Pastimes

OK so this has nothing to do with busting
the cover off of the baseball,
but it's easily one of the best google
image results for "The Sandlot,"
we all know why.

Remember that fateful scene from The Sandlot, the one that eventually led Smalls, Benny, Ham, Squints, Yeah Yeah, Kenny, Bertram Grover Weeks, Repeat, and Timmy into the "the biggest pickle any of them had ever seen"?  No, not the one where Smalls idiotically steals his step-dads Babe Ruth signed baseball, think...why did he need a baseball in the first place?  Yes, the scene where Benny busts the cover off of the ball.  If you don’t remember this, perhaps you do recall a similar scene in the Disney classic Angels in the Outfield (1994).  If neither of these events are familiar to you, you are either not American or (if you are American) had a sad, empty childhood and I pity you. 

http://info.mymovies.ge/

            The sport of baseball is renowned throughout the U.S. of A. as the great American pastime.  Although not quite as glamorized as American Football, baseball claims its place as a staple of American culture.  The international popularity of baseball, however, is limited to parts of South America, of the Caribbean and of Eastern Asia.  The rest of the world claims another sport as what childhood memories are built around, as the source of widespread excitement and game-watching parties.  Yes, of course I am talking about soccer.  Although steadily gaining in popularity since the celebrity of Pelé, the phenomenon of the world’s sport has somehow managed to skip over America, sitting perpetually behind baseball, American football, basketball, and hockey. 

            The rest of the world, however, cherishes original football.  Rather than deeply analyzing this disparity between one culture and most of the other ones, I will simply show some pictures describing it.  Bear in mind, photos of kids playing in the street or on sand pitches in torn up clothes and flat balls may seem stereotypical of photography taken by westerner's in non-western countries, but a picture of kids playing soccer in Senegal, for example, is just as much a stereotype of a trip to a "developing" country as a picture of kids playing baseball in their neighborhood sandlot is a stereotype of American moms showing off their trophy kids.  After all, however true or false or politically correct they may be, stereotypes do exist for a reason.

Bassoul, Fatick, Senegal

Yoff, Dakar, Senegal

Not so stereotypical, but needless to say, USA won this match
Ngor Beach, Dakar, Senegal
Photo Credit: Alex Mendrek-Laske

Wrapping Up

The term "wrapping up" can have many different meanings, for example, hiding Christmas presents within colorful paper (or, as dictated by my college budget last year, within newspaper), bundling up in multiple layers of insulating clothes to protect you from the blistering cold of the North American winter, or, less literally, bringing something to an end.  Currently, I am participating in only one of these "wrapping up activities."  I'll give you a hint, it doesn't have to do with presents or the cold.  Yes, I am talking about the semester coming to an end.  Now, for me, you could say, and I even imagined up until today, that this point is really more of a halfway marker, because I will be in Senegal for 5 more months.  However, as was suddenly brought to my attention a few hours ago, this is the end for all of the semester MSIDers, and therefore the end of my being a part of MSID Fall 2010. 

I actually happen to love wrapping presents

The good-byes today were awkward and unexpected.  We actually did have some presents, but no wrapping or newspaper.  We also have some students who will soon be experiencing the biting cold of jack frost, but, since it is currently 77°F with a slight ocean breeze, we have no layers or insulating materials.  Endings we do have, and as we come from many different universities, it really may be the last time some of us will see each other at least for a very long time, maybe ever.

This will not be a part of my wardrobe this year

Thrown together in a foreign country, the twenty of us make quite the hodge-podge.  Although many lasting friendships, and no deep-seeded rivalries have resulted from this semester, there has certainly been lots of tension at times (Real World: Dakar, anyone?)  We have also had lots of fun, and so it was a sobering day for the group.  I, in particular, was reminded of the All-American, white Christmas holiday season (because let's be serious, in America, Christmas dominates the month of December) that the others are going back to.  I was made aware of just how different their junior years will be from my own.  While this "winter break" is, in ways, a new beginning, it is also the wrapping up of my Fall semester- minus the usual wrapping up of presents and my body from the frigidness of December.

A Typical Drive Home

(Continuation of A Typical Day at Work)
After about 20 minutes of maneuvering around the uneven ditches that are the dirt road, we noticed a wobbling feeling near the back of the car.  Continuing on a little more cautiously, we got to the next town and stopped to have a look.  Sure enough a tire change was in order.

