East Side, West Side

All Around the Town
or
And Never the Twain Shall Meet

Despite living in Dakar for over 5 years, I have a hard time remembering that the US is to the West of me. I finally figured out why. It's because, growing up on the East coast of the US, the Atlantic Ocean has for me always been the equivalent of East. When I looked out over the Atlantic, I was always looking East. Since I have no magnetic needle in my brain telling me which way is East, when I look out over the Atlantic Ocean now, I automatically imagine I'm looking East. I have to actively work to correct this mental perspective.

In other cultural news, did you know that the French don't capitalize North, South, East, or West? Or French, American, Korean, etc. That is apropos of nothing, but it gave me an excuse to write this sentence using a word we stole from French.

Sparky has a Sibling

As I touch-type, I am watching one of the newest members of my household explore my bedroom. I hope he's foraging for food, because there are certainly enough bugs here to keep him happy and healthy and for a long time.

This little guy, who I'm naming Squiggle because of the amusing way his body twists when he walks, is presumably Sparky's baby brother. At two inches head to tail, and about the width of a pencil, he's the same size Sparky was when I wrote about him (see my October 25 post), but Sparky should be much bigger by now. I've also seen an even smaller sibling several times in the past few days. I haven't named that one, who is perhaps only an inch and a quarter long, and half a pencil-width across. I'm accepting suggestions.

Since I grew up on the East Coast (of the US), having lizards living with me is a bit of a lark.

To Paris and Back in an Hour

I took a brief trip to Paris to go shopping this afternoon. It only took an hour. That's pretty amazing, because usually it's a 5-hour flight each way, plus the time on the ground!

OK, I didn't really go to Paris, but I might as well have. Some friends introduced me to a new, enclosed mini-mall that is a slightly smaller version of one I shopped at in France when I went there for language training in 2006. Several glass-fronted, upscale boutiques line one side of a tiled promenade. Across from the boutiques, with no wall or windows to separate it from the mall, is a huge, sparklingly clean grocery store filled with imported items (mostly from France, some from the Mideast, and a few from the US), and lighted up brighter than a Hollywood premier.

It was actually a little disorienting, walking aisles laid out exactly as they were at that store in France, overflowing with neatly stacked rows of brightly colored packages containing virtually every item a large American grocery/drug store would have, and even some other customers speaking (heavily accented) English. I had to keep telling myself I was in Dakar, not Paris.

This is just one more sign of the sea-change taking place here. Last spring, a new, modern, air-conditioned(!) Departures Terminal opened at the airport. This fall, an efficient highway system leading into and around the city was completed. Under construction now is a series of hotels and parks, and a large Visitors Center with a fabulous ocean view, along a 2-mile stretch of shoreline on the peninsula's western coast.

Next thing you know, the power and water will work consistently! Well, that still appears to be wishful thinking. "But," as the old song goes, "I Can Dream, Can't I?"

Green Red Cards

To "get" this post, read the first couple of paragraphs of my previous post first.

I've been using Red Cards with my students for several months now. A few days ago, while teaching my Kindergarteners, I happened to pull out the stack of identical cards in other colors, to use in a game. When the kids saw them, their reaction was immediate: "Look, he has green red cards." "There's a blue red card!" "Cool, there's a black red card."

***

This seems to me to illustrate something about human nature. Once we have a particular perspective, we look at other things with the same perspective, even if they are quite different. For example I find that I perceive peers I've known for years quite differently from peers I've met recently. The middle-aged friends I've known for 20 or 30 years almost all look younger to me than newer friends of the same age. I see the old friends through a mental filter of what they were like when we were young. And not just their physical appearance, but their personalities and characters, too.

I went to my 30th high school reunion a few years ago. While in town, I dropped by a local grocery store, and passed a number of older adults in the aisles as I shopped. Suddenly, I realized these weren't older adults, they were my peers. I might see any one of them at the reunion the next day. I'd never adjusted my perception of middle-aged people as "older" than I--as my parents' peers, not mine--to the reality that I was now middle-aged.

