Inside the studio! More Sous L'Arbre Videos

So since being back, I have been working on a project that aims to bring this group of Senegalese musicians, "Sous L'Arbre Acoustik," to the United States (at least Oregon and Washington) to tour universities and other institutions for a cultural exchange. We would offer workshops in Senegalese music and culture, African drumming, African dance, Cross cultural awareness, and French/Wolof language. If you know anyone who might be interested in having this group or donating to the project, feel free to send me an email! 

 I really want to try and pull this off, especially since these guys were such a huge part of my experience when I was in Senegal, and some of them have dreamed of coming to the USA to play for years. These guys have really become my family, I couldn't have asked for a better crew while I was there.

Project Website

GoFundMe Page

Youtube video link

Goodbye Senegal…

The last few days were pretty hard saying bye to everybody. I left a few days after most of the people in my program, so that sucked because I had to drag out the goodbyes for three extra days than everyone else! The sadness hit me the hardest when it was about an hour before Abi left, and we were sitting outside the studio outside Aba's house (our djembé player) and they wanted to play one LAST song… so they brought the guitar and a djembé outside, and of course, five seconds into Price Tag I start weeping. 

I’m gonna miss so many things about this country. I'll miss so many little every day things that I've gotten so used to; long heartfelt handshakes and greetings. I’ll miss all my friends, especially Abi, my partner in crime, who I’ve seen almost every day for four months. the acoustic tree and it’s philosophy to be à l'aise no matter what. I’ll even miss the smell of Dakar (or maybe not), I'll miss my community in Ouakam, all the people I pass on my way to the bus stop, including the stray cats and dogs. I'll miss sharing money with everyone and not feeling like I have to keep track of every dime and every expense. I’ll miss going to people’s houses uninvited, and bartering in wolof. I'll miss getting hissed at when someone is trying to get my attention. I’ll miss eating around the bowl with my hands, I’ll miss dancing all the time and working out on the corniche by the beach and going on runs with Abi and Youssou, who starts clapping along singing songs in wolof when we start getting tired. I'll miss the gym in Ouakam and Big's step/ab routines and repetitive music. I’ll miss my host family even though we hardly ever talked about anything. I’ll miss walking around sandy streets and almost getting hit by cars (or cows) and sitting on the Terrace on the roof at school, listening to my Senegalese lawyer friends argue in wolof. I’ll miss laying on my stomach and riding the waves at the beach, playing with monkeys, and the fact that I can buy a sack of roasted peanuts for less than 25 cents. I’ll miss seeing people hanging out of buses and riding on the roof of the sept place cars. I'll miss not having to be exactly on time to anything, and the fact that a good excuse for being late is that I had to finish a cup of tea with my family and then say hi to everyone in my neighborhood before leaving. I’ll even miss my instant coffee with powdered milk.  I'm gonna miss playing music and drinking attaya on the beach with my wonderful friends: 

I’ll miss playing in concerts with Sous L’Arbre Acoustique, and rehearsals in Aba’s little studio. I’ll miss driving across the country crammed in a hot car with too many people in it, the taxi driver driving on the side of the road half the time to avoid potholes. I’ll miss little adorable senegalese kids that run up and shake your hand and sing and want a million photographs of themselves. I’ll miss drum circles, the desert, fresh mangoes, bissaap and monkey bread juice, the vibrant colors of Senegalese fabric. I’ll miss the way my host Dad yelled at the TV when his team was losing in soccer. I’ll miss bucket showers outside in villages in the fresh morning air, oh and getting woken up at five in the morning to the call of Prayer from the mosque. I'll miss feeding monkeys and the feeling of satisfaction after hiking all day in the heat and then finally reaching water. I’ll miss getting wise life advice from Big and Aba, people singing all the time, Teranga, speaking French and trying to speak Wolof. I can't say I'll miss wifi that never works, but I'll miss people not being connected or on their phones all the time. I'll miss seeing women wearing babies on their backs, and the sense of togetherness that you find everywhere you go in Senegal. I'll miss the feeling like I'm always present in the moment, and so is everyone else. And how people don't stress out about things that don't really matter in the bigger scheme of things. These are only a few things at the top of my head that I'm gonna miss. I'm sure there are many more.

