Kalila in Greencastle

Here's a photo of Kalila, Faiza, my mom, and my dad, in our kitchen. Faiza has just presented my parents with presents from Uncle Negro -- beautiful Ghanaian masks that now occupy pride of place in our living room! This is right before our annual Christmas party -- I don't have good pictures of Kalila during the party on my own camera but other people do and I'll post them when we have them.

West African reading list

Here's what I read while I was gone. There's not a single thing on this list that I didn't like and wouldn't recommend, but I've tried to rank them within each category in order of what I suspect general interest will be :-)

NON-FICTION (choices were largely determined by what was available on Kindle)

• The Shadow of the Sun -- selective memoir of the three decades Poland's leading international correspondent spent in Africa. Super-readable, evocative, and not too long.
  
• You Must Set Forth at Dawn: A Memoir -- by Wole Soyinka, Nobel Prize for Literature from Nigeria and one of the leaders of the Nigerian diaspora's anti-Abacha movement). Fascinating and (not surprisingly) very well-written; also very long.
• Shady Practices: Agroforestry and Gender Politics in the Gambia -- surprisingly well-written and interesting account of the interactions between NGOs/development agencies and small-scale female gardeners, their families, and their villages. Well worth reading if you work in international development!
• Various selections from works of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president (revered like Washington, Lincoln, and FDR all rolled into one) and one of the foremost pan-Africanist intellectuals. He was quite the philosopher and rhetorician!
  
• Culture and Customs of Senegal -- extremely informative; especially useful given that the language barrier meant I couldn't talk to people to learn stuff or ask questions
• Mali: A Country Profile -- very short, almost like an encyclopedia entry.
  

FICTION/POETRY (I bought most of these in paperback at bookstores while traveling)

• Things Fall Apart -- one of Africa's most famous and widely-read modern novels, it is a page-turner set centuries ago about the downfall of one proud, ambitious man when the Europeans first arrive in his village.
  
• So Long a Letter -- a poignant, eminently readable portrayal of polygamy in Senegal.
  
• The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born -- an extremely provocative portrait of politics and corruption in the early years of Ghana's indepedendence.
• An anthology of West African poetry that doesn't seem to be on Amazon.

STILL TO BE READ

• The Belly of the Atlantic -- Haven't started it yet, but highly recommended by both Lonely Planet and the bookstore in the Gambia. A recent novel about the Senegalese emigration/diaspora and the country's relationship with France.
• The History of Ghana -- About halfway through this one; interesting, pretty straightforward, reasonably well-written. Uncle Nasir read much of it too and assured me that it was balanced and accurate, even though it's written by a white non-Ghanaian.
  
• I'd like to read some fiction/poetry/theater by Wole Soyinka (author named above of You Must Set Forth at Dawn)
  

Christmas Update: In Greencastle!

Had a great 36 hours in Washington DC. Highlights included catching up with Aaron Strauss, Colleen & Alex Denny, and of course the Rev House crew of Brandzel, Michelle, Padler, and Seth. Arrived in Greencastle a few nights ago in time for our annual Christmas caroling party, where my reunion with Kalila and parents Faiza and Samad took place! Then yesterday we took them to the Indianapolis Children's Museum.

Unfortunately am having trouble getting camera to connect to computer, so pictures will have to wait a bit.

Hope you are all doing well -- and whether you celebrate Christmas or not, have a merry one!

Landed in dc!

Soon to be picked up by the very generous Aaron Strauss. Looking forward to seeing you all!

Cultural & political influences in West Africa

A few notes on my observations of cultural and political influences on West Africa:

