Le Président National du MAJ Sénégal après la Marche 2011

Above is the link for MAJ Senegal's first uploaded video to our Youtube channel at MAJSenegal. Im still trying to figure out the features and posting videos takes awhile here, so keep checking back in for more updates and new videos.

This is a video of Pape Momar Mbaye, the National MAJ President in Senegal, right after the youth walk preceding the International Conference on Family Planning. He demands that youth play a bigger role in reproductive health policy and education, and why this is so important especially in Senegal.

Stay tuned for more updates and be sure to subscribe to our channel!

Thanks Adam for the suggestion; here's the link for the blog. Also, I will look into having subtitles added, though translating is quite a bit of work and you would be surprised how long it takes to translate 3 minutes of video word for word. I'll do my best.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MAJSenegal?blend=1&ob=video-mustangbase

Sama yaay ci Sénégal

Immediately following the conference, well actually before the conference was even over, my mom arrived for a week. Being the incredibly flexible and adaptable woman that she is, she agreed to hop off the plane, rest a few hours, and then join her daughter for the closing ceremony of the Family Planning conference and meet my colleagues at ASBEF and fellow MAJ members.

While this day seemed rather chaotic, I think it was comparatively the calmest and least eventful of the days we had together in Sénégal. She was far more prepared than I was for the unbelievable show of kindness and hospitality that my friends, colleagues, and host family presented her with. However, I don’t think any amount of planning could have prepared our stomachs for the sheer amount of food we were fed. Most of Mom’s visit with me involved going to different friends homes and being fed delicious food to the point of bursting, then being handed fruit and beverage when we literally could not fit in anymore rice or couscous. But the trip was absolutely wonderful. We had the time to do some sightseeing at Gorée Island (for more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorée), we did a lot of visiting, and we even had the chance to make a Christmas meal for ourselves and some of my friends here – which included pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce because mom brought canned pumpkin and cranberries from the States. She’s amazing.

It also just happened that Tamxarit – the Muslim New Year in Sénégal – took place during Mom’s trip as well. This meant that my host family had yet another opportunity to stuff us with delicious food, this time Senegalese couscous made from millet, with a red tomato sauce, chicken, sheep, and beef. It was quite extravagant and, needless to say, filling.

MAJ and ASBEF gave my mom one of the most touching welcomes. The Executive Director invited all personnel and youth volunteers to the clinic for refreshments, a formal presentation on MAJ for my mom, and then a period where they showered us both with compliments, which then I had to translate to Mom. Its very embarrassing, actually, to have to translate compliments about yourself.

All in all, a completely overwhelming and absolutely incredible week that I don’t think either of us will ever forget.

Mom at the market with Khady, the vendor I always go to who gives me the best deals and usually throws in a pepper or zucchini for free.

Mom and I at Gorée.

Lunch. Or what was lunch.

A series of absolutely adorable photos with my host family the night of Tamxarit.  

Mom with my husband, the chicken vendor, as we pick out the two chickens destined for our Christmas feast. 

Me with my mom and one of my surrogate mothers in Sénégal, my Wolof and Fulani teacher.

Preparing Christmas Dinner. In order starting with the dish closest to Mom: candied yams, gravy, squash, stuffing, potatoes for mashing.

PUMPKIN PIE! I was very excited.

Us with the chickens.

The chefs of the evening! Lia on the left and Giulia on the right, both my housemates.

Candied yams. They received mixed reviews for the evening, just as they do every year in the States. Oh well, more for me.

The Christmas feast.

Mom on the street enjoying one of my favorites, beignet (deep-fried mini doughnuts), and a 10 cent cup of Nescafé.

Mom and I with MAJ volunteers. Thank you to everyone who made my mom's stay so incredible. Jéréjef waay! 

The International Conference on Family Planning

Every time I begin a blog entry, I seem to apologize for not having written in a long time and then justify it by the fact that so much has happened in the past few weeks that I had no time to process it, let alone write about it. Well that is also true this time around. This may just become my pattern, as incredible things just seem to keep on happening!

