OH MAN
how could i forget? guess who's coming to senegal? Snoop dogg. and akon (he's senegalese). i'm pretty excited about that....also, rumor among the americans is laura bush is coming. seriously. we'll see if that happens...but that's the plan.
also, i'm going to be hamster sitting in a few weeks for someone in the embassy. random, but i have a PCV friend who was asked if he knew anyone...and so he asked me. there you go. =) crazy world.
the world is always getting smaller to me. it never ceases to amaze me. my aunt is a pediatrician in toccoa, GA and she was a missionary kid, and this random boy whom i met doing his internship is getting married when he gets home and my aunt's family is playing music for his wedding... just totally random!
here are my ramblings:
Still anticipating starting my djembe…but it’s in process…like all things in Senegal…it will happen, but only after drinking a few rounds of attaya (really strong tea with tons of sugar, not bad) and watching a soccer match =) The plan was to start Monday, right? Well I met up with Ngala, who is the nephew of Guelel Koumba (from Afrississippi…lives in Oxford) and he brought me to his friends house where after a few rounds of tea, his friend Allissan, the djembe maker, came over with an absolutely beautiful djembe, if you can imagine. Just gorgeous, the designs and the head were really well put together. So we discussed what was the plan to start and stuff, he’s pretty cool so I’m pumped…we walked to his house which involved passing through a dance practice with intense African dancing, and walking through a traditional lion chasing children type thing. The new plan now has evolved to us starting Thursday. (inshallah)
Today (Tuesday) I went to ngala’s house and met his family and ate lunch, had tea and watched germany beat the crap out of Tunisia and San marino in soccer. Then I came home, read through some possible stuff for my thesis and a chapter of the selfish gene. (I know, crazy right?)
**such a great experience meeting up with some of my friends’ host families and giving them stuff like pictures of their students and cards and gifts. Oh man, they just loved seeing pictures of everyone.
The weekend was chillaxed. I went to a club Friday night and Saturday went downtown with my sister and her friend. Saturday night went with my best friend Djibril to a PCV party (peace corps volunteer) - back story, in st. louis I met a load of PCVs and one of them I exchanged numbers with because he said he’s back and forth in Dakar a lot so he told me about the “party” Sunday I went to djibril’s house and we had great attaya and I met his family. I went to my church that night and afterwards met up with my PCV friend (Dan) for dinner. (pseudo date which I wasn’t expecting…I never expect dates, it seems I’m always surprised)
Friday, I spent the day with my friend Celestine, who’s a music teacher at a franco-senegalese elementary school.
There’s a lot of this stuff I could elaborate on but once I start elaborating, I won’t stop so I’m trying to stay to the point =)
Also…I’m always realizing things that I never noticed in life…the most recent being…Notre Dame. Perhaps I’ve noticed this before…but today I passed a primary school of Notre Dame…and finally it was clear…our lady=notre dame. How dumb am I, really? Surely I’ve realized that before now. I mean I’m a ND fan hardcore and I’m catholic. I’m clearly a passive exist-er.
I’ll try to elaborate on some experiences more in the future…but if you want to know more, just ask =)
Right now I’m sitting in my room, it’s 9pm. I haven’t had dinner yet, and the electricity is cut. I reflect on my plans and why they haven’t exactly worked out how I wanted and why, and on what others would do in my place…because I have tons of time to think about that kind of thing…and I’m thinking about how I’ve often heard an argument that sounds a bit like this. People who are poor and underdeveloped are so because they should be more like us, capitalistic, entrepreneurs, individuals, democratic, cautious…blahblah. All good things mind you, but good things for us not for everyone. People think they can “help Africa” by showing them how to be more efficient, how to work harder and save money…but for what ends? Here I am living in one of the most developed cosmo posh towns in west Africa without electricitiy, which is a common occurrence (Wade, the prez, cuts the electricity to each neighborhood all the time…because the power people can’t handle the whole city at one time or because the country can’t afford it…not sure which…but at any one moment someone somewhere doesn’t have power) I mean trying to bring to this country means of having power 24/7 would be great surely but that’s still us trying to push things on them because we feel it’s a huge necessity. But here, I mean such a common occurrence emphasizes what we see as inefficient but what is not inefficient in the slightest. I’m rambling but...let it be known that I’m all about bringing medicines and aid here but there is something to be said for different cultures and forced change. And I do acknowledge a difference between letting different cultures remain the way they are and peacefully co-existing AND leaving peoples alone when they desperately do need help. I feel that there is much need in the world, everywhere, and that while it may be impossible for one