It is so simple.

5 December

DERKLE

Imagine going into a small complex of modest buildings in a poor neighborhood of Dakar. The Senegalese capital city is, for the most part, a sprawling, tumultuous urban landscape. Unless you are in one of the isolated pockets of luxury--a new, French-owned hotel; a high-end restaurant that might be in a Caribbean resort; a cushy embassy--you are on crowded streets and in vast marketplaces, with a population of millions of people living in arduous conditions under blazing temperatures. One after another, people from small children to the elderly, are selling fruit and lottery tickets and radios at every turn; the need to make a few CFA (Senegalese francs) is desperate. Then you leave the honking horns and potholed streets behind and, in the quarter of town called Derkle, go through a doorway in a wall, and enter a yard with a few one-story buildings on your left and a newer two-story structure on your right. Here one woman, Sister Celestine, who came to Senegal from her native India, started the Centre Social Keur Javouhey in 1968. The place is a miracle.

With Moustapha and Sister Celestine

Sister Celestine explains: "The centre was started to attend to the needs of the poor people of this locality. In the dispensary, we get, daily, about 160 to 180 patients, adults and children, coming from near and far, without any distinction. They come to us because here they are being very well welcomed and listened to and cared for. We get lots of children with anemia and malnutrition. To fight against this, we prepare farina with milk powder and cereals (millet, beans, corn, ground nuts)."

When we visited Celestine on December 5, she showed us a photo of a baby boy who, a month ago, when he was three weeks old, weighed four pounds, eight ounces. His legs and arms were like pipe cleaners. Later during our visit, she took us into a room where thirty young women with small babies in their arms were being given a talk explaining the benefits of vaccinations. (In Senegal, polio still exists, as do other illnesses that can now easily be prevented; Celestine succeeds in convincing many young mothers to have their children inoculated, and the group I saw seemed like a happy coffee klatsch.) The same tiny boy in the photo was there, in the arms of his mother. She proudly showed us the thickness of his limbs. Every day, he has been eating Sister Celestine's preparations, and while by our standards he is not yet fully formed or robust, he is clearly on the way to reasonable health and a chance at life.

There is, however, going to be, in the near future, a problem with one of the major ingredients of all of Sister Celestine's nutritional compounds. In about two months, the supply of milk powder will run out. The current supplier, in Switzerland, is unable to continue sending the bags of powder that are essential to all of the different types of farina. And then there is the problem of what happens at the docks with the customs officials who create one obstacle after another to prevent the powder getting through.

Here we have some ideas. I need to track down a source in Ireland, as there is an excess of milk there, and I have heard that there are people who donate the powder where it is needed; either we will try to obtain it as a gift, or to purchase it. And we learned, shortly after being with Celestine, that Fann Hospital employs someone just to receive donations at the docks and get them through the hurdles of Customs.

Upstairs, there are classrooms used by a hundred and thirty teenage girls so that they can learn stitching, embroidery, knitting, and dressmaking. They also have classes in sex education and other subjects pertinent to their everyday lives, and at the end of their fourth year most qualify for a nationally administered diploma.

Walking through the infirmary and dispensary and into the classrooms with Celestine, I marveled at what a single human being can achieve every day. We have to support this tough, hardworking, warm-hearted, smiling, and determined woman.

Milk powder is a child’s life blood

The way that AFLK works is that our full-time Director, Moustapha Diouf, who is based in Dakar, is in touch on a regular basis with each of the institutions we try to assist. He encountered Celestine because of a case of baby triplets, whom he initially came to know at the dispensary of the School of St. Anne in Thies, where we have long been involved, and who were sent to Derkle, as the center is referred to, to start a regime of farina and for their mother to begin nutritional counseling. We have identified a few specific projects to which we will give as much support as possible; our goal for the time being is to help with these undertakings alone.

Larger organizations finance research and studies about methodology; all that we can do is help certain extraordinary ventures, already with roofs over their heads, to survive, or, better yet, to flourish. We do not think we can change the world, or right injustice on a larger scale. We are small-scale, but we can trace every dollar we are given by our donors, and even if we have not yet done much more at Derkle than cover the expenses for the triplets, we look forward to fulfilling more of Celestine's requests.

Josef Albers often spoke about "minimal means, maximum effect." He realized that goal in his paintings of nested squares of undiluted colors that achieve endless magic, and in well-placed, short straight lines angled against one another to make the impossible occur. Doing a lot with a little is our goal.

FANN

We went from Derkle to Fann, a large hospital complex that serves Dakar residents of little means, as well as patients who are sent there from the rural reaches of this country where small villages are dotted throughout the vast expanses of arid land and desert. Moustapha discovered the work being done at Fann shortly after he moved to Dakar to work for us, about a year ago. He first went there because Madame Gueye, the director of social services in the General Hospital of Tambacounda--someone with whom we have been working for the past couple of years, on a program where we pay for medicine for babies and children whose parents cannot cover such costs (which would mean, in turn, that the children could not be treated, and some instances would die)--and who asked Moustapha to help with a patient who needed to be sent from Tambacounda to Dakar.

Those of you who have been reading some of the AFLK material already know about the case. The

eight-year-old boy, Mamadou, from a village near Wassadou, the place where we generally stay in "la Brousse" (the bush country, but that translation never feels right), had been playing with friends under a baobab tree trying to get one of its large fruit ("pain de singe": monkey fruit) to drop. One of the other boys threw an iron bar to knock down a fruit, and it hit Mamadou in the head. His parents got him to Tambacounda Hospital, where he had surgery, but when he returned to his village, he began to lose weight, dramatically, in part because his parents were feeding him nothing but leaves, which they thought would help with his cure. Subsequently he developed hydrocephalus. Both his motor control and his vision were deteriorating. Madame Gueye (Khady) recognized that his only chance would be at Fann Hospital, where people are experienced with the problem, and he needed to go the 800 kilometers by ambulance, which his family could not possibly afford. We pitched in, and Moustapha was there when Mamadou and his mother arrived.

