A Day In The Life - On the Road with a Purpose

We woke up early yesterday and took off on a long journey, driving 450 kilometers from Dakar Senegal to Podor, in the far north. This is an arduous trip, and took seven hours of hard driving. It used to be worse, but the roads have improved considerably.  It used to take two days.


The country of Senegal is a place we know well, having been here many times in the last twenty five years. Indeed, we were here in December. We are active with our Andando Foundation, providing development aid to rural areas.


Podor is one of those rather impoverished areas. We are right on the bank of the Senegal River which forms the northern border of Senegal, across from neighboring Mauritania. The river is an anomaly, meaning that is is unusual in such a dry arid country.


As I mentioned, the roads have improved substantially in the last few years. If you want to improve a country, make the roads better. Then people can get around and you can get products to distant markets. It opens up the country, provides better access, and saves a tremendous amount of time getting around.


Part of the long highway we drove on was built with aid from America. I know this because there are many signs on the recent built road that say “Brought to you by the People of America”. Over the years, the USA has helped many countries improve with foreign aid.  Sadly, this has diminished rather abruptly in recent years.




 
In our place, in other words, instead of America providing this aid, it is now the Chinese. They are very active in Africa. We have traveled a lot around this continent, and the Chinese are very aggressive with their foreign aid and investment. They don’t send missionaries, they send money and workers.  They build bridges, roads, dams, power plants, and factories.


One difference is that America puts up signs that say “We built this”.  China doesn’t put up signs, they are not looking for credit or brownie points. Instead they say “We want your copper (or coal, or oil, minerals, wood, etc)”, fill in the blank, and the Chinese are here to get what they can. This does not downplay their impact, they have done a lot of good things for Africa, a place that needs all the help it can get.  But the Chinese get something in return.

A Day In The Life of Andando

Podor (shown in the photo at the top) is an interesting town.  It's the northernmost town in Senegal, and there is an old French fort (pictured below) established in 1854 as an outpost for their "colony" 

I will recap our day as it unfolded.  

We first had breakfast at our hotel, a restored colonial building on the banks of the river.  It is a very nice hotel, somewhat impressive really in light of the rough conditions.  It's always surprising to see they can pull this off in a remote place.  It even has air conditioning. 

First we headed to a well dug previously seven years ago.  It is still working properly and should continue to do so for another twenty years.  One of our first endeavors here was digging wells to provide water to communities or villages that didn't have any access to water.  A hand dug well done right will last a very long time.  We have seen and used wells here that are up to forty years old. 

We arrived next at our new garden here in Diambo Diaobe (pronounced Jambo Jo-bay).  This young garden is already producing a large quantity of vegetables and other items.  The ladies who work in this garden were happy to see us and started singing and dancing.  It's their way to welcome and celebrate at the same time, and it's always fun. 

One unique aspect of this well is that it draws water from the nearby Senegal River.  This is a first for us, and is made possible by the proximity of the river.  Our approach, which has proven very effective, is to use solar power to drive a pump and holding system.   There is always ample sunshine in this country - it's hot and sunny all year round.   Which also makes gardens grow. 

From there we went to a very remote village where we recently completed a Health Post.  This place was way out in the puckerbrush, and you need a good off-road four wheel drive rig to get there.   It also attracted a crowd of the locals, who were very happy to see us.  

We toured the building and had a sit down meeting with a few speeches.  This is a typical project for us, to construct a modest Health clinic style building to serve a local population that does not have access to proper medical care.   These folks in this village are at least two hours away from a proper "hospital" and in the rainy season, they can't get there at all - isolated by high water when the river floods.

After that we left to visit another project, a new set of classrooms at another local village closer to Podor.   This is a common example of a need for the area villages.  A growing population needs more space in their schools to educate their children.  

This particular school had the best terrible example of temporary classrooms I have ever seen (and we've seen a bunch of bad ones).  They built a structure with branches and leaves on a dirt floor and.

We will replace this with three new classrooms built of brick and mortar with a proper tin roof.  

The progression sequence of this day was significant because of the pattern of the projects:  This represents the progress that Andando has achieved over the years. 

• First were hand dug wells providing water.  Women no longer had to travel an hour a day to get water and carry it on their head.
• Next were bonafide market gardens utilizing that water to produce nutritious food with enough surplus to sell for income.
• Then Health Posts to enable the villagers to address their medical needs, primary on that list is birthing babies. 
• Decent classrooms for the modest schools to educate their growing population.

