"Rural Visit"

Peoples peoples, its been a long time, yet I have been exploring the land of teranga (hospitality) well outside the borders of Dakar. Last week the Tubabs were split into groups that spent time in rural Senegal to experience the village life. Now you may be imagining huts and people with spears or something like that, but come on now people, this is rural Senegal live and direct. Now we were set to leave at 7 am Monday morning, but some Tubbies, hmmm hmmm, were enjoying the urban life the night before. This meant a call at about 7:20 from some other Tubbies who made no reservations in expressing their hostilities. However, in Africa, sometimes the wait is longer than the journey, and sometimes you just throw everything you can think of into a bag in about fifteen minutes and spend the next 4 hours on a hot bus with the Irish flu. Just as I thought I would die of heat exhaustion we arrived.


The village of Djilor was the home of Senegal's first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor. It sits on the bay and is home to fisherman and farmers among others. We expected to work hard and learn the techniques of agriculture and fishing... Cool and easy, the village mothers involved in hosting accommodations had their pick of Tubbies. There were five of us, all men/boys and good friends, so from our perspective we were in for a good time. Anyways, Yenda took my hand and we were off. I entered a maze of small cinder block buildings with multiple rooms and made the appropriate greetings as I made my way to my temporary lodging. It is hard to explain, and I didn't have my camera, but it sort of resembled a small hotel. There were 3 bedrooms, a living room and kitchen all on one side facing a 'courtyard'. I set my bags in a room and was ushered into the living room, equipped with couches (quite nice actually) a TV, DVD player, and to my saving grace, a fan. Mom placed a huge meal in front of me, rice and a sauce with shrimp in it neex na! (delicious). Rural life wasn't so bad after all... The compound housed, I imagine, some 20-30 people all belonging to the Faye family. I quickly made friends with Maurice, 17. He was nice despite the fact that I would occupy his bedroom for the next four days. He gave us a tour of the surrounding areas, and helped me begin my studies of Sereer. Oh right, Djilor is a Sereer village. They speak Wolof too, but pressured us to learn Sereer which is quite a bit more challenging. Anyways Maurice is an up and coming English speaker, so it was a good fit, and we got along really well. You can see him here in front of me giving the tour.























For the next few days we tried not to do too much in the intense heat. We were eventually introduced to the garden. There we practiced getting water out of the wells with buckets- no easy task with a disagreeable bucket- carrying the buckets, and watering the plants. We cultivated a tomato patch, and Stephen and I planted lettuce the next day. That was about it for the strenuous labor.














Below I take lessons with the disagreeable bucket.




























This is probably not me successfully filling the unfriendly bucket (above). Most of the time not much was going on in the garden, and the Day of the Dead was observed on the Nov. 1st, so things were low key. Most days, I got up early, took a bucket bath and sat along the water behind Senghor's house- now a historical fixture- that has the only pier in the village. Here was his backyard.
Their the village men bathed their horses in the cool morning air, while others took a dip. After breakfast I would harass the other Tubbies to get their asses out of bed. Besides gardening, we found many other activities to occupy ourselves. The most fun was playing water football, keep away, with the locals. We also "fished" and watched as brave kids climbed trees for various seeds.





Below are the crazy Djilor youth.




Sittin' on the dock of the bay, Dan, me, and Stephan.
Below, boys wrestle the 'lutte' Senegal's version of sumo.



























Dan, the crazy man gets the hang of carrying objects on the head, and waving casually to passerbys. Below a woman mixes couscous.











Much of the village used palm wood and leaves to built various structures, ie. fences, roofs and piers. Most houses are concrete though.

Our fishing guide chops the couscous up.

Fish market in a nearby village.

So, nobody wanted to leave the village when Friday morn came around, and Stephen cried. We exchanged gifts with our host family, said goodbye to the town and made our way to the bus. Ohhh Djilor, your teranga will always be in my mind...

Four out of the five amigos sweating heavily. Look at them love handles!