Madame Gueye arranged for Moustapha to meet Madame Gaye (sounds the same), her equivalent at Fann. Amy (Gaye) told Moustapha that Mamadou would require a valve--a drain--for the hydrocephalus procedure to be effective, and that it would cost the equivalent of about ninety dollars. We agreed to cover the cost. This was about ten months ago. Moustapha learned from Amy Gaye that there were many cases of children whose family could not afford these valves, and we began a program to pay for them. Meanwhile, in the course of his daily visits to Mamadou (I hope you can picture how reassuring a presence Moustapha must have been for the little boy) he came to know a twenty-seven year old gynecologist named Juliette Faye with whom he discussed the horrible condition of the children's ward in the neurosurgery unit at the hospital. In little time, it was agreed that we would refurbish the ward, with images from Leuk Le Lievre, a wonderful children's book, on the wall. It isn't hard to create a more uplifting environment for people who have a particular need for it since they spend most of the day in their hospital beds.

Young child with hydrocephalus

At Fann, we met with Seydou Badiane, a neurosurgeon who explained that in that capacity he has to operate on many different sorts of cases for patients of all ages, but that nonetheless he has a particular interest in children with hydrocephalus. He explained how important it is that we have been covering the cost of the six or seven valves he has needed per month in the cases of children whose families could not possibly afford them. It is a simple matter; without these straightforward devices that drain the hydrocephalic liquid from the head, the heads would get larger and larger and the children would die.

In the room with us there was a mother with her son cradled in her arms; the two-year-old's head was about the size of a basketball, and it was dreadful to imagine what it would be like if it became larger. In this case, Seydou allowed, the valve, which had been installed about five months ago, was too late; the child's head would remain heavy and oversized, and he would spend most of his time sleeping until he has an early death. But as long as we can keep paying for valves, there will be fewer such cases.

Seydou Badiane is a sophisticated, multi-lingual medical professional of the highest order who attends international conferences and is one of the world's experts in his field. But unlike his colleagues from the US and Paris and Tokyo, he has unfulfilled needs at his workplace that most of them could not imagine. The alternative to valves for treating hydrocephalus is endoscopy; for Seydou to practice it more effectively, he would like to have smaller surgical instruments, more suitable for children than the large ones he currently has to use. (He showed us the oversized stainless steel device, intended for adult skulls, with which he must work on two or-three year old children.) He also needs catheter tubes; most hospitals use a new one for each procedure and then throw it away, but at Fann they have to reuse a tube as much as thirty times. They sterilize it between procedures, but, even then, infections persist.

He needs disposable gloves; instrument boxes; you name it. We have a list, and would like to help fulfill his demands. He pointed out a broken surgical bed where three corners of the mattress were elevated, the fourth on the ground; he turned toward cabinets where the doors no longer close. Naturally he would like to replace this furniture. But neither the government nor outside donors are, as yet, willing to provide any of this. Surely we can lend a hand.

UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Later in the day we met with two of the five university students whose housing and living expenses we cover in Dakar. Coming from a distance of about seven hundred kilometers, they are the first members of their family ever to have gone to the Senegalese capital. They made their way to the university by proving themselves at grade school and then lycee and college. I had met both before--we have been working with these young men for a couple of years--and we are often in touch by email, but it was grand to be with them face to face.

Abdoulaye Kante has been getting top-level grades, and is studying geological engineering. A poised young man with a great broad smile, he told me he will get his Masters at the end of next year, his Doctorate afterwards. He said in a straightforward way that without AFLK he would not have been able to pursue his education over the past three years, and although he did not make the request, it was clear to me that he needs us to continue.

I asked what he had been doing during his summer vacation, which was about to end. He said he had been back in Sinthian--a village that is the base of a lot of the work we do--with his mother. Because his father is no longer alive, and his siblings are much younger, he had used his summer break to cultivate and harvest enough corn and peanuts so that his mother and the rest of the family would have food to live on for the rest of the year.

Knowing the village, I could picture the simple hut with its straw roof, a mattress on the floor, no electricity or running water, where his mother and brothers and sisters live.

Abdoulaye and the other young man, Valery Keita, who is pursuing a PhD in mathematics, allowed that they have one great need. It is for a laptop computer. They go to the Cyber Cafe all the time, but now they receive assignments on line, are expected perpetually to do research on the web, and to submit their work via internet. I said we would consider it.

Then, having raised the idea, he changed the subject to ask me a few questions about my own life, and seemed amused by the idea that three days earlier I had been skiing in a cloud at a temperature of about five degrees Celsius, hard to imagine for someone who has never left Senegal. I could not help thinking that as a geologist he should have the opportunity to see the Matterhorn, as I had the previous weekend.

A BRAVE PROPOSITION

Then came the one encounter where I cannot imagine helping, or asking others to get involved. The goals are admirable, their realization seemingly impossible. It is always difficult to discourage well-meaning people--in this case, especially given who they were--but I had no choice other than to listen politely and say "I will keep my eyes and ears open for anyone who might be interested," while making it clear that I hold little hope of finding such a person or organization.

Two middle-aged nuns, one Indian, one Irish, came to see me. On a laptop they showed me the location in the Congo where they want to build "a center". They will provide education, some housing, and medical treatment. Why this particular area in the Congo, far from any city? Because a beloved bishop who had died ten years ago asked them to do so.

And then they want to build a new center in the Senegalese city of Kedougou. Gold has been discovered in the region, and as a result people have come from as far away as Nigeria to dig for it. The result is that young local girls are being solicited for prostitution, and young mothers are neglecting their children in order to go dig.

I asked if they had any source of support even to test for water on their two sites, to start building, and, more importantly, to maintain the projects once they are constructed. They do not have a thing. They spoke with messianic zeal about the need to save young women from selling their bodies, and about all that could be done on their site in the Congo. If anyone reading this account knows of a funding source that could construct and maintain, in perpetuity, one of these projects, please let me know, and I will be sure to make the link to the two Sisters, but I am short of ideas here.