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One last event that day gave proof to the needs we are trying to address.  After visiting the school later in the day, a local woman came up to us and asked if we could possibly take a local woman to the "hospital" (which is really a glorified clinic, but they best they have anywhere nearby).

The young lady was in labor and having a very rough time.  The woman saw our truck and asked if it was possible take her to the medical clinic, like real soon. (the only other option was a brutal hot dusty bumpy trip on the back of a donkey cart).  

The mother had already been in labor for many hours and there was concern for her health and that of the baby.  We answered "of course", and Fiona set off with our driver, the expectant mother, and two other relatives for the six kilometer trip across the outback.  

Later we received the happy news that she had delivered a healthy baby and mother and child were doing fine.   Good news!

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We are proud to play a small part in improving the world around us. 

With A Little Help ... Good Things Happen ... In Senegal

This journey around the world has revealed not only wonderful things to see and do, but also provided several challenges and new adventures.
We've now entered a new phase.  

After covering multiple nations and continents, we're heading down the home stretch and are now in Senegal, West Africa. 

This is a place we know well.  We have spent many years coming to Senegal with our Andando Foundation, where we are very active in providing aid to rural parts of the country.  The last few days have been engaged in this activity.  

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Even though we're "working" here, there is also time for new discoveries.  For example, today we took a fairly long trip to a fishing village where the large Senegalese fishing fleet launches each day to bring in the catch from the Atlantic Ocean.  

This is no small endeavor.  There are reportedly 4,000 boats in this "village" - but the boats may not be what you think.  They are rather small and compact (and quite colorful), although some are bigger than others. They launch right out through the waves and return with their daily harvest.  

Even though it looked somewhat chaotic, it's almost like a symphony how they manage to seamlessly pull off this high level of activity.  They work together as a big team.   

We watched as thirty guys hauled a massive fishing boat onto the beach.  They had big ropes and there was a lead person calling the rhythm as they pulled together on the count of three to move the boat gradually to its place in the huge lineup on the shore.   It looked like a lot of work. 

We actually bought some fish (tuna) as the boats came ashore - it's fresh and less expensive that way!  The Senegalese eat a lot of fish, and have a long coastline on the Atlantic.  

In fact, as a bit of review, we have eaten a heck of a lot of fish on this three-month-long trip around the globe.   I guess that makes sense based on our journey (all below the equator), because there is a lot more ocean than land.  It seems like we've eaten fish every day - often multiple times a day. It's a good thing we enjoy eating fish!

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It's also very rewarding to see the results of our efforts to provide development aid here in Senegal.   We work a lot in gardens, schools, feeding programs, and health posts.  

For instance, we visited several construction sites under way; building schools and classrooms.  This is a big need here, and the contrast between what they have, and what they need, is stark.  Some of the classrooms are pathetic substandard, and in dire need of upgrade.  

The good news is that this is relatively easy to remedy, once the need is identified.  When we see what needs to be done, and where - we can mobilize and get things done in a very efficient manner. 

A real challenge is that it's hot in Senegal, where we work in the villages.  It was 107 degrees yesterday, and these guys are out working in the sun.   And making a difference in the lives of students there. 

We have an ambitious schedule this year in Senegal with many projects in many small villages.   As I said earlier, it's rewarding to be involved like this.  We have a lot of supporters who can be proud of the accomplishments they've taken part in. 

Below are some pictures from the gardens, where local women are growing bumper crops of vegetables and fruits.  This provides a tremendous source of nutrition.  Because of their hard work, there is even enough to sell in the markets to provide income.  

And this is sustainable - we are helping them to learn to do this on their own and can carry on without our help in future.  For instance, they generate their own seeds for the next planting season ...

This Is Not Smoke, It's A Swarm Of Insects

 

 

 

Travel always comes with risk.  

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     In the last few days, we've been reminded of that fact with the tragic loss of life in the airline accident involving Ethiopian Airlines.  We were just there and took off in a very similar fashion on that same airline in that same city.  
     When Fiona showed me the headline, I dropped my fork.  What?!?!  I was stunned.  That kind of thing really hits you in the gut.  It took my breath away.  It could have been ... us.   
     Ethiopian is an excellent airline, by far the biggest in Africa and one of the largest in the world, with an excellent safety record.  We had flown on them several times on this trip.  But these things can happen anywhere. 
     That element of risk is always there. 
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That being said, our recent travels were not without their own drama.   

