Ranérou

I just got back from Ranérou, which I really want to post about. Before I do that, though, I should post a little bit about the geography here so you know. The coordination that I've been working in consists of the administrative regions of Saint-Louis and Matam. The départements of Saint-Louis, Dagana, and Podor are in the first region, and Matam, Kanel, and Ranérou are in the second. It's an incredibly vast region to work in, over 500km end to end. And the fact that the national "highway" turns to a pothole puzzle after Saint-Louis doesn't make traveling any easier.

The French for pothole is nid-de-poule, or "chicken's nest." Here they say there are too many nests and not enough chickens…

Anyways, I have traveled through but not spent any time in Saint-Louis or Dagana yet. I have spent 90% of my time in Matam, where Ourossogui is, and the rest mainly in Podor. I've barely been to Kanel, and I just spent a night in Ranérou. Ranérou is interesting, and drastically different from Ourossogui in many ways.



For one thing, the road to Ranérou is awful. I didn't take any pictures of it, unfortunately, but there is no packed road for most of the trip. Once the rains come in July, it is largely impossible to get to Ranérou, due to seasonal rivers that pop up. But once you get out into Ranérou you realize how beautiful it is. It's dry and dusty, but there are more trees than in Matam. The grass grows taller, despite the herds of animals. Camels and bright blue birds with long tail feathers and orange patches on their chests are common sights. And baobabs! Up north you don't see many baobabs because it's so dry, but in Ranérou there are ancient, enormous baobabs with the pain de singe (monkey's bred) fruit dangling from the branches.



I didn't take that picture, but that's a baobab.

The food is a little different, but what I ate was good. For one thing, the Fulani that inhabit the region are herders so meat is cheaper in Ranérou. They eat more millet as well, because there's not enough water to grow rice. After eating a couple dishes with a big group, I laid down and looked at the stars. There's SO MANY out here. I've mentioned that to a few people, but they're laughed at me. I guess you don't appreciate what you have until you lose it, but this DC metro suburb boy can appreciate some stars. Most nights that I've stared up at the sky and not just collapsed, exhausted, and fell asleep; I've noticed shooting stars.

So after the next day of talking to people and sitting through a meeting, we were on our way back to Ourossogui. Four grown men in the back seat of a pickup's cab is too many, so I climbed into the bed after the first 25 miles. There I was, roaring through the Senegalese countryside, flying past villages of "modern" huts (concrete instead of mud) with my Arab scarf over my face. I probably looked an insane Bin Laden avenger to the other guy in the bed, laughing at how bizarre I looked and occasionally conversing in very basic Pulaar. The sun set, the wind felt amazing after a very hot day, and I felt much less restless than I do sitting around in College Park.


I sound insane, now, too. Anyways, that's it for now folks! More to come soon, probably on Islam since this is kind of a… umm…. complicated time and issue.