6 December

SCHOOL OF ST. ANNE

The following day--a Thursday, December 6--we left Dakar and headed to Thies, a lively and manageable city about an hour northeast of Dakar. We were there to go to the school of Saint Anne: a splendid institution that I visited on my first trip to Senegal some ten years ago and where I have gone on each of my subsequent trips (about one a year). I always love this place: set in a beautiful garden with an orchard of grapefruit trees, run by a harmonious community of fantastically professional and hard-working nuns. It educates hundreds of children, mostly girls, age four to fourteen, about two thirds Muslim, one third Catholic, the two religious groups completely integrated. The teaching is of the highest quality, the overall atmosphere utterly joyful.

First we went to the dispensary. In this small building with a courtyard opening to four rooms, not only the students, but also people from all over Thies, receive medical assistance. On the day we visited, the triplets--the same ones who had been sent to Derkle, and the reason for which Moustapha had first met Sister Celestine--were present because their parents wanted to see Moustapha. Their mother nursed one of these three-month old girls, while holding another, as the father stood with the third in his arms, and we talked.

The young nun running the dispensary was smiling and cheerful, and walked around with the bearing of someone on top of things, but she had tough information to impart. Here, too, the milk powder, from Switzerland, essential for nutrition of babies, is running out. They need medicines they cannot get. They no longer have the oil they need for making soap, something they do in sufficient quantity so that each person who comes in can receive a rough block of it.

We noted all of this, knowing that if we find a source and a means of importing the milk powder for Derkle, it should work equally well here.

Then we were shown an adjacent building, at the moment used as a storage. Their dream is to build a maternity unit there. There is such a desperate local need for a safe place in which local women can give birth, under the care of a midwife or doctor, and to have it next to the dispensary in a known institution would be a dream.

Then Sister Elise, a Senegalese nun whom I have known since she took over St. Anne about six years ago, appeared. We were clearly delighted to see one another, since, although we are in touch regularly via email, it had been about a year and a half since the last time. Elise, who is probably about fifty-five-years old, is a crackerjack professional, always accomplishing a lot and, as she is the first to admit, always hoping for a lot from the outside to do more.

We stood watching throngs of children at recess. They were shouting and laughing uproariously, jumping rope and playing hopscotch, and also forming groups to play games that involved running and stopping and where I could not imagine the rules. I noticed, and this was new at St. Anne, that, in addition to the hundreds of girls in their neat blue uniforms, there where now some thirty or forty

With Juliette Faye and Sister Elise

boys. Elise smiled when I asked about this. "The parents said, 'You know, boys are people too. Please take them into the school.’"

Then Mame Paye Sall appeared. She is now fourteen; I have known her since she was four, when Gilles Degois, founder of the French organization Le Kinkeliba, first took me to St. Anne. It was then that my wife's and my two daughters first became "pareines"--half way between godparent and foster parent--of Mame Paye Sall and her sister, Oumy Sall. This means that Lucy and Charlotte Weber pay the tuition for Mame Paye and Oumy, which their father, Assane, who was our driver on that first trip, and their mother (one of his four wives) could not possibly pay.

On other visits to Thies, both Lucy and Charlotte have met Mame Paye and Oumy and some of their siblings, either in their mother's house or here at the school. Sometimes they exchange letters afterwards, but, even if the correspondence slackens, we regularly get news of the girls. Mame Paye was noticeably less shy than she used to be, giving me a friendly "Hello, Nicholas" as if I were an older relative she had to put up with on occasion, and chatting much more easily than she did when she was younger. She assured me that all was well, and that her sister was doing well at the nearby "college" (as I well knew, since we are now covering her tuition there).

Mame Paye ran off, and then Sister Elise sounded the bell that caused all the children to freeze as if they were playing a game of "Statues". I have never seen anything like these hundreds of kids instantly becoming silent and standing completely still. A couple of boys were giggling, however, only to have Elise chastise them in a teasing way. A minute later she pressed the button that sounded a second loud bell, and the kids all sprinted off at full speed back into the building and assumed their seats.

Then Elise took us to a few classrooms. The students sang beautifully, and in a couple of classes I spoke with them briefly about our having come from the US. In each classroom, there is, on the blackboard, some information about the group, indicating how many Christians and how many Muslims there are, so the students are certainly aware of these facts.

We repaired to the small dining room where the staff eats and which has come to feel like home to me, because of the number of times I have been there feasting on Poulet Yassa. I know Elise, and I knew that now the serious stuff would begin.

Some of the students' families pay tuition (the equivalent of two hundred and eighty dollars a year), while others have their fees paid by partnership arrangements. (AFLK funds ten of these a year; Sister Elise has a few other such arrangements with supporters from other various countries.) But at the moment she was desperate about eight children whom she was eager to keep in the school, but whose families had to date only paid a tiny bit of cash, which she was keeping in an envelope. Could we cover the shortfall? (Elise never actually asks; she simply provides information.)

Then I told her that I had a project in mind, which was simply some repainting. The classrooms desperately need it -- a lot of the white paint has chipped off, or is cracked. She agreed that this is necessary.

Her real dream is to build, on land she has been given on the outskirts of Thies, a secondary school. The ones where she places her best students when they finish Saint Anne are totally filled. So many girls, at about age fourteen, having done beautifully at St. Anne's, have no place to go afterwards. They are too old for state schools. It means that they will head to the workplace, and, in all likelihood, marriage. She can place a few in the existing schools, but, still, it would be her dream to build a new institution.

And if anyone could do it, and run it well, it is Sister Elise.

While we were talking, Marcelle, the daughter of the cook at St. Anne's--someone I have known for years--appeared in her hospital scrubs. For the past couple of years, AFLK has been supporting this young woman at nursing school. She arrived looking incredibly happy, explaining that it was her day to work at the hospital as part of her training. She had a stamped document showing her latest grades, which were top notch. Then, as Moustapha had warned me to expect, came her question.

Could we possibly get her a laptop computer? She has been going to the Cyber Cafe constantly, but, still, the teachers are forever instructing students to do research on line, and she cannot keep up.

