Man: 18 Mountains, resiliency, and mysticism

In early November 2017, I went the farthest west I have been in Côte d'Ivoire. Man, the capital of the Montagnes district (formerly 18 Montagnes) is nestled amidst the tallest peaks in the country and dense rainforest. Its most western regions border Guinea and Liberia.

Clockwise: The highest peak in Côte d'Ivoire, la dent de Man; the view from the cathedral of Man; sunset; view from Dioulabouga neighborhood, Man

But this region, despite its beauty, was also the site of some of the worst violence the country witnessed during its two crises; it is even known as the "Wild West" because of the lawlessness and proliferation of various armed groups from Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia. Still today it remains a volatile area as the location of current land disputes that resulted in seven deaths and displaced 5000 people in October 2017.

The organizations I spoke with here focused largely on health outcomes: the region has the highest HIV rate in the country, with Côte d'Ivoire having the highest HIV prevalence rate in West Africa and this has had a particular effect on orphaned and vulnerable children; gender-based violence was rampant during and after the conflict; female genital cutting is widely practiced and organizations work to help local leaders understand the negative health impacts of such practices (such as fistulas). After health, social cohesion and poverty reduction were the next most active sectors for NGOs: integrating former combatants proves difficult when victims do not understand why those who hurt them are receiving aid to integrate, while the victims receive nothing. Encouraging groups who fought each other to get along on public good projects proves futile when citizens do not trust their neighbors. Nevertheless, there is a commitment to overcoming the intercommunal violence and develop the region: folks recounted stories of their entrepreneurial endeavors: creating ecotourism sites and developing a rice farming consultancy firm and women banding together to form a co-op to increase local transformation of agricultural products. I admire the resiliency of a population who suffered so greatly in the past and hope that the positive growth seen in recent years will reach these groups.

11/7/2017: Interview with a local health organization

11/8/2017: Interview with an organization that does programming related to orphans and vulnerable children 

11/8/2017: A women's co-op leader shows me the traditional press for removing liquid from cassava (they just recently purchased a more mechanized processing system)

11/8/2017: Attending an open air session hosted by magistrates and a local NGO on how to access the justice system.

In addition to conducting interviews, I still was able to play tourist: visiting a sacred forest full of tiny monkeys, hiking to the beautiful waterfalls, watching the Elephants lose their World Cup qualifying match, partaking in local alcohol products.

Clockwise: Palm wine in a Wobé village east of Man; feeding the monkeys in the Gbêpleu sacred forest; the famous cascades of Man; rooting on the Elephants in a local bar with NGO folks

I also attended the 7th annual Mask Festival. Traditional masks from across the region and elsewhere made their way to the three-day festival: there were some masks who were aggressive and frightened onlookers, there were humorous masks that encouraged (for a fee) photo-taking, there were masks on stilts, and there was plenty of dancing and mask races. Attendance was high, with young people and old alike laughing and pointing, screaming and running (and then laughing), all trying to get a glimpse of the mystical beings. It was a compelling and intriguing cultural experience.

11/11/2017: Some of the masks we saw at the festival

Trashy Stories, Mirror dancing, et autres choses

note to Anna: Lan ngay wax Wolof? means Do you speak Wolof?, in Wolof.

On Saturday we went to the trash dump (the only one for the entire Dakar area) for environment and development class. Land fills are all over the world, used by countries as a way to store material waste. However, this particular area, Mbeubeus, is both interesting and disturbing. More than 300 trucks dump trash (all kinds of trash that hasn’t been sorted) a day at the dump where 800+ people call home. That’s right, there are people living in the dump. Their houses are actually in the midst of the trash. Most of the people that live there sort the trash in order to make a profit on what they can find (i.e. re-sell glass bottles back to companies, plastics to be recycled, weaves to be re-made into useable hair). It may sound like a good system of recycling, until you realize that toxic and industrial trash is dumped here as well, putting the people at extreme health risks. The doctor in the village said that many people come in with respiratory diseases and infections from cuts that they received sorting through the muck. We were wearing masks, but we could still smell the stench and possibly the toxic air that these people breathed in every day. There was absolutely no state management of the dump; there were places where the trash was stacked three to four times our heights. Right beside the mountain of trash were cultivated fields. The trash itself pollutes the water table which in turn affects the vegetation around, let alone the drinking water of the population. I won’t forget when we walked past a stream of multicolored liquid in the middle of the dump that was on fire. That wasn’t water, folks. There was a boy who was 13 years old and who had been sent by his parents to Mbeubeus to work, alone, five days a week. He was supposed to send money back to his family. There were little girls, barely 8, sifting through stacks of old clothes and carrying bags of garbage to be sorted. It was dusty; it was smelly; we had no idea what we were stepping in (or on). What was most remarkable to me (besides the people working in the trash dump) was the amount of trash a city can make. When you throw something in the trash, you forget about it. It gets picked up by a truck, and you never think about it again. But it has to go somewhere. It really makes you realize how wasteful society is. And here they recycle everything from clothes to plastic bottles before they throw it away, so to see that much trash…it makes you think what a landfill in the US is like (though we have decent recycling plants and there aren’t people living in dumps, but still).
After that we headed to a depression where people are living. A depression is where the land has fallen and is very close to the water table. This is a very unsafe place to live because depressions are very susceptible to floods. But, because of this, it is very cheap land. We saw a house which had been flooded recently and been overrun by vegetation. The water is a murky green because of a high concentration of nitrates, which are harmful to humans. Just outside of the village were about two dozen tents: for the refugees that had lived in the village but had been flooded out. Because of higher amounts of water in the village, malaria and cholera are huge problems. People have to keep re-building their houses because the water destroys them or they sink into the depression. To say the least, this is not a good situation.

Saturday night, we went to a discotheque s’appelle Nianey. It was a lot of fun, minus the slow techno music, but it was also an interesting experience. First, there were these mirrors, and I could not understand why people were dancing, by themselves, in front of the mirrors. It was like, can you be a little more conceited? Haha. Second, let’s discuss Senegalese music. It’s different from dance music in a couple of ways. There is the singer, who is usually singing slowly. Then there is the music played by the guitar and keyboard, which is the same rhythm as your typical dance hit. But then there are the drums. They are out of control majority of the time, making their own beat that doesn’t really match up with the rest of the song. You’re real confused: do I dance to the singer, which would mean extra slow, or do I try to keep up with the drumming or what? And Senegalese dancing is the entire body, involves a lot of movement, and many times jumping, which is definitely a workout. And for some reason, always when Senegalese are dancing in music videos, they have this huge grin on their face and make it look so easy to make your legs and hips do impossible things. We try to mimic, but I don’t think we have it down quite yet.