This is the theme of any conversation involving the region of Senegal called (you guessed it!) Kedougou. Kedougou is a twelve hour bus ride away from Dakar (and that's because the road conditions are better—we only spend around 2 or 3 hours on a very bumpy unpaved road). Kedougou. This place I'd never heard of haunted me from the minute I arrived in Senegal. My first week in my host family, I told my host aunt that I would be going to Kedougou, to which she of course laughed and said it's so hot there! I dreaded going. Mostly, I think, because people kept reiterating this fact. Heat is one thing, but heat and humidity? It's killer. Not to mention the fact that when I got here Dakar was in the high 90s which of course "feels like" it's a LOT hotter than that, and Kedougou is going to be "hot".
Then after our village stay in Ker Sedaro and the whole bed bug debacle, I was definitely NOT looking to leave my Dakar bed that I know and trust to be bed-bug free and stay in some mud hut somewhere in the middle of nowhere Senegal where there would be intense heat and no electricity aka no FAN!!!
But you know, this is part of the experience, it's just mind over matter, it's four days, I can survive anything for four days.
When the time came for our trip to Kedougou I was still not looking forward to it-to put it lightly. My plan was to not think about it. We had two nights in Kedougou the "city" before going to the village. In Kedougou, we went to the market where we bought old soda bottles filled with home brewed Shea butter, honey, and fabric. Then the time came to go to the village.
We'd drawn out of a hat to determine which villages we'd be going to each was made up of a different ethnic minority and would serve as the focus for our latest homework assignment. There was Ibel Bassari, which is a Bassari village (Christian/Animist) apparently they mined marble there, then Indar and Etchwar: Bedick villages (Christian/Animist), and then my village: Bounda Kondi a Peul-Bandé village (Muslim/Animist). Senegal has been described to us as 95% Muslim, 5% Catholic and 100% Animist. Traditions are very important, especially among ethnic minorities.
In the village I didn't notice any intense heat, I didn't want to jinx it but I said to myself that it really seemed much cooler than Dakar. Turns out other people thought the same thing. All that talk about how HOT Kedougou was going to be and it turned out to be WONDERFUL. There was wind, greenery, people, animals, community, tradition, stars and one thing that Dakar definitely does not have: quiet.
During our stay in Bounda Kondi, my two peers (Mariama Diallo and Souleyemane Diallo) and I (Khadydjatu Diallo) walked the 3k (this was hot and tiring because we were walking quickly and there was zero shade on the road) to Indar and visited the Catholic village. There we were treated to a big plastic mug of Palm Wine. <--wine made from palm trees (?) It tasted a bit like a really really bad non-bubbly champagne mixed with dish water with an egg-y aftertaste. Oddly enough we didn't hate it (didn't like it either though).
Anyway. Back in my Muslim (therefore alcohol-free) village I spent the day drinking attaya (really hot really sweet really strong green tea) talking with people, not going to the fields, then taking the kernels off of a bazillion ears of corn, helping pound the corn with a GIANT mortar and pestle, making some kind of coucous in a big gourd bowl, and then: PLAYING WITH CHILDREN!! Yes I had lots of children time. They loved the "spin me" game and making animal faces/noises—but most of all they LOVED shoulder rides!
Basically I had a really awesome time in the village and it was NOT hot and to be honest I don't know that I got a single bug bite (mosquitoes included) during the stay. Then I caught a cold. Meh.
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