Back to Salone

Two years ago in my friend Paul’s basement, I looked at his big Michelin map of West Africa and imagined my future in that mysterious place as he told me incredible stories from his past. Paul served two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone and I was about to leave for Senegal to do the same twenty years later. His account of living in a rustic village on the ocean and adventuring through extraordinary situations that only the vivid landscapes and eclectic people of West Africa could produce appealed to me on a visceral level.

I listened with an expectant grin on my face as Paul told me about an acid fueled motorcycle trip he and his friend Kim took around the Freetown peninsula that brought them from a monkey massacre to sketchy police checkpoints. Rounding a corner on their Honda 125s, the countryside broke to reveal dozens of green colobus monkeys swinging slowly in the wind, their tales and limp arms bound around a rough wooden pole. Bare-chested men with machetes smoked cigarettes and stared at them with bloodshot gazes as they drove by. I tried to imagine this bush meat slaughter through LSD eyes but snapped out of it as Paul went on to describe how at a police stop soon after, they had to bribe an officer with a few shots of whiskey to carry on. By the time they left, they had joined him in finishing the bottle, toasting the health of their families, the police force, and the enduring friendship between Sierra Leone and the United States.

Before I left the states Paul gave me the Michelin map. It had hung on his wall during the Peace Corps, and now it would hang on mine. With a strong pat on the back he said he knew exactly what I was about to get into. During my stint in Senegal we have kept in touch over email. A few weeks ago I got a message: would I be interested in joining him and his old pal Kim for a trip to Sierra Leone? It would be their first time back to “Salone” since the Peace Corps. Within a week I bought a plane ticket and was memorizing the few Krio phrases in my Lonely Planet guide to West Africa as I studied Sierra Leone on the aged map in my hut, now well into its second tour on the continent.

From the moment we stepped onto the plane that would take us from Dakar to Sierra Leone—an ancient Bellview Airways 737 aptly named “Faith”—Paul and Kim were giddy. They were already speaking their rusty Krio with other passengers, their senses at greater attention. This seemed at surprising odds with the generous amount of valium they were ingesting, though perhaps that made it all the more impressive. Paul had twisted my arm at more than one pharmacy in Dakar to help him procure the better quality, French Laroche 10mg tablets, a cut above the Valium 5s he and Kim used to swear by in Sierra Leone.

As we made our descent into the Lungi airport I remarked how wild the country looked from the air- thick forest dotted with mudbrick homes, mangroves rooted along a vast network of rivers snaking to the sea, and a noticeable absence of pavement.

The airport was more like an airstrip, but once inside the terminal, the reunion was already underway. The village where Paul lived is only two kilometers from the airport, and after he dropped a few names, employees at the security check had heard of “Mistah Paul” and responded to his “I done com’ back for see you!” with laughter and 30-second handshakes. Kim chatted as casually as he could with the director of airport security, a tough looking man dressed in a silk zebraprint shirt who was certain that several Peace Corps volunteers were agents for the CIA. Kim did his best to assure him that we were nothing more than harmless tourists, but he kept looking at us suspiciously even as he let us pass.

Just before leaving, Paul asked if anyone remembered a man named Samba, who used to be the airport expeditor for the US embassy when Paul was in Salone, and his best friend. “He still working here Mistah Paul!” exclaimed one of the men, and offered him his cellphone after bringing up Samba’s number from his contacts. Paul broke into his uproarious big man laugh and made arrangements to meet up with Samba in another hour at our hotel.

They sat next to each other like matching book-ends pushed together after years on opposite sides of a dusty shelf. The same age and same build—short and stocky with healthy beer guts—Paul and Samba smiled at how much had happened and yet how little had changed in the 20 years since they last saw each other. They kept smacking each other’s prominent bellies saying, “You have the bigger bo-bo belly!” The expression I learned, refers to the distended stomachs of the many malnourished Sierra Leonian children, or bo-bos.

We sat in the lounge of the airport hotel and drank Star beer while Paul and Samba reminisced about getting drunk together and chasing women, catching up on two decades separated not just by time and distance, but by war. Next to us a British Airways flight crew in bathing suits and flip flops quietly sipped daquiris, obviously fascinated by the reunion of these two old friends, and by Paul’s gregarious, if at times stammering Krio. We invited them to join us for lunch in town but they gave a reluctant no thanks, saying they were prohibited by the airline from leaving the hotel, and bring all of their own food with them. Prisoners for their own safety apparently.

Samba took us to a local chop house for spicy groundnut soup with mystery meat. He carried a large plastic jug of “poyo” or fresh palm wine that he had brought for the occasion. “From God to man,” Kim toasted as we raised our effervescent glasses of milky white brew for a quick clink. I drank eagerly and as the subtle but warm buzz of the poyo took its place at the table after three glasses, so did a sense of gentle euphoria, and I understood why the palm-wine drinkard in Amos Tutuola’s book was named the “father of the gods who could do anything in this world.” The moment faded when Paul produced a bottle of Purell to wash our hands before the meal as well as a packet of “Wet-Ones,” a brand of moist towelettes for a gentler wipe after the “runny belly” he assured me we would all enjoy that afternoon.

Sure enough, each of us frequented the hotel bathroom after lunch while Samba waited for us in the bar. Stomachs full and bowels empty, we climbed into Samba’s embassy rig and drove to Paul’s village, Mahera. The road was rutted and bumpy from last year’s long rainy season. Paul narrated who had lived where, pointing out the curve in the road where he crashed his motorcycle, rermarking how the mosque was now a ghost of its former self. We ascended a short grade and pulled up to a house perched on the edge of a ridge overlooking the ocean, Pauls’s old house.

We got out and walked around the place, a well built one story building with two identical sides separated by a large patio. We listened to Paul as he pointed to his old garden and told us how he had killed more than green mamba snakes with his shovel. Behind the house we found a hesitant woman with three children at her side cooking cassava leaf and rice. She said that Paul’s old Ma and Pa had passed away years ago, though not because of the war. Paul asked after Sadiki, who at the time was his six year old host brother. Still in the village, now with wife and child the woman said. “You don’ tire for no see him Mistah Paul.”

