How I spent a good part of this week...

October 29, 2009

Dear DHL,

I am writing to convey my extreme frustration and disappointment in using your shipping services to receive a package in Dakar, Senegal.

The original package was shipped from Aurora, CO on 10/19/09 tracking #3134979676. The package cost $185.00 to ship. I tracked the package through Brussels on 10/21/09, and then the package went completely off the grid. As of Monday 10/26/09, a week after the package had been shipped, there was no update online about the package’s status.

When I finally called the DHL office in Fann-Residence, Dakar, I was told that the package was in customs at the Dakar airport. Although my local phone number was available on the shipping bill, I was not informed that the package had arrived in Senegal until the following day when I was already on my way to the airport to authorize customs procedures.

At the airport I was surprised to learn that not only would Senegalese customs charge me over $100 in customs fees, but that the DHL office here would also charge me over $50 to process the package through customs. I had the option of navigating the customs process myself, but I would still have to pay DHL $50 to release the necessary paperwork to take the package through customs myself.

Having few options, I authorized DHL to process the package through customs. After waiting for another hour for this to take place, I was told that I could not pay the additional charges (76,800 CFA or $171.00) with a credit card. I had two options to pay for my package, a check drawn from BCIS, a Senegalese bank, or cash. I was furious to learn that an international company is not capable of accepting a credit card payment on a charge that was close to $200. I was obligated to leave my package at the DHL office at the Dakar airport and return with cash.

Today when I returned to pay my customs duties and DHL fees, the office processed my payment, but told me that they no longer had my package as it had been sent to the DHL office originally specified on my waybill. While inconvienent as I had already made two trips to the airport, I agreed to retrieve the package at the Fann-Residence office. When I called the Fann-Residence DHL office to confirm that I could retrieve my package, they told me that the package had not yet arrived in Senegal. When I insisted that it had arrived, and that I had already paid the customs duties on it, they told me that the package must still be at the airport.

I have now made four phone calls to the airport trying to determine the location of my package, which has now cost over $356 to send. Neither the airport office, nor the Fann-Residence office can verify the location of my package.

This is not the level of professionalism or customer service that I expected to receive from DHL. Suffice it to say that I will never use DHL’s services in the future, either domestically or internationally.

Sincerely,
One pissed off customer

Luck be a lady

Anyone who has ever dabbled in field research knows that while persistence is mandatory, a fair amount of luck and chance can make a huge difference in the ease, speed, and quality of one's research. One tries to make strategic choices, but as in life there are unanticipated twists and turns that exert a tremendous influence on short and long term outcomes.

From the first moments of conceptualizing this project I thought I would need at least one research assistant. I've had a young woman in mind for a while now, a very savvy university student who showed an intuitive knack for research and focus group facilitation when she worked for me last summer.

After e-mailing her to see if she was interested in a long-term research stint, I discovered that she is in Egypt doing a Master's in International Health. When I asked if there was anyone else she might recommend, I received the name of a potential assistant who was a former sociology student and had a "lot of field work experience."

Last Thursday I went to meet the prospective assistant at a trendy bar/restaurant near the university. She was typical of most Senegalese 27 year-olds, impeccably dressed, very poised, and best of all punctual. We chatted about her past research on garbage pickers who live at the Dakar dump and a WHO-sponsored study on female circumcision.

When I explained my research project to her, her eyes lit up and she immediately made the connection with her own peers and experiences. "I have the perfect circle of friends to start with" she said. "They are all twenty-something, working, living on their own, and using boyfriends and sex to get all kinds of things." Game on. In the course of this first conversation I learned that many of her friends are involved in all kinds of transactional sex, that she is an avid internet chatter/dater with a French boyfriend she met online, and that she can easily recruit at least half of the women I hope to include in my study.

At our second meeting she had already recruited nearly a dozen young women who are willing to talk with us over the next eight months above love, relationships, sex, and marriage. We will start with her inner circle of friends, who she says are already eager to explain to me what skilled seductresses they are. "So perhaps we should pick an evening or weekend for me to meet them," I suggested, "since they all have jobs and are busy during the day."

"Actually" she said, "mornings are better because Fatou goes to work at 3pm." When I concluded she must work in a bar or restaurant,she replied, "Well actually she works for an underground phone sex company. You know, they post photos of nude white women online in France and the calls are directed to the call center here. The guys think they are calling French women but it is really Senegalese girls working the phones." I'll be damned.

So while her first draft of interview questions needed some revision, and she isn't quite clear yet on what it means to keep field notes, I think we are going to be fine. Perhaps even better than fine. Let the data collection begin!