Before the conference even started, MAJ along with 11 other Senegalese youth organizations planned and held a walk for greater youth access to family planning services. I was incredibly proud of MAJ’s ability to organize and mobilize the over 300 youth that participated in the march, and I think it was also a very good opportunity for these organizations to network among themselves and decide how they could work together on future programs and endeavors.

What was completely wonderful of ASBEF was that they let me come along to the actual conference as one of the 50 Senegalese youth participants, so I had the opportunity to attend all of the sessions as well as take part in youth activities. I had a badge that said my name and that I came from Senegal (which got a lot of strange looks when I was walking around speaking very American English), but I was very proud to be there representing ASBEF and the youth of MAJ. I also felt lucky that, for once, I had a definitive skill that I could use to help promote MAJ and their activities. Many of the conference participants came from American organizations and NGOs, so this was a chance for me to do as much PR as I could for MAJ youth in English, and within the channels of American professionalism.

The conference was sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as Johns Hopkins School of Health, among other partners. It brought together family planning professionals from around the world to present their research, programs, and technology to their peers, and was also an excellent means for Senegal and Senegalese family planning programs to be highlighted. The conference had a deliberate youth focus, with 4 young people from West Africa chosen to speak at the opening and closing addresses – one of whom was the President of the MAJ club in St. Louis (the second largest city in Senegal). The ASBEF/MAJ family was incredibly proud. MAJ youth attended sessions as well as got involved with specific activities for youth, notably a political dialogue between youth participants and the First Ladies of Sénégal, Mozambique, and Namibia to come up with constructive demands for policy change relating to youth and their reproductive and family planning rights. 

For me personally, the conference was like Family Planning Christmas. There was an overwhelming number of sessions, posters, abstracts and presentations that interested me, not to mention the over 2000+ participants themselves who came from all over the world to network and share with their fellow professionals. There were information stands from represented organizations, and I took almost everything they had to offer – which now means that a small corner of my room is being renovated into a family planning library. Let me know if you need any information! 

Here are some pictures from the Pre-Conference and Conference activities.

Getting ready for the walk. The sign reads, "Adolescent and Youth Access for Reproductive Health Services."

Beginning the walk from the Place de l'Obèlisque (pictured in the background). The walk was probably about 2 km long, going down one of the main roads leading to downtown, and ending at the large RTS Senegalese TV station downtown.

MAJ members and I gearing up for the walk!

My personal favorite of the posters and signs. I carried this around with me during the walk when I wasn't taking pictures.

This slogan became the theme for youth throughout the conference. It reads "Your life, your rights, your contraception."

On the back of all the t-shirts worn by participants - "Adolescent and Youth Access to Reproductive Health Services: A priority" 

The rest are pictures from the conference itself. Here is the opening ceremony with President Wade giving the opening address.

 This is the tent for the political dialogue session between Senegalese youth and the 3 First Ladies, as well as a African Women Leaders organization.

The First Lady of Mozambique.

The First Lady of Namibia.

 The First Lady of Sénégal.

Youth were assigned to tables with members of this African Women Leaders organization. During the session, there were breakout sessions intended to allow youth to discuss and advocate for their ideas on how policy should be changed to be more inclusive and youth friendly in terms of reproductive health and family planning rights. This is a MAJ member reporting on his breakout session.

Another MAJ member reporting out.

A photo with the 3 First Ladies.

 Before the conference, ASBEF and MAJ held a competition for the best art submissions by youth related to family planning. The winning pieces were then sold during the conference. Here is a conference participant with his purchase!

Me begin stoked to be at the closing ceremony.

The President of MAJ St. Louis, Pape Magotte Ndiaye, giving his closing address. 