We walked through Mahera and found Sadiki. As he and Paul looked at each other and embraced, Kim and I covered up our glassy eyes with our cameras. I tried to imagine walking into my own village in Senegal twenty years from now. Sadiki and his wife were living in a scene straight out of an Oxfam advertisement or commercial for Chrisitan Children’s Fund. Their mud house was crumbling and had no more furniture than a mattress on the ground for the three of them to sleep on, a few plastic buckets and piles of scrap wood and metal, and a copy of the Koran sitting on a wooden chair in the corner. The place smelled of cooking smoke and earth, a humid and heavy feeling to the air.

As Sadiki showed us his home and took us on a walk through the onion fields and along the beach past Shacka Steven’s old presidential rest house, Paul whispered to me that he just didn’t think he would find Sadiki like this. As the older brother to this man who at the time was just a boy, Paul felt somehow responsible and would spend the rest of our vacation thinking of the best way to help Sadiki. “Should I just give him a handful of cash?” he wondered. I said, “Do you want to give him money or do you want to be involved in his life again?”

On the day Paul left Mahera to return to the US twenty years ago, he looked for Sadiki to say goodbye and found him crying high up in one of the palm trees. On this day, as we left at dusk for our hotel, Paul promised him that he would help him however he could. Sadiki just smiled and shook Paul’s hand, saying, “Tank you Mistah Paul.”

We took the ferry across the bay to Freetown with second class berths. Packed closely among other passengers and baskets of produce and fish, we watched the high hills of the south side of the peninsula materialize through the haze. Crawling through traffic on the streets of Freetown we watched banks, barbershops, hardware stores and even a law school bustle with activity. Police wearing blue shirts with white sleeves worked to direct the congestion while troops of girls in their school uniforms of white blouses, pleaded skirts, and smart English hats paraded down the streets. The smell of pepper, fish, and warm sewage captured my nose while the tempo of post-war Sierra Leonian music set the pace for a long, humid day.

Between shelled out or burned buildings children played marbles, women cooked cassava or potato leaf, and men sat with one another chatting. I noticed several Lebanese shopfronts selling used CDs and worthless knick-knacks and wondered how they were making any money. I mentioned this to Paul and he said that many of them are fronts for trafficking diamonds and other gems harvested in the upline provinces near Kenema. Hearing our conversation, the taxi driver asked if we were interested in buying any diamonds, saying he could get us a good price. Though the flow of diamonds was greatly curtailed by the war, he said investment in the trade is back on the rise and the availability of the stone became as obvious in the rest of the capital as it was in our cab.

The movie “Blood Diamond” has introduced much of the world to Sierra Leone, or at least to the horrors that it suffered during its senseless and brutal war, 1991-1999. With no political objective whatsoever, the RUF rebels systematically murdered and tortured thousands as they took over the one source of wealth and power- the “blood” diamonds- in what ranks as the world’s second poorest country.

The money the RUF reaped from the diamond trade, estimated at between $25 million and $125 million per year, was used to buy weapons and continue their war. The rebels often resorted to the ruthless tactic of amputating the limbs of innocent civilians in order to terrorize the population and ensure continued control over the diamond mines. It’s estimated that over 75,000 people were killed during the war and another 20,000 mutilated.

The war’s legacy is no more evident than in its victims’ poignant struggle to continue living. In downtown Freetown near the famous 500 year old cottonwood tree, war victims held out stumps with smiles, congregating together to beg for change. Many people were still bandaged, a sign of the sickening recentness of the RUF’s campaign of atrocities. On the outskirts of Freetown near Waterloo, amputees have been moved to rehabilitation housing projects safely hidden on the other side of the peninsula’s highest point, Signal Hill. Row after row of squat cement houses however, seemed little improvement over the shantytowns that house the impoverished and war refugees who never left Freetown after fleeing the country’s interior.

But in spite of the war, in the face of such poverty and loss, we were received with smiles and warm greetings at every turn. “Cooshay sah! How dee body?” When you ask the same, “I tell God tank-ee” is inevitably the reply. Kim had a response to the common question “How dee time sah?” that I thought was especially fitting- “Well I tank God sah but the struggle continues.”

As we made our way to the far side of the city near Aberdeen, we passed Lumley Beach, Paul and Kim’s favorite hangout as volunteers. What had been an open stretch of sand and ocean with a few rice shacks and beer stands is now a busy strip dotted with bars and restaurants, even a Chinese fast food place with an attached grocery store that advertised tofu. Paul and Kim could hardly believe how it had changed. Group after group of male expats-- mainly Brits and Lebanese-- sat with beers and bottles of liquor around plastic tables with Carlsberg and Guiness beach umbrellas. We caught glimpes of many of them fondling the prostitues on their laps as we drove past the long row of their landcruisers and NGO 4x4s parked out front.

From Lumley, we drove up the hill to Lighthouse Rd. where we were staying. Sierra Leone may be one of the poorest countries in the world, but it is not cheap. An average room at a hotel ran anywhere between $70-$140. My being poor and Paul and Kim not being rich, we hooked up with another old Peace Corps volunteer named Gary Walker who served in Salone in the sixties, and who lives in Freetown. He offered to put us up at his home for free and we told God tank-ee.

Gary has lived off and on in Africa for over 40 years, working as a consultant for the UN, multiple governments, and various NGOs. His knowledge of the history of Sierra Leone and the rest of Africa was remarkable, and his broad collection of books complemented a wealth of intriguing experience dealing with African development, politics, and people. Like other expats I’ve met who have remained in West Africa for years, Gary was cynical about nearly everything we discussed, though equally passionate. An activist since his college years, he regarded history as a series of troubling and connected events in which corrupt and powerful people worked to suppress equality, democracy, and social progress for the advancement of their own control and affluence.

In the US Gary had been active in the civil rights movement, refusal of the draft during the Vietnam War, and establishment of the Voting Rights Act. He had spent most of his career traveling and working on projects across Africa, but was based out of Washington, DC. When George W. Bush was elected president, he sold his house and moved to Sierra Leone permanently. “I’ve never regretted that decision,” he said plainly.

