Its a Saturday afternoon

Check out video of the crowd

The Crowd goes wild

Everyone in Oussouye was there today for the last Big Lute match. Here are some photos and video of the crowd. The crowd photo with the two guys in Red, that's the King of Oussouye.

The group photo on the grass are my neighbors from Harlem. They live directly behind me.

Intervillage Lute

This week has been the intervillage wrestling championships for Oussouye. I am going to post some highlights and videos. The first post is of Alize, Pastor Joe's son. Watch the video, he totally rocks

Dakar

My trip to Dakar was really fun and interesting. The big city is easier for me than the village because I am used to that kind of environment having live in Accra for so long. It took me a couple of days to figure out the bus situation. Dakar is so huge it takes the city buses an hour to get from the neighborhoon I was staying in to down town, where all the action really is.

I left September 15th for the garage to get a car to Dakar. The boat is currently broken so the only other way to travel (as far as I knew) was to take the fast car. I got in a taxi with a man and a young girl to the station. Come to find out they are also going to Dakar and stay in the same neighborhood as I am going to. The man offered to buy the tickets while I watched the little girl and the baggage. This took an hour because of the amount of people cramming towards the ticket "desk" no order no line, just cram forward. The drive to Dakar was uneventful and I found the Diatta's house with no problems.

I really enjoyed staying with the Diatta's. Roger Diatta's family is from Oussouye, he is Marcel's brother but moved to Dakar years ago for work. He started a church there for the Jola. His household is always buzzing with visitors from Ossouye and cousins, friends, children all jumbling around together in their tiny house. I slept in a room with six girls and this is typical each time I visit the family. There are always tons of people, which is actually comforting. We spent the evenings sitting outside and talking while the girls did each others hair and events of the day were discussed or there was no discussion at all, just relaxing inthe cool of the evening. Dakar was dreadfully hot when I was there. Each night I slept under my mosquito netting dripping with sweat.

Sunday I accompanied the family to church. For 13 years Roger's church met in his living room. In March of this year an American caught wind of the work and BOUGHT the church a huge compound close to Roger's house. The place is amazing!!!! Roger and his wife would not stop talking about how wonderful it was to go to church! With the new building the church has been growing. There were 15 visitors from the Cassamance region in Dakar for various reasons. Each one greated the church and explained where they were from in the Cassamance. The service is all in Jola with FRENCH translation.

While I was there I met a missionary couple working with New Tribes Mission. They invited me to lunch afterwards and we spent the entire day chatting about life and their work and training. I mentioned my trip to Dakar entailed purchasing a printer and a bicycle and the challenges of getting it back to Oussouye in tact. They then mentioned that their mission just happens to have a PLANE!!!! We made all the preparations for this and then they mentioned, they just happened to have a friend with a car who would be more than happy to help me purchase all of these things I needed. When I met him he was so nice and called himself "The servants servant." I have thought about that many times since.

The rest of the week consisted of me tooling around Dakar shopping and window shopping. Dakar is a crazy mishmash of people, cars, donkey carts, goods to buy, buses, big trucks, all sharing the same space.

Wednesday evening I went to stay with a family I had met in Ghana. They work for NGO's in Dakar and love having visitors. Their house was in a more affluent neighborhood and the house was affluent.....I really enjoyed chatting with the family and watching satalite tv for three days.

The trip was relaxing and very busy. Dakar is not as bad as I thought it might be. Always an adventure to be had in Dakar.

Traveling in Africa

Trip was an adventure for sure. Friday I really kind of thought I was supposed to leave Saturday morning with the fast car even though I thought it would be difficult at the station with my baggage and being alone. I should have gone with it. It took me an entire day to get back with the bus. The guard at Greg's house took me to the bus station two hours early because his shift was over and he was willing to take me. So I got to the bus station at 8 p.m. the bus was supposed to leave at 10 p.m. I sat around and at 10 pm they started to load the bus. We left around 11:30 pm. then they drove around the city for another hour trying to fill the empty seats. Now this is on a regular large bus with fifty seats similar to a greyhound. We finally left the city at around 1 p.m. Normally when you get to the Gambian border you pay $2 or 1,000 cfa when you enter and when you leave because we are in transit and don't have a visa's. There were two other french guys on the bus. When we got to the border at 4:30 a.m. the border guards demanded we give them 7,000 cfa but in Gambian money for visa's. The French men were adament that we shouldn't pay and for two hours they argued. The border guards wouldn't give. The driver of the bus threatened to throw our baggage off. All the Senegalese on the bus were talking or sleeping or smoking....arguing amongst themselves.

