Over the weekend, we traveled north to the Saint-Louis Jazz Festival. Saint-Louis is located in the northwest of Senegal where the mouth of the Senegal River meets the Atlantic Ocean. It sprawls over a number of small islands and served as an important trading post and eventually the capital of…
We spent Thursday afternoon at the Village Artisanal, a collection of artists, woodcarvers, musicians, weavers, and leatherworkers. The main attraction was djembe lessons!…
We started off the 4th week with a field trip to the Beer-Sheba Project. The Project is a vision of a small team of SIL language workers assigned to the Serer-Sine area in Senegal and is part of their strategy to promote the use of the…
Well, not exactly. We arrived at Chez Jacqueline expecting a batik lesson, which for us meant using dye and hot wax to create beautiful, one of a kind, wall hangings and cloth. After receiving some basic instruction from Jacqueline, we came to realize that ‘batik’ is used as a more…
We started the third week of Study with a trip to Dakar. We began with a visit to the African Renaissance Statue finished in 2010 to celebrate the country’s 50th anniversary of independence from French colonial rule. It sits on top of a huge hill on the edge of the…
After a week of classroom lecture exploring the intersections of religion, politics and history in Senegal, we climbed back into our trusty bus and headed eastward to Touba. Touba is the holy city of Mouridism, a large Islamic Sufi brotherhood founded in 1883 by Cheikh Amadou Bamba. The city is…
On Friday of our second week in Thiès, we spent the morning and afternoon with the Talibé in a variety of settings. The Talibé are boys from between three to fourteen years of age who often come from rural settings to live with a Marabout (Sufi Muslim teacher) in what…
On Monday of our second full week in Senegal we visited Lac Rose, spent some time on the beach, and attended mass at Keur Moussa, a Catholic monastery, where we heard traditional harp-like instruments, called “kora,” in the service.
We visited Gorée Island on a very hot Friday at the end of our first full week in Senegal. Gorée Island is located about 3 kilometers east of Dakar. In the past it was an important trading center and military outpost. It currently serves as a symbolic evocation of the…