Nor do the multitude of Sierra Leonians who Gary supports in some way or another. Over the course of our stay at his home, it became clear that “Pa Gary” employed a sizeable group of his neighbors as cooks, guards, water carriers, maids, handymen, and errand boys. He payed for their secondary education, he financed technical apprenticeships, he sent their children to the doctor, and literally paid for many of the zinc roofs above their heads. Between his bitching and moaning about how they were all fleecing him out of a small fortune, Gary showed a real love and concern for all of these people. All over his house on Lighthouse Rd. were pictures and carvings of lighthouses. All around Pa Gary were Sierra Leonians he helped through difficult waters.

After staying in Freetown for a few days we joined Gary for a trip to the Banana Islands, where in collaboration with the local community he has created an ecotourism campement, the Banana Islands Guest Houses. The islands themselves are nothing short of a hidden, tropical paradise; particularly after negotiating the crowds and stresses of Freetown. Three rugged atolls rise from the sea to form a steep green ridge of cottonwood and palm trees. Pockets of clean sand are nestled among rocks smoothed by countless tides. Terns and gulls divebomb schools of yellowfin tuna and grouper that congregate along the reefs and shipwrecks on the islands’ periphery. Here, local fishermen work adroitly from small wooden dugout canoes that bear slogans like “I hope to God,” and “Thank you Mother.” Besides Gary, we were the only white men to be found.

We sat down at white plastic tables looking out on the ocean in front of the guest houses and had a lunch of lobsters, jolof rice, and slightly chilled tall-boy beers. Paul and Kim couldn’t believe it. They had left the states not knowing what to expect in Salone, and never considered that they would be eating like kings along an idyllic beach on these beautiful islands.

That, of course, is exactly what Gary is counting on as he works to develop the Banana Islands campement and promote it to the flow of tourists coming back to Sierra Leone with the war finally over. When we visited, the guest houses had only been in business for two weeks, but the operation was impressive, especially considering its remote location and novice employees, many of whom had never left the island. While the staff still have much to learn, the fresh seafood was delicious.

Paul, Kim, and I took long walks along the island. In the main village of Dublin we passed by ornate iron lamposts and a boat landing constructed by the Portuguese when they landed on the islands and created a settlement over a century ago. Children still pulled water from the colonists’ deep well. This small Krio community felt initimate and archaic, made up mostly of fishermen and their families who had been on the islands for generations. We were only 2km by sea from Kent on the mainland and another hour’s drive to Freetown, but couldn’t have felt any farther away.

On one afternoon we followed a series of well worn footpaths through the forest to a large stretch of gorgeous beach. We sat in the shade under a tree at the far end of the sand and reflected on how beautiful the place was. Kim told Paul to go down by the water so he could get a picture of him. Paul approached the surf, hesitated for a moment, and then bent over to pick something up.

“Dudes, holy shit. Look at this.” In his hand were two plastic Barbie-Doll arms that had washed up on the beach. The incongruity of these plastic limbs in our little piece of paradise was not without a disturbing sense of irony. The sight of them was a strange and chilling reminder that plenty of people in this beautiful country had met a similar fate during the war.

Walking back to the campement, we met a fisherman named Mr. Dalton standing in front of his home, a classic Krio wooden building with a pitched tin roof. He introduced us to his son Dalton Jr. and his daughter Daltonia. Evidently old English names like Dalton and Johnson survived on the island for good reason. Mr. Dalton told us that during the war the island received thousands of refugees who fled the Freetown Peninsula during the RUF’s assault on the capital. The islanders could do nothing but take in all those who came and hope that the war would come to an end soon.

Back at the guest houses we found a tailor hunched over his sewing machine working on uniforms for the employees. “Only 20 to go,” he said. He told us he was happy to have all the work and that Pa Gary was a blessing to the people of the Banana Islands. He had given them opportunity to improve their lives and develop their community. He said his family would have been proud of him for making money now, but they were all gone—his mother, brother, and aunt killed by the rebels.

And though the war in Sierra Leone is certainly over, the presence of its perpetrators remains. While the leaders of the RUF rebels are in prison and await trial before international war tribunals, their legion of soldiers have been disarmed and reintegrated into the population. I asked most people I met if this process of reconcilitation bothered them and they said, “What else are you to do with people who are your brothers?”

We said goodbye to Gary and the Banana Islands and headed back through Freetown to catch the ferry. Our taxi driver wished us well and dropped us in front of a roadside bar where we could wait for the boat, a small piece of calm among the madness of the port. Three short cinderblock walls with a sheet for a roof shielded us from the chaos outside as we sipped cold Stars. We toasted to an excellent trip.

As we raised our bottles, a large man dressed in all black walked in on the scene. He wore mirrored sunglasses that reflected my own image as I looked up at him. Immediately, and for no obvious reason, my stomach dropped. The man’s fierce muscularity and the way he looked at us from behind those sunglasses made me nervous.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To Lungi,” I said.

“I will drive you in my taxi when we get to the other side,” he stated flatly and put his bag on the bench next to ours. Paul told him we had other arrangements already.

“Then buy me a beer,” he said and moved in front of Paul. Everything about his tone, his rigid body language, and his aggressiveness were enough to make Paul stand up, while Kim and I looked quickly at each other and moved onto the edge of the bench.

“You go on now leave us here,” Paul said as he squared his shoulders to the man, easily a foot taller than him. The man said nothing, just stared with a cold presence that I somehow knew to be capable of violence, perhaps even familiar with it. As I braced for action, a single thought crossed my mind: “Was this man a rebel?”
Paul repeated himself and the man produced a thin, toothless smile as he exhaled through his nose. He grabbed his bag and left. The three of us looked at one another and recognized the fear that had walked in and out of the confines of our small space. Rebel or not, there was no question that this was a bad man.

The tension passed and after we had another beer and Paul downed another valium, he said he was going to get some air and walked into the action on the street while Kim and I kept chatting. When a few minutes had gone by, I thought again of the threathening man and wondered about Paul. Kim seemed to know what I was thinking and got up to take a look onto the street. He scanned the crowd and then said, “Oh God, look at this.”

