Badadou – Lesson 2

December 31, 2004

Professor Mohamed Zatet arrived in Dakar three weeks ago to teach both Calculus and Statistics at Suffolk. He is a professor from the Boston campus, has been here numerous times, and is staying until mid-January this trip. The week of Christmas was for him an opportunity to try to deal with the mess in Badadou. I have written about the village and his attempt, along with Professor Mustapha Ziad, to help the village build a Koranic school for its children.

We know that money was given to Babou (Aboubacar Sarr), a guard at the campement there, to buy a motor and nets for his fishing boat. That property was to be used to catch fish to generate funds for books and supplies for the school at which Babou, knowledgeable in Koran, would be the teacher. Funds were also given to the village for construction of the small school house. When we went there last January, we saw that the building was partially constructed (no roof yet), the nets had disappeared, and Babou, if he had done any productive fishing at all, had not contributed any money towards the school. Mohamed knew he had an obligation to the donors to find out what was going on.

During his trip to Dakar in June we didn’t have the opportunity or energy to travel to Babadou, a long and tiring drive on poor roads. We had heard that the motor had been sold and that Babou was claiming that the motor had been given to him as a gift, totally denying his promise to help the children of his village. The money for the motor, nets, and construction had come from donations from a mosque near Boston and from several Suffolk faculty who had visited Badadou.

Mohamed and I had discussed the problem over many dinners during the past few weeks and had tried to figure out how to get restitution from Babou, see completion of the school house, and be able to report to the donors that their money had gone to some productive outcome. Should we go to the gendarmerie, the local marabout (Muslim religious leader), the chief of the village, find a builder to finish the school, or just hire some thugs to deal with Babou? No clear answer here and even with our knowledge of Senegalese village and Muslim customs, we were at a loss as to what the most effective way to deal with this would be.

So I called a Senegalese friend, General Seck, to solicit his advice. General Seck is a retired Senegalese air force pilot, commander of Senegalese forces during Gulf Storm (yes, Senegal was in the coalition), and former Senegalese Ambassador to the United States. He has been a friend of Suffolk-Dakar’s and mine for quite some time. He said that he was leaving the next day for some consulting for the United Nations, then returned the next weekend to then leave for the Hajj, the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the tenets of Islam and a great honor. He agreed to meet us for coffee that afternoon.

We met the General at a new fast food joint near us, a reminder of an American food court at a mall. Over tea and coffee Mohamed and I told him the story and asked for his advice on how to proceed. He suggested going through the head Imam or marabout of Kaolack, the closest regional city to Badadou. He reached the Imam on his cell phone, in Wolof told him a bit of the story, and told us that the Imam would receive us this week. So we were going to Kaolack at least, and maybe Badadou.

Mohamed’s plans to go to Mauritania fell through, so he pressured me to join him on the long trip to Kaolack yesterday. I called a friend, Viola Vaughn, who lives in Kaolack and told her we were coming. She said to come to her restaurant and she would accompany us to the Imam’s residence, since she knew him well. At 5 AM, Manga arrived at the residence, and we were off in the dark for the adventure. We had asked Dramane to write an affidavit with the details of his involvement in the project. He had held the funds for the group, disbursed the money for the motor and nets to Babou, and to the village chief for construction. Dramane, being one to procrastinate, after many months of prodding had still not written the brief account. So Mohamed wrote it for him and asked him to go to the police to have his signature verified. It took him two days to not get that done. So we went with the document signed but not verified.

Viola Vaughn’s story is certainly an interesting one. She is an African American grandmother from Detroit with an Ed.D. Her father was a Baptist minister and she had converted to Islam while in college. Her daughter was swallowed up by inner city life and died, leaving her four children in the care of Viola and her husband. The children’s father disappeared. After struggling with the problem of how to raise four black children in a way that would keep them from not being corrupted by the lifestyle that took their mother, the family decided to emigrate and settle in Kaolack, Senegal. They felt that it would be a better place to raise the children in the values they wanted to instill. And interestingly there are quite a few African American Muslim families who have settled in Kaolack for similar reasons. Viola set up a small home school operation for her grandchildren. She also has set up an after-school program for girls, which now has over 100 in attendance. She finances all of this through donations, the sale of textile works sewed by the girls, and her small restaurant/bakery, Celebrations, which caters mostly to Peace Corp workers in the region. It is a haven in Kaolack – pancakes, blueberry waffles, veggie sandwiches, awesome cakes and whole grain breads, and other American fare. Oh, and I forgot to mention that her husband died of a heart attack five days after she and her brood arrived in Senegal.

