Dakar, America, and back again by popular demand

So I’m back. It’s been awhile since my last post and in between my trip to Dakar, the three weeks I spent back in the land of roads and television and my recent lack of motivation to update this blog, I’ve lost a lot of time. Now I guess is as good a time as any to update you all.

To save on expenses my flight back home was booked out of Dakar, Senegal and for many weeks I heard the plethora of horror stories involved in the trip from Banjul to there. Bad roads, tourist prices, which are pretty much highway robbery in the third world, border police and customs, and to make the cesspool of hassle worse it seems no one in all of Senegal speaks a decent amount of English or Mandinka, which only accentuates situations that would normally be easily alleviated. So you can see how I was more than relieved to hear that a few of the guys from my group were excited to accompany me there and check out Dakar for a few days. The trip had it’s issues: forgotten passports, west African border police with superiority complexes, overwhelmingly annoying car park children, bad roads in a tight car, and French gravely lost in translation; the journey though was well worth it.

Dakar is a bustling African metropolis that’s littered with elegant French, Lebanese, and Asian cuisine, a breath taking coastline, and a bustling music scene. This city on the tip of the Dakar peninsula has the very best western luxury has to offer with a distinctly African flavor. The city completely juxtaposes the surrounding towns on the way north from the Gambia which still maintain the village feel and look that is typical of the region; in some ways it seems there’s very little outflow of money from the city. After living in the Gambia for eight months though we dove into the city life without hesitation, pigging out at ice cream shops and eating at those expensive French restaurants that boast about their fine dining but give you a plate that has more flair than sustenance. I mean hell I could go to IHOP and stuff my self for five bucks, but here I’m paying my right arm to dabble a little ‘jinee sequa’ on my palette. Regardless though we ate in three days what we hadn’t eaten in weeks, and loved every minute of it. The atmosphere is amazingly friendly to tourists compared greatly to our experiences in the Gambia. It seemed even with the hustle and bustle of the big city, if even slightly, Dakar was able to maintain that relaxed and refreshing feel typical of West Africa.

Sadly, you can only eat for so many hours before it becomes less enjoyable, so we decided to set off towards one of the peninsula’s greatest treasures; an island wildlife refuge off the coast called Isle de Madeline. The island, because of it’s status as a wildlife refuge, is completely uninhabited and trips to and from the island must be taken by a small motor boat. We spent the day there swimming in a blue lagoon eating watermelon and climbing black rock cliffs for views of the city on the mainland. It was epically breathtaking and could only be rivaled, maybe, by the stunning beauty of the Greek isles. A must see while in Dakar, though I recommend spending the night camping there and coming back in the morning. It would not only save you on an expensive hotel room in the city for a night but also be a nice break from city life.

Why is this starting to sound like a travel documentary, I assume you all read this blog to be entertained by the ridiculous trouble I get myself into on a daily basis and like always fortunately I am able to again acquiesce your requests. Before hopping on the rickety boat over to the island we were all stuck in the midsts of trying to negotiate not having to pay to take a tour guide with us to the island. My first argument was justly with the fact that we would be paying for a person to explain the intricacies of the island to us… in French, as no one spoke English this was ridiculous. I’m sure you are asking of course how we were able to negotiate in the first place and I will say “negotiating” is a broad term as it was more part interpretive dance mixed with broken French and Gambian Wolof with a hint of Mandinka thrown in thanks to a few local Cassamance natives. My second argument was then of course the fact that I was to proud and all knowing of a zoologist to have to be taken on a freshman exploration of island ecosystems; and secondly was too ADD to sit through another arduous tale of French colonialism in west Africa. Of course though our efforts turned out to be futile and in accordance with Senegalese Parks Authority law we were forced to be escorted by the guide and still be given an explanation of the island in what to me only sounds like gibberish…. I ended up just walking off for the private Robinson Caruso tour of the island, aka me wondering aimlessly in search of shade, geckos and a flat rock to skip… but back to the shore. After the payment for our passes to the island were secured we waited for the boat to be brought in when a movement from behind an old beached canoe caught my eye. Around the stern came a red striped monkey of which it’s species name had completely escaped me *makes small pout towards charismatic mega-fauna*. I thought, “hmmmm, let me befriend this small creature and using my two decades worth of experience watching national geographic documentaries and that one semester of Animal Behavior Junior year I got a B+ in should be sufficient enough to win this less than intimidating monkey’s trust”… sigh, will I ever learn? So here was my plan, go in very submissively as to not be seen as a threat, crouching and inching near it slowly avoiding eye contact but showing a strong posture to not be perceived as fearful, which in my defense I’m sure might have worked if not for the fact that this monkey was tied to that boat and would soon precede to defend his small amount of territory aggressively. It was going alright at first, he came up and smelled me several times and would nibble on my thigh then walk away. The park ranger walking by then proceeded to antagonize said monkey by swatting at it with a stick. Said monkey then lunged at said thigh and firmly sank its fangs into, by the grace of god, the thick wallet in my pocket that was thankfully filled with enormously oversized west African currencies. Then surprisingly calmly I stood up and walked the few steps out of range of the monkeys lease. In conclusion I am an idiot, but an idiot who lives to see another rabies free day. :-D

