First impressions

Things I hadn’t realised I really liked having until I left them behind:

• A dictionary: because what exactly is the difference between ‘enquiry’ and ‘inquiry’?
  
• The ability to go walking or cycling at night without always getting lost or feeling uncomfortable.
  
• Pubs where you can drink beer from pint glasses. Especially when they’re next to a river, and you can walk home afterwards.
  
• Electricity. Power cuts are really exciting and all that, but when they go on for 24 hours and all the cheese and cold meat in the fridge is at room temperature, they get annoying.

Things I hadn’t realised I really liked having until I got them here:

• A gas lamp to read by when the power goes out.
  
• Fresh baguettes for sale 20 metres from the office.
  
• Allahu akhbar drifting in with the warm night breeze.
  
• Kids playing football in the street outside my flat all the time.

Driving towards town, I pass a West African bloke whose shirt is dark blue with sweat. It’s a reassuring reminder that no-one’s perfect, like seeing a squirrel fall out of a tree.


Marc moves into my flat and we get talking about Chad, where he spent three years. I’m quickly drawn into working out ways of fixing the country, using its oil revenues for development, pulling in international support. I start feeling like Jeffrey Sachs, as if I’m the first foreigner to have looked at the place with a benign and well-organised eye, and have just spotted the end I need to yank to unravel the knot. It’s exhilarating, and I let the thought carry me onto the first stages of getting from here to there, starting with overhauling our advocacy strategy. But as Marc carries on describing the depth of elite corruption and disinterest, I realise quite how distant there actually is.


I notice again how little local understanding I have when I start thinking about race. For the first time in my life, I’m self-consciously white. When I’m walking down the street, I’m aware that I’m the only white person in sight. I feel like everyone notices me from a distance and pays more attention to me than to anyone else – and by extension, I’m more vulnerable than other people. With that on my mind, I couldn’t relax when I went walking yesterday, at least until I was away from a busy road, where I’d felt like every driver was wondering what I was doing. But I’ve got no idea if I’m right. For all I know, I’m as anonymous as anyone else. After all, there are other white people around, and maybe it doesn’t cross the locals’ minds: I still haven’t been able to find out if there’s a Senegalese equivalent of gringo or vazaha.


A reminder of how everyday life here can be insidious here: driving back from the supermarket after work with Stéphane, we’re behind a small bus. As it splutters along, its exhaust fumes are so black and dense, the gap between us becomes as opaque as any fog. We wind up our windows as the bus gets a lost its wake, even though it's going pretty quickly.


When I pay attention, I’m beginning to see the depth of the poverty. Yesterday, as we were being driven back from a beach resort in our air conditioned minibus, I saw the dehydrated corpses of two zebu and a third that looked to be barely hanging on. Then, this afternoon, while wandering in my beautiful neighbourhood, among the colonnaded new buildings, I got the occasional glimpse of a different world, huddling in the cracks. A set of tin shacks crowding next to a bus depot, a small circle of men sitting in a half-demolished building. Being in a vibrant, tourist-friendly city, rather than in some refugee camp outside Abeché, it can be easy to to forget how tough survival can be here, even in Senegal, especially now that I’m starting to have a social life and it’s getting easier for me to live the Emergency Sex life.


I’ve never worked such long hours before. Natasha - the regional director - had a quiet word with me, worried that I’m spending too much time at work. But while I’m in the office, I don’t particularly feel like I’m pushing myself. When 5 o’clock comes, the idea of going home doesn’t cross my mind. Having other people around who’re still working makes a difference. In Oxford, people start leaving at 4.30, and I feel intrepid if I’m still there at 6. Today, Michel and Gilles were still in the office as I left at 8.


I’ve been thinking for a while – a few months – that society is never far from collapse. Take away our water, our petrol, our electricity and it’s lord of the flies in days. For a second evening in a row, we didn’t have water yesterday. Luckily, I had a 5 litre bottle that I’d just bought, which was plenty for washing, and the pipes were on again in the morning. But what if they hadn’t come on again, or there hadn’t been local places to buy bottled water? I comment that things are probably worse in the camps in Chad, but as Gilles points out, you expect and prepare for it when you’re there. Perversely, our luxuries make us much more vulnerable.


I’m reminded again of my gaps in local understanding when I slob out for a pizza at Caesar’s after a long day’s work. When my fruits de mer arrives, I look at the mussels, squid and pink things, wondering how sensible my choice is. In Britain, I’d be dubious about getting that kind of salmonella-prone topping from such a shabby establishment. But here I have no idea. I’m next to the sea, and everything on the pizza could be caught today. But have they made the pizza themselves? Did they heat it from frozen? Was the whole thing bought in, or just some ‘seafood mix’ topping? Are there even such things as catering companies here? Waiting to see how I feel in the morning may be my only way of getting an answer.


At 17.10 today, I feel a little like an aid worker. It started with an early afternoon power surge that blew out the electricity in the office, leaving the computers running on a generator. As the office heated up in the absence of air conditioning (or a fan, thrown away when air conditioning made it redundant), my shirt began to turn a darker shade of blue. The network connection had collapsed, bringing down my PC and forcing me to use my laptop. Then, Kate breezed in and out of the office, doing something to her computer that caused it to beep loudly every 3.5 seconds, until – at 17.10 – the intermittent beeping merged into a continuous wail. I thought about the health & safety directives and workstation assessments so popular in Oxford.


