Workshopping the Senegalese way

Since Christmas, my boss has been talking about this workshop he would like me and a colleague to arrange on adaptation to coastal erosion. I cannot count the number of times we have set a date just to cancel it a few days before the departure. So I was rather surprised when I found myself in a car on my way to Joal at 5am. The workshop was held at the headquarters of our primary partner, Dynamique Femme, about 3 hours from Dakar down the coast. Now, this is not the first workshop I have participated in down here, so I know the procedures and general chaos that comes with these kinds of events. Still, being the one arranging it made it slightly more challanging. The guy who was supposed to bring the projector had forgotten it, our dictaphone and camera was all of a sudden out of battery (the driver had been having fun doing tapes of himself over the night), EVERYBODY was at least one hour late and so on and so forth. On the picture below you can see the attendance an hour after we should have started. During the day the number of participants more than doubled.

 Well, everything works out in the end anyway, so why not just laugh about it. If not before, people will certainly show up for the 'pause café'. That is an essential element of workshops here. When the welcoming speech is done people start getting restless in their chairs, impatiently looking out the door hoping get a glance of what is waiting. The pause café has to include an impressive selection of pastries, juices and hot beverages, and enough to keep you full preferably the rest of the day.

Biggest kanelgiffel I have seen in my life

When the pause café is finally done, the workshop can begin! The Senegalese just love to talk. In general, everybody's convinced that they have all the right answers and the necessary knowledge to save the world. So the least they can do is to share it with the rest of us. This means that every single participant contributed with a presentation during the workshop, which summed up to more than 30 speeches during the days of the workshop. Always being extraordinarily polite, every single presentation must start out with thanking the people arranging the workshop, the host organisation, the prior speakers for their wonderful contributions etc. That can easily take up the first 5-10 minutes of the speech. And then they start talking, rarely prepared or structured in any way, but always with a great passion and capturing gestures and vivid facial expressions. Often a speech ends out in a heated discussion where the whole room gets involved. Unfortunately, the 'plenum debates' were mostly in Wolof, so I did not understand much, however making it no less entertaining to follow.

Well, I shouldn't be the one joking with all these endless contributions. Even i had the chance to do a presentation at this workshop. I was a bit worried that a big discussion in Wolof would follow my contribution too. But, the other participants were very respectful and attentive during my speech, and kept the following discussion in French.

The lake that was supposed to be PINK

Me and some friends decided to take a day of tourism and therefore went for a day-trip to see the famous 'Lac Rose'. A certain type of algae lives in the lake, which produce a red pigment. The colour should be reinforced by sunlight. We had seen some beautiful picture on the internet and it seemed very impressive. So safe to say that we were slightly disappointed when this was what met us:

 
Apparently, the whole sunlight-colour-reinforcement concept means that there will be absolutely no trace of pink what so ever if the sun don't shine bright and has done it during the entire day. And what was the weather like when we chose to stop by? Perfectly cloudy. Disappointed over the so-called pink lake we went for a walk around the lake to see if we would bump into something more exciting. This time we were in luck. We met a couple of dudes with an old, worn-out jeep-kind-of-vehicle. They offered tours around the Dakar Rally area, which happens to be situated right behind Lac Rose. We negotiated a fair price and jumped in. The Dakar Rally has existed since the 1970s and is a huge dessert race starting in Paris and going all the way to this spot in Senegal. Since the conflict broke out in Mauritania in 2008 the final destination of the race has been moved, so now whoever who has a car they are willing to sacrifice for some hours of adrenalin-kicking fun, are free to race around the off-track tracks.

As you can see from the pictures, this car had been sacrificed for this purpose a loooong time ago. I was actually impressed that it only broke down once while we were racing the sand dunes. The guys were used to fixing it and had it up and running in no time. Fear was obviously not a phenomenon they knew of. Sometimes I wondered if they even realised that we had nothing but a small bench to hold onto in the back of the car. Grab on to whatever and do not let go! The initial disappointment turned into a great afternoon of fun and action. Typical weekend in this country. You never know what's awaiting you, but you know it's going to fun!