The rest of the trip went by relaxed and refreshing and entailed three nights at a recommended hotel happy hour bar drinking giant mugs of local brews and hitting on, at the time, ravishingly hot French women and a goddess of a bartender. We hit up an array of, in retrospect way to expensive, foreign restaurants ranging from Korean to French to Lebanese. We relaxed in quiet little coffee shops down town and may or may not have rented 5-dollar motorcycles for a few hours… and the next thing I knew I was struck frozen staring strait at the sheer ridiculousness of the Starbucks in JFK. There I was, America.

Getting picked up by my brother’s overly unnecessary Ford F-150 Supercab truck and driving over the Ohio river to the beautiful site of the Cincinnati skyline was more than shocking, and that first time I stepped back into a grocery store definitely had me puzzled for which of the gazillion types of bread I should end up buying; but other than that it seemed I got in the groove of American life rather quickly, or at least the part that involves watching TV and surfing the internet until 3 in the morning then trying to get up in time to make McDonalds breakfast menu… I’d like to say I took part in the brightest sides of American culture. Nothing beats actually recent episodes of South Park and the Daily Show, or the fact that the internet is actually half decent in my house. I voted, ate in hopes of gaining at least 20 pounds (cheesesteaks, hot dogs and pancakes mostly), and tried really, really hard to find the motivation to help my mom out around the house; but it seemed the pace of life I was so use to for the past 8 months in the Gambia didn’t really translate well to the states. Sadly it’s just not as socially acceptable in middle class suburbia to sit under a tree all day, drink tea, and shout “TOUBAB!” as white people pass by. I got a chance to go to an amusement park and ride roller coasters that I am sure would put most of my friends in village into a coma, if not on the ride then at the site of the food prices when they got off.

I ate some extra McDonalds and a decent slice of New York pizza in JFK as I awaited the journey back to Africa. The flights were long and mostly uncomfortable with my mind racing of readjusting back into things, but thankfully a couple bad airline movies, liquor, and a good conversation with a rock climber from South Africa kept my mind off of things. I flew back into Dakar around 4 in the morning and it took a good dose of will power to keep my self awake and alert to avoid taxi driver harassment outside the terminal until I could check in at 9 or so. In the long 5 hours of slapping my self and trying not to look stupid half falling asleep with my eyes open I met a very interesting character. For the purposes of this blog we will just call him, ‘Spazy McGee’ though later I would find out his real name was Stephan. Spazy was a late 20 or so French speaker from southern Belgium and had to be on some high dosage of speed and or had just injected adrenaline strait into his veins in the bathroom because this man looked as though he was a 5 foot 6 4th grader suffering from a complex assortment of both ADHD and touretts. “Bonjour!” he exclaimed, “I’m sorry sir I do not speak French, do you speak English?”. He signed what I could only assume was, “are you on the flight to The Gambia and I really need to take a piss can you watch my shit because I don’t trust the several other people on the other side of the terminal who happen to be black.” I shook my head yes. On his return I assumed that that would be the end of our unimaginably uncomprehendable ability to have a conversation; but I had strongly underestimated Spazy McGee’s willingness to try and/or do anything but have to sit there snapping his head back and forth like he just got out of the jungle chased by rebels. So there we went, most of which I just shook my head in agreement; because though I had no idea what he was saying in French and odd sign language I found it refreshingly amusing to try and translate. This went on for the next few hours with a mix of attempts at conversation and minutes of silence till it got to the point where we obviously were on completely different pages in translating each others questions. I broke off into conversation for a few minutes with a nice Malian fisherman living in Seattle who spoke English very well and who I tried to greet in Sarahule. All I really ended up catching from Spazy’s rant was that he was going to The Gambia for a few days, something about him not liking Dakar taxi drivers (but who does), his mom sending him money to live in Dakar longer and him heading back to Belgium; oh and a little on the history of southern Belgium but during most of which were memories of the amazingly unsatisfying and dinky Belgium Waffle I had ate in the Brussels airport 8 months prior (see third blog entry or so). The next thing I knew I was waiting to get on the airplane and chowing down a sandwich and soda that cost me 4000 freaking cefa. Stephan, if you ever learn English and come across this blog I’d like to both apologize and thank you for keeping me awake and entertained with the conversation.

