savagebeasts

Salif Gets a Letter of Intent!

I am sitting on Tipper's dog-cage blanket on a hard, cold marble floor at the JFK airport, exhausted, emotionally overwrought from the good-byes and left-handed handshakes (given in Senegal when you say good-bye for a long-time, something "wrong" to be corrected when you meet again).  There are so many finishing stories I must -- and will -- add to the blog about Rachel's magnificent end to the school year with a performance of Beethoven's "The Tempest;" recognition as the most valuable player for basketball and volleyball and best middle school female athlete; and the receipt of a U.S. Presidential award for academics.

We've had going away's, been surveyed for a pack out, only to have the movers changed to get surveyed again.  I've written speeches and spoken as school Board chair at a retirement event and at graduation. 

But the big news at the moment is that just moments ago, I got an email from the tennis coach at Georgia Perimeter College offering Salif a one-year scholarship in Atlanta!  Georgia Perimeter is a junior college, so Salif can play there, live with his aunt and ease into the American educational system.  We had the verbal offer, but I've emphasized to Salif that I had to see it in writing,.

And now I have it. 

Three years of hard work -- a tennis camp tour, multiple ACT exams, GPA disappointments because of unfair NCAA decisions, YouTube videos, multiple emails and phone calls to coaches, letters of recommendations.  The American lesson:  hard work pays off.  I still have to help him with various immigration forms (even with a scholarship, you can't come to America on a visa without a substantial bank account, which you can't prove simply with copies of your statement, but you've got to get letters from you banker (does anyone have a "banker" anymore?) attesting to your wealth).  So more hard work to do, but we know that it will pay off.

What a true happy ending!

Power, Money and Medicine in Dakar

Michael is on call all the time.  His phone is always by his side.  So, when it rings during dinner, we're used to disturbances.  This time was different.

"Nagey is bleeding," Patrice, our guard, told Michael.  Nagey was 7-1/2 months pregnant.

"This is serious," Michael said, "Go to an emergency room."

Thirty minutes later, the phone rang again.  "We went to the emergency room  They told us to go to the hospital.  We're at the hospital.  They say she needs surgery, but they don't have a room." 

"Patrice, this is very serious.  You can't keep looking for a room," Michael admonished, "Go to Clinique de la Madeline." 

(These conversations are all in French, by the way.)

Michael is prohibited from treating anyone outside of Peace Corps, and he certainly doesn't have privileges at local hospitals.  Nor is he an ob-gyn.  But he can give advice.  And unlike other bosses that could have been called in the evening, he is knowledgeable about the Senegalese health care system. 

An hour later, we were sitting in the Madeline, a private clinic, outside a closed door with Patrice, assuring the clinic that we'd handle the bills (a major issue -- no money, no treatment).  We waited and waited at the blue door.   We couldn't hear anything, and no one came out.  Finally, we learned that Nagey had been moved upstairs.  We waited again.  No one was treating her.  We were at a great private clinic, but they were waiting for Nagey's obstetrician to arrive.  Patrice didn't have the phone number for the doctor, so Michael asked the nurse for the doctor's phone number.  The nurse wouldn't give it to him but insisted that she'd make the call on her own.

For this second pregnancy, Nagey was going to an obstetrician they were paying for.  We'd offered to pay for Dr. Ba, whom she'd seen for the first pregnancy, a gynecologist Michael knows and trusts, but they'd wanted to be responsible, which was admirable.   Come to find out, the doctor she was seeing is an 82-year-old stroke victim, now in a wheel chair, who takes some cases now and then.  When he can't handle the problem, he refers the patient to his son, who isn't even an ob-gyn.

So, they had to wait for this doctor to come.  We waited longer and were told that the doctor was on the way.  There was nothing more we could do, so we left.

That night, they took Nagey to surgery with her doctor's son who looked at her condition and said he couldn't do the surgery, so more waiting and eventually the clinic doctor was called in.  He did a C-section and took a baby girl.  She was alive.  Patrice got to see her.  She looked like his first child Mohamed Mikel. 

Thirty minutes later she was dead.

This was night one. 

No one told Nagey that her daughter had died.  The next day, she was asking about her baby, but she didn't seem strong enough to get the news.  That day, we learned that the baby wasn't really considered a person by the Senegalese, simply a medical condition.  In the Muslim religion, a baby isn't given a name until a week after its birth.  Many babies die.  So, rather than plan a funeral ritual, Patrice had to get a birth certificate, file it with the mayor's office and bury his baby daughter.

Sadness soaked our household.

