self-pity for a second, it's my blog). Last night Cathi and I - ever industrious and giddy - were able to fill up some buckets of water at a neighbor’s house, and carry them back on our heads … did we ever turn a few heads! Sometimes I feel like toubabs (white people) are just purely comical to Africans. I suppose it’s very common for foreigners to come here and, at least once in a while, feel way less self-sufficient than they'd like to be. (AH! water water halleluja … I'm stealing away for a moment to wash vegetables while the glorious flow lasts).
Before I returned with this big bowl of carrots and avocados and tomatoes, and beans … (for one reason or another I’ve been living on white bread and rice for a few days. I can’t help but feel a deep gratification in saying, the bakers are on strike) I think I was going to make some point about how darn funny we are - sunburned and miscommunicating - navigating our way through a society that’s not terribly open-minded and but has nonetheless a sense of humor. Often at our expense … you’d laugh too. (One of my girlfriends, Leah, - gallant in her stabs at Gambian Wolof - somehow misconstrued “are you married?” with “do you pleasure your wife?” ) It’s humbling, a little.
But before I get too far off the topic of water … I want to make a point to say that it is so, so, so, so precious. You think about these things when you go without. And while we can bear the loss for a couple days, while our dishes pile up in the sink, while we can’t sufficiently wash vegetables, while we empty bottles of sanitizer on our hands in lieu of soap and water - for just a few days - we never the less get a glimpse of the aggravation of a problem that is very grave and growing in magnitude. There are close to 2 billion people who live without access to safe drinking water, right now, who live in a state of what the UN calls a “moderate to sever water crisis.” (I was curious, had to google it when the power came back on, haha). Oh man, the luxuries we don’t even think about. Who ever thinks about water as a luxury, let alone a human right?
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Woke up today feeling something you could call a cool draft in our house, imagine that. I had about a half hour to relish it, naïvely, deludedly, thinking the times are a-changing, before 8:30 descended on West Africa and with it the familiar old dry, heavy heat - merely trapped in the morning rush hour drag - arrived promptly, all ruffled and overcompensating, not a minute too soon. Everyday must be one closer to cooling off, right? Or have I been living in New England too long!
But nonetheless, things feel like they’re changing. You can usually trust it when you feel it, in the breeze, in your bones … (wherever you so feel change.) This weekend marks the end of Ramadan. Feels like a ball rolling downhill, but instead of gaining momentum, it’s gotten drowsy under the weight of inertia. It’s so straining, it feels like its its got to come to an end or else. I find myself thinking about religion constantly here, way more than the last time I was here, way more than ever. There seem to be a lot of questions I can’t seem to get off my mind, mostly about the roots of religions, our evolutionary inclination to spirituality (and why it's quite maladaptive to our venerable old species)(but all of this isn't about spirituality per se), about social conformity, about long outdated approaches to understanding the world and beyond, about incompatibility … about other things I don’t want to discuss here for fear of stepping on toes; I’ve even stepped on my own toes this time. What I used to find very beautiful and worthy about the world religions has been trumped recently by a negativity I can't seem to shake off.
But nonetheless, things feel like they’re changing. You can usually trust it when you feel it, in the breeze, in your bones … (wherever you so feel change.) This weekend marks the end of Ramadan. Feels like a ball rolling downhill, but instead of gaining momentum, it’s gotten drowsy under the weight of inertia. It’s so straining, it feels like its its got to come to an end or else. I find myself thinking about religion constantly here, way more than the last time I was here, way more than ever. There seem to be a lot of questions I can’t seem to get off my mind, mostly about the roots of religions, our evolutionary inclination to spirituality (and why it's quite maladaptive to our venerable old species)(but all of this isn't about spirituality per se), about social conformity, about long outdated approaches to understanding the world and beyond, about incompatibility … about other things I don’t want to discuss here for fear of stepping on toes; I’ve even stepped on my own toes this time. What I used to find very beautiful and worthy about the world religions has been trumped recently by a negativity I can't seem to shake off.
Friday, October 5, 2007
rambling, nuff said
Call it what you will - Friday, vendredi, ajumaa, or if you’re Australian, likely a heavy drinkin bloke, and so inclined, POETS-day (Piss Off Early Tomorrow’s Saturday) - the general t.g.i.f.afternoon sense of unbridled, unencumbered, damn satisfying freedom is a universal one. (On a side note, if you happen to conflate all of your known languages on a regular basis, rest assured you’re not alone.)
