This poster says "A citizen president facing professional politicians." The BBC lowdown on this particular candidate mentions more about traditional Senegalese wrestling than politics... They quote him as wanting "to wrestle power from the hands of traditional politicians."
Passing through Senegal on my way to Mauritania, late trains (to say the least -- more than 60 hours behind schedule!) and elections kept me longer than planned. The border with Mauritania was closed during election day, so I could not leave, and stayed in St. Louis, a little colonial town in northern Senegal. Saw the ocean, trudged through every street on St Louis' island at least seven times, and observed a sleepy town's reaction to the presidential elections.
As we left Dakar in a tightly packed minivan, election posters lined the road by the hundreds, but very few had been left alone. No less than fourteen candidates compete against the incumbent Abdoulaye Wade (an impressive 80 years old), although few of them could have harbored much realistic hope of winning.
Along one stretch of tree-and-poster-lined road, I counted eight billboards in a row portraying the same candidate, although it was hard to tell -- each one had been carefully covered in black paint, ruthlessly effacing the slogans, the facial features, the name of the candidate.
This is a poster of Wade's:
Below, and about a block away in reality's St. Louis, a wall proclaims "Idy = voleur," meaning "Idy = thief." Obviously, all sides are about as ready to resort to foul tactics.
Idy's real name is Idrissa Seck, and he used to be the teacher's pet, i.e. be close to Wade, as well as the Prime Minister. When it became obvious that Seck also had his eyes on the presidential seat, he was fired, accused of embezzlement, and jailed. The case was later dismissed. Let's just say I remain sceptical.
Wade looks set to take home the game, and listening to the radio as the votes trickled in, the discrepancy between the candidates was striking: so-and-so got four votes, the next candidate -- zero, wade: threehundredandsixtyseven. And so on. Not everyone is pleased, however, and many are sceptical towards the ruling party's supporters, who are already celebrating, and have been doing so ever since the votes began being counted. Over fried fish for dinner, a few Senegalese men clashed with a couple at the table next to mine -- "Wade is the best for our country," one man boldly stated, but the others had hoped for a run-off with the Socialist candidate, and claimed that it would be impossible for Wade to scrape up the full majority needed to avoid a second round.
Luckily, I saw no violence, and I guess that speaks to the stability of Senegal. People talk, and they argue, but they don't fight.
I wonder if the upcoming Mauritaninan elections, marking the last stage in the process back to civilian rule since the military coup in 2005, will be as peaceful?
I will tell you more about the trip here soon: riding the Trans-Siberian of West Africa, and getting family-planning advice from Mauritanian police.
I hadn't planned on beginning this post with a rant, but rant, it seems, I must.
The subject of my rant is a bit dated, but I feel all the more justified in ranting about it, as my anger has not subsided in the weeks since the event. Our story begins next to the river Niger, in the town of Segou. The setting is a music festival. According to Mamou Daffe, the director of said spectacle, its "goal is to contribute to the development of sustainable tourism, safeguarding our natural and cultural riches."
The word sustainable remains, in my naive world, a very powerful concept, but in most other areas of life, like Daffe's, it is a qualifier that you can throw in front of just about anything, but preferably "tourism" or "development," and, as it turns out, even in front of "tear gas."
In my opinion, for tourism to warrant as noble a title as sustainable, it has to not only reward the local population and the people whose culture is being showcased through tourism (as opposed to, say, big tour companies based in the capital), but also somehow affect incentives surrounding, e.g., resource management and the upholding of culture. Based on what I saw in Segou, the festival on the Niger does none of the above.
One of the ways in which a festival could affect the local population is through job creation. Sure, the festival created some 1500 jobs this year (to be compared to last year's figure of 958 jobs created by the festival, of which "44 were directly and 914 indirectly created"), but based on my observations working behind the scenes as a volunteer, a large percentage of those directly employed spent their time avoiding work, an even larger percentage of employees spent their time directing anyone who might imply work to someone else, or, even better, to "the office over there." "What office?" "Over there, out there, just walk out the door," "...But where?" "Oh, just leave!" Some might say that this is to be expected in Africa, in Mali, etc, but I prefer to write it off to badly designed job descriptions and a complete lack of incentives.
The employees who took the prize, however, may or may not have been directly employed. The most absurd people on the payroll were... drum rolls... the gendarmes, who, on the second night of the festival, fired several canisters of tear gas over a crowd of young people who were illegally listening and perhaps trying to get into the festival grounds. Apart from the obvious abuse of power that this constituted, a staggering amount of stupidity got added to the record the moment they fired the canisters without taking into account the direction of the wind...
The organizers were spectacularly lucky, though: no one panicked, the crowd did not trample over each other to get out, and the wind dissipated the gas rapidly enough to only disturb the spectators closest to the incident. The fact that panic was avoided could not be attributed to the escape routes provided by the organizers -- they had been blocked by VIPs whose seating had not been secured early enough in the evening -- nor was it thanks to the professional handling of the situation, which included closing the exit closest to the accident, without adequately explaining to the crowds wanting out where they could find an alternative.
Although the first night showed off Mali's musical diversity in a grand way, I did not even stay the second night through, and only heard second-hand accounts of Toumani Diabate's spectacular show, featuring guest stars, among them Amadou et Mariam. I doubt that many tourists, apart from those already very hooked on Malian music, would come back, based on the exorbitant entrance fees and the tepid list of performers on the last night of the festival (turning the entrance into 100 Euros for two nights of music, instead of -- as the organizers claim -- four days of festival)...
I doubt that anyone has the right to complain as much as the Guinean Peace Corps Volunteers, though. They had just been evacuated from Conakry's increasingly violent general strike, and were taken to the festival as a special evacuation-vacation. From dealing quite well with protests and strikes, they were transported to peaceful Mali to hear music and get tear gassed...