• US culture is most prominent on TV, where many American movies and TV shows are on. In the Gambia the family I was staying with also watched CNN. However, we are far from unchallenged in the role of cultural supremacy. Al-Jazeera is the primary international news source for my host family in Accra; TV in the Gambia has lots of Bollywood; many if not most English-language programs have Arabic subtitles (example shown in the parlor of Ibraheem and Sirah’s home in the Gambia); and South African shows also seem popular.
• France is of course hugely influential in Senegal but not much so in Ghana and less than I might have expected in the Gambia given that it is landlocked by Senegal. France had a different kind of approach to colonialism than the Brits, and ties seem to be closer between France and the Francophone West African intellectual/cultural elite than the corresponding British relationship.
• Germany, for some reason, has a lot of well-marked development projects in the Gambia. Not sure why.
• I met a real live person, who spoke enough English to have a real conversation with, who had not heard of Barack Obama! She is 16 years old and from a tiny rural village in northwest Ghana, near Wa. She is “educated,” meaning that she goes to school unlike some of her siblings (hence the English). And she had no idea who Obama was – in fact, I’m not sure she even understood the concept of the President of America. Most other West Africans, however, seem to have quite a balanced opinion of Obama. They think he’s generally good, he’s probably made a few mistakes, and that Americans are expecting far too much far too quickly from him given how royally Bush screwed things over. They don’t have too much of the attitude I was surprised by in Jamaica last year, where Obama is viewed in the same category of historical figure as Bob Marley, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X – he’s not a savior or even really viewed as a representative of the black race -- he’s just a good guy who’s got a really tough job. Not sure how much the difference is because it’s now a year later and we’ve all lowered our expectations for Obama, and how much the attitudes differed all along. However, I did come across the pictured "Obama biscuits" this morning and couldn't resist buying them :-)
• Speaking of Bob Marley, he and reggae are remarkably popular here, I think for reasons closely related to the strong underlying sentiments of pan-Africanism and that all black people need to stick together the whole world round. There is a small slice of men in Ghana, the Gambia, and Senegal each who are visibly Rastafarian. Note: Rafiq and Faiza asked me at one point why all the white women in Africa who are traveling with/sleeping with/dating black men are with the black men with dreadlocks, and I had no good answer – but from observation it’s undoubtedly true!
  
• Nigeria is clearly the cultural Mecca of Anglophone West Africa – Nigerian productions make up probably 70% of all West-African generated music, film, and TV I encountered, even though I didn’t go to Nigeria or any of its border states!
• Australia has a very low profile (though I'm told that some of Ghana's gold mines are run by Australian companies) and Australians are very rare here (which in my traveling experience is unusual – they are all over Latin America, Europe, and of course Asia!)
• In Ghana, several times I was shown massive construction projects (usually sports stadiums) that were introduced with the sentence “The Chinese built this,” accompanied by a warranted awe for Chinese efficiency. Otherwise there wasn’t too much obvious Chinese influence, but neither was there too much obvious American influence outside of TV. My hosts in Ghana seem to think that America is more influential on Ghana’s politics, however.
• In the Gambia, I asked the same set of questions about China and was surprised to learn that China and the Gambia have highly strained diplomatic relations because Jammeh, the Gambian President, is one of the most vocal supporters of Taiwan on the international stage (eg at the UN). Taiwan, in return, provides a lot of aid to Gambia, including things like scholarships to go study at Taiwanese universities. But it was an important reminder of how being the head of state for a very small, poor country can still carry with it much more power in some ways than being, say, a governor of a very large, rich state in the US.

Back "home" in Accra!

As I told Uncle Negro and Sarah, when I got off the plane yesterday in Accra I felt like I was coming home! Of course Faiza and Kalila aren't here, but I'll see them soon enough in Indiana.

My last few days in the Gambia were packed with excitement, including a few more kora lessons, a fascinating school theater performance that Ibraheem was judging, and the opening ceremony of a national youth conference that Ibraheem was running, complete with the Vice President of the Gambia.

The first photo is of one of the acts in the school theater performance -- a traditional Indian dance, performed by a couple of students of Indian descent and a couple native Gambians. I hope I have time to write a whole blog post on the entire event, as it certainly deserves it, but this act in particular stuck out in my mind. The girl on the left in the picture was the leader of the group, and while the other dancers sometimes stumbled through the choreography, she had a look of intense focus the whole time (and it was long -- like maybe 4-5 min). The audience of middle and high school students, who you can see a few of at the bottom the picture, were going absolutely wild the whole time, screaming and dancing and clapping along. And I just had this sense that for this young girl, living in a country and going to a school where she's in a tiny minority ethnically and culturally (and probably religiously, though she could be Muslim), this was a pivotal moment in her adolescent years, the kind of moment of feeling accepted and even celebrated that problably doesn't come along very often. I felt a real sense of vicarious pride and joy in her accomplishment!

The second picture is from the opening ceremonies of the youth conference -- part of a procession of youth groups, musicians, traditional dancers, and more passing by a dais with several ministers and the Vice President. The brown hairy guy dancers you can see in this picture are monsters who carry machetes, and they're acting out some sort of attack scene. It's supposed to be very bad luck if they touch you with their machetes, and Sirah tells me that Rugi used to be very frightened of them as a child.

A veritable Babel

[This is a very long post, but I hope an interesting one!]

West Africa is not like the USA or Australia or even Latin America for many reasons, but one is easy not to think about until you get here. Ghana is English-speaking, says the guidebook. Senegal, French.

Ha!

Virtually no one here speaks a European language in the home. And because of the long history of migrations within the continent, in any given location there are at least 3 or 4 African languages that are the first language of a large segment of the population. The language you speak at home is, as far as I can tell, the primary indicator of what tribe/clan/people you belong to.

