The Village Church

One Sunday Arnold took all four of us (Jan, Ron, Sharron, Jane) to a village named N'Diaganiao about 2 1/2 hours outside of Dakar to attend the village church service. It was a wonderful experience!
The land was flat with some grass and lots of baobab trees. We passed several very poor looking small towns. Two of the towns were places where two of our readers live.

First are photos of the travel to the village.

Arnold said that he likes to stop at this market place to buy boiled eggs. You can see a man standing at the car window selling the eggs. Arnold and Ron both got eggs to eat. People are eating a meal under a makeshift tent just a few feet from where the mule and goats are tethered.

The church is called the World Radio Village church, because it was begun from one man, Joseph, hearing the broadcast of World Radio. Now there are about 50 in attendance.
Following is a picture of the building that the church rents. It has one main room and a small room at one side in which the preacher and his family lives.The entire grounds had been swept that morning! The car in the photo belongs to Arnold. No church members have cars. In fact, the people are so poor that the Sunday contribution averages about fifty cents! The church in Dakar supports the preacher with a very meager salary.

This building is the restroom. The inside consists of a floor in the middle of which is a hole to the ground!

Next are some photos of inside the church building and of the church service.
Men sit on one side and women on the other. A few children sat with the men, but most sat on the women's side.

The children sat quietly on the hard wooden benches for over two hours! They were a little distracted, however, by a little mouse that kept running across the ceiling and hiding above the beams!

On the left is Joseph, who led the singing. He wanted to attend Arnold's preaching school in Dakar, and that Sunday Arnold went to talk with Joseph's father to get his permission. The man on the right is the preacher. The service was in the native language of Woluf, with a few songs in French.

George, from the church in Dakar, encouraged the group.

After the church service, Arnold and George passed out bags of rice to the adults and bread to the children. The bags were very thin, and several broke, but the women quickly swept up the spilled rice and wrapped it up to take it home---even if it had fallen in the dirt! The children did not waste any time eating their bread.

After church everyone wanted to pose for pictures! They loved seeing themselves in the camera----both children and adults!

Here is a video of the singing at the village church.

The Baobab Tree

There are very few tourist spots to see in Dakar, so Ron and I waited until we were joined by Sharron and Jane to go to see any of them. We had a couple of free Saturdays, so we were really happy when one of the readers, Tidiane, offered to show us around Dakar! He was an excellent guide---he is a university graduate in tourism.
Here is Tidiane (with a "toothbrush" stick in his mouth!).

One of the places that he took us was to an artist center. This small building is a gathering place for artists, musicians, and souvenir vendors. Outside the building is a huge baobab tree. For such a big trunk, the top of the tree is usually relatively small with branches that are not dense. The baobab tree is the source of several products. One is the fruit. Glue is made from the sap of the tree. The bark can be stripped off to make rope.

The next two photos show the fruit of the baobab tree. The fruit has a hard shell. Monkeys are the only animals that eat the fruit because of the hard shell. Inside, the fruit is white and kind of like a hard candy with pits. We tasted it, and it did not taste bad, but it is not something that we really wanted again! Juice is made from the fruit, and it supposedly tastes like a banana milkshake. We are taking some of the concentrate home, but we have not had any of the juice.

Next is an artist doing sand painting.

The sand is from regions all around Dakar and is in many different natural colors.

First, the artist uses glue from the baobab tree to make his design on the plain wooden board. The glue will dry in about 10 minutes so he must work quickly.

Then he sprinkles just the right colors of sand in just the right places. He then will add glue and sand as needed to complete his beautiful picture.

Here is the partly finished product! You can see his other pictures hanging on the wall. We bought one that has a baobab tree in it.

Next is a video of some musicians playing African music.

In another part of the city, we found this baobab tree in the middle of a road. It has had some of the bark stripped off of the bottom part, then pictures were painted on the tree. Sharron is in the first photo.

