Cookle namm cookle... cookle na kay!

Pronounced ["choeckle nahm choeckle"] it's probably the best known song in all Senegal. Though to my foriegnor's ear it seems somewhat short of brilliant, it's catchiness is undeniable. Wherever a decrepid tape-player can laboriously churn through a hand-rewound cassette, 'cokle namm cokle' is boung to be in the air. As far as I understand, the English translation is approximately: "Is it great or isn't it?" but that doesn't exactly get to the heart of it.

Anyway, the song seemed as good a theme as any for the brief rural visit that took place 3 weeks ago. It was everywhere in the parched northern village of Njagenn, where Mike (the only other guy in the program) and I spent our four days. Young women spot us from their compounds with raptor-like vision or children chasing after us through the streets would invariably call out "Cookle namm cookle...!" and wait for a response. Our options? Either return the desired "Cookle na kay!" for the thousanth time, our enthusiasm waning, or else try to change the subject, thereby confusing the caller and provoking yet another 'cokling'. This sort of constant, bizarre, and amusing attention made time in the village exhausting, stressful, but hard to forget.

(Ewan and Liz picking off xarxam on the Thies-St. Louis road.)
We went up north in theory to work with 'Green Senegal,' an NGO that aims to 'promote food security and sustainability' in the North-western regions of Senegal. Our initial formation at Green's headquarters in the beautifully clean city of Thies had us thrilled. The elegant, young second director lectured to us on desertification in the north and gave us an intro to Green's work to counter it. We were broken into groups and given a strict schedule. We were to learn sustainable techniques for gardening in the dry season, teach them to new villages, give a presentation to the head of Green at the end.

I was completely enthralled. Ewan Robinson - who so prides himself on being environmentally aware - had been in Dakar for 3 months, entirely clueless about the state of Senegal's environments! This sort of situation required serious muddling, and I was known to randomly bring up the subject of desertification in even the most casual of conversations for the next couple of weeks.

(Isaa, from Green Senegal, lecturing on marichaige, winter gardening)
However, needless to say the initially clear, blissfully-organized prospects of Green Senegal never quite became reality. After a few hours (and breakdowns) along the Thies-St. Louis rode, we arrived at Green's regional headquarters in Mpal, and the filthiest apartment I've seen in living memory.

To get the general picture, imagine your living quarters. Now imagine them uncleaned for say, 2 1/2 years. Leave the remnants of meals on the table or kitchen floor, unplug your bathroom sink, and cease to clean the toilet. Cease to clean it. And stop flushing it too while you're at it. And if something were to, say, spill over the side, leave that there on the floor as well. Anyway, that starts to generate the feel of the place. This apartment was not, in fact, inhabited by deranged savages, or even U of I fraternity brothers. Instead this effect was achieved by every-day, middle-aged Senegalese men. And there's the problem: men. Men raised with no conception whatsoever of what cleaning could possibly be. A cultural blindspot; the natural state of the female gender. This I think goes to explain some of the incredible filth of Senegalese public spaces. Where women are excluded, tires, sewage, and skeletal automobiles pour in to fill the gap. But enough on that tangent.

Credit to Mike Holmes for the photos, which I nicked from his Flickr page. Check it out if you want to see more images from Ndiagene: http://www.flickr.com/photos/holmeslightfoot/