But you also don’t just speak your in-the-home language plus English/French. Usually, you speak your own language, plus at least one other African language that is widespread in your area at the level of fluency, plus at least one other African language as well as I speak Spanish (which is to say, plenty well enough for daily practicalities, bargaining, etc). So for example, in the Gambia, the languages/tribes that are widespread include Wolof, Mandinka, Fula, and Sarahule. Of these, most people seem to have practical knowledge if not fluency in both Wolof and Mandinka, as well as their own language if it’s neither of those

You also probably went to Koranic school and memorized the entire Koran in Arabic as a child, and if you are particularly religious you may have learned even more Arabic than that or at least kept up your Koranic reading over the years. And then, if you went to school, you speak either English or French (possibly both) reasonably well (and if you didn’t, you probably speak enough to at least sell things to tourists). And none of these languages are luxuries – you need all of them to conduct your daily affairs. Pictured is Malang, an 18-year-old member of Ibraheem's household, who speaks Mandinka, Wolof, Fula, English, and French, in front of an Arabic-language TV program.

It’s enough to give me, with my practical Spanish and my beginner-level dabbling in German, Mandarin, and French, quite the inferiority complex. And it really puts Americans to shame in general. Imagine how much better off we’d be if every American spoke both English and Spanish fluently, as well as at least one other language at a proficient level! And we’d still be behind West Africans. [It also seems like quite the waste of brainpower here in an objective sense. Part of me feels like “gosh, if they’d just all speak English at home and then devote all that energy and time to learning Mandarin, Arabic, and either French, German or Spanish, they’d have valuable skills marketable the world over!” But of course that is not how it works…]

Other observations:

• Most people are not literate in any African language, with the exception I think being Wolof in Senegal, in which there is actually a growing body of literature, film, etc (though there is both Wolof written in the Roman script and Wolof written in Arabic script, called Wolofal). Even in Senegal, though all the Roman script writing I saw on signs/shopfronts/etc was in English, and I assume that all the Arabic script writing was in Arabic, not Wolofal.
• The two families who have so graciously hosted me both have televisions in the parlor that are on a lot of the time, and almost all the programming is in English. Watching cartoons takes on a whole educational level if you are learning a language while watching!
• I think I’ve gotten a lot better over the past 5 weeks at parsing English spoken with a West African accent. The big problem I have is not so much the different pronunciation of vowels and consonants, though there is a bit of that, but more the difference in emphasis on syllables and the rhythm of the sentence. Eg, the word “development”, which is used a lot here, is pronounced something like dee-VEL-up-MUNT by us, and something like "DUH-vlup-munt" by most West Africans I’ve encountered. String a bunch of differently-emphasized words like that together and change the emphasis/rhythm of words within the sentence, and it can be really tough for the American ear to parse.

There are a few concepts/types of communication that routinely cause problems for me:

1. Relatives: The words “brother”, “sister”, “father”, “mother”, and so on, are used to refer not just to your immediate nuclear family, but to your cousins, aunts, and uncles – because in West African family structure, your father’s brother has equivalent authority over you as your father, and your responsibilities to his children are not that different from your responsibilities to your father’s children. It took me a while to break the reflex of assuming that when someone uses one of these words, they mean what we mean. There are other confusions like using “stepfather” to refer to your father’s brother (because if your father dies, he will probably marry your mother), and “uncle” to refer to the unrelated man your mother marries after your father’s death (I don’t know why – I guess because “stepfather” was taken and “uncle” wasn’t being used?)
   
   Moreover, it’s clearly not just a translation issue – it’s a different way of categorizing the world. When I ask something like “what is her relation to you *actually*? How are her parents related to yours?” etc – people have to actually think about it as if solving a new math problem. Their relatives are classified in swathes of “grandparents” (people two generations above you) “fathers/mothers” (people one generation above you), “sisters/brothers” (your own generation), and “sons/daughters” (the generation below), and the question that Europeans consider critical of what percentage of your genes you share is simply not relevant.
   
   What I am dying to know but can’t figure out how to get across the concept of asking is at what point the expansion of kinship ends. If your father’s brother’s children are also your brothers and sisters, then they are your children’s fathers and sisters as well. But clearly that can’t go on forever – how and when does someone drop out of that category and just because a loosely defined “distant relation”, which they also do talk about?



2. Referents/pronouns: First, I am often confused by stories in which gender pronouns are used because either the pairs he/she and him/her are used interchangeably or else my ears can’t hear the distinction within a West African accent.
   
