New phase in Senegal

I have lived in places where I did not get power or water for months on end, but Senegal is not such a place.  They have benefited from a stronger support base, non-violent transitions in power, and strong outside investment, until recently.  The downturn in the world economy has meant that a poorly run government can no longer keep up with shortages and increasing demands for fuel, food, and jobs.  Past incidents of corruption went unnoticed against the backdrop of relative comfort and stability.  Now that the veil has been lifted, and the population has seen the effectiveness of violent outcries for change.  We can expect to see a shift in Senegal.  

Last week, members of parliament critiqued the proposed bill not because they were genuinely against President Wade's idea for a new format of government and elections. They verbally criticized it because they feared that their families, homes, and cars would be harmed, burned, or looted. Several close aides to the head of state had faced this same fate that evening.  The fear in the eyes of those in government has been laid bare for all to see.  The disgruntled youth have opened the proverbial political Pandora's box, and now, only shrewd, presidential leadership can steer Senegal away from this precipice of brinkmanship and mob rule.

Last night youth burned several government buildings including city hall and three electric power offices when the city was plunged into 48 hours of darkness.  As I said before, hardly a hardship foreign to its neighbors, but to the Senegalese, it is a step too far in the wrong direction. Today the US Embassy issued this warning to people living in Dakar:

"Violent demonstrations erupted overnight in various neighborhoods of Dakar.  While last week’s demonstrations (specifically those on June 23rd) focused on a controversial law regarding the upcoming Presidential elections, demonstrations last night focused on public frustration over continued and increasing power outages in Dakar.  While power cuts are not a new phenomenon, their frequency and duration have increased in recent months.  In addition, it should be noted that two separate churches were torched over the weekend in separate locations near Dakar.  While not related to the issue of power cuts, it is an indication of ongoing unrest and the possibility of violence.

The demonstrations last night quickly became violent, with protestors throwing rocks, burning tires, torching cars and buses, and blocking roads.  Further demonstrations are planned today, which may target various sites in the city and/or the offices of Senelec (the national electricity company.)  Demonstrations in other locations could occur without prior notice, and demonstrations of this nature may continue in the coming days.

Travel plans should be amended to account for the possibility of continued protests and/or ensuing violence and delays in these affected areas. We remind U.S. citizens that even demonstrations intended to be peaceful can quickly and without much advance warning turn confrontational and escalate into violence. The Embassy, therefore, urges U.S. citizens to avoid crowds, political gatherings, and street demonstrations, even if they appear to be peaceful, and to exercise caution if within the vicinity of any demonstrations. If indoors when a demonstration begins, shelter in place until it is safe to move about. U.S. citizens should stay current with media coverage of local events and be aware of their surrounding at all times."


It is not an overly alarming message.  No one expects matters to get out of hand. Not today.  But we are all keeping our eyes on the political leadership to steer this ship to a safer harbor.

No Silence, No dialog

Dialog is a powerful tool.  We see it used across the dinner table, pillow talk, between strangers on a city bus, and in more formal formats as a means of self expression and vehicles to arrive at mutual understanding, conflict management, and to effect a change in behavior and amelioration of circumstances to put us back into right relation. 

Dialog is an important lesson for our youth to learn.  It is a tool within each of us.  It is a power to wield for change.  It is a tool that may enable each of us to help mold our environment into a substance that nourishes the soul and our society. When we lose sight of that fact, dialog seems like a less viable option compared to violence.

In Dakar and in some many capital cities today, the youth have lost faith in the power of dialog and resort to public displays of violence to make their point, effect a change in behavior, and assert their power.  They have an impact.  People recoil and react in fear, not with understanding or compassion.  But they react they do. Concession are made and the lesson is learned.

Unfortunately for this youth, this generation, such is not the lesson that will serve them or their people.

Today our office in Dakar closed early to allow our staff to return home early.  The city seems to be burning. Many embassies remained closed and encouraged other US-funded organizations to send their staff home early so that they may reach home before nightfall when more looting and violence is expected.  The main roads leading from the peninsula into the suburbs where the majority of the people live have been closed or blocked by burning tires and police barricades. The government has made concessions but apparently that gesture is not enough. The lessons of Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen have shown that impressive public displays will sway public officials to make other decisions. The anger is spreading to other failures of the government. It appears that this is not the end. 