In order for Nagey's treatment to continue, money had to change hands.  I went to the hospital that morning to make the first payment.  A deposit is required, and fortunately, they accept credit cards, because for us, getting big sums of cash is a problem here; out ATM limit dictates these situation.  So, we paid the sum, awaiting the bill for the surgery.  We assumed a few days more of recovery, and she'd be home.

The next night, Dr. Ba called Michael to say that she was at the clinic and Nagey was getting worse and being moved to the ICU.  Her kidneys didn't seem to be functioning.  We might want to move her to Hopital Principal, the public hospital -- if we didn't,  we'd have a bill of $10,000 very quickly.

We had an ethical debate about the right thing to do.  Was it moral for us to consider the cost of the care?  Could we "afford" a $10,000 bill?  Did we want to pay that kind of sum?  Was it immoral  to have these kinds of debates when a life was at stake?

There were benefits to the public hospital, the primary being a supply of blood, which doesn't exist at the private clinics.  (Nagey had gotten 3 units of blood at Madeline, but it wasn't always available.)  And there was the dialysis machine.  The public hospital is where Michael takes seriously sick Peace Corps volunteers.  It isn't as nice in appearance as the private clinic, but it has the proper equipment.  Maybe, all of this was a rationalization, but we became comfortable with the idea of taking her to Hopital Principal. 

What is remarkable, though, is that we were making these huge decisions for Nagey.  Not the family, but some employers of her husband, people from another country, another culture.  No one seemed to mind.

So, the next day, Michael called the private clinic as well as an ambulance service to arrange Nagey's transfer to the public hospital.  I had to pay the bill in full, or they wouldn't transfer her. 

Then, Michael began his delicate dance with the treating physicians at Hopital Principal.  Michael has learned how to ask to look at charts, to get doctor's thoughts about his patients.  When the patient is a Peace Corps volunteer, he has less of a problem getting the doctors to collaborate.  This was more difficult.  But he started going each day to check in on Nagey. 

She was sick.  It felt like an episode of  House.  She had an auto-immune reaction to the baby.  They could only give her supportive care, which included dialysis, transfusions, a respirator.  But there was no plasmaphoresis machine (which cleans blood). 

For a few days, she was touch and go.  They never did dialysis, nor did they give her any more transfusions.  It was as if all those treatments were precious and weren't going to be used unless absolutely necessary.  Days went by.  They put her on an oxygen mask.  And we worried that she might die. Michael asked the doctors details of the treatment.  Some cooperated.  Others resented his intrusions.  One sarcastically responded that she was getting "so much oxygen" because it is "good for the blood."

After four days in the ICU at Principal, she turned a corner and started to urinate.  It was time to get her out of intensive care.

But they didn't have a room for her in the obstetrics ward.  So, they wouldn't transfer her, which meant we had to continue paying for intensive care. 

How could we resent paying the extra money when she was alive?

A few more days, and she was ready to be discharged.  Again, they don't discharge you without cash in hand -- and for this, it had to be cash.  So, again we paid.

There is no way that Patrice or Nagey could have financed these large sums.  Had they been on their own, she would have gone to a public clinic -- not the private clinic or the premier hospital -- not gotten the transfusions and likely would have died.  We did learn that even though Nagey's employer didn't have health insurance, they reimburse their employees for health care (at the measly rate, it seems, of $20/month!).  But you only get the health care if you have the sums to pay at that moment, so a promise of reimbursement is not a promise of treatment.

A week after the first admission, Nagey went home.  She was still weak and wasn't eating. 

Michael started asking detailed questions and discovered that even though Nagey had been discharged with a prescription for antibiotics, Patrice had not filled it.  No one had told him the importance of it, and he didn't have money for this.  I'm sure he didn't want to ask us for more money. 

Michael, impatient by now, insisted that Patrice fill the prescription immediately.

Then, we demanded that Nagey see Dr. Ba for another analysis.  Dr. Ba said that Nagey was healing.  All was well.

At the time this was going on, the huge disparities in medical treatment were glaring us in the face -- and the power of money to make a difference.  Had we done nothing, she'd be dead.  Had Michael not known about the medical system, she'd be dead.  If she died, they'd call it God's will.  Maybe, they'd say it was God's will that Michael was there and that we could pay for the care.

This is not the first Senegalese staff life we've saved.  A few years ago, when our housekeeper Victorine was hospitalized, Michael asked why she was getting only half a dose of medicine for meningitis, and when he was told it was because the doctor didn't think she could afford to pay for the full dose, we assured her that we could.  And Victorine lived.

There was some famous economist who recently determined that 95% of wealth results from where you are born.  Because of our birthright, we are privileged.  Because of theirs, they are not.  And so, to those to whom much is given...yes, much is expected.

