Thursday, February 2 Delivered cloth to the tailor

I enjoyed a good night of sleep once again, getting a bit closer to my normal sleeping and waking times. I slept from 10:00 pm to nearly 6:00 am, which put me in good shape for the day’s activities. After eating breakfast, I was looking forward to a busy day in town. First up was the need to get the cloth that I bought yesterday to the tailor that SIL colleagues recommended, so that he can make it into shirts for me, a dress for Anita, and a shirt for a friend, as I mentioned in yesterday’s blog.

To get to the tailor’s shop—and for the rest of the activities I had planned for today—I arranged yesterday for a Senegalese man name Touré Seymi to accompany me. (That name is pronounced something like “Today Say Me”.)

Touré and I at the center

Touré showed up at 8:30 am, as he had promised yesterday, so he got a brownie point right from the start for being on time. He took me to the best place to catch a taxi, then instructed the taxi driver where to take us. I paid the taxi fare. Touré had been given directions in my presence last evening for getting to the tailor’s shop, but I could tell that he wasn’t understanding them completely. Fortunately, the person who gave him the directions also gave him the tailor’s phone number, so as the taxi drove in the general direction of the shop, Touré used his cell phone to call the tailor and ask him for specifics. We made a couple of wrong turns and at one point had to make a u-turn in the middle of a busy street, but we eventually made it to our destination.

After introductions, I showed Yéro (“yay, dough”), the tailor, the shirt (mine) and outfit (Anita) I had brought along that he could use to get the measurements right as he made the new articles of clothing. I clarified for him just how many of which kind of clothing I wanted made from each type of cloth. Then I asked him how much all of this would cost me. His price is a bit more expensive than I’ve been in the habit of paying in Burkina Faso, but as I discovered today, prices in general here in Senegal seem to be higher than in Burkina. The cost of sewing each shirt will be about $9, and Anita’s outfit will cost us about $12.50. That’s in addition to the cost of the material itself. While his prices are a bit higher than I’ve paid before, I’ve been assured that his workmanship is of high quality, so I made a downpayment of a bit less than half of the total bill, and we left everything in his care, to be collected again when I come back to the capital city in about two weeks.

The cloth for Anita

Wednesday, February 1 The cloth market

At 4:30, Sue was able to leave her office and showed me how to get to the “biggest cloth market in Senegal” per her claim. Without a guide the first time, it would be easy to not arrive at the hoped-for destination. A walk along a couple of dirt roads, then up 30 steps or so and down again to cross the railroad tracks, then up another series of steps and back down again to cross a 4- or 6-lane road, then through sand on the edge of a paved road led us after 15 or 20 minutes to HLM Market, where there were aisles and aisles of people selling cloth of all sorts. I was looking for a specific type, but even so there were hundreds of colors and designs to choose from.

Sue had told me that the kind of cloth I wanted should cost about 5000cfa (approximately $18) for 6 yards (the minimum length most vendors normally sell since they get it in 12-yard lengths), but when I asked the price for what I was interested in, it was always higher than that. I offered 4000, with the idea that if they came down to 5000, I’d accept, but the first several vendors resisted my negotiations, clinging firmly to 6000, which they claimed was “bargain basement” so they could go no lower. Each time, I moved on, but I did begin to wonder if I’d ever be able to find anyone willing to sell for the price Sue had told me was right. On about the fifth try, however, I found a vendor who agreed to my offer of 5000—only after I had begun to walk away, mind you—and I bought two different patterns from him.

As I continued my search in other booths there in the market, I encountered many who admantly insisted that 6000cfa was the least they could accept for their cloth, but through persistence, I eventually bought four or six yards of five different patterns/colors at the price of 5000cfa. I received the compliment of the day from a woman who sold me four yards of my favorite design for 3500cfa. She wondered why a white person—someone who has so much money—would quibble over the paltry sum of 500cfa. I told her that the process of bargaining was all about social interaction, and I was trying to fit into the culture. That’s when she said that I was Senegalese the way I had bargained her selling price down. When Sue told her that I had worked elsewhere in Africa but was new to Senegal, the woman insisted that I was Senegalese nonetheless.

The material I bought will be used to make shirts for me, a dress for Anita, a shirt for a friend, and several 2-yard pieces of cloth for our friend who decorated our living room.

Wednesday, February 1 Getting my feet on the ground

When I went to bed last night, I thought it was 10:30, but I had the time difference wrong, so it was actually 11:30. I woke up at what I thought was 6:20, but it was actually 7:20. OK, so this time zone thing apparently has me a little confused, but I think I’ve got it sorted it out now.

