My First Trip to Badadou

January 17-18, 2004

Badadou is a tiny village in central Senegal. In order to get there, you drive out of Dakar through the towns of Rufisque, Thies (pronounced “chez”), and Kaolack. The village is about 20 kilometres from the Gambian border, on a small oceanic lagoon. The drive takes about five or six hours, and most of it is on roads that are full of huge potholes, probably more like craters. The roads are one lane on each side, of course without lane markers. Drivers on both sides weave on both sides of the road and on the sides of the road to avoid the gigantic ruts. You are constantly passing, on either side, huge trucks carrying sacks of peanuts (called groundnuts, and the chief product of Senegal), car rapides (the small buses that cram full of people, their belongings, goats, etc.), horse and donkey drawn buggies, and assorted bush taxis, cars, etc. This is not a trip for the faint of heart.

The village is inhabited by a central Senegalese tribe (I’ll find out the name later), who speak Wolof. A few of the villagers speak a bit of French. The village is very poor. The people live in huts which have mud brick sides and straw roofs. The pace of life is quite slow, and I really didn’t see anyone there working much there, other than the women, caring for the babies and cooking the food. There are some fishermen, though. To reach you village, you leave the main road and drive for a few miles on a dirt road. None of the roads or turn-offs are marked.

There is a small guest village about a half a mile beyond the village, quite rustic, right on the ocean lagoon. The guest village was built by some French Christian group, although most of the villagers are Moslem. This is a phenomenon seen all over West Africa. The guest village has two round huts with four small bedrooms each, plus a dormitory-style building. Rarely tourist stay there, but mostly former villagers who come to visit on weekends are the principle guests. The guest village has these huts and sleeping arrangements, a dock and small beach, a couple of informal sitting areas and a kitchen. Most of the cooking, though, is done outdoors on charcoal, either on the ground or on a small grill.

The plan was to leave Dakar very early Saturday morning, 3 AM. I was going with fellow Suffolk professor, Mohamed Zatet (MZ), who is of Algerian background and has visited the village many times before, Dramane Coulibaly (DC), the Suffolk-Dakar financial manager, of Malian descent with a Suffolk undergraduate degree, and our driver, Manga, a Senegalese from southern Senegal. It was Manga who first showed Suffolk faculty and staff Badadou. Apparently he was familiar with the village from his scouting days. He was quite a home there, knowing everyone.

Manga was to pick us up. I decided not to set an alarm clock, as nothing is ever on time. At 4 AM there was a knock on my door. I got up, got dressed, came down stairs and the other three were waiting and ready to go. We set out in the dark. Amazingly, at that hour, absolutely no traffic. Manga drove a breakneck speed out of Dakar, through Rufisque, as far as Thies. From there on, the roads were amazingly bad, and we bounced along in the dark. We stopped for a wonderful pee break in the middle of the West African plain, as the sun was coming up. Long expanses of scrub land and occasional huge trees. What a beautiful site, probably one of the best pee places I have ever used!

We continued on to Kaolack, where we sought out Emile. Emile is a Badadou villager, working as a security guard in the town. He is the hunter and he went off on his moped to get us his rifle to borrow. And what a rifle – probably World War I vintage, single barrel shotgun. We then went around the corner to some other guy, woke him up and bought 25 shot gun shells. OK, so I’m along for the ride and the experience. They can go hunting if they want to!

In Kaolack, a dingy place, we stopped at a bakery and bought a few loaves of fresh baguettes. That was our breakfast while driving. Continuing on, more lousy roads, people coming awake and starting their day. More beautiful plains vistas. After about five hours of driving, we turn off the main road onto a dirt road and drive a few miles into the village. All the village children come running at our car, yelling “toubab, toubab” (white person) at us. Not hostile at all, just a rare occurrence in the village. We are seeking out Babou. Who he is, I do not yet know. It looks like we have woken him up. MZ exchanges words with him, cordial, and off we drive to the guest village, a bit further down the road. At this point, I have no idea where we are going or what to expect.

At the guest village, someone greets us and we drive to our accommodations. A small round hut with four modest rooms in them. We each take room. The room has a cement floor, walls, and ceiling, one light bulb, generated by solar batteries, a bathroom with toilet, sink and shower head, and two single beds with a sheet on each (no cover sheet). I had brought a pillow, based on MZ’s suggestion. We were all a bit tired, but we walked to the dock area, sat at a small outdoor table and eventually were served breakfast. We had two fried eggs with onions and tomatoes, some bread we had brought, and Nescafe. I hadn’t eaten fried eggs in quite some time. They are good! Then we walked back to our rooms and all of us fell asleep. I slept for about an hour and at 1 PM got up. I didn’t know where the others were. I walked down to the dock area, found a hammock (quite rickety), and sat down to read. Very shortly MZ and DC showed up. We shot the breeze for a while. The arrangement was that Babou was going to take us for a boat ride at 3. We asked to have lunch, and eventually (things go slow here) we were served some delicious small grilled fishes, rice, and some sliced cucumbers and tomatoes. Very simple, but quite good.

