Senegal Tres Dia

I got an international phone today. Orange is the carrier--on all the corners men hawk calling cards for minutes. We got or should I say, Suzanne got a good deal from a brother, one of many who is down on his luck--his mother is sick and his dad just passed recently.

Yes, I have been complaining about the high cost of everything--even smiles come with hidden price tags I've noticed, so I look and walk...become expressive with body language as I keep walking even when I might be interested ever mindful of the cost of the next taxi ride or entrance to the toilet.

I really wanted to ask about the bronze Mamawata. I collect them.

It takes all the fun from shopping, so I don't anymore. I heard about all the great clothes at inexpensive prices. I haven't seen anything worth a second glance anywhere in these three days. Baba Ken was correct when he sang about Africa, the San Francisco Bay really is little Africa or maybe I am overread and over culturated but nothing much has delighted me except the Atlantic ocean and the Mangrove tree and the lovely people in an older section of Dakar.

I just love waking to the sounds of Allahu Akbar and the voices of children going to kitab school next door. The sauntering walks of youth, boys and girls dressed in Western and African traditional clothes. I am still amazed at how seriously Muslims take th religion here--at morning and evening and even during the afternoons one can find an elder seated surrounded by children, most in white. Fathers hug their kids and walk next to them, everyone greeting each other with Savah! (I know this is spelled incorrectly). I interpret it the same as "What's up?" or "Habari Gani?" Fine or Alhumdulilah is the answer, among other things.

I think I need to get out of the city into the country. I want to see less Eurocentrism and more precolonial Africa, if it exists. It might not. I might have to make that trek to Haiti and Brazil and Cuba and Trinidad and Tobago.

The duplicity isn't even subtle here regarding fees. I can see the minds twirling: Hum, how much can I get away with is the operative. So when I refuse to pay 4400 CVAs (the price for two) for entrance to a raggedy, unkempt, museum of West Africa--are they crazy! my escort goes to get a meal while I check out the installations which are still impressive despite the disrepair--nothing a little TLC or wet cloth wouldn't repair--if I'd possessed one, I would have dusted the art off, when as I am walking on one side of the main floor, I look up and who do I see, Sekou Diawara, journalist, writer, entrepreneur. I'm like, Wow! He says the security let him in.

Again, I am very well-educated about African art and have seen some of the best, not all but quite a bit and know what a first class exhibition looks like and I felt really sad that such artifacts were not being maintained. Some white fellow made the museum possible, no one could give me any information on the museum or its benefactor, perhaps he was an anthropolgist, they usually are. Didn't the philantropist leave funds for upkeep? If one can't do something right, then shut it down until one can.

Life here as elsewhere in the third world is one sob story after another, from the educated brothers who can't find jobs, to the bandits and hoodlums who prey on the less fortunate and the politicians who invite coups and assassinations--not to mention the neocolonial mentality which resists the sacrifice true change demands from the wealthy, not the poor.

While I certainly feel for the struggle and the struggling, the day to day struggle of the poor hardworking honest people—their desire to use me as a stepping stone just isn’t shaking this sister's tree--I saw my first mangrove today. It’s as if Africans in the Diaspora haven’t felt the same. We have—400, 500 years and then some. Brothers and sisters with degrees can't get jobs in America either. Why is the grass always greener? There are homeless kids in my neighborhood too, battered and beaten and traumatized children in my community too. My daughter works with this population at Seneca School--thank God for Seneca. There are teenage girls, runaways, selling their bodies to dirty old men on Sunday morning in my neighborhood. AIDS is the silent killer of black people in America too, a medical pandemic in Oakland, a silent killer in Senegal.

We need to be strategizing, but I know when bread is on one's mind, the revolution can wait. I am really looking to Fesman as a step in this planning session, there is strengh in organization and we are not organized. There is no reason why all the smart, trained and well educated Africans are not maintaining and developing the wealth in their nations, both human potential and natural resources.

Public schools are free for Senegalese children and if they score highest in their classes they are supposed to get government support for their efforts. Not so, when said government is corrupt…such honors are given out to the favored even if unworthy, not those who earned them like Suzanne’s three children who got into college anyway. Their mother even got a scholarship to a college in France, but extra fees and a sick mother meant Suzanne had to drop out after one year to take care of her family. She more than made up for it with her three children whom it is said she raised on her own.