A long week, I guess more tiring than tumultuous in hindsight. (And electrifying! No, literally. Don’t worry, I’m ok. A little shaken up though.) Sometimes things aren’t as uncomplicated as we want to tell other people they are. Sometimes you feel very comfortable in your own skin (again, literally), but things happen that really knock your self-confidence down a notch. I’ve begun Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, which is not as gripping as I had imagined, but for what it's worth, a really eloquent inquiry into the nature of human isolation, and pilgrimage, and well truthfully, God. And the humbling effect on the man out of his element, in the arms of unbroken landscapes. (I sure miss the old Mass North Shore and the South Shore! the unassuming façades of the New England coast.) I found this quote by Thoreau from Walden especially moving:
No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted … The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We can easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality … The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
(by the way, Blogger operates differently on Macs, and for some reason, I cannot italicize anything. I will try to get on a different computer and fix that. my apologies, of course you probably don't mind)
I suppose a part of what he’s saying is, at the end of the day we sometimes just cannot name the things we’re seeking, nor the things we’ve found. A couple months ago a friend gave me a collection of writings by R. W. Emerson, all in a similar vein. In light of everything at the time, it might have been the most thoughtful present I have ever received (and if you ever read this, that is true, and thank you). I think like man’s relationship to the land and to people, these ideas fade and reappear and morph with age. Sometimes we hunger for the salty, muddy earth more than at other times.
I’m so ready for the next leg of work here, which entails moving out to the regional bases. I should be spending a good amount of time (well, the remainder of my trip … if all goes as planned) in each of 5 regional offices: Matam in the sahelian north; Tambacounda the biggest, barest region of Senegal; Kolda in the “Haute Casamance”; humid and green and coastal Ziguinchor in the “Basse Casamance”; and finally, old landlocked Kaolack not far outside of homebase (not necessarily in that order). I'm aching to make it out to Mali too ... if possible. Thiès is really lovely, but I get this ambiguous feeling here that makes me restless. Maybe it’s events, maybe it's just because I know I’ll be on the move soon.
[A pizza and a bottle or two of red wine later - shared with Cameroonian and Benenois bioengineers and enjoyed all around - what you are reading tonight is, of course, a running document!]
So where was I? Retreating into the great emptiness of l’Afrique d’Ouest? Soon, insh’Allah. I will try add more to this post over the weekend, I suppose it's got a sort of weak, lack of focus.
A long week, I guess more tiring than tumultuous in hindsight. (And electrifying! No, literally. Don’t worry, I’m ok. A little shaken up though.) Sometimes things aren’t as uncomplicated as we want to tell other people they are. Sometimes you feel very comfortable in your own skin (again, literally), but things happen that really knock your self-confidence down a notch. I’ve begun Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, which is not as gripping as I had imagined, but for what it's worth, a really eloquent inquiry into the nature of human isolation, and pilgrimage, and well truthfully, God. And the humbling effect on the man out of his element, in the arms of unbroken landscapes. (I sure miss the old Mass North Shore and the South Shore! the unassuming façades of the New England coast.) I found this quote by Thoreau from Walden especially moving:
No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted … The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We can easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality … The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
(by the way, Blogger operates differently on Macs, and for some reason, I cannot italicize anything. I will try to get on a different computer and fix that. my apologies, of course you probably don't mind)
I suppose a part of what he’s saying is, at the end of the day we sometimes just cannot name the things we’re seeking, nor the things we’ve found. A couple months ago a friend gave me a collection of writings by R. W. Emerson, all in a similar vein. In light of everything at the time, it might have been the most thoughtful present I have ever received (and if you ever read this, that is true, and thank you). I think like man’s relationship to the land and to people, these ideas fade and reappear and morph with age. Sometimes we hunger for the salty, muddy earth more than at other times.
I’m so ready for the next leg of work here, which entails moving out to the regional bases. I should be spending a good amount of time (well, the remainder of my trip … if all goes as planned) in each of 5 regional offices: Matam in the sahelian north; Tambacounda the biggest, barest region of Senegal; Kolda in the “Haute Casamance”; humid and green and coastal Ziguinchor in the “Basse Casamance”; and finally, old landlocked Kaolack not far outside of homebase (not necessarily in that order). I'm aching to make it out to Mali too ... if possible. Thiès is really lovely, but I get this ambiguous feeling here that makes me restless. Maybe it’s events, maybe it's just because I know I’ll be on the move soon.
[A pizza and a bottle or two of red wine later - shared with Cameroonian and Benenois bioengineers and enjoyed all around - what you are reading tonight is, of course, a running document!]
So where was I? Retreating into the great emptiness of l’Afrique d’Ouest? Soon, insh’Allah. I will try add more to this post over the weekend, I suppose it's got a sort of weak, lack of focus.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Monday, October 1, 2007
governance in Africa
The Ibrahim Index of African Governance is a new, comprehensive ranking of sub-Saharan African nations according to governance quality. It has been created in recognition of the need for a more comprehensive, objective and quantifiable method of measuring governance quality in sub-Saharan Africa. The Index assesses national progress in five key areas, which together constitute a holistic definition of good governance.
Safety and Security
Rule of Law, Transparency and Corruption
Participation and Human Rights
Sustainable Economic Development
Human Development
http://www.moibrahimfoundation.org/the-index.asp
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