I looked out and saw Paul talking with two police officers and another man that I recognized as our taxi driver who had dropped us off at the port earlier.

“What is he doing?” I said and looked on with disbelief as Paul laughed and put his arms around the cops—one for each officer—and slapped their backs as he had mine at his house two years before. Kim started laughing and said that seeing this had reminded him of how back in their days as volunteers, Paul had bribed a police officer for his uniform, and then got in trouble for showing up at an official Peace Corps meeting wearing the thing, demanding to see people’s IDs. Just then Paul walked in with a huge grin on his face.

“Those cops were going to give our driver a parking ticket, and…”

“And Prince Valium had to save the day!” Kim interrupted. We all broke into laughter. As I thought to myself that some things obviously never change, the ferry blew its whistle and we were on our way.

"If I had a choice between living an easy life or a difficult one, I would choose a difficult one."

"Why?"

"Because when tough times come I'll be able to say, 'I've been here before.'"

Clo-Clo Ba, my wise man friend

Subtle Signs

Life's little secrets
Seep through the cracks
They enter in rays of light
And swirl in clouds of dust

The truth in a smile
An answer in a wink
The essence of what is
Sings through the rattles
Of life's little pieces

In Senegal, cloths hanging to dry in the sun are like Tibetan prayer flags. Their colors and designs spread beauty in what can be a very dirty place. The country’s dusty roads, trash, feces, and other objectionable sights are pleasantly lost in washs of bright blue, red, orange, and white. Tie dye and batik abound.

The women sitting on the ground scrubbing fist over fist in soapy buckets add just as much color. They talk with one another, greet people passing by, all the while making a chorus of suds squirting from their efforts.

Los Clandestinos

It was New Year’s in Granada, and I was already about two pigs into a ham filled holiday in Southern Spain. My girlfriend Erica and I were having wine and tapas at this little retro bar El Circulo, taking in the stylish Spanish people and their laid back, have a drink at 3PM attitude. We were unabashed tourists people-watching on vacation. A little draft of cold air rushed into the bar as the door opened. I look up and knew immediately the guy who entered was Senegalese, not just because of the silver bracelet and large gris-gris ring he wore, but because he was selling burned CDs out of a plastic bag. He didn’t say anything, just waved the disk jacket in front of one group of people after another who quietly demurred. I leaned over to Erica and whispered that he was Senegalese just as he made his way back out the door.

With our next round the door opened again and another Senegalese walked in with the same routine, the same product. He wore a hooded sweatshirt underneath a worn-in burgundy caftan. I was going to say something to the guy but decided against it when a customer wanted to know what CDs he had. I wanted to ask him about his history and see how he got to Spain. I also wanted to show off speaking Wolof in front of my girlfriend. The customer didn’t buy anything and I could tell that the Senegalese guy wanted to negotiate with him, offer a lower price, but I got the sense that his Spanish just wasn’t there. He moved on to the next bar and we moved on to another glass of wine.

Next the door at the far end of the bar opened to reveal a small Spanish man, smartly dressed in a sweater and sports jacket. His hair was greased back and he had the kind of beard that has five o’clock shadow by noon. In his hand was a wooden shoe-shine box, the telltale foot stool on the top doubling as a handle. The man’s eyes went to the floor and within seconds he made his way over to a group of three men wearing nice leather shoes. Mr. Shoeshine greeted them in Spanish and ordered a glass of sherry. By the time his drink was served, he had already begun on one of the man’s boots.

I sipped my wine and couldn’t help but reflect on the very different experience of the men I had watched sell their wares. Erica saw what I was thinking and said, “Looks a little easier for that guy, huh?” I made a faint smile and just shook my head.

As if on cue, the door opened again and a third Senegalese walks in with his plastic bag of CDs. I say “Oh my God” as I notice the bartender see him and swear under his breath. Coming into the bar I had noticed a sign saying you couldn’t sell things inside, something I wondered might be the result of the Senegalese vendors. Before the CD guy could follow the footsteps of the two others before him, I called him over to our table in Spanish. I felt the need to give this guy a reason to be in the bar. I asked him where he was from and he looked at me with the wrinkled brow of someone who may have had Survival Spanish at best. I ask him in Wolof and after the requisite “Toubab degg na Wolof deh” I bought him a Coke and he told me his story.

Mustapha Seck left Kaolack five months ago and paid 360,000 CFA to travel from Dakar to the Canary Islands on a pirogue with 60 other people, two 40 horsepower outboards, and enough thieb for the nine day voyage. Thanks be to God, the ocean was calm for the entire trip. In the Canaries, Mustapha spent just under a week with the Red Cross where he and the others were processed and given blankets, sweatshirts, and food. He was then flown to mainland Spain where he appeared before a magistrate and was able to point to two other Senegalese he had been in touch with from the get-go, also from Kaolack, who already had legal residency and work permit cards, and who could vouch for his care. He came to Granada because, quite simply, he was told there was work.

His current job was buying burned CDs for a euro and selling them for three. Not a bad profit margin I thought, but it didn’t seem like it was going all that well. He said he was glad to be there even if the work was tough. “God is good,” he laughed.

I found myself wanting to consult with this guy as if I were back in Senegal, quiz him on the market for burned CDs in Spain, ask about other enterprises, but the moment passed.

Over the course of my vacation throughout Andalusia, in nearly every city we visited, I encountered Senegalese immigrants working hard, including two women. They sold purses and belts, makeup, African masks, paintings, and necklaces. All who I spoke with were glad to be in Spain, glad to be making money. Many of them were legal residents who had been there for years. Others like Mustapha were relatively fresh off the boat.

Senegal it would seem, has become Spain’s Mexico. Each conversation I had with a Senegalese immigrant made that much more striking the parallels between their situation and those of Mexicans and other Latinos I’ve worked with in the US. They were making it any way they could, living too many to an apartment, and dealing with discrimination and legal issues. Yet in spite of the difficulties they were incredibly positive and kind.

