The past week has been full of social time. Social time with a 3 week-old new born just looking around amazed at every new phenomenon in the world around him; social time with his parents who return now to their home in Bissau, the capital of Guinea Bissau (GB), after giving birth in a hospital in Dakar. GB is many times poorer than Senegal, so there is a lot of traffic between the two countries. People travel north to Casamance or even further north to Dakar to buy goods and services not available at home and drugs, guns, and other contraband cross the border headed even futher north to Europe or to other markets in Africa. Guinea Bissau became a beachhead for the Colombian drug cartels over 20 years ago and has since been able to control the Bissau Guinean national government by corrupting the its military. It is as close to a failed state as you can imagine. Even Somalia has an international community that at least gives a damn.
The border to Guinea Bissau is just 10 minutes from my house by bicycle. So if you have the option available to you, you decide to have the baby in Dakar and go home afterwards. Guinea Bissau is a Portuguese speaking country and has all that latin flavor that I love plus the African cultural vibe, so really the best of two worlds. A violent revolution to gain its independence from Portugal in the mid-70s (they were one of the last colonies in Africa) and a rough climb out of underdevelopment, combined with the overthrow of several governments with the help of outside parties, and the weight of the drug trade have made Guinea Bissau a miracle of sorts. It is a miracle that the country functions at all. I have not yet had the pleasure of crossing over for a weekend, ,but a trip to GB is in the works once the young couple has had a chance to settle into their lives made new with the arrival of their son.
Social time was spent as well with another couple and their one year old daughter who never fails to marvel. The father is a desginer of batik clothing and wall hangings. The mother works for a local non-profit. They have a cat (who seems to return with a new injury every weekend) that they named Batik. Social time with him is usually just a quick pet on the head and a few caresses to say hello. But I was more interested in the new members of the family - two hens and a rooster - and the fact that they (ncluding the cat) all ate from the same bowl. Animal-animal and animal-human relations just seem to operate a little differently from my expectations. It was amazing to see a hen sleeping against a cat just hours after they first met. Clearly communication is taking place on another level that is imperceptible to us humans. Fun. I just had to take a picture.
I traveled wth the little one-year old and her father to a local festival near their house. One of the resident artists of the nieghborhood of Lindjane organized a cultural festival out of his house and front yard. He organized a battle of the drums, performances of local music bands, set his family up as cooks and drink distributors, invited rap and DJ artists, and launched a neighborhood tournament of traditional wrestling - a crowd pleaser for sure. Wrestling is a tradition among a number of African cultural groups. Martial arts are so readily associated with Asia that people are usually surprised when I posit that all cultures have a martial art. Art means practice or skill. And unfortunately most cultures have honed their skills in the practice of fighting. There are many different martial arts in Africa. In Casamance, it is wrestling. And that martial art took on a new dimension when the Diola tradition was popularized on national television. Now people bet heavily on natioalilly televised bouts. My neighborhood erupts with cries of joy when the local favorite wins. It was a fun afternoon and we were treated to two rounds of wrestling where the little guy always seemed to have an advantage over the taller favorites.
The little girl scurried about, touching everything in sight and flirting for a good 30 minutes with the idea of trying to touch a vervet monkey that the owner had tied to a post to avoid problems during the festival She also spend a good amount of time coveting low hanging mangos and would have eaten them on the stem, if she had been strong enough to break the skin on her own. Obviously hungry, she returned home for a battle with mom to get the food into the mouth. :-) I returned the following day to make batiks and learned that most of the batik crew had been up until 5 am dancing to the drums and music. I cannot manage that kind of stamina but it seemed like a lot of fun. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon. Thoughts of conflict, job contracts, and other woes were far far away last weekend. I hope for more of the same. I am including more of the photos of that weekend including shots of that mango with little teeth marks that demonstrate her earnest efforts to take a bite.Enjoy!
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