Construct Africa: Africa-trip 2010/2011, Senegal

Senegal, the country I didn´t want to go to. I heard so many bad stories about Senegal, mostly about the corrupt police. On the other hand I heard in the south people are different. So I was quite curious what would be happen. And I tell you this was the easiest border to pass. The guy was extremly polite. Maybe because he got some money from the guy in front of me. I just saw them exchanging money. Anyway, it took me not more than two minutes to get my stamp. He was not even asking me for a laissez passer or a carnet de passage nor did he look at the car. I could have had 10 people in the car without him noticing anyhting. And the road was a brand new paved road. On my way to Kédougou which was a distance of 130km I passed maybe one car and one lorry. The road was brand new, but still they haven´t finished it on the Mali side. So I reckon once the Mali side is finished the traffic will move into Mali on this road instead of going via Kayes. In Kédougou I asked for a camp side called la Girafe but they told me it is in Mako. It was still early anyway so I thought I could go there. The road was paved as well but with many holes or pot-holes if you like. Between Kédougou and Mako I saw a sign campement de Mako and I turned in. It turned out to be a very nice place. Ok, there were mostly hunters using this place for a stay but it was very well maintenanced and they had a pool.

Aahhh, this was just fantastic. I stayed at least one hour in the pool, great. Life sometimes has nice surprises. And for sure they had a bar with icecold beer. I thought of maybe staying a day longer. The river Gambia is just passing at the side of the place. Very, very beautiful. But this place is like so many others not at all busy anymore. It looked like it had better times. They had maybe 12 or 15 little houses to rent, all very clean and well maintenanced, just the customers were missing. After two nights at the camp-site I went on. My plan was to visit the Niokoto-Koba park. The owner of the camp-site ment the entrance is 35km ahead but I couldn´t take this entrance cause I had no ticket. Ok, I thought lets keep going. A few km later I discovered a guy who looked like some sort of gard. I asked him if he is selling tickets and he ment it would be better to move on to the main entrance of the park. This guy was already a little bit wierd. He was asking me what I´ve got in my car, but at this moment I didn´t think much. After half an hour driving I had to stop. A guy who looked like a gard as well wanted to see my papers and wanted to have a look in the car. I felt a little bit unconfortable. All this guys with their big rifles but still I didn´t think much. Short after this interuption I arrived at the main entrance. The first guy who turned up was telling me he is a guide. Good I said, but I don´t want one. I went into the office and the trouble started. The other gard was just calling telling the main entrance gard that I had refused him to search my car which was a total lie. I had my back door open to show him the car. So the other guy was really searching my car. At this point I thought already, what is this all about, why would I have my car searched when I just want to visit a bloody national park. Later I thought maybe they were thinking I was hunting some animals, anyway, after the guy had finished his search action I was already a little bit pissed off. Finally he asked me where I wanted to go and I explained him. I was planning to stay two days in the park. Than he said you need a guide and I said I don´t want one but if you want to visit the park you have to take a guide. Ok, I thought I was angry anyway and I told him to put his park where ever he would like to but I am not going in there when I have to take a guide. I went on and stopped in the next village to have some lunch. I found a „restaurant“ where I had a nice plate of meat with vegetables. In this village was a camp-site as well. I had a look but the place was deserted and they had no shade so I moved on. The next place I saw had some huge advertising on the side of the road. I had a look. This place, I forgot the name was a tourist rip off place. They wanted 2700CFA for the night which is still acceptable but I would have had to take dinner and the dinner was 6500CFA, no I thought. I didn´t like the place anyway so I kept going. The roads went insanly bad. They were still paved but they had more holes then pavement. It was incredibly tirering to drive on these roads. And I made my first contact with corrupt police officers, and not the last. Pardon my language but they are all wankers. It was always