Tomorrow is a new day.  New days bring new promises, so I remain optimistic and hopeful for a return to dialog.

A week of turmoil

I went to bed late last night after a long bout to restore any data left on my laptop.  After 9 faithful years and several days of triage, rebooting, reloading, and everything else short of mouth to mouth, it finally gave up the ghost.  I bought a new hard drive and DVD to replace the damaged parts.  It looks the same from the outside but it is not the same Fujitsu Lifebook P Series that has seen me through some pretty sketchy environments and kept me in touch with friends and family. I had done what I could to keep clean and looking good on the outside but on the inside, it was breaking down slowly and in serious need of a total overhaul.  I was too late in recognizing that truth.  Hopefully the Senegalese government will have better luck.  
Early last week the government bill to introduce the office of the vice presidency under the pretense of helping to avoid costly election should the head of state die or otherwise find himself incapable of carrying out the functions of his office.  I mentioned the polemics around that topic.  Well, they were really only the tip of the iceberg.    Senegal has long been the darling of the West.  A beacon of democracy in West Africa.  But like my laptop, despite the efforts to keep up appearances, the insides had started to break down over a decade ago and an overhaul is needed to put the country back on more stable ground.

President Wade is 85 years old and is intending to run for another 7 years.  He was the first president ever to be truly elected by the people of Senegal.  France appointed Leopold Senghor, the first president, during its colonial rule and he carried Senegal into independence.  Senghor then modified the constitution to appoint Abdou Diouf as president when he felt he was no longer able to continue to do his job.  Therefore, Wade emerged as the first real challenge -an outsider and lifetime opposition leader with bright ideas.  Expectations ran very high after his 2000 election.  He made many lofty promises and today the population is disappointed and wary that this new law is simply an attempt to allow him to choose his successor, possibly even his son. No one envisions that he would like to serve out another 7 years in office, so they wholly anticipate that he will win the 2012 elections and shortly thereafter surrender his post to his vice-president who would then appoint his own vice-president.

The tensions over this issue have been building: Today the US Embassy asked Americans to stay clear of Dakar if possible to avoid possible violent confrontations expected in the city and around the parliament building where elected officials will be debating and voting on the proposed bill.

This morning thousands of youth descended into the city, placing piles of burning tires in the main entrance points to the city to block all access via bus or car. Reports are coming in of demonstrations around the country but none in the Casamance region where I suppose we have our own more pressing issues that we want to keep in the spotlight.  As I type this, my colleague burst into my office to tell me that the youth managed to smash open the gates to the parliament building.  They are trying to gain entry into the building to force out all the Parliamentary Members and prevent a vote.  Tensions rising still.

I also received an email informing me that I am to expect a termination letter from my employer and an employment letter from the organization that acquired us a few weeks ago.  Not just me, of course.  All of us here at the organization are in the same situation.  I am sure that it will lead to some heated debates especially if the terms are not the same.

Interesting times indeed.

Power politics

As a human being, I have to admit that I am a creature of habit.   We all seem to thrive on pattern and our ability to predict and recognize them for emotional and physical survival.  I remember my statistics professor at Hunter College in New York city telling my class that the human species has evolved successfully because of this ability, so don't be surprised if you find some patterns in your scramble to derive meaning from the jumble of statistical data in your social science research.  Hey, it was the 90s!  Anthropology was trying to justify its existence as a science by backing up its claims with hard, crunchable numbers. Fun times actually, but, as it turns out,  a questionable use of our time.

 
Then, fast forward a couple of decades.