   Second, compounding the problem, I have a very difficult time making a question like “but I’m confused, who is the “he” you are referring to in this story?” clear. For instance if out of the blue someone says to me “You know, that woman owns the store down the road,” and I ask “who is that woman?” because I don’t know who they’re referring to (the woman we just greeted on the roadside? The woman we had an appointment with earlier today? The mother of a friend who we were just talking about?”), The answer is usually “The woman who owns the store down the road.” I repeat, yes, but who are you talking about? The frustrated response: “The owner of the store! I hope you understand now.” And so on…



3. Planning/time. This one I assume is only partly language, and a lot about the whole “African time” phenomenon. But questions like “how soon will he get here?” are often answered with statements like “he has already left.” “But how soon do you think that means he will arrive?” “Oh, that I cannot say…”



4. Measuring frequency & ratios. (I think this is probably related to the African time phenomenon as well.) Being my father’s daughter a lot of my questions about culture and lifestyle come in the form of “How often do you do X?” or “What percentage of people are Y?” The answer to a question like this almost invariably comes in the form of an anecdote, about a time when they did X or a person who is Y. The anecdotes are usually very illuminating about how things work, but they do not answer my question!
   
   In order to get a related answer, I have to repeat the question in several different but related ways (eg, “When was the last time you did X? or “How many times did you do X last month”? or “Are most of your friends Y, or just a few?”), and even then often fail. I have been thinking that I should actually try this on some random Americans and see how it goes – it seems entirely possible that my set of friends and colleagues think about frequencies and ratios differently from the average Anglo as well from the average African.

Home in less than a week!

Have been busy the last few days, not as much blog posting time, but much to blog about... This trip is very rapidly coming to a close – I fly back to Accra on Saturday, then arrive in DC on Tuesday morning, then fly to Greencastle on Wednesday evening, if all the flights go as scheduled.

I really don’t want to think about what the temperature shock is going to feel like… I don’t even have a jacket in which to make my way from Dulles to Mt Pleasant!

On the other hand, Kalila is by all reports doing quite well at the Indianapolis hospital post-surgery, and I’m really looking forward to checking up on her in person very soon.

Speaking of kids, here’s a bonus picture of me carrying Bobo (Ibraheem Jr) around on my back, African-style. The Gambians Sirah and I walked past on the street found this hilarious. It’s also the first practical use for large breasts I’ve ever recognized – they’re essential for fighting the baby’s gravity!

Sandele Eco-Resort

This post is primarily for some friends who are considering Sandele as a retreat site. I have no other easy way of sending photos to them :-)

Going clockwise from top right:
First pic -- view from beachside meeting hut
Second pic -- view of inside of beach meeting hut
Third pic -- view of unfinished inside of another meeting space -- they are planning to remove some of the pillars
Fourth pic -- view of rooftop meeting space. Right now there's no roof but they say they can easily construct a shade tent.

Down South

Today, Sarjoe and I headed down “south” (insofar as the Gambia has a “south”) along the coast -- all the way to the Gambia's southern border with the Casamance region of Senegal. The border river (pictured, with Sarjoe) and the beaches in the Kartong area were both beautiful, serene and almost unoccupied.

Working our way back north, we stopped to see (and hold!) the snakes at the local Reptile Center. The woman who gave us a tour said that there are serious misconceptions about snakes in Gambian folklore that can even lead to unnecessary deaths, so part of their mission is to teach several thousand Gambian schoolchildren per year what there really is to fear and not fear from the local snakes. Unrelatedly (I hope), she had a simultaneously understated and lewd sense of humor -- telling us about one kind of snake that allegedly has two penises and can go at it for 24 hour straight; cracking jokes about tortoise polygamy; and ending the tour with the question "What is the most dangerous snake in the Gambia?" with the unexpected response "The one in men's pants."

At around 5pm, we watched the fishing village Tanji in full swing, with boatloads of fish pulling up and a sophisticated ladder of distribution in deployment. From what I could tell, it works something like this: Wholesale brokers take their teams of teenage boys out to the boats, buy fish in bulk, and have them carried back to shore in enormous buckets. Those fish that are to be dried are then carted away from shore in wheelbarrows to the smokehouses just a few dozen meters away. The fish that are to be sold fresh, iced or salted are bought on the beach from the wholesalers by small-scale distributors on the shore, who then take them to market in Serekunda or wherever the next day (presumably) -- or possibly resell them to the people who are actually going to take them to market, taking their own small slice of profit at each step of distribution.

Also today: We had lunch at and a very interesting briefing on the stunning Sandele Eco-resort, which we were checking out on behalf of Avaaz as a possible retreat venue. We also went to the Tanji museum on the history, culture, flora and fauna of the Gambia. And we visited with Sarjoe's sister and his former boss (a retired UNICEF professional).