Kitchen and dining room of the apartment where I am staying on the SIL center

After shaving and showering with hot water—still appreciating that blessing!—I began planning my day. I needed to get some local currency because I was lined up for a visit to the cloth market at the end of the working day (more about that a bit further along), so I knew I needed to make a trip to a bank. But first, I had to find out where the nearest bank was located. My debit cards are MasterCard-branded and there was some uncertainty about whether I’d be able to use anything other than a Visa card in the local ATMs, so I also brought US dollars in cash with me to exchange in the event my card wouldn’t work.

As I emerged from my apartment at what I thought was 8:45 or so, I was met by Sophie, the guesthouse manager. After introducing herself and inquiring about my health, my trip, and so on, she pointed to a nearby door and told me that people would soon be congregating there for coffee break. When I asked what time coffee break happened and was told “10 o’clock”, I received my first clue that my calculation of the local time was an hour off. I hadn’t yet figured out or been shown where the offices were located on the Center, so I decided that coffee break was as good a place as any to begin meeting those who serve with SIL here.

The first two people I met, however, were visitors just like me. They had come for the dedication of a New Testament for a people group in the extreme eastern part of the country, where longtime friends of theirs had labored for close to 20 years to translate God’s Message into that community’s heart language. They were leaving to return to the US this evening. As I was talking with them, another man came and sat down next to me. I didn’t recognize him until he introduced himself—one of the local IT guys whom I had gotten to know when I served as a Language Technology Consultant in Burkina Faso almost 10 years ago now. It was good to see Mark again, and after coffee break was over, he took me to the office building and gave me a brief tour, along with the passcode to get in. He also gave me what I needed to prepare a meal for myself whenever I wanted it: couscous and a beef curry sauce, along with a small container of yogurt.

I found out from Mark that there is a bank a few blocks from the SIL Center, so after my tour at the office, I decided to walk there and exchange the dollars I had brought. (I thought I had a better chance of coming back with local currency that way than by attempting to use the ATM. In retrospect, it would have been a good idea to take my debit cards with me.) As I’ve come to expect in Africa, there was an armed guard at the door of the bank. He asked to see inside the bag I was carrying, and when he was satisfied that I had nothing threatening in it, he allowed me to enter. There was a woman at a desk just inside the door, so I approached her to ask about exchanging dollars. Her response took me by surprise: “We don’t exchange dollars here, only euros.” It was so unexpected that my brain couldn’t process what she had said; I had to ask her to repeat it. It took me a few moments to recover from this unexpected piece of news, but I eventually learned that there was a bank in town where I could exchange dollars. I made a mental note of that for tomorrow.

Then I inquired about the ATM that I thought I had seen in a separate little building just beside the bank. I asked if I could use a MasterCard card in it and was told that I could use any card at all. So I decided to return to my room, get my debit cards and come back to try my luck with the ATM. 10-15 minutes later I was back at the bank, and to my great surprise—I’m easily amazed, it seems—the transaction went perfectly. I came out of that little building with a wad of bills in the local currency. Technology really is amazing sometimes! Imagine making a withdrawal from my bank thousands of miles away and getting the cash in a currency that most employees at that bank wouldn’t even recognize if they saw it!

After stashing my newly gained tangible wealth in my room, I went to the SIL office to see who I might see there. I met Mark’s wife, Audrey, who had some banknotes from Guinea-Bissau for me that I had requested to satisfy the appetites of some of my numismatic buddies. (If you don’t already know it, I help paper-money collectors get items for their collections from various countries in West Africa, and Guinea-Bissau seems to be one of the most challenging places to get money from.)

While in Audrey’s office, I met quite a few other people who serve with SIL in Senegal: Colin, a friend from some time back because he used to work in Burkina Faso; Sue, who showed me how to get to the cloth market; Andrew and Kathy, husband and wife who share offices with Mark and Audrey, respectively; Rebecca, who will be helping at the upcoming Rapid Word Collection workshop; and probably some others whose names and faces I’ve forgotten because I met them so briefly and my brain was jetlagged.

Mark loaned me an adapter so I could transfer the pictures from my tablet to my computer, where I could resize them for my blog and email them to Anita to post. He also tested my phone charger and confirmed that it is not working. So tomorrow I’ll have to shop for a replacement charger. That shouldn’t be a difficult thing to find here, but that’s tomorrow’s story.

Tuesday, January 31 Getting from the Dakar Airport to the SIL Centre—an Adventure!

The most “interesting” part of my journey from my home in Waxhaw, North Carolina to the SIL Center in Dakar was the trip from the Dakar airport to my room at SIL. The routine at the airport was pretty much what I’ve become used to, except no one ever checked to make sure that my yellow fever vaccination was current and no one looked through my luggage to see what I was bringing with me.

