Jay Sappington

CORRECTION

2010-11-02T01:29:00.003Z

I've moved my new blog to this address:
www.sappingtonstateside.blogspot.com
Enjoy!

SAPPINGTON STATESIDE

2010-11-01T06:48:00.011Z

After 20 months of "silence," I have returned to the blogosphere. For the startling results of the tense "Who's Cuter?" survey, plus other fascinating revelations, go to my new blog, SAPPINGTON STATESIDE at the following address:

www.jaysappingtons.blogspot.com

Note the subtle difference in the url: the new blog has an "s" at the end of "jaysappington" (it's meant to be possessive, but apostrophes aren't allowed).

Reader's Survey: Who's Cuter?

2009-02-07T13:41:00.012Z

Another teacher and I recently had dinner at the home of three of my favorite elementary music students. Their mom had baked (and sent me home with) sensational fresh bread, their cook had prepared a terrific Senegalese meal, and their dad provided the music from his varied CD collection (we now trade CDs to share our complimentary musical interests).

Here's a picture of me with the daughter, first-grader Maureen. To vote in the WHO'S CUTER contest (I'm the one with the yellow shirt), just send me an email. And don't worry, I promised the parents I'd keep the contest a secret so as not to hurt Maureen's feelings when I win...

Photo by, and used with permission of, Maureen's mom.

Mary Queen of Scots meets Mao Zedong

2009-02-01T17:50:00.007Z

Speaking of British history...I recently went on a related reading binge. For the first time ever, it was mostly a non-fiction binge. (I typically read only fiction for pleasure, and non-fiction only when assigned.)

I'm not sure what prompted my sudden foray into history, but it was a fascinating journey that I wish I'd begun decades ago in my high school's Western Civilization class, a combination of world history and world literature that most of my friends took. I guess I'm trying to make up for lost time.

Lady Jane Grey
Queen for 9 Days

It started innocently, with a short but extremely dense and well-written book on Lady Jane Grey. Lady Jane was crowned Queen of England in 1553, at age 15, while imprisoned in the Tower of London. Her reign lasted 9 days. At 16, she was beheaded, a martyr to the shameful rift between Catholics and Protestants.

Mary I, Queen of Scots
Daughter of James V
Cousin of England's Queen Elizabeth

Then, meaning to read about Bloody Mary, I mistakenly picked up a tome on Mary Queen of Scots, whose life preceded Lady Jane's by a couple of generations. Mary was born in Scotland, raised in France, and then returned to her homeland, where she reigned several years. It was a tumultuous time in Ireland, and eventually, Mary was forced to flee to England, with promises of aid from her cousin, Elizabeth. Instead of receiving assistance, however, Mary was illegally imprisoned for over two decades, and finally tried, with Elizabeth's tacit approval, by a kangaroo court, and summarily beheaded.

Catherine of Aragon
Henry VIII's first wife

To fill in the gap between Jane and Mary, I started reading The Six Wives of Henry VIII--yet another illustration of Lord Aston's later, famous observation: "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Henry VIII at age 18 (1509)
The year he was crowned king and married to Catherine of Aragon

Gruesome stuff, British history. Frankly, it reminds me of modern-day warfare among gangs, but with fancier clothing and lower standards of loyalty.

A STUDY IN CONTRASTS

(l. to r.) Henry Kissinger, Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, 1972

For no other reasons than contrast and curiosity, I also picked up a couple of biographies of Chairman Mao. For my entire childhood, Mao was China--and as much of an enigma as was the land he ruled.

The main difference I could discern between Mao and the British royalty was that the Chairman had no effective political opposition, giving him a complete control during his reign. This apparently was because he was so good at keeping adversaries focused on fighting each other that they had no political capital left to fight him.

In addition, he was so disarmingly congenial and empathetic (a surprise to me) that people gave away their darkest secrets to him, which he could later use either for political blackmail or to publicly disgrace them as (worst of all sins) counter-revolutionaries.

My binge eventually petered out. I'm piling up books now for the next one.

All portraits from Wikipedia.org, and apparently in the public domain

Review the Reviews

2009-02-01T13:00:00.008Z

Check out the new film reviews (of old films) in the right-hand column of this blog. And don't miss all the other informative items beneath the reviews.

Obama Ice Cream

2009-01-24T10:23:00.001Z

This is not a joke.

I went out for ice cream recently with some good friends (three of my students and their parents). We went to a terrific place in downtown Dakar called Nice Cream. Not only do they have the highest quality ice cream in Dakar, Nice Cream has some of the best flavors I've had in my whole life.

This time, there was a new flavor: Obama Cookie!

I couldn't pass up trying it, thinking that, even if it wasn't good, I could write about it on my blog. (How many people can say "I had Obama Cookie Ice Cream in Africa"?).

Any concern about liking it was dispelled by the first taste. It was absolutely delicious: an incredibly smooth (how appropriate), surprisingly dark chocolate, with small chocolate chunks distributed throughout.

Most of us got at least one scoop, and everyone agreed it was delicious.

Africa loves Obama!

Wreckognize this?

2008-12-27T12:45:00.000Z

Perhaps you've seen this painting in photos (it hangs in the Louvre), but do you know the story behind it? "The Raft of the Medusa," by Theodore Gericault, depicts an historical event, one of the tragedies of Franco-Senegalese colonial history.

In July of 1816, the Medusa, a French frigate, was en route to the capital of French West Africa, St. Louis (san-loo-EE). It carried over 400 people, including the crew. Among its passengers were the new colonial governor and his family.

The captain, who had been granted his position as a political reward, hadn't sailed in 20 years, and was profoundly incompetent. He ran the ship aground on a sandbar some 60 miles off the coast of West Africa, where it broke up.

Lacking sufficient lifeboats, 146 travellers were forced to flee on a makeshift raft tethered to the lifeboats. This arrangement proved ungainly, and the lifeboat's passengers cut the raft loose, abandoning it to the elements.

Thirteen days later, the raft was discovered with only 15 passengers, the rest having died of deyhydration (they had only wine to drink), starvation (despite resorting to cannibalism), or literally raving madness.

The political ramfications of the event were also severe, greatly embarrassing France's post-Napoleonic, newly restored monarchy.

Gericault thoroughly researched his subject, reading first-hand accounts of the tragedy, and even interviewing some of the survivors, one of whom he portrayed in the painting. Begun in 1818, just two years after the incident, and completed in 1819, when the artist was only 28 years old, the painting is considered a seminal work of the Romantic era and perhaps Gericault's masterpiece (he died of tuberculosis just three years later).

The tale is as interesting as it is horrific. It's all the more interesting to me given its geographic and historical connection to my current home. Two recent books on the topic are readily available if you want to pursue the story in more detail.

words from The Word about THE WORD

2008-12-25T10:32:00.011Z

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:

"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel"—
which means, "God with us."

from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 1

*******

God sent the angel Gabriel to a virgin named Mary. The angel went to her and said,

You will be with child and give birth to a son. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. His kingdom will never end.

Mary, gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

selections from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2

*******

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

selections from the Gospel of John, Chapter 1

*******

Putting the Horse Before the Cart

2008-12-24T10:57:00.004Z

I won't trouble with daily updates on the construction, but I just got a good shot (admittedly blurry--I took it through my window screen) of something I wanted to show earlier.

Around here, when we refer to a workhorse, we mean it literally. This horse has been on campus for several days, carting sand across the soccer field to the site where it is used to make cinder-blocks. Here he is leaving to get another load of sand.

Horse carts like this are common in Dakar, sharing the roads with the thousands of cars and trucks, though usually, they stay off of the divided highways.

Saharacide

2008-12-23T10:15:00.004Z

For years I have been puzzled by the enormous number of discoveries of the remnants of older civilizations deep underground. How did they get buried?

Pompei I can understand. But most of the buried cities are far from volcanic activity. If there were only one or two non-volcanic cases, it would be a curiosity with several plausible theories. But city after city after city?

After living in Dakar for nearly six years, I begin, perhaps, to understand. Every year from December through June, harmattan [HAHR-mah-tahn] winds carry vast quantities of sandy dust from the Sahara, across West Africa, and out into the Atlantic (see photo--Dakar is the tiny, hooked peninsula near the bottom). Some days it's as thick as fog. At night, you can see it drift past the street lights.

At Dakar Academy, the maintenance staff frequently have to sweep the dust and sand off of our sidewalks, steps, and basketball court to keep them from being buried. But could this account for all of it? How high did the world's mountains used to be if cities are hidden beneath cities beneath cities beneath meters of sand? It baffles me.

(Satellite photo in public domain, from http://www.nasa.gov)

What a Difference a Day Makes

2008-12-23T09:29:00.011Z

OK, it’s been more than a day. But not much more than a week since I first posted the first picture, above. I took the second one yesterday.

Why the difference? Because, about a week ago, work began on an addition to our on-campus dormitory. (In my 5-1/2 years here, every year has included a major change on campus.) You can see where the old staircase has been torn down, where sand is being dug out to make way for the foundation, and where a temporary worker’s shack has been built off to the left.

The end product is to be three stories tall, with the bottom floor left open for now, and the dorm parent apartment and students’ rooms on the top two, enclosed floors. After we’ve saved money for a few years by not renting as much dorm space off campus, we may enclose the bottom floor for a staff apartment.

This is how the work is being done.

No backhoes, earth-movers or other heavy equipment is anywhere to be seen. Everything is by manual labor. To bend re-bar, they use a simple contraption in which the stump of one of the trees dug up last week is used as the counterweight.

As the building goes up, perhaps I’ll be able to take video of teams of men shoveling wet cement, in unison, up to the next floor while singing a work song to keep the rhythm going. Does that sound like another century? No, just a part of the world where relatively few manual labor jobs have been surrendered to technology, unemployment is high, and labor is cheap.

Films Worth Seeing--or Seeing Again

2008-12-21T22:34:00.007Z

Don't miss the new reviews of three old films, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Spanglish, and The Truman Show, just posted in the column to the right!

Blues in the (African) Night

2008-12-21T21:06:00.010Z

A Welsh friend and I attended an open-air, blues concert in downtown Dakar last night. Now, blues is not my favorite type of music. I prefer bluegrass; or "classical" music in many of it's varieties--renaissance, baroque, classical, etc. Or folk and “world” music (klezmer; mariachi, etc.); or hymns, especially early American shape-note hymnody, and contemporary “re-hymns” (old hymn texts set to new tunes); or jazz, especially bebop, Dixieland, and swing; or Western swing, ragtime, reggae, stride piano, zydeco, or even Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Nevertheless, seeking a little bit of home at a cost less than round trip airfare, I took in a concert by the Chicago Blues Quintet. As it turns out, sixty percent of the Chicago Blues Quintet is not from Chicago, but from France. The Americans, Maurice John Vaughn and B. J. Emory, have been performing together in Chicago for nearly 20 years. On their European tours, they team up with a band led by Frederic Brousse, and brought them with them to Senegal for this, their first-ever African gig.

Vaughn is the musical and personality leader of the group, the happiest blues singer you ever did see, with an unexpectedly light, even zany stage presence. A roly-poly, joking, fella-next-door suburban family man, he is also a world class blues guitarist (we didn’t get to hear enough of it), and a more than serviceable backup blues keyboardist. I can’t comment on his ability on sax, as he inexplicably never played it. He’s had a successful career as a concert and recording side-man, but has also made a mark as a soloist. According to one bio I’ve read online, Guitar World magazine called his debut solo CD, humorously titled Generic Blues Album (Alligator/AL 4763), blues album of the year.

Emory is a gutsy vocalist and a bland trombonist, both skills benefiting from great tone, pitch and presence, and both suffering from lack of melodic and improvisational interest.

For me, the musical revelation of the evening came from Fred Brousse, the leader of the act’s talented French contingent. Though an above average lead guitarist, and a decent singer, Brousse deserves worldwide fame as a harmonica player. Seriously. Brousse’s performance-opening, 5-minute, unaccompanied solo was no less than extraordinary, and was alone worth the price of admission. It was Ella Fitzgerald, Chicago, Ravel, a train, James Brown, and Billie Holliday all wrapped into one. I’ve heard excellent harmonica before, but I have never heard harmonica with such nuance, variety, depth, guts, emotion, and virtuosity. In fact, I never could have imagined it was capable of such nuance, variety, depth, guts, emotion, and virtuosity.

An enjoyable evening overall, a welcome and, at $6, affordable taste of home, clearly appreciated by the initially staid French crowd, and receiving rave reviews from my Welsh friend, for whom it was anything but a taste of home. I'd like to hear more Vaughn, especially his stellar guitar work, though I'd recommend he steer clear of doo-wop in the future.

But I would go well out of my way, and gladly pay more, to hear Fred Brousse on the harmonica again, with or without other performers.

The Sound and the Fury

2008-12-21T01:48:00.009Z

Senegal has no noise ordinances. Anyone can broadcast music or speech--or other sounds, for that matter--anywhere, at any volume, at any time. As I write this, my clock has just silently reached the 2:00 A.M. mark, and piercing the darkness is music so loud that, though it is coming from a high school stadium a few blocks away, sounds (and feels) like it's coming from the apartment next door. This is the third straight day (and night) of virtually uninterrupted music and shouting and what I take to be preaching to youth.

Other common sources of air-saturating sounds are (a) calls to prayer, broadcast from speakers in mosque towers, (b) garbage trucks driving through neighborhoods during the day, honking their horns loudly and repeatedly for 5-10 seconds at a blast (c) youth organization parties, which, like the current stadium event, include singing and dancing into the early morning hours, and (d) all-night religious gatherings, with preaching, chanting, and singing--some of which is quite beautiful, and some of which does not please the western ear.

OK, I guess I should admit that our students are sometimes culprits. During studnet-run carnivals and afternoon (and late-night) sports tournaments, our kids join in the freedom, and play CDs at bone-vibrating volumes.

Oh, one more example, for which I suppose I can share partial blame, since I paid for it. I attended Chicago Blues Quintet concert tonight. It was held in an open-air amphitheater in the heart of downtown Dakar. From 9:00 to 11:00 P.M., the neighborhood and beyond were treated to keyboard, drums, trombone, bass guitar, rhythm guitar, harmonica, and gutsy voices, all generously amplified. I wonder if it was worth paying for admission. I could have sat on a nearby street corner for free and heard just as much music. (More on the concert in an upcoming post.)

There's something to having the freedom to make noise or, more often, music at any time. But it sure can be hard to get to sleep! Speaking of which, good night.

Letting it All Hang Out

2008-12-14T23:19:00.014Z

One of the small things that surprised me when I moved to Senegal was the ubiquitous presence of laundry drying outside--hanging out of windows, lying on bushes,

stretched across clothes lines. Very few people, even in the city, own electric or gas dryers. Rain is so infrequent as to be inconsequential. (Dust is more of a problem in the dry season than rain in the rainy season.)

I was struck recently by the rainbow of colors hanging on a line outside my bedroom window. I took this photo through the screen, so it lacks the brilliance of the actual sight. Still, I like the image. There is nothing on the other two lines that stretch parallel to this one, making this an uncharacteristically artistic arrangement.

