Plastic is invading us

I mentioned one of my first impressions of Africa was the amount of trash everywhere. I have since learned that in the early days of our trip the garbage collectors were on strike, which somewhat explained the huge piles of trash everywhere. However, even when these workers are doing their job, garbage and pollution still abound.

A very important issue in Africa is the lack of space that exists here. Space is a luxury that only the wealthy can truly afford. One of the professors on the trip with us lived in Senegal 30 years ago. She said at the time she was here, the population of Dakar was 150,000. Now the population is close to 3 million, about 25% of the country’s population. With that many people living in such close confines, unless you can afford to create space for yourself, you have none. The whole city becomes your home.  You maybe have a roof or a small shanty to sleep in, but people seem to roam freely. You eat where you can, you use the bathroom where you can, you make money where you can, and you throw your trash where you can. In poverty, there is no defined space for such things, which is somewhat of a foreign concept to an American. We have a kitchen to eat in, a bathroom to relieve ourselves in, a bedroom to sleep in, trash cans in nearly every room, a dump to bring our garbage too, and endless amounts of space in which to perform our daily activities.

The director of WARC made what I felt was a rather important comment that “Plastic is invading us.” He mentioned specifically the impact that plastic bags have had on rural villages. Plastic bags that litter the ground are accidently eaten by cows as they graze and, ultimately, cause the animal’s death. Is there anything more unnatural than plastic? Yet it is everywhere, even in Africa, the birthplace of humanity, where nature has always been revered as central to life. How has this invasion of the unnatural affected Africa? Has it hindered, destroying the pureness of the land and the livelihood of rural families, more than it has offered? Even in America, such synthetic materials make our lives convenient, tidy, easy, but what have they cost us? We are, for example, told to avoid plastic water bottles containing certain chemicals now known to be toxic to our bodies. Are we poisoning ourselves, losing our connection to the natural beauty that surrounds us, in the name of convenience?

It’s difficult to take pictures that truly capture the amount of garbage, but it is somewhat overwhelming. Plastic has truly invaded the landscape. 

1: Me

2: http://www.righttosightandhealth.org

3: yveslebelge.skynetblogs.be

Village Life

One of the professors on the trip with us is originally from Senegal, and Thursday night we had the opportunity to visit his village in rural Africa. After a very long, 8 hour bus trip from Dakar (with several stops along the way), we arrived in Tene Toubab just as the sun was setting. We were met with horse drawn carts to give us a ride from the road into the village.

We were greeted by the entire village - men, women, and children welcomed us with drumming and dancing. The dancing here was very much like drumming, feet pounding on the ground in time to the beat. Children that could barely walk were up dancing - it is so incredible to witness the infusion of rhythm into the soul of these people. I would not have missed this night for anything.

The village still leads an extremely rural existence. There is no electricity, and there is only recently the addition of running water. Once the sun set, pitch darkness set in very quickly. The people here truly live off the land. Their houses, fences, everything is made out of natural materials. The sense of community is overwhelming. The people eat together in a common area, raise their children together, really live together. It is human nature to complicate things, and I don't want to make the assumption that people in rural areas have less problems, less heartache than we do in our "modern" world. But human interaction still exists in a way that gets lost in our technology - our texting and emailing and facebooking that allow us to stay in touch without ever actually touching.

The children (and the adults) were so excited to have pictures taken and be able to view them after. I made lots of friends, but one little 9-year old girl named Kumba eventually grabbed my hand and didn't let go. She had a stutter and seemed more stoic than the rest of the children. I could tell she was so pleased to have my attention when it was so clearly wanted, but I didn't see her really smile until I gave her a piggyback ride all around the village. I wonder what that stutter means for her - and what it will mean as she gets older. She was crying when I left, and I gave her my watch because it's all I really had to give her.

How incredible it is to think that both this life and mine co-exist in the same world. And I wonder how the presence of a modern world impacts that of the rural. To know there is a place called America, where a group of "rich" people came on a big bus and gave us lots of presents and played with us and then drove away back to that place from which they came. Are stories of their own, like our professor, who moved abroad told with reverence? Do children begin to look down on this rural life or at the very least hope to leave it behind them? Will rural life eventually collapse - and the beauty of community and nature sacrificed in the name of comfort and possessions and technology?

I could have stayed here a long time, possibly forever. And maybe I'll be back - not here exactly, but somewhere like it. To learn the stories of these people and share their lives.

Now we are spending a few days in an artist's community called Sobo Bade, aka paradise. I'm attending an African drumming class in an hour!