The Sunday rounds

Yesterday, Sirah, Rugi, Bobo (Ibraheem Jr) and I did the rounds of family visits around town. First we visited Ibraheem's family compound, then Sirah's family's compound. The first picture is of the children at the latter compound eating in the standard Senegambian fashion -- a big bowl of rice with some form of flavorful stew/curry mixed in, eaten out of collectively with one's hands. The children, women, and men each eat out of separate bowls (you graduate to the adult world when you're about 10).

[That brings me briefly to the topic of hygiene and disease: There seems no concern or really even awareness of non-fatal person-to-person communicable diseases like colds or the flu -- but I also haven't heard of anyone having one. It's considered an absolute given that all food and drinks are shared in a way that would make most American parents shudder for fear of their child having the sniffles for a few days. Hands are also washed pre-meal in shared bowls of water, which doesn't really help the situation much!]

Next came Rugi's father's compound (where his second wife lives -- his first wife lives in Sirah's family's compound), and finally the house of one of Sirah's cousins, her husband, and his second wife. Sirah's cousin gave birth 2 weeks ago to her 4th child, who I think may hold the distinction of the youngest child I can remember ever holding. The second picture is of Rugi's father writing Koran verses (using washable ink) in Arabic for the children in his compound to memorize. Rugi herself goes there after school most days to learn them.

These compounds are all literally crawling with children. I'd say the adult-to-child ratio is about 3:2 if you define child as under 16 -- which fits approximately with the published demographics of the Gambia. But the childcare burden for adults is no more overwhelming than it is in the US, possibly less so, because first of all of the shared load among all the women and second because of the extremely well-established role that the older children (especially but not exclusively the girls) play in caring for the younger children. In fact, it's led me to think a lot about the way that we think about education. I may be able to type and read really fast but any 10-year-old Gambian girl is far more qualified to care for a child than I am -- and you can't say that's not an important life skill!

Afterwards we went to the beach again for a little while -- hence the final photo. Rugi is developing quite an impressive flick, no mean feat in the windy oceanside conditions especially

Ile de Goree

Another post to catch you all up on my time in Senegal:

I spent a day on Ile de Goree, a tiny picturesque island just off the Dakar harbor with about 2000 permanent residents, most of whom are small-scale innkeepers during the tourist season and many of whom are artists of one form or another. It was one of the initial strongholds of the Europeans in Senegambia and served as a key administrative base for hundreds of years for several European powers (the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the French all had their turns) as well as a holding center for slaves waiting to be shipped to the New World.

The historical museums were interesting (and provided a reason to discover that with my Spanish, English, and very rudimentary spoken French, I can read French reasonably well -- I'd say better and faster than most West Africans I've met can read English, even those who've been all the way through secondary school), the art was quite good, and being in a place so central to such a horrific phenomenon as the slave trade is of course sobering at best. But what I actually enjoyed most about the island was finding the "hidden" corners of the island where the villagers were just living their lives with only the occasional observation of tourists.

The second picture is of a group of girls playing a game that seemed vaguely familiar to me -- I think that in elementary school I might have played something similar. They had a long elastic band that three of them stood in the corners of to form a triangle. Three others stood inside the triangle, one on each side, and then in synchronized fashion jumped over the band on their side, jumped back over, and moved to the next side.

I watched for a while (not daring to get too close and distract them), but couldn't figure out what the rules were for when you got kicked out of the jumpers. You were definitely allowed to touch the elastic; the height wasn't being consistently raised or anything, but there was clearly something you could do wrong that would result in your turn being over -- and I couldn't figure out what it was. Ah well, another one of the humbling mysteries of life, reminding us that not everything is knowable...

Kalila update: Ready for surgery!

I'm in the Gambia while Kalila, her parents, and my mom are getting ready for surgery!

The email my mom sent to all donors yesterday -- with a cute photo of Kalila in her donated sweater and hat to ward off the Indiana chill!

***************

Dear Friends,

Kalila and her parents, Faiza and Samar, arrived Thursday morning. We went straight to the hospital for a full day of tests. I had predicted that Kalila would be scared and miserable. Not at all! She (unlike her parents) had slept well on the night flight from Ghana and seemed totally delighted to find herself in a brand new place to explore. Despite the fact that she was being pricked and prodded by strangers the entire day, she was charming and cooperative. The best day-long performance I can ever recall for a two-year-old. I can see why Taren fell in love with her.

Unless catches a cold, her surgery will be first thing Monday morning and should last 6 - 7 hours. Please keep her and her parents in your thoughts and prayers. Her parents have expressed their gratitude to all of you many times over.

Kelsey

More frisbee

Just in case you felt like I haven't done enough evangelizing for the frisbee, here is me teaching Rugi forehand grip this morning.