This view out this window began to change this week. Soon I will be posting photos of the construction work that has begun. An extension is going to be built on this end of the on-campus dormitory (the building in the upper right corner).

Tightening Our Chaaya Genyo

2008-12-14T14:31:00.022Z

Friends of mine who live in rural Senegal sent me an email last week that provides an excellent glimpse of some of the major contrasts between life for the average Senegalese and the average American. With their permission, I am printing excerpts from it below. I have removed all identifying information to protect them and those they minister to from reprisals.

"We've watched from a distance as financial markets convulsed this fall. These headline events haven’t raised a single question or comment from our village friends who’ve never heard of Wall Street or a mutual fund.

"Villagers don’t even have bank accounts in this cash economy. They don’t speak or read French so bank documents are unintelligible to them. Plus, banks charge so many fees that small accounts are not feasible financially.

"A different economy operates here. “Savings accounts” are the sheep and goats owned by every family. An emergency medical bill or a need to visit to a distant sick relative may prompt the sale of one or more male goats.

"Females are prized for increasing the size of the herd. The availability of grass and hay causes fluctuations in value with selling prices lowest during the rainy season when free grass is abundant. Prices are highest near the end of the dry season when all the grass has been eaten and the hay supply is at a minimum.

"The highest prices for large male sheep are just before Tabaski when each family deems it almost obligatory to kill and eat a sheep during the holiday that commemorates Abraham’s offering of Ishmael—according to the Koran. Tabaski takes place this year the second week of December so the supply of sheep in towns is growing daily.

"We are aware that the current economic challenges are affecting many of you...We also are tightening our chaaya genyo (pants tie-strings, as in our sweat pants)."

21st Century Christmas Carols

2008-12-11T08:58:00.004Z

In case you haven't heard of them before, here are a few Christmas Carols, chosen or updated for singers with particular diagnoses:

Schizophrenia
Do You Hear What I Hear?

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells...

Narcissism
Hark, the Herald Angels Sing About Me!

Manic Disorder
Deck the halls and walls and house and lawn and streets and stores and offices and town and cars and busses and trucks and trees and fire hydrants and...

Paranoia
Santa Claus is Coming to Get Me

Mulitple Personality Disorder
We Three Kings Disoriented Are

May you have happier songs to sing!

Tabaski

2008-12-09T06:18:00.004Z

For the last half hour or so, songs and chants have been wafting into my apartment from all sides, broadcast from minarets around the city. It is one of the Islamic required hours of prayer, and today is the most important day on the Muslim calendar. Even as I write, goats are being sacrificed around the city and around the country to atone for sin. It's a national holiday.

Eid al-Adha, or Tabaski, as it is known here, is a commemoration of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his own son, at God's commaned--stopped at the last moment by an angel who told Abraham to sacrifice a goat that was caught in a nearby patch of thorns instead.

In the days leading up to the holiday here in Dakar, thousands and thousands of goats appear at impromptu roadside markets, like so many Christmas tree stands in the US. (I saw fewer of them this year, apparently due to a tightening in the enforcement of laws governing such things.)

For the rest of the day, families will celebrate, with relatives visiting relatives, friends visiting friends, adults giving gifts to children, children playing games, and everyone dressing in their finest new clothes to eat elaborate holiday meals, and many families spending beyond their means.

Sound familiar? I wonder if every culture has a day celebrated in this manner.

East Side, West Side

2008-12-01T00:25:00.013Z

All Around the Town
or
And Never the Twain Shall Meet

Despite living in Dakar for over 5 years, I have a hard time remembering that the US is to the West of me. I finally figured out why. It's because, growing up on the East coast of the US, the Atlantic Ocean has for me always been the equivalent of East. When I looked out over the Atlantic, I was always looking East. Since I have no magnetic needle in my brain telling me which way is East, when I look out over the Atlantic Ocean now, I automatically imagine I'm looking East. I have to actively work to correct this mental perspective.

In other cultural news, did you know that the French don't capitalize North, South, East, or West? Or French, American, Korean, etc. That is apropos of nothing, but it gave me an excuse to write this sentence using a word we stole from French.

Sparky has a Sibling

2008-12-01T00:12:00.006Z

As I touch-type, I am watching one of the newest members of my household explore my bedroom. I hope he's foraging for food, because there are certainly enough bugs here to keep him happy and healthy and for a long time.

This little guy, who I'm naming Squiggle because of the amusing way his body twists when he walks, is presumably Sparky's baby brother. At two inches head to tail, and about the width of a pencil, he's the same size Sparky was when I wrote about him (see my October 25 post), but Sparky should be much bigger by now. I've also seen an even smaller sibling several times in the past few days. I haven't named that one, who is perhaps only an inch and a quarter long, and half a pencil-width across. I'm accepting suggestions.

Since I grew up on the East Coast (of the US), having lizards living with me is a bit of a lark.

To Paris and Back in an Hour

2008-11-30T23:28:00.008Z

I took a brief trip to Paris to go shopping this afternoon. It only took an hour. That's pretty amazing, because usually it's a 5-hour flight each way, plus the time on the ground!

OK, I didn't really go to Paris, but I might as well have. Some friends introduced me to a new, enclosed mini-mall that is a slightly smaller version of one I shopped at in France when I went there for language training in 2006. Several glass-fronted, upscale boutiques line one side of a tiled promenade. Across from the boutiques, with no wall or windows to separate it from the mall, is a huge, sparklingly clean grocery store filled with imported items (mostly from France, some from the Mideast, and a few from the US), and lighted up brighter than a Hollywood premier.

It was actually a little disorienting, walking aisles laid out exactly as they were at that store in France, overflowing with neatly stacked rows of brightly colored packages containing virtually every item a large American grocery/drug store would have, and even some other customers speaking (heavily accented) English. I had to keep telling myself I was in Dakar, not Paris.

This is just one more sign of the sea-change taking place here. Last spring, a new, modern, air-conditioned(!) Departures Terminal opened at the airport. This fall, an efficient highway system leading into and around the city was completed. Under construction now is a series of hotels and parks, and a large Visitors Center with a fabulous ocean view, along a 2-mile stretch of shoreline on the peninsula's western coast.

Next thing you know, the power and water will work consistently! Well, that still appears to be wishful thinking. "But," as the old song goes, "I Can Dream, Can't I?"

Green Red Cards

2008-11-09T01:20:00.009Z

To "get" this post, read the first couple of paragraphs of my previous post first.

I've been using Red Cards with my students for several months now. A few days ago, while teaching my Kindergarteners, I happened to pull out the stack of identical cards in other colors, to use in a game. When the kids saw them, their reaction was immediate: "Look, he has green red cards." "There's a blue red card!" "Cool, there's a black red card."

***

This seems to me to illustrate something about human nature. Once we have a particular perspective, we look at other things with the same perspective, even if they are quite different. For example I find that I perceive peers I've known for years quite differently from peers I've met recently. The middle-aged friends I've known for 20 or 30 years almost all look younger to me than newer friends of the same age. I see the old friends through a mental filter of what they were like when we were young. And not just their physical appearance, but their personalities and characters, too.

I went to my 30th high school reunion a few years ago. While in town, I dropped by a local grocery store, and passed a number of older adults i n the aisles as I shopped. Suddenly, I realized these weren't older adults, they were my peers. I might see any one of them at the reunion the next day. I'd never adjusted my perception of middle-aged people as "older" than I--as my parents' peers, not mine--to the reality that I was now middle-aged.

But some experiences show this tendency to perceive the new through an old filter, as sometimes a good thing, even as accurate. If I know someone well, and know him to be honest, kind, and trustworthy, I qill perceive an isolated episode of rudeness or failure as an anomaly, not as an indication of a change in their character. It's like saying "Look, a rude good person." If, on the other hand, I know someone as a rude, crude jerk, I see even good behavior through that lens--perhaps doubting the reality or sincerity of the new behavior. "Look, there's a kind and thoughtful jerk." Of course, we all know examples of children who get blamed for something they didn't do because so often they have been the one at fault.

How many green red cards are in your life?

Red Cards and Baby Harmonicas

2008-11-09T00:31:00.007Z

RED CARDS: I've finally hit on a simple, effective discipline system for my elementary music classes. It came to me in a flash at the beginning of a 2nd grade session last year. They were a bright group, but considerably lacking in self control.

One day, I had pulled out a stack of square, laminated cards that I'd made from construction paper in different colors, for use in various games. That day, I picked the red cards out of the pack and handed one to any student who misbehaved. I explained that they were like penalty flags in sports--you get one when you've done something you shouldn't have, and there is a punishment that goes with it.

Now I use Red Cards with all my elementary classes. When the teachers pick up their children, they check to see if any of their students received a red card (or more than one) and incorporate that as a negative "mark" in whatever discipline system they use (5 minutes off recess for each mark, or whatever).

This has revolutionized discipline in my classes. I don't have to run back to the board to put a student's name up. I don't have to remember the offense until the end of class. I just keep a card or two in my shirt pocket, and hand it to the student immediately after the infraction.

BABY HARMONICAS. For a couple of years, I've been using a desk bell to get my students' attentions whenever they get too noisy, or when I need to interrupt what they're doing to give new instructions. This has worked well--it's a penetrating but attractive sound--but it has a major drawback. The bell is never where I am when I need it. If I'm playing the piano, it's on my desk. If I've moved it to the piano, I'm writing on the board. I always have to search for it, and then go get it.

I mused for weeks on how to solve the problem. "I need an instrument I can carry with me at all times," I thought one day. But what? The answer? A harmonica!

Last summer, I bought a one-inch harmonica (really!), just to see if I could learn how to play. (It's not a toy, it's an honest-to-goodness Hoehner harmonica.) For only $10, it was a low-risk investment.

A few weeks ago, I took it to school to show to my students. To keep from losing it, I put it on a lanyard around my neck. In the middle of a class, realizing my bell was on the other side of the room, it came to me. I can use the harmonica! Now I wear it every day, and give it a little toot whenever I need the students' attentions. Once I learn to play better, maybe I can have different signals for different circumstances, like Baron Von Trapp in The Sound of Music...

Red cards and baby harmonicas--they only took 5 years to come up with. And that's just more evidence that a professor's caution was on the mark: don't judge yourself as a teacher until you've been teaching at least 5 years.

Power Plays

2008-11-02T14:27:00.004Z

Power outages are a common topic around here, because they are such a common--and frustrating--occurrence, especially between July and November.

Outages are unannounced, so there's no way to plan work or other needs around them. As a result, they (along with constant, damaging power fluctuations) wreak havoc on work, food (going bad in non-operating fridges and freezers), sleep on still, sultry nights, applicances, and much more.

Frustration has boiled over into demonstrations (read: riots) in Dakar over the past couple of weeks. One crowd piled a bunch of ruined appliances in the street and set them on fire. Others destroyed Senelec business offices in a couple of quatiers (neighborhoods), smashing windows, computers, desks, etc.

In response, Senelec has switched from cutting the power once or twice a day for 4 hours or more (11 hours on one day a few weeks ago) to cutting it 4 or 5 times a day for an hour or two each.

I'm thinking of writing a letter to the editor of some Dakar newspaper asking why Senegal does this to it's own people. It's bad enough having outages, but not letting the public know when they will be so that individuals and businesses can plan around them is, in my mind, inexplicable.

It's hard not to get frustrated. It's hard not to complain. (I probably write about it too often in this blog and in emails.)

The good news is, we've had no outages on campus for the past 3 days, giving hope that the break in the heat has decreased usage to such an extent that the demand can be met.

Other West African Reptiles

2008-10-25T17:36:00.003Z

Geckos are just one of the many desert crawlers in Senegal. Lizards are common, often sunning themselves on the sides of buildings, or scampering out of your way on the sidewalk. Most are non-descript grays and browns, but at least one species is striking in it’s coloration: it has a school bus yellow head, steel blue body, and a gray and yellow tail. To see a good photo, copy this link into your browser:

http://www.pbase.com/rvbulck/image/34224169

Once while birdwatching, I came across what appeared to me to be a salamander, small and quick with soft-scaled green skin on the back, with a white underside. There were two: one had nearly fluorescent orange sides. The other—its mate?—had white sides.

Our students’ favorite species (probably because they can catch them), is chameleons. These are quite different from the lizard-like color-changers that frequented my grandmother’s yard in Alabama during our summer visits decades ago. I would be hard pressed to accurately describe the Senegalese versions, except to mention that their tails can curl tightly up over their backs, or around a small tree branch for stability, that they have three-toes on their feet, and that they change colors from green to brown.

Finally, there are a few snakes, but they are not common. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wild snake here. The school has a 6-foot boa named Spot, but he’s an émigré. He was donated to the school by his former owner, a woman who brought him to Senegal when she was evacuated to Dakar during the Ivory Coast’s civil war a few years ago. She snuck him in by hiding him under her sweater and pretending she was pregnant! Yes, really!

Oops. Almost left out crocodiles and monitor lizards, both of which I've seen in zoo-like parks and in the wild.

This ends part two of your ____________* lesson for today.

*Does anyone know the scientific Latin term goes in that blank?

Gary the Gecko

2008-10-25T17:31:00.005Z

No, I’m not selling car insurance. I have an actual pet gecko. Well, saying it that way implies a closer relationship than we really have. Gary hides under a shelf or behind the microwave whenever I enter the same room.

Geckos here are translucent brown or tan when they are very young, and have non-descript, rather light camouflage pigmentation when grown. The first time I saw Gary he was a juvenile--starting to turn opaque, but still a pasty monochrome that housepaint marketers would no doubt call something like “Mexican Adobe” or “Cream of Wheat,” though I think “Gary Gecko Tan” would be a more interesting name to see on a paint can).

I’m happy to have this little house guest, as he eats . . . well, I don’t know what he eats—flies? mosquitoes? ants?--but he’s welcome to them all, and so are his future progeny.

Speaking of progeny… fast forward two months.

I first drafted this post back in September. Recently, I realized that I have not only one pet Gecko, but three. My newest friend is Sparky, a cute little fellow about 2 inches long, counting his tail. And, of course, if there’s a papa gecko, and a baby gecko, there must be a momma gecko. So, some of those sightings of Gary may actually have been sightings of Gilda. (In case you wonder how to tell the difference between a Gary and a Gilda, I don’t know. For that matter, Sparky might actually be Suzy.)

What's Nike Missing?

2008-10-21T21:34:00.012Z

A. Brains
B. Honesty
C. Common sense
D. All of the above

Answer: D. All of the above.

Some of you are old enough to remember the old ABC sports programs, whose opening shots always included Jim McKay's famous voice-over, "The thrill of victory . . . the agony of defeat." According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Arien O'Connell of New York City experienced both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat last Sunday . . . in the same event!

Arien was the fastest runner in Sunday's Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco, but wasn't awarded the first place trophy. Nor second place. Nor even third. Why? Because she hadn't registered as an "elite" runner to get a 20-minute early starting time in a less crowded field.

