Two weeks ago I had the opportunity
to see a very different side of Senegalese and African life by spending a week
in a rural village with a Peace Corps volunteer and her homestay family.
In order to
get to my rural village I, along with 3 other students from my program took the
most common form of Senegalese transportation to far places, a Sept-Place. The best way to describe a Sept-Place is an
old station wagon with an added seat in the back in order to fit 7 people
including the driver, as you can imagine not the most comfortable form of
transportation especially for 7 hours in 105 degree weather, but we made it to
Koumpentoum none-the-less.
For the
first three days I stayed in a road town called Koumpentoum with about 15,000
people, not exactly the rural village I was imagining but still very different
from Dakar. We spent the first three
days wandering around Koumpentoum. At
the Health Post I met a women who 10 minutes before gave birth to a baby. She was sitting on a bed with the baby next
to her and looked as though she could dance around, not like a person had just
come out of her. The women who give
birth at the clinic only stay for a couple of hours and then return to their
village. I couldn’t believe how calm this woman was especially because in the
United States giving birth is a huge ordeal involving medicine, personal hospital
rooms, multiple doctors, nurses, and more.
One day I
was sitting with some Senegalese Women who sell Fataaya, the best bread ever
made, and they took me over to the Koumpentoum women’s garden where I met a
woman named Rosa Lee. Rosa explained to
me that the women in community all pool their money for the upkeep of the
garden, sell the vegetables from their personal garden patches, and give most
of the money back to the garden for sustainability. This garden was just one example of how the
people of Koumpentoum are pushing for change and development. It was very inspiring to see how involved
this community was in improving the lives of each member.
On Thursday
of that week I took a Sharete, basically a piece of wood pulled by a horse, 10
Km outside of Koumpentoum (about an hour ride) to the village of Daraw Salam 2
Sine Saloum. This village is a
conglomeration of huts surrounded by the African bush on all sides. It was a pretty amazing experience as I spent
time in a compound composed of two co-wives, the first wife was 26 with 5
children, the oldest child is 12, and the second wife is 21 with one 2-year-old
child. Unfortunately their husband does
not spend much time at home and uses all of his money on other forms of
entertainment, leaving the family with very little money means. I spent a lot of time sitting in the shade
observing the compound, trying to speak in Wolof while they responded in
Seerer, and I even had the chance to pound some millet!
Daraw Salam 2 Sine Saloum
Sunset from my compound
I left the
village early the next morning and watched the sunrise over the African bush
while riding a Sharete, it was by far one of my favorite experiences of the
past two and a half months. My Rural
Visit week taught me a lot about the many different types of people in
Senegal. It is easy to forget that there
are 27 different languages spoken in Senegal and each ethnic group is distinct. I also realized that throughout my studies I
have learned about this thing called the “African Bush” and “Bush People” but
you can’t just classify them as “Bush People.”
Everyone in the “Bush” is different and unique, from the village of
Daraw Salam 2 Sine Saloum, to the bustling town of Koumpentoum, to the nomadic
Pular villages I saw on my Sharete rides.
Overall the
Rural Visit was by far one of the best weeks of my abroad experience so far and
reminded me just how big this world is and how I want to continue to meet and
see everyone in it.
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