Back from the Boonies

This past week all the CIEEers were scattered throughout the various regions in Senegal to get a taste of “rural life” for a couple days. Three other girls and I lucked out big time and were placed in Joal. There we stayed… well, it’s actually really hard to fully describe where we were in one sentence.

Let’s see…

Once upon a time, a black American woman and a Senegalese man met in Cote d’Ivoire at an art exhibition. Different backgrounds and languages, but a mutual passion for art—they found love in each other and decided to make a life together. They now live with their three children in tents pitched on the floor of a giant one-room warehouse plopped beside the highway somewhere between Mbor and Joal, Senegal. Bright colors and dreams without means seem to spin their lives. They stretch their creative juices in everything from ceramic workshops with local female artists to international art exhibits to homeschooling their children. Ultimately, their vision is finding a means for wholesome development—that is development that is good for all parts and members of the community—through creative expression and innovation.

That’s where I stayed.

We were told we’d be working on various projects during our week stay at this place. But for whatever reason, we didn’t actually do any work in the morning. We’d wake up to a leisurely breakfast of coffee, tea, toasted bread with jam and homemade honey (I actually found a real, though non-living, bee in it!) and occasionally hot porridge called fondae to top it off.

After being fed and watered, we usually lounged around and spent a great deal of time lending an ear to our host artists’ perspectives on development, the effects of slavery on the African Diaspora today, natural childbirth, having a mixed-culture marriage, and the benefits of using medicinal plants over prescribed medication.

Whew.

All that knowledge-soaking just about did us in, so we’d break for lunch and continue to lounge about and discuss over tea and mangoes.

Finally around 4pm we usually got on our horses and decided to do something. It felt like a real life Little House on the Prairie most days—at least during those maybe three hours of working daylight we had left after our strenuous hours of sitting, eating, and talking.

We did everything you might expect one to do on a “rural visit”… drew water from the well, sewed curtains by hand with a simple needle and thread, whitewashed the walls of a small school room for the children, helped cut the vegetables for dinner and washed the dishes by hand in big basins afterwards.

One of the activity descriptions listed on our rural visit informational sheet was “prepare for ceramics workshop.” Naturally I thought this might involve setting up some benches, getting the clay out into distributable lumps… something pretty basic.

We found out later in the week that the ceramics workshop would be a special occasion because for the first time, instead of using a kiln, they were going to fire the pieces the old fashioned way—digging a hole in the ground, placing the ceramic pieces inside and filling in around them with hay and cow pies, then burning the whole ensemble over night.

Neat!

Guess who got to collect the cow pies?

Before I even realized what was happening, I found myself bouncing down the highway among speeding cars on a two-wheeled, donkey-driven wooden wagon, nestled in between two thirty-year old men: a Wolof-speaking Senegalese man named Sally and a French-speaking (though thick-accented) Ivory Coast man named Gilbert. Hired help, my partners in crime.

There we were, cruising down the road until Sally suddenly pulled a quick right and we veered off the road, plunging down into this dirt ditch. No worries, all part of the plan. For we came up out of the ditch, and there it was, glistening in the rosy sunset: the field of dung. Poop as far as the eye could see. What a goldmine.

The three of us hopped out and immediately started gathering and stashing the treasures in our wagon, cow pies flying through the air from every which direction. Sy-Sy (the donkey… “trouble-maker” in Wolof) stood watch. Sally communicated to me through facial expressions alone which pies were the keepers. I quickly learned the wet ones weren’t the ones we wanted, which I was relieved to discover. Still, there were a few sneakers that appeared to be dry, but once in my bare hands, proved very clearly to be fresh out of the oven. Those ones were fun surprises.

After about twenty minutes of scavenging, we decided to pack it up, and we rode triumphantly back home atop our pile of prize-winning pies.

We actually ended up coming back for round two with another CIEEer and two of the kids. By that time I was pro status, though. No poop-shy for me!

The ceramic pieces ended up turning out well and we all felt a great sense of accomplishment, certainly a job well-done. Rah-rah, way to go team. But even despite all the excitement of our hunt, I was pretty happy to head back to Dakar at the end of the week.

I think I’ll just stick to picking up mangoes from the local fruit stands from now on.