So Arien, a fifth-grade teacher by day, watched as the trophies were handed out to three women who ran 11 minutes slower than she did.

When the judges and sponsors recognized the inconsistency, they . . . did nothing.

Reports the Chronicle:

"At this point," Nike media relations manager Tanya Lopez said Monday, "we've declared our winner."

Maybe the next time Tanya buys something, the clerk should give her the wrong change. When she asks about it, the clerk can just say, "At this point, we've given our change."

By the way, just a week before the San Francisco debacle, the fourth-place runner in the Chicago Marathon didn't get the fourth place prize either. Wesley Korir didn't run with the "elite group" in that race, so he too was ineligible for a prize, even though he outran the fourth-place "winner."
It's a strange sport that requires you to announce in advance that you might win in order for you to be acknowledged as the winner when you do, in fact, win.

Nike, hang your head in shame.

And change your name.

You don't deserve to call yourself by the Greek word for "victory" when you don't acknowledge the true victors in your own sporting events.

To read the San Francisco Chronicle article, click the following link.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/21/BAUC13L3GQ.DTL&nopu=1

What's China Got that We Ain't Got?

2008-10-02T18:19:00.003Z

I know, the Beijing Olympics were impressive. But the bar has been raised. Take a look at these shots from DA's own Olympics. (I tried to post this much closer to the so-called "real" Olympics, but had trouble with photos.)

We have real bird's nests in our trees!

And form not to be matched anywhere...
Geometry in motion!

We even have cool Red Team outfits.

So, don't wait around for 2012. Visit Dakar--we have Olympics every year! (Full disclosure: the above photos are actually from DA's 2007 Olympics. This year's sports extravaganza is still to come.)

On the Rocks

2008-10-02T18:05:00.006Z

Today I'll treat you to several shots from my (long-ago) visit to Isle des Madeleine, commonly known as Snake Island (though there are no snakes—this name is probably a distortion of a mistranslation of an African word). Madeleine is a tiny island about 20 minutes by motorized pirogue off the western shore of the southern tip of the peninsula that is Dakar.

The next photo is a view of the Pancake Islands. At least, that’s what I call them. They’re actually flat rocks, perhaps 10 yards in diameter, in a small bay next to one of Snake Island’s beaches. (If I’d moved my camera even a smidgen to the left, you would have seen the beginning of the narrow shore whose cliffs lead up to where I was standing.)

I’ve been to Snake Island only once. The real treat for me was seeing and photographing Red-Billed Tropic Birds--beautiful white birds with two, very long tail feathers--in their rock nests. The island is said to be one of the only two places in the world that they breed.

In the air...

...and "on the rocks"

For some additional, nice views of the island, check out the following blog that I discovered recently, put together by a couple (who I do not know) upon visiting Senegal a few years back.

www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Laura%20JohnInAfrica/page-2.html

Up a creek without a net...

2008-10-02T18:04:00.003Z

Portions of Dakar have been without Internet access for the past one to two weeks. What a disruption! Between that and power outages, September was a hard month! Our campus connection is back up, so I finally get to post the blog entries I was working on before it went bad. Hope you enjoy them.

Speaking of Watergate

2008-09-16T23:20:00.009Z

In my "Vote Early, Vote Often" post, below, I mentioned attending the Watergate hearings. I was in high school, and my government class was scheduled to take a field trip to downtown Washington, D.C. I forget what we were going to see, but I asked permission to attend the Watergate hearings instead.

Two friends from outside the class joined me, and we waited in line together for hours. Dick Cavett, the intellectual and witty late night talk show host of the era (and the Tonight Show's first real competitor), walked by at one point. So did other celebrities I've since forgotten. Apparently a Time magazine photographer stopped by, too, because in the next issue, an article on the hearings sported a photo showing me and my two buddies sitting on the floor around the perimeter of a circular entryway to the Capitol building. (I saved a copy of that issue for a long time, but lost track of it some years ago.)

We had been warned that the hearings would probably be boring, and the warnings were apt. The proceedings that we witnessed were quite tedious and mundane. We didn't stay very long--30 minutes, perhaps. It had actually been more interesting waiting in line. Pitty the poor legislators who had to sit through the whole thing for months on end!

Even so, I have never regretted taking the opportunity to see history in the making, despite not seeing any of the celebrated portions live and in person.

The Audacity of Politicians

2008-09-16T21:48:00.004Z

I received the following comments in email from a friend today. They make a good follow-up to my last post.

I've kept somewhat of an eye on the political season but I'm not fully engaged nor do I expect to be. My confidence in the political system is at a low ebb. I've come to the conclusion that the major parties are not driven by aspirations to benefit the country or the population at large. Rather, they are to benefit the special interests that leverage them into power. The system is readily manipulated by corruption and misdirection with power players on all sides gaming the system for their own benefit. There's lots of Orwellian liberty taken with the speeches -- less is more, war is peace, etc.
As much as the Republicans tout that they are the party of fiscal conservatism, the national debt soars when they are in office and we have little to evidence any beneficial investment of the money spent that created the debt. Democrats aren't any better. They pander to folks saying that government will solve their problems.
Both parties kick the serious issues into the future rather than deal with them in a rational planning manner now (social security, health care, etc). If one side starts to gain momentum on solutions, the other side yanks the rug from underneath so as to undermine any credit to other side.
I can't recall who said it but I like the motto "that government governs best which governs least". Fat chance. We haven't shrunk government since George Washington was president.
Enough.

Pretty glum, but accurate, I think. Interestingly, Obama makes exactly the same argument in his book The Audacity of Hope. Whether he can do anything about it (or truly wants to) remains to be seen. If there's going to be change, it has to start somewhere, but I see no evidence that any of our four presidential or vice presidential candidates are starting.

Vote Early, Vote Often

2008-09-16T21:23:00.008Z

I'm paying more attention to this year's Presidential campaign than I ever have previous ones. I always follow the basics, but little more. This year, I decided to read books by the two presidential nominees (I bought two by each when I was in the States over the summer). I've also watched some of the key speeches and interviews on the Internet.

I found Obama's VP pick interesting--I remember Joe Biden for his sharp questioning of witnesses at the Watergate hearings (one of which which I actually attended) back in the '70s. I was stunned and fascinated by McCain's pick of Sarah Palin. At first I thought he had lost his mind (literally). Now I recognize its political brilliance. Whether it will succeed or not is anyone's guess at this point. Two historic candidates--the first black nominee political, and perhaps social, backlash. Not so with Palin, because she's not part of an activist movement that expects to win and feels slighted when they don't.

I still undecided, but I have to make up my mind soon. My absentee ballot should arrive any day now. A friend and colleague from Chicago has already received his! (So, he actually does get to vote early--though, I presume, not often--as the old Chicago quip went.)

Grounded!

2008-09-13T10:32:00.009Z

Last night was hot, so I got out of bed and plugged in an extra fan I had bought used from friends. It was an American fan, so it needed a plug adaptor to fit into the European-style recepticals here. It roared on. I couldn't find a switch to change the speed. A few seconds later there was a pop, the fan stopped abruptly, and my bedroom instantly filled with the aroma of burning oil and rubber.

Alas, I had momentarily forgotten that a plug adaptor is not the only thing you need to run an American electrical appliance here. You also need a power transformer to dial down the 220 volts that is the European standard, to 110, the American standard.

Despite opening my windows and turning on two other fans, the room continued to smell so bad I had to sleep in the living room.

********

I am less than educated about electrical principles. The only electrical tutorial I've been able to handle is the highly entertaining and nearly farcical There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings, by Kenn Amdahl. It's one step below Electricity for Dummies (if there is such a book).

Amdahl admits that no-one understands electricity, though a lot of people understand a lot about how it behaves. He finally undestood the principles after a dream he had one night, in which a large green man appeared to him and explained the true nature of electricity: there are no electrons, there are only Greenies, like him, trying to get to the next groovy party on the electrical line. The book is a hoot, and it effectively explains electrical concepts sans electrical jargon, introducing scientific terminology ("this is what other people call an 'amp'," "some people call this 'resistance'.") only after he's made the concept abundantly clear using Greenie-talk.

******
I am not alone in my lack of electrical prowess. Senegalese electricians are also missing--or ignoring--some basic electrical concepts. Such as what that third prong in electrical plugs is for. Though appliance cords and extension cords here all have three prongs, and the sockets, of course, have a hole for the third prong to fit into, it turns out those holes aren't wired to anything. This means the outlets aren't grounded.

Until I moved here, electrical grounding was a vague mental construct. Why electricity can't simply go down one wire, into an appliance to do its work, and straight out the other wire is a mystery to me. People do it! We walk into our office buildings, do our work, and walk out.

Well, grounding is no longer theoretical for me. It is a visceral, physical experience, because whenever I touch (for example) an input jack on my laptop while my bare or socked feet are touching the floor, I get shocked. One can also get shocked by touching a refridgerator. My favorite: the friend who got shocked when he touched a cement wall in his house.

A less amusing example occurred at my old apartment building, a few blocks from campus. A colleague was on the roof using the washing machine. (Don't ask me why the washing machine is on the roof--I don't know. But it's there, inside a thief-proof cage of heavy iron bars.) My friend was nearly electrocuted when she touched the washing machine while standing in a small puddle of water from the previous day's rain. How she survived, I'll never know. . . 220 volts delivers quite a jolt!

So, the next time you insert a three-pronged plug into a three-hole socket, be thankful that that third hole is connected to something called a ground, which takes some of those shocking green Greenies back outside where they belong!

Skyline

2008-09-13T09:44:00.020Z

Here is one of my happiest efforts as an amateur photographer. Can you identify the subject? (For some hints, followed by the answer, read the top entry in the column at right.

I have been justly admonished for my lack of photos in recent posts. I plead extenuating circumstances: my cheap camera broke, my expensive camera is too heavy to carry except on specifically photographic outings, and I have had a hard time getting "back on the horse" after losing thousands of digital pictures when my third laptop in four years bit the dust in 2006. I will try to make up for my delinquency with some of the pictures that managed to survive that unwanted purge.

Fuel for the Economy

2008-09-10T06:42:00.004Z

This just in from an American friend here who is his organization's governmental liason:

New fuel prices went into effect Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 18:00.
Super gasoline went down $0.01 to $3.75 per gallon.
Diesel went down a whopping $0.20 to $3.52/gallon!

Note: I've converted the CFA francs/liter prices he provided to USD/gallon prices based on today's (September 10, 2008) exchange rate as reported at www.Oanda.com. (The exchange rate has improved by $0.15 in the last few weeks!)

Stormy Weather

2008-09-08T19:12:00.014Z

A strikingly beautiful scene illuminates my bedroom window. The northern sky is a distant sheet of steel, with small gray puffs and stark white egrets passing silently in reverse silhouettes. The soccer field, sporting its new, thin coat of grass, reflects yellow-gray light from the west with an eerie glow. Vultures hunch in trees, while leaves explode in the wind like billows of smoke. Lightning rends the steel sky. All is darkening slowly, the colors muting but not lost in the deepening storm twilight. Finally, it is all but night, and I begin to see my reflection in the glass, insulated from everything but the occasional thunder.

Another view of DA's Soccer Lake. This is almost the view
from my window--just closer to the field, and perhaps 5 yards
to the left. Photo again courtesy of co-worker Lois Clark.

Exchange Rate Tool Bites the Dust

2008-09-08T00:55:00.002Z

I removed the second Exchange Rate program I had installed at right because it apparently prevented people from accessing the blog (including, sometimes, me!).

You Rain What You Sow, or, How to Make a Hurricane Without Really Trying

2008-09-08T00:26:00.021Z

Photo of DA's recently flooded soccer field (at least
it has grass!) by my colleague, DA math teacher Lois Clark.

A few days ago, I learned that Senegal recently began managing a cooperative project with other West African nations to “seed” clouds in an attempt to increase rainfall in this seriously under-watered portion of the continent. Over here, the sky isn’t falling, and that’s a problem for subsistence farmers! Or it was. The cloud seeding project appears to be working.

Can you guess when the project started. (Hint: think “Katrina.”) That’s right! In 2005, when Dakar saw the most rain it’s seen in 30 years. And when numerous storms from Senegal and surrounding countries crossed the Atlantic, becoming hurricanes on the way.

For the following two years, apparently, no seeding was done, and rainfall dropped precipitously*. But this year, the project is apparently back in action, and we’re getting solid rains almost every night. And the Caribbean and North America are getting big hurricanes again!

The friend who first told me about the Senegalese use of cloud seeding was amused because this news pretty well puts the kabosh on theories that global warming is simultaneously causing the drought in West Africa and causing the increased rain storms in West Africa that lead to hurricanes.

Apparently, however, it is fairly well established that certain kinds of storm conditions here in West Africa do lead to the formation of hurricanes as they head west across the Atlantic Ocean.

If true that the seeding is working, and true that some of the storms turn into hurricanes, then human intervention in the weather to help starving people on one continent is leading to loss of life and massive destruction in North America.

* For those of you who don’t remember your high school Earth Science class, or who took something silly like Physics or Chemistry instead, “seeding” a cloud is a process in which some substance is injected into “pregnant” clouds—ones containing lots of tiny water droplets that are too light to fall as rain. The injected substances range from sodium iodide to dry ice. (I’ve heard that even cement powder has been tested). The effect is that the water droplets either freeze or combine to be heavy enough to fall as rain (or concrete, as the case may be).

** Wow! Did you catch that double pun? I’m impressed with myself!

Typing with a Different Type of Type

2008-08-28T21:51:00.004Z

I'm testing a new font size and color in hopes of increasing readability. Let me know what you think. (Unfortunately, eblogger often doesn't do quite what you tell it to, even when you select options from its own menus, so there are and will continue to be some inconsistencies.)

Currency Converter Replacement

2008-08-28T20:36:00.015Z

Don't miss out on my next post!

SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG

by clicking the POSTS button at right.

I couldn't get the previous Currency Converter to work, so I've replaced it. To see how the fluctuations in the dollar are affecting me, just do the following.

Click in the FROM field, press the "U" key 5 times to choose USD, and press ENTER.
Click in the TO field, press the "C" key once to choose CFA BCEAO Francs,* and press ENTER.
Click the GO button (above the FROM field).

* INTERESTING TECHNICAL DISTINCTION: CFA BCEAO Francs (Bank code: XOF) are West African Francs, used by 8 countries, including Senegal. CFA BEAC Francs (Bank code: XAF) are used by a different consortium of 5 CENTRAL African nations. Both currencies are tied to the Euro, and at the same exchange rate, but you can't use XAF Francs in XOF countries, or vice versa. In addition, a few other countries in the region have their own currencies, and do not accept either XOF or XAF Francs! (For more details, including color-coded maps, search for "CFA Francs" on Wikipedia, the source of the info in this paragraph.)

Good news: as of today, the dollar has rebounded from its recent low of 400CFA to the dollar to (today) 446CFA to the dollar. So a box of breakfast cereal today cost only $7.84 instead of the $8.75 it cost two or three months ago. And a pound of bananas is down from $1.50 to $1.34.