There have also been some women who came back from gathering mussels which grown in the mangroves near the village. The men cook them on the ground over open coals, then sit as a group and shuck them. We go over to watch and munch a few. I decided not to risk that, since they weren’t fully cooked and I had had a problem with undercooked shellfish touched by dirty hands in Mexico a few years before.

Now I need to skip to the story of the connection to the village, the outboard motor and nets, and the Koranic school:

When Suffolk-Dakar first opened, MZ and another faculty member and fellow Algerian, Mustafa Ziad, were both teaching there. Manga suggested a place they might like to visit for a relaxing weekend and took them to Badadou. They were quite enamored by the village, the relaxed pace, and the villagers. They met several people, including Babou, who was a guard at the guest village. It turns out that Badou is knowledgeable in Koran, speaks Arabic, and knows the Muslim teachings very well. Mustafa is quite devout, although MZ is not so much. The Algerians then decide (or perhaps on a subsequent visit) that they would like to do something for the village. The idea comes up to raise money to build a Koranic school there. Badou could coordinate the effort and teach the children. The bounce the idea of several other Suffolk faculty, and Mustafa proposes the idea to his friends at his Mosque in Weyland.

They are further convinced that if the help Babou to acquire the means to generate income, he can use this income to support the school and perhaps other endeavors to better the lives of these villagers. A deal is reached to buy Babou an outboard motor and a fishing net. With these he can fish, generate enough money to support the school, himself, and others. So, enough money is raised, the motor and net are purchased, and plans are made for construction of the small schoolhouse.

Now comes a story I have heard over and over again:

Construction begins on the schoolhouse, but is never finished. Mud bricks that are purchased are destroyed in the rain, since they lie idle rather than being made into secure walls. More bricks are purchased and the walls go up. Babou claims a roof was put on, but it was destroyed in the wind. Interestingly none of the other roofs in the village are destroyed at all. Babou claims the net is too small, so they buy him a larger, much more expensive, net. Guess what? He doesn’t do any fishing, claims the motor belongs to him. No one knows where the nets have gone to. Occasionally he takes French tourists on little boat trips and generates enough money for himself. All this time (a couple of years or more) promises are made, quite convincingly, excuses are made, quite believably, and the Algerians and their backers are patient.

By now, we have all figured out that Babou is not going to generate any income or see to the completion of the schoolhouse. He continues to be cordial and unabashed. Complaints have been made with the chief and elders of the village, and nothing much happens. Of course, the Algerians are now embarrassed about what to tell their backers.

OK, back to this weekend:

MZ has decided he is going to meet again with the chief. We have brought DC as a witness, to testify that MZ is telling the truth. DC was involved with the negotiations with Babou and helped with the purchase of the motor, holding the funds, and distributing them. MZ decides not to confront Babou, as he has already threatened to kill anyone who tries to take the motor away (he has a hunting rifle). We are going to visit the chief on our way out of the village on Sunday morning and file an official complaint.

So at 3 PM or so, Baboa arrives with his pirougue (long, skinny fishing boat) to take us for a ride and do some fishing. There are three teenage village girls who we allow to tag on for the ride. We go around several mangrove islands and lagoons in the ocean inlet to a couple of good fishing spots. We hear lots of birds, hyenas, and even monkeys when the motor stops. By the way, the motor konks out several times on the way. I am not sure whether this is an act by Baboa to show that the motor isn’t such a great thing, or that he just doesn’t keep it well maintained. I am prepared for a breakdown and whatever adventure that would entail. We fish with drop lines and pieces of small dead fish for about an hour. The only thing anyone catches are a few sucker type bottom feeders, which Baboa promptly bashes to death and throws back. So we head back to the shore, and now it’s time to go hunting.

Emile has decided to get himself to the village. Hunting here means driving through the dirt roads through the bush with guns aimed out the windows, looking for quail in the dry grass at dusk. I am told that occasionally they shoot monkeys, which the villagers eat too. After about an hour of driving around, me in the front seat reading to hold my ears, we give up and head back to the village. We encounter Paul, a villager who is in the beekeeping business. Apparently a Dutch group taught him to raise bees and he actually has a thriving business, tending to the hives and selling the honey in Kaolack. So We buy about 2 kilograms from him. And it is amazing, very sweet, but a slight saltiness, probably due to the proximity to the ocean.

