Before beginning this entry, I would like to write some things about my family in Nder.
I’m going to individually mention some of them:
Pap Thioye: the father of my family and chief of the ecovillage (not to be confused with the chief of the village) Pap spent a lot of time away from Nder either in St. Louis or Dakar, attending eco-village meetings or visiting his third wife…
Ndeye Salle: Pap’s first wife. Ndeye Salle has 6 children, and one of them just had twins, making her a grandmother. She went to Mauritania numerous times and would return with massive amounts of goods (a lot smuggled through customs I assume.)
Asta: Pap’s second wife. Asta is a beautiful, stoic woman with strength like I have never seen before. She has massive hands, which she uses to keep her 4 children in check. She was my favorite woman in the village, and was always very kind and looked out for me. She is pregnant with her 5th child, which will probably be born in December or January.
Iserre: Asta’s 9 year-old daughter. Iserre was my favorite child in my family. She looked like her mother, and was always very nice to me. When I gave out my gifts to all of the children, she was the only one who thanked me…she also invited me to come to school with her every afternoon (although most days I was unable to because I had to go work in the field…)
Ndery: Pap Thioye’s younger brother and member of our agriculture group. Ndery has one son who is only a few years old. In the agriculture, we referred to Ndery as “Rude boy”, as he frequently would express his opinion rather loudly and inappropriately…But that's not to say that he wasn't nice, he just had a strange way of treating people.
Ndeye Astou: One of Ndeye Salle’s 6 children, and mother of 3 month-old twins. Ndeye Astou was really loud and full of energy, but not to the point of annoyance. She was really nice to me as well, and offered to give me one of her twins to take to the US…she always wanted me to dance, and was a good dancer herself.
Marem: Another one of Ndeye Salle’s daughters, Marem did most of the work around the compound. She is 19 years old, and I spent a lot of time trying to communicate with her. Marem made sure that Eric and I had everything we needed, like meals and water for showers and stuff…
A few more things about Nder that I have to write down so I won’t forget…
Walking through the village, everyone knew my name. I would walk around during the day and little kids would come up to me shouting “Bilal!” and asking to shake my hand. Even most adults would call me by name…it just showed that the village really had an interest in our stay there.
As for Saturday, it was an early morning. After really sad goodbyes (including me nearly crying), our bus left Nder for the last time. After such a great stay, it was so difficult to watch the people whom we had come so close with grow smaller in the distance. I like to think that someday I’ll come and visit, to see my family and also to see how sustainable our projects ended up being…
The trip to St. Louis only took a couple hours, and for most of us, it was spent thinking and reflecting on the past 3 weeks. For me, it had gone faster than I could have possibly imagined. Being November 26th, it was difficult to comprehend what happened to the entire month of November…
Before embarking on our trip to Nder, I assumed that it would be the longest and hardest portion of our trip. It ended up being the shortest, most enjoyable, and certainly most beneficial to me…It’s funny how what you get is so different from you had imagined it to be.
We checked into our “Auberge de Jeunesse” in St. Louis at around 9am. The name of the hotel is translated in to “youth hostel”, but it was really quite a nice place to stay. We each had our own beds, with mattresses (not made of foam), and a couple bathrooms with showers and hot water.
We had a breakfast of watermelons that we had brought from Nder (where they were plentiful), and shortly after, we set out in to the streets of St. Louis. The group split up, and I ended up walking around with Rich and Allison. The island on which St. Louis is located is pretty high-end, and there are some really colorful buildings. It kind of reminded me of New Orleans (or what NO used to be like). The streets were narrow and very clean, with an absence of trash, which is something we aren’t used to…
We had lunch at a small place that sold shwarma and burgers…it was border-line...
After lunch, the three of us walked around some more and saw pretty much the entire island. We walked all the way down to the southern point (our hotel was located at the north end) and looked out at the Senegal River.
After stopping in at numerous shops and artisan boutiques, we returned to the auberge. We took some really nice showers and hung around until leaving for dinner. We walked up to the northern point to this Vietnamese restaurant. The food was decent, expensive, and afterwards, we walked back to the hotel. After discussing what to do, we all went out again, but I returned after a little bit because I was pretty tired.
At around 11, I was about to go to sleep when Tom and Sam (our friends who are independent students in Yoff) walked in to the room. We had been contacting each other throughout the day, and they said that they might be coming to St. Louis, but I didn’t really believe them…
Anyway, after they arrived, we went out to a “tapas bar” where there was some live music. We got some drinks (sodas…of course) and some food. Allison and I talked to them, told them stories about Nder, and listened to them talk about their time in Yoff.
We came back pretty late, and I was exhausted and fell asleep.
