PFP is currently conducting fact-finding missions to Senegal and Mali, and we received the following dispatches from Dr. Ed Lilly, a long-time volunteer and a PFP Board of Trustees member. Joining him on different legs of his journey are Dr. Richard Brown and photographer Stephen Katz, both long-time volunteers, as well as PFP C.E.O. Gen. Ron Sconyers (U.S.A.F., Ret.). We will post further dispatches as we receive them.
Sunday, July 15
I am able to send emails while I am in Senegal, but we go out for the day and Thurs. will be in a hotel in St. Louis overnight. We continue to do well. We have separate rooms, which is much better. I have WiFi for the computer and am acting as the scribe.
Yesterday was a dream. Ferry ride to Goree (lovely colonial town but notoriety as the major slave embarkation site), very impressive watching the Medical Director run the screening program and teaching the residents (and me). I have been able to do a lot better in French than I thought. Our seaside restaurant in open air, but covered, was delightful, with a cool breeze and grilled fish with spicy manioc (like couscous).
Today we had a meeting with the organizers of the Millennium Project here – very informative, but challenging as it was all in French. I am watching French TV whenever I have the opportunity in the room. The hotel is like a French 3 star, but with a larger room. It has a surprisingly good French restaurant.
We went to the Catholic church this am (Senegal is 5% Christian). It was not large, but a modern plain building with good ventilation and fabulous acoustics. This was a big item, as the choir sang from the rear loft and gave me goose bumps! They sang half and half in French and Wolof, the local tribal language. There was the chant and response, so typical of African music. I ought to add a word about the women here. I am just amazed at how well dressed they are. Bright colored long robes with exactly matching head dresses, lot of jewelry (big ear rings), and some of the most creative hair styles imaginable. The men seem more modest, many with the long robes.
The resemblances to Haiti are staggering, though Dakar is in far better condition, of course. But often the look is the same, with buildings in disrepair, goats in the streets, etc. We went to the old market place (by accident) during our walk around – a very French looking 19th century brick spread-out building with all of the fresh produce and animal and fish products. Very poor hygiene and terrible odors, but as Dick (Dr. Brown) said, at least it was fresh and could be washed and cooked!
Have to finish up to go to a 5pm follow up meeting.
Monday, July 16
Sunday morning in Bamako, the capital of Mali! I woke up again to the beautiful sight of a water scene, this time the meandering Niger River. A long, narrow boat was working there, with the oarsman on the elevated stern paddling the boat backwards while the net caster on the bow was pulling in his catch. It had the same appearance as the paintings of the Egyptians on the Nile. There was a lot of orderly traffic going over the bridge, and it gave a real sense of prosperity and things going as they should.
We had that same feeling of things being in good working order last night also, as the roads from the airport were clean and well paved, the traffic was orderly and had none of the chaotic driving in all directions which seemed to be the rule in Dakar. The shops were neat too, but of course the biggest difference was that it was green here – plenty of trees, bushes and grass. No goats wandering around either. People smile when they talk with you here too. We were also very pleased with our comfortable hotel, well situated and with a very good Lebanese restaurant also.
After a really good breakfast (even mueslix cereal!), Dick and I were pleased to finish up our reports on Senegal this morning. We felt a real sense of satisfaction about getting our observations and suggestions in good order while the material was still fresh in our minds. We needed a break and decided to take a long walk around the city, and we wound up having a late lunch at the nearby Sofitel Hotel. A croque monsieur and French fries with catsup never tasted so good. Just as we had gotten started home, a rain shower started back up again. The walking areas by the road were already muddy, but luckily a taxi came by and saved us a lot of trouble. The street vendors and hustlers, open air chicken market (and feather picking station), sewage and drainage canal which was intermittently covered by concrete slabs or open seemed to alter our sense of direction a bit. When we decided to stop a taxi, we realized we were way off course for the walk home anyway, so it was a good thing the showers returned.
