It's Almost Too Hot to Think Straight ... That's our excuse

We spent the day in the desert, looking for water (under the ground).

There are several projects underway here in Senegal with Andando, and several more on the way, and we spent the day driving to distant locations, getting things lined out. 

The weather here is brutal right now, with temperatures up to 106 degrees F, and hot direct sun beating down.  So even with air conditioning in the truck, it's sometimes hard to concentrate, all you can think of is finding some shade and cold water!

We went to many sites and I will list them by their Senegalese name:  Sama Toucouleur, Daga Sombou, Ndioufene, Keur Nene Serere, and Taiba Nianguene.   A couple of them are just now functioning and the others are new projects where we have to dig a well.

One of the future well and garden spots in the middle of the desert

The well digging (by hand) is not for the faint of heart.  The guys are lowered by a rope down the well, sometimes 75 feet deep.  It's hot and dirty work, and they can only work for an hour or so, then they have to trade out to a new guy. 

 

This picture above shows one of the well diggers after he has come up from the bottom of the shaft.  He is covered in the wet clay-like dirt at the base.  

Funny story 

So we are doing a little work at the base house here in Keur Soce, just some cleaning and decorating.  One of the new wall hangings requires a long pole to mount it on the wall.  Of course a long straight stick is hard to come by in these parts.

 

So we go to the hardware store to buy a couple things, and ask about the "curtain rod" that we need for the wall.  They have no idea what we're talking about and we have to explain several times what we want.  Bamboo would be ideal, but there isn't any around here.  

We're ready to give up but on our way out, we see a long stick.  It has a funky mop top sort of thing on top, and we ask about it.  They laugh and say it's a kind of a feather duster thing that they use to clean the dust from the ceiling.  We say "this is perfect and, can we buy it?"

They think this is hilarious.  But we say "Hey, no, we are serious, we will buy this and take the feather duster thing off"  and it will be the perfect size for our wall hanging.  They think we are completely nuts.  

We ask - how much?  They are baffled and say it's not really for sale and they bought it from some street vendor who stopped in and pointed out how dirty their ceiling was.  

So we negotiated.  At one point they protested, "How are we going to clean our ceiling?"  And we all looked up and saw the ceiling was pretty dirty and had not been cleaned in a ... (I don't want to be unkind here) ... forever?

They laughed - and agreed!  So we made a deal, and we can't wait to get home tonight and add to the decor of the house!  It's gonna be awesome.

We can always blame it on too much time in the hot sun ...

Kettle Shopping - Greetings go on Forever in Senegal

Saying hello can take a long time in this West African country

When Senegalese greet each other they go through a rather long routine of questions, and below I will recite the exchange when we sent shopping to buy a kettle for boiling water:

 

After looking around, we enter a shop and Boubou our Senegal representative says "I know this guy, he used to live in Dakar!"

Boubou: Hello my friend, how are you?

Friendly Shop Keeper (FSK):  Boubou my friend!  I am fine, how are you?

B: I am fine, how is your family?

FSK:  My family is good, how is your family?

B: My family is very good, how is your goat?

FSK: My goat is good, how is your chicken?

B: I don't have a chicken but if I did, he would be fine.  I had chicken for dinner last night and it was really good. How is your donkey?

FSK: My donkey had babies and they are fine, how is your foot?

B:  My foot? my foot is fine, how is your grandmother?

FSK: She is good, getting older, how is your cell phone?

B: I have a new phone! it is soooo good!  How is your brother?

FSK:  My brother is good, he just got a goat and a chicken ... How is your cousin, second removed on your mother's side ... ?

And this goes on and on and on ... takes forever, all we wanted to do was buy a kettle.  

So finally they finish the greeting.  Boubou looks around the shop and springs the question "Do you any kettles for sale here?"

FSK: No

Boubou: Okay, bye.

We walk out.  

HA HA HA!  The greetings take ten minutes and the shopping takes ten seconds!  It was hilarious, I'm still laughing ...  It was good fun!

Eventually we found the proper kettle we were looking for.  You have to be persistent ... 

The Transformation of a Country ... It's still going on ....