But some experiences show this tendency to perceive the new through an old filter, as sometimes a good thing, even as accurate. If I know someone well, and know him to be honest, kind, and trustworthy, I will perceive an isolated episode of rudeness or failure as an anomaly, not as an indication of a change in their character. It's like saying "Look, a rude good person." If, on the other hand, I know someone as a rude, crude jerk, I see even good behavior through that lens--perhaps doubting the reality or sincerity of the new behavior. "Look, there's a kind and thoughtful jerk." Of course, we all know examples of children who get blamed for something they didn't do because so often they have been the one at fault.

How many green red cards are in your life?

Red Cards and Baby Harmonicas

RED CARDS: I've finally hit on a simple, effective discipline system for my elementary music classes. It came to me in a flash at the beginning of a 2nd grade session last year. They were a bright group, but considerably lacking in self control.

One day, I had pulled out a stack of square, laminated cards that I'd made from construction paper in different colors, for use in various games. That day, I picked the red cards out of the pack and handed one to any student who misbehaved. I explained that they were like penalty flags in sports--you get one when you've done something you shouldn't have, and there is a punishment that goes with it.

Now I use Red Cards with all my elementary classes. When the teachers pick up their children, they check to see if any of their students received a red card (or more than one) and incorporate that as a negative "mark" in whatever discipline system they use (5 minutes off recess for each mark, or whatever).

This has revolutionized discipline in my classes. I don't have to run back to the board to put a student's name up. I don't have to remember the offense until the end of class. I just keep a card or two in my shirt pocket, and hand it to the student immediately after the infraction.

BABY HARMONICAS. For a couple of years, I've been using a desk bell to get my students' attentions whenever they get too noisy, or when I need to interrupt what they're doing to give new instructions. This has worked well--it's a penetrating but attractive sound--but it has a major drawback. The bell is never where I am when I need it. If I'm playing the piano, it's on my desk. If I've moved it to the piano, I'm writing on the board. I always have to search for it, and then go get it.

I mused for weeks on how to solve the problem. "I need an instrument I can carry with me at all times," I thought one day. But what? The answer? A harmonica!

Last summer, I bought a one-inch harmonica (really!), just to see if I could learn how to play. (It's not a toy, it's an honest-to-goodness Hoehner harmonica.) For only $10, it was a low-risk investment.

A few weeks ago, I took it to school to show to my students. To keep from losing it, I put it on a lanyard around my neck. In the middle of a class, realizing my bell was on the other side of the room, it came to me. I can use the harmonica! Now I wear it every day, and give it a little toot whenever I need the students' attentions. Once I learn to play better, maybe I can have different signals for different circumstances, like Baron Von Trapp in The Sound of Music...

Red cards and baby harmonicas--they only took 5 years to come up with. And that's just more evidence that a professor's caution was on the mark: don't judge yourself as a teacher until you've been teaching at least 5 years.

Power Plays

Power outages are a common topic around here, because they are such a common--and frustrating--occurrence, especially between July and November.

Outages are unannounced, so there's no way to plan work or other needs around them. As a result, they (along with constant, damaging power fluctuations) wreak havoc on work, food (going bad in non-operating fridges and freezers), sleep on still, sultry nights, applicances, and much more.

Frustration has boiled over into demonstrations (read: riots) in Dakar over the past couple of weeks. One crowd piled a bunch of ruined appliances in the street and set them on fire. Others destroyed Senelec business offices in a couple of quatiers (neighborhoods), smashing windows, computers, desks, etc.

In response, Senelec has switched from cutting the power once or twice a day for 4 hours or more (11 hours on one day a few weeks ago) to cutting it 4 or 5 times a day for an hour or two each.

I'm thinking of writing a letter to the editor of some Dakar newspaper asking why Senegal does this to it's own people. It's bad enough having outages, but not letting the public know when they will be so that individuals and businesses can plan around them is, in my mind, inexplicable.

It's hard not to get frustrated. It's hard not to complain. (I probably write about it too often in this blog and in emails.)