There I am, passing out then jerking awake a second later then back asleep in the terminal waiting to board, meanwhile the morning sun is blaring in my face as if to mock me, “Welcome back to Africa”. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in days and this journey hasn’t been exactly the most pleasant of cross Atlantic flights. The clock ticks down, and I’m thinking, When are they going to let us on the freaking plane? Finally the doors open and people push to get in line to get on the shuttle that will take us to yet another line to board the dinkiest of propeller planes which may or may not also serve in Senegal’s air force occasionally. Why now I ask you, the reader, is it necessary to push and shove, scream and yell, in order to be the first one on a plane which you have already been granted an assigned seat? Then after all this effort put forth to be the first on the plane would it be crucial to scream and get really offended when someone accidentally, out of his lack of sleep for the past few days and long flight sits in your seat, having dyslexiclly misread the seat number? Why? The last, and I mean THE LAST, thing I really felt like doing at that time is dealing with some bitch of a lady who just has to yell at me for accidentally sitting in the wrong seat, I mean seriously what is wrong with you when you have to push and shove to get on an airplane? Oh don’t worry, it gets better, stick with me here.

After the ordeal and finally having to wait till the plane is near take off to get back to my seat through the crowds of people in the isles I decided that I really should do everything humanly possible to pass out, short of smashing my head into the window, for the 50 minutes of sheer terror I only assume will be the flight. It must have been calm because I only woke up in short spurts of jerking awakenings, I must have looked like I was crazy or deathly sick, especially to the couple who had followed me on all my flights from JFK; who by some act of god seemed to be completely fine and lucid. What drugs were they on, and did they get them from Spazy? The plane lands, after many prayers from me, and I’m reminded why Senegalese Airlines brags about their 80% satisfaction rate on billboards. I’ve returned to my temporary home in the Gambia again and this time during the day, so I was able to see the landing onto the thin strip of tarmac in the middle of the bog as opposed to the darkness of the previous trip. I’m instantly relieved as I step down onto solid ground and hop in the shuttle. I feel safe here in the Gambia, now I can use my language ability to negotiate things again vs. in Dakar where I’m just a tourist; and Peace Corps rightfully receives respect here as well as being a household name I can drop. But my little adventure home was not over yet. Man, I really had to take a piss, maybe I can just walk off real quick to the bathroom before customs. It’s a tiny gas station like bathroom and I go into a stall and do my business… relief… then I’m greeted by a middle aged woman who looks to be cleaning the bathroom, and with my passport and paper work in hand she graciously asks to hold it for me as I wash my hands. I finish washing and she refuses to give me my passport back instead asking if, ‘I have anything for her’. “uhhhh nope, nothing, why what did you do for me that deserved payment other than a kind gesture between human beings?” I take my passport and papers and sensing a second wind head off to customs. I feel much more awake than I had, my short 30 minute power nap had obviously done wonders. My paper work had been rushed which said wonders on how much I really gave a shit now for these formalities and I was asked to go back and to please re-fill out the information fully this time. With a sneer I did, and in the end the officer just filled out his own information. “Where are you staying?” “Jiboro”, he looked up again in surprise as he obviously figured I would be staying at a hotel in the tourist region like most travelers. I ask him in Mandinka if he’d ever been there… he’s not impressed and says again in English, “What is your business in Jiboro?” “I’m a Peace Corps volunteer, but I traffic drugs and weapons to pass the time”. Great, I get the one guy who has no idea what Peace Corps is. He begins to quiz me, he obviously doesn’t believe, even with the presented work visa, that I really live in a little border village “Which Jiboro do you live in?”. Which really was a good question because some people don’t know that it’s actually broken up into two villages, New and Old Jiboro. I told him. “Alright sir, you can go” “Why thank you”.