            Luckily we only had to wait about 15 minutes, with the company of a few donkeys, clearly unhappy about our presence interrupting their sleeping in the middle of the road, for a sept-place to drive by.  We waved down the driver, who happened to live in the town in which we were stranded.  He gave us directions to his house and we gave him a wrench (I’m still trying to figure that transaction out), and he was off. 

We bulkily made our way down the narrow dirt roads of the town, which were only about two feet wider than the SUV, stopping every once in a while to ask for directions.  After backtracking a few times and certainly drawing the attention of everyone who was about, we were lead down the street by a neighbor of the sept-place driver.  He helped us open up the trunk of the car in his neighbor’s driveway, where we found, as apparently promised, a spare tire.  After a quick tire change, we wound our way through the maze of slender streets out onto the main road.

http://i1.trekearth.com/photos/83277/drogi_te.jpg

This time, we were actually heading out for good.  The rest of the ride home, the only other slow down we encountered was negotiating the pot-hole ridden roads – and by negotiating I mean choosing between big pot-holes, really big pot-holes, and ditches; smooth road surface just wasn’t an option.  Thanks to my childhood of long car rides enhanced by relentless disturbances (a.k.a. a little brother) and my justifiable exhaustion, the swerving and bouncing of the SUV were no match for my willingness to sleep. 

Groggily forcing myself awake as we meandered down the road to my house, I checked my phone, only to discover that it was just past midnight. We pulled up to my pink house, dark and peaceful and full of sleeping people.  Feeling guilty for awaking her, I reluctantly called sama Yaay to come let me in.  After a few words of apology from Cheikh, the two of us stumbled sleepily inside, where she accepted, just as groggily as I offered, the fruit and juice that I had brought back. 

Then, suddenly awake, she looked at me, and clearly and sternly demanded, “Yow, Reer nga?” (Have you eaten dinner?)

“Déedéet.”

She briskly brought from the kitchen the leftovers from dinner, and quickly set me a plate of cerre u mafi, couscous with a delicious peanut butter and palm oil sauce, topped off with a big piece of meat.  Sitting in my room, sleepily savoring my delicious leftovers, I decided that, regardless of the setbacks and the fatigue, a stomach full of mafi and a nice, mosquito-net protected bed was a much more perfect ending to a very long day.

Besides providing me with a story to tell around future Thanksgiving tables, this experience also happens to be very telling of many of the problems here in Senegal.  Take the roads.  Even the roads in between main cities are littered with pot holes, less frequently than those in this story but they are still a problem.  This is an example of what I’ve concluded must be the result of a lack of infrastructure, or perhaps a lack of an efficient system within the existing infrastructure.

I would also like to highlight the fact that this whole adventure was not even technically necessary.  The selection of enterprises is a stage of the process that the community leaders can do independently; we were simply there to guide the process along.  Not only was it unnecessary for us to be there, but it only took about 20 minutes.  Actually the real reason we went was for M. Diouf to take measurements for another project, but the day before we had gone to Loul Séssène for the same process, and spent about two times as much time in the car as choosing between enterprises.

This leads to another thing I have noticed in my short time here, which is a lack of training.  We had to go to show the presidents of these communities how to go through the enterprise process, because they didn’t already know how to do it.  I’ve also noticed that, in filling out forms related to projects, the people filling them out often don’t know what information we’re asking for.  Only having been here for three weeks, I have only noticed this problem, and haven’t come up with any substantial causes or solutions.

Senegal is in a very interesting stage of development.  It has a functional government, a willing population, and various private and state programs working towards social, technological, and economical advancement.  However, it is stuck in this mélange of old and new.  While waiting for a herd of cattle to cross the road, you can jump out of the car to go by credits for your cell phone, and drop some change into the hand of a polio-handicapped man with no way of obtaining medical help.  In Dakar, 50 year old car rapids share the road with charrettes and 2010 Mercedes Benzes.  Giant skeletons of buildings stand, unfinished, on the outskirts of the capital city of the region due to the abandonment – for political or capital reasons – of ambitious projects.

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/GsTD-5cwua4jhDxd3w0Uvg

It is these juxtapositions that strike me on a daily basis, that provoke questions that I can’t find answers to, that illustrate perfectly the state of the country – pushing itself forward and into the world economy since before independence, but struggling with the hindrances of governmental misjudgments and capital inadequacies (due largely, but not uniquely, to the after-effects of colonialism, which are quite numerous - perhaps I will delve into this subject later on), searching for a balance between modern and traditional.  But then again, what do I know, Amuma dara!