The Medical Director for the Millennium Development Goals for Central and West Africa has been with us for all of our official activity. He arranged an introductory meeting here this evening, just as he had done in Dakar, and it was really exciting to meet with some of the key people involved in this effort. We had a very fruitful meeting, discussing our plan of attack for the upcoming sessions and visits, what we hoped to accomplish, and where PFP could make its best contributions.
The experiences in Senegal and Mali have been hugely beneficial in helping Dick and me realize what a magnificent organization PFP is, with its cadre of volunteers and staff who really do have the potential to make a lasting contribution in the developing world. The solutions to the enormous needs of these countries are not beyond the reach of the people in country, especially if NGOs like PFP can donate their experience and talents in a well thought out way like through the MDG.
Monday, July 16
Well, we got pretty close to hitting the wall today. Dick and I had several great meetings with local doctors and politicians in our Millennium Village, Louga. We left at 7am and didn’t have lunch till 3 – same schedule as Sat. But the ride home was 5 1/2 hrs, compared to 4 hrs. going. We were in stand still “embouteillage” for over two hours. My and Dick’s backs were really complaining, and the dust, terrible exhaust fumes, etc. were almost overwhelming. We came home exhausted, started supper in the hotel at 9:45pm, and cancelled a hospital tour we had for 8am. We are trying to keep up the discipline of doing our detailed report of the day’s activities each day, but we had to postpone it till tomorrow. A little Chinon with another great fish dish helped a lot!
But the day was extraordinary. We saw the Sahel – the vast plains which are an intermediate zone between the Sahara and the rain forests. There were huge expanses of orange and red sand, with the shrubs and scattered trees you see in the movies. The famous baobab trees were impressive – huge trunks with sparse growth, and the Africans say it is like God became angry with them and pulled them up with their roots in the air. There were many local markets, with pottery and the usual mangos and other vegetables and fruits. I am really impressed by the clothing – bright colored robes with matching head dress for the women and long robes and caps for the men. There are horse or donkey carts everywhere – as many as the cars easily – with boys driving them and often with families on board or loads of commerce.
There are mosques all through the small towns, but they are small compared to Turkey. We saw lots of sports today en route – a very skillful older girls’ basketball game, soccer matches everywhere (often barefoot, sometimes using what looked like a coconut), joggers out in the middle of nowhere in warm-up suits. The women with perfect posture carrying big loads on their heads and some with babies strapped on their backs looked familiar, as all of this except the Sahel could be transplanted to Haiti.
The meetings were more challenging than yesterday by far, as we got down to cases with lots of specifics, and I really had a hard time following things. But Dick and I will try to piece things together tomorrow to keep our reports up to date, and hopefully we didn’t miss anything. A lot of this depends on diplomacy, cultural sensitivity and humor, and I think I helped in this regard. But it is becoming clear just what their specific needs are, and how PFP can help.
Thursday July 19
Thursday’s trip to St. Louis and Podor was really an experience far beyond anything we had imagined! We left early and had the traditional petit dejeuner of coffee and croissant on the road in Thies, Senegal’s second largest city. It is a spacious and well maintained colonial city, with broad tree-lined streets and boulevards, a large public square, and a few newer impressive public buildings. They also have large areas of the suburbs laid out neatly for new development, very unlike the sprawl and congestion of the Dakar periphery and its construction.
The trip to Podor was long and tiring. Louga was about one third of the way, and it took us seven hours to get there. We arrived at this dusty, arid town in the north at the edge of the Sahara to pull under a tent which had been raised for us at the entrance to the City Hall. We went inside to find the electricity wasn’t working and were led to a fairly dark large room with a few chairs and sofas, around a large rug. There was a rubberized mat over much of the rug, which should have been a clue for us. We chatted informally and then had our business session. What followed was the shocker – a woman came in with a kettle of water and soap over a bucket for us to wash our hands. People began taking off their shoes, so we did too. Then they announced it was time to eat, and out came platters with half or whole roasted lamb! The aroma was fabulous. People started pulling off chunks of lamb and eating with their hands. There were roasted onions in a thick sauce on the side, also eaten with our hands. I later saw that they had a few forks for us, but by that time I had already dug in. It reminded me of the pig pickings on my uncle’s farm after the tobacco harvest – a real community feast.