There is no doubt that she will use that computer. I promised it. And by the time you have read this, I trust that Moustapha will have bought it in Dakar, where he was hoping to make a deal for the seven laptops in all we had promised by the end of the trip.

(It does not work to send laptops from abroad, and none of the programs that advertise computers for everyone really make this happen, at least in our experience. We cannot make universal change, but we can buy a few worthy young people their laptops.)

7 December

We spent a total of twelve hours on the difficult road going from Dakar to our main area of operation. On the following morning of December 7, we woke up in our headquarters at the camp where we stay in "la Brousse", to the sound of monkeys and baboons shaking the trees. Exotic birds with fantastic silky blue wings were swirling over the river, where I have on many occasions seen, (and avoided, which means not swimming even on hot days when one would love to, or going out in a canoe) hippos. It was all a reminder of where we were in the world. The generator gave us electricity for an hour, and then there was daylight. I shaved with a headlamp on, using cold water.

It is not a complaint. Most of the people I would see during the day have no running water whatsoever. The only place where they get to wash their hands--a vital tool to health--is in the kindergarten we have built, or at a medical centers or other kindergartens constructed over the past twenty years by our French colleagues, the people who first got me to this part of the world, nearly twenty years ago, and now supported largely by the villagers themselves, through the sale of bags of onions, and, to a modest degree, by AFLK.

SINTHIAN

The Sinthian Kindergarten--in a village most of us would never be able to find, reached by taking the main road (a potholed nightmare) from Tambacounda in the direction of Gouloumbou, and then by turning off onto a dirt track, on which one goes for about twenty miles, through a dusty landscape of scrub brush, past the occasional Baobab tree--is a jewel. AFLK built it in 2009, in part with donations given in memory of my wonderful friend Nick Ohly, and it has on the entrance wall a photo of Nick, who had gone to the region with me a few months prior to his death. Nick's wife Sara and I, with my sister Nancy, were present at the inauguration when the photo was put up and the School Superintendent from Tambacounda, while acknowledging that he had never met Nick, said that he had already learned what an exceptional human being he was and had everyone rise and stand silent in his memory.

Here children who otherwise would have no chance of any form of education before the age of six, and who are often among many siblings with a mother of, say, age sixteen, and who play at risk of snakebite and other problems, are

in a safe setting, learning French, hearing about mosquito nets, singing together.

I have been there many times, and was thrilled to find the seventy students, ages three through six, flourishing.

We were joined there by Magueye Ba, a doctor who was trained in Dakar but now devotes his life to serving the local population in this very different world ten hours from the capital city. Magueye, another person with whom I am in touch regularly (email), did not take long before he told me that two of the teachers (monitrices in French) have come from Dakar, and that the monthly pay for the one with more experience, forty thousand CFA (about eighty dollars), and for the other, thirty thousand CFA (about sixty dollars), is inadequate.

Also, it would be nice if they each had a hut of their own, with a shower and toilet. They are dedicated to working in this isolated region, but, still, for sophisticated women from the big city, these conditions are difficult.

Magueye and Moustapha and I walked into the classroom with the older children. While I was babbling away to them in French about having come from America and how proud I was of them for being such good kids, Moustapha went over to one little boy whom he patted on the shoulder. After we left the classroom, Magueye explained to me that he has delivered or treated almost every student in the school, and that in the case of this boy, when he was born, just as his head was coming out, and his mother had one or two more contractions to go, a serpent appeared on the bed where she was giving birth. Following the penultimate contraction, Magueye picked up a metal tray on which he had his surgical instruments and used it to kill the serpent. Then the baby was born.

We went from the school to Magueye's medical center. The place is running well, the pharmacy has supplies, and over a thousand patients a month are treated. We agreed to renew our program with which we cover the expenses of patients with exceptional needs, like going to the Tambacounda Hospital, or who do not have the means for their own care. We have been covering these expenses costs as needed -- about $10,000 a year. Magueye always provides receipts of every expense we cover, so we have documentation of ambulance transport, prescription drugs, cataract procedures, and so on. At the moment, his greatest need is for a specialist in HIV and related diseases, as his is one of the only medical centers in what is called "Senegal Oriental" where AIDS is openly

discussed and treated, and people come from great distances. And they need new roofs. That is clear enough. Straw roofs, the usual local solution, don't last long enough, and some of the metal roofs need to be replaced, for they have rotted completely. Naturally we would like to say yes to everything.

TAMBACOUNDA HOSPITAL

We went from Sinthian to Tambacounda Hospital. In what has been charted as the hottest city on the earth, this is the only full-fledged hospital for hundreds of miles in every direction.

We have been there many times before, and it is not a pretty sight. The used syringes on the floor, the packed outdoor waiting area, the single operating table (a second one was sent, but was stolen en route), and the unfinished buildings (the place is technically government-funded) do not add up to the sort of hospital most of us are used to, and the lack of air conditioning in temperatures of over a hundred degrees does not help. Yet everywhere patients are being served, as their family members cook for them with portable stoves on the floor, and devoted doctors do their best.

With Magueye Ba

Our meeting was with Khady Gueye, the splendid head of social services, described earlier. We get together with her regularly. She was noticeably tense. She wanted the assurance that our funding would continue to come, as every week there are one or two babies abandoned on the hospital grounds, and unless we continue to pay for their medicines, there is no one else who will do so, which means they cannot receive medical care and probably will die. She also felt she had to tell me that the man for whom my friend John Eastman, who had been there with me in April of 2011, had bought a steel prosthesis, for his left leg, had died. But she wanted me to know that they had removed and saved the prosthesis and would be able to use it for someone else.

But what had her most upset, however, was the case of a girl aged fourteen who had recently been raped. Our program is for young children, and she hoped that we could bend the rules and cover the cost of the girl's HIV and STD testing, and, ideally, some appointments with the psychologist.

There was also a practical matter on her mind. Every month, she sends us the receipts to provide a record of every expenditure our fund pays for. But the photocopier was broken. Moustapha discussed the advantages of a scanner and of emailing the documentation, and we will take it from there.

