Just got back from a week in the Casamance, the region of Senegal south of the Gambia. The region has been officially in rebellion for nearly 30 years, and there continues to be occasional violence between rebels and armed forces in the area. However, because of the Casamance’s natural beauty and incredible beaches, there is clear potential for a thriving tourist industry. As a result, the government has done a lot to make sure that much of the Basse Casamance, the area south of the Casamance River, is safe to prevent any further damage to tourism.

My friends and I headed to Basse Cassamance by boat, an option that takes about 16 hours overnight and brings you to Ziguinchor, the capital and largest city of the region. We then took a sept-place (a common form of public transport with seven seats for people stuffed into a really, really old hatchback) directly to Cap Skirring, a resort town almost on the Guinea-Bissau border so that I could attend the annual Rotary Club Gala in the Casamance hosted by the Rotary Club of Ziguinchor. 

I was invited to the Gala by my Rotary Parent in Dakar (pictured with me below), who also was incredibly sweet to find me a LOVELY room on the beach at the same hotel where other Rotary members were staying for the Gala. The Gala happens once a year and gives Rotarians from all over Senegal to come to the Casamance, discuss common projects together, and spend time together as a group. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to meet Rotarians from around Senegal, listen to great local music, and enjoy really good and really fresh seafood. 

The Gala happens once a year and gives Rotarians from all over Senegal to come to the Casamance, discuss common projects together, and spend time together as a group. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to meet Rotarians from around Senegal, listen to great local music, and enjoy really good and really fresh seafood. Here's another picture of the entertainment that night. 

And a couple pictures of the "cabin" (as it was called) of mine at the hotel Cap Skirring and the view of the beach.

After the Gala, my friends and I stayed another night in Cap Skirring, walking the beaches and doing a lot of swimming. These are the best beaches I have ever been to.

Then we went by car to a town called Elinkine where we hopped a boat to the Island of Kirabane, an island in the Casamance River. We stayed a night there in an auberge on the water. This is the kind of boat we hopped on - this shot was taken as we went to the island itself.

We then took another boat to a very remote part of the river coast called Point St. George. And we saw dolphins. Lots and lots of dolphins. They were jumping and playing right next to the boat practically. I was so happy, and I may have done a lot of squealing. However, I could not get any photos of them.

 

At Point St. George we stayed the night at the only lodging option on the island for tourists - a restaurant that offers to rent tents for 2,000CFA (about $4) a tent. We had a delicious meal of Caldou, a speciality of the Casamance with fresh fish and onion/lemon sauce, and then slept in tents on the beach. Just beautiful. In the morning, we headed towards the manatee sanctuary and even got to see a couple tails and heads come up above the water. Then I was really, really happy.

The tents at Pt. St. George.

Then began the less exciting part of the trip, to say the least. It was an expensive boat ride to Point St. George and people had reassured us that even though there was no public transport to the nearest down, there was a dirt road people took to the closest town from the Point. A hefty walk they said (about 9km), but people made it all the time. So we had a guide that took us halfway there to a giant, giant, giant tree called a fromageur in French – known as a kapok tree in English. The others proceeded to climb the tree with the gear to look out from the platform built around its base at the top. I however, made it up four rungs and panicked. This happened the last time I was in Senegal too and tried to climb a boabab. And yet again, it was terribly embarrassing at the time, and is now super funny. But at least I got a picture with the giant on the ground level. 

Me and the tree. 

Giulia, one of the braver members of the group. 

With the tree behind us, we had 5 km left ahead to walk. It seemed easy at first, but it got hotter and hotter, and then we got lost a bit, but finally we found the only other person stupid enough to try to walk that distance during the middle of the day; a wonderful, wonderful man named Jean who let us follow him to M'lomp, the nearest village to the Point. By the time we made it there we were thoroughly stinky and bright red, but we made it. 

Here's us on the fateful march.

And a final picture of the group, looking hot, sweaty, and cramped (But happy!) in a sept place.

All in all, a great trip that allowed me to do a bit of exploring outside of Dakar and meet up with the whole Senegalese Rotary community. But needless to say, I am very happy to be home again, with all the creature comforts of Dakar – including functional public transport! 

MAJ Update 12/8

It has been awhile since I last wrote an update on my ongoing project with MAJ and ASBEF.

Following the International Conference on Family Planning, things have definitely calmed down a bit, but there is still much to be done before leaving in July. The conference turned out to be not only a great way for MAJ members to participate and learn from the international community of reproductive and sexual health professionals, but it was also an excellent means for MAJ members to promote their own activities.

Post-conference, the MAJ Twitter account has been really advancing. We are up to almost 100 followers, which I realize is not a huge number, but considering a couple months ago when we had no Twitter account and little interaction with the greater reproductive health community, I would say that we are off to a pretty good start. Through Twitter, we are regularly interacting, sharing information with, and asking questions of IPPF, the international parent organization funding ASBEF, as well as engaging both Senegalese youth and young people from around the world in dialogue. I’m also finding that Twitter is a great way to share professional resources from other reproductive health organizations on the social media site, and we have been using Twitter to track down a number of helpful resources in French for MAJ activities.

Our YouTube channel also has some new features. The channel is a bit more put together now, with additional videos, playlists, and other featured channels. We’ve also made contact through YouTube with a group called Scenarios from Africa, a project originally created by two Emory University professors to create short skits about HIV/AIDS in Africa for young people. 2 particularly cool things about this program: 1) the ideas from the skits are submitted to the organization by African youth between the ages of 10-25, 2) The films are then translated into over 25 languages found in Africa, from the colonial languages like French, English, and Portuguese, to local languages like Wolof and Pulaar (those two I was particularly excited about). I’ve embedded a particularly funny video below dubbed into English, though you can check them all out at Scenarios from Africa's YouTube channel. One of Scenarios from Africa’s local partners is ACI Baobab, the NGO through which I took classes during my first study abroad experience in Senegal. I am hoping soon to meet with someone at ACI to look into the possibilities of MAJ members submitting story ideas for the next round of selections for films.

  

In other news, just under half of the funds raised remain and I am trying, along with MAJ members and ASBEF staff, to decide how best to use what is left. I recently visited ASBEF Guédiawaye to begin the process of figuring out what the MAJ group there needs in terms of additional programmatic and technical support. Hopefully, some of the remaining funds will go towards helping this smaller MAJ group out in the suburbs of Dakar – an area that is historically poorer with less access to health information and clinical care.

Along with the help of another MAJ member living in the suburbs, I am also looking into helping finance and support a youth center that could be run by MAJ members in another suburb called Thiaroye. While Thiaroye and Guédiawaye aren’t too far away from each other geographically, transportation difficulties and unbelievable traffic jams as people try to get in and out of the city make it much harder for youth in Thiaroye to access services or be involved with MAJ Guédiwaye. This MAJ member happens to have an empty room attached to his apartment complex and was interested in turning the space into a resource center for youth, where they could come and get information about reproductive health, free condoms, and perhaps be referred to near-by health centers as needed. It would also be a place to hold activities and education events. I thought this was a wonderful idea, especially because the space is not being used, and it is in a low-income neighborhood with a lot of young people living in and around the area. We are in the planning stages now, but are hoping to schedule a sort-of town hall meeting in Thiaroye with youth to discuss how they feel the space could best be used.

This sort of project is particularly exciting to me because there is just so much that could be done with a space like this for relatively little money, and we get to begin from square one – meaning that community members (i.e. youth) will have input from the beginning into what this youth center could look like.