I remember how much at the beginning of my stay here, it felt like such a foreign land, and now I feel so comfortable and "a l'aise" here. Maangi fii. I am here only. Alhamdoulilah!! Goodbye Senegal, Ci Kanam, Be beenen yoon, inchallah!! I will miss you! 

Almost time to leave...

As I get ready to leave this beautiful country, I've been thinking back at my time here and some of the little things I'm going to take with me when I go home. I need to find a way to keep my connection with Senegal and continue to be involved there somehow. I don’t want to just leave and then never really return to this place or just lose contact with people. That’s what is difficult about studying abroad, is I feel like I have established a great life across the world with great people, and then it's just over. I can’t just move onto my normal life again and leave it all behind..I just can’t, it's a part of me now. And my experiences here have had such an impact on me. 

One thing I’m definitely taking back to the USA is just to consciously go out of my way to give more and help people here and there. The week before I left, I was frantically last minute gift shopping with Abi, and we ran into this guy that had sold something to Abi the previous week. He got his four friends together and they took us everywhere we needed to go shopping in Central Dakar without asking for anything in return. Granted, they probably had nothing better to do, but still. They gave up their afternoon to help us find everything on our list, and made sure we didn’t get mobbed by annoying vendors trying to rip us off because we were toubabs (white people). We practiced wolof with them, and bought them some mangoes as a thank you for helping us all day. How often in America would you ever see someone just join a couple foreigners and help them with their shopping? People in Senegal as a whole I noticed are just much less concerned with themselves and their own agenda than in the States, and are much more concerned and aware of the people around them. 

Another thing that I have really lived and experienced here is that when you consistently do things for others it really does come back to you. I’ll buy my friends all a banana one day, and the next day someone else will buy me a mango or a taxi ride when I have no money. If it's not a big amount, people don't keep track of what they owe each other, because when you do something for someone, people don't want you to pay them back, they want you to pay them back by building the relationship, or paying it forward. For instance the other day, I was completely out of money, had no access to an ATM  and needed a couple dollars for a taxi in the morning. So my friend Youssou runs all the way to his house, and comes back with a little bit of cash to get me through until the next day. I thank him several times, and he just says "On est ensemble!" Which literally means "we are together." But basically means we're family, I look out for you and you look out for me. I love this philosophy. the expression "on est ensemble," is not a french thing, but comes from a wolof phrase and it's just translated to that in French. I heard this phrase almost every day.

I am going to make more of an effort when I get home to say hi to people more, ask them how they're doing and actually mean it. To take the time to ask people about their families, their studies, if they are in peace! I don’t know if that works really in our culture to do this to random people but I can try and then see what happens. I actually was around a giant group of French people when I was playing a gig with Sous L'Arbre at a birthday party few weeks ago, and the majority of the people there were white and French. I was tempted to go up and give someone a huge enthusiastic hello with a fist pump and a high five, and greet them 5 different ways in wolof. But then I remembered that white people don't really do that... I then struggled with myself for a couple minutes and then realized that I honestly had forgotten how to greet and start conversations with white people.

I also feel more sympathetic and empathetic towards people who are needy. People can be so rude to homeless people in America. My friend Big always tries to give his spare change to people who need it, and starts up conversations with people who might be sitting on the street all the time, asking about their day and making sure they're "a l'aise." Or if he has candy in his pockets he gives them to the Talibé, along with a high five or a pound it. I remember he told me once that if everyone just cared a little bit more about strangers, and gave a little bit more, then the world would be a much nicer place - which is so true. He said that money has no value if you're not using it for good. There was a lady once who was really distressed, and needed about ten bucks to buy medicine at the pharmacy for her mother who was ill. I wasn't sure or not if I was being scammed, but I gave it to her anyway, and she took my phone number and said that we will keep in touch and that she would let me know how her Mother was doing. She told me that because I did a nice thing, someone somewhere would would do something nice for me. Then not long afterwards I was out of phone credit, and I get a text message saying that an anonymous person has sent me ten dollars worth of credit to my phone. 