On my Iberia flight back to Senegal we made a stop in the Canary Islands to refuel and pick up more passengers. It was dark as we made our approach but I looked carefully along the coastline to see if I could spot some sign of the thousands of Senegalese who have landed here in their journey to mainland Spain. I couldn’t make out a whole lot, but I did get a new neighbor for the last leg to Dakar, a Toucouleur man from Velingara who had been working in Barcelona for 15 years. Both his Wolof and French were about as bad as my Pulaar, so we spoke in Spanish about his time in Spain and his thoughts on immigration.

He loosened his tie and settled into his chair, laying his meaty forearm on the armrest between us. He was lucky he said. In his situation, with his family living in a comfortable apartment in Barcelona, his children had been born and raised bilingual, with the same rights and opportunities as other Europeans. He said that he felt sorry for the plight of other Senegalese risking their lives in pirogues to have a life like his, but how could he blame them?

As our plane neared Dakar our flight attendant, Isabella, passed out immigration cards for us to fill out before arrival. Before take-off, I had enjoyed watching this beautiful and perfectly put together woman nearly unravel as she tried in vain to make all the Senegalese passengers sit in their assigned seats. My neighbor handed me his passport and with a big smile asked me to fill out his card. This same man who had successfully emigrated with his family to Barcelona, and who spoke beautiful Spanish, could not read or write. I had this experience before traveling from Senegal so his illiteracy wasn’t a surprise, but as I filled out his card I smiled and thought to myself, “Damn these people are tenacious.”

Back in Mouit at my site in the national park my colleagues greeted me with that African warmth I had really missed in Spain. They were genuinely amused by how I was now a few shades lighter from my time in the cold of Europe. They even “toubabed” me affectionately.

My counterpart Arona seemed a bit down though, so I took him aside to ask what was up. His cousin had died the day before yesterday he said. I asked him what happened. His cousin had left Dakar only a few weeks earlier on a pirogue for Spain. Somewhere off the coast of Western Sahara, the boat began to take on water and two of the passengers got high fevers. The captain decided to turn around and head back to Dakar. Two days later both men died en route and Arona’s cousin had to help throw the bodies overboard. Soon after he too fell ill. The boat made it to Dakar and Arona’s cousin, by this time in very bad shape, was brought to the hospital. He lived another six days, long enough to tell of his ordeal before dying in his hospital bed. He was 21 years old.

I wanted to console Arona as this awful story lingered in my mind, but it was so prescient just having been to Spain that I kept quiet. I think my mouth sort of hung open a bit. Then he tells me this was his cousin’s second time making the voyage! On his first attempt he made it to the Canaries, but was returned to Senegal by plane as part of the new effort at repatriating Senegalese immigrants.

“It was his destiny Mansour,” Arona concluded. I couldn’t say anything. For some reason all I could think about was Mustapha Seck trying to sell his CDs at the bar in Granada.

Destiny is both fascinating and troubling, whatever its veracity. I’ve often wondered why it was my destiny to be born an American, rich and blessed, educated and healthy, when I consider the challenges and lack of means most Senegalese have to meet them. I get frustrated trying to figure out what to do with my life, choosing among all the possibilities my apparent problem. Most Senegalese on the other hand, will do whatever they can so long as it means making money. Listening to Arona, I realized my trip to Spain was a casual vacation to the promised land his cousin just died trying to reach.

I don’t know what the solutions to clandestine immigration are but I feel confident that people from poor countries will keep trying to get to rich countries, even if that means risking their lives. Their struggle is a poignant indicator of the economic disparities between countries of the North and South and amid their rich and poor.

It’s funny how when you are thinking a lot about something, it seems to manifest in your life all over the place. I went for a get back in the swing of things afternoon beer at the Zebrabar in my village still thinking about the clandestine connection between Senegal and Spain. What comes on the stereo? Manu Chao’s “Clandestino.” I listened, sat down, and opened my journal.

To a city of the north
I went to work
I left my life Between Ceuta and
Gibraltar
I’m a line in the sea
A ghost in the city
My life is forbidden
So says the authority

Alone I go with my sorrow
Alone goes my sentence
To run is my destiny
For having no papers
Lost in the heart
Of the great Babylon
They call me clandestine

A fisherman in my village on the Senegal river at sunset

Adama my host father preparing a lunch of grass for the sheep and Tabara his second wife sorting rice





















My sister Penda making dinner. For the last 7 months she has been in The Gambia cooking for her brother Pape while he worked on a fishing boat there.





















My two moms in our yard a typical afternoon. That's my house in the background with the door open.
















Students in the Mouit elementary school















Ladies at the park preparing thiebujen for 50 people

Sunrise at the Biological Station in the Djoudj National Park for migratory birds















My counterparts at the Langue de Barbarie National Park during our monthly bird count















Men of my village making their way from the mosque to the cemetery for a burial




















Two talibes, boys who study at Koranic school by evening and beg for alms all day. They come to my door every morning for part of my breakfast baguette.

Sunrise at the Biological Station in the Djoudj National Park for migratory birds















My counterparts at the Langue de Barbarie National Park during our monthly bird count















Men of my village making their way from the mosque to the cemetery for a burial




















Two talibes, boys who study at Koranic school by evening and beg for alms all day. They come to my door every morning for part of my breakfast baguette.

Striking a balance between natural resource conservation in Africa and their traditional use by local populations is one of the greatest challenges in managing the continent’s national parks and other protected areas. In fact most national parks in Africa,while touted in the West for preserving scarce or endangered flora and fauna, are often regarded with resentment and uncertainty by local communities. In creating parks and reserves, many countries have forcibly removed entire villages from within their limits to new locations along their periphery. Traditional hunting, fishing, logging, and fruit gathering is often limited or even outright banned.

In Senegal, natural areas are managed by the Department of National Parks, a pseudo military organization staffed by wildlife experts and park agents who undergo military training and who are well armed not only to prevent poaching, but for national defense purposes as well. The Langue de Barbarie park along Senegal’s northern border with Mauritania, has a stock of automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades (RPG-7). With a war between Senegal and Mauritania only a decade old, this stockpile does not exist without precedent. Likewise, in the South of the country the Basse Casamance park, known for its thriving populations of monkeys and jaguar, has been closed to visitors for over a year as rebels in the region continue to wage a separatist “conflict” with the Senegalese military that has seen action in the park itself. Just this past summer, an American aid worker with the Red Cross who visited the park was killed by an antiperssonel landmine.