We were leaving Malawi and hustling to catch the flight out of Lilongwe, the nations capital.  Never fails, when you're in a hurry, stuff happens.  The hotel machine for credit cards didn't work (they never do).  The only option was to go to a "cash machine" (ATM) which are notoriously unreliable in most parts of the world, they never work either. 

So we bust out of there on a taxi and luckily find a machine that works - except that it only allows limited withdrawals in small bills.  This takes forever and we end up with a giant wad of money shown in the picture below.  It was only worth $300, the biggest bill value was three dollars.

It doesn't get better.  So we make our flight and take off for Harare, Zimbabwe (pronounced Zim-bob-way) but we don't go directly there.  We land in a city I've never heard of called Ndola (pronounced In-Doh-Lah), it's right on the border of the Congo.  

In fact, here is a list of the cities we've landed in within the last few days:
   Blantyre
   Lilongwe
   Ndola
   Harare
   Lusaka
   Bulawayo
I'll let you figure out the pronunciation.  This is not exactly a top-ten list of holiday destinations ...

It gets worse:  We are about to take off again on a flight from Herare after a ridiculous five-and-a-half hour layover and the guy at the ticket counter says "your names are not on the passenger list."

Fiona says "I was afraid of this, they changed the flight times."  So we were told to go to the other ticket counter in the other terminal and get our names added to the list.  

This turned out to the a pain.  The guy at the "other ticket counter" said it was because we changed our flights.  Fiona fired off "No!  YOU changed the flights!"  Our names were eventually added and we made the flight. 

It gets worse:  

When we finally land in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe we procure a ride to the hotel and the fun begins ...

It's rather late at night when we walk into the 'lobby' and it looks like a mess and the 'reception' guy says ... 
"Um, we have a problem.  The hotel is closed right now for renovations."
"Closed?" we ask, "What do you mean?"
"Well," he says "We don't have a room for you, but we have booked you into another hotel."
"What?"  we are incredulous "Where?"
"Oh, it's not far.  It's nice, out on the edge of town."
We are not at all happy about this "How long has this hotel been closed for renovation?"
And he says: "About a month."
"What the @%#^$&$*#?  This place has been closed for a month and you are still taking reservations??  That's a buncha &$@^*&#!"
The guy is very apologetic and then he says "Is it possible for you to pay us now?"
We have finally had enough, Fiona explodes - "NO!  First you blow our off our reservation and want to send us to a hotel in god-knows-where, and now you want to be paid?  Are you out of your mind?"

This goes on for a while and we end up in a crappy place in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.   Like I said, plenty of drama.
  

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It's not all bad 

That being said, there were still plenty of things to enjoy.  In between the monsoon rains and floods in Malawi we had a chance to visit the giant Lake Malawi from which the country gets its name. 

When we got there, we saw this funky thing on the lake that looked like smoke.  Our driver told us it was not smoke, but a cloud of insects.  It looked really weird and was moving across the lake (It's the picture at the top of the blog). 

"Yes, and when it hits land, the people like to eat the bugs"  Hunh?  They eat the cloud of insects? 
"Yes, they are very good, they scoop them up with shovels ..."  Ha! Ha! ... I think I'll pass on that.  

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But we did find a nice beach to enjoy lunch and admire the vast lake, the seventh largest in the world, with the most species of fish in any lake. 

Another thing we saw that I was not familiar with - Malawi grows a lot of tobacco.  It's all over, and it's a really good cash crop for them, and grows great in this semi-tropical climate.  You might debate about the ethics of such, but they are just trying to make a living in this poor country. 

And then we arrived in Zimbabwe, with the weather just about perfect.  We've been all over the southern hemisphere on this trip and most of the times it's been super hot and humid, with frequent tropical rain.  But here?  Great. 


We went to visit around town, and there is evidence of the colonial period with a cool train station.   From 1880 to 1965 this country was known as Rhodesia, and then the name changed. 

And going way back, a thousand years or more, there was a great civilization here in southwest Africa.  We drove out to the amazing ruins of Khami, where you can see the remains of ancient cities.  There is evidence of this all over Zimbabwe, something most people are not aware of, a great, advanced, ancient civilization of Africans.  

