During one of my last weeks in Dakar, my dad - after much pressure from me - came to visit. My dad also - at the last minute - agreed to track down and visit Tatene Bambara, the tiny peanut-farming village where he lived as a peace corps volunteer almost 40 years ago. (He had not been back to West Africa since 1973.) Despite its location - maybe 70 miles from Dakar as the crow flies, and only about 15 miles from Thies, which is now a major city with several hundred thousand inhabitants - my dad says Tatene Bambara used to be fairly remote, due to a lack of roads or transport options from Thies other than walking or riding on the back of a horse-cart. My dad was concerned that we might not be able to reach the village by car - he seemed to remember getting stuck in the sand a lot - but it turns out today that there is a tarmac road with a government-installed *sign* for the gravel turn-off.
Both my dad and I were somewhat anxious starting out. Monsieur Saine, the driver I had hired to take us to the village from Dakar, turned out to be a wonderful man from the same central region who was charmed by our quest to locate the area where my dad worked as an "assistant technique" so long ago. But we hit several diesel-smoke-laden hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic on the way out of town (a common problem since there is only one road connecting the entire Dakar peninsula with the rest of the country), so that by the time we reached Thies it was extremely hot, and I think both of us were worried we might not find the village at all. My dad seemed to fear that even if we did, the experience would merely serve as a depressing reminder of the hardships of rural West African life, for those who have no option to leave - that all the people he knew could have died years ago, that those who remained would still be mired in poverty, that all would be exactly the same, or - worse - that all would be unrecognizable.
In fact, the trip was fairly miraculous. We found Tatene with no problem at all. (The beautiful sign helped.) And immediately upon arrival in the shady square that serves as the village's central meeting place, my dad located an older woman who informed us that while 2 of my dad's acquaintances were no longer there (one had died, the other moved to Dakar), the third name he mentioned - Ibrahim Sangare - was "right over there." She pointed.
Following her directions, we entered the courtyard of a large family compound. Under a giant tree was a mat, on which an older man was napping, having just (we were told) returned from working in his fields. My dad walked closer and said, "Ibrahim?" Instantly this white-haired 71-year-old turned towards us, flipped to his feet, and yelled, "Alioune, c'est toi?" Alioune was my dad's "Senegalese" name in the village. (Keep in mind that no one had any idea we were coming, and that 30-some years ago my dad neither wore glasses nor had gray hair.) "Alors, Alioune, tu es revenu!" The two of them immediately caught each other in a bear hug, and everyone - me, our driver, Ibrahim's grown son who was standing there - burst into tears.
Ibrahim (wearing a yellow robe, which he insisted on putting on - instead of the dusty farming clothes he was wearing initially - before we could take any pictures!) was my dad's closest friend in the village when he lived there (1968-1971), and they had not seen each other since 1973, when my dad returned briefly to Senegal to work as a peace corps trainer. He is now the patriarch of a large and lovely family, and he was made village chief several years ago. (The village still has neither running water or electricity; as proof of Ibrahim's success, his tiny but tightly organized home boasts a generator and large television.) Apparently even back in the seventies Ibrahim was known as the village's most gifted farmer.
The third photo from the top shows members of Ibrahim's family and my dad standing where my dad's old grass-and-mud hut used to be (it's now a newer cement house), holding a photograph taken 37 years ago, by my dad, of a bunch of village kids (all now grown) who were standing in the same spot. The photo drew a lot of interest, with everyone competing to identify the people in it.
Apart from examining the photo, a lot of our time in Tatene was spent discussing the many incremental changes in the village since my dad left. The village population had grown, to 700 from a mere 200 in 1973. A general store that my dad helped build was still standing, but closed down last year. One of the village wells dried up, but water mysteriously appeared in another which had long been dead. An Italian NGO built gigantic metal windmills on the tops of the wells which were supposed to drop and lift buckets of water effortlessly - but of course they broke almost immediately and no one has the correct spare part to fix them. (As we stood there talking, a tiny girl of no more than 10 was conducting the back-breaking labor of hoisting a bucket from the seemingly endless depths.) The rainy season so far had been punishingly late - with only one "real" rain, in early August - and the whole village feared a thin harvest. (Literally the same evening, after we returned to Dakar, a record-breaking amount of rain fell on Thies and the surrounding areas, which I hope helped at least somewhat.)
It was a pretty amazing experience. We promised to send Ibrahim copies of the photos we took - so his son dictated their "address" to me, which involved the name of the village, the name of the surrounding prefecture, and the family's cell phone number, so that the post office can call in case they get lost. ("They have a cell phone??" my dad exclaimed later. Much of his trip to Senegal was spent marveling at how well-connected and downright hip people were - which of course they are.) My dad plans to stay in touch.