I don't know if any of you are interested in all this, but I am--especially the cost of food!

It's raining, it's pouring...

2008-08-25T02:12:00.002Z

As I write, I can hear a downpour of refreshing rain outside my open windows. This is the best rainy season West Africa has had since it spawned Hurricane Katrina a few years back. Recently, we've had rain every day or two!

Food supplies are still low for many Senegalese, but there's good hope of a good harvest ahead!

Currency Converter

2008-08-25T02:11:00.003Z

I've just added a currency converter "gadget" at the left--under the SUBSCRIPTION buttons. You, too, can watch the value of the dollar go up and down in comparison to West African Currency! Just press the CONVERT button for the latest exchange rate.

UPDATE: This converter didn't work so I replaced it. For instructions, see my August 28 post.

Your Support Dollars at Work

2008-08-25T01:34:00.014Z

DON'T MISS OUT ON MY NEXT POST!
SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG.

Click the POSTS button at right.

Friends often ask me about the cost of living in Dakar. It depends a lot on how I choose to eat.

FOOD. I generally buy western food imported from Europe and, sometimes, the US. I went grocery shopping today and bought the following.

1 box of breakfast cereal
2 large boxes of skim milk powder
2 boxes of fruit juice
4 fruit yogurts

My total bill was 17,110 cfa. Even at last week’s improving exchange rate of 450cfa/dollar, that’s $38.00!

If I consistently ate Senegalese style (mostly rice, with various vegetable or meat sauces very high in oil content), I could eat for about $3.00 per day.

FUEL. Today, I saw gasoline for sale at 798cfa per liter, diesel at 808cfa. That comes to $6.71/gallon for gas, $6.80/gallon for diesel. Most vehicles here use diesel.

I don’t often buy fuel. When I need to travel around town, I either take a taxi—$3.50 to $5.00 per trip, one way, depending on distance and traffic—or use a school vehicle and reimburse the school about 70 cents per mile.

SUBSCRIBE to my blog!

2008-08-19T23:18:00.003Z

Use the new POSTS button at right to subscribe to this blog. You will then be automatically notified when I add a new post.

NOTE: The ALL COMMENTS button doesn't do anything since I don't have this blog set up to accept comments from readers. But eblogger didn't offer the option to suppress the appearance of that button.

CAVEAT: I have not personally used this feature. (I don't need to subscribe to my own blog!) If you do, please write to tell me if it works. (The last time eblogger added a similar feature, it did not work for every one of my friends who tried to use it. I'm hoping this one is more reliable.)

And the word is...(the envelope, please)...

2008-08-18T01:09:00.007Z

to find the mYsteRy word, which I unwillingly omitted from the August 15 post, check this paragRaph--simply find The capItal letters scattered aBout, reveRse their sequence, and there you'll hAve it.

Who Benefits? (Part 2) Or, That's Water through the Dam

2008-08-18T00:23:00.010Z

A magazine article I read last year complained that western companies come to Africa, harvest the natural resources, and then take those resources elsewhere for further processing, refusing to let Africans take part in the more lucrative steps in the manufacture of goods. That sounds selfish until you realize that the infrastructure here (I speak of West Africa) is not reliable enough to run large-scale processing and manufacturing plants.

The following story amazes and saddens me.

The Republic of Guinea is extremely rich in natural resources, including minerals and water power. Some years ago, a foreign nation donated huge amounts of engineering expertise and enormous quantities of cement to design and construct a dam on one of Guinea's major rivers. This dam, I am told, could have provided enough electrical power for the entire country, with some left over to sell to neighboring nations. It had the potential to completely revolutionize Guinea's economy .

But when I visited Guinea last December, I found that even parts of the capital city lacked electricity. Entire neighborhoods lighted their markets with kerosene lamps at night. Why? Because the folks in leadership when the dam was being built apparently stole much of the cement powder for their own personal projects and those of their friends. Once the dam was built, it was determined that the cement was so diluted as to be too weak to hold back the river. So, the dam was never put into operation. Now, decades later, this country is still stuck in poverty.

NOTE: I heard the dam story while I was in Guinea. I have done no follow-up research, so it may be off in some particulars either from errors by those who told it to me, or resulting from my less-and-less reliable rememberer, or both. However, I believe it to be true in at least its basic outline. I welcome corrections.

Who benefits? (Part 1)

2008-08-17T23:54:00.008Z

As much as I respect the Senegalese government (see previous posts), the poor delivery here of such basic services as electricity baffle me. I want to ask someone, "Why are you doing this to your own people?"

During the rainy season (July-December), the power is cut, unannounced, several times a week--sometimes daily, sometimes more than once in a day-- for anywhere between 15 minutes and 10 hours. Apparently, the government, which subsidizes the power plants, frequently doesn't pay the bills on time, so the power company shuts down the plant--or has daily, rolling outages around the city to reduce output.

If there were even a schedule of outages published, it would be immensely better. Then individuals and businesses could at least attempt to plan activities requiring electricity for the times it would be on. (In fact, I'm told this was tried a few years ago, but the schedule was so seldom kept, it was more frustrating than having no schedule, so they quit publishing it.)

I suppose in a predominantly pre-industrial environment, reliable technological infrastructure is not crucial. Much of Senegal qualifies for that description. Farmers and carpenters who use hand tools, vendors with street-side stalls, even taxi drivers in diesel-fueled cars don't care whether the electricity is on or off.

But unlike much of the country, Dakar is not pre-industrial. There are factories, grocery stores, restaurants, banks, and many other businesses that depend on electricity to function--not to mention safety features such as traffic lights and street lights. Computers are common in businesses here, too. Cutting the current without warning is incredibly disruptive to life, businesses, schools.

The president promised last year that power outages would end on a specific day in October. And, in fact, they became very rare for several months. It was wonderful. You didn't have to wonder if you could perform a task (typing, printing, photocopying) at any point during the day. But the stoppages ramped up again in the spring, and have been horrible in the one week I've been back in town.

So, who benefits when the power goes out? Somebody must gain or it wouldn't keep happening.

Suppliers of generator fuel, perhaps? But aren't they the same people who supply fuel for the electrical generators (though perhaps at a lower,bulk price). "I expect," surmised one of my stateside relatives, "that the 'in crowd' (whoever that may be) gets great benefit for maintaining the status quo rather than for improving it. Parties with solutions could be threatening to the in crowd so their barriers to implement solutions are kept high." This is the most plausible explanation I've heard.

Whatever the cause, Africans suffer daily. And, year after year, entire nations pay the price of such infrastructural unreliability. See my next post for a sad example.

Mystery Word

2008-08-17T23:51:00.007Z

Has anyone determined the word missing from my last entry? Here's the sentence, again.

I'm not a fan of [Frank Gehry's] abstract, seemingly * style, but it is striking.

Email me with your guesses. I remembered it as I drifted off to sleep the other night, but didn't turn on the light and write it down, so it's drifted away again.

Jay the Tourist

2008-08-15T16:32:00.009Z

TOURING FRIENDS AND FAMILY. I have returned to Dakar from an 8-week visit to the States. I've been wondering what to write that would be of general interest. I can summarize my trip simply by saying I got plenty (!) of rest, saw a number of family members, a number of friends, and met a few new folks. It was great to see "everyone"!

I put "everyone" in quotes because, to my frustration and in some cases embarrassment, I did not see everyone I wanted to. Thanks to a college-era alumni newsletter, word had gotten around that I was coming to town, and people I haven't seen in 20 years contacted me. As a result of a volatile travel schedule, and also of eventual burnout, I didn't get to connect with all of them. If you're one of them, my apologies. Next time, I hope!

JAY THE TOURGUIDE IN DC. I had two, thoroughly enjoyable, touristic voyages. First, I had the unique pleasure of playing tourguide to four Dakar Academy alums and their father (my former English8 team-teaching colleague) during their 12-hour layover in Washington, D.C. We perused the National Mall between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, taking in numerous memorials and some International Folk Festival exhibits and foods. I may become a docent when I retire.

JAY THE TOURIST IN CHICAGO. Later, in Chicago, I went to Millenium Park--built since my last visit, entirely with private money--for the first time. I didn't know what to expect, but I wasn't really expecting much. I was wrong! It's a destination! Sculpture, indoor and outdoor theaters, gardens, plazas, and more!

The sculptures looked odd or downright silly in tourist brochures, but were, in fact, terrific. The shiny silver "Cloud Gate" (shaped like a huge pinto bean) is both fascinating and fun. One side yields a dramatic, bowed reflection of the Chicago skyline. Up close, you see yourself and other gawkers in humorous distortion. Underneath, you're lost in a magical and indecipherable kaleidescope of reflections.

Though I missed the open orchestra rehearsal at the Jay Pritzker Pavillion, the outdoor theater designed by Frank Gehry, it was a visual blast. I'm not a fan of his abstract, seemingly * style, but it is striking. And the creation of a distinct audience "space" through use of a grid of widely spaced arches over the lawn seating, is both interesting and impressive. (Alas, I missed the wandering BP Bridge, also by Gehry, which looks cool in photos on the Park's website.)

Jaume Plensa's Crown Fountain--twin glass-brick monoliths spouting water into a sloped plaza, and projecting huge video close-ups of Chicago residents--is quirky, but worth the visit just to see the screaming children vying for a position under the foot-wide streams of water coming from the mouths of the citizen videos.

The one disappointment was the Lurie Garden. Entirely walled off by tall firs or junipers, it's invisible from the outside, and it's a good thing. A gently sloping plot perhaps half the size of a football field is criss-crossed by sunken, walled paths. In the remaining patchwork of plots are planted the homeliest weeds and grasses, in the least aesthetically pleasing arrangement imagineable--Nature has never done so poorly on its own. The tallest plants were often next to the sunken paths, obscuring the vegetation further in. My main color recollection is gray, though I was there at the height of summer.

I see from the park's website, http://www.millenniumpark.org/, that I missed a lot. It's on my list for more attention next time I'm in Chicago!

JAY THE ALMOST-TOURIST IN CASABLANCA. Finally, on my return trip to Dakar I had a 12-hours layover in fabled Casablanca, Morocco. Alas, I can neither deny nor confirm rumors that the city does not live up to the romantic reputation it's earned in the US from the movie of the same name. The airline, I had been told, would provide a hotel or a tour of the city. I was going to choose the tour, but it wasn't being offered anymore, so instead I spent the day in a very decent airport hotel in the middle of brown scrubby no-man's-land, with no city in sight. I watched part of the Olympic opening ceremonies on TV (Mini-Review: fantastically creative and clever in places) and ate a lunch of delicious Moroccan food at the hotel's buffet.

* The missing word in this sentence is one of my favorities, but also one
of the hardest for me to remember. I used to keep it written in my wallet to
keep me from being frustrated to the point of distraction in conversation. I'll
fill it in when I finally think of it again.

Political Apologies

2008-06-25T03:27:00.012Z

I heard a very interesting lecture on the radio tonight. Entitled "The Meaning and Value of Political Apology," it was an insightful analysis of the reasons for, and the effects and limitations of "political apologies"--when a government apologizes for the nation's past actions, perhaps decades or centuries after the fact.

The text of the lecture is available as a pdf file at the following site. It is fairly brief (8 pages, with lots of white space), and worth reading if you've ever wondered about the value, or even the legitimacy of such apologies.

http://www.ony.unu.edu/middayforum/May%2023%20Apology/Political%20Apology%20Speech%20Handout%20Version.pdf.

The author and speaker was French Jean-Marc Coicaud, a young but experienced diplomat, who has co-written several books on international law and human rights, and who currently heads UNU's New York Office (UNU-NYO).

Photo of Jean-Marc Coicaud unattributed.
Source: http://update.unu.edu/archive/issue34_21.htm

Statesman Abdoulaye Wade

2008-06-25T02:47:00.010Z

If you read the recent National Geographic article on the Sahel--the transitional region between the Sahara desert and the tropical forests of Africa that stretches across the continent, you know that this strip has been gradually moving south, leaving once-arable lands unproductive.

I was interested to learn today that Senegal's President, Abdoulaye Wade (pronounced Wahd), will be giving the 2008 U Thant lecture at United Nations University (UNU), a Tokyo-based school and think-tank. His topic will be "Climate Change and African-led Initiatives."

According to the UNU website,

President Wade will speak on climate change and Africa, and specifically on how African-led initiatives, such as la Grande Muraille Verte (the Great Green Wall) can contribute to combating desertification. . . [I]n his recent speeches President Wade has highlighted the importance of the sharing of experiences, of collaborative effort, and of innovation to the success of these initiatives.

I can't read French-language newspapers fluently enough to follow daily political developments in Senegal, but more and more, I am learning about President Wade's statesmanship on crucial world issues. At a conference of Islamic nations held in Dakar in April, he stood firm against calls to make Senegal an Islamic republic, and gave a reasoned but urgent plea for respect and cooperation across religious lines, holding up Senegal as a (in my mind, valid) example.

Photo shows President Wade addressing the UN General Assembly, September, 2007. UN Photo/Marco Castro. Source: http://www.unu.edu/ (June 24, 2008)

Quote source: http://www.unu.edu/uthant_lectures/#wade (June 24, 2008)

Dakar Academy: What and Why?

2008-05-30T19:04:00.010Z

This video by professional John Brill (no known relation to my brother) of Colorado introduces you to the purpose and a few of the people of Dakar Academy, my home, and will make you thirsty for more. Fortunately, Brill is producing a longer video to quench that thirst! Stay tuned.

Fine Fun Art

2008-05-17T21:43:00.007Z

For some amusement mixed with a sense of wonder, go to http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm and select any of the thumbnail pictures there. Unlike most trompe-l'oeil exponents, British artist Julian Beever paints his eye-tricking images on streets, not buildings. You may have seen some of these which have made the rounds in the past year or two via email, but there are several here I'd never seen, plus they're always worth a second look. You can also watch a time lapse video of Beever creating one of the scenes at http://media.cnpapers.com/chalk/

Fine Fine Art

2008-05-17T21:10:00.009Z

We just held our Middle School Fine Arts Festival, which consists of a juried art show (judged by three international artists), a short drama presented by each grade (6, 7, 8), and a handbell performance by each grade. I had no part except to observe and applaud, which I did a lot. (I teach middle school in the fall, but not the spring.) Even in budding adolescence, some of these kids have extreme and already-developed talent. It truly amazes me. They're so good, I hope to purchase a few of the pieces! I certainly don't remember anyone in my junior high school being so gifted or skilled.

The High School Fine Arts program is next Saturday, and will be even more impressive. I did purchase an entry from this show my first year here--a striking, quirky, highly detailed ceramic set--a triangular vase, candy dish, and candlesticks, and a set of (square) coasters--all now prominently displayed in my living room. I do have a formal role in this event--conducting our 11-member Chamber Choir. They will perform 6 selections:

Kafal Sviri--an exciting and difficult Bulgarian folk song (their favorite)
Love You--a little known, a capella, American pop song from the 1970s (their other favorite) that I "discovered" when it played over the credits of the film Stranger than Fiction
O Shenendoah--American folk song (which none of them had ever heard!) in a very pretty and subtle arrangement
Windsong--another film tune, this one with an African flair (the text is in Swahili), written specifically for Mighty Joe Young--which they grew up on, but I had never seen or heard.
Hitch a Ride--a light-hearted song in the style of a black spiritual
Chantez a Dieu--a 17th century, Huegonot, fugue-like setting of Psalm 96 (or maybe this is their favorite)

I'm looking forward to the concert. They have worked hard, they are ready, and they sound great!

