Joal-Fadiout

The weekend after IST, a good friend -Luci and I took a slight detour down to Joal to visit two of my favorite volunteers Curt and Nicole. Joal-Fadiout are twin cities; Joal is on the mainland and Fadiout is the nearby island.

Now, Luci lives in the far north (Ourossogui, near Matam) where temperatures will soon be reaching upwards of 135 F enabling her to literally fry an egg on the sidewalk (I intend to see footage and possibly post video). She is a city volunteer and consequently has electricity to occasionally power a small refridgerator and fan, which helps take the sting off the encroaching desert heat. As you all are well aware, I live in a small village with no electricity. I am growing to love my village, but as we like to joke about in the Kaffrine area, "Sand, sand everywhere, but no beach." You get the picture.

Continuing my story, as Luci and I make our way down the coastline and into Curt and Nicole's upstairs apartment, we had to take a moment of silence to pick our jaws off the floor before screaming, "You live here?!" So they have a beautiful site - I have a baobab grove and an authentic mud hut complete with its own mini ecological zone (reptiles, rodents, earwigs, spiders, cockroaches, crickets, hornets... just to name a few of the ones I can see) - I'm not jealous at all.

Curt is a SED (small enterprise development) volunteer and is focusing primarily on setting up a solid waste management program with the city. Nicole is an ecotourism volunteer and is working closely with the city and local businesses to promote sustainable tourism - she took us on a path along the ocean that she wants to establish as a tourist trek. Both have extensive backgrounds and I'm very excited to see everything that they are able to accomplish. They've been working 12 hr days trying to connect with the masses that are so eager to work with them. Let's just say, they're not your average volunteers. We spent the weekend walking around the city (Joal) and out to the island (Fadiout). Joal is a reasonably clean city (practically immaculate compared to Kaolack) with many sidewalks, schools, decent restaurants, and English speaking inhabitants. I found that I really had to watch what I was saying.

side note: I have grown terribly accustomed to talking about people right in front of their faces as few people I encounter in the bush understand French (not a problem; I really don't either), and even fewer understand English even when it is spoken very s-l-o-w-l-y to them. I decided that my village friends had been talking about me in a language I still have trouble understanding (unless it is spoken s-l-o-w-l-y and the speaker limits herself or himself the hundred or so word vocabulary that I have readily available in my brain) since the fateful evening I arrived. So that permitted me to freely speak about the ridiculousness of people trying to convince you to buy something or give them money, or a woman wearing a red bra and nothing else on top (it would be far less strange for her to just go topless) whenever there is an American ear present. Admittedly, I have on occasion been known to express my frustrations to nearby goats or donkeys deciding that they understand English deep down and they think that my 40 year old male neighbor wearing a bright pink puffy coat when it's 80F out is just as funny as I do.

Back to Joal: the city is nice, the beaches are really nice, especially in the portions that aren't covered in trash. There's a spot in a small portion of the coastline where the waves actually flow backwards out to sea. It's a strange phenomenon that occurs very few places in the world - if anyone has knowledge of the strange currents off the coast of Senegal, do post a comment.

Another interruption: I'm at the computer room at the Peace Corps office in Dakar. I just jumped and turned around because I heard a crash coming from the adjacent library that was caused by none other than a very large rat. I'm not really sure about the scientific classification of these rodents, but they seriously could be (and have been) mistaken for cats. Its body was about a foot long - not quite as big and fat as the ones I find in my backyard, but he gets major points for breaking into the building.

Back to Fadiout: A unique attraction is that Fadiout island is composed entirely of the refuse from centuries of shellfish consumption. As the story goes, it is also the only place in the world where Muslims and Christians are buried side by side. The whole area is very touristy, but still somewhat laid back as the majority of people are from the Serer ethnicity - they tend to be much less aggressive than the Wolof people that I live with. Because they receive many tourists, they still ran after us trying to sell jewelry, tours, and boat rides. I've discovered that by speaking in Wolof (Wolof is a fairly easy language that most everyone in Senegal can communicate in), I'm able to suppress the amount of attention I receive as they realize that I actually live in Senegal.

After a few days of staying in this city with a nice, cool breeze, walking along the shoreline and eating good food, I'm looking for possible secondary agroforestry projects that Curt and Nicole couldn't complete without my help. My thought is just to set up a tent on their veranda... my village won't miss me that much, right? (two fabulous women: Luci and Nicole)