Senegal, wrap

Last odds and ends about Senegal.

They don't like W.  Senegalese, without an exception I could find, don't like George W. Bush.  The reason is simple: he paid a visit there in 2003, and it was a disaster.  This was just after the Iraq invasion, and basically the whole city of Dakar had to be shut down.  He went out to the island of Goree to make a speech, and all of the people who lived there -- a thousand or so -- were taken off for a day.  Security, right? 

I found a pissy article about it online.  I discounted it heavily because, you know, The Nation.  But according to the Senegalese, it's basically correct.  Senegal doesn't seem to be one of those touchy countries, but it was a bit much.  And, you know.  Way to make a small, friendly country dislike us, Mr. President.

Railroads.  Turns out the Senegalese railroad has a glorious history of strikes and activism; one of Senegal's greatest literary works is a novel that's based on a strike in 1947.  (h/t Tzintzuntzan!)  This makes the whole privatization thing more baffling, mind.

History.  I need to read more about French Africa; it's way more interesting than I realized.  The French were dicks, but if you were going to be colonized -- and in the late 19th century, yeah, you probably were -- you could have done worse.  They were more competent than the Portuguese and less hypocritical than the British, yadda yadda.  From a West African point of view, they were in many ways more obnoxious and damaging after independence.  That's because they kept intervening in the region, usually to prop up the local evil strongman -- sort of like the US in Central America, except more so, and nobody outside the region ever cared much.

Birds.  Two sorts stick in my mind.  One, the kites -- big scraggly hawks.  The country is full of them.  They'll eat any sort of meat -- rats, lizards, fish, garbage.  They make big messy nests in baobab trees and spend all day soaring around on thermals.  They're not handsome, but they're wonderful fliers, and very relaxing to watch.

Two, the local weaverbirds.  Little yellow guys with black heads who weave hanging nests, like orioles.  Loud, and fearless -- sit by the pool eating a sandwich, and they'd come scavenging for crumbs like sparrows in a park.  Except they look like they'd cost $200 each in an exotic pet shop.  So cool.

Oh, and not birds, but there were a lot of fruit bats around in the evenings -- big ones, with like a two foot wingspan.  During the day they hang upside down in palm trees.  Very neat.

WAEMU.  WAEMU is the West African Economic and Monetary Union, or UEMOA in French.  It's a union of eight Francophone West African countries; they've reduced mutual tariffs and share a common currency, the CFA, and a common Central Bank.

WAEMU is pretty damn impressive in a lot of ways.  Here's the one that affected my work: all laws relating to the financial sector are WAEMU, not national.  So, banking in Senegal?  Is regulated by a loi bancaire that's identical in all eight member states.  In this respect WAEMU is actually ahead of the EU, which has a central bank and a common currency but hasn't finished harmonizing its financial laws yet (and likely won't for many years to come).

The CFA used to be pegged to the franc and is now pegged to the euro.  The exchange rate has only changed once in sixty years; that was in 1994, when it was abruptly devalued by 50%.  Apparently this was supposed to help exports; it failed.  There's a complicated and interesting story there, and maybe one day I'll dig it up.  Meanwhile, West Africa is an interesting macroeconomic laboratory that nobody seems to be paying much attention to.  Low tariffs and a common currency haven't done much for inter-regional trade, that's for sure.  On the other hand, West Africa's interregional transport links suck -- there's exactly one international rail line (Bamako, Mali to Dakar) and most of the roads are awful.  But at least you don't have to keep changing money.

End of the dry.  It was the end of the dry season, which is the least attractive time of year -- very hot, very humid, dusty and hazy.  Everyone was waiting for the rains.  "Like the last month of pregnancy."

Even so, Dakar is pleasant if you can find a green spot with some shade: there are ocean breezes.  Kaolack, umm, less so.

Cosmopolitan Dakar.  Nationalism and the various convulsions of the 20th century have made a lot of former colonial cities much less varied.  Alexandria is no longer full of Greeks and Jews and Armenians, the French and Spanish and Italians are gone from Algiers.  But Dakar still has tens of thousands of French and other Europeans, and a permanent colony of thirty thousand or so Lebanese.  And the Senegalese themselves are impressively varied -- tall and short, a wide range of facial features, skin colors mostly "black" but ranging from dark brown to matte black and blue-black.  Furthermore, there's a huge range of costumes, from caftans and skullcaps to blue jeans and baseball caps.  "Western" outfits and "traditional" garb are both common. 

The result is that a street scene in Dakar is as varied as anything in New York or London.  Which is nice. 

BTW, head scarves are very rare, and veils are unknown.  Senegalese women tend to dress up.  Younger women mostly wouldn't look out of place in Paris; older women tend towards caftans and muu-muu like things.  The general level of stylishness is high.

Dressup Friday.  Speaking of caftans, most men wear one on Friday, because it's the holy day.  And when I say caftan, I mean a really nice caftan, all clean and pressed.  (It is astonishing how clean they are.  I mean, I wouldn't dare wear a white suit in Dakar.  Okay, I wouldn't dare wear a white suit anywhere, because I'd spill coffee on it.  But still.) 

Apparently even non-Muslims may wear a nice caftan on Friday.  Just, you know, because.

People.  Consistently pleasant and friendly.  You do get guys trying to sell you stuff, and the occasional barnacle who won't quit.  But that (I'm told) is the norm in West Africa, and Senegal less bad than most. 

Also, in the circles I was moving in, everyone spoke French -- very well, usually -- and most were really well educated and seemed really competent.  Obviously this is not at all representative; Senegal is a very poor country, and something like a third of the population is still illiterate.   There was plenty of poverty in Dakar, and even more in the countryside.  But there's definitely a critical mass of bright, educated young professionals.  Whether they'll be used effectively is something else again.  