The Generosity Jam: Daily public giving, or secret unregulated giving?

2008-05-16T19:14:00.011Z

Islamic Almsgiving

Alms-giving is one of the four pillars of Islam. Every faithful Muslim is expected to give something to someone in need every day. But, one is only required to give once, and it may be a very small donation.

Living in a Muslim country for five years, it has been interesting to learn a little bit about how this works out in practice.

The daily experience of letting go of something that is "yours" (usually money) is a good thing. Giving something away every day develops a habit and a mindset in which giving is a natural experience, and therefore, a more likely option when a need arises. It can loosen of our grasp of material wealth.

A second benefit of required daily almsgiving is de-stigmatization of the begger. If I am required to give, there must be someone to give to. The fact that I am required to give to them in some sense legitimizes their need. A life of begging, if not pleasant, is at least not dishonorable.

Another aspect of this Islamic pillar--that you are only required to give once each day--yields a third benefit: it de-stigmatizes not giving. Though every begger is ostensibly engaged in a legitimate practice, and is worthy of assistance, once you have given to one person, you are under no compulsion to give to another person in the same day.

Most beggers in Dakar respect this. For example, if I decide not to give to someone begging at my car window, I find that if I look directly at the individual, smile slightly and shake my head (usually also holding my clasped hands to my heart), the person will smile--often broadly, give a slight bow of the head, and walk away. Each of us has respectfully acknowledged the other--I haven't ignored her or her need, but have instead acknowledged her existance, her humanity, and the validity of her station as a beggar. And, though she naturally expects me to give alms to someone today, she accepts that I don't have to give to her.

There are drawbacks to this system, too, however. As with any something-for-nothing system, required daily almsgiving encourages abuse. Apparently begging instead of working can be quite profitable. Some beggers in Dakar are said to live in quite remarkable homes. Some travel miles and miles to beg on a corner that is particularly lucrative (and where they won't be recognized as the owner of that fine house across the street).

A second drawback is the effective encouragement of very small giving. Any amount qualifies, so why give more than the least possible? Hand out 10 to 25 cfa (about 2 to 5 cents US), and I'm off the hook for the day. And, in fact, such amounts are considered sufficient. Granted, 25 cfa here has more buying power than 5 cents in the US--350cfa can buy a meal--but it's still not much.

Christian Almsgiving

What of the Christian approach to alms? While Jesus lauded generosity, he didn't mandate any specific frequency of almsgiving. There is no requirement to give every day. Moreover, most giving is to be done secretly, without public fanfare, or even public knowledge. This approach is less legalistic, and therefore, it seems to me, less likely to produce a large begging population. In fact, the Apostle Paul, actively discouraged begging. He wrote that he who doesn't work should not eat. This tends to promote diligence among those who can work.

But the Christian approach does lend itself to stigmatization of the begging class (which, Jesus said, we will "always have with us"). In FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, Tevye says, "It's no shame to be poor--but it's no great honor, either." Yet, I suspect many people do experience their poverty as shameful, and experience poor treatment and receive less respect from many of us who are financially better off.

The lack of daily practice can also abet our human tendency to hold on to what we have. If I'm not required to give, and I don't practice giving daily, I can easily never give. (If giving is secret, so too, a lack of giving can be kept secret.)

There is one more factor for the Christian to consider, however: the guidance and prompting of the Spirit of Christ (or Holy Spirit). In the 14th chapter of his Gospel, the apostle John quotes Jesus:

But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,
will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to
you.

Having a relationship with one generous enough to give his very life for us should increase our desire to become more like him, including our willingness to help others materially. With this remarkable gift available to us, I opt for the Christian perspective on giving. Yet, I have something to learn from the Muslim example of daily generosity.

More Laughs

2008-04-24T17:13:00.041Z

My last entry got me to thinking about some funny comments I've heard or read over the years. Here's a brief collection

When I die, I want to be cremated and have my ashes thrown in Ernie Martin's face.
--Playwright George S. Kaufman; Ernie Martin was one of his producers.

They weren't blind; they were just hard to see.
--A former colleague of mine
.
Guido Nadzo is nadzo guido.
--George S. Kaufman again, writing of actor Nadzo's performance in a Broadway play. Nadzo changed his name.

Yes! They won't let us rap, they won't let us wear boubous, and they won't let us jump high.
--A former student, in response to the question, "Are whites oppressed?" Note: Boubous are long, handsome, formal, shirt-like garments worn by many Muslim men in West Africa.
Not all alien abductions are bad things.
--Another former colleague

Embarrassing, but Funny

2008-04-24T09:11:00.010Z

Remember the old joke where you walk up to someone and say, “Did you know that Mark doesn’t have a last name?!” The other person almost invariably replies, “Mark who?”

Well, I have a real-life reversal of that story.

I'm good friends with a family I'll call the McClendons. A few days ago, they sent me an email with a newsletter attached. I was delighted to hear from them, but I completely blanked on their last name, and couldn't find it in their message. It wasn't part of their email address. It wasn't in the body of the email. I looked in the attached newsletter--not there, either.

That night, frustrated and embarrassed that I still hadn't remembered their surname, I decided to ask a friend who also knows them well. The next time I ran into her, I said, "What's the McClendon family's last name?" As soon as it was out of my mouth, I realized what I'd done, and we both burst out laughing!

(By the way, I later learned the explanation for the case of the missing name...but I'm not going to tell you.)

Reprogramming the Automatic Response Bin

2008-04-21T17:15:00.005Z

Have you ever changed jobs and found, on your first day, that you've driven half way to your old place of employment by mistake without realizing it? Or bought a new car and then spent half an hour looking for the old one in a grocery store parking lot? One of the things our brains are great at is doing things without making us consciously think about them. Occasionally, this comes back to bite us, but usually it's a great thing.

Imagine that dozens of things that have worked a certain way your whole life suddenly work a different way, and the action your brain has stored in the Automatic Response Bin is now the wrong action. For example, flipping light switches down turns the light on. Or you flush a toilet by pushing a button on top of the tank instead of flipping a handle on the front. These are little things, to be sure, but face enough of them at one time, and it can be surprisingly disorienting. That's part of what moving to a new culture involves. These little things add up to a bigger mental adjustment than one expects, or even consciously notices.

So, here are a collection of differences I've run into living in Senegal, some having to do with technology, and some not.

Light switches: Up is "off," down is "on."
Other power switches: Green is "off," red is "on."
Hailing a cab: Holding your hand up and waving your hand means you don't need a taxi. Pointing down towards the road and waving slightly means you want one (you're saying "pull over here"). It's funny how much this throws me off, especially given how seldom I have taken a cab in the US, and how often I have taken one here.
Toilet handles: Toilets here don't have handles. Instead, they have buttons on the top. Pressing the button flushes the toilet. (For a few, the water tank is attached to the wall above the toilet seat, and you pull a string to flush.)

Hee are a few more differences that aren't in the Automatic Response Bin category, but are nonetheless interesting.

Honking: First of all, horns here don't honk, they beep. Secondly, when someone beeps at you, it doesn't mean that you're doing something unsafe, or that he's mad at you. Beeps are usually directed at pedestrians, and mean "I'm coming up behind you." Only in huge traffic jams where no-one has moved for a while do drivers bear down on the horn in disgust--but this is usually aimed at the policeman directing traffic.
Door handles. Doors here have handles rather than knobs. Several times as I've entered or exited my office, the handle has slipped inside the front of my shirt and torn it.
Getting directions. In Senegal, terenga [tuh-REN-ga], or hospitality, is a key cultural value. This has some interesting corollaries. To not help someone is virtually a moral failure. So, if someone asks you for directions, you must give him directions, even if you don't know how to get where he wants to go. Giving wrong information is better than being so rude as to give none!

This list was difficult to assemble, and that's part of the point. These aren't things you think about. They are so entrenched a part of the way one's world works that it's only when they work differently that they are noticeable.

Shopping Spree

2008-04-21T09:35:00.006Z

On my way home from bird-watching yesterday, I stopped at a neighborhood grocery store and bought the following:

2 boxes of cereal
2 1-litre cartons of fruit juice
1 can of powdered milk
1 package of chocolate cookies*
A candy bar...OK, five candy bars*

*Studies have shown that dark chocolate is good for heart patients!
Unfortunately, these were white chocolate cookies and milk chocolate candy bars...

The total for this shopping spree was 17,700 West African francs (cfa). At today's exchange rate of 400 cfa to the dollar, that trip cost the equivalent of $44US! When I arrived in 2003, the same items would have cost about 15,000 francs. With an exchange rate that hovered around 550 cfa to the dollar, this was equivalent to only $27US (and that wasn't cheap--$5 to $7 per box of cereal!).

So, yesterday's shopping trip cost about $17 more than it would have 5 years ago. Rising prices account for about $5 (15% if I've done my math right). The drop in the dollar accounts for about $12 (30%, give or take).

This makes me all the more thankful for my church and the friends who donate to my support each month. I am financially solvent because of your generosity!

"That's Africa for You"

2008-04-04T15:47:00.004Z

A lot of things *in* Africa get blamed *on* Africa.

It is true that, for a variety of reasons, numerous things don't work as well here as they do in some other places. Since I am American and work mostly with Americans, we usually compare things here with things in the US.

Some typical complaints: the city electricity is frequently cut off without warning, for long periods of time. Meetings don't start "on time" as Westerners think of time. Beauraucracy can be paralyzing. The phone company sends out bills every few months, but may cut your service if you haven't paid before the bill arrives. Some governments officials are corrupt; bribery and nepotism are common.

"That's Africa for you!" folks exclaim when we encounter one of these circumstances.

But when things in the US don't work, we don't say, "That's the US for you!" We say, "That's the phone company for you," or "That's a politician for you." Why do Africa's problems get blamed on Africa, and American problems get blamed on individuals or organizations?

Consider the following.

I recently moved my office desk and computer a foot or two to the right. I had to unplug all the computer equipment to do so. When I plugged everything back in, the computer wouldn't turn on, though the monitor (which was plugged into the computer, not directly into the wall) did turn on! I tried everything I could think of to aaddress the problem. I changed what was plugged into what (computer, power strip, regulator, wall socket) in every combination I could think of. No matter the combination, and no matter how many times I pressed the power button on the front of the computer, nothing worked.

Finally, I unplugged everything again (including the mouse and the monitor, etc.) and took the computer to our tech team who flipped a power switch on the back of the box, and it started right up. Apparently it had gotten bumped when I rearranged my office. But why are there two power buttons on the same computer? Sheesh! That's Africa for you!

Well, no, actually, the computer was bought in the US. That's the computer industry for you. That's the Secretary of State's Office for you. That's the Airline Industry for you. That's the Government for you. That's Republicans for you. That's Democrats for you. That's the human race for you!

As I just wrote to a friend in the States, it's...

2008-02-29T08:24:00.002Z

...Very busy and interesting time here--working on grant proposals hoping to bring in outside support for the school, gearing up for a regional sports tournament for our students next week, and bracing ourselves for the world Islamic conference the week after--5,000 visitors arriving for 2-5 days. Oh, yes, and teaching. At least we don't have to deal with snow (though at least one embassy is taking a snow day during the conference because our geographically small city will be one major traffic jam, what with road closings and increased security).

Hot Off the Press

2008-02-22T16:33:00.007Z

My musical play, "A Christmas Carol Card Collection," has just been "released" on DVD!

The play, very loosely based on Dicken's similarly titled book, tells the story of Ben Scrooge, President and CEO of Bleak Publishing House. He stumbles across a box of old Christmas cards. Reviewing these "posts of Christmases past" causes him to mentally revisit key points of his life. Each card leads to the performance of a skit or song (by our elementary and middle school students), re-enacting an instance when Ben chose greed over good.

When he finally understands from the cards that he can be reconciled to God through Jesus, he repents and determines that all of his "posts of Christmases future" will declare the good news he has finally grasped.

The script is laced with humor (even a guest appearance by Laurel and Hardy), Christmas carols, other Christmas songs, and one song by me that sets the stage (so to speak) for the story. Two of our high school students filmed the December world premier and edited it into one presentation. I haven't even had a chance to review the whole thing yet, but I'm mighty pleased to have this record of our performance. (Sorry, I'm not taking orders--there are only 9 copies in existence.)

The Rain in Senegal Falls Mainly in the Summer

2008-02-13T18:09:00.004Z

We had a thunderstorm last night--quite unusual for February! I'm told the thunder was so loud that children took refuge in their parents' beds. Though the head of my bed is directly beneath a window, I slept through it all, waking only later to enjoy an owl hooting in the trees just outside my bedroom. I didn't even realize it had rained until I left my apartment. For once, Dakar smells fresh and clean!

What Happens to a Rhinoceros' Armor When it Gets Wet?

2008-01-31T18:14:00.001Z

It rhinocer-rusts.

I took this photo standing about 10 yards from the subjects. Yes, standing. Outside of the Jeep! The park guide said it was safe. "They have very good hearing, but very poor eyesight," she explained. Once we were on the ground, she proceeded to talk loudly for several minutes.

I'll post more pictures of my visit to the Bandia Reserve later. This week has been (and remains) very busy, so I've had to delay updating my blog.

(Joke found on http://www.kidsjokes.co.uk/jokes/animal/kangaroo.html)

Three Smiley Middle Schoolers

2008-01-15T17:08:00.000Z

Today marks one week since the arrival of an old friend from my church in the US. Beni was part of the same team I was when I first visited Senegal in 2003. She returns every couple of years to volunteer with different organizations.

This year, she's working mainly with one of several organizations that provides help for talibe [TAL-ee-bay] boys--boys whose families have given them to a marabout [MAIR-uh-boo], a regional Islamic religious/political leader, for training in the Koran. Though they do get rote Koranic training in Arabic (which is not spoken here), most become street beggars who raise money for the marabou. They are frequently underfed, underclothed, underwashed, and lacking in medical care. Many Senegalese are scandalized by this system, but marabouts are culturally, religiously, and politically entrenched.

In the next few days, I'll post an article with more details about the problem and about the organization Beni is volunteering for.

In addition to coming to volunteer, Beni generously loaded up her luggage with things I can't buy here, including oat bran, "Miracle Whip," my favorite brand of chewing gum, books and DVDs in English, and, most importantly, a lot of music for the Chamber Choir, for which we are grateful.

None of this has anything to do with the above picture, which shows three of my middle school students who just dropped by to say "Hi" and to sing silly songs to me.