An entry wouldn't be complete without some food! Here are some photos of the ceebu jën (the national dish in Senegal made with fresh fish, rice, tons of vegetables, and a myriad of amazing sauces) made my housemate's boyfriend. While Mamadou repeatedly tried to convince me that he cooks all the time, my housemate confirmed that this was indeed his first attempt at ceebu jën. And what an accomplishment. Truly - magnifique!

The aerial view - note the abundance of vegetables, fish in the center, and sauces around the edge. So, one is made from hibiscus leaves (the green sauce in the pink cup), the sauce in the yellow dish is the juice the fish was cooked in. Then there's lime around the plate, another sauce made from nettatoo, a fishy-smelling (but yummy) seed I've only ever seen in Senegal, and xoin (the crispy burned rice found at the bottom of the bowl).

And this is the picture we're sending to Food and Wine. Bon appétit!

Bringing Thanksgiving to Senegal

This next post will unequivocally make my blog a food blog. However, I need to get better at taking pictures of food, if I really want to invest in this, because the photos to follow do not do the food justice (if I do say so myself). I was a bit hesitant trying to host a Thanksgiving meal in Senegal for a couple reasons. One, I really wasn't sure if what we'd try to make would work given the ingredients we have in Senegal. Second reason I hesitated - I wasn't sure that, even with the proper ingredients, I could cook a Thanksgiving meal! Sure, maybe with my mom and grandmother around I could feel a bit more self-assured, but that is a lot of food to coordinate. In any case, despite my worries, I think my roomate, a few other girls, and I did manage to pull off something quite nice. So here's a recount of Thanksgiving à la mode Senegalaise. 

My roommate Giulia and I decided we were going to try a modest Senegalese Thanksgiving meal because we both love to cook and eat and we knew of a couple other American women who wanted to cook a Thanksgiving meal but were living in host families and didn’t have access to a kitchen. This was the Monday before Thanksgiving. By Wednesday evening, 16 people had RSVP’d – how this happened, we’re still not quite sure.

So, Thanksgiving morning began like I’m sure it begins in many American homes. Giulia and I went to the market to get our “turkey.” And by this I mean, Giulia and I went to the sprawling, open-air market called Tilène and negotiated for 3 live chicken. Actually, Giulia offered me up to the vendor as a second wife for $2 off the price of the chicken – what a good friend.  We then watched our chicken be carted away and quickly become no longer alive. For 200CFA/chicken (about 50 cents) a couple men plucked, cleaned, and bagged our Thanksgiving feast and we were on our way. Oh I forgot to mention that our chickens came included with a series of eggs inside of them – including one that was about ready to come out, shell and all! The next stop: finding a substitute for pumpkin for the pumpkin pie. Fortunately, there is a type of orange squash in Senegal called “naadjo” that everyone puts in the national dish ceebu jen, so we thought, why not “naadjo pie?” After finding half a large “naadjo” for about $3, we moved onto our Senegalese contribution to the meal: “sauce feuilles” (sauce and greens). Giulia had an idea how to make this dish; I was totally clueless. So we asked the woman we were buying the greens from, who elaborated out the recipe to us in very precise Wolof, that was not very precisely understood by us (thank God she caught on to how clueless we were despite our nodding and used lots of large gestures). Feeling quite excited and having basically chatted up the whole market in our quest for strange food substitutes for Thanksgiving, we headed home.

