Thursday, June 30, 2011

Fatick and Kaolack continued

Discussion with the traditional healers at Fatick.



People come from distant parts even other countries seeking salt here in the Sine-saloum area of Senegal.


The Senegalese-French Alliance community center provides many cultural services to students, researchers and the general public in Kaolack with it's lending library, study rooms, archives of newspapers, theater, movie room, language lab, classrooms and cybercafe. It's unusual design won the Aga Khan Award in architecture.


John (left) speaking with the director.


At Kaolack, we were entertained by a musical theater troop which presents morality plays in the City and in the villages.

YouTube Video


Location:Kaolack

Dakar to Kaolack, June, 2011




More from the Fann Hospital gardens, Dakar, above: a shot from the Infectious Ward garden at Fann Hospital



In the therapeutic garden at Fann Psychiatric Ward (above and below)


Above: We visited a garden cultivated by students at the Lycée (high school) in a suburb of Dakar. This is a joint effort of the school and the Peace Corps. A volunteer comes regularly to consult and work in the garden. The plan is to utilize the proceeds of the garden for the maintenance of the garden and for the benefit of the students, including the purchase of medications for the infirmary.




Though many students are preparing for exams at this time, several members of the Gardening Club came to greet us.




Leaving the suburbs of Dakar to continue to Fatick and Kaolack. The road is shared by a variety of conveyances.




Fueling our "sept place" modified Peugeot station wagon is not cheap.Fuel costs about $6.70 a gallon at today's rate of exchange.

On the way to Kaolack, we visited a center for transitional healing at Fatick ("Malango"). The administration and healers were most welcoming and explained their work, their successes and problems with us. (Below)




- Posted from my iPad

A gradual privatization of electricity

Since we arrived in Senegal five days ago, the electricity has been off more than it has been on, I believe throughout the country. Businesses to some extent can get along with their privately purchased generators. Of course, this is at a significant added expense. At our hotel, we had electricity but we were asked to turn off the air conditioner because the generator was being overtaxed. Apparently, the generator has no problem with outages of a few hours but outages of long duration may be beyond its capacity to endure and fully supply the needs of the hotel. I suspect this is true for other businesses as well-and so I was told. But those who have the means to purchase such machinery and fuel it do not include the common man and woman in the street nor many institutions such as schools and infirmaries. As for small business people such as tailors, woodworking tradesmen, iron workers and many others, they have no means to pursue their livelihoods.

It is one thing when electricity is cut off due to causes of nature beyond human control. Though severe, that kind of interruption is both understandable and of relatively short duration. What we have here is a system that simply is not working and has not been working over a long period of time. The last time we were in Senegal and the times before that, there were outages, but nothing like what we are experiencing now. A two or three hour interruption several times a week is bad enough; but now we are way beyond that level of inconvenience. We are into a really serious deterioration of the level of functioning in Senegal.


- Posted from my iPad

Location:Senegal

Monday, June 27, 2011

Hospital Gardens Help Patients in Dakar

We visited a garden at the Fann Hospital in Dakar this morning. The produce is utilized at the hospital for the benefit of the patients. There is also a therapeutic garden beside the psychiatric ward. Both gardens are assisted by a Peace Corps volunteer.







- Posted from my iPad

Location:Dakar, Senegal

The People's Law





- Posted from my iPad

Location:Dakar, Senegal

Sunday, June 26, 2011

1963, 1988 and 2011: tear gas in the streets of Dakar

1963: About two months following Mamadou Dia's attempted coup d'etat in December, 1962, the Peace Corps arrived. The armored vehicles and clouds of tear gas in the streets did not cause us much concern inasmuch as the situation was, by the first of February, mostly stabilized. Dia was in jail. Still, for a fledgling democracy it was startling and worrisome.