Elected to a New Office

2008-01-15T16:19:00.000Z

Things change often at my school. Classrooms become storage rooms, offices become kitchens, kitchens become classrooms--you name it! I have had several offices and several classrooms in my four-and-a-half years here--sometimes simultaneously. Last week, I moved to a new office in what was a classroom earlier this year, but is now half-filled with shelving where we keep infrequently used books and other teaching supplies. There's just enough room to sqeeze my 11-member chamber choir in my half of the room, so we rehearse here, as well (thus the sign on the door).

OK, so it's a low news day. You want I should make something up?

Photo Page Under Construction

2008-01-11T17:37:00.000Z

This is my first attempt to create a linked page consisting only of photos and captions. It's not a particularly straightforward process. I'll post an announcement when I get it working, until then, this is a placeholder. (The photo is the elementary building and playground as seen from the third story of our new Middle School / High School academic building.)

The 12 Days of Christmas (redux)... and Beyond!

2008-01-08T11:35:00.001Z

BLOG NEWS: I've published posts (below) for the final two days of my Christmas trip to the Republic of Guinea. All 12 days now have pictures and updated, proof-read copy.

GUINEAN NEWS: Political unrest erupted in Guinea over the weekend, resulting in one reported death. A national strike has been threatened for Thursday--on the one-year anniversary of the riots that left 130 dead last year. We pray for peace in Guniea, and for those of our students who are trying to return to Dakar from there.

DAKAR NEWS: There has been no further trouble in Dakar since the riots that broke out the Thanksgiving weekend, protests centered on two issues: rising food prices, and the razing of un-licensed boutiques (we would say stalls) in various markets around the city. The government relented during the holidays. The holidays are over. No news is good news?

SCHOOL NEWS: We've just kicked off the new semester with a day and a half of interesting and useful meetings (really!). Classes resume tomorrow.

SHOPPING NEWS: You're probably suprised to see shopping listed as a news item, but it's an interesting story. Dakar has a moveable market called Fëgg Jaay [FOOG-ee jie, or FOOK-ee jie]. It's mostly clothing, mostly used (perhaps including something you donated to Good Will or one of its equivalents last year), plus some new items that are often knock-offs of name brands. The city sets up two rows of booths, framed with heavy pipes, down the median of one of the city's major roads, leaving an aisle down the middle for shoppers. Each booth is about 6-ft. square. Most are covered with tarps for shade. They stay up a day or two, as people from that part of town shop, then are taken down, moved to another street, and set up again. Each Saturday morning, the Fëgg Jaay appears in all its glory on a mile-long section of a street not far from my school. On Sunday, it's gone, with piles of trash every few yards all that remains.

Fëgg jaay means "shake and sell." Some vendors have so much the clothing that, in addition to hanging it from the poles, they pile it high inside their booths. When you find something in the middle of the pile, wrinkled and dusty, the vendor pulls it out, shakes it, and tries to sell it to you for "a good price."

I went to this market last Saturday and was delighted to find a handsome windbreaker, two pair of pants my size, and two or three shirts, for the equivalent of about $20! Then, at another, permanent market in a nearby neigborhood, I bought two brand new shirts for about $3.50 each. Until now, I've done all of my clothing shopping on my visits to the States. No longer!

PHOTO NEWS: Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera along to the Fëgg Jaay. I'll try to remember to post a picture of it another time. Lacking that, I've included two pictures of boabob trees, one God-made, and one man-made--complete with hanging fruit and roosting birds. (Click on the picture for a closer look.)

Alive and well in Dakar

2008-01-02T18:33:00.001Z

I've returned to Dakar from my 12 teriffic days in Guinea. I'll put the remaining "12 days of (my) Christmas" posts up as soon as I am able.

Meanwhile, I wanted to post a photo I just took of an African Grey Hornbill (relative of the red-billed hornbill in my November 7 post). Interestingly, the photo in Wikipedia's article about this species was taking just a few hundred yards from mine--in the zoo/forest park across the street from my school. Their specimen looks rather different. Mine looks more like the hand-painted illustration in the same article.

I've loaned out my fancy Nikon camera for a friend to take some portraits. This was snapped with my little Kodak.

On the 12th Day of (my) Christmas

2007-12-29T15:46:00.001Z

WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 26

This, my last full day in Guinea, was one of my favorites. As always, it was beautiful--sunny and warm (OK, a little too warm, or, at least, too humid for my taste). And I did all of the things I liked to do--traveled, visited with friends, watched a family have fun together, took pictures, and played music. Only the beautiful mountain countryside was missing.

The travel was merely across town to visit two of my students and their family. This was great fun. They are a bright, lively (especially two younger siblings, who, I was duly warned, may become my students in the near), and interesting to talk to. They are hospitable, and served me a delicious meal of beef and chicken brochettes (shish kabob) and wonderful chocolate-filled cream puffs. We discussed Guinean history and current conditions (they've been without city power for a month now) and school and books and movies.

On the way too and from lunch, I took numerous photos. I've been surprised at the wide variety of sizes, shapes, and colors of moquest in West Africa, so I've begun documenting that variety. Check back for a separate page of pictures at a later date.

When I returned to Jim and Becky's, they played outside with the kids, chasing and screaming and laughing.

As night fell, I sang and played music with a young Guinean musician who has come to Conakry to attend a University. Only 23 years old, he's written many songs about life in Africa: "Cease Crying" and "Stop Playing with Fire" were among those he sang for me. He accompanied himself on a hand-made gongoma [GOHng-go-mah], a simple instrument made from a calabash, a piece of wood, and three broken pieces of a hack-saw blade. He taps the wood with his left hand and plucks the sawblades with his right as he sings.

We recorded some of his songs, and he instisted I join him on the choruses of one. So, I now own what may become highly-sought-after, seminal recordings of West Africa's next singing sensation. And who will guess that it's an old toubob (white guy) singing along with him?

On the 11th Day of (my) Christmas

2007-12-29T15:27:00.000Z

TUESDAY DECEMBER 25

Though it's the 11th Day of my Christmas holiday, it's actually Christmas day, and I'm glad to report that Santa took time to visit us (see photo).

Baby Jenna's first Christmas was duly videotaped for the grandparents. Hannah, when not decked out in a red and white cap, helped her younger sister open her packages. To my surprise, there were gifts for me, too: a lalaangii (see Day 6 post) and two books, including a wonderful book about Guinea.

We were joined for breakfast by a young Guinean man. When he asked about my family, he was visibly moved to learn that, like him, I had lost both of my parents. This led to a long conversation about sorrow and happiness and hope. I was glad to be able to tell him about the steady hope I have because of the centuries of promises, recorded in the Old and New Testaments, that God fulfilled in the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It was a surprising conversation, but fitting for Christmas day, since Christmas has no meaning outside of those promises.

In the evening, we attended a huge Christmas dinner hosted by a friend of Jim and Becky's, complete with two turkeys (which I attempted to carve), stuffing, mashed potatoes, home-made rolls, and a host of other wonderful dishes, including several fabulous desserts. The crowd was broadly international--American, Canadian, Egyptian, French, and Guinean, perhaps more--and the entertainment ranged from dominoes to card tricks to jigsaw puzzles to live hammered dulcimer music (hmmmm). It was a treat to be invited, a great way to close out Christmas day.

On the 10th Day of (my) Christmas

2007-12-29T14:45:00.000Z

MONDAY DECEMBER 24

A downtown shopping trip downtown took up most of my Christmas Eve day. Conakry, at 2 million, boasts a population about two-thirds that of Dakar, but is a much bigger city, stretched over a long, narrow penninsula. It took perhaps 45 minutes to get downtown despite almost no traffic.

Since West Africa is predominantly Muslim, there were understandably few indications in town that Christmas was near, even fewer than in Dakar. Nevertheless, the three I saw were rather large--two 6-foot Santas, and, in the middle of a major intersection, this leaning tower of a Christmas tree.

We went to a small artisan village, where I bought some rhythm instruments. In a larger market, I found some beautiful and unusual hand-dyed cloth, and purchased a few other items. Jim and I ate lunch at La Gondole--one of Dakar's nicer restaurant-ice cream parlors, which, I discovered, has a branch in Conakry.

We got home in the nick of time to leave for the outdoor, candlelight Christmas Eve service held at a local mission compound. I led the singing, and helped accompany a couple of songs on the hammered dulcimer I bought in Michigan last August, my public premier as a dulcimer player.

On the 9th Day of (my) Christmas

2007-12-29T14:14:00.001Z

SUNDAY DECEMBER 23

Back in Conakry, we attended a large French-language church service Sunday morning. It turned out to be the annual children's service. The room was decorated with paper streamers and birthday baloons for Jesus' birthday. The kids ran the whole thing.

MUSIC: Several choirs of various aged kids sang a lot of great songs, and led the congregation in others. I wish I had music for them!

SKITS: A variety of skits were acted with amazing confidence and animation by children of all ages. Some were apparently quite funny, though the only joke I got was when Mary and Joseph reported to the census taker in Bethlehem...

Census-taker: Name?
Joseph: Joseph.
Census-taker: Wife's name?
Joseph: Mary.
Census-taker: Ages?
Joseph: I'm 9. She's 7.

SERMON: A boy I judged to be 10 or 11 years old gave a lengthy and lively sermon on Isaiah 9 in French. It was translated, on-the-fly, into an African language by another boy his age. I followed neither presentation!

Back home later in the day, while I played with the kids, Becky caught a chicken that had flown over the wall from a neighbor's yard.

On the 8th Day of (my) Christmas

2007-12-28T21:06:00.001Z

SATURDAY DECEMBER 22

One of the things that most frustrates American children living in Africa is having their state-side friends ask them if they live in grass huts, ride to school on elephants, or hide from tigers at night. Don't Americans know that Africa has houses, that elephants are rare, and that tigers only live in India and Asia?

Though none of my students live in huts, and many urban Africans live in houses and apartment buildings, many, many other Africans do, in fact, live in huts. We passed hundreds of them on the way to and from our mountain vacation. Many, like the one shown here, offer items for sale to those driving by. In this case, it's charcoal, wrapped in grasses and bagged in pastel sacks, displayed under a huge, colorful mango tree. Perhaps more often, it's rice, potatoes, or pyramids of fresh fruit or vegetables. Sometimes it might be boldly patterned cloth, or recently butchered cows or goats.

In fact, the irregular intersection of manual labor and traditional products with technological sophistication is one of the earmarks of African life. Single A fisherman spends his morning in a small canoe, and brings his products to a market where vendors use hand-held calculators and cell phones. A shepherd guides his flock of sheep or goats across a divided highway. A street vendors hawk matches, CD players, and inflatable Santas side-by-side. Imams chant their calls to prayer not from the minarets themselves, but from tinny loudspeakers stuck at their tops (see photo--that's a speaker, not a bell). Africa is a living kaleidescope of change.

On the 7th Day of (my) Christmas

2007-12-28T20:29:00.001Z

FRIDAY DECEMBER 21

This was a packed day! It started with birdwatching near the cabin in the morning. I saw numerous species not listed in my Birds of West Africa; and others that are listed, but not indicated as living in Guinea. And I have pictures to prove (some of) my sightings! Unfortunately, the quality of most of the photos is pretty poor, but they still should help with identification. Here's a fire finch perched on the end of a cinnamon tree trunk.

Then, Jim and I and three-year-old Hannah began a sight-seeing tour of the area. It started at the Dalaba visitor's center, a hut packed with local crafts and other items of interest, including this Hannah-sized, stuffed leopard skin. I almost succeeded in playing a reed flute like the one with which I was serenaded at the market yesterday, and the Center Director almost succeeded in getting me to buy one, but we couldn't agree on a price.

The next stop was the French colonial governor's compound, including a traditional "cassa des palabres" or House of Words. Built in 1936 using traditional mud construction, with beautiful geometric patterns formed in the floor, walls, and (before it collapsed from lack of care) the roof, the governor met here with important indigenous leaders to discuss political matters. A special place for each cheikh' (chief's) chair is marked in the wall--you may be able to make out two of these on either side of the door in this picture). It was here, in 1958, that incoming dictator Sekou Tourre convinced other national leaders to oust the French upon declaring independence--a move from which the country has never recovered.

Finally, we went to a beautiful lake where friends took me birdwatching in their canoe. I saw more stunning sights (including a large kingfisher with irredescent green back, wings, and throat; white breast; huge orange and black beak; and gray head), and took more terrible photos, the single exception being the birdless one at left.

On the 6th Day of (my) Christmas

2007-12-27T22:06:00.002Z

THURSDAY DECEMBER 20

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO FOOTAGE BELOW!!

Today is the highest holiday of the Muslim calendar. Known by different names in different parts of the world ("Eid ul-Adha" in Arabic countries, "Tabaski" in Senegal, "Donkin" in Pulaar, one of the main Guinean languages), it is the Muslim celebration of Abraham's near-sacrifice, at God's command, of his son. At the last minute, God provided an alternate sacrifice, a ram caught in a thorny thicket near the altar he had instructed Abraham to build (see Genesis 22). Christians recognize in these remarkable events a foreshadowing of God sending his own son, Jesus, wearing a crown of thorns, to pay the price for our sins, literally once and for all, with his life instead of ours.

Muslim families sacrifice a goat or sheep or cow each year in gratitude for the sparing of Abraham's son. (When I left Dakar, roadsides and major intersections were filled with thousands of sheep for sale at makeshift markets. It reminded me of the hundreds of Christmas tree stalls in every city in the United States--though those generally smell better!) The sacrificed animal is divided and shared with family and with the poor. The rest of the day and the following day are spent in celebration with special meals, visiting of friends, and gift-giving.

We took the day to travel over roller-coaster quality, unpaved roads to Pont de Dieu--"Bridge of God"--a natural bridge on the penultimate level of a 5-tier waterfall. In the above picture, I'm standing on the middle level, just below the bridge, photographing Jim as he photographs me.

On the way home, we stopped by the city market for a few food items. Jim and Becky��s blonde two-year-old Hannah was the center of attention until Becky came back from her search for cooking oil trailed by four nyamakalabhe��musicians who insert themselves into social settings such as weddings and baby-naming ceremonies in hopes of securing cash donations. They welcomed me to Dalaba, singing ��You have come to Dalaba, You have come a long way,�� and similar phrases over and over . . . until I paid them to stop! One man played a djembe, a west African drum; one played a reed flute; and two played lalaade (singular: lalaangii), shakers made from wooden disks stacked on small, angled tree branches.

Back "home" at our mountainside cabin, we could hear the Tabaski/Donkin celebrations until 10 pm under the nearly full moon, with both children and adults chattering excitedly along the road that runs along the bottom of the hill on which our cabin sits.

On the 5th Day of (my) Christmas

2007-12-27T22:04:00.000Z

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19

After getting up to do a little birdwatching, during which I photographed the sunrise through the pine trees, I spent the rest of the day sleeping. Every move felt like lifting lead weights. I wore three layers of clothing and was still cold, so I lay on a mat in the sun all afternoon to keep warm. In my lethargy, I missed going to the local French restaurant at which we had made reservations for dinner. I began recovering just in time to eat some of the delicious beef bourguinon leftovers Jim and Becky brought home.