Thanks to Malang for taking the photo -- you haven't met him yet but he is an 18-year-old resident of the Ceesay household who Ibrahim has "adopted." He is speaks excellent English and, while studying waste management for the time being, is trying to scrape together funds to start a cell phone repair/maintenance/unlocking shop. He and Rugi and I spent more than an hour throwing on the beach today!

Kora Jali

That's me -- a "jali" (update: spelling corrected from "jalli"), or student, of the kora, West Africa's traditional harp and probably signature musical instrument (along with the djembe drum, of course). I'm taking lessons from one of the Gambia's best-known players (pictured), nicknamed Pa Bobo. He started touring around the world around the age of 12, and has a website here. Today was my second lesson and so far I can play about 8 basic tunes.

Kora are now made with the traditional materials of a calabash gourd, cowhide, wood, and the less traditional materials of thumbtacks and fishing line. Being a musician, or griot, is considered hereditary here in West Africa and Pa Bobo comes from one of the most prominent griot families in the Gambia.

I'm finding it much easier than guitar, probably in part because there are no pesky key changes -- so in that sense it's also a lot less flexible. The harp is in F major (and therefore I suppose E minor). I'm probably going to buy a small one and bring it back -- just need to make sure I can bring it through customs, though Pa Bobo obviously manages to get his through when he travels, so it must be possible.

Oh, and yes, those are braids! For some reason it hadn't occurred to me until yesterday that my hair was long enough for braids for the first time in more than 5 years! Still not quite long enough for a single braid in the back, but still very exciting.

Meet the family, Gambia edition

In Serekunda, the largest city in the Gambia, I am staying at the house of Ibraheem Ceesay and his lovely wife Sirah. I went to visit Sirah at the department store she works at today and here is a picture of the two of us.

Ibraheem, who is ED of a small Gambian NGO called Children for Children, is in Senegal right now doing some NGO facilitation/trainings. He'll be back on Saturday, but in the meantime I'm getting to know his household and touring around the Gambia with C4C's Logistics Coordinator, who moonlights as a tour guide on a regular basis (and, critically, has a 4WD).

The next picture (sorry I still haven't figured out how to rotate...) is of Rugi, who is Sirah's sister and lives with Sirah and Ibraheem, and Booboo (Ibrahim Jr), Ibrahim and Sirah's second son. (Their first son, Omar, is with Sirah's mother in Guinea-Bissau for a few months.) Booboo is about 6 months old and has had a somewhat exaggerated version of Kalila's initial reaction to me. Yesterday while Sirah was at work and Rugi (who does a good portion of the child care) was at school, the maid/nanny, Haddy, left me alone for about 15 min with Ibraheem to run some errands. I was sitting across the room, and as soon as she walked out the door he took one look at me and started screaming. I tried everything from singing to him to leaving the room so that he couldn't see me, but he wasn't having any of this whole being-left-alone-with-a-terrifying-white-person thing and screamed non-stop til she got back.

Since then I've been making my best efforts to become friends and he has gotten to the point of smiling at my peekaboo and developing a decided interest in chewing on my fingers as long as he's in the arms of someone he trusts. He still does occasionally, and as far as I can tell unpredictably, burst into tears on the sight of my face, but I'm counting it overall as progress.

A meditation on markets

As in every developing country I've traveled in, most everyday commerce in West African countries takes place on the streets rather than in "real" stores. There are some fairly big differences between and within countries, of course: In Accra especially, the markets come to you in that anytime you are stopped in traffic (which is about 80% of the time you're in a car), you are approached by vendors darting through the stopped vehicles to sell you anything from a bag of cashews to a colander to a cell phone -- you could literally do a day's worth of shopping without ever leaving your car. In Dakar people are particularly insistent that surely any white person wants to buy whatever it is they are selling. In Serekunda's main market I for some reason have been unable to locate the sellers of bananas and oranges, though other fruits and vegetables are readily available and you can get bananas and oranges on any road outside town.

But the basic point is that the "informal" economy far outpaces the "formal" economy in the realm of everyday goods and services.

