Electricity. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it?? I
had an interesting evening several weeks ago. A car battery materialized in my
compound, and out of nowhere my older brother produced a television set and
jeri-rigged it to the battery and some sort of metal contraption that one can
only assume was the antenna. And presto-chango,
we had TV. Thirty or forty kids instantly rushed in to crowd around and watch.
(Disclaimer: Senegal was playing in the Africa Cup, so this was a bit of an
event) In sharp contrast to this scene, my friend Fatou, a young mother maybe
in her early twenties, was sitting next to me with a dim flashlight, clearly
running low on precious battery power, trying to read a basic French
instructional lent to her by one of the children still in school in her
compound. The television set’s sudden assault on my visual and auditory senses,
paired with Fatou’s indifference to the show and dedication to her reading got
me thinking. What’s so great about electricity anyways?
A year ago now, I moved to a small Senegalese village to
live in a small cement hut with no electricity. Coming from our over-stimulated
American culture of 24-hour news cycles, BBM-ing, and iPads, it was the
antithesis of my previous lifestyle. Talk about being unplugged. It comes with
its difficulties, of course. I seem to
be completely unable to keep my phone (a Nokia throwback to the 90s btw) charged,
despite a solar charger and an ample supply of the blazing African sun (though
in all fairness, I do talk on the phone a lot…), I have to hoard battery power
on my iPod for emergencies, like the nights when the mosquitoes just won’t let
up on the buzzing, and if I have a question or want to know something I have to
actually write it down and google it later. What a life, right?
I should mention here, that this is, of course, a flight of
fancy, an exercise in thought. Are any of those things that I mentioned
hardships? No, of course not. I do just fine without having Kanye or Florence
available to me twenty four hours a day. The reality of it is that life without
electricity has an entirely different meaning for my villagers. It means that
women in my village who go into labor in the middle of the night do so by
flashlight; that children studying for their end of the year exams do so by a
burning candle or the moon light; that radios are the main form of mass media; that
women cooking after dark chop onions by the light of the fire they are cooking
over. And it means that a moto with a broken headlight has a much harder time
looking out for stray donkeys and children.
Electricity could fix this. But what has it meant so far?
When a few affluent community members invested in the village’s first solar
panel, instead of going to our dilapidated health hut, it went to the freshly
painted mosque, so the call to prayer can echo through the village five times a
day. It means when a car battery shows up, it’s to power up a TV or speakers
for a ‘fete.’ So this brings me back to the original question. Would I like to
see my village have access to electricity during the rest of my service here?
No, not really. A bit counter-intuitive for a grass-roots development worker,
no?
Let me explain that one a bit. In reality, of course
electricity would be a huge gain for my village, and there would most
definitely be increases in the standard of living here. But if economics taught
me anything, it is that in the real world there is always a cost associated
with a gain. And what exactly is that cost? My road town has electricity, and
my visits with friends there have helped to illuminate what goes on in Senegal when
cracking peanuts isn’t your only option for the afternoon. They watch TV. And
then, they watch some more. And a little bit later, a little bit more. I have
seen an eighty year old woman sit in front of a television and watch Indian
soap operas for 4 hours. I have watched a group of people crowd into a dark
room to watch TV while drinking the traditional tea, attaya, instead of sitting
around and conversing, which, culturally, is the whole point of attaya anyways.
I’ve seen a four year old kick and scream, and cry and wail because her
grandmother won’t change the channel. You know what that sounds like to me? It
sounds a bit like America…
I know that I am being a bit judgmental here. But it’s
because I don’t like what I am seeing. I came here to delve into Senegalese
culture, and when you see it being changed and altered like this, it makes you
a little uneasy. I am also being rather hypocritical, because I love going into
my regional house and watching a movie or two. But for me, it is an enclave
into my own culture for a few hours, and for the Senegalese it is a new development
that is being assimilated into their culture. And I am not saying that it is a
horrible thing, that Senegalese shouldn’t have TV. They should. It’s great. But
again, going back to trusty economics, there are costs involved. Culturally,
family interactions are decreased; traditions like attaya are fundamentally
altered. “Westernized” images pour forth from the screen. (Westernization is
quite the buzz word nowadays, and I really don’t want to get into it here,
let’s just say that they certainly aren’t watching portrayals of village life when
they watch their soaps.) I’ve seen American, British, French and Indian
programs shown. And, consequently, I see a lot of sai-sai high schoolers
walking around in skinny jeans and halter tops – quite the opposite of a pagne.
There is a health concern as well. Through some turn of events, as Senegal has
progressed through the years, a sign of wealth has become the consumption of
rice and oil. And anyone who’s ever witnessed the luxury of a Bollywood soap
knows that when you got it, you flaunt it. That has led to a rapid increase in
the consumption of white rice that is cooked with loads of oil (i.e. the
national dish of ceeb u jen, pronounced cheb, that is white rice, cooked in oil
with fish and some veggies on top). That can lead to increases in diabetes,
heart disease, all of which are the sad consequences of moving from a locally
based diet, such as millet, corn, vegetables, to an imported one (read: Thai
rice). We make jokes about ‘ceeb mamas,’
the women with jaifundes (big butts) that you always inevitably get shoved
between in a sept place, but it is more devastating when it is a 6-8 month old
baby who looks the same size as a five year old.