Yes, we would continue with the funding, we assured her.

We then met with the hospital director, a man with a tremendously reassuring presence. He is the fourth director in three years, but plans to stay. He has held various positions around his country, and, as a Senegalese, feels that this is the region of greatest need. He offered thanks for what we do

at the hospital, and when I tried to make light of it, saying it was "la moindre des choses", etc., he replied, "To save one baby's life is, already, a lot".

FOYER DES JEUNES FILLES

Our next stop was the Foyer des Jeunes Filles. If you have followed the work of AFLK in the past, you know about the place. It is a splendid campus, across the street from the high school, which allows girls from rural villages to have a place to stay in safe and supportive conditions, so that, rather than marrying at age twelve, as is the custom, they can continue their educations. There are two different schools they can go to in Tamba--one state-run, one religious--whereas there is nothing whatsoever outside of the city in the regions where they live. Were they to live in Tamba with family friends or relatives, they would most likely become domestic servants, or sex slaves, which is why the Foyer is the only acceptable solution if they are to continue their education into high school. Here the young women stay in pleasant rooms, have the chance to take hot showers, get decent meals, use the study halls, and even get to watch television.

I won't bore you with the recent history of this institution. A few years ago, it was thriving; then, because of internal difficulties within the Paris-based organization Le Kinkeliba, it had come to naught. The last time I visited, a year and a half ago, there were no students. They had been sent back to the villages, for lack of funding. The place was run down, the plantings overgrown, the small buildings locked, and there were pools of stagnant water. I subsequently met with colleagues

in Paris to see what we could do, but our efforts were perpetually stymied. In fact, I did not want to go there on this trip last week, but Moustapha insisted.

When we arrived, one member of our delegation--Deborah Norris, a consultant who headed the Board of the New York based Elisa Monte Dance (where I am a trustee), and who said she wanted to join our trip to see what she could do help us beef up our operation back in the US--said she felt as if she had arrived in a combination of a tropical resort and a New England girls' boarding school. The hedges were trimmed, the buildings freshly painted, and happy looking young women were walking around in their beautiful dresses. One could feel the remarkable serenity of the atmosphere, and a sense of order and calm.

A few months ago, the Foyer was brought back to life by Constance Mbaye, a Senegalese woman with whom I have worked for years. (At one point, we arranged for her to come to Washington to attend a conference, and she stayed with my wife, Katharine, and me in Connecticut in the course of the trip.) Constance told me that at the moment the Foyer has a hundred and thirty students. She had taken it over last May, after the issues of management had taken a new turn in Paris. She said that the Foyer was her "baby"; she had started it after having four teenage girls living in her house, alongside her own daughter, so that they could go to the local high school. I well remember my daughter Charlotte talking with these girls on a visit to Tamba many years ago, and the great impression their needs and difficulties, and positive spirit, made on her. Constance had written the first appeal for the development of Le Foyer, but after it was built, she had been preoccupied with running a local medical center, and then came the problems with the funders from Paris, and so on.

Constance Mbaye

She was happy to be back, even if there were, she quickly allowed, Parisians who felt that the direction of all these organizations had to be by them, from afar, whereas she believed that only Senegalese people, on the spot, could direct their management, even if the bulk of the financial support came from abroad.

And now she is achieving her goal. The former director of the Foyer is in prison, having embezzled funds donated over the previous couple of years and falsified the records and receipts. Whereas there used to be five gardeners and maids to clean, now there was one gardener, and the girls cleaned the rooms themselves. And look at the place! A hundred and thirty girls are there. Her own organization provides some of the funding, and a Dutch family foundation had promised money for the upcoming academic year. But a UN-operated food program had stopped, and she was in need of bags of rice and other supplies. She did not ask for anything--Constance would not--but we made note.

What a lift it was to see the students walking around, chatting, laughing, as we left. Moustapha, as usual, was right; I thanked him for insisting on the one visit I wanted to avoid.

8 December

On Saturday, December 8, we took off for the long journey to Goumbayel. Moustapha had warned me that the road to this village south of Tamba (as we call Tambacounda) was worse than it used to be, but I still was unprepared. I have to admit that after two hours on a dusty road that was more potholes than surface, going through a landscape so flat and unvaried, without signs of civilization other than the road itself, almost lunar, I wondered what I was doing in this part of the world so far away from anywhere I need to be. Why be involved?

I had gone to Goumbayel on my first trip to Senegal, ten years ago. At the time, the small medical center amazed me; it was clean, efficient, and professional, and I was deeply moved by the sight of a young woman who had given birth a few hours earlier. She would have died of fistula if she had delivered the baby without care; instead, she and the baby were in splendid form, surrounded by the woman's mother, grandmother, and aunts. It was on that visit that I first met the excellent school director, Bamba Sagna, and it is because of him that AFLK has been involved in projects there over the past few years.

We arrived in the village at what might euphemistically be called "the school campus" in this place for which the term "Godforsaken" might have been invented. Bamba Sagna greeted us warmly. He immediately led us across a dusty courtyard to the new toilet structure, which we have funded. Beautifully constructed, it has three toilets each for boys and girls, as well as sinks; the tiles sparkled. We had been convinced to fund this project when we learned that teenage girls were

dropping out of school at the age of menstruation, because the lack of toilets made their experience too uncomfortable and embarrassing.

We then went to see the new kitchen for which we had paid. I have to admit it was not what I expected. The other recently constructed kitchens I have seen in rural Senegal have a refrigerator and a gas stove. This one is a nice open-air structure, with a well made straw roof and good tile work, and it did have a sink and a tap with water, and some ample shelves and storage units, but other than that the only other accouterment was an open fire in the middle. There was an iron pot full of soup sitting on the glowing embers.

Bamba Sagna assured me that this facility enables them to provide cooked lunches to all the students in the elementary and high schools which are housed in the modest, barrack-like structures separated by a wall that defines different spaces for the two different age groups.