The good news is, we've had no outages on campus for the past 3 days, giving hope that the break in the heat has decreased usage to such an extent that the demand can be met.

Other West African Reptiles

Geckos are just one of the many desert crawlers in Senegal. Lizards are common, often sunning themselves on the sides of buildings, or scampering out of your way on the sidewalk. Most are non-descript grays and browns, but at least one species is striking in it’s coloration: it has a school bus yellow head, steel blue body, and a gray and yellow tail. To see a good photo, copy this link into your browser:

http://www.pbase.com/rvbulck/image/34224169

Once while birdwatching, I came across what appeared to me to be a salamander, small and quick with soft-scaled green skin on the back, with a white underside. There were two: one had nearly fluorescent orange sides. The other—its mate?—had white sides.

Our students’ favorite species (probably because they can catch them), is chameleons. These are quite different from the lizard-like color-changers that frequented my grandmother’s yard in Alabama during our summer visits decades ago. I would be hard pressed to accurately describe the Senegalese versions, except to mention that their tails can curl tightly up over their backs, or around a small tree branch for stability, that they have three-toes on their feet, and that they change colors from green to brown.

Finally, there are a few snakes, but they are not common. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wild snake here. The school has a 6-foot boa named Spot, but he’s an émigré. He was donated to the school by his former owner, a woman who brought him to Senegal when she was evacuated to Dakar during the Ivory Coast’s civil war a few years ago. She snuck him in by hiding him under her sweater and pretending she was pregnant! Yes, really!

Oops. Almost left out crocodiles and monitor lizards, both of which I've seen in zoo-like parks and in the wild.

This ends part two of your ____________* lesson for today.

*Does anyone know the scientific Latin term goes in that blank?

Gary the Gecko

No, I’m not selling car insurance. I have an actual pet gecko. Well, saying it that way implies a closer relationship than we really have. Gary hides under a shelf or behind the microwave whenever I enter the same room.

Geckos here are translucent brown or tan when they are very young, and have non-descript, rather light camouflage pigmentation when grown. The first time I saw Gary he was a juvenile--starting to turn opaque, but still a pasty monochrome that housepaint marketers would no doubt call something like “Mexican Adobe” or “Cream of Wheat,” though I think “Gary Gecko Tan” would be a more interesting name to see on a paint can).

I’m happy to have this little house guest, as he eats . . . well, I don’t know what he eats—flies? mosquitoes? ants?--but he’s welcome to them all, and so are his future progeny.

Speaking of progeny… fast forward two months.

I first drafted this post back in September. Recently, I realized that I have not only one pet Gecko, but three. My newest friend is Sparky, a cute little fellow about 2 inches long, counting his tail. And, of course, if there’s a papa gecko, and a baby gecko, there must be a momma gecko. So, some of those sightings of Gary may actually have been sightings of Gilda. (In case you wonder how to tell the difference between a Gary and a Gilda, I don’t know. For that matter, Sparky might actually be Suzy.)

What's Nike Missing?

A. Brains
B. Honesty
C. Common sense
D. All of the above

Answer: D. All of the above.

Some of you are old enough to remember the old ABC sports programs, whose opening shots always included Jim McKay's famous voice-over, "The thrill of victory . . . the agony of defeat." According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Arien O'Connell of New York City experienced both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat last Sunday . . . in the same event!

Arien was the fastest runner in Sunday's Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco, but wasn't awarded the first place trophy. Nor second place. Nor even third. Why? Because she hadn't registered as an "elite" runner to get a 20-minute early starting time in a less crowded field.

So Arien, a fifth-grade teacher by day, watched as the trophies were handed out to three women who ran 11 minutes slower than she did.

When the judges and sponsors recognized the inconsistency, they . . . did nothing.

Reports the Chronicle:

"At this point," Nike media relations manager Tanya Lopez said Monday, "we've declared our winner."

Maybe the next time Tanya buys something, the clerk should give her the wrong change. When she asks about it, the clerk can just say, "At this point, we've given our change."