The temperature at 4:00pm when I arrived was a pleasant 22°C (72°F), so I shed the sweater I’d been wearing and waited for the 250-300 people seated closer to the exit door than I to disembark so I could experience the wonderful African warmth for myself. Finally, it was my turn to go down the 20-some steps to the pavement and board the waiting shuttle bus, which took us about 100 yards to the airport entrance. There we lined up in air-conditioned comfort to await our turn to be processed through immigration, which turned out to be a fairly simple affair compared to what I’ve been through on previous trips to the African continent.

After having my passport stamped as having officially entered Senegal, I proceeded to the baggage claim area, waited the requisite time for my bags to appear, and hauled them off the moving belt. Both bags arrived together, looking none the worse for wear after having traveled so many miles. Baggage carts were available at no cost, so I put my bags on one and headed toward the exit. Everything had to be put through an x-ray scanner, but that was the extent of the customs check. I loaded everything back on my cart and exited the airport, looking for the promised SIL sign, found it, introduced myself to the man holding it, and proceeded with him to his waiting taxi.

We exited the airport property, and we headed toward the SIL Center, where I’d be staying. The first part of the journey went pretty much as expected. There was the usual hustle and bustle of a West African city that I expected, with a wide variety of modes of transportation in evidence, ranging from yellow taxis like the one I was in to vans serving as economical public transportation to motorcycles to SUVs to horse-drawn carts to pedestrians. There were people hawking their wares anywhere that vehicles might stop long enough to allow a transaction to take place. There was the contrast between the nice paved road and buildings in various stages of construction or disrepair—a contrast accentuated by the fact that the paved road was nicer than most I’ve been on in African capital cities. And the volume of traffic was moderate, … at least at first.

But as we approached the center of the city, traffic became more dense. We encountered an increasing number of intersections in the form of traffic circles, each with a long line of vehicles waiting to enter from each of the arteries meeting there. Traffic policemen were present to manage the flow, but it was slow going until we were through and on our way again. As we approached the stadium on a 4-lane road, a police vehicle with siren blaring passed us on the left, off on a mission whose nature I could only attempt to guess. Soon afterward, however, their purpose became apparent, since the events that followed were ones I’ve experienced many times in Africa. Traffic policemen were at every intersection, and they began motioning to us to keep to the right-hand lane. Then a series of motorcycles came through in the left lane, also waving everyone to the right. It was obvious to me that we were in the path of some arriving dignitary, on his way from the airport to his accommodations in the city. We kept to the right, slowing down, but eventually were directed to exit completely the main road we were traveling on.

Exiting put us and many other vehicles all on a two-lane dirt road that was not designed to handle the volume of traffic imposed on it just then. The result was a major traffic jam!

The oversized public-transportation van two cars in front of us was wider than the road was intended to accommodate and had trouble getting past a 9-inch concrete barrier bordering the edge of the roadway. Traffic was blocked for 5 minutes or more until the driver repositioned himself so as to be able to make it up and over. It took us several more minutes to go ‘round a long block and get back on the main road. Of course by this time the visiting dignitary was well on his way to his hotel, and we were able to stay on the road we had been on 10 minutes earlier.

We continued on to another crowded intersection, but after exiting the roundabout on the far side, traffic ceased to move. After sitting there for a couple of minutes, the taxi driver got out of the car and went to see what was holding things up. He apparently didn’t like what he saw because he made a u-turn immediately after returning to the car and took a different route—which involved more stop-and-go traffic, but at least we were able to make forward progress. I snapped a few pictures with my tablet at that point, but all of the interesting events were already in the past, so the one shown here doesn’t do justice to the “excitement” of my trip from the airport.

As we neared our destination, we passed through what I would call an alley but which apparently serves as a two-way street where we had to allow a horse and cart coming toward us to exit before we could proceed. At the far end of that same alley, a taxi was wanting to enter in the opposite direction. Seeing us in his way, he backed up far enough for us to squeeze past onto the connecting street, then continued on his journey. The connecting street was slightly wider, but with the vehicles parked along the side, two lanes of traffic had to pass with care. Had I not lived in Africa for so long, the journey from the airport would have had my pulse rate at a dangerous level, I think.

We soon arrived at the SIL center, where the guard informed the taxi driver that I’d be going to the Director’s house. We got to know Pascal when we were studying French in Switzerland. Now he’s working with SIL, and currently he’s serving as Director for the work in Senegal. It was reassuring to know that I was expected.

We unloaded my bags from the trunk of the taxi, the taximan left, and I waited while the guard went to notify Pascal of my arrival. It was great to see him again, after nearly 30 years of contact only via newsletters! He showed me where I’d be staying, then told me he’d be by in about an hour to take me to his apartment (on the SIL Center) for supper.

I unpacked, shaved and showered—with HOT water from a showerhead, which I was not expecting—felt more presentable, then enjoyed the evening meal and conversation with friends. I met two of Pascal and Janet’s four children and had a wonderful time together with their family, so my stay here in Senegal is off to a great start. I’m looking forward to meeting more people tomorrow.