Rebellion and war, while serious threats in select areas, remain improbable scenarios in most of Senegal’s parks. Yet poaching and the everyday exploitation of resources for food, fuel, and medicine by local people persist as real challenges to park agents whose mandate is to protect biodiversity. At the Langue de Barbarie park, the situation is somewhat unique. Primarily a marine park created to protect populations of sea turtles and migratory birds in the Senegal River Delta, the ecosystem’s main threat is overfishing. But instead of forbidding fishing entirely, the Langue de Barbarie tolerates sustenance fishing by the local population. Unlike the commercial fishing that abounds off Senegal’s coast, sustenance fisherman bring home their take and sell their surplus to their neighbors. Everday, scenic expanses of the park are filled with dozens of fisherman along the river’s banks and in dugout canoes throwing their nets into picturesque waters.

At the park’s boundaries, small fishing camps have been set up along the beach where dozens of pirogues sit alongside one another before facing the waves and whitewater of the local sandbar to reach offshore fishing grounds. Here, catch limits do not exist and the piles of tuna, sharks, rays, eels, and other fruits de mer make obvious the distinction. The fisherman here know that within the park boudaries they cannot fill their nets as they can at the edges and their reactions to the regulations are mixed.
Some complain that the park benefits the toubabs, the white people only. They see its rules as an obstacle to an already precarious profession. Others think that the park is a good idea because it gives the fish a place to reproduce and grow. Still other fisherman within the park have adapted to the situation and now make money giving boat tours to tourists.

Surprisingly few however, mention the likely effects of the foreign commercial vessels, mostly Asian and European, that overshadow their artisanal Senegalese counterparts. The Senegalese government has sold lucrative offshore fishing rights to several countries hungry for the abundance of species on the West African coastline. Sadly, local fisherman and the population they feed may now be paying for it.

Africa’s protected areas and national parks may provide some indication of how developing countries deal with mounting pressures on natural resources. More mouths to feed and fewer fish to feed them is undoubtedly the trend places like Senegal will face in the years to come. An increase in deforestation coupled with the advance of the desert into sub-Saharan countries make the situation in Africa’s Sahel region that much more prescient. Parks and reserves may be able to stop local villagers from destroying vegetation or poaching sensitive species, but along their edges hungry people will continue to fish, hunt, and cut the wood they need to feed their families.

I wake up every morning a white man in black Africa, a Westerner in a developing country. I am a stranger in a place that while completely foreign has felt somehow familiar to me since I arrived a year ago. I am not a tourist. Tourists here are like country club members in a bowling alley. They come to have fun, but only because it’s a novelty they can enjoy and safely escape from. I am not a missionary. The missionaries are much friendlier than I am, immediately your confidant and infinitely interested in you and your story. I am not a foreign aid worker either. They have 4x4s with drivers, houses with guards, budgets to spend and romantic expatriot lifestyles. I don’t live a rich lifestyle, but I do live an exciting one. I am a Peace Corps volunteer, representing the United States and its people and culture to Senegal, West Africa and hers.

My job is different than what most people would label a job because I can show up anytime I choose, and I always wear sandals. Making people laugh at me can be viewed as a good day at work, and not only do I not have a salary, but I am sometimes forced to beg my parents for an extra fifty dollars here and there to support my drinking habit and need for a steak once in a while. I am nearly untouched by deadlines, meetings, or accountability. My phone doesn’t ring, my inbox doesn’t chime with each new message, my ears don’t hear that faint hum of the fluorescent lights overhead. I am in a completely different world, off the grid, under the radar.

I am different than the other toubabs here, the white people. I am different because I speak the same language as the Senegalese people, and I don’t mean French, though I do speak French. I speak Wolof, the most prominent language among the more than 40 ethnicities that make up the country’s diverse population. Imagine 40 languages actually spoken in the US, where Italians would understand German, Mexicans would speak French, and Romanians would speak Mandarin. It’s like that here. You have your own language, be it Mandinka or Pulaar, but you understand many, Wolof being the most likely. Wolof sounds a lot like Clingon from Star Trek, glutteral and gruff, with lots of sounds like you’re hacking a loogey or suddenly getting choked halfway through a sentence.

Like in any other language, I learned the importance of being able to gesture and intone Wolof. The words say a lot, but the way you say them is crucial-- the trailing off of certain phrases, where to put the emphasis in “Thanks Be to God,” how to shake your finger at someone like you are angry at them. The effect is powerful. When you see a foreign traveller in the US, you expect they will speak English. You are not surprised much less impressed.

In Senegal however, a Toubab that speaks Wolof is an african dictator that imposes term limits. Disbelief is followed by laughter, humor is followed by admiration, appreciation is followed by offers of sisters or daughters for prospective wives (I can have up to four), even babies to take back to the US to raise as my own. Perhaps because of the adoption offers, I sometimes think about a chance meeting I might have with a celebrity one day back home, let’s say Brad Pitt. I tell Brad, “man I really know what’s it like for you, being stared at, wanted, offered babies, yet sort of lonely in your immense popularity.” He thinks I am crazy as any star would hearing this, but I really do know what it’s like to be a celebrity.

People here know my name and I have no idea who they are, and not just someone here or there. It happens all the time. “Mansour!” “Diop! Mansour Diop!” They greet me and know that I am the toubab that speaks Wolof. They know that I am different than the other toubabs. My name of course is not Mansour Diop, but in Senegal it is. It is tradition for a family to give you their last name, and as an adopted son in the home of my village host father Adama Diop, he named me after his brother Mansour.

Nobody knows Nat Parker, hell I’m not sure I know him so well anymore myself. But Mansour is prolific. He can dance like the Senegalese, he understands money problems in a way that the Senegalese recognize, he eats the same rice and fish they do every single day. Mansour has parasites just like the Senegalese, he takes bucket baths, and hold your breath for this one: he wipes his ass using water and his left hand, just like the Senegalese, just like the rest of the developing world. Nat Parker is not a bare-handed ass wiper. He never really liked fish either. He enjoyed fine bourbans and scotchs back home, iced and abundant. Here, Mansour reaches for a $3 bottle of Club 7 Whiskey and drinks it straight when he can afford it. Mmm mmm good.