person to individually help the entire populus, it’s not impossible for one person to inspire and motivate others to help more. (I’m thinking of a tree…someone influential(dalai lama) being the trunk, and all who read his works and live them, the branches…hippy-ish, I know, but there are good aspects of the hippy era) We want to change the world, but change starts from the bottom, at the base, with the individual. And we simply can’t change individual beliefs and cultures because of what we wish to accomplish. For example, hypothetically my goal is to lower the malaria rate so I want people to sleep in mosquito nets. So I, naively, plan on raising money and subsidizing a million mosquito nets so that the people will be able to afford one for their beds. Sure it’s possible, but its already 80-85 degrees when you get to bed and the net will only further serve to trap air and keep you warmer…who wants that? And sleeping is part of everyday life…so to change from free sleeping to sleeping under a net is huge for a large population. Cultural change…can’t be done well from the outside. Moral dilemma in my head: we should help who we can help…right? Does that mean bringing in a million nets in hopes that at least a few hundred people will benefit? I think so…but its hard to prove things that people would want to be proven, like efficacy, etc…blahblah. There’s so much crap and red tape with so many NGOs trying to do stuff. Some of them are wonderful, some not so great. People are trying though. Sometimes trying just doesn’t get it though…when you’re wasting valuable resources… you’ve got to know when to ask someone else for help and when to pull out and replan.
Back to the inefficiency that we see here. Things here may work 50 times slower than home in many respects, but here life is not your work. Life is your life away from your work, your family, your neighborhood, your friends. At home, we go to school and are told that we can be whatever we want, we can find our dream job. That’s why we go to school…so we can have some really amazing job. Why is a job so important? With a middle man job, we can still have a great home life and that’s what matters here. You work 10 hour days everyday at a cyber café not because you can’t achieve better but because it’s there, your family’s right a few houses down and there’s not much more you need. When looking at differences between us and other countries, it’s not about who’s better. We, in America, have done a lot of things right and are reaping benefits of that, but we’ve also done many things wrong…and are seeing consequences all the time, in war, in street violence, in music lyrics, in “immoral” things…Every country is constantly evolving, no government or people are stagnant. Ideas are always being revamped and repackaged, history repeating itself through the generations. This makes me think of the idea of eternal recurrence…how there are only so many options in the world, because the universe is finite, that everything will occur again and again…weird idea? Nietzsche I think.
Capitalism. Great idea in the beginning but like everything, it is evolving and has evolved into privatization and segregation of classes. In attempts to become stronger entrepreneurs, business owners find ways to only serve the wealthy or middle class…like with health care. This was not the beginning idea for capitalism. The beginning idea was great, everyone do their own thing, make their own money, build their own business, study hard, work hard, earn much for your family, helping your neighbor out. But now it’s become something crazy. It used to be family drug stores and neighborhood supermarkets and now its wal-marts and walgreens. The chances for entrepreneurships have greatly decreased and the gap between the haves and have nots is increasing.
**I feel like I’m jumping way out in left field with this…but I’ve heard all this before at different times and in different manners. This is just a mélange (mix) of what I’ve been thinking about and reading about and seeing in my daily life.
It’s all about competition. You leave high school thinking, I can’t wait till my 20 year reunion when I come with my mercedez z45 (or whatever) and my high paying brain surgery job in some swanky posh town. People have always been competitive mind you, but now it’s to the point where you don’t even know your neighbors’ names nor do you care to, as long as the grass is cut.
Then with this idea pushing us to work and study harder is the idea that behind all this competition, we’ve got to be able to provide for ourselves, to survive in this expensive world. Health care and insurance prices are ridiculous but you’re s.o.l. if you don’t have any at all. So you work real hard just to get by, almost no matter who you are. In Mississippi, people are more acknowledging of the will to do what you got to do for your family to get by. It’s not totally dog eat dog; that idea exists but not too horribly. (maybe with torts, but I don’t really understand those)
What these leads to…what do I want to do with my life? I want to work hard for the things I end up doing, for the people I end up serving, for my family, but I want a family, too. A big one. And a farm. With cows. I want to be involved in social justice work and work on projects that affect the human race in general. But I want to be a mom and a role model.