Something I’ll also take away is patience. If the wifi doesn’t work, its not the end of the world. If the employee doesn’t have the right change for you, get over it. If the bus is late, its late. If your car breaks down, it happens! Things constantly would stop functioning or not work in Senegal and you could either freak out and let it ruin your day, or you could just get over it and realize that it's really not the end of the world. I honestly can only remember hearing someone complain about 3 or 4 times while I was in Senegal. When I think of America, people are constantly complaining about how tired they are, how they don't have the newest model of the iPhone, or how they have to wait in traffic, etc. 

People in Senegal are late to everything - I was an hour late to our farewell dinner with my school because I had to stop by a friends house to visit on the way, which meant that I had to talk to every member of his family for a few minutes, ask if they were in peace, and how everything was going. Then I would see more people on the street that I knew so I had to talk to them too. You can’t just be in a hurry all the time here, or people will wonder why you can’t even take the time to talk to people. This reminds me of back on April 4th, the day of our Independence day concert. It was scheduled at 10pm, and by 9:45 Abi and I were just finishing getting ready and were scrambling to get out the door as fast as possible, which mean't that I missed dinner. We hurried as fast as we could to meet Aba, and when we tried to get a taxi and Aba calmly said that he would rather walk. We told him that if we walked then we would get there after 10, which is when he reminded us that we were in Senegal, not the US, and that the concert would start when it started! And sure enough, when we got there at 10:15 the venue was practically empty, and half the band hadn't even arrived yet. I definitely did not need to skip dinner. A l'aise!

Which brings me to say that time is NOT money! I know Americans are productive people and we get a lot done and that is great and all, but that doesn't mean we have to feel bad about having too much down time,  or for doing things that might not be making us money, but make us happy. One of my Senegalese friends pointed out to me something about the way we think about time. He said to me, "look at the way that Americans talk about time. You spend time, you waste time, you kill time. You talk about time as though it is something you need to keep track of and use up." When he said that he made me think of time in a different way. Then I thought about how the Senegalese think about time. For most of them, time doesn't really exist, and neither does age a lot of the time. Americans are very good at doing, and doing many things at once. We make to do lists, we plan out our time to the last second. While Senegalese people are so good at just being. 

I think that Americans subconsciously feel like when we are stressed out, it is okay because it means that we are accomplishing things. If you think about it, as a society we are always seeking new forms of entertainment to keep us entertained and sane because we work so hard, but we aren't very good at just doing nothing, or spending quality time with people we people we love. It seems like we are an entertainment seeking nation but not really a pleasure seeking nation. People go on vacation all the time, but don't really know how to relax. Even people who think they are relaxing or having down time or present in what they're doing, are really on their cell phone or just watching TV. I felt like because I was spending so much of my time fully present with people and not doing my own thing or around people who were distracted or on their phones, I just felt much happier and more connected with everything around me. Instead of just texting a friend, you just actually go stop by their house. What a concept! I think because in our culture there is so much focus on being independent and following your dreams, we can sometimes get so caught up in that that we forget about our happiness, our health, and our relationships. 

While I may seem like I'm bashing Americans and America right now, let me just say that I do very much appreciate my country in a whole different way, especially after being here. Despite the fact that I keep comparing cultures and putting down Americans in this blog post, I also think there are so many awesome and wonderful things about America and Americans. And also if you're reading this, know that when I am generalizing Americans as a certain way, what I mean to say is that as a whole we have the tendency to do certain things, but I recognize that America is huge and very diverse and that I can't make generalizations about the entire country. I really do love our country, (even though its got a lot of issues) but every country has issues. Being here made me realize just how much opportunity we have in America, and how privileged we are. And no matter where I go in the world, home is home. I'm going to post more once I get home about that because I'm sure I will have some new things to say about it after arriving at home. 

