Lindsay here - Most of you know that I was fortunate to have my sister & brother-in-law come visit me here in Senegal right after my trip home to the USA. We spent about 2 weeks together in my village and then traveled to Cape Town, South Africa for a week before Jessica & Jake continued on their whirlwind trip. (Jake was traveling as a part of a fellowship to gain more cultural understanding and use that to make the classroom more vivid for his high school students).
While visiting, they talked to me about the concept of "the single story". For more on the idea of the single story, watch this Ted Talk by Chimamanda Adichie -
http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en
Read below for their wonderful thoughts. More to come from me soon!
Jessica & Jake:
What a difference 10k makes. I’m not talking about a 10k race I might run on a Saturday morning. In this case, 10k refers to the way 10k disrupts the idea of a single story about people and their culture.
As I’ve mentioned before, the single story is the idea that people (myself included) often have a limited understanding and knowledge of other people. As a result, we use this limited perspective to describe all people and their cultures as one thing – or our single story. For example, a man I was talking with earlier in my trip thought that because I was from Michigan, that I must own a boat. One of the main purposes of this travel experience was to confront the single stories many of my students and I have constructed about people and their cultures based upon our often limited existing knowledge.
One area of the world that I think suffers the most from the single story is that of Africa. To begin, many people – often without really thinking about it – describe Africa as if it were a single country rather than a continent with 54 countries and somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 -2,000 spoken languages. It was not until I got here that I really began to understand that vast complexity that is the many stories of people living on the African continent. In fact, 10 kilometers within the same country was enough to tell two very different stories.
My time in Africa began in Senegal. I stayed in the village of Saare Aladji, population 600. The village happens to be about 10k south of a city called Tambacounda, population 78,000. Visiting just one, however, would provide a pretty incomplete picture of how people in this area live. To begin, the facilities are much different. The village has no electricity or running water, while Tamba (as it is known) has both. Housing is also much different. In the village people live in huts, while in Tamba people live mainly in freestanding concrete buildings. The food is also different. I ate a dish called cheb, which is rice cooked in oil, in both the village and the city. It was vastly different as the pictures below show.
Cheb in the village. Pretty plain, although sometimes it had a few veggies.
Cheb I had in Tamba. It has chicken, eggs, veggies, and many spices. This was served at Mr. Sy’s house. He was the principal of a local middle school I visited. This meal was amazing.
Jessica, Mr. Sy, and I at his home. He lives in Tamba and has electricity, running water, and flushing toilets at his home.
Tamba has a radio station (with air conditioning!!). We were on an English language radio talkshow hosted by Mr. Sy.
Even something like measuring wealth – which we might think would be pretty universal within 10k – was different. In the city, wealth was generally measured using money. In the village, one’s wealth was largely gauged by the head of cattle owned. The chief of Saare Aladji had the most cattle and therefore was the wealthiest man in the village.
Cattle in the village. They were free to roam about during the day.
Beyond the tangibles, the village and the city had different sounds. I spent the night in each place. Each morning in the village, I would wake up to the sound of woman rhythmically pounding grain and animals welcoming the sunlight. It was pretty great. In Tamba the morning was marked by the sound of car engines and people making their way to work or school. 10k really makes a different.
After spending a couple weeks in Senegal, my travels took to me Cape Town, South Africa. Here again, the single story was set to rest within about 10k. Like Senegal, Cape Town is a beautiful place (more on South Africa in a later post) and also has a history which includes colonialism. While Senegal was colonized by the French, South Africa was colonized first by the Dutch and later by the British. Although the system of Apartheid (which means the “state of being apart”) has been was abolished in 1994 it has cast a long shadow.
View of Cape Town from atop Table Mountain. This is very near Camps Bay where I stayed.
View from the cable car at Table Mountain. We walked up and then took the cable car down. Even at the top of the mountain everything was pretty pristine.
I stayed in an area just outside of Cape Town called Camps Bay. It was very developed and modern and right on the Atlantic Ocean. The views were stunning. If you had closed your eyes and been dropped here, you could easily think you were in Europe. It’s semi-upscale restaurants, spas, and shops catered to people with money. Just 10k away were some of the Townships, or neighborhoods. It was a much different story here. Housing was mainly corrugated steel shacks whose construction seemed to have been completed in a quick fashion to accommodate people needing to move there (due to a resettlement law during apartheid that forced people of color to move out of the city). The townships had electricity and were connected to Cape Town’s sewage system, but that had only occurred in the post-apartheid years.
View of a township.
Shack living area in one of the Townships.
More than anything was the stark difference that race played. Most all of the people who worked in Camps Bay were black, while the people living and visiting were white. The townships, in comparison, had no white people that I saw. This all goes back to Apartheid and the designating of some areas as “white” and other “black.” Although we are 20-years removed from Apartheid, 10k plays a sadly all to familiar tune.
More broadly, Senegal and South Africa are much different, but often get lumped into being “Africa.” Senegal is developing and making good strides (Their official economic development program is called “Senegal, Emergent.” There are billboards all over Dakar promoting it.). Yet, the most upscale area of the capital city Dakar is about the same in terms of infrastructure as a lower-middle end of Cape Town. Politically, the two are quite different. Senegal is socially conservative, while South Africa is proud to tell visitors it has one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. Senegal is heavily Muslim, while South Africa has a majority Christian population. While in Senegal, I heard French, Wolof, and Pulaar being spoken; in South Africa it was English, Afrikaans, and Zulu.