The Story of the Throne

Just next to the fish market (unfortunately, as well as a sewage outlet into the sea), a huge local artisan market called Soumbedioune sits on the Corniche, the main road into town.  In that market, tourists can buy anything from t-shirts and hand-made purses to paintings and sculptures.  This is the saga of our purchase of a throne.

Hidden in the back of market is a small store full of statues, beads and antiquities collected by an older man named Monsieur Diagne.  The store is packed with items, dusty, precious.  In that store, I'd seen a spectacular beaded throne.  It was probably Camaroonian, a throne made for royalty, covered with tiny beads and shells.  And I was curious about the price, so I took Michael there to meet the owner.

Over time, when you've been in Dakar for a while, when you enter markets like this, you are not a tourist.  You are "Madame Dakar," so the negotiations are different.  This time, we sat down to discuss this throne with the Msr. Diagne.  Very quickly, the seller learned that we were not tourists and that Michael was the Peace Corps doctor, so sent his son off to buy us sodas, and he started discussing his health problems.  He told us a bit about his life, that his first wife (always the most important) had given birth to seven babies, and all had died. 

You hear something like that and you pause and consider how fortunate you are. 

As a successful businessman with four wives, he was feeling old, worn, and his fourth wife, a relatively young woman who lived in Touba, a holy city, had left him.  He couldn't sleep through the night.

Michael moved away from me and began talking discretely with the store owner, discussing his problems.  He told the man that we liked the throne, but we weren't going to talk about that this day; we were going to discuss his health issues.  So, we left with his phone number and a promise to take him to a good doctor for a diagnosis.  Michael is prohibited from treating anyone other than Peace Corps volunteers, but he knows who are the best doctors here, so he can make good referals.

The next day, we sent our guard, Patrice, to take M. Diagne to a doctor Michael knew.  Come to find out that he had diabetes, a common problem here, but he'd probably had it for many years.  She gave him diabetes medicine and also other medicine. 

Michael had told M. Diagne that he wanted to see any medicine prescribed before he took it.  So, M. Diagne drove his old car (a true sign of wealth to own such a car) and came to our house, drank juice, showed Michael his prescriptions, and Michael sent our guard, Patrice, with the money to buy the medicines.  M. Diagne mentioned that as a Muslim holiday was coming soon,  he needed to go to Touba, a holy city, to visit one of his wives and buy a lamb and food to feed many people. 

Again, we didn't talk about buying the throne yet. 

But then M. Diagne called.  First, he tod Michael that the diabetes medicine was working.  For the first time in many years, he could sleep through the night.  But he also remnded us that a holy holiday was rapidly approaching, and he needed money for all the food he'd have to buy.  He wanted us to buy the throne.

Michael and I had a long discussion about price and came up with an amount we'd be willing to spend, so Michael called M. Diagne and told him an amount we'd spend, promised that we'd come to his boutique and asked him to consider what he'd sell us for the amount we'd spend.  When we arrived, his first wife and son were there, awaiting us.

M. Diagne told us that the amount we wanted to spend was hundreds of dollars less than he'd usually sell the throne for but that with a sweeping gesture, he said that he would give us everything in his store to pay for being able to sleep through the night.  And then he sold us this spectacular Cameroonian throne. 

But this was not all.  He had noticed that I liked a beaded mask.  His first wife handed me, as a gift, the mask. 

We were both touched, tearing up at the gesture. 

Our saga with M. Diagne continues, but I'll end here and tell more later.  Now the throne sits in our living room and the mask on our wall.  They will come back to America with us, not just as symbols of African nobility but also of generosity of spirit. 

  

Surf's Up in Dakar!

Last week, a perfect swell hit Dakar, and surfers by the dozens plunged into the Atlantic.  The 12' waves bouned so grand that surf instructors were prohibiting their students from going out.  The peak of the waves crested high enough to fold into a long tunnel.  Michael has gone out for lessons a few times with friends but not in this. 

This week, the surf has subsided and kids are back in the ocean for lessons.

These photos are Rachel on the Virage Beach, probably six weeks ago. (Our friend Mike is with Rachel and Michael (and Tipper!).  One photo is of our beautiful friends Evelyn and Willie Mac.)  A California surf instructor was in town, and our friend Mike wanted to watch him teach, so Rachel was the guinea pig.  It probably was the wrong day.  She'd surfed before, in 2-1/2 foot waves.  On this afternoon, they went out farther than she's ever been and had a great time -- until that big fall when Rachel went under swallowed water, got hit by the board in the head, and came back pale and wanted to go home immediately.  We've got only a month left, so I hope she gets one last gentle ride!

