[+] Thursday, April 26, 2001

we turned the corner to see a boy, face painted, laying in the sand ready to pounce. he danced at us in a somewhat menacing fashion, but his eyes betrayed it as a game. random performance art? apparently not, there a quite a few spectacularly painted faces today. many young faces peer from many windows and cracks in the unfinished concrete walls. "toubab!", "ca va?", "bonjour madame".

we take a wrong turn and it's the highlight of the kids day. (are these white people totally insane? everyone knows that's a deadend.) one of the boys follows us to the end of the track and walks back with us. every child in the village waits at the corner for us to return. it's all very exciting. they shake our hands. "toubab!", "ca va?". the biggest smiles you've ever seen. the senegalese love people, even at funny looking ones like us. they can't help but smile.

we made it to yoff beach. we saw the beached blow-fish. we met Rick, the wet puppy in a can with the two small fish. we danced with the drummers on the beach. and just when it seemed things were as strange and beautiful as they could ever get, the lion-man caught me and took me to the water bowl in the middle of the circle of people.

i thought he might dunk me or something, but i was surprisingly un-phased by the whole thing. as i was not fast enough to outrun the lion, it was only fair that i face the consequences. but then gilles paid the lady 200 CFA to bail me out. so we danced a bit then sat on one of the benches to watch the lion-men dance and mess with the kids. some would be slapped on the back, others would have the lions gyrating in front of their faces, and 5 young boys were instructed to rub themselves until... well it's hard to say until what. but one by one they were permitted to leave.

the game came to an end. the lion-man who caught me shook our hands. we said farewell to the ticket lady. we sang the praises on the performers, then stumbled home in a state of mild shock.

[+] Sunday, April 22, 2001

every monday i feel like i'm a shiny little pin-ball ball about to be flung into a crazed game. my job is simply to be tossed around and perhaps score a few points before slipping through the flippers into oblivion.

having managed to get to the beach twice on our lovely long weekend i arrived at tuesday with a strange sense of optimism. perhaps it won't be like that this week...? well, it is like that this week. but on the upside, it feels like we're actually making progress. we have power, network, servers, some of the software we need, half a team, some clever people from HP helping us work out the backend stuff, and reliable source for cream donuts & pain au chocolate.

i expected this project to be difficult, but today it just got silly. i spent most of the day desperately trying to understand a linux based "internet application framework" called Zope. between my poor grasp of all things technical, and the haphazard documentation it's been a huge struggle to even reach a point where i understand what Zope is. and just as i begin to have the tiniest clue about what it is and how it works, i'm asked to explain it in French (which i barely speak) to a guy who's been hanging out in the tech room, and whom we suspect has some sort of technical background.

we both look at each other, a little terrified. i try to explain again that i don't really understand it myself. i try to convince him that it's ok, we'll take it slowly. do you know HTML? i ask. have you ever FTP'd a file before? that sort of stuff. i don't understand the reply. perhaps he didn't understand my questions either. who knows?

[+] Wednesday, April 11, 2001

the first photos from senegal are finally up. most of these are photos from the community meeting we went to at N'Goudian. it's about and hour and a half out of Dakar. really hot, and dusty.

N'Goudian will be the first village to have a Joko Club. They are all really excited. some of the kids spoke a little english as well as the standard french and wolof, and they're keen to get online.

[+] Tuesday, April 10, 2001

technosavvy geniuses at your service

we're here to narrow the digital divide. and perhaps, after a few weeks training from the senegalese on how to operate our cellphones we'll be able to get started on that.

sitting in a bungalow at Mamelle beach waiting for our fish and chips (for 2 hours!!) we looked like we were playing out a scene from "The Gods must be Crazy". the three of us (tammy, hank & i) with cell-phones in hand.

somehow it came out that none of us had ever had cellphones before. we had no idea had to use the ones we were just given. so hank says he's going to call tammy's phone so she could test it out. next thing you know her phone rings, and she and i freak out. even though we knew he was calling we can help but panic a bit. answering the cellphone feels like having to program your VCR in hurry. so cryptic, and noisy. tammy pulls herself together and tries to answer it but somehow hangs up on him. the phone tutorial then disintigrates into hysterical laughter. this project is turing out to be even more challenging than we imagined.

<><><>

keep it simple

tammy and i want to go to the store, so we tell hank we're off to get a cab. hank says adama's on his way in a car, maybe we should wait for him. tammy thinks about it and says that might be good idea. perhaps adama's driver could take us to the store while adama checks his email, or maybe we could get dropped at the store when it's time for adama to leave. "is that what you were thinking?" she asks hank. hank crinkles his forhead for a second then says, "I was just thinking, um... car."

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le ville de les toubabs perdu
(city of the lost white people)

tammy and i popped down to the local restaurant, L'Ocean, for lunch. after ordering we realize we forgot to ask ami if she wanted anything. at this point my french is slightly better than tammy's so i decide to go ask if she wants us to bring her anything. tammy gives me directions, and i figure since it's about a 2 minute walk i'll work it out.

the thing is, i'd just flown in the night before and hadn't seen the house in the day. so i'm walking around in circles for a while, when two women say hello (and a whole bunch of other stuff that i couldn't understand). i tell them in my bad french that i'm looking for my house. they ask "where is it?", and i say, "i don't know", and they ask "then who's house is it?", and i say " it's my house. i'm looking for my house but i cannot find it." we all laugh at me, then i say goodbye and head back to the restaurant. after lunch we wealked back and i showed tammy where i was standing talking to the women. tammy laughs and tells me that i was standing in front of the house the whole time.

[+] Tuesday, April 03, 2001

it's hard to describe the last week and a half. getting to know dakar. everyday promises to bring fresh kinds of insanity. it seems like for everything you've been warned about, there are 10 others that you weren't. it's just not possible to cover everyhing. i was trying to keep track of stuff so i could share what i've learned with the others when they arrive, but it'd probably just fry their brains. i figure if we remember to go pick them up at the airport, that's good enough to start with.

any tiny task (eg: get food) can take days, not cause it's not available...i dunno, it's hard to explain. and as for bigger tasks, it's taken about a month to get power in the office 'cause someone wanted a bribe and we refused to pay. there's still no connection at office or home, Sonatel says "tommorow" every day. the head of the company has approved it and ordered that it be set up "rapidemente", but it makes no difference.

then there's all the cultural stuff. we have a cook and gaurdian that we didn't know we should have been feeding every day. they probably wound up eating every second day by accident until we found out. i still haven't recovered the horror of that discovery.

the whole thing is a bit overwhelming right now, but i think i'll be adjusted in a few weeks. when we're not making idiots of ourselves, laughing at how stupid we were, fighting impossible beauracracy, or fighting to get to a bank to get money to get water with, we're staying up late talking about the project. i have to say, it feels great to be thinking again.

despite my exhaustion, i'm really happy to be here. and i'm stoked about the people i'm working with, and i really think we'll be able to make something cool.

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