1988: I wish I had kept the full page picture of me standing near a burned out car on the principal street in downtown Dakar which appeared on page one of a daily newspaper in April, 1988. It was my first return to Senegal after my Peace Corps service which ended in 1964. I returned to visit friends and to attend festivities at Thies for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Peace Corps in Senegal. (I hope to return for the "fiftieth.") The cause of the riots was the treatment that the presidential hopeful Abdoulaye Wade received. Just two months after the New York Times spoke of Senegal's democratic processes and showed Mr. Wade making a speech in Kaolack, he was jailed for some supposed criminal insubordination. Not a good sign. When I returned to Dakar from Sedhiou, tensions were very high, the lights were off at night; it was, maybe, a close call.

Many have believed in the democracy of Senegal and in Mr. Wade as an agent of change when finally he ascended to Senegal's highest office. He spoke eloquently of Senegal's democratic institutions in a speech at the J.F.K. School of Government at Harvard in 2008. I hope that he can still dream the progressive dreams he had in '88 and thereafter.

2011: Janet and I are conducting our 21st Intercultural Dimension program in Senegal. As we set off for Dakar and the countryside of central and southern Senegal, we read that tear gas is once again clouding the street as demonstrations take place in Dakar. This time they are in protest of the policies of Mr. Wade and conditions of life in present-day Senegal.

So, where do we stand today? We are fast approaching the fiftieth anniversary of Peace Corps in Senegal. Before that occurs, there will be another presidential election in Senegal. Let us hope that it will be a peaceful and productive continuation of Senegal's democracy.



- Posted from my iPad

Location:Dakar, Senegal

Saturday, June 18, 2011

In Case You Suffer From Back Pain...


OPEN LETTER TO BACK PAIN SUFFERERS:

In January, 1981, shortly after the law firm where I worked dissolved, as I was riding a bike through the streets of Eugene, Oregon, I stopped short to avoid hitting the back of a car. I felt something "go" in my back, but it didn't hurt then. A few hours later, I was in agony on the floor in my home. Shuffling and doubled over, I managed to get to the office of a sports medicine physician. He did nothing but examine me. He gave me neither medicine nor any physical adjustment - just told me to take it easy. This made me very anxious, since he didn't seem to think anything of my predicament.

At that time, I thought it was an isolated episode that would go away and not return, for I had not experienced back pain for 20 years. My back was "out" and would return to normal. The pain diminished, but persisted. So, I went to an osteopath, who gave me the physical adjustment I wanted and also a muscle relaxant. Now, I felt "treated." I relaxed, and after a few days of slow going, I was normal. I put the incident behind me.

But not for long. Several months after I returned to New York and my old job, I awoke one morning unable to get up. The pain was quite fierce. Of course, I at once identified the cause: raking leaves in the yard. This time I went to a chiropractor, who adjusted my back and took x-rays. The results were alarming and depressing. He told me I had degenerative disc disease and that the condition was chronic and incurable. But there was hope for a fairly normal life if I followed instructions and took care.

Over the ensuing six years, I went to a chiropractor every time my back "went out," that is, several times a year. Each bout lasted from three to twelve weeks. I could not do many things that I enjoy doing. Physical exercise was dangerous. Running was out of the question. Hiking was problematic; I worried I'd have to be rescued on some ridge in the White Mountains, as once I almost did.

Carrying, lifting, driving, even sitting in a theater became increasingly difficult, painful and fearsome. Doing research in a library was extremely uncomfortable - especially standing in the stacks. Going to meetings anywhere that I did not have the right kind of chair presented significant problems. Every day I had to spend from a half hour to two hours lying on a pad on my office floor. I missed work several weeks a year and almost routinely had to leave early or arrive late. My life was carefully arranged to protect my fragile back. Nevertheless, the pain became continual and worse around 1986. The doctors told me that I could expect a gradual worsening of the condition. I felt pretty bad since I was only in my mid-forties. I wondered about what my condition would be in my fifties.

During one particularly awful episode, I consulted an orthopedic surgeon, who paced, looked very grave and told me I would be in deep trouble without surgery. In desperation, I consulted a neurologist, who assured me I could control the problem with certain exercises and swimming. I followed his suggestions and swam 5 or 6 times a week, though I dislike swimming for exercise.