In the past few months a new pattern has emerged.  I come home at 7pm or so.  I make dinner, get settled to eat and watch a film on Itunes or break open one of the many peacebuilding books that made the voyage with me.  Most of the books are from the Lynne Rienner Publishers series - great publications by the way.  Stellar really empirical stuff that lays out the findings of other practicioners and should be required reading for any budding or seasoned peacebuilder.  No sooner than the opening credits start to roll or the chapter contents start to flow in my mind, do we experience a power cut.  Unlike the capital Dakar where these outages are scheduled, ours come unannounced and last for an undetermined amount of time.  Sometimes 4 hours; Sometimes 6 hours.  I can imagine the agent with his hand on the master switch trying to guess how many hours it will take to get almost everyone to go to bed and stop putting a drain on the limited power grid here.  It is getting to be quite amusing.  Instead of giving up, most people in Ziguinchor have adapted coping skills that include taking naps or gathering outside in the cool night breeze for casual or heated conversations about everything from wedding and funeral plans to why we continue to support a government that can give tens of millions away to build an inspirtional statue or to reward a champion wrestler but will not fix the power grid. And why some neighborhoods never get power cuts. The point is that the local population seems willing to put their lives on hold and wait out that master switch for as long as necessary.  A bit of one upmanship.  And that pattern is spreading.

Election season is just 5 months away and we are already starting to get visits from prominent politicians to rally voters under the party banner.  Mind you, these visitors are actually locally elected mayors, deputy mayors and the like, so we would normally see them on a regular basis, but here - as in many French-systems of government - it is possible to hold many different posts simultaneously.  So the mayor is also the minister of industry, the minister of defense, or the interior.  It is not hard to imagine which position takes precedence.  Most constituents never see their representatives at all until election time rolls around.  Recently the mayor came to present his party's platform and not 10 minutes into his presentation, the city power went out.  It was in the middle of the day, so it seemed to be timed specifically to stop the rally's sound system for the fancy bands and high-profile speakers from being heard.

Today we got our first real downpour, after 8 months without a drop.  I am told that classrooms will likely be nearly empty and absenteeism will reach a record high this week as families rush to prepare their fields for an early rainy season.  Casamance is the breadbasket of Senegal and everyone here has crops that need tending and rize fields to mould and plant.  It will be interesting to see if we manage to retain the participation of community members with such a compelling distraction competiting with our unreasonable schedule.

Today the president pushed through a bill that would mandate that the next presidential elections feature presidential and vice-presidential candidates American style.  Opposition leaders have long accused the president of trying to usher his son into the presidency, suggesting that he was grooming him for power when he was appointed the head of half a dozen ministries, when he failed to win the mayoral race in the nation's capital.  Today's news shook the political pundits and made everyone wonder if the old man would actually dare to run on a father son ticket.  Others posited that he would find a loop hole to get his son into the presidency by having a puppet vice president step aside.   It is all smoke and mirrors here in Senegal at the moment. The President traveled to the G8 summit and managed to get his son in a room with Obama at a meeting reserved to heads of state and staged a highly publicized handshake. Shortly thereafter the president of Senegal is meeting with the rebel movement in Libya and asking the Libyan leader - and former best friend - to step down from power. It is difficult to tell fact from fiction.  But I am starting to see a pattern...

Enjoy the rain.  I am.

A day in the life

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!

On the outside looking in

 I live in a working class neighborhood.  That means dirt and uneven roads mostly with the random cement brick apartment building among the mudbrick homes that dominate the landscape.  When you take a taxi anywhere in the city, the easiest way to indicate your destination is to name the closest school.  Oddly enough, some neighborhoods here take the name of the school and not the other way around.  My place holder is École Amed Barrry - an elementary school with mudbrick walls and green painted wooden shutters that have been feeding generations of termites since they were first attached to the glassless window frames in 1995. 

Each morning, the tradition is reborn. Old women position themselves at the entrance to the school sitting on small wooden stools, they arrange their assortments of dried fruit, peanuts, and fried sweet dough for sale to the kids whose parents did not have time to feed them before they left home. It is a swift and apparently lucrative business. On more than one occassion, I have seen two women bickering over who arrived first, pushing their small round platters as close as possible to the rickety rusted gate that you have to lift to close.  Little kids crowd around, fingering the precious 5 cents that will bring a tasty treat before school starts. Others finish their breakfast before entering.  French baguettes with some form of spread inside is the usual fare.  It is amazing to watch these tiny 4 or 5 year old kids finish off a foot-long baguette on their own.