Eh, that's probably enough for now.  I liked it and would go back with enthusiasm.

Comments

[Dennis Brennan]

My understanding of the West African economy is pretty much non-existent, but can't the low level of international trade among the West African countries also be explained by most of them being cash-crop economies?

[Doug M.]

That's a big part of it, sure. But Senegal has some basic industries -- cement, processed foods like canned tomatoes, food products like peanut oil. You'd think they'd find some markets around the region.

There's an inland city in Senegal called Tambacounda -- you drive from Dakar to Kaolack and keep going, yah? Well, someone said to us that "it's easier to import corn and beef from Brazil, 4,000 km across the Atlantic, than to bring it from Tambacounda, 500 km inland."

Doug M.

[Ed]

Last odds and ends about Senegal.

They don't like W. Senegalese, without an exception I could find, don't like George W. Bush. The reason is simple: he paid a visit there in 2003, and it was a disaster. This was just after the Iraq invasion, and basically the whole city of Dakar had to be shut down. He went out to the island of Goree to make a speech, and all of the people who lived there -- a thousand or so -- were taken off for a day. Security, right?

Hmmm.

"Popular in Africa: Bush has given more aid than any other US president"

[T]here is another, perhaps more important, reason for President Bush's week-long visit to Africa: people actually like him here.

A recent report from the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that "the US image is much stronger in Africa than in other regions of the world". At least 80 per cent of respondents in Ghana, Kenya and Cote d'Ivoire were favourable to the US. In all other sub-Saharan African countries polled, there were more "favourables" than "non-favourables".

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/popular-in-africa-bush-has-given-more-aid-than-any-other-us-president-783387.html

Unpopular at home, Bush basks in African praise

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL17797120080217

Both articles are from 2008. I rather doubt that Bush's popularity has collapsed in just one year, especially since he hasn't been in office for the last 6+ months.

But, hey. Let's not go basing our beliefs on recent scientific polling data. No, six-year old articles from Marxist rags and anecdotes from non-random samples have much higher validity, amiright?

I mean, it's simply not possible that the people you spoke to there were just telling a leftist 0bama fanboy American what he wanted to hear out of basic politeness.

[Ed]

This link - http://pewglobal.org/database/?indicator=1&country=194 - has data specific to Senegal. The US had a 69% favourable rating in 2007. Americans had a 67% favourable rating in 2007. Nearly 40% had confidence in Bush, specifically. Over 40% supported the "Global War On Terror". But less than 20% supported the NATO occupation of Afghanistan.

Hmmm. Maybe if Bush had wanted to increase his popularity in Senegal (which, as everyone knows, is a supremely important goal of every US President), he should have withdrawn all US forces from Afghanistan.

I wonder if 0bama's attempt to duplicate the success of Bush's "surge" in Iraq with his own mini-surge in Afghanistan has cost him much support on the all-important Senegalese street?

[Ed]

"BTW, head scarves are very rare, and veils are unknown. Senegalese women tend to dress up. Younger women mostly wouldn't look out of place in Paris; older women tend towards caftans and muu-muu like things. The general level of stylishness is high."

I suppose when your clitoris and labia have been cut off and your vagina sewn shut - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_cutting#Prevalence - then all you have left for enjoyment is playing dress up.

[Doug M.]

Ed, you seem to have a bug up about something. That's fine, but keep in mind that this is a private blog. Play nice, please.

Senegalese and W: /without exception/, every Senegalese had something bad to say about George Bush. It came up at random about halfway through my stay, but the reaction was strong enough that I made a point of mentioning it to see what would happen.

The Senegalese I met had no trouble distinguishing between the US (generally favorable, sure enough) and its last President (nobody liked him). I suspect part of the problem was that Bill Clinton set the bar too high with his 1990s visit to Ghana. Clinton he worked the crowd so hard that the Secret Service was terrified for his safety; he dived into the masses, shook thousands of hands, and narrowly avoided heat stroke. The Senegalese were expecting something like this, and were nonplussed to find that nobody below the rank of Minister was going to be allowed anywhere near.

Leftist Obama fanboy: see, this is the sort of thing that makes me just want to say "fuck along, Ed" and delete you. But since you're new here, you get one bye.

Part of the reason I'm in this line of work is that I like hearing what the world has to say. So I try not to prime the pump with my own opinions. In general, I don't say a word about US politics, other than in the broadest terms ("we had an election last year. Did people here follow it much?") until the local has laid out his or her opinion.

FGM: okay, what exactly is the point of this? That the Senegalese are eeevil baby-girl-mutilating-Muslims, whose dislike of W. only serves to validate his essential goodness? Or are you just upset at the suggestion that Africans could be smart and stylish?

Anyway. If you'd bothered actually researching, instead of looking at wikipedia, you'd have found that the prevalence of FGM in Senegal, while still unacceptably high, has been falling steadily since the 1980s. The Wolof -- the biggest ethnic group, with about 40% of the population -- have pretty much given it up, as have the urban inhabitants. The current prevalence is estimated at around 20%, but still falling -- about half of what it was a generation ago.

The last two governments have come out firmly against the practice; Senegal's Ministry of Health has been conducting anti-FGM campaigns since the early 1990s. The government has publicly stated that it wants to eliminate FGM completely by 2015. I think that's overly optimistic, myself, but there's no question that they're trying.

Whoops, sorry -- am I putting facts in the way of your rant? My bad.

Doug M.