I dodge the many “airport workers” who attempt to help me with my bag and respond merely with, “I’m completely capable enough to hold them thank you, It builds character” (something I’m sure I have too much of). Crossing my fingers I collect my bags on a cart and head to the X-Ray machine for my bags. The man at the end of the conveyer belt thankfully knows Peace Corps very well, as we get to talking cordially I find out he had a PCV in his village as a child. He has me open my bag for him and explain what I was doing with a fog horn, “I want to prank my host brothers, is that a crime?” “Nope you’re good, but I will have to charge you for bringing two laptops into the country, it’s our policy.” GOTCHA! …sigh. “Well sir thankfully one’s not technically mine but my late father’s and the other is strictly for use on saving malnourished Gambian children; but I completely understand, let me just make a quick call to Peace Corps office to sort this out” “No, no, that’s ok, this was just a warning anyways but next time you come back into the country I will have to charge you” “Don’t worry sir there will not be a next time” “Why is that?” “Well the next time I plan on going back to America will most likely be at the end of my service, and if I ever make it back here I will sure as hell not be bringing two laptops. Have a great day though sir.” Surprisingly, at this point I’m still very positive and feeling oddly awake, he was just doing his job anyways. I did end up checking up on the legitimacy of the “two laptop charge” and turns out it is actually valid. Some Gambians come in from Europe with several laptops to sell back in West Africa and who could blame them.



After clearing customs and the security check I proceeded outside to walk, what I thought was a few 100 meters, to the airport junction with the main road where you can catch a bush taxi for about 10 dalasis to either of the major town north or south. I walk out side am instantly confronted by about a dozen taxi drivers each trying to give me the, “Set Price” of the taxi ride to one of the nearer towns; 400 dalasi, about 20 dollars, pretty much high-way robbery when if you’re able to make it to the junction it’ll only cost you 50 cents. Now you should realize that I only brought one travel bag to the US but ended up coming back with two 50 pound bags, mostly containing gifts for my host family. And the plan was to just walk to that junction, which I would soon find out is a several miles. It also may help to visualize the environment at the time. It’s noon, in west Africa, clear day except for the sun which is taking up half the sky, during THE hottest month of the year, October, right after the rains have ended but before the cool winds of December have blown in, so it’s still humid as hell. There’s no trees for shade, no casually floating cumulous clouds to block the sun, it’s me, two 50 pound bags, my backpack, walking down the airport road which is in the middle of a wetland. But don’t worry, I wouldn’t have to walk the journey alone, I was soon accompanied by those taxi drivers, who feeling slighted at me saying I’d rather walk the little bit than pay that ridiculous standard price, decide to follow. But this was not a “little” bit at all and the taxi drivers had more than enough time in their schedule to follow, and berate me, the entire way. Since I had told them that I live here, and wouldn’t dare pay that tourist price (in Mandinka) they responded with, “Don’t you understand I have a family to feed, why can’t you just pay the 400 dalasi’s and we’ll take you to Birkama” “Don’t get this confused. Me walking away is not a bargaining technique, I legitimately don’t want a taxi, now if you could leave me alone that’d be greatly appreciated.” “You can’t just walk out of the airport, you HAVE to buy a taxi, this is my living and I know you have the money white man!” “Seriously, bro, I’m not negotiating and I really don’t have the money, Peace Corps doesn’t pay me much, just leave me alone and let me do this death walk on my own. Now if you’d be willing for 50 dalasi to take me to the junction that’d be appreciated, but if not please give me a fucking break.” But they continued to walk with me, watch, and suck up my suffering like vampire bats to a pool of blood. “Alright, bro, leave me the fuck alone, this is really not helping. And by what logic do you actually think that I’m just going to say, ‘you know what, that sounds great, I will just pay the money and go?’ You obviously gravely underestimate the extreme levels of pride I have. I would rather take all day to walk this road, sleep the night here, then walk the rest of the way to my village in the morning than to give you one butut. Eat shit.” This cursing back and forth continued, a few drivers even pulled up in there cars to watch and one offered me 100 dalasis to the junction to ease my pain; but, by the grace of the almighty, two eastern European gentleman in an old land rover passed, stopped about 100 meters up and backed up to my rescue. The door opens and he tells them to leave me alone in Mandinka, “Peace Corps right?” THANK YOU!