By the way, just a week before the San Francisco debacle, the fourth-place runner in the Chicago Marathon didn't get the fourth place prize either. Wesley Korir didn't run with the "elite group" in that race, so he too was ineligible for a prize, even though he outran the fourth-place "winner."
It's a strange sport that requires you to announce in advance that you might win in order for you to be acknowledged as the winner when you do, in fact, win.

Nike, hang your head in shame.

And change your name.

You don't deserve to call yourself by the Greek word for "victory" when you don't acknowledge the true victors in your own sporting events.

To read the San Francisco Chronicle article, click the following link.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/21/BAUC13L3GQ.DTL&nopu=1

What's China Got that We Ain't Got?

I know, the Beijing Olympics were impressive. But the bar has been raised. Take a look at these shots from DA's own Olympics. (I tried to post this much closer to the so-called "real" Olympics, but had trouble with photos.)

We have real bird's nests in our trees!

And form not to be matched anywhere...
Geometry in motion!

We even have cool Red Team outfits.

So, don't wait around for 2012. Visit Dakar--we have Olympics every year! (Full disclosure: the above photos are actually from DA's 2007 Olympics. This year's sports extravaganza is still to come.)

On the Rocks

Today I'll treat you to several shots from my (long-ago) visit to Isle des Madeleine, commonly known as Snake Island (though there are no snakes—this name is probably a distortion of a mistranslation of an African word). Madeleine is a tiny island about 20 minutes by motorized pirogue off the western shore of the southern tip of the peninsula that is Dakar.

The next photo is a view of the Pancake Islands. At least, that’s what I call them. They’re actually flat rocks, perhaps 10 yards in diameter, in a small bay next to one of Snake Island’s beaches. (If I’d moved my camera even a smidgen to the left, you would have seen the beginning of the narrow shore whose cliffs lead up to where I was standing.)

I’ve been to Snake Island only once. The real treat for me was seeing and photographing Red-Billed Tropic Birds--beautiful white birds with two, very long tail feathers--in their rock nests. The island is said to be one of the only two places in the world that they breed.

In the air...

...and "on the rocks"

For some additional, nice views of the island, check out the following blog that I discovered recently, put together by a couple (who I do not know) upon visiting Senegal a few years back.

www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Laura%20JohnInAfrica/page-2.html

Up a creek without a net...

Portions of Dakar have been without Internet access for the past one to two weeks. What a disruption! Between that and power outages, September was a hard month! Our campus connection is back up, so I finally get to post the blog entries I was working on before it went bad. Hope you enjoy them.

Speaking of Watergate

In my "Vote Early, Vote Often" post, below, I mentioned attending the Watergate hearings. I was in high school, and my government class was scheduled to take a field trip to downtown Washington, D.C. I forget what we were going to see, but I asked permission to attend the Watergate hearings instead.

Two friends from outside the class joined me, and we waited in line together for hours. Dick Cavett, the intellectual and witty late night talk show host of the era (and the Tonight Show's first real competitor), walked by at one point. So did other celebrities I've since forgotten. Apparently a Time magazine photographer stopped by, too, because in the next issue, an article on the hearings sported a photo showing me and my two buddies sitting on the floor around the perimeter of a circular entryway to the Capitol building. (I saved a copy of that issue for a long time, but lost track of it some years ago.)

We had been warned that the hearings would probably be boring, and the warnings were apt. The proceedings that we witnessed were quite tedious and mundane. We didn't stay very long--30 minutes, perhaps. It had actually been more interesting waiting in line. Pitty the poor legislators who had to sit through the whole thing for months on end!

Even so, I have never regretted taking the opportunity to see history in the making, despite not seeing any of the celebrated portions live and in person.

The Audacity of Politicians

I received the following comments in email from a friend today. They make a good follow-up to my last post.

I've kept somewhat of an eye on the political season but I'm not fully engaged nor do I expect to be. My confidence in the political system is at a low ebb. I've come to the conclusion that the major parties are not driven by aspirations to benefit the country or the population at large. Rather, they are to benefit the special interests that leverage them into power. The system is readily manipulated by corruption and misdirection with power players on all sides gaming the system for their own benefit. There's lots of Orwellian liberty taken with the speeches -- less is more, war is peace, etc.