so the ramblings are very spontaneous...pardon me for the weirdness -- probably more for my friends to read
also, i'm going to be hamster sitting in a few weeks for someone in the embassy. random, but i have a PCV friend who was asked if he knew anyone...and so he asked me. there you go. =) crazy world.
the world is always getting smaller to me. it never ceases to amaze me. my aunt is a pediatrician in toccoa, GA and she was a missionary kid, and this random boy whom i met doing his internship is getting married when he gets home and my aunt's family is playing music for his wedding... just totally random!
here are my ramblings:
Still anticipating starting my djembe…but it’s in process…like all things in Senegal…it will happen, but only after drinking a few rounds of attaya (really strong tea with tons of sugar, not bad) and watching a soccer match =) The plan was to start Monday, right? Well I met up with Ngala, who is the nephew of Guelel Koumba (from Afrississippi…lives in Oxford) and he brought me to his friends house where after a few rounds of tea, his friend Allissan, the djembe maker, came over with an absolutely beautiful djembe, if you can imagine. Just gorgeous, the designs and the head were really well put together. So we discussed what was the plan to start and stuff, he’s pretty cool so I’m pumped…we walked to his house which involved passing through a dance practice with intense African dancing, and walking through a traditional lion chasing children type thing. The new plan now has evolved to us starting Thursday. (inshallah)
Today (Tuesday) I went to ngala’s house and met his family and ate lunch, had tea and watched germany beat the crap out of Tunisia and San marino in soccer. Then I came home, read through some possible stuff for my thesis and a chapter of the selfish gene. (I know, crazy right?)
**such a great experience meeting up with some of my friends’ host families and giving them stuff like pictures of their students and cards and gifts. Oh man, they just loved seeing pictures of everyone.
The weekend was chillaxed. I went to a club Friday night and Saturday went downtown with my sister and her friend. Saturday night went with my best friend Djibril to a PCV party (peace corps volunteer) - back story, in st. louis I met a load of PCVs and one of them I exchanged numbers with because he said he’s back and forth in Dakar a lot so he told me about the “party” Sunday I went to djibril’s house and we had great attaya and I met his family. I went to my church that night and afterwards met up with my PCV friend (Dan) for dinner. (pseudo date which I wasn’t expecting…I never expect dates, it seems I’m always surprised)
Friday, I spent the day with my friend Celestine, who’s a music teacher at a franco-senegalese elementary school.
There’s a lot of this stuff I could elaborate on but once I start elaborating, I won’t stop so I’m trying to stay to the point =)
Also…I’m always realizing things that I never noticed in life…the most recent being…Notre Dame. Perhaps I’ve noticed this before…but today I passed a primary school of Notre Dame…and finally it was clear…our lady=notre dame. How dumb am I, really? Surely I’ve realized that before now. I mean I’m a ND fan hardcore and I’m catholic. I’m clearly a passive exist-er.
I’ll try to elaborate on some experiences more in the future…but if you want to know more, just ask =)
Right now I’m sitting in my room, it’s 9pm. I haven’t had dinner yet, and the electricity is cut. I reflect on my plans and why they haven’t exactly worked out how I wanted and why, and on what others would do in my place…because I have tons of time to think about that kind of thing…and I’m thinking about how I’ve often heard an argument that sounds a bit like this. People who are poor and underdeveloped are so because they should be more like us, capitalistic, entrepreneurs, individuals, democratic, cautious…blahblah. All good things mind you, but good things for us not for everyone. People think they can “help Africa” by showing them how to be more efficient, how to work harder and save money…but for what ends? Here I am living in one of the most developed cosmo posh towns in west Africa without electricitiy, which is a common occurrence (Wade, the prez, cuts the electricity to each neighborhood all the time…because the power people can’t handle the whole city at one time or because the country can’t afford it…not sure which…but at any one moment someone somewhere doesn’t have power) I mean trying to bring to this country means of having power 24/7 would be great surely but that’s still us trying to push things on them because we feel it’s a huge necessity. But here, I mean such a common occurrence emphasizes what we see as inefficient but what is not inefficient in the slightest. I’m rambling but...let it be known that I’m all about bringing medicines and aid here but there is something to be said for different cultures and forced change. And I do acknowledge a difference between letting different cultures remain the way they are and peacefully co-existing AND leaving peoples alone when they desperately do need help. I feel that there is much need in the world, everywhere, and that while it may be impossible for one person to individually help the entire populus, it’s not impossible for one person to inspire and motivate others to help