leggy leggy

As I leave this place, my feelings are pretty mixed.

Senegal’s done so much for me. Living in Africa has been a really eye-opening experience and has led me down so many cool paths. Lending to the Senegalese through Zidisha has allowed me to see a side of their culture I wouldn’t have otherwise seen. Also, having just finished the 17^th grade (yeah, college took me five years), it felt pretty good to be doing practical work, that I truly believed in, outside of the classroom that helps people.

Working for Zidisha was a blast. It was really cool to be a part of such a small operation getting off the ground, doing good work. Julia, my boss and the founder of the organization, was always there to help keep me on track, but gave me tons of liberty to do the job as I wanted. It was clear that she trusts me and takes my opinions seriously, which really helped me feel like it was my project, too. She’s done a fantastic job with the whole thing; I’m really happy to have found her.

I’ve become really close with my African host family. They’re wonderful people who have really accepted and treated me like one of their own.

Thanks to everyone who read this, my first blogging experiment. It meant a lot to me. I didn’t want to do it at first, for a few reasons, but I’m glad I did. It was fun to everybody what I was doing out here.

I’m beyond excited to come home. This is a pretty pivotal summer in my life – having just finished college and preparing to move out west to start my first long term job – so I want to spend the rest of it seeing my friends and family. I’ll definitely have a whole new appreciation for the simple things like reliable electricity and running water in the morning.

I can’t wait to get back to home to see my friends in Barrington and Urbana. I want to listen to Neil Young and have a barbeque. Turn on all my pedals and play my guitar really loud. I can’t wait to see my brother Billy. And my mom. I can’t wait to go to the Canopy Club and watch Santah play to a packed room and kill it.

I want to swim across Icehouse Pond with my dad. And take Boomer for a walk. I also really need a haircut.

Much love,

Mack

Found on Yoff Beach

Lompoul Desert

Here's me and my friend Xander. This guy's excellent.

On our way back from St. Louis, my friends and I spent a night in a desert just outside of a small village called Lampoul. We spent the afternoon with the locals, rode some camels, etc...

Our camp:

Saint Louis

Last weekend I went to St. Louis with some friends. It's the second biggest city in Senegal, so there was lots to see. The city has a lot of buildings boasting bright colors which you don't see as often here in Dakar. St. Louis has a different feel than anything I've seen in Senegal, and walking it's streets can be a real history lesson.

During French colonization, St. Louis was the country's capital. Back then, France played a pretty big role in the city's growth/construction and today, the city still wears its french influence on its sleeve. Since 1960, when Senegal won its independence, France did less and less for the former Senegalese capital. Today, you can see the vestiges of former French rule all over the city - wider streets, Christianity and crumbling french architecture - mixed with aspects of a Senegalese city, like mosques and goats.

Obama Party

People love Barack Obama here in Senegal. Here are some things I've seen over the last few weeks:

An Obama shower kit.

The Obama Shop sells cosmetics and bathing suits. Nothing to do with Barack Obama. At all.

A fan of his work.

A guy I live with has Barack Obama underwear.

Ataya

Most Senegalese people can't live without their Ataya, a sugary green tea that's served in small glasses. The people at my home don't do it much, but a lot of my friends in the neighborhood do it as an everyday ritual and invite at least a few people over every time. The tea has a really strong flavor and is made with a metric ton of sugar. It doesn't appeal to many expats, but I happen to like it.

It takes about twenty minutes for each round of glasses and you can expect three or four rounds. Like most activities in Senegal, Ataya is usually a time for friends to hang out and talk to each other.

Making the tea is just as important as drinking it. Heating the tea, mixing the sugar, cleaning the glasses, all have to be done in a very certain way. Even if I had done this every day after being here for six weeks, I wouldn't be able to do it like these guys. It's really amazing to watch.