Unfortunately, there are some economic problems here in Zimbabwe and their currency has kinda collapsed.  This makes it difficult for us to get any cash to spend, and the credit card machines don't work and well, this is the part of travel that kinda sucks.   

It's a lot worse for the local citizens, because businesses are closing and there are no jobs.  You wouldn't know this from far away, across the globe.  We didn't.  

But for us, we press on. 

And it's not all bad.

Moving On, Not Very Quickly - Deep In The Heart Of Africa

  
After a length of time on this journey that was somewhat leisurely (for us anyway) we have begun to speed up - and we have also hit some speed bumps.

We left the extraordinary country of Madagascar three days ago on a flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  That's when the fun began.  We were already rather exhausted from the 16 hour car ride ordeal the day before. 

Everything seemed to go okay on the flight, other than the rowdy and very irritating kids sitting behind us on the flight.  We never could sleep on the long flight.  As we approached the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, we began to circle in the air with a bunch of turbulence. 

It got worse and went on way too long.  It was now getting late at night.  The pilot came on and said that because of very bad weather, we could not land in Addis, and we were running low on fuel and would have to divert and land in Djibouti.  

This was not good news for several reasons - short time made shorter in Ethiopia, unknown fate of the current flight, fatigue, Djibouti is a foreign country, and the fact that I had gotten sick from something I ate and was suffering severe stomach issues.  

But we eventually landed in Djibouti (pronounced Jih-Boo-Tee) which is the capital of the nation of Djibouti, a separate neighbor country from Ethoipia.  Fortunately it wasn't very far.  We finally refueled and eventually returned to Addis Ababa.   

The airport was trashed from the storm and water had gotten inside the terminal.  Of course our ride to the hotel was long gone and we had to fend for ourselves in the middle of the night with a taxi.  We finally got to bed around three in the morning. 

We were super tired the next morning from the nearly all night ordeal (there was a time zone change too), so we took it pretty easy and arranged a short tour of the city.  It was not the best way to enjoy a new country, and we had to leave real early the next morning.  

Which we did, rising at 4:50 am to catch another flight, this time to Malawi in south east Africa.  We became concerned when watching the weather forecasts which called for severe and heavy rain where we were going; the town of Blantyre.  

Sure enough, when we got here it was absolutely pouring rain all day and night.  It rained five inches yesterday, unreal, like a monsoon.  We had to arrange some kind of travel plans, we couldn't just sit in our rooms and ride out the rain - it was the same forecast for the next three days.  

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So made our way to the bus station, and got tickets out of town for the next day.  The only problem was getting back to our hotel.  It's already dark now.  The first taxi we got was a piece of garbage and broke down immediately in the middle of a big traffic jam in the pouring rain.  People were honking and shaking their fists.

All I know is "I'm not getting out and walking, not in this weather, this is insane."  Our taxi guy summoned a fellow taxi to take us - and it promptly broke down too.  You couldn't make this up.  Apparently he ran out of gas?  We're in the middle of the road with thousand angry drivers around.  So the driver jumps out and grabs a gas can from the back of the car, and runs off.  "I'll be right back!"  he shouts. 

"Somebody is gonna hit us,"  I'm thinking.  I checked to see if the seats had the head rest thing in case of a rear impact (they did).  At least the guy left his flashers on ...

We were still pretty wet when made it back to our room.  We laid in our bed last night listening the dull roar of the torrential rain beat down on the metal roof.  

Some travels days are filled with wonder and amazing things, other days ... are not.  

An all too brief recap of Ethiopia

We had to speed visit Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, because of the very short time frame. 
A few pictures with an explanation.

This lovely lady is Lucy, the oldest known skeleton of a Homo Sapien.   She used to live here in Ethiopia about 3.2 million years ago or so.  She was on loan to the USA for many years but is now back home here in the National Museum.   I guess people were kinda small back in the old days ...

There is a lot of religious iconography here with the ancient culture of this nation, once known as Abyssinia.  Ethiopia was mentioned in the Bible and the Christian faith runs very deep in this part of the world.  Here in picture is Mary and Jesus, along with Haile Selassie shown in the bottom right.  

Why is he there?   He was a defining figure in contemporary Ethiopian history and ruled for sixty years, bringing many positive changes to the society.  He is revered among many.   In fact his shadow runs far and wide.  He is also known as 
Ras Tafari - and also as "Jah" - you know the guys with the dreadlocks?  Rastafarians?  This is the "spiritual" ruler of that Jamaican belief system. 