National Champion Salif Kante Has Made the Grade!

Salif Kante has grabbed success this spring, but he still awaits the fulfillment of his dreams. 

He's played tennis with dominance in tournament after tournament.  In February, in Mali, he came from far behind, 1-5, to  defeat a player from Burkina Faso and win the tournament (he's pictured here).  The next month, he took the title of National Champion of Senegal, by defeating 1553-ranked Daouda Ndiaye.  Daouda is a tall, muscular player with a searing serve who played Division I tennis at Brigham Young-Hawaii (part of the match is on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4syZUC38e8.)  

At his matches, I used to watch nervously, but there is something different now.  He's not just playing consistently and confidently.  There is a level of maturity he's reached, a steely assuredness he possesses.  He sits quietly looking at notes when changing courts.  I worry less.

He's not just played amazing tennis this spring.  He's audited two of my classes at Suffolk, giving speeches and participating in class discussions -- all in English.  And just last week, he overcame the final hurdle, achieving a high enough score on his ACT to play Division II tennis. 

But he awaits a scholarship offer.

For those of you who've followed his story, you know that he had two Division I full scholarship offers but because of how the NCAA interpreted their rules, they looked only at his baccalaureate scores to determine his GPA and awarded him too low of a GPA to allow him to play.  (Remarkable.  Only 14% of all the students in Senegal passed the national exam, and passing gives you automatic entry into a Senegalese university, but the NCAA awarded him a low GPA.  Had they looked at his high school transcript, he'd be in America as I write.  (I still kick myself for sending them his baccalaureate exam results -- I'd thought it evidence of academic proweress -- because passing the exam isn't a requirement.)

Because of the NCAA interpretation, he had to make a certain score on his ACT.  He studied for hours.  And he did it!  (This score is like making a 2.0 GPA, and is no small feat for a French speaker, unaccustomed to America's multiple choice tests.)

We'd thought it was over then, that he had a full offer awaiting him at a Division II school.

But that coach has now told him that the money may not be there -- that the recession is hurting his ability to award scholarships.  I told the coach how much Salif had improved from two years ago when he was in camps in the U.S.  "It was never a question of his tennis skills.  He didn't need to get any better," the coach remarked, "I would take him if he still played at the same level."

How do we convey this to coaches in the U.S.?  Email, YouTube, the global world of internet.  Salif is trying to tell his story to coaches across America, waiting for an offer, with determination and a firm belief  still that his dreams will come true. 

Lots of Catching Up - Portland Bound

Life has been consumed with "the move," which has been a bit like America, so many choices that you stand in the aisle of the supermarket overwhelmed and agog, simply frozen. 

At first, I applied for a variety of environmental law jobs and had a couple of interviews -- one job in Phoenix, one in Denver.  I was all but told I was too old: "it's unusual for someone with your 'experience' to apply for this job," they said. 

After it became clear that I wasn't going to be the easy breadwinner, Michael and I had a long, long-distance phone call (he was in Cape Verde at the time; I was in the parking lot of a Dakar ATM).  We decided we just needed to pick a city.  And we posited Portland, Oregon as a good fit.  That day, I went home to look up schools and found a perfect one, a school called Catlin Gabel, www.catlin.edu.  Of all the schools I'd searched (and we'd been looking), it just seemed ideal -- small, academically challenging, with chances to participate in the arts and an outdoor program of hiking and enjoying the beauty of Oregon.   But the application deadline for the school was three days away!  I immediately emailed the school and explained our situation. and was warmly and quickly answered.  And Catlin Gabel fueled the momentum for Portland.

Applying for high school was a bit like a university application.  What interesting work!  A parent questionnaire, an application for Rachel, transcripts, teacher recommendations, a skype interview with Rachel and us.  And then we waited.  We went away for spring break in St. Anton, Austria (that's another post), and we found out there March that Rachel had been admitted (the admission rate is low, so we were excited).  The school's warmth and inclusiveness is astounding.  The day Rachel was admitted, we got a call from the volleyball coach welcoming her and telling us about the team.  She received hand-written notes from the head of the school, the head of the upper school (high school) and a group of kids.  A host family has been assigned to greet us. 

So, we're headed to Portland, Oregon.  We'll miss Dakar deeply, but leaving is inevitable.  We'll miss our friends and life in Austin, but we'll visit.  Portland will be a new adventure, hiking in the mountains, riding bikes in the rain, and drinking coffee, beer, and Oregon wine.  We've rented a house for the summer, and we're mired in the logistics of moving. 

We don't have jobs yet, but Michael seems imminently employable (I seem less of a sure thing).  We've both got age and experience working against us, it seems.  (Just this week, a New York Times article chronicled the problem of "mature" workers.)

