Richard Wesley

Are you worried that you are losing your curves? Put on your favourite jeans on a Saturday night out on the town only to find them a bit baggy? Have had your significant other mutter something about eating a little more to fill out a bit? Maybe what you need is padded underwear. Now available from all good outdoor crazy markets in the backstreets of Dakar, just look alongside the wigs, printed t-shirts with spelling mistakes, extremely low lifespan jandals, and mass produced other junk. Apart from this important discovery the other happenings of the month included birthdays for both Elodie and myself and a bit of kayaking. Elodie organised me a wonderful party with a great lot of people around for dinner. This also required a day in front of the oven and resulted in enough food for thousands. Most excellent to have good leftovers for the rest of the week. Elodie had a surprise party eight days later, held on the other side of town. This resulted in some minor problems trying to find th...

I've been working for the last few weeks, and will be for the coming months, for a little organisation called 'Anti Poverty Initiative' (API) which provides micro credit for woman in Dakar. It was started by an American ex Methodist missionary who has been living in Dakar for many years. They needed help with setting up a new computer accounting system and various other tasks and so I am getting some good experience in the field of micro credit. Micro credit is simply loaning small amounts of money to people with no security, effectively filling the gap below which normal banks and financial institutions operate. It came to major prominence recently when Muhammad Yunus, who funded the Grameen Bank in Bangadish, was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. The loan money enables women, who are more trustworthy with repayment and usually provide benefits for the whole family, to start and run small businesses. API has a model which sets up groups of 25 women together and gives th...

During the past week the city of Dakar has been hosting a meeting of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). This has resulted in many cancellations, reorganisation of traffic, and general disruption to the city, as the leaders of 56 nations all arrived for the gathering. It turns out that many of the major infrastructure projects around Dakar were begun in expectation of this event, but unfortunately only a handful of them seem to have been completed. On the positive side the western coastal road was finished in the nick of time, on the negative side two large hotels are still only shells under construction. To cover the resulting shortage of accommodation a huge Italian cruise ship appeared at the port, appearing to outdo all the shore based hotels. I heard via some friends here that the main two topics discussed at the meeting were first the lack of progress with the implementation of an investment fund for transfer of wealth from northern middle east members to southern ...

The beaches of Senegal stretch to the south of Dakar and vary from highly developed tourist resorts to small little fishing villages. We have been spending the last few weekends exploring a few of them and the surrounding countryside. The heat of the sun in the middle of the day is so great that for me the only too options are hiding in the shade or complete immersion in the sea. A nearby park known as Bandia Reserve provided some great photo opportunities with many large animals including rhino, giraffe, and antelope. Most of them are actually from South Africa, and the park is so small it could be called a very large zoo, but certainly well worth a visit if wanting to see such large beasts up close and in the open. We even managed to do it very cheaply by meeting some other helpful French woman who were able to include us in their hired car for the morning. While out and about we have also met a host of great people, including fellow Dakar residents and travellers on an overland trip...

Woops, just got pick pocketed in town and so am feeling stupid, angry, amused and sad all at the same time. Its my first time and just a moments thoughtlessness was all it took. I’ve had the friendly lads around in town a few times and keep my hands on my wallet and cell phone. Tonight through we were walking between two nightclubs with friends up ahead, other friends dropping behind, lots happening, and my right hand holding onto Elodie just in front of me. Suddenly a very friendly chap is on my right, my hand goes to my phone in one pocket instinctively. There are people all around, pushing, shoving, then we are through it all. 100m on I let go of Elodie’s hand and instantly realise my wallet is gone from my other side pocket. I feel stupid as the rouse was so obvious, angry because of the theft of my little wallet and credit card, amused as they did it well (and had read all about it in the guidebook), and sad as I will certainly have my guard up even more against the ‘friendly’ loc...

We have some monkeys as neighbours it turns out in a little building below where we are living. They are used for medical research, and it’s certainly the closest I’ve been to this field of science. It certainly leaves me feeling very uneasy as I am not at all sure the standards of care insisted upon back in France with the institute have quite made it down to Senegal. The cages are small and the monkeys seem to act pretty deranged. I’m sure it is a small price to pay for the advance of vaccines and safe treatments, but sad and unsettling when in your own backyard.

I am now in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, in west africa. We arrived here last a week ago and have had fun exploring and settling in. Elodie is working with the Institute Pasteur on a hepatitis B research program (involving the correlation of results for vibroscans and liver biopisis in black people). Her employers have provided a fantastic apartment, three levels up, looking out at the sea, located on the south western tip of the Dakar peninsula, about 20mins walk from the centre of town. It’s been hard to get a clear impression of Dakar, but few thoughts that have hit me are the busy broken up streets and the very nice temperature range. Cars and buses fly up and down the roads, people parked up everywhere on the footpaths, black and yellow taxis drive past tooting at you every minute, there are broken pavements and potholes. It certainly has the African flavor when it comes to public service maintenance. However the weather is very mild, getting up to maybe 25 during the day and dr...