Because marriage is mandatory

One of the things that often surprises American visitors to Senegal, and particularly female visitors, is that one's marital status is considered to be a subject of public concern and thus is fair game for conversation with just about anyone who crosses your path. One of the first questions that women are asked in casual conversation is "how is your husband?" If you are foolish enough to answer 1) I don't have a husband 2) my husband is in the United States 3) I have a boyfriend or 4) I have no husband or boyfriend, you have effectively opened the door to any and all potential suitors. Popular opening lines include "You need a husband here and in the US" or "You need a Senegalese husband because we are so much more effective than other men."

I was reminded of the marriage mandate on Saturday when I spent the day at a back-to-school open house at the community center I am studying out in Yeumbeul. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that things always look more important if you have a tubaab in attendance, I found myself sitting at the VIP table in the front of the meeting hall. Shortly after I took my seat, I felt a gentle tap on the shoulder. I turned around to face the two sixty-something gentlemen who were seated in the row behind me.

In a very polite tone, gentleman #1 tells me that gentleman #2 wants to know if I have a "kilifa", a polite and deferential word for husband. "Ah yes" I said in response, "I do indeed have a kilifa."

"I knew it!" gentleman #2 retorted. "Anyone can see that you have a kilifa!" Although I could be mildly flattered that gentleman #2 thought I was attractive enough to be married off already, the fact is that few Senegalese women remain unmarried for long stretches of time, so it is not unsurprising for a woman of my age to be married. I joked in response that I was an old lady and so of course I was already married, and the older gentlemen clucked their agreement that yes, it was to be expected (however disappointing) that I have a husband.

The flip side of the marital-status-is-the-public's-business is that once it has been established that you are indeed another man's wife, it becomes extremely distasteful if not outright offensive to show romantic interest in you. You are effectively off limits.

This principle came into play less than 30 minutes later at the same event when the mayor of Malika, seated to my right, asked me when I was going to pay him a visit. Having no intention of ever visiting him, I nonetheless handed him my business card and said I could visit him at the time of his choosing. I was not entirely clear if his intentions were above board, but I had an inkling that he was not inviting me to see him because he had an interest in cultural anthropology.

Throughout the event the mayor watched me exchanging glances and a few comments with an American colleague (male) who was also in attendance. As soon as the event ended Mr. Mayor made a beeline for said colleague and immediately apologized. "I have made a grave mistake" he said, "I invited your wife to come visit me." Not thinking that he could have easily accepted the apology and therefore shielded me from further advances, my colleague responded, "Oh, no problem. She's not MY wife." Nonetheless, the mayor was deterred and I managed to get through the rest of the event with no further propositions or questions about my marital status.

Note to all prospective female travelers to Senegal: You do have a husband, he is in Senegal with you, and anything that Senegalese men can do, he can do better.

Three steps forward...

I knew that when I took a few days off work to entertain our guest I would lose a little bit of momentum on the research front. Nonetheless I have plenty to keep myself busy to fill in the lulls: article revisions, conference abstracts to submit, and piles and piles of reading relevant to this new project that I need to plow through during the eight months here.

In spite of no shortage of things to do, this week I can't help feeling a bit done in by the slow, slow, slow forward motion that seems to characterize most of life here, or at least my life at the moment.

On the three steps foward front:
Caught up with an old colleague who has a fascinating relationship history and I should be able to interview her soon. She also has juicy divorce gossip on another of our colleagues. Good stuff.

Had a great interview with a lawyer yesterday who gave me a comprehensive overview of the legal and illegal aspects of prostitution here. Whenever I'm ready to publish something on sex work I'll have all of the legal issues nailed down. Score.

Continue to plod along with the girls' education group, and they actually gave me their entire calendar for the year (provisional of course, but still).

On the two steps back front:
My right-hand man, the only scholar in Senegal whose research is even remotely close to mine, continues to elude me. Last week it was UNDP trainings, this week he is out sick. I have been here for six weeks and have spent exactly 10 minutes with this man. Ten minutes.

The director of the sex worker organization that I hope to embed myself in is leaving on Friday for France for six weeks. Yes, she passed my research application on to the NGO's board, but now I have to chase down a doc at the STD clinic and talk myself into his good graces. That means at least another week or two of power-building before I can even imagine getting something that resembles data.

The very savvy graduate student who we used as a research assistant last summer, the one who actually had a more intuitive sense of how to do qualitative research than some of her superiors, has gone abroad to do a Master's in International Health. I'm hoping she can point me to a stand-in who is half as good as she is.