The tea is cooked in little teapots on top of mini charcoal grills or on a small butane stove. Like a latté, the foam is really important. To get a good foam on top of each little cup, they pour hot tea back and forth between two cups fifteen or twenty times. This gets the tea mixed and bubbly without using spoons or anything. This is part of the spectacle. The cups are usually pretty far apart when they do the pour-mix thing, making you wonder how they are so coordinated and never burn their hands. Then, they pour the liquid back into the teapot to steep longer, leaving the foam behind in the glass. They do this for each cup, usually about three or four, before finally pouring the tea back into the foamy glasses. The foam sits on top of the thick, green tea and proves that it was well-made.

I got my hair did.

Don't worry, folks. These were only in for about an hour. Braids in three steps.

While waiting for a boat to take me to Carabane, an amazing island off the coast of Casamance, I was invited in for lunch and conversation by a local family hanging out on their porch. It sounds crazy, but this is regular behavior for Casamance. I'm sure being a traveler had a lot to do with it, but still a very nice gesture.

They loved my white-boy hair and went to town.

By the way, if anybody's wondering why I'm wearing this shirt in all of my pictures. It's because I never take it off.

Casamance

I just got back from a six-day trip to Casamance (the region in red). So far, everyone who has gotten Zidisha loans in Senegal lives in the Dakar region. I was pretty eager to get to Casamance to spread the Zidisha love and travel around the region. I found a pretty cool balance between being half-tourist looking to experience everything / half-workaholic trying to spread financing in a region that really needs it.

I don't really know where to start. I spent nights in Ziguinchor, Oussoye, Carabane, staying with different locals each night. With the exception of Ziguinchor, the region is pretty rural. I made some really good friends and got a 'real' look at the region, which would have been impossible if I'd gone the hotel route. It was pretty exhausting, but completely worth it. Also, it was an incredible lesson in human nature - the people in Casamance were the nicest and most welcoming bunch I've ever met, dying to know American culture just as much as I wanted to know theirs.

In terms of work, it was frustrating at first. Like I said in an earlier posting, in order to be eligible for a Zidisha loan, the borrower must have access to and be able to navigate the internet. This is because Zidisha is a "peer-to-peer" service that requires that the borrowers interact directly with their lenders through the website. In the beginning of my trip, I simply couldn't find anyone that fit the bill. Before I went, I had a couple of contacts (mostly friends of friends) but only one of them came through and was of any use. My approach: to introduce myself to anyone that seemed thirsty for a conversation and see if they could point me to anybody who we could work with or could help me find people. After meeting countless people and explaining my work, it was pretty obvious that everybody wanted to be financed but didn't fit the computer literacy requirement. A lot of the region has no electricity at all and cyber cafés are a luxury that few can afford.

I had plenty of fun while I was there, but at this point was frustrated that I had spent nearly a week without being able to find anybody eligible.

Things turned around pretty quickly. My friend Bintou, somewhat of a local socialite, knew plenty of people that fit the bill perfectly and was able to meet with a half-dozen of them. I predict that at least a few will be on the Zidisha site soon, ready to be funded.

The biggest success was Thursday night, my last night in Ziguinchor. I was invited to a local woman's home, who caught wind of what I was doing, to speak with "a friend or two" who were computer literate and interested in getting loans. I was ecstatic. I had finally found them at the last minute.

It was around midnight, completely dark, and the power was out in the whole neighborhood. I was invited into a eerily candlelit concrete room with ten men and women who wanted to know more about what Zidisha was all about. Some of them had heard about it last minute and came in their pajamas. The meeting turned into a couple hours of getting to know each other, explaining the service and answering questions. Within 24 hours, I had met with and instructed 15 people on how to take the first steps to getting loans.

For every person that wants to work with Zidisha, there's a lot of work I have to do back here in Dakar in order to get them on the site. So, 15 people is definitely more than I can handle, but I'd rather get a hold of too many than too little. It just so happened that I had to cram all of my work on the last day, but it allowed me to do so many cool things with the rest of my week.