Rachel is deeply sad about the move, worrying about saying good-by to friends and anxious about a new school.  But I think she also recognizes the opportunities she'll have in America.  Michael and I have been on a roller coaster of planning -- do we buy a house?  where can we work?  when do we move our furniture from Austin?  Deep down, we know we'll survive and that we tend to be happy wherever we go.

So, we're tying up projects and life in Dakar.  On Sunday, I go to Kaolack to introduce some new volunteers to the 10,000 Girls project (www.10000girls.org).  We're still trying to get Salif a scholarship (he's now the national champion -- that's another post).  The school board has approved a master plan, we we'll hire an architect in the next few weeks for a new middle school/high school building.  And I'll try to catch up on the blog and conclude with our final months in Dakar.

On the Streets of Dakar - Saying Goodbye

Michael's Peace Corps contract ends soon, and Rachel starts high school next year, so we're beginning our good-byes to Dakar.  We just got the definite decision about ten days ago that we'll be leaving.  We've finished telling our staff, Rachel has told her friends, and I've told Suffolk.  We'll leave with such tenderness for Senegal and all the people we've met here.  We have been so happy here.

Where are we going?

We don't know yet.  Rachel is applying to a wonderful high school in Portland, Oregon.  I am applying for jobs.  And Michael, always employable, just continues working full time, full speed with all the Peace Corps volunteers he keeps healthy and happy.

Track Meet

For the first time since I've been here, ISD has hosted track meets.  The "meets" are small:  one other school, Dakar Academy comes to run on our track.  But the kids run hard, have fun, and parents gather to watch.  Rachel has won many first places!

Catching up - Salif and Inauguration

So much has happened since my last post, but I'll try to update some important stories and enter a few more posts.  Senegalese students at ENEA (the school where Suffolk rents our space) are on strike today and have blocked the roads, so I've got an unexpected "snow day" and can catch up.

Salif.  First, the NCAA and Salif.  I learned that being an attorney who can search the internet has its benefits.  After calling and emailing the NCAA repeatedly and getting no response, I finally found an attorney in California who had brought a class action suit against the NCAA.  He graciously told me the name of defense attorneys for the NCAA who forwarded my email.

And Voila!  It was like magic.

I got to speak with two live people with authority and information.  I sent them detailed information.  We scheduled a conference call.  Unfortunately, though, they informed me that for Senegalese students the NCAA looks merely at test scores on the baccalaureate exam and not at students' four years of transcripts:  thus, Salif has a 1.8 GPA and not a 2.6 (or even higher).  Unfair, narrow -- certainly.  But I think fighting the NCAA is more challenging than city hall.  So, with a 1.8 GPA, Salif lost any opportunity to play for a Division I school. We were working frantically on this issue, down to the wire.  We were talking to the NCAA a few days before he had the scholarship offer to start school in Florida at a Division I school.  It was a big disappointment.

If he gets a 68 on the ACT, which he has not yet obtained, he will be eligible for a Division II school, but he will have to sit out his first year.  So, he applied to Morehouse, which would be a remarkable school for him, and has emailed Division II schools but has heard not a peep.  He is auditing two of my classes at Suffolk and will take the ACT again on April 4.

Enshallah, he will get the score he needs, be admitted to Morehouse, and be leaving this summer. But we're still waiting.

Other catching up...

Inauguration.  We threw an inauguration party.  Originally, there were no official parties, so we returned to our favorite place, El Toro, for a big screen viewing.  We took a gaggle of girls (pictured) who did their homework while they awaited the inauguration.  One Senegalese Club even threw a big party that night to honor our new President (their sign is pictured).  It was a huge day for the world!

Happy New Year! Sunset and Bonfire on the Beach to Prepare for New Year's

Tuesday night, the tides were right, and we planned a party at Le Petite N'Gor, a restaurant on the beach. Babies, small children wading in the water, young teens and older teens visiting home, adults, from all over the world, joined us for a relaxed evening.  It was like inviting yourself and your friends to someone else's house -- they fixed the drinks and food, set up tables on the beach and then cleaned up the mess.  We even asked them to build a bonfire, which they lit after the sunset.  

The only request of our guests was to bring marshmallows, sweet gooshy American treats, which the French do make and sell (but they don't toast).

So, we drank, watched the sunset, ate dinner in the restaurant, roasted marshmallows, and finally lit a few fireworks.  Oh, yes, Oscar the pelican was behind us, so we had to be wary of his sharp beak (he's pictured.  He eventually slept but was unhappily aroused by the fireworks.  Happy New Year to all!