I met Viola last year in Dakar. She often comes to events to sell her baked goods. We met to discuss helping her “girls” to get to Suffolk, which is something we are still working on. She is a gutsy, loveable woman who has become mother/grandmother to her own, to the girls in her program, and to all the Peace Corp volunteers that spend their days off hanging around in her restaurant and chatting with her.

We arrived in Kaolack at around 9 AM and made our way to Celebrations. We greeted Viola, sat at a table, and she brought us piles of waffles with blueberries, syrup, and honey and very strong coffee. We chatted with two Peace Corp workers who were with one kid’s parents, a couple from Arkansas who were all on their way to the kid’s village. Boy, were those parents in for an experience!

Viola went and changed into her “visiting the Imam clothes” and off we went to meet with him. Manga drove us to the old section of Kaolack (not that there is modern section), called Medina Bay. The mosque there is very large and quite impressive, probably second only to the one in Touba. This mosque is of he Tidiene sect, not the Mouride as in Touba. The Imam’s house was next door. We removed our shoes and entered. I will try as best I can to describe the whole scene, but I think it will be very difficult to describe the it visually and the feeling of the place and experience.

Cheikh Hassan Aly Cisse is the head Imam for the entire region of Kaolack. I have no idea how many followers he has, but it is a lot. The room we entered was large. The floors were all covered with oriental carpets. There was a long red sofa that hugged two parallel walls. Straight ahead was a large oil painting of Mecca, not yet framed or hung, just resting on the floor. Beyond it was a wall of bookcases full of Arabic texts. The Imam sat relaxedly in the middle of the sofa on one side. We shook his hand (Viola touched it to her forehead) and were asked to sit on the sofa opposite. He spoke to me in very good English and to Mohamed in Arabic, which he had learned during studies in Egypt. Cheikh Hassan was wearing a beautiful boubou of white with gold embroidery on it and an elaborate skull cap type thing. He was round and had a white beard. Next to him was a visiting Imam from Mauritania, an old, old man. In front of him was a small table with the remains of a meal – an omelet, some bread, and tea. He took out a small bag of something and sprinkled it on some food and ate it. At his feet sat two attendants. I found out that they were Indian boys from South Africa who had been sent by their father to serve and study. Everyone in the room besides Mohamed and me and the other Imam sat at his feet. He had a cell phone next to him. In between greeting visitors, eating, and talking to us, he fielded calls on it. Behind him on the wall were several framed photographs and citations. One was an impressive picture of him shaking hands with Kofi Annan in front of the UN seal. Another was a citation making him an honorary Councilman of the city of Memphis, Tennessee.

Cheikh Hassan asked us if we would like some tea. We agreed and one of the Indian boys went off to prepare it. The small table was cleared of his meal and brought in front of us and tea was ceremoniously served. The pace was very slow. The Cheikh finally addressed Mohamed in Arabic, and Mohamed related the entire story of Badadou and Babou’s thievery. He implored the Cheikh to help us get restitution and justice from Babou and to complete the school. During the conversation, the Cheikh was repeatedly interrupted by visitors and phone calls. I was amazed to realize that he was, in fact, multi-tasking, a trait not necessarily associated with West Africans, especially those who are traditional Muslims or Muslim clerics. The pace in Senegal tends to be very slow, and doing more than one thing at a time is not something I had observed among Suffolk’s employees at least. I assume that this was a typical day for him, greeting his flock, helping to solve their problems, and being attended to.

Cheikh Hassan told Mohamed to tell Babou to come and see him tomorrow (Friday) and he would solve this for us. After an appropriate length of time, we were politely dismissed. We shook hands, I gave the Cheikh a nice Suffolk pen, and we departed. I knew that now we needed to drive to Badadou and deliver the Cheikh’s request for Babou to see him. I was not looking forward to that difficult trip.

Viola then invited us to come to her house and see where she has her program for girls, where she lives, and how she raises her grandchildren. Her house is quite modest and typical of a Senegalese house. Adjacent to her house is another building which has three classrooms. In one a very young girl was teaching the grandchildren a lesson in Arabic. We were introduced to the teacher and the kids, who each had to read for us. Mohamed helped them with their Arabic pronunciation. In another classroom there was some high level algebra on the chalk board. I was quite impressed, much higher than typical American high school level. Also in the room were five ancient computers in a pile, none in working condition. This was a no-brainer. I called Manga to carry them to the trunk of the car. The least we could do is rebuild them so that they could have some good working computers. Our students would even be able to take on part of this project. Over a cold drink in her living room, Viola told us a bit about her program for girls, the story of her conversion to Islam, move to Senegal, vision for her grandchildren and her “girls”. I am hoping to be able to find some scholarship money for some of her girls to go to Suffolk. Here is a woman who is really making a difference, without major grant money or big administrative bureaucracies.