I came to Africa to discover a new place and people, to adventure before a mortgage or marriage could hold me down. I chose to join the Peace Corps because I thought that I could do a better job of representing the United States to the world than the Bush Administration. The problem is that I work for Mr. Bush, and he decided that I would best represent the US to an unelectrified village of mostly illiterate and highly religious Senegalese farmers and fisherman. Not to be unhinged by such a post, I am over halfway through, and just ask anyone in Mouit, my little village on the Senegal River, what they think of the United States and they will say “I love America. Will you help me get to America? Can you get me a visa?” Of course I can’t take all the credit. Ironically, and the Bush Administration will be loathe to admit it, the Black rap community in the US may be one of our most effective diplomats in Senegal.

Just the other day my boss at the national park where I work called me into his office for what I had thought would be an assignment, maybe a translation request. Instead, he wanted me to watch “Clips,” a CD filled with video clips from American rappers. Each clip got progressively more American; the number of hot women dancing half naked multiplied, Beamers became Bentleys, and diamond encrusted necklaces were lost in crisp wads of hundred dollar bills. My boss, Sidibe, sat transfixed with a smile on his face. “I have to go to the US Mansour. If there is one thing I do in this life, it’s to go to the US.”

My approach for spreading democracy and American culture by contrast, is a little short on bling. I talk about America all the time, but my goal has been to demonstrate that Americans are just as interested in Senegal as Senegalese are taken with America. So I do my best at integrating into the Senegalese culture by attending baptisms, funerals, and all night Koranic chanting sessions with as much enthusiasm as my boss watching clips. I haven’t converted to Islam or married four wives (my host father Adama has three), but I live at least five days a week in my little village doing as they do, drinking tea, praising God, and training my counterparts in the national park in basic business skills. I knew I was doing something right when my village family stopped referring to me as a toubab and began calling me a white Wolof.

The other two days of the week, Friday and Saturday, I go to the city and drink cold beer, Club 7, and load up on protein. The four dollar steak and fries at one of my favorite restaurants speaks to me in a way that rice and fish never will. I am still Mansour when I go to town, but I am the city version of my village persona, rolling out phrases like “What up dog?” or “How’s your sex life?” to my city buddies just as easily as “The Lord be praised” or “God willing” in the village.

What I really like about this experience is that it allows me to play all kinds of different roles depending on my mood. I can talk about the onion harvest or daily catch with the people of my village in Wolof and the next day speak to French hotel owners about excessive taxes on tourism and government graft. I like debating development with NGO workers, what works better grassroots organizing or addressing systemic change? I enjoy arguing American politics with my Mauritanian jeweler friend who is a faithful follower of the BBC in Arabic. “It was your CIA that trained Osama Bin Laden Mansour, why do you think you can’t catch him?”

I keep up with my friends back home who are becoming rich, buying their first house, wondering where to spend their two week vacation this year. They seem envious of my unique lifestyle while I worry that I am falling behind the curve in advancing my career and saving for the future. I am all too certain that the American routine will catch up with me, but will it ever let them go?

My family worries about me unnecessarily, partly because that’s what families do, but also because they are just as ignorant to the realities of Africa as most Americans. They are intelligent people but will ask things like “What do people wear over there? Animal skins?” “You’re not near any cannibals are you?” or “Do you want me to send you peanut butter?” The last question may not be so dumb come to think of it.

My experience has been that Americans are only slightly more ignorant to the colonial history of French West Africa than we are to our own colonial history of western expansion and imperialism. People recognize with Sally Struthers like sympathy the rampant poverty of this place, the incessant violence and corruption that do exist. That we care about these issues greatly there is no question.

What we don’t realize I think, is how our own lifestyles and ignorance are in many ways responsible for the situation. How many Americans know what the World Trade Organization or International Monetary Fund really do? Most of us don’t realize that these American led groups maintain and perpetuate insurmountable debt in developing nations, debt that forms one of the primary obstacles to their very advancement out of poverty. The WTO and IMF give countries giant payday loans in the name of bolstering their economies and we wonder why the situation doesn’t get better. How does that happen?

But I don’t blame Americans for not fully understanding the situation over here. We are too busy trying to pay our own bills and take care of our own troubles to get personally involved in problems a continent away. Iraq has been a testament to that. I just want America to realize how much the Senegalese respect us and look up to us. We should guard that respect and try to earn more of it around the world. Maybe we could send more Peace Corps volunteers armed with “Clips” to other developing nations.

After over a year in this country battling the heat, the flies, and the runs, I realize that Senegal can teach America incredible lessons about what it means to be human. These people are poor, undereducated, and without real opportunities to better their lives. They carve out a living from the land, they sell cheap wares between row after row of cars stuck in traffic in Dakar, they work hard knowing it won’t be enough. Thousands of hopeful Senegalese are risking their lives every year by crowding into small fishing boats to brave the Atlantic and sneak into Spain to find work-- in the fields, cleaning office buildings, selling African masks and necklaces in weekend markets; basically anything. Senegal has become Spain’s Mexico, though so far there is no 700 mile wall planned for the border.

But amidst these struggles and in spite of them, the Senegalese are some of the happiest and friendliest people I have ever encountered. They have a great sense of dignity and take care of one another without question or condition. You always have a place to stay in Senegal, you are never without a bowl of rice at lunchtime. Strangers are always invited. The most important Senegalese value, teranga, translated roughly (remember Clingon) means hospitality. Clearly this is more than an ethos, it is a survival mechanism.

Before I left the US I had the distinct impression that there was a silent suffering among so many people I saw commuting to work, buying groceries, or watching their kids. They have homes, cars, education, healthcare, and most importantly opportunity, but something seems to be missing. I love the US, which is after all why I am in the Peace Corps, but is it possible that the American dream has gotten away from us? Could it be that as we acquire more and more we are growing somehow emptier? Maybe it’s possible that Senegalese teranga could be the answer to a disaffected America. Perhaps the wealth in community and kindness so abundant in this country could truly make our own that much richer.