On the 4th Day of (my) Christmas

2007-12-27T22:01:00.000Z

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18

Tuesday we went shopping in the nearby city, Dalaba [DAHL-uh-buh]. (Be sure to watch the market video on my "6th Day" blog). We bought fresh eggs, flour, sugar, bread, lettuce, tomatoes, several packages of batteries (that didn’t work), and slippers, each item in a different shop. I watched awhile as a tailor sewed gold thread into the seams of a dress using a foot-powered sewing machine similar to one my grandmother used.

On the way home, we stopped at a hotel surrounded by poinsettias and oleanders, with a fabulous panoramic view of the mountains. Here I am holding my hosts' baby girl in front of a 6-foot poinsettia bush.

At night, two of my former students and their parents, who are staying in a nearby cabin, came over for games and desert. I learned a strange, but fun card game called Bohnanza (or, "The Bean Game").

On the 3rd Day of (my) Christmas

2007-12-27T21:58:00.001Z

MONDAY, DECEMBER 17th

Today, we drove northeast from Conakry (on the coast) past Kindia to Mamou, and northwest from there to Dalaba [DAH-lah-bah] in "upper Guinea" for a 5-day stay in the mountains. We stopped in Mamou to greet the family of my hosts' guard in Conakry. The family was apologetic that they hadn't known we were coming, and didn't have any food prepared for us. We promised to stop again on our return trip. (Map © 2006 Mapquest)

One of the differences between the US and Africa is the approach to tranportation. In the US, people and luggage are usually trasnported inside a vehicle. In Africa, the outside of the vehicle is just as viable as the inside. In the left-hand picture above, the luggage and people on top of the car are taller than the car itself. In the right-hand picture, the man standing on the left bumper has tied himself to the car so he can nap as he rides!

The countryside here is truly beautiful. The panoramas bring to mind parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Georgia, but with a special character all their own. At left is a view of a valley as seen from our cabin. The weather here is idyllic--clear and sunny, breezy and dry, with pleasant temperatures. Surprisingly, though, even this far south, the harmattan wind delivers a hazy layer of Saharan dust which hovers over the countryside.

Another surprise for me is the quality and busy-ness of the roads this far from Conakry (quite different from my experience in Senegal, where roads and traffic both thin within a couple of hours of Dakar). Our cabin home feels like a US National Park, with frequent trucks driving by on the road below us and children laughing in the distance.

On the 2nd Day of (my) Christmas

2007-12-27T21:52:00.000Z

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 16

Today, I attended two church services and a wake. The first service was in one of the three predominant languages of Guinea. Nine people were in attendance. We sat on mats in a room with a half-wall open to the outside. We sang in two languages (it was interesting to try to read and sing the words to a couple of the songs, originally written in English, in a language unfamiliar to me.) I will not publish photos of this service, since announcing one’s Christian faith in this particular Islamic context is a matter of considerable difficulty and, sometime, persecution. It can be a long process, often starting with trusted friends. It is not my place to publicize these believers’ faith for them.

The wake was for the brother of one of the church members. Her house and yard were full of men coming to pay their respects. As special church guests, we were ushered into her living room and served a meal of bara-bara (BAHda-BAHda)—a delicious rice—and sauce with a little meat.

The second church service was in the evening, conducted in English, and attended by American, Canadian, and African missionaries and personnel from various embassies. Much more in my own tradition, it was a welcomedly* familiar end to the day.

Today's photo is of something I saw many times in Guinea, food laid out on the shoulder of the road to dry. In most cases, as shown here, it's rice, but I also saw a bleached-white root of some sort, perhaps manioc, handled the same way.

*I made that word up. Feel free to use it without asking my permission. Just footnote me in the history books.

On the 1st Day of (my) Christmas

2007-12-23T15:23:00.000Z

SATURDAY DECEMBER 15

I left Dakar at 4:30 am and arrived in Guinea's capital city of Conakry at 6:00 am. The air was humid but not hot. Not suprisingly, the airport terminal was small. Surprisingly, it had no exterior walls.

To exit the airport, you must present your yellow health card as evidence that you have had malaria shots. I had presented this to the Guinean embassy in Dakar a few days earlier to obtain a visa, but had mistakenly left the card itself in Dakar, perhaps even at the embassy. At first, the airport health representative insisted that I either produce the card or pay 10,000 Guinean francs (about $2.50US) for an inoculation. I didn’t want another vaccination, particularly not one kept in a freezer that doesn’t have power 70% of the week (see below), so I repeatedly explained that I had obviously had an inoculation, or I wouldn’t have been able to get a visa. The woman continued to dismissively insist I purchase a vaccination. Eventually, we reached a compromise: I paid $2.50 for a new yellow health card that said I’d received an inoculation at the airport.

As we drove through the city in the early morning light, I found Conakry quite different from Dakar. It is more spread out—wider streets, more space between buildings, and stretched over a longer peninsula; the ground is rock and dirt instead of sand; slanted roofs outnumber flat ones; trees and grasses abound, as do streams and ponds and hills! It also smells better, lacking the sickly sweet odor of decaying trash mingled with diesel fumes which so often permeates Dakar. With its red clay, pine trees (introduced by the French), and dilapidated buildings, Conakry reminds me of rural Georgia near where my grandparents lived.

Two other ways Conakry is different from Dakar I learned later: city electricity is usually available only at night, and water is available only two days per week. Neither service reaches Jim and Becky's neighborhood, so they have solar panels on their roof and a short water tower in their front yard.

The 12 Days of Christmas

2007-12-23T15:05:00.000Z

For the holidays this year, I’m on my first African trip outside of Senegal. I’m spending twelve days in the beautiful (!) Republic of Guinea, two countries to the south. This Guinea is commonly referred to as Guinea Conakry (CON-uh-kree), after its capital city, to distinguish it from Guinea-Bissau to the north and west, and Equatorial Guinea to the southeast.

I came to Conakry to visit my friends, Jim and Becky. I knew Becky at graduate school in the ’90s, but never expected to see her again because she was planning to live overseas! I bumped into Becky and Jim last spring when they were evacuated to Dakar during political unrest in Guinea, and they invited me to visit sometime. Seven months later, here I am! (Let that be a warning to anyone else who might lightly toss off an invitation for me to visit you.)

Subsequent posts will tell a little about each day. The photo above is from the Fouta Djallo region, as we neared the mountains. I have so many interesting and beautiful photos, I’ll try to figure out how to set up a separate page on the blog for some of them.

Scrooge is Dead! Long live Scrooge!

2007-12-07T16:28:00.000Z

Next week, our Middle School and Elementary School students will join forces to perform A CHRISTMAS CAROL CARD COLLECTION--an update of Dickens' Scrooge story by yours truly, complete with bad puns, rhyming replacements for Scrooge's ghost friends (posts of Christmas instead of ghosts of Christmas), true spiritual conversion to Christ, traditional and contemporary Christmas music (including a new piece written specially for the program by one R. Jay Sappington), and a special guest appearance by Laurel and Hardy.

In the rehearsal pictured above, Scrooge is rudely refusing Laurel and Hardy's request for a donation to their charity, NICKELS BY NICHOLAS, which is sponsoring a Christmas dinner for those who have fallen on HARD TIMES.

"We have GREAT EXPECTATIONS of you," says Oliver.

"You won't FIELD one COPPER from me!" scowls Scrooge, ushering them out the door.

"That was a nasty turn," Oliver comments as they leave.

"It certainly was an unexpected TWIST, OLIVER," Stan replies.

Sharing the Road with Tomorrow's Dinner

2007-12-07T16:16:00.000Z

In an earlier post, I compared Dakar's traffic to Chicago's. There are differences, though. It's not at all unusual in Dakar to share crowded intersections with horse-drawn carts, hand-pushed carts (the ones in the photo at left are full of sacks of potatoes), or with goats, sheep, and cows.

Sassy Teenagers!

2007-12-07T16:15:00.000Z

Dakar Academy is not just a ministry of adults to students. It is a ministry of students to Senegal. Over 75 of our 110 high school students gave up 3 days of their Thanksgiving vacation to go to the village of Sass (pronounced "sahs"), a few hours from our campus, where they worked long, hard days in hot, sunny weather to minister to the physical and spiritual needs of the residents.

Joining our students on this trip were 25 more students from a sister school in Madrid, Spain. Plus, ten national pastors--including the president of the national church--lived, ate, and worked with the students.

The daytime project teams:

Team 1: Roofed the village pastor's home

Team 2: Dug and poured a foundation for a church

Team 3: Dug a septic system

Team 4: Made and repaired church benches and made a pulipt

Team 5: Painted another church and two homes in a nearby village

Team 6: Provided medical aid to 157 locals. (Our assistant director, who is an EMT, provided training and first aid certification for our students, who administered most of the treatments. Two additional trained medical professionals were on the trip to help with triage.)

Team 7: Visited 13 villages, presenting the gospel through skits, music, mime, and puppet shows to about 1200 children and adults.

Team 8: Ran Bible programs ("Vacation Bible School") with 800 children!

Team 9: Worked at the campsite coordinating meals and hand-pumping gallons and gallons of filtered water.

At night, troups of students went to three different villages and joined the Senegalese pastors in presenting the gospel to all who came to listen. Between 180 and 200 of these people indicated that they recognized the truth of the Biblical message of spiritual freedom in Christ, and wanted to become Christians. Many have already gotten involved in their local churches.

The students finished the weekend by joining the Sass church members in ther Sunday morning worship service. "We were deeply moved and humbled," wrote our outreach coordinator," when the president of the national church asked our staff and students to surround the local believers and pray for them. Indeed, the battle has just begun and we need to pray for these dear folks, that they will be faithful in sharing the gospel with their neighbors and building God's kingdom in that area.”

Photo of some of our girls working in Sass, taken by outreach coordinator Evan Evans.

Equal Time for the Boy's Dorm

2007-12-07T15:36:00.000Z

This is the week for carolers! In an earlier post, I showed the group of Santas who serenaded my apartment building Monday night. Sadly, I missed a Wednesday night group when I was stuck in traffic for over an hour. (Dakar is a very congested city. It was odd to move to Africa only to face the Chicago rush hour.)

Last night, my Bible Study group was meeting when the sounds of male harmonies wafted in the windows. Sure enough, the high school boy's dorm was making the rounds. A welcome sound at this time of year!

'Tis the Season

2007-12-04T08:56:00.000Z

Dateline December 3, 2007. 8pm. I'm about to eat dinner and watch a movie when the doorbell rings. "Who would be stopping by now?" I grumble, "I just want to be alone and relax." Then music begins floating in my open windows. Something about wishing me a merry Christmas . . .

And there, outside my apartment building, is a group of 15 high school girls from our on-campus dorm, all wearing Santa hats and shorts and (the temperatures being way down in the 70's)sweatshirts, singing Christmas carols! What a treat! I am pleased to report that I had a fresh batch of Christmas cookies to offer them (a neighbor had made them for me the day before.)

My Hero, My Rant

2007-12-02T23:39:00.000Z

My weekend began with a visit from my new Canadian friend, "Dan," (see my November 16 post), who brought me the latest issue of New Africa, a magazine based out of Ghana and England. I set it on my coffee table without noticing the cover article about Britain's celebration of the 200th anniversary of Parliament's abolition of the British slave trade, and Dan and I set off for Movie Night, an evening of free outdoor movies sponsored by the senior class.

First movie: Ratatouille. Thoroughly enjoyable. Get's my vote for the best animation and story since Finding Nemo.

Second movie: Amazing Grace. This historical drama is a class act from begining to end: well-written, brilliantly acted, and (most amazing of all) historically accurate in, I believe, every significant detail. The story is that of William Wilberforce's leadership of the abolitionist movement in 18th-century England. I had looked forward to the film because of the subject matter (as you may know, I spent two years researching Wilberforce's abolitionist strategy as the subject of my master's thesis), but was unprepared for its extraordinarily high quality as cinema.

The film's only major flaw is a sin of omission rather than commission. Whereas, in the US, the terms "abolition" and "emancipation" are typically used synonymously to refer to the end of slavery, in British parlance, "abolition" refers merely to ending the slave trade--the buying and selling of slaves. This was accomplished in 1807, and this is where, fairly enough, the film ends. The uninitiated American viewer might assume this abolition simultaneously ended British slavery itself, and nothing in the film serves to prevent or correct that assumption--not even the end notes which say that Wilbeforce went on to challenge and change additional aspects of British culture and life.

But Wilbeforce and his colleagues had to fight another 25 years before finally securing emancipation for the millions of slaves still owned by British subjects. This they finally achieved in 1833, just days after Wilberforce's death. (Wilberforce, age 73, had retired by this time, and died happy, assured that the emancipation bill would pass.)

This blurring of abolition and emancipation also mars the issue of New Africa Dan had brought me. The cover article, "Lies, Lies, Lies!," tells of a new book by a British historian who claims, apparently with detailed documentation, that Britain's bicentennial celebration of Abolition is a bunch of self-congratulatory hooey; that Britain continued to build its empire on the products of slave labor late into the 1800s. The book's author and the article's author both are scandalized by this revelation, and the latter heaps calumnies on the Brits, going so far as to wonder if Wilberforce himself were a racist.

The late hour and lack of library resources (or even my thesis and the notes it was based on) prevent a detailed or footnoted response. Suffice it to say:

(1) The main proponents of slavery were those who were benefitting financially from plantation produce (shippers, merchants, bankers, etc.). They spent 20 years fighting abolition because major portions of the economy, and their own profits, were based on slavery. Why would anyone expect them to suddenly forgo the financial benefits they could still milk from the industry, even if they were prevented from the direct sale and purchase of slaves? It's one thing go be scandalized by this. Slavery is scandalous. But, given the historical context, to be surprized by it seems naive.

(2) As pointed out earlier, 1807 marked the legislative end of the British slave trade. It did not mark the end of the slave trade still conducted under the laws of other nations (or of the illegal trade still conducted by some Britons). And it did not end slavery itself, even in Britain and its territories. The slaving industry marched on, denying basic human rights to Africans. And the foodstuffs and other salable items produced by slaves continued to be a huge portion of the British and world economy of the time. Again, what is the surprise here?

(3) Though the article does acknowledge Africans' complicity in the slave trade, the author downplays it, saving his indignation for the British alone (apparently feeling the British are self-serving in their celebration of Wilberforce and Abolition; but isn't it worth commemorating?).

(4) Wilberforce would not have spent over 40 years of his life trying to free British slaves if he were an anti-African racist (the term is anachronistic). To imply such a thing only indicates lack of knowledge of Wilberforce's writings, his life's work, and his reputation among opponents as a (to use another anachronism) a "nigger lover."

Photo shows a contemporary painting, by John Rising, of Wilberforce at age 29, near the beginning of his abolitionist efforts. Image in the public domain. Downloaded from http://www.hullcc.gov.uk.