I hop in and they explain how the taxi drivers have a history there of not being in the least bit helpful to PCVs who really can’t pay the 400 dalasis out of the airport. I later found out that it’s more than 5k to walk that road and that most Gambians just wait at the terminal for someone to have left a car there or picked up by a family member. A few days later at the peace corps office I would ask about the laptop debacle and about the taxis and both the security officer and the country director said, “Why didn’t you just call, we would have just came and picked you up.” …sigh. I ended up walking at least a quarter of the way and will never forget the kindness of those two strangers. It didn’t take long at the junction to catch a big van and a kid going to school even helped me carry my bags to where the van was. The apprentice in the gilly only ended up charging me 25 dalasi for what really is at least 40 dalasis worth of baggage but I handed him the 50 I had in my pocket and thanked him.

Birkama was a mess, something big was going on because a large crowd was gathered in the streets, it was loud and I even thought I saw smoke in the distance. What happened? I didn’t hear anything coming in and I had already texted my boss to tell him I had got in. He hadn’t said anything. Thankfully the situation was not near the car park and I went on with the day thinking nothing of it. I texted a friend later that afternoon and the response I got was, “Whats up! Glad to hear you’re back! Oh yea there was a big riot in Birkama, some Fula kid from Guinea got beat nearly to death for not having paperwork and running from the police. They actually texted all the volunteers to tell them not to go through that way for a few days, you didn’t get the message, heard they fired tear gas even?!?” … no, I did not get the message, thanks. (I think I have to say now that I or the United States Government have absolutely NO political opinion on the situation what so ever and to be quite honest I have no idea what really happened anyways, I am only stating that something happened, I wasn’t suppose to go through the town that day, but not knowing I ended up going through and being fine. I mention the event merely for purposes of my story and again have no opinion what so ever on the matter.)

At the car park I’m greeted by a few familiar faces, “INDOKE!! A be nyadi?” “KOTOKE!”, pay for my ticket, and begin to sweat my balls off in the van as I still have my cotton long sleeve shirt on from the plane and the death walk out of the airport. I pass familiar villages, I really was seeing The Gambia again with slightly more rested eyes and a full belly; it really changes your point of view dramatically let me tell you. Everything was so much greener and the sky seemed a deep, deep shade of blue and the smells of Africa brought everything back; then, in the middle of that little dirt road to my village… our van broke down. Welcome back Demba ;). You know what though, this is going to sound strange, but it was actually really nice. I joked with driver about how terrible of a vehicle he owns and I just sat, in some random ladies compound, drank some water, and chatted. Some times you forget how quintessential a conversation can be. I never understood it before Peace Corps. We sat, and chatted, and 3 hours later we got the van running again with a push start from some local kids. Pure, sublime, Gambia. Then, finally, my miny odyssey was done. I had made it to my village, only about 27 hours later.

By the time we made it to my place it was just me and the driver left and we pulled right up to my hut. I lengthily greeted my host family and butchered my Mandinka really bad (I still haven’t recovered, I really need to study one of these days). Open my door and I find out a few of the people from my training group had broke in while I was gone and graffitied the walls blue with messages like, “WELCOME HOME! Hope you enjoyed your 711 and ice cream in America!” it oozed of fresh sarcasm. I’m greeted by my cat, who thankfully is not pregnant yet. I look in my back yard and my jaw drops. My walls had fallen down and I wouldn’t be able to use the bathroom until I rallied about a dozen boys to help fix it for a few hours, did I mention Jarjukunda is amazing. It’s great to be back, at least now I don’t have to feel super guilty all day for eating good food, instead I get to suffer and feel much better :-P. I went back to the capital the next morning, it was tough to go strait to village off the plane, and in retrospect was probably a terrible idea. And so America came, and America went, and I found myself again in my little border village drinking sweet tea under the mango tree and talking about the weather. I love and miss you all.