The next two show Sharron, Jane, Tidiane, and Ron beneath the tree.

Boys Begging

Many young boys, many of whom are from villages, attend Muslim "schools"in the cities of Senegal. Sometimes very poor parents in the villages cannot support their children and they see this as a way for their children to eat and to learn. Many poor villagers believe that giving a Muslim holy man a child to educate will gain an entire family entrance to paradise! This practice dates back to the 11th century.
These "schools" are run by Muslim men, called Marabout, who are teaching the children the Koran. They do not teach other school subjects, and they teach the Koran for only about two hours per day. The "teaching" is really just memorizing the Koran. The rest of the day , or about nine hours, the young boys, many of whom are just six or seven years old, are required to go out into the streets to beg for money and food. The children are on their own until a certain time of day, at which time they are to report back and turn in the money. They collect an average of 300 African francs per day, which is just 72 cents. If they do not collect enough money, they may be beaten. It is such a sad life for these little boys! Sometimes they are forced to live in vacant or unfinished buildings. In Dakar alone, there are at least 7,600 child beggars, according to a study that was released in February. Each Marabout tries to gather more and more children so that he can become more and more wealthy!
In 2005 Senegal passed a law that made it a crime to force a child to beg, but there is an exception to the law---and that is begging for religious reasons.
(There are other legitimate and good Muslim schools.)

I was told one story about how a group of boys had saved out some of their money until they could buy a soccer ball. Then they found a business owner who agreed to keep the ball for them. Each day whenever they have reached their quota of donations, they go to get their ball and play for a while!

Look at the sad faces on these boys......

Restaurants

Because of our long hours at the church building helping people with English, we do not get back to the apartment until about 8:30 in the evenings. That is too late to cook, so we eat sandwiches for dinner. That means we need something different for lunch, so we eat lunch at one of the two places that we have found within walking distance of the church.
The first is a Chinese take-out restaurant, called Saveurs D'Asie. It seems strange to go order Chinese food from Africans who are speaking French! First is the outside of the restaurant. Notice the wall that looks like a white door and an orange door; behind those doors is a large generator that is about 4' tall and 4' long. We have seen it used many times when the public electricity has failed. Usually, when it is running, the air conditioning inside the restaurant is turned off. While we are waiting for our food, we enjoy standing in the draft from the air conditioning if it is on.

This is the inside. There are offices on both sides of this room, and the kitchen is behind. The left wall of this room is a floor to ceiling mirror about 12' long.

We have splurged a few times on ice cream! It melts if we don't eat it fast. It is only one and a half blocks back to the church building, and the ice cream will not make it that far.

Following is some of the good food! This is steak and chicken kabobs with rice and onions.

Next is the second restaurant, La Broche, which is one of a chain of restaurants in Dakar. It is about a ten minute walk from our work site. Some days we eat inside, and other days we take the food out.
On the left side of the building is their bakery.

Ron is paying for our food. No one seems to speak English at this restaurant. This makes ordering and paying for food an interesting adventure.

They do have pizza, but look it and see if it looks like "real" pizza! The menu lists 8 different types of pizza; when we point to any of the others, they shake their heads "No". This is the only one available; once it was served without the eggs. We don't know how to ask for it that way.

The next photos show the inside of the La Broche that is close to our apartment. It is much larger and much nicer inside. By the time we walk here, we enjoy the air conditioner! This is the upstairs part of the restaurant. Unlike the smaller La Broche restaurant near the church building, this one serves a very good baked chicken with fries. The baked chicken with drinks for 2 people costs us about $8.

It is nice to see a working TV, but it is all in French! The volume is always either extremely loud or turned down so low it cannot be heard.

This is the bar in the upstairs dining room from where all drinks are served. Although we are always served glasses of ice with our canned drinks here, we do not use ice that may not be from bottled water as it could be contaminated. So, our cokes are lukewarm.

No, we have not eaten at this next restaurant!!