So why is this happening? Is there a solution? Because we
all know electricity is the next step, that one day it will be ubiquitous. I
can’t really answer that question. But when sitting and thinking about it (I
have ample time to sit and think here), my mind led me to a theory that I
learned back in school – the technology leap.
Basically, what the technology leap refers to is how
developing countries are able to ‘leap’ over certain technologies to more
current ones due to their availability in the world market. The perfect example
of this is cell phones. You don’t see a proliferation of land lines in Senegal,
because by the time that became something realizable, cell phones were
beginning to take hold. What you see today is a very minimal presence of land
lines, whereas everyone and their grandma has a cell phone. Of course,
technology leap could also be used to mean that while they have to technology,
the appropriate education for it was ‘leaped’ over. I thought my mom back home
was cell phone illiterate (sorry mom!), but you should see my Senegalese mom
here (part of that is because she is actually illiterate, in French at least,
but you get my point). Both, however are fiercely possessive of their right to
this technology, as they should be. The problem that you see here, and in much
of Africa, is that these technologies are dropped in, made desirable and into
status symbols, but with no explanation. Like I said, everyone and their
grandma has a cell phone, but who knows how to use them? My seventeen year old
sister who is in middle school knows how to use a cell phone here almost better
than I do, but does she have one? No, of course not. She’s a child. Her
fifty-something year old mom, however, has the means to purchase one, but is
lost without someone to help her. I cannot tell you how many times a day
someone from the ‘grandma set’ asks me to reset the time on their portables.
What compounds this is the fact that cell phone usage in
developing countries has enormous potential. We all saw how new media, which
included the wide-spread proliferation of cell phones, ignited the Arab Spring.
While that is an extreme, it is a perfect example of the sudden onslaught of
person to person communication. Ten years ago my mom here could only talk to
her older sister by walking 5k to see her. Now she can call. It means everyone
has access to an ambulance, that political rallies can be organized (something
I have been witnessing first hand, as Senegal is just wrapped up a contentious
election.). Banking is also a potential for cell phone usage. When I was in
Ghana I learned that many people there are able to send and receive money
through their phones, almost utilizing them as ATMs. (http://www.theafricareport.com/index.php/2012012450179876/technology/mobile-phone-banking-and-remittances-an-african-boom-50179876.html)
The catch is that you have to be able to use them.
There is a recognized need for this education, especially
because it mostly affects women, who either never made it past primary school,
or are taken out at an early age for cultural reasons or marriage. Even in the
older crowd, most men that you encounter know their way around a phone, as they
had the advantage of learning some French in their youth. Tostan, an organization that focuses a lot on women’s
rights and works all across West Africa, but began here in Senegal, has a
component to their program where they teach women how to use their phones,
whether it be saving a number, writing a text, or checking how much credit they
have.
Computers also pose a similar problem. In today’s world, if
you want to move upwards and onwards exposure to a computer is key, even in
Senegal. An impressive number of computer relics make it to Africa one way or
another (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/08/04/magazine/20100815-dump.html),
and many are donated through programs such as the World Computer Exchange (http://www.worldcomputerexchange.org/).
This is the type of technology leap that can produce positive results, again
with the proper education. I am lucky enough to have had a computer in my house
since as far back as I can remember. As a result, I could sit down at any
computer, pretty much anywhere, and know how to use it. An indispensible skill
in the modern job market. That’s not true of a fifteen year old girl in middle
school who spends most of her time doing laundry. Teach her how to use a
computer and she has a tangible skill that puts her far ahead of her peers,
which can lead to remarkable places down the road. That is the rationale behind
sending computers to places like Senegal, but in these cases, the education
matters even more. Most teachers in Senegal don’t even have a high school
degree, let alone exposure to a computer. Last fall I participated in an USAID
sponsored summer camp for middle school kids, and one of the sessions was
computer skills. It was all ‘back-to-basics,’ teaching the kids how to
highlight, change fonts & sizes, colors, spacing, how to save and open. And
this was with kids who had used a computer before. Programs that bring the
technology need to bring the knowledge as well, otherwise they might as well
end up in a spare-parts graveyard.
So what does this rant on technology come down to? Not much.
Unfortunately, there is no unifying theory of everything here. It means that
everyone needs to keep doing what they are doing, pushing technology forward,
and teaching the world how to use it to make all of our lives better. Will
electricity come to my village? Yes. All I can do is hope that they use it to
their best advantage. In the mean time, I can let Fatou borrow one of my
flashlights, and help her to learn a little French.