Africa, and the whole world, is such an amazingly diverse place. Limiting it to a single story doesn’t do justice to its richness. It is such an incredible experience to travel and see how unique people and places are…even when they are only 10k apart!
Read below for their wonderful thoughts. More to come from me soon!
Jessica & Jake:
What a difference 10k makes. I’m not talking about a 10k race I might run on a Saturday morning. In this case, 10k refers to the way 10k disrupts the idea of a single story about people and their culture.
As I’ve mentioned before, the single story is the idea that people (myself included) often have a limited understanding and knowledge of other people. As a result, we use this limited perspective to describe all people and their cultures as one thing – or our single story. For example, a man I was talking with earlier in my trip thought that because I was from Michigan, that I must own a boat. One of the main purposes of this travel experience was to confront the single stories many of my students and I have constructed about people and their cultures based upon our often limited existing knowledge.
One area of the world that I think suffers the most from the single story is that of Africa. To begin, many people – often without really thinking about it – describe Africa as if it were a single country rather than a continent with 54 countries and somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 -2,000 spoken languages. It was not until I got here that I really began to understand that vast complexity that is the many stories of people living on the African continent. In fact, 10 kilometers within the same country was enough to tell two very different stories.
My time in Africa began in Senegal. I stayed in the village of Saare Aladji, population 600. The village happens to be about 10k south of a city called Tambacounda, population 78,000. Visiting just one, however, would provide a pretty incomplete picture of how people in this area live. To begin, the facilities are much different. The village has no electricity or running water, while Tamba (as it is known) has both. Housing is also much different. In the village people live in huts, while in Tamba people live mainly in freestanding concrete buildings. The food is also different. I ate a dish called cheb, which is rice cooked in oil, in both the village and the city. It was vastly different as the pictures below show.
Cheb in the village. Pretty plain, although sometimes it had a few veggies.
Cheb I had in Tamba. It has chicken, eggs, veggies, and many spices. This was served at Mr. Sy’s house. He was the principal of a local middle school I visited. This meal was amazing.
Jessica, Mr. Sy, and I at his home. He lives in Tamba and has electricity, running water, and flushing toilets at his home.
Tamba has a radio station (with air conditioning!!). We were on an English language radio talkshow hosted by Mr. Sy.
Even something like measuring wealth – which we might think would be pretty universal within 10k – was different. In the city, wealth was generally measured using money. In the village, one’s wealth was largely gauged by the head of cattle owned. The chief of Saare Aladji had the most cattle and therefore was the wealthiest man in the village.
Cattle in the village. They were free to roam about during the day.
Beyond the tangibles, the village and the city had different sounds. I spent the night in each place. Each morning in the village, I would wake up to the sound of woman rhythmically pounding grain and animals welcoming the sunlight. It was pretty great. In Tamba the morning was marked by the sound of car engines and people making their way to work or school. 10k really makes a different.
After spending a couple weeks in Senegal, my travels took to me Cape Town, South Africa. Here again, the single story was set to rest within about 10k. Like Senegal, Cape Town is a beautiful place (more on South Africa in a later post) and also has a history which includes colonialism. While Senegal was colonized by the French, South Africa was colonized first by the Dutch and later by the British. Although the system of Apartheid (which means the “state of being apart”) has been was abolished in 1994 it has cast a long shadow.
View of Cape Town from atop Table Mountain. This is very near Camps Bay where I stayed.
View from the cable car at Table Mountain. We walked up and then took the cable car down. Even at the top of the mountain everything was pretty pristine.
I stayed in an area just outside of Cape Town called Camps Bay. It was very developed and modern and right on the Atlantic Ocean. The views were stunning. If you had closed your eyes and been dropped here, you could easily think you were in Europe. It’s semi-upscale restaurants, spas, and shops catered to people with money. Just 10k away were some of the Townships, or neighborhoods. It was a much different story here. Housing was mainly corrugated steel shacks whose construction seemed to have been completed in a quick fashion to accommodate people needing to move there (due to a resettlement law during apartheid that forced people of color to move out of the city). The townships had electricity and were connected to Cape Town’s sewage system, but that had only occurred in the post-apartheid years.
View of a township.
Shack living area in one of the Townships.
More than anything was the stark difference that race played. Most all of the people who worked in Camps Bay were black, while the people living and visiting were white. The townships, in comparison, had no white people that I saw. This all goes back to Apartheid and the designating of some areas as “white” and other “black.” Although we are 20-years removed from Apartheid, 10k plays a sadly all to familiar tune.
More broadly, Senegal and South Africa are much different, but often get lumped into being “Africa.” Senegal is developing and making good strides (Their official economic development program is called “Senegal, Emergent.” There are billboards all over Dakar promoting it.). Yet, the most upscale area of the capital city Dakar is about the same in terms of infrastructure as a lower-middle end of Cape Town. Politically, the two are quite different. Senegal is socially conservative, while South Africa is proud to tell visitors it has one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. Senegal is heavily Muslim, while South Africa has a majority Christian population. While in Senegal, I heard French, Wolof, and Pulaar being spoken; in South Africa it was English, Afrikaans, and Zulu.
Africa, and the whole world, is such an amazingly diverse place. Limiting it to a single story doesn’t do justice to its richness. It is such an incredible experience to travel and see how unique people and places are…even when they are only 10k apart!