As much as the Republicans tout that they are the party of fiscal conservatism, the national debt soars when they are in office and we have little to evidence any beneficial investment of the money spent that created the debt. Democrats aren't any better. They pander to folks saying that government will solve their problems.

Both parties kick the serious issues into the future rather than deal with them in a rational planning manner now (social security, health care, etc). If one side starts to gain momentum on solutions, the other side yanks the rug from underneath so as to undermine any credit to other side.

I can't recall who said it but I like the motto "that government governs best which governs least". Fat chance. We haven't shrunk government since George Washington was president.

Enough.

Pretty glum, but accurate, I think. Interestingly, Obama makes exactly the same argument in his book The Audacity of Hope. Whether he can do anything about it (or truly wants to) remains to be seen. If there's going to be change, it has to start somewhere, but I see no evidence that any of our four presidential or vice presidential candidates are starting.

Vote Early, Vote Often

I'm paying more attention to this year's Presidential campaign than I ever have previous ones. I always follow the basics, but little more. This year, I decided to read books by the two presidential nominees (I bought two by each when I was in the States over the summer). I've also watched some of the key speeches and interviews on the Internet.

I found Obama's VP pick interesting--I remember Joe Biden for his sharp questioning of witnesses at the Watergate hearings (one of which which I actually attended) back in the '70s. I was stunned and fascinated by McCain's pick of Sarah Palin. At first I thought he had lost his mind (literally). Now I recognize its political brilliance. Whether it will succeed or not is anyone's guess at this point. Two historic candidates--the first black nominee political, and perhaps social, backlash. Not so with Palin, because she's not part of an activist movement that expects to win and feels slighted when they don't.

I am still undecided, but I have to make up my mind soon. My absentee ballot should arrive any day now. A friend and colleague from Chicago has already received his! (So, he actually does get to vote early--though, I presume, not often--as the old Chicago quip went.)

Grounded!

Last night was hot, so I got out of bed and plugged in an extra fan I had bought used from friends. It was an American fan, so it needed a plug adaptor to fit into the European-style recepticals here. It roared on. I couldn't find a switch to change the speed. A few seconds later there was a pop, the fan stopped abruptly, and my bedroom instantly filled with the aroma of burning oil and rubber.

Alas, I had momentarily forgotten that a plug adaptor is not the only thing you need to run an American electrical appliance here. You also need a power transformer to dial down the 220 volts that is the European standard, to 110, the American standard.

Despite opening my windows and turning on two other fans, the room continued to smell so bad I had to sleep in the living room.

********

I am less than educated about electrical principles. The only electrical tutorial I've been able to handle is the highly entertaining and nearly farcical There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings, by Kenn Amdahl. It's one step below Electricity for Dummies (if there is such a book).

Amdahl admits that no-one understands electricity, though a lot of people understand a lot about how it behaves. He finally undestood the principles after a dream he had one night, in which a large green man appeared to him and explained the true nature of electricity: there are no electrons, there are only Greenies, like him, trying to get to the next groovy party on the electrical line. The book is a hoot, and it effectively explains electrical concepts sans electrical jargon, introducing scientific terminology ("this is what other people call an 'amp'," "some people call this 'resistance'.") only after he's made the concept abundantly clear using Greenie-talk.

******
I am not alone in my lack of electrical prowess. Senegalese electricians are also missing--or ignoring--some basic electrical concepts. Such as what that third prong in electrical plugs is for. Though appliance cords and extension cords here all have three prongs, and the sockets, of course, have a hole for the third prong to fit into, it turns out those holes aren't wired to anything. This means the outlets aren't grounded.

Until I moved here, electrical grounding was a vague mental construct. Why electricity can't simply go down one wire, into an appliance to do its work, and straight out the other wire is a mystery to me. People do it! We walk into our office buildings, do our work, and walk out.