The toilets and the kitchen had cost 12,000 Euros, and I suppose that the money had gone far, the bathrooms being the most important thing, but, still, I wish we could have done better. by at least having a fridge. Bamba Sagna has built a simple straw-roofed hut for himself and his wife and their children behind the elementary school. They live there, along with the children of his recently deceased brother. When, eighteen years ago, he came to Goumbayel from a more densely populated region about three hundred kilometers away, he was determined to give the school new life. By living there on site, he is caretaker as well as school director. He is passionately devoted to the improvement of the place, and above all to its high educational standards. His greatest need at the moment is for a residential unit for the teachers. The elementary school has twelve; the high school

has eight. Bamba said that they come from far away, and sleep in the classrooms at night. He would like there to be a couple of buildings, with showers as well as toilets. We have been talking about the project for years, and he is hoping for the green light.

Here I have to express some of Moustapha's and Debbie's doubts about things. Why, they asked me, was there no sign of a mattress or of someone's personal possessions in any of the classrooms? How could this be, if this is where the teachers sleep?

It remains possible that there is some exaggeration here, that the teachers find places to stay in the village, even if that only means a bit of floor space in someone's hut. We will look into it all further through colleagues in the region.

It was a Saturday morning, and toward the end of the visit, Bamba led us into a classroom where there were a dozen or so boys, about age fifteen. They all stood up the moment Bamba and Moustapha and Debbie and I walked in. For me, there were instant memories of classrooms at Loomis, the private preparatory school which I attended in Connecticut in the early 1960s. The boys had amused smiles on their faces, that particular indescribable look of being between childhood and manhood. They were a hundred per cent present, polite, and tuned in, but they also had a wonderful look of independence and strength, as if they knew where they were going.

The old toilets

The new toilets

I know how subjective this is, and how odd it might seem that African teenagers standing in a low-roofed hot classroom could remind me so precisely of a group the same size in a traditional, brick, neo-Georgian building in New England, in the era when coats and ties were requisite. But the sameness was striking. I talked with the students as a group, briefly. I learned that they are learning English, and I had brief conversations in it with a couple of them. As a group, they made clear their immense admiration of Barack Obama. It was the attentiveness and alertness that struck me the most, and I told them that we, too, had had classes on Saturday mornings when I was in high school, which amused them. I asked what sports they played, not surprised to have the answer be "le foot"--for "football", our equivalent of soccer.

After we left the class, Bamba told me he hoped that all of these young men would next go to college, in a distant location, as they were fine students. Here my mental comparison to Loomis came to a stop: these would not be Ivy League, unless a miracle occurred.

We then saw three younger children doing remedial education. Bamba said that they only arrived in Goumbayel recently from more rural locations, and had some catching up to do; this program of remedial education, initially funded by the US and the UN in tandem, was proving effective.

By the time we left, I felt the drive had been well worth it.

Bamba Sagna’s home

The new toilets

BALA

That afternoon, we went to Bala, a fantastic new medical center. I have told you about it before; it was built largely to accommodate rural villages with mobile medicine, with weekly visits to the villages and transportation to take people back to the center as needed. The complex is fantastic: a beautiful ophthalmology unit, splendid rooms for in-patients, laboratories, a pharmacy, and so on. This is the result of years of effort on the behalf of some of our Parisian colleagues, who have found all of the funding, and we have covered the cost of an ambulance as well as the maternity unit and some operating expenses. Bala, which was inaugurated only a month ago, is in tip-top shape, and we assume that once the villagers become more familiar with it, and the patients begin to come in greater quantity, it will thrive.

MORE STUDENTS

Lunch that day had been a hot picnic next to the car, and we were happy to be able to get cold Cokes at a hotel in Tamba where we went after Bala, in order to meet three more of the scholarship students for whom we have provided funding over the past three years in Dakar. As with the two I had seen in Dakar, I had met them previously, and we are regularly in touch.

We had a great chat; all three are studying geological engineering, and hope to work, eventually, in the region of Kedougou. The operation to mine for gold there will, they believe, require more and more expertise in the upcoming years, and they expect that further education--not only Masters Degrees, but Doctorates--will enable them to be a strong part of it.

The academic year is just about to begin, because the normal calendar of the school has been altered as the result of a prolonged teachers' strikes. The three young men looked forward to returning. I asked what they were doing, meanwhile, over the holidays. "La recolte", they all replied: the harvest. This means living in their families' huts in remote villages, and, starting each day at 6 a.m., with a break at noon to avoid the hottest part of the day, and then going again from 3 to 7 p.m., they work to harvest and process corn, peanuts, and other local crops. I knew that this meant sleeping with their families on the ground, going without running water, and have the usual conditions of village life--a far cry from their living arrangements in Dakar, even if the apartment we fund and the meals in the university cafeterias are far from luxurious.

But no one was complaining. These young men were all cheerful, smiling, enthusiastic about what lies ahead. They had only one request. It was not hard to anticipate. Of course they were asking for laptop computers, for the same reasons everyone else had. And I authorized Moustapha to get the best possible price for six identical computers (I did not yet know that we had one further request still to come), same configuration, same amount of megabytes.

The boys were pleased, and then we shook hands before they walked off toward the center of Tambacounda. I asked Moustapha if he thought they would spend the evening in town--it was, after all, a Friday night--or go back to their villages. He said they had talked about staying with relatives overnight. It is a non-drinking culture, alcohol being forbidden by Muslim law, so Friday nights in Tamba are not as raucous as in other places, but one imagined them having great fun.

9 December

Forgive me for making this account so personal, but it seems inauthentic if I write about the events of Sunday, December 9, as if they were just more of the same.

It was my sixty-fifth birthday. It feels like years since I have slept as well as I did that previous night at the Wassadou Camp, and I was not even awake by the hour when the noisy generator was

With the 3 students and Moustapha

on, from 6 to 7. A bit after seven, I went for a run down the road surrounded by mangrove trees, hoping to encounter some baboons (they were kind enough to appear, although not until we were leaving for the day). I had a decent cold shower and shaved, as usual, with a headlamp. At breakfast we had fantastic grapefruit from the garden in Thies, and instant Nescafe has rarely been as satisfying. I was sorry that my family, because of everyone's work obligations and the cost of travel, could not be there with me, but I knew they were in spirit, and I felt inordinately happy.

