Ana xaalis bi?

Pëndum tank moo gën pëndum taat.
Dirt on the feet is better than dirt on the butt.

It’s been a minute since I wrote on here. A lot has happened, but how to summarize…In the same day I was simultaneously encouraged meeting the new PC Country Director and saddened by news of the tragic death of our Safety & Security Officer. Send love to Lamine Ndongo and his family (You can send money too. Let me know if you want details.). It seems I haven’t been able to stay at site for two consecutive days in the past month. The last couple weeks have seemed particularly whirlwindish. Sometimes my life feels like a tragic comedy- riding my bike (read: walking my bike, trying to get on it every once in a while to find that the sand is too loose, and walking some more) to a village to find the desired baskets already sold and gone. Other times my life feels like an epic- riding off into the sunset on a horse drawn cart with the long-sought after basket prototype and restored faith in the basket makers.

I’ve turned into a travelling shoe salesman, which has been kind of fun. My guys own the local market, and we’re trying to find more international buyers. Check out the catalog: www.picasaweb.google.com/pcvsenegal/sandalsinmekhe. I want to send you all a pair, but it’s not gonna work unless you’re buying 50 some odd pairs…so who wants to buy 50 pairs?

Ramadan has come and gone, alhumdullallah, and I am happy that things are back to normal. It’s a weird normal, but it’s normal enough. Korite was uneventful, aside from my host sister knitting me and my buddy some fly clothes (see picture).

Seeing kids come back from other towns for the start of school and hearing fellow volunteers referring to things that happened ‘last year’ made me realize that I have been here for a while. I feel I that am a part of this place, as it has long been a part of me. Which makes me all the more indignant no one will let me say that I live here, yet they all claim that Akon does. Will I ever get to the point where the Senegalese agree that I ‘live’ here? Probably about as soon as they agree that I’m headed to work when they see me, rather than visiting my ‘girlfriends’…

Bonjour les enfants !

Njêlbeen du dara. Mujj bu rafet moo am solo.
The beginning means nothing. A beautiful ending is what matters.

A flashlight trained on a white basket, enveloped in darkness so thick, I momentarily forget there are people huddled all around me. ‘In one month, we want to see 100 baskets that look just like this one’, I bellowed, feeling like some sort of artisanal prophet. ‘Can you do it? Will you do it?’ The ring of women around me sings a chorus of assurances: ‘Yes, no problem! We’ll do it in 2 weeks! God gave us an order and God will help us fill it! We’re ready!’

Sow chuckles and emphasizes, ‘Don’t just say yes. If you say yes, you are making a commitment. Can you make this basket in 5 days?’ A moment of consideration sobers the air, until the same chorus of enthusiastic yes’s comes raining down upon us. I hand off the flash light and allow myself a night-cloaked smile.

This is the way the journey began. Sow (Vice-President of the village Association, called And Suxali), Kebe (Treasurer), and the village women had the opportunity to take part in an order destined for France mere days after they had formed a cohesive group.

It seemed that every one of those first couple days, we were thrown to the ground at noon only to be picked back up again at sunset. Take the day we had the prototype basket made. This was the basket that the other 99 were to be copied off of, so it was important that it be perfect. We had dimensions, we had a picture, and I figured that we wouldn’t have a problem. Wrong. The first two attempts made me wince- they were half as tall and twice as wide as they were supposed to be. I called over the woman in charge of quality control and asked her what she thought of the baskets. She told me they were beautiful. I told her we had a problem. I asked her to get out her measuring tape and compare the basket to the dimensions we had given her. In the middle of chiding her about respecting commitments and following through, I stopped. The botched prototypes were more our mistake than hers. She can’t read numbers.

After a lesson in numerics and trying to come up with another way for her to measure baskets, I was off to the third village, praying that I would find an acceptable prototype there.

A charette (horse cart) ride in off the main road brought me tired, frustrated, and at this point without Sow or Kebe, through sand and sun to my destination. The kids in the village alternately running away from me yelping and running up to me to shake my hand, snot-nosed all the while, reminded me that the baskets are just a means to an end. Basket or no basket, life would go on.

I settled down into the chair provided and began running through plan B. I was awoken from my thoughts by the last thing I expected to see: a perfect, beautifully made basket. The tape measure confirmed my intuition, and I could hardly suppress my glee. In a moment I was fiving the woman who made it (I have yet to get a single Senegalese to high-five) and taking pictures like a bizarre, confused tourist.

I mounted the charette, perfect prototype in tow, and rode off into the sunset…