We then brought Viola back to her restaurant and off we went, headed for Badadou. The road we had taken in the morning, from Dakar through Rufisque, MBour, and Fatick is mostly a new two-lane highway, built in anticipation of completion of a new airport scheduled to open in our grandchildren’s lifetime. Getting out of Dakar and through Rufisque is the hardest part. There was still some construction in MBour and we took a detour, but otherwise a very smooth 3 ½ hours. However, from Koalak south is another story. The road is very rough, full of gigantic potholes, some requiring leaving the road and traveling along the dirt road adjacent. It was a lot for the small Renault Laguna we had taken. Suffolk also owns an ancient 4 x 4 Toyota, but it would not start that morning. After about 90 minutes, the last part on a dirt road, we reached the village.

We went directly to the hut of the chief of the village, and were told that he was away. So we proceeded to the small campement built by a Catholic group (although the entire village is Muslim) by the ocean inlet. Since the last time we had been there in January, 2004, the construction we had seen had been completed. There is now a small dining room/bar and some improvements to the small huts that are rented to guests. We met the young man who runs the campement, Aliou, and were told that Babou was out on his boat but on his way in. We saw a large pirogue heading back towards the dock with Babou and another local man and a family of tourists. The tourists disembarked and eventually Babou also. He reluctantly came and greeted us. Mohamed told him we needed to talk. He said he would be right back and walked away. We waited a few minutes and found him next door, starting to eat a meal. Manga (also our head of security) gently took the plate away from him and Babou said he would be right back. He walked away, headed to his house. After five minutes Manga went to retrieve him. In the meantime I had talked to the tourists returning from the fishing trip. They were American missionaries who have been in Senegal for seven years. I asked how much they had paid Babou for the fishing trip. They told me 40,000 CFA (about $80), almost a month’s salary here.

Babou was reluctantly brought back to meet with us, knowing he was about to face a confrontation. In broken French he began to deny everything and point fingers at everyone else involved in this venture – Dramane, Moustapha, Manga, and Mohamed. He claimed that the motor was a gift and that he never knew he was supposed to help the village or give money towards the school. When Mohamed told him that the head Cheikh had requested that he visit him tomorrow, Babou shouted that he had his own marabout. He said, if the Cheikh wanted to see him, he would have to come to Badadou. He further said he didn’t care if Abdoulaye Wade (president of Senegal) wanted to talk to him, he wasn’t budging!

At this point I intervened. I told Mohamed we were finished. We had delivered the message and would report back to the Cheikh. As we drove away, Babou was shouting at us and imploring us to give him 10,000 CFA if we wanted him to go to Kaolack. (Transportation to Kaolack is closer to 500 CFA) Frankly I expected this kind response. After a bit more shouting, we got back into the car and headed back to Kaolack.

En route, Mohamed called the Cheikh and reported the incident. We don’t yet know what has happened, although Cheikh Hassan Aly Cisse’s request for a meeting is not something that can be refused. No doubt the bravado we had seen from Babou had turned to fear and hopefully a very trouble night.

On the drive back, Manga also explained some of the village dynamics in this drama. It appears that Babou is an outsider in the village and not well liked. Mohamed and Mustapha’s alliance with him alienated the chief of the village, who probably also wanted his “cut” of the deal. As a result of that, no matter what had been done from that point on, the chief was resigned to sabotage the project to build the Koranic school for the children of the village. The several meetings with the chief and village elders were all for show, as they had no intention of helping us get resolution or complete the project.

Once in Kaolack, we went back to Celebrations. Viola served us grilled thiof (a local fish), salad, and fries, and gave us a pound cake, a quiche, and some sweet potato tarts to take back to Dakar. There was a Peace Corp volunteer hanging around the restaurant looking for a ride to Dakar for a fun weekend with some friends. So the four of us got into the car and headed back to Dakar. There was (as usual) a lot of traffic once we reached Rufisque, and the last ten kilometers took well over an hour. We finally arrived home at close to 11 PM. Certainly a long day.

Post Script:

Saturday we also reported to General Seck. He was leaving for Mecca the next day, so said there wasn’t a lot he could do until he returned. He suggested we write a letter and deliver it to the Imam. I expect the computers will be repaired in a week or so and I’ll take a ride to Kaolack to visit Viola, have some more waffles, and set them up for her and her girls. We will ask her to deliver the letter to the Cheikh. I am sure there will be a “lesson 3” soon.

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