Radio Ga Ga

As I write, I have less than a week's time left in St. Louis. It's a strange thought. The first few months seemed to go pretty slowly, but May and June have flown by. There have been a lot of changes recently, as far as my work is concerned. I officially finished at Collège Telemaque Sow on Wednesday the 3rd of June. The exams and the 'compositions' were starting, so there was not much work left to do, apart from the marking. I was a bit sad to leave. Despite the hard work and stress of running classes there, it was a really interesting experience, and I'm definately missing it. The last lessons I ran almost all involved songs (thank you Bob Marley...) so it was really good fun towards the end. I still see my ex-pupils on my way into town most days, which is nice, although not if I'm in a hurry (long-winded Senegalese greetings have their disadvantages).

With my time teaching in the school finished, what has been occupying my time in this past month? Why haven't I written a blog entry in so long? I have other work. For the past three weeks or so, I've been doing a 'stage' (work experience) at Radio Dunyaa, a local radio station. This has been altogther different experience from working in the school, and it has been much more of a challenge for my French skills.

There are four local radio stations in St. Louis: RTS, Teranga, Dunyaa and Sud. St. Louis is a relatively small city, and no one has explained to me quite why there are so many stations. In Moray we have one, and that's bad enough. The quality of local radio here is like MFR x 4, but broadcast through twenty year-old technology. The music played generally reflects the taste of the majority of the Senegalese population: mballax, mballax and a little more mballax. There is a little bit of hip-hop for the younger generation, but it's rare.

Senegalese mballax music probably deserves a bit of explanation - it's been a big part of my overall experience of the country. It's the music that you get when you combine funk, latin and cuban music, and Senegal. Percussive and polyrythmic to the highest level, it's not the kind of music to listen to if you have a headache. The tam-tams and djembis seem to be contesting in permanent, frantic solos in each song, while staccato guitar parts and sparse keyboards try to keep some kind of melody going. For most mballax songs, in a live setting particularly, there is very little structure. It's all one big, rolling groove, with vocals sung, wailed or spoken over the top, which goes on for at least 10 minutes or until the djembi player's wrist gives in. The whole aim of the genre is to make people dance as crazily as possible. Never in my life have I seen anyone dance more crazily than Senegalese people at a good mballax concert. Two weeks ago I was lucky enough to see Viviane N'Dour (Senegal's answer to Britney Spears, only with good music) live in concert at the St. Louis Université Gaston Berger, and it was spectacular.

With my work at Dunyaa, I don't have a lot to do with the music shows. I do the news! This has many downsides - my co-workers mostly talk in Wolof, the tribal language, my boss has been to work for a total of 3 days during my 3 weeks of work, and the radio has been stopped several times in the last week because of power cuts. But still, somehow, I think I'm using my time well. Tagging along with the journalists in town most days has allowed me to see a side of St. Louis I would never have seen otherwise. We've done a number of interesting interviews, including one with the manager of an NGO devoted to helping 'difficult' young people - those with prison sentences, drink or drugs problems and most of the Talibé and ex-Talibé. We've attended some conferences, on topics as diverse as dental hygiene, the importance of information technology in developing nations, and the state of fishing in St. Louis (this was a very important one - fishing is the town's biggest industry). I've been reliably writing up stories for the daily news on all of these events - some of them have been accepted and some of them haven't. It's definately a learning experience, as far as writing in French is concerned, and several times I've had to grit my teeth as my redrafts are rejected by a cursory glance, a meaningless scribble and a "c'est pas bon".

Recently, however, things have taken a change for the better. There's less scribbling, more constructive criticism. I've also been given the task of preparing the international news section every day - formerly they just poached the stories from the BBC world service. I've been researching stories (thank you google.com), writing them and then reading them live on air every day. If you were in Senegal, in the St. Louis region, and happened to tune into 106.30 Radio Dunyaa at about 10.15am on weekdays, mine is the imitation French accent you would hear, talking about anything from the Iranien elections to Barack Obama's anti-tobacco laws. Bizarre situations like that just seem to happen in Senegal. I still haven't told you all, for example, about how I starred in a prime-time Senegalese reality TV show. That story, however, is for another time.

I'll aim to include a final update on my situation before I go. Given the rate I've written my blog entries so far that might sound a little ambitious, but inshallah (God-willing) I'll find the time.