I know this is just about the longest stretch I’ve gone without posting something, so I’m sorry about that! But, that’s mostly thanks to some recent travel I did at the end of September into Burkina Faso and Senegal that kind of took me out of my normal routine. Now I’m back and can to tell you a bit about it!
The travel started off with a week stay in Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso, where I took part in a conference on food security. In short, an organization based out of Ft. Myers, FL, called ECHO (echonet.org), organized a West African networking conference for workers associated with food security to get together and exchange ideas concerning the problem of food security (unfortunately, while other continents increase food security bit by bit, Africa struggles more than any other. That is to say, Africa isn’t experiencing the gradual improvements in food security that the rest of the world is). The occasion for such a conference was certainly called for and I left feeling very positive about what took place. By getting together with other people in the region working on the same issues we were able to share a lot of important information that normally isn’t well vulgarized in this corner of the world. I definitely came away with some great ideas and made some important contacts.
Beyond the conference, however, I got the chance to check out Ouagadougou and all the goodies that it has to offer! I was itching to have my first trip out of country since arriving in Togo and that start in Ouaga kicked things off well. Like Togo, I found the people to be welcoming, especially after presenting myself as a Peace Corps volunteer (people are almost always excited about Peace Corps if they’ve heard about it, and a lot of people have). The majority ethnicity in Burkina is the Mossi people, who speak a language called More (pronounced more-ray), and is actually an ethnicity I encounter often in Togo. My village and Dapaong both have a strong populations of Mossi, so it was a nice occasion to get to know a little about their homeland. In fact, my best friend in village is Mossi and so is my village family name (although my mom is Moba). Thus, I got to use some More salutations I’ve picked up over the course of my year here and that helped me get a few extra smiles out of people. While there, some of the highlights were an “artisanal village” selling all kinds of African artwork, a very nicely organized market, a bowling alley, an American country club with a pool and a gym (I had a bench press and baseball on the tv, who’d of thought!) and darn good food. Among other things, I binged on dates, brochettes (street meat) and hamburgers! Yes, hamburgers people, they are not to be taken for granted!
After a week in Ouaga, we caught a flight out to Dakar, Senegal, where the real vacation set in and I started to feel like a tourist again. After getting in (the flight was about 2.5 hrs) we shot straight up to the brink of the Mauritania border and the city of St. Louis, the former capital of Senegal and French West Africa. After a pretty uncomfortable and drawn out bus ride we made it in and checked into a very nice hostel on the main island (the first picture is taken from the hostel’s roof terrace at sun down, looking across the slice of the Senegal river that separates the island and the sand bar that protects it from the ocean, called the “langue de barbarie”). The town definitely had a nice colonial-type feel to it, which has evolved to accommodate a regular influx of tourists. Thanks to it being the end of their rainy season (meaning humid heat pushing 100 mid-day and mosquitoes at night), the number of ex-pats on the island was down from normal, giving us some nice space to roam and extra leverage to barter with the many artists lining the streets. Overall, I’d call it a very nice tourist destination for someone wanting to check-out Senegal, especially if you’re looking for a place with some Western comforts.
But if you might one day go to Senegal and want a tip, get the pen out for the next one. After St. Louis, we a caught a night bus back towards Dakar and on to a beach town called Toubab Dialaw. This was paradise! A little harder to find and less developed for tourists perhaps, but it’s one of those places you can get real comfortable in. Check out the second picture from our hotel, you can get a glimpse of the view. Just a few steps from my hotel room door I could soak in the smell and sight of the ocean in full that I’ve lacked in my landlocked part of Togo. I especially enjoyed swimming in the fairly calm, and temperate ocean water (as opposed to Maine’s ice water) and beach restaurants that gave me my fill of seafood.
After Toubab, we headed back to Dakar to wind things down. One night out downtown, a day trip out to Gorée Island and an ice cream and pizza binge later we hopped back on our plane and called it a trip.
After getting the time away I definitely needed, I’m now back in Togo ready to go. And although we’ve had a couple scorchers here lately topping 100, Harmattan is soon to come and I couldn’t be more happy about it! It’s my closest equivalent to fall back home and if you know me well you know it’s my favorite time.
Well, Saturday afternoon in Dapaong, means it’s market it day. We’ll see what goodies I can find, or as the Moba would say “daa bic”. Haha, this means “the market’s child”, to imply metaphorically whether or not the market gave birth to good stuff for the town today or not! I’ll let ya know!