I've been thinking a lot about why that is, how it works, and what the factors are that would lead to an informal market economy to turn into a formal store-based economy. Here's what I've come up with so far:

Hallmarks of an informal market-based economy

• Lots of small-scale subsistence or barely-above-subsistence farming/gardening
• Child labor is available for hawking goods
• Transportation has a relatively high cost in terms of either time or money, so lots of small outlets spread out all over town selling an item significantly reduces transaction costs
• High unemployment
• Low literacy/level of qualification to be employed in the formal economy
• Culture of markets
• Warm weather year-round
  

Hallmarks of a formal store-based economy

• Information about where to purchase things is readily available, whether because of chain reputation, the presence of the internet, or something else.
• Credit readily available/credit cards in widespread use
• Relatively high income level for lowest 20% -- high enough that the marginal amount you can earn by buying a good from a distributor and then selling it on the street, usually, against stiff, ubiquitous competition, is too low to be worth your time even if you are unemployed
  
• Strong culture/enforcement of paying sales/income taxes
• Strong enforcement of licensing/loitering/etc provisions
  
• Culture of stores (meaning simply that consumers are used to going to stores to buy things instead of buying them on the street)
  

I just made this list up, of course, and it really doesn't feel like it tells the whole story to me. I'd really love to hear other people's thoughts on this matter!

Additionally, other than food, almost all of the items being sold are manufactured outside of Africa. And in fact, a fair amount of the food is imported as well. I've tried to inquire as to how the goods are distributed to the vendors once they are imported, but the vendors almost universally fail to understand what the crazy white woman is trying to ask them -- and/or they don't have a clear picture themselves! It seems that the region's main exports to make up the trade balance are groundnuts (peanuts) and, in Ghana, cocoa.

Games

One of my favorite past-times in Senegal, where I couldn't have very in-depth conversations with very many people due to my lack of French (and of course lack of Wolof and Mandinka and all the other widely-spoken African languages), was to watch people playing a game and try to figure out the rules.

Pictured above are two young men who were playing a game in the sand in the beach at Toubab Dialao, a fishing village where I spent a very pleasant day and a half. The called the game "dam", and as far as I could discern the rules are thus:

• Played on a 5-by-5 board (in this case, demarcated by holes dug in the sand by hand)
• Each side has 11 pieces (in this case, rocks vs sticks)
• You take turns putting your pieces down in any free spot on the board til you're done
• Then you take turns making moves, which consist of either moving a piece one space in any horizontal/vertical direction (but not diagonally), or of jumping over an adjacent enemy piece in any horizontal/vertical direction as long as you land on an empty square, in which case you get to remove the enemy piece from the board
• Whoever has pieces remaining on the board wins (though all the games I watched were conceded with a few of the loser's pieces left, rather than being fully played out)

I am not 100% sure of this but there may also have been some sort of concession for the disadvantaged side (the side that went second? the side that lost the last game?), such as getting to remove one extra of the advantaged side's pieces on their first Phase 2 turn (after all the pieces were laid down).

Later in a different village I saw a few old men playing a game that looked similar on a wooden board that was more like 10 by 10 or maybe even larger, and the guide told me it was also called "dam" and was dismissive of any 5 by 5 game called dam when I asked him whether they were the same, but I didn't have time to observe that one for very long.

A quick google search was unhelpful in identifying this game, but of course I could be spelling it completely wrong. Anyone heard of it or can help identify it in some other way?

Oh, and I also introduced frisbee to the kids at Toubab Dialao, engaging in a couple of sessions of beach-side (and often in-the-ocean) catch. The gender dynamics were very interesting -- the girls all wanted to play but as soon as the boys started playing they would melt away, only to return when almost all the boys were tired of it. I wonder whether my treatment of the boys was part of the problem -- I was interested in creating a mixed-gender group so when a boy approached I would try to include him, but he and his friends would quickly come to dominate the group. The girls, on the other hand, generally wouldn't approach a group of boys to try to cut in, so once the boys took over there was no going back. I'm not sure whether there's something I could have done to change the situation or whether it was inevitable...

The Gambia! (country #42)

Arrived in the Gambia last night to stay with Ibraheem Ceesay, Copenhagen AcFac-er extraordinaire, and his lovely wife Sirah. Have good internet access here -- more updates on the last 10 days to come tonight!

Also, I realized I left out Jamaica when I was country-counting, so this is #42! Full list:

EUROPE (18)
Germany
UK
France
Belgium
Luxembourg The Netherlands**
Denmark
Norway
Sweden
Finland
Lichtenstein*
Austria
Switzerland
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Hungary
Italy
Vatican*
Spain

NORTH AMERICA/CARRIBEAN (8)
USA
Canada
Mexico
Guatemala
Honduras
Nicaragua
Costa Rica
Jamaica

SOUTH AMERICA (6)
Argentina
Chile
Brazil
Uruguay
Paraguay
Bolivia

ASIA-PACIFIC (6)
Australia
New Zealand
Fiji
Singapore
Malaysia
China

AFRICA (4)
Ghana
Burkina Faso*
Senegal
The Gambia

*These are the 3 most questionable. Lichtenstein we went through on a train (we meaning my family, when I was 11) without knowing we had been in it until afterwards. The Vatican I think is debatable as to whether it's a country. And Burkina Faso, well, this was the extent of my visit there...