more. (I’m thinking of a tree…someone influential(dalai lama) being the trunk, and all who read his works and live them, the branches…hippy-ish, I know, but there are good aspects of the hippy era) We want to change the world, but change starts from the bottom, at the base, with the individual. And we simply can’t change individual beliefs and cultures because of what we wish to accomplish. For example, hypothetically my goal is to lower the malaria rate so I want people to sleep in mosquito nets. So I, naively, plan on raising money and subsidizing a million mosquito nets so that the people will be able to afford one for their beds. Sure it’s possible, but its already 80-85 degrees when you get to bed and the net will only further serve to trap air and keep you warmer…who wants that? And sleeping is part of everyday life…so to change from free sleeping to sleeping under a net is huge for a large population. Cultural change…can’t be done well from the outside. Moral dilemma in my head: we should help who we can help…right? Does that mean bringing in a million nets in hopes that at least a few hundred people will benefit? I think so…but its hard to prove things that people would want to be proven, like efficacy, etc…blahblah. There’s so much crap and red tape with so many NGOs trying to do stuff. Some of them are wonderful, some not so great. People are trying though. Sometimes trying just doesn’t get it though…when you’re wasting valuable resources… you’ve got to know when to ask someone else for help and when to pull out and replan.
Back to the inefficiency that we see here. Things here may work 50 times slower than home in many respects, but here life is not your work. Life is your life away from your work, your family, your neighborhood, your friends. At home, we go to school and are told that we can be whatever we want, we can find our dream job. That’s why we go to school…so we can have some really amazing job. Why is a job so important? With a middle man job, we can still have a great home life and that’s what matters here. You work 10 hour days everyday at a cyber café not because you can’t achieve better but because it’s there, your family’s right a few houses down and there’s not much more you need. When looking at differences between us and other countries, it’s not about who’s better. We, in America, have done a lot of things right and are reaping benefits of that, but we’ve also done many things wrong…and are seeing consequences all the time, in war, in street violence, in music lyrics, in “immoral” things…Every country is constantly evolving, no government or people are stagnant. Ideas are always being revamped and repackaged, history repeating itself through the generations. This makes me think of the idea of eternal recurrence…how there are only so many options in the world, because the universe is finite, that everything will occur again and again…weird idea? Nietzsche I think.
Capitalism. Great idea in the beginning but like everything, it is evolving and has evolved into privatization and segregation of classes. In attempts to become stronger entrepreneurs, business owners find ways to only serve the wealthy or middle class…like with health care. This was not the beginning idea for capitalism. The beginning idea was great, everyone do their own thing, make their own money, build their own business, study hard, work hard, earn much for your family, helping your neighbor out. But now it’s become something crazy. It used to be family drug stores and neighborhood supermarkets and now its wal-marts and walgreens. The chances for entrepreneurships have greatly decreased and the gap between the haves and have nots is increasing.
**I feel like I’m jumping way out in left field with this…but I’ve heard all this before at different times and in different manners. This is just a mélange (mix) of what I’ve been thinking about and reading about and seeing in my daily life.
It’s all about competition. You leave high school thinking, I can’t wait till my 20 year reunion when I come with my mercedez z45 (or whatever) and my high paying brain surgery job in some swanky posh town. People have always been competitive mind you, but now it’s to the point where you don’t even know your neighbors’ names nor do you care to, as long as the grass is cut.
Then with this idea pushing us to work and study harder is the idea that behind all this competition, we’ve got to be able to provide for ourselves, to survive in this expensive world. Health care and insurance prices are ridiculous but you’re s.o.l. if you don’t have any at all. So you work real hard just to get by, almost no matter who you are. In Mississippi, people are more acknowledging of the will to do what you got to do for your family to get by. It’s not totally dog eat dog; that idea exists but not too horribly. (maybe with torts, but I don’t really understand those)
What these leads to…what do I want to do with my life? I want to work hard for the things I end up doing, for the people I end up serving, for my family, but I want a family, too. A big one. And a farm. With cows. I want to be involved in social justice work and work on projects that affect the human race in general. But I want to be a mom and a role model.
so the ramblings are very spontaneous...pardon me for the weirdness -- probably more for my friends to read