Well, grounding is no longer theoretical for me. It is a visceral, physical experience, because whenever I touch (for example) an input jack on my laptop while my bare or socked feet are touching the floor, I get shocked. One can also get shocked by touching a refridgerator. My favorite: the friend who got shocked when he touched a cement wall in his house.

A less amusing example occurred at my old apartment building, a few blocks from campus. A colleague was on the roof using the washing machine. (Don't ask me why the washing machine is on the roof--I don't know. But it's there, inside a thief-proof cage of heavy iron bars.) My friend was nearly electrocuted when she touched the washing machine while standing in a small puddle of water from the previous day's rain. How she survived, I'll never know. . . 220 volts delivers quite a jolt!

So, the next time you insert a three-pronged plug into a three-hole socket, be thankful that that third hole is connected to something called a ground, which takes some of those shocking green Greenies back outside where they belong!

Skyline

Here is one of my happiest efforts as an amateur photographer. Can you identify the subject? (For some hints, followed by the answer, read the top entry in the column at right.

photo (c) 2008 by R. Jay Sappington

I have been justly admonished for my lack of photos in recent posts. I plead extenuating circumstances: my cheap camera broke, my expensive camera is too heavy to carry except on specifically photographic outings, and I have had a hard time getting "back on the horse" after losing thousands of digital pictures when my third laptop in four years bit the dust in 2006. I will try to make up for my delinquency with some of the pictures that managed to survive that unwanted purge.

Fuel for the Economy

This just in from an American friend here who is his organization's governmental liason:

New fuel prices went into effect Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 18:00.
Super gasoline went down $0.01 to $3.75 per gallon.
Diesel went down a whopping $0.20 to $3.52/gallon!

Note: I've converted the CFA francs/liter prices he provided to USD/gallon prices based on today's (September 10, 2008) exchange rate as reported at www.Oanda.com. (The exchange rate has improved by $0.15 in the last few weeks!)

Stormy Weather

A strikingly beautiful scene illuminates my bedroom window. The northern sky is a distant sheet of steel, with small gray puffs and stark white egrets passing silently in reverse silhouettes. The soccer field, sporting its new, thin coat of grass, reflects yellow-gray light from the west with an eerie glow. Vultures hunch in trees, while leaves explode in the wind like billows of smoke. Lightning rends the steel sky. All is darkening slowly, the colors muting but not lost in the deepening storm twilight. Finally, it is all but night, and I begin to see my reflection in the glass, insulated from everything but the occasional thunder.

Another view of DA's Soccer Lake. This is almost the view
from my window--just closer to the field, and perhaps 5 yards
to the left. Photo again courtesy of co-worker Lois Clark.

Exchange Rate Tool Bites the Dust

I removed the second Exchange Rate program I had installed at right because it apparently prevented people from accessing the blog (including, sometimes, me!).

You Rain What You Sow, or, How to Make a Hurricane Without Really Trying

Photo of DA's recently flooded soccer field (at least
it has grass!) by my colleague, DA math teacher Lois Clark.

A few days ago, I learned that Senegal recently began managing a cooperative project with other West African nations to “seed” clouds in an attempt to increase rainfall in this seriously under-watered portion of the continent. Over here, the sky isn’t falling, and that’s a problem for subsistence farmers! Or it was. The cloud seeding project appears to be working.

Can you guess when the project started. (Hint: think “Katrina.”) That’s right! In 2005, when Dakar saw the most rain it’s seen in 30 years. And when numerous storms from Senegal and surrounding countries crossed the Atlantic, becoming hurricanes on the way.

For the following two years, apparently, no seeding was done, and rainfall dropped precipitously*. But this year, the project is apparently back in action, and we’re getting solid rains almost every night. And the Caribbean and North America are getting big hurricanes again!

The friend who first told me about the Senegalese use of cloud seeding was amused because this news pretty well puts the kabosh on theories that global warming is simultaneously causing the drought in West Africa and causing the increased rain storms in West Africa that lead to hurricanes.

Apparently, however, it is fairly well established that certain kinds of storm conditions here in West Africa do lead to the formation of hurricanes as they head west across the Atlantic Ocean.