Tuesday, January 31 In Transit to Senegal

The plane I flew in from Brussels to Dakar was a big one, and it was nearly full. Finding a way to get everyone’s carry-on bags into the overhead bins was a challenge for the cabin crew, but with the help of some passengers with an ability for that sort of thing, they did finally manage to do it. On at least two occasions during the flight, we experienced turbulence so severe that the pilot told everyone—including the flight crew members—to strap themselves in. He told us we could not use the restroom until we were through the turbulent areas! (That was the first time I can remember a pilot saying that.) It was quite rough, and afterward, the pilot thanked everyone for their cooperation, explaining to us that we had flown through a jet stream on each occasion. He then pulled off a very soft landing on the runway in Dakar, which led the passengers to give a spontaneous round of applause. Our arrival in Dakar was about 15 minutes ahead of schedule.

Monday, January 30 Leaving the US

My flights from Charlotte to Newark to Brussels to Dakar went well, and I am now in the SIL guesthouse in Dakar. I’ll be here until Friday afternoon, when I’ll be boarding a ferry to travel to the southern part of the country. (More about that closer to the time.)

But let me back up to early Saturday morning. That was when the left arm of my glasses broke. (I thought, “Of course this had to happen right before my trip and on the weekend, when my eye doctor does not have office hours!”) I taped the arm back on as a temporary fix, then showed it to someone at a different optometrist’s office that was open on Saturday. The diagnosis was “The spring is broken; it can’t be fixed.”

I retaped it a couple of times over the weekend in order to be able to continue using my glasses, then planned to visit my optometrist at 8:00 Monday morning, right when his office opened. I notified the man who was scheduled to take me to the airport that he might need to pick me up at the eye doctor’s office instead of my house, and he was willing to pick me up either place.

At 7:40 yesterday (Monday) morning, Anita and I went to the optometrist’s office. I showed them my glasses and they agreed with the weekend diagnosis: no way to repair them. Then they looked to see if they had the same frame in stock. They didn’t. But they did have one of the same size and shape but a slightly different color. So 20 minutes later, I left with my lenses in a brand new frame. We had time to get back home before my scheduled pick-up time, so I called my driver and let him know to come to our house. Thank you, God, for a great (and quick) last-minute solution to my glasses problem!

I arrived at the Charlotte airport around 10:15, got my bags checked in by a person who was very helpful and courteous, then quickly went through the security checkpoint without any complications. I found my gate without difficulty, and my flight to Newark was scheduled to leave on time. …Only it didn’t because there was a mechanical problem that needed to be taken care of before we could board, so we were delayed by about 30 minutes. While waiting in line, I chatted with a man who has traveled all over the world for business. He gave me a tip about the Newark airport: Use the shuttle to go from one terminal to another; you avoid having to go through security a second time that way.

The 30-minute delay wasn’t a problem for me, since I had a four-hour layover scheduled in Newark, giving me lots of room for flight delays without complications. In the end, I was able to use a one-time pass to the United Club lounge to spend two hours or more checking email and getting a free lunch. While there, I had a nice conversation with a Norwegian traveling to Colombia on business. It was also during this break in the lounge that I learned that my friends at SIL in Dakar would be sending a taximan to pick me up when I arrived at the airport there. I was to look for someone holding an “SIL” sign up at the airport exit.

The flight from Newark to Brussels was also delayed, but this time after everyone had boarded. There was a mechanical or electronic malfunction that needed to be checked out before we could leave. I think we left about an hour behind schedule but made up some of the lost time while in the air so that we arrived only about 30 minutes later than planned. Again this was not a problem for me because I had plenty of time between flights in Brussels.

Kevin Warfel

Pictures from the Chad RWC workshop

Normally very brown, this part of Chad had "greened up" with the recent rains

The land was mostly flat, but here and there a huge outcropping of rock made a "mountain"

The three days of training for those in key roles took place in the Regional capital

Emma and Sakine were two of the people I trained to lead RWC workshops in Chad in the future

Jim, a PhD in Linguistics, was another of my trainees; in this picture, he was explaining some linguistics to the group

In this culture, mats are used for many purposes. This word-collection group took their tea break on a mat.

Word collection was done on mats in almost all cases

Meals were eaten on mats. Here I was in a group with Emma, Sakine, Pierre, and Wadi Pascal.

The team of glossers—those who translated the collected words into French—sat at school desks to work together.

The admin team: Katie (record-keeper), Cindy & Mahamat (typists), Emma (coordinator), and Jim (trainee)

The total number of words collected by the end of each day was recorded for all to see

That same total was represented pictorially, with each head of grain added to the painting representing 500 words

Noon meals consisted most often of "boule" with a sauce for dipping it in, plus meat (usually mutton)