She is still taking care of others, and I feel really badly since she has such a bad back. I hope she feels 100 percent again soon.

I am certainly looking forward to her story too. Stay tuned.

But back to the sorrow song that is Africa and Africans in the Diaspora. We need to hang up the sheet music and as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, "Do for self." Look at Katrina--a wake up call...hello? Opportunists continue to grow fat off the misery of others less fortunate and often a lot more desperate. How started the first non-profit or non-governmental organization? Probably a government agent.

Did I mention that France still controls the air traffic with its base in Dakar?

I don't know who is going to live in all the condos and new apartments I mentioned the other day which are going up all around town. Today I saw the theatre being built for the Fesman conference which was cancelled--the conference I purchased plane tickets to attend in August. It has been rescheduled for 2011.

I am going to have to skip my summer vacation to pay for the hole I am digging right now. I feel blessed that I have the potential of earning money this summer--nothing is assured in this economy. I am just not having that much fun yet, I'm in Africa yet it feels like Oakland. This is something I didn't expect, familarity.

I remember when all the new condos and lofts went up and Oaklanders couldn't afford to live there and here, the bank owns most of the people with the new cars, new homes and jobs which keep them barely above sea level.

Today I enjoyed riding around town, checking out the landmarks...the military museum is something I would not have chosen on my own to visit, but it was really informative. What I found really interesting was the French government's gradual replacement of white soldiers with West African men from their colonies. One general married a black woman and had a son who returned to Senegal and raised a family. These men were stationed on Goree Island--funny coincidence isn't it?

The reproductions of the soldiers lifesize in uniform are another highlight of the exhibition.

I wondered yesterday about the rifle with the cowrie shells around the neck. These men were classified as French and the French government used them in combat against their fellow Africans, and when in combat and the French were assured victory, they pulled the black men out of the field and replaced them with white soldiers.

I remember the story of the black or African soldiers who were massacred for demanding equal pay and their pensions. The same is true for the men who fought in the French wars. They have not been compensated equally.

Senegal and Mali were once called the French Sudan,, and Dakar was the capital of what was until August 20, 1960, the Mali Federation. It gained independence June 20, that same year--freedom extremely short lived.

The tiny museum from the outside doesn't look as informative and pivotal to understanding what happened along this coast--it certainly is great as a follow-up to the trip to Goree. I understand now why there is a fort there with canons facing the ocean, similar to the canons on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. The war is even the same, WW2-Hitler.

What surprised me was to see Cheikh Amadou Bamba and other religious leaders and learn of their support of the French battles when told the enemy was an enemy to Islam. Many men were killed in these battles. Another thing that I found interesting, well two or three other things: women went into battle with their husbands, with children too--from 1816 to about 1830 maybe. There is a lovely painting of a family in formation. Senegalese women just recently began enlisting --just two years ago. But this is unusual. In Zimbabwe and Southern Africa: Angola and South Africa, women have fought along side the men from the beginning.
I hadn't realized Senegal fought with the United States to secure Kuwait from attack from Iraq, under Sadam Hussain, who saw the country as little more than an annex. 93 men lost their lives and they are memorialized in Senegal and in Kuwait.

When one walks into the museum there is a reproduction of a stature erected in France to honor the contributions of the African soldiers. The statue was destroyed; an attempt to erase this great history, but this museum preserves it. Momar Hdiaye, the guide also the curator and archivist, is really passionate about this history. Without even guessing that he is a veteran of a war post 1960, the terminius of this episode of an amazing history— one is not surprised when he discloses this fact.

One can trace the history of the nation to the brave men who gave their lives or put them on the line like the first president, Senghor whose poem to the courage and triumphant spirit his comrades reflect in their self-sacrifice hangs in the staircase at the entrance.
I wish I knew the saying or motto, but I can't recall it. Just outside the museum is a museum bus with an abbreviated history and a large screen for films. The weekend of Dec. 20th there will be a celebration of the lives of these men.

There is a photo of the first president in prison, captive...not long after the photo was taken, he was free.

My Wolof is progressing. I understand: What is your name and can answer, My name is...I also have learned how to say, how are you and I'm good fine.