Also I feel like my perception of wealth has changed so much. People have always said money doesn't buy happiness, but I feel like I really experienced that and realized how true it is. I mean, past the very basic necessities that you need, how much "stuff" you have really has nothing to do with how happy you are as a person. Buying a bunch of expensive stuff might buy you short term gratification, but it's not necessarily going to make you feel like a fulfilled person. As a whole, I found Senegalese people to be so much happier, less stressed out, and just overall satisfied with their lives then most Americans I know, and the amount of material things and even activities available to them  are so much less. Then again, maybe it's engrained in American culture to never truly be satisfied, and maybe thats why we go out and work so hard and get things done and are always setting new goals for ourselves.

In Senegal, they have so many less luxuries than we do - things we take for granted like hot showers, access to a wide variety of foods, and just tons of STUFF, all the forms of entertainment we have. When we are so used to having so much stuff, we freak out when we think we are running out of stuff, or when things don't go how we plan them to. Some of the kinds of things we concern ourselves with and get worked up over I've realized are just so un necessary, especially considering how much we actually have and how lucky we are to have the opportunities we do. I think something we can learn from the Senegalese people is to always be content with what you have, and make the people in your life a higher priority. 

Also, not to state the obvious, but people are people, no matter where you go. Despite differences in skin color, background, nationality, gender, etc. we all the same and want the same basic things. I also just wanted to post that picture because I think it looks artsy fartsy! 

Talibé in Senegal

I meant to post about this earlier but it has been in my saved drafts for a long time because I kept adding to it as I learned more about the Talibé. Also all these pictures are from the internet because I didn't feel comfortable taking pictures of them while I was there.

The word Talibé means “student,” but in English, the word has a connotation to mean a student that studies Islam. You see them running around all over the streets of Dakar, usually barefoot and in dirty clothes asking for food and money as a part of their curriculum. Parents send their kids to Marabouts (religious leaders/teachers in West Africa) veto schools called Daaras (Quranic schools, usually at the home of a Marabout and not usually a part of the formal education system) because they believe that it is an opportunity for them to have a Quranic education for free, and often these families don't have the means to send their kids to public school. Usually these kids live with the Marabout and learn the Quran until they are about 15 years old, in exchange for a small quota that they have to beg for in the streets and then give to the Marabout.  

With my education class, we went to visit one of the daaras in Dakar and talk to the marabout (asked questions which were then translated into Wolof). There was a big room that was used for studying the Quran, for prayer, and sleeping - apparently all of the children slept on the floor on these mats, no mosquito nets or beds. There were stray cats running in and out, and it didn't seem like a very clean place to live. The Marabout talked about how this was one of the better daaras, and how you can't really get look at one daara and assume they are all like it because the conditions vary from daara to daara. He said that in that daara, he never beat the kids, and that he only required that the students bring him a minimum of 300 CFA (maybe 75 cents) per day, and the rest they can keep for themselves. 

Its hard to improve the conditions of the lives of the Talibé because of poverty, and the power that marabouts have in Senegalese society. The government and other international organizations have tried to help improve the conditions of the Talibé, but the system of the Talibé and Marabout are so engrained in Senegalese culture that it's not easy to change. Also Marabouts are viewed as some of the most important people in Senegal and have tons of economic and political power in the society.