FASS

We drove the hour and a half to Sinthian. In Tamba, we picked up two more passengers--Idiatu, a nursing student, who has long been supported by Anne and Oliver Barker, ever since she was a student at the Foyer des Jeunes Filles (it was she who requested the seventh laptop computer of the week), and a translator traveling with a P. A. System. In Sinthian, I changed cars to be with Magueye Ba as we took off in the direction of a nearby stretch of the Gambia River.

In the car, Magueye and I talked about all of the projects on which we hope to work together. One of these consists of a pair of artists' studios, an idea we have been discussing for the past couple of years, and for which the splendid New York architect, Toshiko Mori, has made fantastic plans. Toshiko, whom I first met when she designed the installation of "Josef and Anni Albers: Designs for Living" at the Cooper Hewitt Museum a few years ago, has visited all of the AFLK sites on two occasions with her Harvard Design School graduate students, and she has come up with plans that utilize local materials and would function perfectly in the sub-Saharan climate.

Our idea is to have two studios adjacent to the village of Sinthian. They will function much like the residential studios at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Bethany. Painters, writers, musicians, sculptors, dancers, or craftspeople--individuals whom we know already, in whom we have confidence, and who speak French--would come for two-month stints. The idea is for them to continue with their own work in this very different, isolated setting (there is, it should be known, Wi-Fi in Sinthian), and at the same time to try to teach their specialty to local people, from children to the teachers at the kindergarten, from staff at the medical center to older people in the village. Magueye's presence in Sinthian is an inestimable plus to all of this.

We arrived at an area where we could park the cars, having driven for miles through what is more of a clearing in the trees than a road. Then we walked down to the river bank, and, along with a number of local people from Sinthian, were ferried, five people at a time, in a single dugout canoe, across the Gambia. The translator, who had recently fallen, had a badly bruised leg and a knee that stuck out a frightening distance, but he was determined to make the journey, and people helped him down the muddy bank and into the canoe.

Magueye had told me about a year ago that he wanted to name a building in his medical center at Fass, on the far side of the Gambia, for me. I declined, but then said I would be delighted if he

named it for my wonderful parents. I felt that my mother, who died in 1990, and my father, who died in 2001, would have been honored. Magueye asked me for a photo of them, which I supplied, but we did not discuss the matter in greater detail, except that we agreed to baptize the building--his word; he said it was a local tradition--on December 9, the day I told him I wanted to be in Fass.

Magueye started this medical center about four years ago, with fifteen hundred Euros of his own money. I have written to you about it before. My daughter Lucy and I went there a bit over two years ago, and were amazed with the simple structure Magueye had built, and with the enthusiasm of hundreds of villagers for the project. When John Eastman and I visited a year and a half ago, we were both overwhelmed not just by the impressive buildings Magueye had constructed so that people who had never before in their lives had medical care available other than by traveling for many hours to his clinic at Sinthian now could be taken care of nearer to home. John and I met a woman whose cataract surgery AFLK had funded (about $350); having previously been completely blind, now she could see, although she leaned on the arm of her elderly husband as she walked, as her vision had not yet fully come back.

AFLK has provided electricity and running water for Fass, which had none before, and has paid for the construction of its maternity unit, which was the building to be named for my mom and dad.

As the canoe approached the shore on the far side of the Gambia, I saw an unbelievable sight. About fifty men from the village were lined up, all wearing t-shirts with my mother's and father's smiling faces on them. I had given Magueye a photo a friend took at the opening of the Josef Albers Centenary Retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York on March 19, 1988. Mom and Dad looked radiant that night, and the picture shows them, dressed in black tie, beaming at each other.

So here were my parents, serialized, in formal attire, incredibly happy, on the remote shore of the Gambia River. The T-shirt has, on the front, beside the colorful photos, the words: "AFLK / Urgence Rural / MATERNITY Saul & Caroline."

On the back, it says, "Inauguration Maternity" / M.M. Fass Dimanche 09 Dec. 2012." ("M.M." stands for "Maison Medicale.")

In the past, I have made the journey from the river to the site of Fass in a horse cart. But this time we went in the back of a pick-up truck. When we arrived, hundreds of villagers awaited us. I have never shaken as many people's hands in so little time, and rarely have handshakes seemed so meaningful, all of the hands, but mine, black-skinned, some very old and well-worn, others young, some strong, others less so. The symbolism of this way of meeting another human being felt very rich.

Magueye showed me through Fass in its latest phase. It is amazing. The maternity unit has everything necessary for the safe delivery of babies, and two well-outfitted rooms for young mothers. The residential unit for the midwives is decorated with impeccable taste, and the bathrooms adjacent to each of the two bedrooms are among the few such facilities I have seen in the region that would meet the standards of demanding westerners. (That is to say that there are solid, meticulous toilet seats.)

Everything at Fass--the pharmacy, the examining room, the waiting areas, the building with the generator, the solar panels--epitomizes minimal means and maximum effect.

A ceremony with speeches followed. I was seated next to the local Imam--the religious leader who is also, in effect, the mayor, and who is second in power to the Marabout. He was in splendid robes, but was without pomp on a personal level; this easy-going man with his warm smile made me feel completely welcome.

He gave his speech in Pulaar, the local language. The only thing I could understand was my parents names, as well as my own. At the end the translator summarized what he said. The main point was that this new maternity unit guaranteed the local women and their babies a chance at healthy lives they had never before had. Now, rather than having to endure, while in labor, a ride by horse cart and a rough canoe crossing before being driven a sizable distance to get to a medical center, women giving birth could deliver their babies near to where they lived, with the care of a midwife.

We sat down, and the Magueye continued his speech. (It was in French, although he subsequently gave it in Woloff, and then the translator summarized it in Pulaar.)