If true that the seeding is working, and true that some of the storms turn into hurricanes, then human intervention in the weather to help starving people on one continent is leading to loss of life and massive destruction in North America.

* For those of you who don’t remember your high school Earth Science class, or who took something silly like Physics or Chemistry instead, “seeding” a cloud is a process in which some substance is injected into “pregnant” clouds—ones containing lots of tiny water droplets that are too light to fall as rain. The injected substances range from sodium iodide to dry ice. (I’ve heard that even cement powder has been tested). The effect is that the water droplets either freeze or combine to be heavy enough to fall as rain (or concrete, as the case may be).

** Wow! Did you catch that double pun? I’m impressed with myself!

Typing with a Different Type of Type

I'm testing a new font size and color in hopes of increasing readability. Let me know what you think. (Unfortunately, eblogger often doesn't do quite what you tell it to, even when you select options from its own menus, so there are and will continue to be some inconsistencies.)

Currency Converter Replacement

Don't miss out on my next post!

SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG

by clicking the POSTS button at right.

I couldn't get the previous Currency Converter to work, so I've replaced it. To see how the fluctuations in the dollar are affecting me, just do the following.

1. Click in the FROM field, press the "U" key 5 times to choose USD, and press ENTER.
   
2. Click in the TO field, press the "C" key once to choose CFA BCEAO Francs,* and press ENTER.
3. Click the GO button (above the FROM field).

* INTERESTING TECHNICAL DISTINCTION: CFA BCEAO Francs (Bank code: XOF) are West African Francs, used by 8 countries, including Senegal. CFA BEAC Francs (Bank code: XAF) are used by a different consortium of 5 CENTRAL African nations. Both currencies are tied to the Euro, and at the same exchange rate, but you can't use XAF Francs in XOF countries, or vice versa. In addition, a few other countries in the region have their own currencies, and do not accept either XOF or XAF Francs! (For more details, including color-coded maps, search for "CFA Francs" on Wikipedia, the source of the info in this paragraph.)

Good news: as of today, the dollar has rebounded from its recent low of 400CFA to the dollar to (today) 446CFA to the dollar. So a box of breakfast cereal today cost only $7.84 instead of the $8.75 it cost two or three months ago. And a pound of bananas is down from $1.50 to $1.34.

I don't know if any of you are interested in all this, but I am--especially the cost of food!

It's raining, it's pouring...

As I write, I can hear a downpour of refreshing rain outside my open windows. This is the best rainy season West Africa has had since it spawned Hurricane Katrina a few years back. Recently, we've had rain every day or two!

Food supplies are still low for many Senegalese, but there's good hope of a good harvest ahead!

Currency Converter

I've just added a currency converter "gadget" at the left--under the SUBSCRIPTION buttons. You, too, can watch the value of the dollar go up and down in comparison to West African Currency! Just press the CONVERT button for the latest exchange rate.

UPDATE: This converter didn't work so I replaced it. For instructions, see my August 28 post.

Your Support Dollars at Work

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SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG.

Click the POSTS button at right.

Friends often ask me about the cost of living in Dakar. It depends a lot on how I choose to eat.

FOOD. I generally buy western food imported from Europe and, sometimes, the US. I went grocery shopping today and bought the following.

1 box of breakfast cereal
2 large boxes of skim milk powder
2 boxes of fruit juice
4 fruit yogurts

My total bill was 17,110 cfa. Even at last week’s improving exchange rate of 450cfa/dollar, that’s $38.00!

If I consistently ate Senegalese style (mostly rice, with various vegetable or meat sauces very high in oil content), I could eat for about $3.00 per day.

FUEL. Today, I saw gasoline for sale at 798cfa per liter, diesel at 808cfa. That comes to $6.71/gallon for gas, $6.80/gallon for diesel. Most vehicles here use diesel.

I don’t often buy fuel. When I need to travel around town, I either take a taxi—$3.50 to $5.00 per trip, one way, depending on distance and traffic—or use a school vehicle and reimburse the school about 70 cents per mile.