Banana Lady’s Baby

Hello Banana Lady’s Baby. I am not sure if you are a boy or girl, what your name is, or what your future holds but I saw you from a car as I passed on the street in Dakar. You sit snuggly against your mother’s back and bottom, wrapped in an old towel as she sells bananas from the platter on her head along the side of the main road through the city. You didn’t seem to notice, but there was an almost constant cloud of blue smoke from the beat up buses, cars, and motos that pass by you all day long. Your mom was working hard when I saw her, balancing you and her bananas, smiling and selling her produce to hungry passerbys as best she could. There were many other banana ladies at the same intersection, some with their own babies.

When I was a baby like you, I think I had a mobil and a quiet crib full of toys to keep me occupied. You have the horns, whistles, and shouts of a busy road and the motion of your mother’s back to take care of you. I don’t know what will happen to you, but I would guess that in just a few years you will still be with your mom, but her back will hold your little brother or sister then, and you will be selling bananas next to them. Will you go to school or will you work all day instead? I’m not sure, but I know that you will know what hard work is at a very young age. In fact, somehow you already do.

Being a ten year old boy in Senegal does not involve daily games on an X-Box or Playstation. It resembles something more like a cross between Huckleberry Finn and The Jungle. Boys in particular, roam free in packs without supervision or rules. Armed with makeshift fishing poles village boys spend countless hours on the river or along one of the lagoons catching small carp or crabs. They swim, run, scream and fight with a Lord of Flies hierarchy, the older boys bossing and often beating the younger boys. They address each other as “Boy,” one of the distinct English additions to the Wolof vocabulary throughout Senegal. Coming home at sunset they are covered in sand and dried salt, grass stains in this case replaced by cuts from fishing hooks and shells.

When not in school or memorizing the Koran with the local marabout, the boys are sent by their fathers out to the fields to cut a rice sack full of grass each to feed the family sheep. Seeing them armed with machetes and sithes can make the hair on the back of your neck stick up for a moment when you witness their raw form of discipline among each other. During the growing season they spend at least an hour or two a day in the field pulling water from the wells to water the onion plots.

City boys, while usually governed by the same freedom, play different games and have it a bit tougher. They jump from the back of one bus to another, catching free rides for one block at a time, roaming boutique front foozeball tables with a gang like mentality. The pressure to do something to make some money for the family here is greater though. Ten year old boys in the city are just as likely to be working as going to school. They drive horse carts, transporting passengers, building materials, produce, and other boys. They sell peanuts and watermelons in the market from a stall, though more often and perhaps by nature, they roam the streets and market with some product to sell. Underwear, phone cards, bottles of water, and radios are common.

At the local Samsung store in Saint Louis, you can always count on seeing a crowd of boys pressed against the glass to watch the big color televisions inside the air-conditioned store. Soccer of course is their favorite thing to watch and certainly their game of choice. Cars fight for right of way among hoards of dusty boys playing soccer with rocks to mark off the sidelines and goal posts.

Young girls meanwhile, are more like indentured servants than their vagabond male counterparts. From morning until night, they are busy cooking, cleaning, and washing. The girls are often more physically built than the boys just because of the daily water pulling, lifting, and activity they grow up with. Village girls usually have a trace of wood smoke smell because of the time spent in the family cook sheds where they cook the rice and fish over wood that they have gathered from the bush themselves. They can clean a fish in record time and clean clothes so well that a washing machine seems a lazy excuse for the old fashioned fist after fist scrub in soapy water.

While the boys play soccer and go fishing, the girls spend hours playing with each other’s hair, braiding one piece of mesh after another to create quite exquisite dos. They play a game like parchisi and sit in the shade, lying on one another on plastic mats. All of them look after babies, often a five year old with an infant wrapped to her back, mothering it with great care.

Seeing all of this with my American eyes I can’t help but think that we are crazy and obsessed with our kids to the opposite extreme, looking out for every step, every breath they take. We are so involved I wonder if we stifle them somehow. The Senegalese model is no better though—I feel terrible seeing the distinct look of an adult in the eyes of so many children I see here. They know what it is to be in dire straights, to work hard, to have no choice. They grow up quickly in spite of their freedom to roam and play.

The process of development is arguably one of the most difficult and painstaking projects imaginable. It really comes down to teaching an entirely foreign world view, set of concepts, culture, and language to a population steeped in centureies of tradition. Changing peoples' awareness is one thing, but modifying behavior is incredibly tough.

The language of development (action plan, accountability, time based goals and objectives, feasibility, indicators of success) and the endless flow charts and venn diagrams NGOs use to communicate these terms are as foreign to Senegalese villagers as eating with your right hand and wiping your ass with the left are to us.

Imagine you are at the meeting I am attending right now to create a community action plan. The room is filled with village chiefs wearing long kaftans, adorned with scarves, prayer caps, sunglasses, and big rings. Local fisherman with calloused hands and sandy feet are seated near the door. National park agents in full camoflauge fatigues sit near the front. Beyond them are the five white French experts in development and conservation , armed with power point presentations and notebooks, pens, and folders for an audience overwhelmingly illiterate. The room is hot and besides the Frenchman, no one is wearing deodorant.

As a sign in sheet is circulated, one of the local volunteers at the park follows it to write for those who don't know how, making sure they "sign," or make a scribble next to their names.

The objective of the meeting is to start the creation of a community driven plan for managing the national park; start an appropriate qualifier as making such a plan will take months. The presentation begins and after 30 seconds, the first Frenchman is interrupted by three latecomers who not only provide the expected "Salaam Allekum" to the group, but proceed to begin greeting members of the audience individually. The presenter is not pleased. I'm not surprised and sit back and wait. As presentation continues each bullet point of each slide must be translated. The translator steps in to say in Wolof what the Frenchman has just said, but to do so takes twice the time.

For instance action plan or "un plan d'action" in French would be translated in Wolof to "a conversation among all of us about what we want to do to change things here." The presenter seems frustrated but maybe it's just the heat.