And so it goes on the research front. Here's to hoping that next week the trickle turns into a stream.

Tourist in Senegal

As anyone who lives in a decent-sized city knows, it is often only because you have a guest visiting that you take advantage of all of the offerings that can be found just a stone's throw from home. Since we have R visiting us this week, it was a great chance to check some of the tourist destinations off of our Senegal list.

First was Goree, known mostly for the old slave house, but the Christian churches, Dutch fort, and women's museum were interesting as well. I was surprised to learn that there are currently about 400 Catholics who live on the island out of a total population of 1200.

Our big adventure was to head a mere 50 km out of Dakar to the top of the Petite Cote, Senegal's premier tourist destination complete with white-sand beaches, Club Med equivalents, and more people hawking tie-dye tank tops and beaded necklaces than you thought was possible. We chose the sleepy fishing village of Toubab Dialaw, which came highly recommended by friends and colleagues. We ended up in a small house that sleeps five with steps down to the beach right outside our back door. The payoff for excessively hot and humid weather was the sound of waves crashing against the shore all night right below our windows.

The biggest splurge of the trip was an afternoon at the Bandia nature preserve, which would seem like the kiddie pool if you have been on real safari in East Africa but was just fine for us amateurs. R fulfilled her life goal of seeing rhinos up close, and I was particularly charmed by the herd of giraffes.



There was some end of trip anxiety (mostly on my part) about the not inconsiderable crack we put in the bumper of the rental car. I was imagining how we might talk ourselves out of getting fleeced by the rental car agency after they discovered the damage. (R's experience getting charged 75 euro for a minor ding on a rental car in Greece did not foster much optimism). But after all of my angsting the clerk who inspected our car either didn't notice, or didn't care, since he reported to his boss that there was "rien a signaler" after the inspection.

Left on the tourist to do list: visit to Marche Kermel, walk through downtown Dakar, meal at the swanky cafe in the French cultural center, and happy hour at Club Atlantique.

Sex health

As anyone who has ever been quoted in the press knows, there is often some slippage between what one actually said and what makes it into print. When my university issued a press release about my Fulbright, the sub-title indicated that I was to study "sex health issues in urban Senegal." This description is not entirely wrong, but not entirely apt either.

In any event, this week I attended a training for young women (20-25) who will hopefully become peer educators and then lead a year long empowerment/sex ed program for adolescent girls in their neighborhoods. In Senegal (and throughout francophonie) these kinds of programs are given the amazingly vague title "Education in Family Life" or Education a la Vie Familiale. The overarching goals of the program are to reduce the rates of HIV and sexually transmitted infections in the Dakar suburbs (read unplanned neighborhoods/shantytowns here) and to reduce the risks of HIV and STIs for the girls who participate in the program. Other objectives include reducing teen pregnancy, teen marriage, and "forced" marriages.

One of the tricks of the program is that with a peer education model, the facilitators are supposed to have the same social background as the participants, which in this case means girls 13-20 from very poor neighborhoods who have never been to school or who have very little schooling at all. The dilemma--how do you transform timid, barely literate young women into dynamic leaders who will become community organizers on reproductive health issues and role-models for their peers?

The program in question is now entering its 14th year, so they must be doing something right. The first three-days of training were also an audition. The supervisors will select two or three girls from the group of five trainees and they will become the group leaders. It only took a few hours to see which of the young women seem to have the requisite sass and poise to pull off the job of peer educator. One young woman, who could barely raise her voice to an audible level when she was called on to speak, looked horrified during a small group exercise when I suggested that teaching about contraception might be part of the program. "But that would mean talking about pre-marital sex!" was the jist of her objection. Yes indeed, sex and contraception are taboo subjects, but how does one talk to girls about teen pregnancy without talking about sex and contraception? (Unless of course we want to promote abstinence, because we know how well that works.)

Perhaps the best part was that the trainers decided to throw me in with the other women and treat me like a student, which means I got about 16 hours of interactive discussions and small group work in Wolof. (Believe me, I wrote down a LOT of new vocabulary to learn). The other trainees took my presence in stride and since I am getting to know them at the very beginning, I don't think I will have any problems shadowing them for the rest of the year. I have a pretty good guess about who the supervisors will pick, and over the next six weeks I will follow their progress as they head back to the neighborhoods to recruit girls for their groups.

Is this social change in action? Hard to say yet, but the whole project is a fascinating endeavor and I will be fascinated to watch these newly-minted peer educators lead discussions on topics like "What is love" and "Who owns my body?" in the months to come.