Dakar to St. Louis, dejeuner with the family of Iba

It's a four and a half hour bus ride from Dakar to St. Louis.  One of the pre-departure decisions was what to leave in Dakar.  I didn't want to haul a big suitcase.  So, with required Nalgene water bottle dangling from my backpack, smaller water bottles full off purified water, a few clothes, off I went.  Iba came by in the pre-dawn hours to pick me up en route to the "bus station", a large parking lot filled with a throng of men, women and children.  Buses back up into narrow spaces.  There are no warning beeps but somehow people get out of the way.  It's all very normal.

I dozed off much of the way, occasionally looking out to see expanses of scrub, men and boys on horse-drawn carts, various stages of construction, or decay, in villages.  Ironically, our one stop, Gaeoul, is the village where a friend of my brother, came to instruct Teachers on how best to teach  under the guise of Friends of Gaeoul. This small organization pays families $100/year to keep their daughters in school.

Iba's family is enormously grateful for all the support I have given him to continue in school  (It's another story, a separate blog posting, to explain how I came to know these people).  By bringing one person up economically, this helps the whole family.  Here in Africa, if person A has a little bit of money, he/she must give it to person B, if they have more need.  Basically, everyone is broke all the time.  Children, of which there are many, seem to glide between adjoining families for food, company, care.

Maman Ba prepared a large platter of rice, grilled fish, vegetables (eggplant, onion, carrots, potatoes) for our lunch.  I wish I had a photo of this:  Iba, Maman Ba, Neighbor woman, Malik (Iba's brother), Malik's wife, two other young women in lycee, two boys, one baby.  We are all seated on a large mat around the metal platter, 18" ish wide), some of us eating with a spoon, the older women gathering food into their right hand, squeezing it into a ball and popping it into their mouth.  I found it quite charming how the older women distributed choice morsels of fish or vegetables towards those who they felt needed help getting adequate food (like me).  Between themselves, they speak Wolof,  but I never really feel left out.