On days when I am running late, the commotion in front of the school has all but vanished and left behind are idle boys or girls standing on their tippy toes trying to see what is happning inside.  Are they the odd sibling that was not allowed to go to school or are they looking for an accomplice for a day off?  I remember how jealous I was when my sister first went to school.  We were inseparable at home but somehow she was able to tear herself away to go to school?  That just did not seem fair.  Or even conceivable.  Watching these kids linger just outside the reach of an education makes me conjure an entire story around each one.  Yesterday I stopped to share a small pouch of peanuts and asked why he was not going in?  "Oh, I go to another school," came the reply. Then why aren't you there? "I like this school better.  I am not a little kid." Je suis pas une gosse he insisted.  So we sat there finishing the pouch and watching the taxis and wagons roll down the only really smooth street in the city.  His name is Emmanuel.  And I am not sure if he ever made to his school at that morning.  But he sure gave me the desire to skip work, just for one day. 

I am sorry to miss so many days with you all. About two weeks ago the blogosphere collapsed and I was not able to upload any new stories.  Then when I WAS able to log on, I had fallen out of practice.  

On April 27, the director of my unit called me to inform me that they were having thoughts about shutting down my unit or perhaps just phasing out my position since the nature of the program had changed and they could no longer really justify someone with my expertise (and pay level).  The conversation was polite and considerate.  Since I started this program, none of the senior staff has had any experience or training in peacebuilding or conflict work at all.  My component therefore has been the hardest to sell and poorly represented when senior staff met with the donor or the general public.  It has been an uphill battle and one that, it seemed, would soon come to an end.  "Your notice letter is just about ready.  You should be receiving it soon," she said with kind consderation for my predicament.  

Well, soon is now a month later.  And I have no idea if another month will roll by before I have a clearer idea of my status.  At least I am guaranteed 4-weeks notice and I will be able to use that time to prepare my replacement who I assume will be a host country national. Work has picked up tremendously and I am enjoying the challenges of everyday meetings with civil society, local authorities, and chance encounters with rebel representatives hoping for some sign that we are still on board.  In the meantime, I am enjoying bouncing through town on my bicycle. 

Each time I survive a nasty pothole or a plane of sharp rocks my thoughts and thanks go to Scott in Mishawaka who promised me that the tires would be all but imprenetrable.  You were right Scott.  Wish you were here to celebrate your feat of invincibility with me. Scott passed away a few days ago due to complications with MS.  He was an amazing giving man.  Rest in peace Scott.  You will be missed.

Finding a way forward together

On my way to work a week ago,  I saw two donkeys struggling to make progress. They were both lashed to a wagon carrying 10 very large bags of cement.   One donkey was leaning his entire body weight to the right, his hooves scrapping on the uneven pavers to pull the wagon to make a right turn,  The other donkey had its head down pulling with all his might to go straight.  All the while, the owner whipped them both from behind but with a mixed message.  The one to pull harder to the right and the other to stop pulling straight.  Not sure the guys were getting the message.


The scenario reminded me of how awful a work environment can be if everyone does not find consensus in the way they work together.

Last week, we held a workshop to prepare civil society groups for an upcoming forum and today I am training my staff on how to develop an action plan.  We will face a particularly arduous task of developing an action plan for a group of people and organizations who work in the field but cannot work together for various political and inter-personel reasons. I am looking forward to the challenge.  The meeting was rescheduled to make sure all the bells and whistles are in place.

This morning I got an omen of sorts.  On my usual morning commute, I passed the same cart and donkeys.  This time, the donkey who knew the way was free (unattached) running a few paces ahead, while the donkey pulling the cart followed, smoothly without either critter getting the whip. How is that for team work?  Not sure how the owner figured out that solution, but I pray for that kind of inspired genious, when 65 organizations pour into the conference room for a 2-day session next Wednesday.  I am putting the final touches on the training module now.  Wish me luck!