One day in late '86, coming out of the courthouse in White Plains, someone asked me how I was doing. I didn't lie. She suggested I see the physician that she said had cured her husband of back pain, John Sarno. Dr. Sarno is a professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at the New York University School of Medicine.

Dr. Sarno's theory is that except for rare cases, back pain is caused not by structural defects in the back (which, of course, do appear in various scans). Rather, pain emanates from the back, shoulders, neck or legs, etc., as a result of mild deprivation of oxygen in the affected area of the body. This condition is produced deliberately by the brain for the purpose of distracting one from repressed emotionality, including repressed anger. The name that Dr. Sarno has given to this condition is tension myositis syndrome (TMS). Thus, the tension that causes back pain is not tension of which one is readily aware. In order to sustain the deception, the brain associates back pain with various triggers, such as raking leaves or twisting - almost anything will do. TMS is a stratagem of the brain to protect itself from what the brain considers a threat of an overwhelming nature.

Curing back pain results when one rids oneself of the self-deception involved. Once one understands that the pain is harmless, because it arises from a stratagem of the brain, the syndrome loses its efficacy. What a pleasure it was to lose the fear of deterioration and pain and to realize that I could safely resume all activities. I have done so and I have had no debilitating back pain since 1988, when I attended Dr. Sarno's program.

Dr. Sarno first conducts a physical examination and takes the history. If he makes a diagnosis that the pain is a result of TMS, the patient is asked to return to the N.Y.U. Medical Center to attend a class in which Sarno teaches how and why the pain is produced. It is the knowledge of how TMS works that dissipates the deception and hence the pain, which no longer can serve any function. I was examined by Dr. Sarno in January, 1988. In February, I attended his lectures with about 50 other patients. Subsequently, I attended several of his Tuesday afternoon seminars and within a couple months I no longer had back pain.

In 1988, when I was a patient and student of Dr. Sarno, he avoided the term “psychosomatic,” because, he said, that word was loaded with inaccurate meaning. He focused on back pain exclusively and preferred simply to use “tension myositis syndrome,”or “TMS.” If I recall correctly, his treatment lectures and his 1991 book (Healing back Pain) only tangentially speculated that TMS may be part of larger medical phenomenon. But with publication of The Divided Mind, Dr. Sarno has produced a landmark work encompassing the field of psychosomatic medicine.

If I read Dr. Sarno’s latest book correctly, broadly speaking, there are three ways in which his thinking now is radically different from when I saw him for treatment. TMS describes a benign strategy by which the brain protects itself from what it considers to be dangerous emotional material contained (locked away) in the sub-conscious part of the brain. Other psychosomatic conditions, however, are not limited to the benign pain of TMS; they are capable of damaging or destroying the individual. Secondly, while TMS is caused entirely by psychosomatic processes, other psychosomatic processes can be a partial cause of - or an exacerbating factor in - any illness, including cancer and cardiovascular disease. Thirdly, psychosomatic conditions are universal among humans.

I think that Dr. Sarno’s work is profound. I urge you to read The Divided Mind, The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders, Harper Books, 2006. I recommend also, Healing Hypertension-A Revolutionary New Approach, by Samuel J. Mann, M.D. Hypertension Center, NY Presbyterian Hosp.-Cornell Medical Center, John Wiley and Sons, publisher, 1999.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Some Photos from Senegal

 Near the "ranch" at Toubab Dialao
 Chez Chenet
 Pirogue on the Casamance River at Sedhiou
 In the market at Kolda
 Janet with a women's group at Diofior
 Marriage festivities at Neman Ding

 Drummers at Sedhiou



 Sabo Badé
 Early morning contemplation of the Qur'an
 at the ranch
 A good Mafé

 fields at Temento Samba
 at Neman'Ding

 Mamadou Mané, dit, Maaneebaa

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

lead poisoning of children, a continuing horror

New York Times
WORLD | June 15, 2011
Lead Poisoning in China: The Hidden Scourge
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Over the past two and a half years, thousands of workers, villagers and children have been found to be suffering from toxic levels of lead exposure, mostly caused by pollution from battery factories.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/world/asia/15lead.html?emc=eta1