**Update: Oops, got this wrong the first time.

Time travel

I have traveled ALL THE WAY from 1981 to type this to you on a sneaky
French language keyboard (meaning the keyboard looks american but
among many other things seems not to have a close parenthesis key(,
from a tiny internet cafe in a dusty commercial fishing town halfway
between Dakar and Banjul, on a computer that must be at least 10 years
old:

Isnt traveling fun (missing question mark key( !

(Reference: http://xkcd.com/630/(

A few pictures

At a tiny cybercafe on the equally tiny Ile du Goree off of the Dakar harbor: Cant figure out punctuation on this keyboard so be content that you are getting As instead of Qs qnd vice versq ** see what i mean§

Anyway, just wanted to give you a bit of a taste of what Ive been up to for the last week.

First pic is of me and Uncle Negro with some of the elders of Jingbe-Yiri, the section (like a clan) of Wa that he is from.

The second is my conquest of Burkina Faso (country number 39).

I may not have gotten my passport stamped, but I was there, dammit.

And the last is of our stop at one of the oldest mud-and-stick mosques in the world -- and its still in daily use by the local community.

Kalila arriving in USA next week

Below is the update on Kalila that mom emailed to all of you yesterday.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Friday, December 3, 2010
Subject: Kalila arriving next week

Dear Friends of Kalila (and Taren),

Big developments
this week. We've scheduled the surgery, acquired visas, and bought plane
tickets for Kalila and her parents—and they are arriving in the US in six days!

As you know, our
initial goal was to raise $36,000 to cover the cost of pre-op,
surgery, and standard
post-op (i.e., no complications) at Boston Children's Hospital. With
pledges from nearly 200 friends for $29,000 plus $5,000 from Rotary in
Boston, we went ahead and
reserved a date for the operation.

Then Rotary of Central
Indiana (where I live and Taren grew up) suggested that we bring Kalila to
Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis
under Rotary's Gift of Life program. Not only would hospital costs be lower,
but we would also be guaranteed that all
of Kalila's medical expenses would be covered, even were she to have
substantial complications. Furthermore, we would have enough money to fly
Kalila and her parents here and home again.
After weighing the pros and cons, Kalila's parents decided to come to
Indianapolis. (Given the lower cost here, we may have money
left over. We will be in touch once we
know.)

Taren had postponed the rest of her Africa trip to stay in Ghana until
certain that the visas would come through, which they did today. Many
thanks to all of you who shared
expertise on this process, especially Genevieve Maricle (who many of you
know) for her enthusiastic intercessions with the State Department.
Taren is now in Senegal (without good Internet access) and I have
purchased the air
tickets.

Kalila will
arrive with her parents in Indianapolis
Thursday for two days of tests. Barring complications, the surgery will take
place Monday morning, Dec. 13. She will then recuperate for several weeks
with Taren and the rest of our family, and enjoy the company of nearly
100 friends
and neighbors here in Greencastle who also donated. Assuming all goes
well, they will head back
to Ghana
in mid-January. We hope to arrange a
layover in Washington DC so those of you who want to meet Kalila
and her family can do so. I know they
would love to meet and personally thank all of you.

Taren is adding
a note dictated via Skype: "I had no
idea whether any of this would be possible when I first emailed all of
you. To see it become a reality is
deeply moving for me. Kalila still faces
many hurdles in the coming weeks, but thanks to you she has a very good chance
of living a normal life. Please keep her
in your thoughts and prayers and we will keep you posted."

All the best,

Kelsey

Senegal!

I arrived in Senegal yesterday at 1:30 am, reaching my 40th country!
Burkina Faso, #39, was admittedly a bit weak -- I managed to take a
few steps on the other side of the river while on a boat tour from the
Ghanaian side hippo sanctuary.)

Spent yesterday wandering through Dakar. Turns out you learn a lot
less in francophone countries than anglophone countries if you don't
really speak French. Moving on today to the historic Ile de Goree,
then tomorrow down the coast.

(unfortunately I am posting from iPhone so I can't attach pictures.)

Update

Spent the last 5 days on a wonderful whirlwind tour of Ghana's Upper West region, with Uncles Negro and Nasir. Back in Accra today for Kalila's visa appointment (2 hours from now!) If all goes well with the appointment, planning to fly out tonight to Dakar, Senegal, spend a few days there, and then make my way overland to Banjul, the capitol of the Gambia, to visit Ceesay of EU Action Factory 2009 fame.

Then on the 18th back to Accra as originally described here.

Update coming soon on Kalila's surgery - finances, date, etc.