Samécouta

Life has become a bit crazier, and I apologize for not writing in so long. Let me explain a few things before I back track to Kedougou. As of this weekend I only have one week of classes left. It seems completely insane that I will be left to my own devices that soon. That being said, I have been working nearly non-stop on figuring out my Independent Study Project, a process both exciting and very frustrating. Long story short, I have spent a lot of time walking around Dakar and ferrying out to Goree Island looking for an advisor, housing, and permission to do my project. I don’t really have any of these things yet, but some are closer than others. As soon as I acquire them I will explain my project, but since I may be making drastic changes to it, this seems pointless right now. The ultimate dream involves me spending a lot of time on a tropical vacation island…

I am currently not living in my house in Dakar because my family decided to exterminate the cockroaches in our kitchen. This means that for three days I’m living in the clinic part of the building. Right now I’m typing in one of those weird tilted hospital beds in a pale green room that has the windows blacked out. Think kind-of-sketchy-horror-movie old medical building. Two bright sides- there’s air conditioning, and I found an awesome secret door to our roof. My friends are about to come over with wine and cards to celebrate our last weekend together before ISP period starts.

Back to Kedougou. When I wasn’t hiking up mini mountains enjoying the clean air, I was staying in a village called Samécouta. We all stayed in twos or threes with different ethnic minority villages in the Kedougou area. Raghav and I stayed in a Dianhanke village, and it was definitely the biggest. There were about 250 people and it was right next to the Gambie River. This meant a couple things- compared to the other villages where my friends stayed, ours was definitely the best off. They were able to grow crops like rice, corn, peanuts and millet very close to their homes, and water wasn’t too far away. Secondly, last year a gigantic paved road was build through the middle of Samécouta to give vehicles access to the river. This was at first very bizarre and disorienting, because I rarely saw a car, and it was pitch black at night because there was no electricity.

I stayed with a woman named Aminita Kaba. She is the leader of “l’association des femmes” in Samécouta, which means that she organizes all the women to maximize the village’s self-sustaining capacity. Aminita has one daughter, three sons and a granddaughter. Her co-wife Senea has two daughters and a son.  All of these people lived in a collection of mud huts with thatched roofs in the same compound. To explain what I spent most of the time doing, I will run through the average day of my older sister Fanta, age 22, who I spent the most time with in the village.

Aminita Kaba, Nené Kaba

When I woke up at 6:30am Fanta was already awake and helping her mom make buye for breakfast. (this is a some kind of millet like dish that involves straining hot water through leaves…it’s not the best). After we ate I walked down to the river with her- maybe a twenty minute walk. She carried all of the laundry on her head and I carried the dishes. When we got there there was usually half a dozen other women ages maybe eight to sixty also doing chores in the river. We did the dishes together standing the red mud near the shore and then it took us almost two hours to do the laundry. I had never done hand washing in a way that way so physical and draining. Some days Fanta caught some small fish in the river by baiting them with millet and then smacking them on the shoreline to kill them. I never saw a hippo or a crocodile like I hoped to.

my sister tigeda doing laundry

After we returned from the river we hung the clothes out to dry on the fence outside their compound. Next we made a few trips to the water pump, about a ten-minute walk away. Fanta carried a bucket approximately four times the size of mine and still didn’t spill any. It is absurdly challenging to carry anything on your head- not just the balancing; it takes a lot of muscle. My sisters were all enormously strong. There is also a well in the village that they use when the pump isn’t working. Although it is hard work to get water from the pump, it seems like water is generally accessible when villagers in Samécouta need it. Next came preparing for lunch, so chores like picking through rice, mashing up corn or shelling peanuts. My mom, my other mom and my other sisters were always around the compound for this time of day too.

A little before lunch my brothers returned from either school or the fields. Some days they would go to harvest and some days they would go to class. We would all eat lunch, separated by gender. After lunch was the only time I ever saw anyone in my family relax. My sixteen-year-old brother would make ataaya, my mom and my sisters would nap, and also force me to “repose” as well. At some point this was over and dinner preparation started. One or two of my sisters would go back to the pump to get more water, someone might fold the clothes, and there would be a lot of mashing of corn and peanuts into paste of some kind. I spent a lot of time playing with my six-year-old niece because people were very busy. We ate dinner just after dark in the light of a flashlight or just the moon. Dinner and lunch were always funions (this cous cous like millet) with some kind of peanut sauce. Sometimes there was also eggplant, okra or tomato in the bowl too. I only ate fish one time and I never saw any other meat, which I loved but knew was really just very telling of the economic status of my family. After dinner there was more ataaya and a lot of “reposing.” Sometimes the kids would go play in the middle of the village together, and I usually went to hang out with Raghav and the teenagers in his family. We all spent a lot of time sitting on the bridge over the Gambie River watching distant thunderstorms.

Nené and Nené

My family in Samécouta was just as kind and generous as my family in Mouit. Yet I came away from the experience with a very different feeling in my chest, and I will try to explain why. First, the Kaba’s just did not have time to sit and hang out with me to talk and get to know me. Nearly all of the hours of the day were spent preparing enough food for the family to live on. This was especially true for all of the women around my age. Another result of this is that often education was put aside. Fanta has completed primary and secondary school, but since lycee (high school) is in kedougou, she stopped going to school seven years ago. The daughters of my other mother were 18 and 12. Neither of them could speak French very well, which led me to believe they may not have completed primary school. Fatou, the younger one was not going to school while I was in the village. My brothers all went to school a couple days a week. The two oldest, 20 and 24, biked into Kedougou 10k for lycee.

I was more uncomfortable in Samécouta than I wanted to be. Not physically uncomfortable at all- it was quite cool at night, I loved the food, and I really liked working a lot with my sister. “Rouging it” without electricity or a bathroom was not a big deal. I felt uncomfortable having things. Simple things, like my water bottle, or my notebook. I was living with a family who worked so, so hard just to make their needs. And they could make them- I don’t think anyone was hungry, or sick. Yet there was no room for rest, or anything extra- including education. So a little sad maybe, a little out of place, a little helpless. 

I don't want to end on that note- it was amazing to be so whole heartedly welcomed into a family that had so little- true Senegalese "teranga."