Saturday, June 18, 2016
We leave Ziguinchor on Friday for 2 days in Cap Skirring, a beach town about an hour west. Apparently this town grew up around a Club Med in the 1970s. Have not seen this compound nor do I want to.
We bundle now into two vans, one with a roof rack, another not, which does create some shuffling as we prepare to depart. Eventually we all settle in and I am lucky to get a bit of leg room. We zig zag through a dirt road route for a while until we hit the main 2 lane thoroughfare west. There is a kind of by-the-side-of-the-road construction going on with men digging or finishing a trench---by hand--picks and shovels. There are crews of 10-20 guys every 200 yards or so. It is hot and humid and they are out in the open. This goes on for miles. At one point there are fellows unspooling what looks to be like 2" plastic pipe in sort of a fire brigade, pulling in tandem for a mile or so. After about 30 miles, suddenly modern trench digging tractors churning up the deep red earth. I am speculating these guys with shovels are "finishing" the trench.
We are in the Casamance region, one that is far south, subject to some separatist slow-simmering guerilla warfare that has calmed down in the last 5 years.(Due in a large part to political appropriation of ethnic "joking relationships"---complicated ancient relationships rooted in ritualized insults. The population has tired of the rebellion due to the framing through these relationships.
This is rice and cashew country. They grow African rice, not for export, but for domestic consumption. It is the end of the dry season, but greener down here. Whole swaths of palm and scrub are being burned for the coming rains and you see fallow rice fields everywhere. The dominant ethnic group down here is Diola, a recalcitrant thorn in the side of colonials and now the Wolof cultural dominance of the Senegalese political system.
When we arrive at a very nice hotel---off the beach but very comfortable with a pool---you walk down a dirt road for 10 minutes in either direction and then a 100 yard walk down to the water.It is dusty, deserted---wide---cows are here. They hang out on the beach to escape the heat and the flies. But it is beautiful and very peaceful. The beach in Africa. I have wanted to do this for a long time. You have this feeling here that this moment of your life is not going to be replicated often and so I try to savor it between the seminars, visits, tours and so forth. We have another two hour talk on Diola culture this morning and then maybe, just maybe a few hours to ourselves. The subject will be on the "joking relationships" that different ethnic groups practice. Interesting stuff but I am feeling drowsy. Woke up at 6:30am. Sleeping in my own room here, but I meet up with my old roommate Brandon and we take an hour walk up the beach. Back for breakfast---and then a few minutes to write here and try to post photos at a glacial pace.
We bundle now into two vans, one with a roof rack, another not, which does create some shuffling as we prepare to depart. Eventually we all settle in and I am lucky to get a bit of leg room. We zig zag through a dirt road route for a while until we hit the main 2 lane thoroughfare west. There is a kind of by-the-side-of-the-road construction going on with men digging or finishing a trench---by hand--picks and shovels. There are crews of 10-20 guys every 200 yards or so. It is hot and humid and they are out in the open. This goes on for miles. At one point there are fellows unspooling what looks to be like 2" plastic pipe in sort of a fire brigade, pulling in tandem for a mile or so. After about 30 miles, suddenly modern trench digging tractors churning up the deep red earth. I am speculating these guys with shovels are "finishing" the trench.
We are in the Casamance region, one that is far south, subject to some separatist slow-simmering guerilla warfare that has calmed down in the last 5 years.(Due in a large part to political appropriation of ethnic "joking relationships"---complicated ancient relationships rooted in ritualized insults. The population has tired of the rebellion due to the framing through these relationships.
This is rice and cashew country. They grow African rice, not for export, but for domestic consumption. It is the end of the dry season, but greener down here. Whole swaths of palm and scrub are being burned for the coming rains and you see fallow rice fields everywhere. The dominant ethnic group down here is Diola, a recalcitrant thorn in the side of colonials and now the Wolof cultural dominance of the Senegalese political system.
When we arrive at a very nice hotel---off the beach but very comfortable with a pool---you walk down a dirt road for 10 minutes in either direction and then a 100 yard walk down to the water.It is dusty, deserted---wide---cows are here. They hang out on the beach to escape the heat and the flies. But it is beautiful and very peaceful. The beach in Africa. I have wanted to do this for a long time. You have this feeling here that this moment of your life is not going to be replicated often and so I try to savor it between the seminars, visits, tours and so forth. We have another two hour talk on Diola culture this morning and then maybe, just maybe a few hours to ourselves. The subject will be on the "joking relationships" that different ethnic groups practice. Interesting stuff but I am feeling drowsy. Woke up at 6:30am. Sleeping in my own room here, but I meet up with my old roommate Brandon and we take an hour walk up the beach. Back for breakfast---and then a few minutes to write here and try to post photos at a glacial pace.
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