As an American coming to Senegal and seeing the Talibé all over the street, I couldn't help but feel a lot of sadness for them. I can't imagine spending my childhood begging in the streets. But in Senegal and for many Muslims, they view this traditional education as sort of necessary passage into adulthood, and Talibé are often proud to be part of this tradition. I talked to my host Mom about this and she was telling me about how for many Muslims, being able to give to the Talibé is something that gives them a sense of being a good Muslim. Whenever we had leftovers in my host family, we always saved it to give it to the Talibé. We had a few regulars that would come by the house in the evening and ask for something to eat too, and my family would expect them. Muslims give to the Talibé in the morning because they believe that it will bring them more luck during the day. My host Dad was also telling me that the Talibé from all over West Africa come to Senegal because they know this about Senegalese people. They know that Senegalese people love to give and while this is good, it also means that this kind of justifies the problem and makes it so that there are way too many of them concentrated in places like Dakar.  

One of the five pillars of Islam, Zakat, says you must help people who are in need who don’t have the means to help themselves. Also, Islam requires Muslims to study the Quran and to know God, which is why there are so many marabous and Quranic schools in Senegal. The daaras are a way that people can give their kids at least a religious education if they aren't able to send their kids to a french or private school. While it's good to give to the Talibé, even if you gave them clothes and food every day it doesn't help the long term problem or the fact that they are still living in poverty. When you do give them a new shirt or shoes, it usually gets taken by another older Talibé in the Daaras.  

The main problem with the daaras right now is that they aren't regulated. There has been talk about the need to regulate them and make sure there are at least some minimum standards like access to clean water, sanitation, mosquito nets, food, toilets, basic health care, etc. but there has not been much action taken. Most of the daaras don't provide very comfortable living conditions, and many the Talibé don’t have access to water or electricity, and sleep together on the floor in rooms without mosquito nets. There have also been reports of abuse on the part of the Marabout. 

Another big problem right now is that a lot of Marabouts often take advantage of the Talibé and exploit them to make a profit. Usually the money that the Talibé bring in from the streets isn't put towards the kids well being or is not used to help support them, but the Marabout just keeps it all for himself. I got the impression that the daaras have changed a lot over time in history, and it used to be a smaller tradition in villages. But now, Taliban have to spend a huge part of their day in the street and it didn't used to be this way.

There are around ten thousand Talibé in Dakar. If the Talibé aren't successful at bringing back the minimum quota required by the Marabout, they are sometimes beaten. The Marabouts sometimes make more money with their children then if they were to have a real job. This creates thousands of children that are malnourished, dirty, barefoot and prone to sickness, running around the streets of Dakar searching for enough money so that they don't get beaten when they get back to the house of the marabout. In the city, the Marabouts are much less confronted with social pressure than in the villages. Some of them even have more than one daara and make money off of their kids, hiding the truth from their parents. 

The Quranic schools that are part of the recognized education system are not the same as the daaras - the Quranic schools are recognized by the formal education system. In the Quranic schools, the Quran is taught along with Arabic, but usually French is also taught, along with other subjects like math, science, etc. This is generally seen as a better option because if they decide to get a job later in life they might have more options available. The downside though is that usually these schools that offer both a religious education and a colonial education can be expensive.  

Modern Daara 

I think that one of the things that could be to help the problem would be to add the daaras to the formal education system, because if they were part of it then it would be ensured that the students were actually getting their education in the daaras, and not just becoming subject to begging in the streets. The state also needs to look out for the kids to see if they are abused or not, and ensure that they have enough to eat, access to proper water, and are not exploited by the marabous. It's also an issue that pretty much anyone can just open up a daara and pretend to be a marabou, and take in Talibé to use them to make a profit since they aren't regulated. It is an issue that is not well addressed, and the state does not want to ban it because it is a matter of religion.

 The government could restore human rights in the daaras if they decided to, but it is complicated when politics and religion become mixed. What is needed is for people to start seeing this as a human rights issue, and not a matter of maintaining religious schools. Religious schools can still exist but it seems to me that there is no reason why they need to be in such conditions, where children have to go out and get exploited by marabouts, or be in such poverish conditions. Human Rights Watch also has been saying for years that Senegal needs to create stricter laws for daaras. These boys don’t have much of a future if they spend most of their childhoods on the street begging. But unfortunately the government is not putting this issue at the top of their list of priorities.