the same game, they asked for some documents, either passeport or driving licence and just kept the papers trying to make me nervious, trying I said. Once I just said next to them starting to relaxe and talking silly stuff. As soon as they realize you are not scared of them and you show them you have time they don´t know how to handle you and give you the papers back. Some were asking directly for money. These are the once who check all the papers incluiding car insurance etc. I started to regret my decision to come to Senegal. How much cooler was Mali and Burkina. One of the guys I asked if he knows a camp-site and he ment in the next town there is one. Cool I thought, it was getting late anyway. I only had to ask once and than found the place. But they wanted 8000CFA . A normal rate is between 1500 and 2500 CFA. I really started to loose my temper. At the end I was yelling at the guy who was a miserable bastard anyway. I went back into town and spotted a blag sign. This is a local beer. It was a hotel with a nice bar and ice-cold beer. I asked the owner if I could park my car inside but he said the place is going to be busy later. At the meanwhile it was dark and I didn´t want to drive any further. Just next to the hotel I saw some police and I asked them if I could park the car around the corner where I spotted some abandoned houses but they said no. At the end I drove out of town and stopped at the first possible place for a bush camp. This day was the worst so far on my whole travells and I was regretting even more being in Senegal. I gave Deanne a ring. She is the woman running this project in a small village some where close to where I was. She explained me how to drive. Only another 6 hours from where I was staying. I left early in the morning. I passed the night undisturbed. It went on where it stopped yesterday. I was only stopped five times and had a car search only three times. Once I took a wrong road and had to go all the way back. Finally I arrived at a place which is called Medina Wandifa but by the locals only called Carrefour. I met Deanne and Aliou a guy from the village. Before we went towards the village she was presenting me to the chef de village who was living in Carrefour but somehow he was still the chef of Ndongane the village. It was only a five km drive on donkey roads to Ndongane. That´s the name of the village. In the village itself I had a very warm welcome. They were drumming and dancing for me and all the trouble I had over the last days was just drifting away. This was great. The day I arrived they had a big party anyway.

It started late and I couldn´t stand it. They had the music just built up next to my car and it was sooo loud and sooo bad. I waited a while and than put the tent down and drove out of town to get some sleep. The next day Deanne showed me around. They were building a school. The building itself was already standing but it was the finish which needed doing. Also the floor on the outside, which was done 6 month ago but already was totally cracked up by using not enough cement and no reinforcement. We wanted to start to work on Monday, but on Monday the village had a celebration so nobody was turning up to work. This was a good possibility for me to go shopping in Carrefour. I took Anna with me, a spanish woman who was staying in the village to visit Deanne. The rest of the day I spent preparing the work for the next day. I found a lovely parking space for my car underneeth a huge tree. The rest of the week I was working with two guys, one was Ibrahim a very tall guy and Moussad. But there were always some people turning up, mostly to have a look.or to give us a hand. What we did was priming and painting the walls with two coats of paint. We started to work at eight in the morning when it was still relativly cool until maybe eleven or twelve.

Between twelve and four in the afternoon you didn´t even had do think about work. Too hot. Sometimes more than 40°C. After four it was still very hot but it cooled down slowly. On the weekend Deanne wanted to go Ziguinchor the capital of Casamance to buy material. Spontaniously I decided to join her. We took Anna with us . She is living in Ziguinchor. We took my car. The drive was horrible. We were stopped six times. And three times I had the car searched. Once they even searched my pockets. Very, very unpleasant. Once I had to open up my tent. This guy was showing off his authority. By the time we arrived in Ziguinchor which was only a 100km distance I was in not a very good mood. The area around Ziguinchor is very green and beatiful but it didn´t pay for the hustle on the roads. Later I learned they had an attack by some rebells only one week ago. But hey there were tanks all over the place. We spent the day shopping for the building . The heat was not as bad as in the village but the humidity was killing me. Ziguinchor is next to the river Casamance and for this reason very humid. After we put all the stuff in the car we went for a cold beer in one of the hotels at the river. Deanne´s friend in town is called Richard. He is a building constructor. I could have had parked my car in his yard but I was not very confortable with the guy and I decided to spend the night in an auberge. I spent the night in a real bed.

But hey, I couldn´t sleep. I was awake until four in the morning. So, at the end it was not a very good idea. Anyway I still woke up early and was already horrorfied about the drive back to the village. And this time with all the building material inside the car. I saw myself already taking the stuff out on every ceckpoint. We left Ziguinchor around 4Pm. The first time we had to pull over was still in town. Good start I thought, but the rest of the trip we went on undisturbed. Back in the village we unloaded the stuff and I head an early night. The next week I was busy with concreting and building a water deposit and I was showing the people how to build a wall etc.