Dinner was ready around 8 PM. It was quite dark by then. The men were grilling a goat that had been hit by a car on the road and left to die. They had finished it off, butchered it, and marinated small pieces of whatever in a very spicy sauce. Sitting around a small homemade grill in the dark, they were drinking palm wine and grilling away. We were asked if we wanted chicken (which we saw them carry in by the legs earlier) or goat, we opted for chicken (but ate a few pieces of goat later!). The meal was quite good and the goat was awesome. Very spicy, grilled to perfection. It was a process of chewing meat and gristle off small pieces of bone. I have noticed that Africans hack little pieces rather than filleting or Western butchering techniques. Watermelon finished off the meal.

MZ and I were tired, so we sat on the dock with some kids for a while. They got a kick out of my digital camera. We were amazed at the night sky. Like anywhere without light, the sky seems two feet away. So many stars and almost no moon that night. We retired to our huts by 9 PM and I slept soundly until right before sunrise – 7 AM. Manga and DC stayed up drinking palm wine and chatting till the wee hours.

I awake, as I said, before sunrise. I wanted to take a shower (cold water) to wash off the combination of sweat, sunscreen, deet, dead fish smell, road kill goat, and a more. But no running water. I rinsed off my eyes and hands with bottled water, got dressed, and went outside. I went down to the waterside and stretched for a few minutes then walked over to the dock. No one was stirring. I sat on the dock and closed my eyes to meditate for a while. The noise was amazing – myriad birds, hyenas, monkeys, fish jumping. It was so loud! Amazing experience. I think I was there for about a half hour before I was disturbed by people moving about. MZ had come to get me, as we wanted to get going. Arriving back in Dakar later than 3 PM on a Sunday was a disaster. Everyone goes home to their villages on the weekends and returns to the city on Sundays. Also it was the final day of the Dakar Rally, a 4x4, motorcycle race through the Sahara and ending outside of Dakar. The city was full of Frenchmen as a result and there would be unbelievable traffic.

We decided to make a quick stop to council with the village chief on the way out. We weren’t going to confront Babou, just get a deposition to the chief, who would decide what to do. We drove back to the village, walked into the chief’s hut and waited for the other village elders to join us. So it was me, MZ, DC, Manga, the chief, and three other old men. Only one man spoke French, so he did the translating from Wolof. We sat there while MZ and DC plead their case, the old man translated from Wolof to French, back and forth a few times. I am not sure what happened, but I doubt there will ever be any resolution to the problem. Things move slowly, if at all! We all shook hands again. The chief went a got us a big bucket full of peanuts (groundnuts here), and off we went. Back up the dirt road to the main road. We again were driving at 120 km per hour, dodging crater-sized potholes, passing villages, people walking, broken down vehicles on and off the road, kids running, horse drawn carts, etc. Oh, and half way there, I noticed that Emile had joined us!

Well, it is now 10 AM and we are on the road. Returning the way we came, although it looked much different during the waking hours that at sunrise. People were already out, going about their business. Women drawing water from wells, horse drawn and oxen drawn wagons full of hay, giant bags of groundnuts, and various other commodities. The roads were full of car rapides, bush taxis (Peugeot 505s loaded to the gills), semi-trailers of groundnuts, very beat up cars, mopeds, among the entourage. We weave through the masses and the crater holes until we get to Kaolak, starving. We stop at Anour the Lebanese restaurant for a late breakfast – Nescafe and baguettes with butter and jam are the fare. The we drive through a shanty town with trash everywhere and pigs (Christian section) eating the trash to Emile’s house. His wife is waiting for him and says hello to us. Off goes Emile and his shotgun and the rest of our bullets. And we make our way back to Dakar. There is a lot of traffic on the road.

At one point, between Kaolak and Thies we encounter a car rapide that has just been in a big accident. It is on its side and people are injured and lying on the ground. The army authorities are already there, so we just drive by. I can still hear the sound of the women wailing at the tragedy as we drive by.

The rest of the trip is quite uneventful. I am now wondering why Manga chose to take the nicer car – the Renault – rather that the “kat kat”, which is French slang for a 4x4 vehicle. The kat kat is air conditioned, and the air conditioning on the Renault doesn’t work. No one has thought to find out how to get it fixed, so as Executive Director, I instruct Manga to look into it. But it is mid-day, and hot sitting in the car with the sun glaring down. Lots of dirt and dust and various smells as we drive by. One thing I have noticed on this trip is that if a cow or a goat is hit by a car, it remains on the side of the road until it is totally decomposed. In the meantime, the odor is not pleasant. We are expecting traffic as we approach Dakar, but we get back without too much.

So back to the residence by 4 PM. That gives me time to wash off the sweat, dirt, sunscreen, and insect repellant, put on some clean clothes, and get ready for dinner and the Patriots vs. Colts game. Yes, it was broadcast on cable here.

And the chief’s peanuts were the perfect snack.

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