I don't remember that building being there last time ...?

Sometimes when you visit a place many times over the years, you don't really notice the changes.  But coming back to Senegal this time, after twenty years of visits, it was hard not to be impressed by how much different it is now compared to what it used to be.

There are freeways where there were dirt roads.  Everyone has smart phones (or at least cell phones) and their service is better and less expensive than we have in the States.  They have been enjoying the good times of a housing boom for a few years.  They are building a new national airport.  The highway system is as good as any in Africa.  Progress has come to Senegal.

The Village of Keur Soce, Senegal

 
Well, hold on a minute .... have you been to a remote village out in the interior of the country?  Actually, yes, as a matter of fact that's where we are right now.  Things are still pretty rough for most Senegalese.  They could use a little help.  

We have been active here for many years with our Andando Foundation, providing assistance with development projects, which brings us here again to the village of Keur Soce and the surrounding area. 

I will hit on some of the highlights of our trip so far:

 
So we stopped at a "factory" on the five hour drive out to our final destination, to check out the place that makes our fence for the gardens.  You know, like chain link fence, only they make it by hand.  
This picture shows a guy winding the inter-woven wire into a continuous length of chain link.  This will keep the critters out and ring the garden with a perimeter for planting.

This is a well digger, coming up out of a 50 foot hole.  A large part of what we do here involves water.  This country is hot and dry.  But with water and hard work, you can grow food and feed your family and maybe even have enough vegetables to sell and make some income,
This particular well hit water at 50 feet, but the well went dry, so they need to dig it deeper.  Oh, and did I mention they do all of this by hand?  They send a guy down there and he digs as long as he can stand it and then it's someone else's turn. 

Speaking of gardens, The picture above show one of the the gardens in Keur Soce, a very vibrant garden indeed.  In fact we bought some veggies for dinner and breakfast, carrots, guavas, and mint (for tea)

 And lastly, but certainly not leastly (is that a word?) we are in the middle of building a Health Post in the nearby village of Sama Toucouleur, sponsored to a great degree by Hub City Church in Albany, Oregon.  
This is going to make a great difference in the lives of the people in this village. 

We are just getting started.  But we are well aware that this is not Oregon here, it's 100 degrees, hot, dry, and windy.  But really darn interesting. 

Oops, wrong spelling, guess you're not going anywhere ...

It's been a while since we've left the country, but we are back at it.  But we didn't get off to a good start.

Left Tuesday night from Portland to fly to Senegal West Africa, for a couple of weeks work for our Andando Foundation.  This is a non-profit focusing on development projects in remote villages, including wells and water efforts, market gardens, education programs, micro loans, feeding programs, building projects, and last but not least, health posts.

For this particular trip, we are accompanied by our friend and professional photographer Danae.  She has traveled a lot, but this is her first trip to Africa, and she is bringing along some rather sophisticated equipment that will run on batteries out in the boonies.

In fact, Danae was the lucky winner of the first travel mishap (if you want to call it that).  When we got to the airport to check in, we had a bunch of heavy bags and such, and she was first up to get her boarding pass.

Turns out her last name was spelled wrong on the reservation.  Hard to misspell "Jones" it would seem.
Anyway the guy at the counter was not terribly helpful, and said things like "you can't get on the plane" or "they will cancel your ticket and you will have to buy another one" and "guess you're gonna miss the flight".  A little too much drama ... can't you just fix it?

This went on for a while, longer than it should have really, and the ticket agent guy got on the phone forever with no luck.  Not exactly sure who he was calling, but they were not much help.

In the meantime, Fiona and I checked in with another agent and breezed right through.  I spoke to our agent about Danae's dilemma, and she said just go for it with the misspelled name, it's no big deal.  
I asked her to speak to her colleague who was holding things up and she did.  He relented to some extent, but by this time Danae was on the phone trying to sort things out on her end.  Eventually we all agreed she should just hang up and go for it, and she sailed right through security.  

It was all kind of a pain, but Danae kept her cool, and we are now boarding the flight.   All's well that ends well?  Only ... we are just beginning ...