He began:

"Before I speak, I would like to ask you all to stand and observe a moment of silence in honor of the memory of Saul and Caroline Fox Weber, whose name the maternity ward bears, but also for my grandmother Arame Hann and Thierno Seydou Ba, the founder of these villages. May God in his goodness and mercy welcome them by his side. "

Everyone rose. The Imam gave me a wonderful smile.

With hundreds of people on their feet in silence, I felt immense joy remembering my ineffably serene father, in love with everyday life as he was. Dad was among the few people I have ever met who was truly without any prejudice, and who hated all forms of prejudice vehemently. And I thought of my colorful, humorous, charismatic mother. She could appear haughty, and had the ability to terrify others, but those of us who knew her well knew that she was all heart and humanity, that the toughness was a facade to protect her vulnerability.

Once everyone was seated, Magueye continued.

"We have chosen to build this magnificent medical center here in the village of Fass, because after four years as a doctor at Sinthian, I found that a segment of the population, those living next to the river, were suffering from an enormous lack of access to primary health care. Due to geographic limitations and limited financial resources members of this community are prevented from accessing medical care. Fass and the surrounding villages have over 5,000 inhabitants and the nearest medical station is located 15 km away in Maedina Gounass, a town of 60,000.

"The rates of maternal and infant mortality are high in this area due to the devastation inflicted by diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, diseases transmitted through fecal matter, and complications from chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes, usually not diagnosed until they have already caused complications. As a doctor, I could never in good conscience leave this community without helping its population to find a solution to their health problems.

"After making a promise to this population, I decided to begin a project with my meager savings when one day this white man, with short hair, decided to come and visit this medical center. His organization and its many generous donors financed a clean water project by building wells, paid for electricity, medical equipment, and this beautiful maternity center that responds perfectly to the basic and emergency obstetric health needs of women. I have named the center for his parents who I did not know but who I am sure were wonderful people. They must have been exemplary to have raised a child who is able to affect the living conditions of the people of Eastern Senegal. Nicholas, thank you and your colleagues again."

Magueye continued, briefly and emphatically, about the need for medical care and education. I followed him with an impromptu talk, first by explaining that Magueye was flattering me, since I am in fact bald, and then by removing my cap to prove the point. Standing at the microphone, I thanked him and the Imam, those of you who have helped make our projects possible, my parents of course, and Josef and Anni Albers, explaining who the Alberses were, what they did, and how it was in many ways because of them and their achievement that we had the chance to do this. Above all else, I thanked the local people for the way they work together, for their camaraderie and ability to function as a unified group, which makes so much possible. When I said that I needed no thanks but owed thanks in profusion, I meant it utterly.

Lunch was a feast. A few of us avoided the raw meat and uncooked vegetables, but the beef that had been cooked a la vapeur over a wood fire and then grilled, the brown rice, and the local river fish--carp--cooked with smothered onions, were as great a birthday meal as one could ask for, and a cold Coca Cola made the perfect accompaniment. The fresh papaya, grown within a kilometer of where we were seating, was an amazing dessert.

Just as the meal was finishing, a delegation arrived from another village, hours away by foot, which is the only means of local transport. We all greeted them, and, with others translating from French to Pulaar, I thanked them for having made the trip.

Just before we left, Moustapha told me that the Imam had just announced he was in favor of having a non-Koranic kindergarten at Fass. The only education to date has been in a school where the only teaching consists of reading the Koran. The idea of a place where French could be taught, where there could be talks about hygiene, where children could sing, is something for which we have long hoped, but without the Imam's approval, there would be no such hope.

Leaving Fass, again in the back of the truck, I was euphoric. Rarely have I seen so many people smiling, or felt such omnipresent joy.

Back at Sinthian, we reviewed what needs to be done. Fass desperately needs an ambulance. Patients are coming from as far away as Mali, and either they need to be brought in from their villages, or, for the more difficult cases, patients need to have a means by which they can go from the center to Tambacounda Hospital. We agreed, on the spot, to fund it. Otherwise, Fass is able to run without outside support, because of donations Magueye receives, support he gives himself, and the modest amounts paid by the local "mutual", a sort of group insurance plan for the entire community.

Clearly, however, our next major goal is to built a kindergarten. Moustapha is determined.

MAMADOU

On the way back to the camp where we were staying, we made a last stop in a small village off of the main road. This was to visit Mamadou, the eight-year-old boy whose treatment for hydrocephalus we had overseen in Dakar. As we pulled in to the village, Mamadou's mother--a striking woman, dressed exquisitely with a head scarf and long dress (although our visit was unannounced; this is the way she dresses every day)--spotted Moustapha. She threw her arms around him with laughter, and quickly cleared a platform next to her hut and put a mat on it so that we might all sit down.

Then came the search for Mamadou. The boy who, a few months earlier, following his accident, and, still right after his surgery, could not see or walk, had, his mother told us, gone off on his bicycle.

She finally got someone to hop on a bike to go and find him. Mamadou appeared, looking happy, but almost terrified of the delegation come to visit. Moustapha put his arms around him. The site of the valve on the side of his cranium and the drain extending down from it were readily visible, but the boy looked utterly normal and fine. Moustapha, who had given Mamadou the first chocolates of his life when he was in the hospital in Dakar, now gave him some more. There was a bit of conversation, and Mamadou said he wanted to show us all how well he could run. He sprinted off, went to another hut, and sprinted back. I challenged him to a race, which seemed to entertain the dozens of villagers, many of them young children, watching all of this.

Mamadou and his parents

Before we left, Mamadou's parents tried to give us a sack of onions, which we managed to decline--knowing that it represents a month's wages. But there was no turning down the live chicken they insisted on our taking as a gift, and we drove off with it squawking in the back of the car.

All photographs taken by Deborah Kobe Norris

and Moustapha Diouf

The AFLK website can be found by going to AFLK.org

Visiting Moustapha’s great grandmother in Kaolack on the way back to Dakar