He did not do this by his design, he was a devout Ethiopian Orthodox Christian his entire life.   He was such a titanic figure in history ... 

Addis Ababa is a huge city, one of the biggest in Africa at around eight million people.  It is considered a cultural center for the continent and has helped bring about progress across the spectrum - political, social, religious, technology and science.  We had such a short time there. 

Was It Worth It? Well, There Is No Other Place In The World Like This

This is one for the Bucket List 

We've spent the last week in Madagascar.  First thing to say, it's not a well developed country.  In fact, it's a rather rough place, with occasional concerns for safety.  Depending on your definition, in terms of countries, it's probably somewhere in the bottom half.  

However, that doesn't mean that there aren't interesting things to see.  In fact, it's on the amazing scale, it's pretty high up there.  But if you want to come here to check it out, you need to have a commitment.  In other words, it's not easy to get here. 

 

It's very remote - you've probably heard that before in this blog because we like to go to remote places - but it's true.  It is not easy to get here; we like to go to remote places and then go to the remotest part of that remote place.  It's quite difficult.  And once you get here, it's a challenge to deal with the conditions, and a real ordeal to get to the interesting parts. 

Okay, so why do you do this?  Is it worth the "adventure"?  I'll let you be the judge. 

So Madagascar is a very large island, number four on the list, behind such behemoths as Greenland. And that means when you get here, there is a lot of distance between points.  And if you add one more element, which makes it almost ridiculously problematic and that is ... 

Bad Roads - I have complained in the past about bad roads in different places we've traveled, but this has to be among the worst.  The roads here are ... hideous.   This picture above shows a local guy leading us across a flooded river, which was supposed to be the road. 

 
This picture above is the main national highway, and this was one of the good sections.  

For example, today we traveled back from our target destination which is around 400 miles away.  Admittedly, that's a long way, but it took us sixteen hours to drive it!  (an average of 25 miles per hour) In one day, in the rain, and dark.  And it was worse than it sounds.   I would almost call it a near death experience, but Fiona might scale that back a bit. 

 

Fortunately, we had the foresight to hire a driver.  This is not a credit to us being experienced and courageous travelers, it's kind of mandatory.  It's actually cheaper to rent a car with a driver than to do it yourself.  After our experience for the last four days, nobody in their right mind would want to drive this on their own.  

Not only that, but this place is Hot and Sweaty - we're talking high heat and high humidity.   It might be hard to imagine in the cold and frosty northern hemisphere, but Madagascar is a blistering hot ... tropical paradise.  The only problem (well, maybe not the only one) here is the widespread poverty of the citizens, it's a poor country.  As I said before, it's pretty rough here. 

So, with all that being said, we finally arrived at our destination 

 

We traveled to the West Coast of Madagascar to the legendary Baobab Forest (pronounced Bah-o-bob).  We were not disappointed.  This is such a surreal place; when you're here it does not quite seem real.

 

These gigantic trees are kind of unbelievable - it's one of those places where being there is hard to capture in words or pictures.  I have done my best to show some of the views and the scale of the enormous size of these things.  It was thrilling to walk among these giants.  In fact, it was rather mesmerizing. 

 

 

What kind of animal is that?

And it gets better - the exotic animals of Madagascar are literally unique in the world.  they are one-of-a-kind, and are found nowhere else on earth.   I was woefully uneducated on animals like the White Lemur, or the Brown Lemur for that matter.  

We were walking through the Kirindy Forest and saw these critters hanging from trees and swinging around on the branches and generally having a good time in their own very specific environment.  It was fascinating; they had some striking features, such as their eyes.  

A Lemur is sort of like a monkey, but a different species.  It's described as a primate, on the list with apes, chimpanzees, baboons, etc.  Pretty big and not really afraid of people, as they have few predators in Madagascar.  We saw a couple kinds, white and brown, and got up close.   

And the Fossa (pronounced Foo-sah).   It's a bit like a skinny cougar with a really long tail.  It's also fairly big.  It can climb trees, and the Lemurs better watch out for this bad boy. 

And this area is right on the ocean - Sunsets, Fishing Boats, waves. 

 
So after all this excitement, we had to make the long trip back.  It took all day, and then some.  I think it was worth it, but I'm glad to be back to a reasonable imitation of reality.  

Tomorrow we leave for Ethiopia.