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And the word is...(the envelope, please)...

to find the mYsteRy word, which I unwillingly omitted from the August 15 post, check this paragRaph--simply find The capItal letters scattered aBout, reveRse their sequence, and there you'll hAve it.

Who Benefits? (Part 2) Or, That's Water through the Dam

A magazine article I read last year complained that western companies come to Africa, harvest the natural resources, and then take those resources elsewhere for further processing, refusing to let Africans take part in the more lucrative steps in the manufacture of goods. That sounds selfish until you realize that the infrastructure here (I speak of West Africa) is not reliable enough to run large-scale processing and manufacturing plants.

The following story amazes and saddens me.

The Republic of Guinea is extremely rich in natural resources, including minerals and water power. Some years ago, a foreign nation donated huge amounts of engineering expertise and enormous quantities of cement to design and construct a dam on one of Guinea's major rivers. This dam, I am told, could have provided enough electrical power for the entire country, with some left over to sell to neighboring nations. It had the potential to completely revolutionize Guinea's economy.

But when I visited Guinea last December, I found that even parts of the capital city lacked electricity. Entire neighborhoods lighted their markets with kerosene lamps at night. Why? Because the folks in leadership when the dam was being built apparently stole much of the cement powder for their own personal projects and those of their friends. Once the dam was built, it was determined that the cement was so diluted as to be too weak to hold back the river. So, the dam was never put into operation. Now, decades later, this country is still stuck in poverty.

NOTE: I heard the dam story while I was in Guinea. I have done no follow-up research, so it may be off in some particulars either from errors by those who told it to me, or resulting from my less-and-less reliable rememberer, or both. However, I believe it to be true in at least its basic outline. I welcome corrections.

Who benefits? (Part 1)

As much as I respect the Senegalese government (see previous posts), the poor delivery here of such basic services as electricity baffle me. I want to ask someone, "Why are you doing this to your own people?"

During the rainy season (July-December), the power is cut, unannounced, several times a week--sometimes daily, sometimes more than once in a day-- for anywhere between 15 minutes and 10 hours. Apparently, the government, which subsidizes the power plants, frequently doesn't pay the bills on time, so the power company shuts down the plant--or has daily, rolling outages around the city to reduce output.

If there were even a schedule of outages published, it would be immensely better. Then individuals and businesses could at least attempt to plan activities requiring electricity for the times it would be on. (In fact, I'm told this was tried a few years ago, but the schedule was so seldom kept, it was more frustrating than having no schedule, so they quit publishing it.)

I suppose in a predominantly pre-industrial environment, reliable technological infrastructure is not crucial. Much of Senegal qualifies for that description. Farmers and carpenters who use hand tools, vendors with street-side stalls, even taxi drivers in diesel-fueled cars don't care whether the electricity is on or off.

But unlike much of the country, Dakar is not pre-industrial. There are factories, grocery stores, restaurants, banks, and many other businesses that depend on electricity to function--not to mention safety features such as traffic lights and street lights. Computers are common in businesses here, too. Cutting the current without warning is incredibly disruptive to life, businesses, schools.

The president promised last year that power outages would end on a specific day in October. And, in fact, they became very rare for several months. It was wonderful. You didn't have to wonder if you could perform a task (typing, printing, photocopying) at any point during the day. But the stoppages ramped up again in the spring, and have been horrible in the one week I've been back in town.

So, who benefits when the power goes out? Somebody must gain or it wouldn't keep happening.

Suppliers of generator fuel, perhaps? But aren't they the same people who supply fuel for the electrical generators (though perhaps at a lower,bulk price). "I expect," surmised one of my stateside relatives, "that the 'in crowd' (whoever that may be) gets great benefit for maintaining the status quo rather than for improving it. Parties with solutions could be threatening to the in crowd so their barriers to implement solutions are kept high." This is the most plausible explanation I've heard.

Whatever the cause, Africans suffer daily. And, year after year, entire nations pay the price of such infrastructural unreliability. See my next post for a sad example.