We headed out for the next round of meetings with the Prefect and a tour of the small hospital. The meeting with the Prefect largely consisted of listening to him describe the difficult state of the area. Damming of the adjacent Senegal River had prevented the fish from returning up the river to spawn and had wiped out their fishing industry. Our subsequent visit to the small hospital was also very depressing – a very poorly maintained and disorderly place. The previous doctor had recently died, and the new doctor was away “en voyage,” so they were understaffed and functioned poorly. We were glad to be getting back to the city hall and some type of activity.
We were told that there would be a “ceremonie” for us early that evening, but that didn’t prepare us for what followed. As we drove up to the tent where we entered the city hall, a group of drummers and someone on an electric guitar were playing away, surrounded by a large group of people which included many of the handicapped people. There were old and young women dancing away with contagious joy and excitement. The drummers then worked the crowd for contributions, coming up with bills in their teeth. We made a contribution too, and the money was to help the Handicap Association with their projects. After a while, the grio (a wise man who is the guardian of traditions and story teller) came up chanting and intoning an homage to the doctor who was in charge of our local work. It went on and on and was really moving. Then the president of the association made a little speech, thanking us and explaining what we were doing. The doctor thanked everyone for the homage, and it seemed like it might to be our turn to speak next. Our administrator for the Millennium Development Goals gave me a quick heads up on how to say “Peace be with you” in the native Wolof. It sounded something like the Arab “Salam a lechem.” So with that as an opener, I managed to thank them for the earlier mouchouix and their warm welcome and the ceremony. But then the leader of the women’s section made a presentation of a lovely large pottery pot to us, and I had to do some more thanks. It was quite a thrill to have a brief relationship with these people, who combine sub-Saharan black African with desert traditions.
By nightfall, we headed back on the road to St. Louis, a former colonial capital about an hour and a half away back towards the west. The hotel was older, but had been restored and was really a very charming example of the older colonial era. When I awakened the next a.m. and pulled back the long drapes, I looked out onto the Senegal River emptying into the Atlantic Ocean, all framed by palm trees. The brightly colored open fishing and cargo boats, with large crowds working on the shoreline made it easy to understand why this was the primary fishing port for Senegal.
We next headed over to the regional hospital in St. Louis for an evaluation of their prosthesis shop and clinic, to consider possible PFP ventures with them. The hospital was a little old, but lovely, with cloistered walkways connecting the buildings, which were separated by lovely tropical gardens.
Then it was on to our last site to visit in Senegal, the Millennium Village of Leona. It was fairly close to Louga’s regional hospital and not too far from the ocean. It was a well maintained little village, hopefully a model for future development. Agricultural projects were progressing nicely, thanks to shallow wells and an irrigation system, allowing profitable truck farming to really take hold in these rolling sand hills. The clinic was orderly and clean, with a diligent nurse practitioner and midwife, pharmacist and other staff doing a nice job giving basic medical care and referring difficult cases to Louga.
We met a former USAID colleague of Dick’s and her friend for supper, a fascinating opportunity to hear three experienced “Africa hands” talking over old experiences. Most of the people doing this type of work start out as Peace Corps volunteers, and then often go on to make a career of foreign service, often in very difficult conditions. It was also very inspiring.
After a somewhat harrowing taxi ride through the dusty and extremely congested roads to the airport, we got through the usual routine of getting through the crowds and porters to finally get settled for the flight on Kenya Airlines to Bamako, and our next responsibilities and adventure in Mali.