But lead poisoned children are not only the shame of China, they are our shame as well. Is there any excuse for this state of affairs in America in this century? According to the Illinois Department of Health:

"National surveys estimate that more than 3 million children 6 years of age and younger have lead poisoning. This number represents almost one out of every six children younger than age 7. In Illinois, more than 5,000 children were found to have lead poisoning in 2008."

http://www.idph.state.il.us/public/hb/hblead.htm

- Posted from my iPad

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Illegal Loggers Profit From Conflict In Senegal's Casamance

http://www.jollofnews.com/illegal-loggers-profit-from-conflict-in-senegals-casamance.html


This is such an outrage. The forests of the Casamance are aleady in tough shape, now this rape of the land by bandits and who knows who else? How are these logs being shipped? And to where?

Wouldn't It Be Nice If Air Afrique Were Here To Take Us To Senegal.

It was always a pleasure to fly Air Afrique with its welcoming flight attendants and excellent meals. Of course, one had to put up with a delay here and there, sometimes a lengthy one; but all things considered, we'd like to see a return of that service.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Sedhiou, Senegal-from my sunset/sunrise collection

Sunrise over the Casamance River at Sedhiou

                                 Sunset at Sedhiou

First Project of Peace Corps in the Casamance

It was late in February, 1963, when we arrived at Koussy following a couple of false starts at developing a project. With several dozen Senegalese homesteaders, we managed to build some 35 houses - a new village, Koussy trois, a km. or so from Koussy.

In 1988, I visited Senegal to see my frineds and attend a party at Thies to mark the 25th anniversary of Peace Corps in Senegal. I found Koussy "trois" fully occupied and functioning. In July, 2010, I visited Koussy 3 again and found it in the condition pictured below. I was stunned. The story as far as I know it is complicated and I prefer to face the future rather than speculating about rumors that may not be true. The fact is, no family resided there when I returned last year; it appeared to be merely a bleached skeleton. I was sad as I left Koussy 3.

Yesterday, a friend who teaches in nearby Koussy sent me some pictures, one of which is posted with this entry. Again, I am amazed. Is it possible that Koussy 3 may again function to house families? I am hoping so and looking forward to learning more when we return to Senegal.




Koussy "3" in July, 2010-an empty shell that once housed 35 families.



Restoring a building at Koussy "3" May, 20, 2011-quite a surprise. (photo by Boubacar Seydi)


- Posted from my iPad

If this is going to continue, what will ordinary working people do?

BUSINESS DAY   | June 10, 2011
Companies Spend on Equipment, Not Workers
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
As the economy recovers, companies' capital spending is growing faster than their spending on employees, encouraged by tax breaks and falling prices for equipment.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Thinking About Grandma

My grandmother was a very successful midwife. She was licensed to practice before Utah became a state and, I understand, she did not lose a patient; she delivered about 500 babies.




Marion M. Hand, 1860-1948



Sunday, June 5, 2011

Should We Kill When We Can Capture The Enemy

I believe it was a mistake to kill Bin Laden. If we had taken him alive, as apparently we could have done, he would have faced trial as a mass murderer. As my friend Ben says about taking him alive: "I believe that Osama would have lost a lot of his lustre as a federal prisoner, rather than his status now as a mythic figure  ever in the imagination of his still numerous followers.  But forget about propaganda for the moment--we had the opportunity to take the man alive, to do justice the right way, and we just did not do it."
I think that even those who are known to have participated in mass murder, whether they are common criminals, heads of organized crime syndicates or leaders of states who have committed crimes against humanity, they should be captured, if possible, and tried in domestic or international courts.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Friday, June 3, 2011

A Disturbing Headline in Today's News

"Moody's Warns of Downgrade for U.S. Credit"

We have chosen to spend a lot of money on waging war in the Middle East. Has this choice utilized our resources effectively? I do not think so. Instead, our financial condition has so deteriorated during a decade of wasted effort and lawless behavior at home and abroad that we risk no longer having the means to ameliorate our domestic problems.