An International Weekend

2007-11-25T21:14:00.000Z

This picture shows my weekend hosts, Dubby and Anna Rodda (left) and missionary friends from neighboring villages, eating a Saafi meal from a common platter. (If we were really traditional, we would have set the platter on the floor and sat around it.) The meal consisted of a thick layer of millet (much like couscous) flavored with boabob leaves, topped with a smorgasbord of vegetables, including squash, tomotoes, carrots, and a kale-like leafy something whose name sounded like "never-die."

This weekend, I took my first solo trip outside of Dakar since moving here four years ago. I drove an hour and a half to visit Dubby and Anna Rodda and their son Charlton, who live in Mbayar, a Saafi (SAH-fee) village southeast of Dakar. The Saafis are a Senegalese tribe of about 100,000, related to the larger tribal group Serer (see sidebar under the heading "EVERY TRIBE AND TONGUE"). My friends are working to develop a written version of their language using both Roman and Arabic scripts.

It was good to be out of Dakar. It was very quiet and peaceful (except Saturday night, when a village festival included the blaring of recorded African pop music into the early morning). It's not what I would call a pretty area. There is no ground cover of any sort. The view is barren brown from horizon to horizon, broken only by the brown cinderblock huts and a few dusty trees and shrubs. The rainy season wasn't rainy this year, so the villagers' farming efforts largely failed.

Yesterday marked the end of the mourning period for two elderly women whose husband died 4 months ago, and I could have accompanied Dubby to the, the -- well, I don't know if it was a ceremony or a celebration or just what -- at which the women were to learn of their current re-marriage options. (Hmm. Was this connected with the village festival last night? I didn't think to ask.) Alas, I didn't have the energy, physically (I had a fever most of the weekend) or emotionally (it's almost the end of a long semester) to venture into the village. I'm not sure this is the sort of event I'd feel comfortable crashing anyway!

I did meet several villagers, as they dropped by frequently. One, I was surprised to learn, was the village chief. Why was I surprised? Because he looked to be between 25 and 35, too young to be the chief. It turns out he is 57, the father of 13 children!

So, my weekend cross-cultural foray was not a matter of black and white, but of various genres of blond and blue-eyed. Of the six missionaries pictured above...

three are British (Dubby's family produces the exclusive Rodda's Cornish Clotted Cream)

one is Faroese (Anna is from one of the 18 Faroe Islands located in the North Atlantic between Scotland, Norway, and Iceland, largely independent, but with political ties to Denmark)

one is Dutch, and

one is Norwegian

I was the token blond-blue-eyed Yankee (British-German-American).

Despite our various backgrounds, we talked together, laughed together, listened to music together (in English, German, Fareoese, and Bulgarian), sang Christmas carols together (including one I wrote, and a "new" one from England), prayed together (in English), we all ate Saaafi.

I've been emailing and blogging ever since I got back to Dakar hours ago. It's time for bed!

Post of a Thanksgiving Past

2007-11-25T19:04:00.000Z

A friend emailed me this photo (copyright status unknown). It seems a fitting accompaniment to the following story.

My best--and favorite--college professor was my choral director. An excellent teacher and a skilled conductor, Dr. Marsh provided us with practical wisdom gained from years in the classroom; he was emminently approachable, and had an excellent sense of humor.

He was also my advisor. One day, I stopped him in the hall and asked to set up an appointment with him. We settled on 10 am the following Thursday as a time amenable to us both.

When we passed each other in the hall again later, Dr. Marsh stopped me and said, "Jay, I realized after we talked that next Thursday is Thanksgiving; I can't meet with you then."

"Hmph!" I exclaimed with feigned indignation, "I see where your priorities lie!"

"Well," he replied without skipping a beat, "it was a choice of one turkey or another."

On the town

2007-11-19T20:46:00.000Z

I rarely travel alone. I prefer to be with people. Especially when traveling--even short distances--in a country whose languages and customs I don't know.

This past Saturday, I spent much of the day downtown by myself. In the morning I visited a Senegalese friend in the hospital. Then I went shopping alone, followed by a long walk and a stop at a small Senegalese restraurant, all time spent "processing" the hospital visit, which included some new cultural experiences and perspectives I had to mull over, in addition to normal emotions associated with facing friends' medical difficulties with them. I decided I need more of these solo trips to begin to really live "in Senegal."

A True Story

2007-11-16T18:57:00.000Z

A few weekends ago, I went to dinner with a new Canadian friend (we'll call him Dan) who was "baching it" for the weekend while his wife (who we'll call Angie) was at a retreat. Knowing that Angie is American, and that Dan had attended graduate school in the US, I risked asking him a potentially sensitive question: what stereotypes of Americans he had found to be generally accurate--and annoying. He thought a bit and said, "I wish Americans knew more about Canada."

Fair enough, I thought. And, hoping to be the beginning of the change he wanted, I asked him, "What do you wish Americans knew about Canada?" He paused for a long time, and finally said, "I don't know."

A Bird in the Bush

2007-11-07T20:30:00.000Z

Last Sunday, I spent an exceedingly pleasant afternoon with a group of old and new friends (not counting the birds) at a nearby technology park / golf course / nature preserve. A golfer leaving the park saw us carting binoculars and cameras, and alerted us to the presence of flamingos in a distant corner of the golf course. By the time we got there, the flamingos had left, but just learning about this secluded and pretty part of the park--with open water, brushy trees, and open fields attracting a terrific mix of birds--was worth the trip.

This was also a "get back on the horse" experience for me. I've barely touched my camera since losing literally thousands of photos last spring (see my September 8, 2007 post). Though I didn't take my long zoom and tripod with me, I'm still happy to have begun replenishing my photo collection with this plain but clear shot of a red-billed hornbill. The hornbill, which also comes in a gray-billed variety, is an active, noisy bird with amusing flight patterns. It is perhaps 2 feet long from tip of its bill to the end of its long tail.

Dakar Academy Alum in Space

2007-10-27T23:19:00.000Z

Former Dakar Academy student Scott E. Parazynski completed his fifth space walk yesterday. As the Space Shuttle's lead space walker on STS-120 (the 120th shuttle mission), Scott was in charge of installing the massive, new HARMONY live-in unit at the International Space Station (ISS). In the next three walks, he will oversee the moving of another huge part of the ISS, a project he likens to the structural relocation of a huge Victorian house which he witnessed as a child.

Scott grew up as an international traveler, living in the US, Lebanon, Greece, Iran, and "two wonderful years in West Africa, in Dakar, Senegal," where he attended Dakar Academy as a junior high school student.

To read more about STS-120, the ISS, or Scott (including his biography, an interview, and even the meal menu for this Shuttle voyage), go to

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts120/index.html (The above photo of Scott is from www.nasa.gov)

Home, Sweet Home

2007-10-05T16:50:00.000Z

This remarkable image of the coast of West Africa is NASA's "photo of the week" (http://www.nasa.gov/). It shows a dust storm blowing over the Atlantic Ocean from Mauritania. If you could zoom in close enough, you'd see me on that little green peninsula near the bottom.

Actually, if you go to GoogleEarth, you can zoom in that close! When you do, find the airport on the west side of the penninsula. Due southeast from the airport, near the opposite shore, look for a large brown patch. That's Hann Park (the Dakar Zoo). Zoom in on that, and you can see the Dakar Academy campus across the street, near the top left corner of the park!

The campus has several buildings, a couple of parking lots, a basketball court, a sand lot, and, easiest to spot, a large grass-less, gray soccer field surrounded by trees. Near the bottom left corner of campus, there's a backwards-L-shaped building. That's my apartment house. I'm the guy on the roof waving at the camera.

"Will it be enough?"

2007-09-28T16:05:00.000Z

In my post of August 28, I explained the hardships faced annually by many Senegalese subsistence farmers whose first fall harvests often aren't sufficient to meet the needs of their families.

In this photo of our Elementary Chapel service earlier today, you can see the stack of bags of rice and beans--over 2-½ tons--collected by our K-12 students. Tomorrow, a small group of students and staff will deliver the staples to suffering villagers.

"Will it be enough?" asked one of my fourth graders. I had to be honest. "No," I told her, "it won't feed everyone, but it will help."

If you would like to help with similar efforts, send a donation to WorldVenture / 1501 W. Mineral Ave. / Littleton, CO 80120 / Attn: Special Project #6403-933 Famine Relief, or you can give online at www.WorldVenture.com.

Spiritual Power, not Electrical Power

2007-09-19T17:34:00.000Z

In my past four years here, the months of August through November have been quite frustrating because of the almost daily power outages. (The first year was the worst—I was teaching computers. Imagine doing that with no electricity!)

This school year has been different. So far, we’ve lost power on campus only a handful of times, and for only a half hour or so each, instead of the typical 6-10 hour outages. Nearby neighborhoods, on the other hand, continue to go without power for extended periods. Though it's impossible to say for sure why, one plausible theory is that a high government official has moved into our neighborhood, and is making sure his home has consistent electrical service.

Well, a letter I read today indicates someone even more powerful has "moved into the neighborhood." I'll copy in portions of the letter below, but for it to make sense, you need a little background.

For about a third of our students, DA is home for three quarters of the year; they live in dorms on or near campus while their parents serve as missionaries in more remote parts of West Africa. Each dorm has a set of dorm parents—a married couple who care for the students during the school year. Dorm parents get one night off each week, and someone else from school fills in for them.

Dan (our middle school/high school principal) and his wife, Patty (our second grade teacher), fill in as “dorm relief parents” for the middle school boys each Monday night. Following a Senegalese tradition, Dan and the boys drink a tea called attayah [uh-TY-uh], the brewing and drinking of which is the centerpiece of evening fellowship in Senegal. It is often prepared outdoors. To make their attayah gatherings even more fun, the middle schoolers hold theirs on the roof (houses in Senegal have flat roofs).

In a letter to the boys’ parents, this week, Dan described the “incredible thing” he witnessed in the dorm Monday night. I reprint exerpts here, edited somewhat for clarity.

On a normal Monday evening, I take the boys on the roof for attayah and a devotion. Last night was no different, except that one of the boys asked if we could have an extended prayer time on the roof after the devotion. . . . As we ended our time on the roof, the rains began to come down, and WOW, did it pour, and then the power went out.
Shortly thereafter, the boys came to me and asked permission to all sleep in the living room. They cited two reasons. (1) With the power being out, it was cooler and (2) they wanted to continue their time in prayer.
By 9:00 P.M., every boy was in the living room and it was pitch black. They began to pray. They prayed for each other, for DA, for their parents, for their parents’ ministries, for the administration, for their dorm parents, for the Senegalese people, for God to crush Satan’s power in Senegal. They prayed and prayed and prayed.
Then they began to pray one-on-one with each other; each boy going to all of his dorm mates. Several of them even prayed with and for me. I was absolutely blown away. At around 10:00 P.M., the power suddenly came back on. Several of the boys got up and turned off all the lights while the others continued to pray. . . .
They prayed for the Holy Spirit to empower them to share the Gospel and to give them the courage to love each other and everyone they came in contact with. They prayed for strength, they prayed for God’s armor, they prayed for the Holy Spirit to take control of their lives. . . . They prayed for over two hours!
. . . Your children are . . . a bright light in our lives. . . . They are a testament to your loving affection and guidance. They are a testament to the power of the Holy Spirit. . . . They are a testament to what young boys can do for a world in need of God’s love. . . .
May God bless your day as your boys have blessed my night!
In His Service,
Dan

DA Wins Award

2007-09-19T16:32:00.000Z

DA won an Exemplary School Program award from one of our accrediting organizations, the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), for our innovative and effective Student Outreach program. The following description (co-authored by yours truly) summarizes the program. Though the article looks long here, it's actually fills only a single published magazine page. And it's pretty inspiring.

Imagine . . .
You pour a foundation, make 1,600 bricks by hand, lay the walls, raise the roof, and worship with local Christians in the church you just built for them.
You visit several villages, presenting skits and puppet shows, and starting children’s Bible clubs.
You play soccer with a high school team, then present the school with dictionaries, textbooks, and soccer uniforms.
You hold two performances of mime and multi-language music, followed by an
evangelistic film and a call to freedom in Christ by a local pastor.
Now imagine . . . you are in high school, you and fellow students did all of this, and more, in one weekend, and you financed it yourselves.
This real-life scenario gives only a taste of the varied ways that Dakar Academy DA) high school students use their diverse gifts to minister to people in Sénégal through DA’s innovative Student Outreach Program. Other facets of the program include monthly visits to an orphanage; soap and shoe drives for local ministries to street kids; and friendship evangelism at a large French high school near our campus.
What makes this program remarkable? The answers to that question fall into the following four categories.
Strategic Breadth
My Skills Count: The variety of activities staged in a single weekend—manual labor, visual arts, performing arts, healthcare, sports—enables virtually any high school student to participate meaningfully.
Multiple Sizes Fit All: This variety also broadens the impact: if one aspect of the outreach doesn’t touch a particular villager, another one probably does.
Participation Depth
Here I am Lord, Send Me: Outreach weekends attract more students than can participate; we consistently must turn volunteers away. One recent outreach involved 87 students—over 66% of the high school student body!
Pay as You Go: The program is self-supporting. They are funded by collections taken at DA’s Sunday morning worship services, attended by dorm students, some teachers, day students, and their families.
Chips Off the Young Blocks: The program’s vision is rubbing off on elementary students! A class of fifth graders who recently took a field trip to deliver Operation Christmas Child gifts to preschool children were proud to be doing something “like the big kids.” They realized that, though young, they can serve others for Christ.
Community Impact
Christian Identity: Students and staff from DA have built five churches in Sénégal. Beyond providing shelter for worship services, churches are a “24/7” symbol of Christian presence in the community. This strengthens local Christians’ identification with the body of Christ, and provides non-Christians with a visible reminder of the call to new life in Christ.
Spiritual Harvest: Sometimes fruit appears quickly: eight villagers chose to follow Christ during one outreach. Within weeks of another outreach, eighteen people had joined their village’s church—enlarging the congregation by more than fifty percent! Prayers for an end to drought brought the largest rains in 20 years.
Clearing the Path: The novelty of our students’ presence “in the bush” naturally attracts crowds. Their joy and generosity break barriers. Sénégalese children’s pastors report that our programs have opened doors for ministry in villages where previously they were not permitted to work.
Passing it On: Some DA teams have helped train Sénégalese Christian workers how to minister through puppetry and drama, extending the effect of our teams’ work.
Expanding Horizons
We’re grateful God is using us—teaching and equipping us to share the gospel across cultures. We are now developing partnerships with churches and schools in the U.S. and Europe, to help their students “catch” the vision, and extend the reach of the gospel in Sénégal.
May we be faithful and may God’s kingdom grow!

Photo Request

2007-09-08T13:35:00.000Z

Have I ever given you copies of photos I've taken (especially of Africa), either by email or on CD? If so, please, please, please send copies of these photos back to me.

Why?

Because, when my laptop crashed last spring, I lost hundreds of photos documenting my life in Senegal, pictures that I had thought were being backed up daily to my school's server. I'm trying to reconstruct some of this record of my time here.

Thanks!