What proceeded was what I like to think of as Tabaski, Take 2, except swap out the large sheep for 3 stuffed chickens. I spent a couple hours wrestling with the now thoroughly dead chickens, creating a stuffing out of dried and hand-smashed baguette, and filling the birds. Giulia basically tackled the rest of the dishes. Then we had a few American women come over and take a gander at green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and apple crisp. Things were going quite well until our oven decided that it was too hot and no longer wanted to work. For a brief moment there, Giulia and I envisioned serving our guests half cooked chicken and slowly watching them all get the nasty little Salmonella stomach bug I had a few weeks ago. But in true Thanksgiving and Senegalese fashion, the boutiquiers, the men that run the corner shops that are found everywhere in Dakar, nearby us stepped in and saved Thanksgiving! One of them lugged heavy tanks of natural gas up and down our steps to try and restart our stove. When this failed, the other lent us his personal hand-held gas/mini-burner so we could cook with that and focus all the heat and power of the dying oven on the stupid chicken. It was unbelievably sweet of them – we ended up borrowing that gas for most of the day. However, the end result was wonderful, mostly because we had had so much fun cooking together and we had a large group of friends to share the meal. I believe we had 5 nationalities represented at our eclectic Thanksgiving dinner – American, Italian, Senegalese, German, and Swedish.

It was also really fun going to the boutiquiers and their families and sharing our meal with them. Food culture in Senegal is a very interesting thing, and sometimes people are very hesitant to try something that is too far removed from what they know – like many other cultures, I’d suppose. But, in any case, they seemed to really appreciate the food, and it felt like a very in the spirit of Thanksgiving sort of gesture, but also felt like a great way to connect with our neighbors and thank them for saving our butts!

In this entry, I’ve posted some photos from my camera, but I’ll post more once I get more photos from other people. And before leaving you with the photos, I thought I’d leave you with a complete menu:

1. Salad with homemade vinaigrette and feta

2. chicken stuffed with homemade “baguette” stuffing

3. mashed potatoes and gravy from the chicken

4. cornbread (Italian style from Giulia)

5. sauce feuille (with palm oil, cassava leaves, and beef)

6. bissap sauce with mint and lime (also known as hibiscus flower sauce, our version of “cranberry sauce”)

7. green bean casserole

8. couscous with raisins and mint

9. pumpkin pie

10. apple cake from a nearby patisserie

11. apple crisp

12. chocolate chip cookies 

Me and my new hubby, thanks to Giulia.

Us by the chicken graveyard.

Giulia learning how to make "sauce feuille"

Us after we pulled ourselves together post oven scare.

Cornbread!

Stuffing after being removed from the birds.

Giulia, the art historian, assembling the dinner platter in an aesthetically pleasing way.

me looking crazed trying to lug 3 chickens into the dining room.

Almost there!

Thanksgiving dinner table.

The main course.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 

Tabaski!!

What follows is the promised blog on Tabaski in Senegal, 2011. I had an absolute blast; I got to get dressed up in my best Senegalese clothes (which didn't look to ridiculous in this year, I think) and eat lots and lots of sheep.

Tabaski is truly the holiday of the sheep. Each family that is able kills at least one pretty big male sheep to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael when God demands it of him.  God intervenes, however, and offers him a sheep to sacrifice instead (for more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_al-Adha). So, Muslims around the world sacrifice male sheep on this day, share some meat with neighbors, and then, at least in Senegal, feast for days, weeks, months (!) on delicious sheep. On the day of the actual holiday, I had the honor of eating my host family's sheep 4 different ways throughout the day. I lost some weight just before the holiday because of my stomach bug, so this holiday really came at a perfect time. Nothing like 4 servings of sheep and french fries to help you regain those pounds! Here are some pictures from the day.

Tabaski, while a very fun holiday, is also a lot of work. My host family killed two sheep, and there is a lot of preparation and clean-up that follows this event, so people start their day very early. Not exactly like the leisurely Christmas mornings we have in the States. Anyway, as a result, this is a not-so-attractive picture of me sleepily washing out pop bottles to fill with filtered water to drink for the day. Killing, cooking and eating sheep makes you thirsty!

This is my host family sheep, clearly pre-sacrifice. He seemed pretty calm all morning; I guess its a good thing he didn't know what was coming.

This is my host aunt making a sauce for the traditional breakfast of Tabaski. I always forget the name, but its a sweet sauce made by mixing peanut butter with bouye, the juice made from the fruit of the baobab tree. It is absolutely amazing, and you pour it over the millet porridge eaten on special occasions called "laax." Only problem is, its absolutely delicious and super filling. I was stuffed by 9am and had four more courses of sheep to come.

