Archive for the 'Senegal' Category

Addicted to Alice

Sunday, July 13th, 2008

I got a chunky translation job last month, 61 pages of sobering and inspiring information about childhood in Senegal: sobering to read that children’s charity X allows a maximum grant of US$5 per month; inspiring when I think of the hundreds of people freely offering their time and experience to help others less fortunate than […]

Sidewalk scholar

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

I almost fell out of the taxi, holding baby J under one arm and dragging out her buggy behind me.
Source of great amusement to the devout beggars lining the sidewalk around the mosque. Baby J waved wildly at the old men and got big smiles in return.
Having broken the ice, I asked the nearest guy […]

School sacrifice

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

Ever on the lookout for the curious news story, I read in yesterday’s Sudonline of a new outbreak of mass hysteria at a Dakar secondary school. The first occurrence had been last Friday when some 90 students had experienced “hysterical” symptoms of screaming, trembling and falling into a trance-like state. Of the group, 88 were […]

Blistering bandwidth!

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

I signed up with Sonatel last week and got a phone line installed. The broadband services are predictably very expensive, and I chose the cheapest one, which gives us just 512k downspeed … or that’s what I thought. In fact I had already warned the salesperson that, annual tied contract notwithstanding, if I didn’t get […]

Muezzin musing

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

One of my first questions to my prospective landlord was whether there was a mosque in the neighbourhood. He laughed and said no.
On the first night in the house, empty except for two double foam mattresses on the floor, I woke at 4:30 am to the sound of the muezzin calling for the first prayer […]