What happened was the bus took a different route than the trans gambian highway which is used for transit senegalese to get to dakar. Because we were trying to enter towards banjul they were going to try and get us for more money. The french guys walked back to the senegalese border guards who said you have to pay it. Meanwhile I am acting as a translator between the gambian border police and the french guys who are arguing. So we all ended up paying 7000 or $14 two hours later. Then the ferry was late at the banjul crossing. We waited another sleepy hour there. Then the road through the gambia as usual was HORRIBLE and it took us another five hours to get to Senegal. When we finally reached the border the french men practically kissed the senegalese border police. It had been such a horrible trip. I mentioned when people clap after arriving on American soil on the plane. I was ready to cheer also. It was horrible. But even after we got to Senegal we didn't arrive in Ziguinchor till 1 p.m. Then I had to go pick up my bicycle and the rest of my baggage and haggle for a taxi to take me and the baggage to Oussouye.

I finally arrived here around 3 p.m. The guy I hired to take care of the house no where to be seen. The house in complete funk. There must have been tons of rain over the last week because everything is moldy and wet. I spent the next four hours cleaning the entire house.

My dog and the guardian are still no where to be seen.

Bling

During the season of the cultivating the land there are also lots of dances. They have a word for them in Jola and it sounds to me like can can. So I just refer to them as cancans. The young men and women from the village come and dance in a circle and we all go and watch. The music and songs change but the dance stays relatively the same. Many times the women dance in the middle and the men on the outside.

But the main thing is the BLING!!!!! You have to wear a lot of bling no matter what outfit you have chosen for the dance. Cd's are particularly popular but last week I saw an entire LP hanging from this guys arm. Sometimes they attach pottery or fake flowers. Many of the guys carry weapons or all sorts to show their strength and bravery (in dance?)

The Rainbow

Genesis 9:16 "Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."

La Lute

The national sport in Senegal is wrestling. I have been waiting to go to the wrestling matches for two years and Sunday evening I finally got my first chance. There is an intervillage competition going on so there has been a ton of matches this week and I just get to take my pick. When we arrived it was raining but that doesn't stop a lute.

The event began by the older men who can no longer wrestle dancing onto the field dressed in all manner of bright costumes with knives and branches. Some were wearing random helmets and carrying big sticks.

Then the village supporters come out banging these large palm sticks on the ground so it almost sound like a gun going off. They welcome the wrestlers. First the wrestlers approach the other village supporters and wrestlers by growling and some crawling on all fours showing off how mean and strong they are. Then the other village does the same thing. The men then start making trips across the field to look at the other wrestlers and discuss who they think they can beat.

The games then begin. Wrestlers from each side approach the opposing village and chose an opponent. There is a guy from each village who watches the two wrestle and if either one breaks some unwritten rules or they wrestle too long and no one wins they they pull them apart.

There was one old fat guy who wrestled this really tiny guy. The tiny guy totally destroyed him and flipped him on the ground. It was so funny. Any time there was a win by either side, the supporters would rush the field and go after the other village, cheering, singing and shouting. There are three to five different wrestling groups on the field at the same time and wrestlers walking across to chose opponents. And then the supporters running to and fro. There was so much chaos I had no idea how anyone kept a "score" but by the end of the match everyone knew which village had one. It was a mystery to me.

And of course only one picture of people sitting under umbrellas because my camera batteries ran out just as it was starting.

Freddie the new guardian

Ever since I moved in here people in Oussouye have been worried about my safety. People here do not live alone, they don't like to sleep alone and its considered bad for you to eat alone. Everything people do here is collective. So for me to be living in "the forest" alone is "dangerous" but I have survived to everyones paranoia and fear. I have always liked living with a dog to guard the house as opposed to an actual human guardian. In Ghana I had both. My dogs were fantastic watch men alerting me to all manner of creatures on the compound. I never had any thieves and they were suspicious of all new people to the house. In Agbogba I had these three guys who took turns guarding the house. They would peak in my windows and take showers in the in yard. It was, well, awkward.

So now I have Freddie. My previous dog due to her status as a girl was sent to Esoute to guard some chickens there. Unfortuately she bit someone and they gave her a distemper shot, which got infected and last I heard she was very sick.

I received Freddie last week. He is a total scaredy cat and hates to be left alone anywhere. The first two days he ran away to the neighbors house every time I went to the toilet. Now he is a little more content and hasn't run away in a few days.

I am praying Freddie lives a long life here at the center and becomes part of the fabric of the place. Knowing all the corners of the compound and that he'll be agressive and discerning in the night and with new people. Long Live Freddie!

Electricity

After three months of work with the electricity company they finally came on Saturday to install the electricity. There are still general power cuts everyday but that is so normal here you don't even blink an eye. After the electricity was hooked up I had a problem setting up the internet and called the phone company. Two days later the phone company made a house call to make sure everything was working properly. The electricity company is owned by the government and Orange or Sonatel the phone company is a privately owned French company. And that is the difference.