Here's a picture of the "laax" cooking. Its a bit like oatmeal, but even more filling.

These are my two host cousins, just come back from the morning prayers at the mosque with their Pappy (grandpa). The matching mbou-mbous were adorable, and they were clearly so proud to be old enough to go the mosque with the adults.

Out of respect for the holiday, I'm skipping the gory details, but this is clearly sheep post-sacrifice. There were about 3 basins like this filled with meat from just one of the sheep, and my family killed two. People use and eat every part of the sheep except the horns and the hooves, which is nice to see. Very different from our sterile, Saran-wrapped cuts in the States.

This is the meat in action. It smelled so good!

And the famous Senegalese onion sauce that goes with the meat. This is probably an entire giant bag of onions chopped and cooked down for about 4 hours. The end result is the sweet and spicy sauce that you pour over the meat. Amazing.

So, the traditional first meal from the sheep is the liver, which we ate 2 hours after the "laax" around 11am. By 1pm we were on to the second meal, french fries (which when cooked in peanut oil are to die for), with the onion sauce, olives and the meat, of course. You eat this all with bread. These two platters were just for the kids and young adults.

By the middle of the afternoon, someone had essentially force fed me more sheep (I was so full), and then everyone crashed for a couple hours. So much cooking and cleaning! Around 6pm people started to wake up and get ready for the getting dressed up and visiting relatives part of the holiday. Here's me in my mbou-mbou with the boys.

Everyone is so beautiful on Tabaski. People have clothes made months in advance with really expensive fabric and tons of embroidery done by tailors who work sometimes all through the night in the couple days leading up to the holiday. The end result, however, is gorgeous. This is a picture with a couple of my host cousins. The tops of both women's mbou-mbous are all covered in embroidery. I went for a more simple route. My fabric already had the orange embroidery built-in, the tailor just had to make the shape for me.

Me and another cousin. She was absolutely adorable, and she knew it.

I visited with my host family and their extended family for awhile before going around the city to visit some friends. This is me with another intern from ASBEF, after we had just been fed more pop and fruit at his house.  The look on my face is one of extreme happiness and pain from the fullness of my stomach.

Me and two of my friends from MAJ. We had just come from Pape's house (on the right), where (shocker!) we were fed grilled sheep and onion sauce. It was so, so good but I was in a lot of pain by this point.

And finally, my friend Amadou and I at his house. At this point its almost midnight, and he was kind enough just to offer me some juice and then find me a taxi for the ride home. I was so full, happy, and pooped. I got back to my host family's house to pick up some stuff and see if my host sister wanted to go see Youssou N'dour playing at his club. But the concert started at 2am (a typical time for concerts to start in Dakar) and while we were waiting to go, I fell asleep on their couch. So, they just tucked me into an extra bed, and that is how my Tabaski ended. Quite a day! The rest of the week I had to go through sheep detox, eating only fruits and vegetables. But it was completely worth it. Deweneti!

Also, for a quick MAJ update. The International Conference on Family Planning is coming to Dakar in two weeks and MAJ is helping to prepare a lot of the pre-conference activities. I am helping them order and buy camera and video equipment so they can document the conference and MAJ activities from here on out. Also, we're working on creating an electronic database of all MAJ evaluations and reports on activities, so that MAJ can have a more unified and organized monitoring and evaluation program. With this, I am working with a couple ASBEF interns to create a bi-annual report of MAJ activities, with statistics of how many activities and people they've reached in the past 6 months. We're hoping to have this ready before the conference to show to potential partners in the field of reproductive health. And finally, the MAJ Twitter account is going strong! If you haven't already, please follow MAJ at:

@MAJ_Senegal

We'll be tweeting a lot particularly related to conference as we get closer. The more buzz that can be generated, the better!