I feel my integration into local life has moved forward a step now I’m coming to understand the importance of ça va-ing. Until now, I’d thought ça va was an optional pleasantry, used as an opening gambit in a conversation between friends. Not so here. The Senegalese greeting is Bon jour ça va. Bon jour on its own has no meaning and is never used. Whether talking to a colleague, or buying a bottle of water, every conversation starts with ça va. Every conversation. Begin a dialogue with something else, and the other person will look at you blankly, and ça va you as soon as you pause, regardless of what you said. Of course, the only conventional response to ça va is ça va bien. But before I leave this country, I intend to prepare – and deliver – a monologue on my blocked sinuses, arthritic hip and constipated goldfish to some poor shopkeeper who ça vas me without really wanting to know the answer.


It’s good to see my old friend, Wayne Myslik. That sentence should be nonsense. We’ve met just once before, and spoken on the phone no more than half a dozen times. I didn’t recognise him when I arrived at the Strategy Academy, and had to ask where he was (two metres away, it turned out). But, identities clarified, we greet one another warmly, and spend the next half hour in conversation. It’s a glimpse into the life of the aid worker. Rapid friendships, that begin in Kigali, are built upon in brief days, hours or minutes, in Aceh, Darfur, Port-au-Prince.


It’s remarkable how strong the colonial influence still is here, in a country that’s been independent for so long. Some things are predictable, like the language and the omnipresence of French tourists and workers. Others are more unexpected. Why should most shops and restaurants be closed on a Sunday in a Muslim country? Why is Senegalese handwriting embellished in the French style? Would people be quite so passionate about the World Cup Final if there wasn’t France’s opponents to support? At least some things are very welcome: you can buy excellent freshly baked bread wherever you go. Except on Sundays, of course.


Swimming in the beautifully constructed and packed Piscine Olympique, I hazily wonder what the locals would be doing now if it wasn’t for colonialism. Probably something worse that playing in the refreshing waters of a swimming pool, I conclude. I wonder if I’m in danger of convincing myself of an apology for colonialism. But then I realise that no society functions only on its own discoveries and inventions. Most are learned from other cultures, and the fertilisation doesn’t require conquest and imposed changes. My cultural guilt restored, I swim on contentedly.


Mary calls when I’m in a taxi, driving through bright market streets that are barely wider than the car. The shift in context is so sharp, I don’t recognise her voice for several seconds. When I do, my happiness reminds me of the difference between a holiday and a work trip. For the first time when I’m abroad, I only see the benefits of the communications revolution.


Tendayi points out how far we have to trust people when we’re in situations like ours. She’s living with a host family, any one of whom could easily rob her, or worse. We agree, though, that we can’t function without constantly taking risks. How could I have got to her house without taking a taxi that had no seatbelts and would no doubt have failed an MOT? But later, I draw the line when she invites me to her host sister’s birthday party. It’s pitch dark, there are no street lights, and my phone’s out of credit. I find somewhere still open where I can top up my phone, but I’m relieved when I get back to my flat, and decide to stay there until the morning.


Being away from Oxford reminds me how far my life is built around social contact. I spend the working day without having any non-work-related conversation, and by the evening feel quite isolated. As I’m leaving, I suspect that I will be back in the office before Monday in order to fill my time. But then I meet Sereya and Lorenza at the fruit stall, and I’m invited out tomorrow night. My day gets another boost when Tendayi calls and suggests a trip to Îls de Gorée.


Biting into the mango I bought from my new friend at the fruit stall, Mamadou, I gasp aloud at its succulence. I’m reminded of Patrick’s comment on eating a Malagasy pineapple that its taste was so intense, his mouth hurt. Only the vastness of the mango prevents me declaring it the nicest thing I’ve ever eaten: its flavour becomes exhausting when it goes on for so long.


Everyone here tutoyezs. It solves the problem of remembering how to conjugate vous, but my British formality keeps on getting offended. Too many school French lessons and s’il vous plaits.


Going to the supermarket after work, I realise that about 90% of people on the street are men. Most of those seem to be between the age of 18-30, and most of those are dressed in a parody of American ghetto-wear: caps, basketball vests, baggy jeans, big trainers, a load of bling. Lorenza tells me that the women dress in a similar cultural style, though only on Friday and Saturday nights. And this in a Muslim country.


I’m reminded how the small differences between countries can easily catch you out. After seeing the Heinz Tomato Ketchup, I give up being surprised by the familiarity of the products in the supermarket, and start buying ingredients for a pasta sauce. But it was a false confidence. I only realise that mushrooms probably don’t grow in Senegal when the checkout girl rings up £1.20 for two of them. Later, as I cut open the first of my carefully chosen, soft golden mangoes, I’m startled to realise that they are in fact shrivelled and foul-tasting oranges, with more pip than flesh.


As I’m going through passport control, a beautiful young British student on holiday is stopped for five minutes, and questioned in a language she obviously can’t understand. I’m next, with my form that has no exit date, and with its vague reference to working as a communications officer, for an unspecified employer. Not entirely surprised to be quickly waved through by the middle-aged man at the desk.


I touch down to Dakar with a sudden wave of self doubt. Getting off the plane among a crowd of tall, handsome, black West Africans, I wonder what I can possibly offer them. Feel like a neo-colonialist, with grandiose ideas of bettering the lot of the natives, and no practical experience of what their needs really are. Wonder if it’s really true that no-one in West Africa could have been a regional information and communications officer for three months.