The village Ndongane.

I spent three weeks in the village. The village itself is settled 5km off the main road close to a place which is called Bounkiling. My car was the only car in town. For transport they use donkeys and lately 2 guys bought a scooter. There was no electicity in the village. As soon as the night felt is was just pitch dark, except when the moon was rising. With the full moon shining it was almost as light as in day time. Deanne is leading the project in Senegal. A friend of hers is fundraising the money for the project. Though the budget is very, very limited. Every penny has to be turned over twice. But things are moving. So far they built the school itself and a well. For some of the villagers it is a good possibility to gain some money. And Deanne was paying them the double rate. When we talk about money. A guy working the whole day gets between 500 and 1000 CFA a day which is aquivalent to 80 cents and 1€50. Deanne was paying them 2000CFA a day. For us it sounds like it is nothing but for them is was a very good income. I remember, once Deanne had payed the guys after one week of work and the guys were really smiling at the 12000CFA they´ve got. (18€).

It is not easy for me to decripe the life in the village. The women are doing the hard part of the labour. They have the kids, they prepare food, they wash, they fetch the water, in fact they do practically everything. The men are just sitting in the shade. Sure there is not much work but they would never ever go and fetch some water, this is womens work. The same with the cooking. They looked very wierd at me when they saw me cooking my own food. I just didn´t like their daily food which was cous cous with peanut sauce. They eat this stuff twice or three times every day. Over all I liked my stay in the village, the heat in the afternoon was not easy to deal with. Once I meassured the temperature in the sun arround 15.30. It was close to 55°C. In the shade stiil it was 43°C. But there was no shade anyway so 55 was the temperature I had to deal with. Even with lots of water I felt dizzy after one hour. It is hard to tell but there is not even a basic knowledge of how to rais a building. Some of the guys were „builders“ but they didn´t even know how to mix cement in the right mixture. They made some concrete blocs. I looked at them and thought this is just sand. I took one up and let it fall down from maybe the height of one meter and it just totally broke. But the guys were really proud telling me they used two tonnes of cement for the blocs. After calculating the weight of the blocs it turned out they had a mixture 7 parts of sand and 1 part of cement. Ideal is 3 to 1.

The same with the concrete. They get the gravel from somewhere behind the village only 50% of the so called gravel is soil. I had to tell them soil is not a good compound in concrete. You know things like that. I remember the first mix we did they looked at me like I have lost my mind. Cause for them I used far to much cement. But after the three weeks they themself saw the difference. It doesn´t mean they will change the way they work, for econmy sake. The same with the stealwork for the concrete. They normaly don´t use any and that is exatly the reason why everything is cracking up in no time. I don´t know if I helped them a lot but maybe the one or another thing is working out better.

And than the kids. I just felt in love with them. They are so great. They behave like little adults and not like kids. As far as I remember I heard maybe once a baby crying. These kids don´t cry, they don´t bag for toys or for sweeties for the simple fact there aren´t any. They live a life without toys, gameboys or television. I just feel sad for the girls. Most or them get married very early to someone the parents chose. This is were I struggle as well a little bit to see the point of education. The girls go to school and learn french for example and than later they are locked up in a village getting one baby after the other. It is still normal to have 6 or 8 kids with one wife. Men with money do have more wives and for this more kids. One guy having three wives and 20 kids is rather normal. To be very honest I cannot see a big change in the future for the people of this village. A good thing Deanne realised the last year was building toilets for every house. Before they just had holes in the ground and for that many infections. My leaving party was great.The women of the village made a trouser and a shirt for me. Very nice and very beautiful. I reckon this was there way to say thank you. I could not have no corversation with any of the women. They only spoke the local language. The main reason I had to leave was the laissez passer for my car which was going to be expired. On one hand I was sad to leave and on the other hand I couldn´t wait to get out of Senegal. Senegal is not a very friendly country and I can not recommend to go there. Sure the life in the village had nothing to do with all the corrupt police, the military pressence or the terrible roads. But I had it always in mind.