Journalism - SENEGAL Daily Life

Daily life of a Journalism Volunteer

I took part in a radio journalism placement in Saint-Louis in Senegal at the station Fréquence Téranga. From Monday to Friday, I would wake up at 7.30 and either I or my roommate would pop out to one of the street-side bread stalls to buy two large baguettes, one for us to share and the other for the family. We would then eat the bread for breakfast with chocolate spread or butter and a thermos of Café Touba (a local sweet, spiced coffee). After this I would take a cold shower and dress for work.

At about 8.45, I'd leave the house for the ten-minute stroll from one end of the island to the other, stopping halfway at a bookshop-cum-newsagent to chat with the owner and pick up a couple of the national papers on the Radio Téranga account. Not infrequently, as with many things running on Senegalese time, the day's delivery didn't arrive until mid-morning and sometimes not until after lunch (despite one of the papers I picked up every day being called Le Matin!).

Arriving at the station at 9.00, I'd tend to spend the first half-hour of the day chatting to my colleagues, from the DJs to Nabou, the female security guard, and occasionally even daring to speak to Golbert, the revered celebrity owner of the station.

When I'd decided enough was enough and I couldn't spend the whole day basking in the sun by the door engaged in idle chat, I'd head off with my A4 pad of paper and biro to one of the three cybercafés on the island to find out what was going on in the world as, for most of the time, the international section of our news bulletin was my responsibility. (Since finishing my placement, Projects Abroad has bought a computer for the station so research can be done in the studio). I'd spend a good hour every day looking for items of world news that would be of interest to Senegalese people and noting down the details. The most prominent stories at the time were developments in Palestine and Iraq, the nuclear activity in Iran, and perhaps most interestingly - as Senegal is a Muslim country -the response in the Islamic world to the publishing of the satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

On returning to the station with the details of a handful of stories, I'd spend the rest of the morning turning those quick English notes into the full script of a French news bulletin. At 1.00 I'd return home for lunch, although we didn't tend to eat until nearly 3.00 so there was plenty of time to visit other volunteers at the houses of their host families or relax at our house playing with our brothers, aged four and two. Around the family bowl of rice and sauce, we'd discuss the morning's events with the family and chat to any guests who happened to have popped in for lunch that day.

After a nice, long break in the middle of the day when it was often too hot to do much else than relax indoors, I'd head back to the station for 4.00. When the ever-busy technician, Lamine, had a moment free, he and I would go into the studio and I would record my ten-minute bulletin to cassette, complete with jingles, to be broadcast as part of the half-hour news and sport programme at 6.00 that evening. The same recording was then rebroadcast twice more in the morning and at lunchtime on the following day.

On Tuesday and Thursday evenings, I'd join the teaching volunteers at a local high school to teach a free evening class in English to any adults who wanted to learn the language from scratch or to practise and improve what they already knew. The other evenings I would generally spend with my host family (or napping!) before eating dinner as late as 9.30. After dinner, more nights than not, we'd go out for a drink with other volunteers and chat with the barman at L'Embuscade, our local bar.

Weekends provided the opportunity for trips away from Saint-Louis; my trips included seeing the pelicans and crocodiles at the National Bird Park nearby and spending a night under the stars in the desert.

Generally though, after an obligatory lie-in, weekends were the time for a wander around the market or a trip to the tailor to get yet another weird and wonderful fabric made up into a boubou. We'd tend to spend afternoons lazing and slowly frying on the white-sand beach and watching the Atlantic waves crash in or by the swimming pool of one of the more upmarket hotels on the island (but refusing to be tempted by the extortionate cocktail list). Mealtimes were the same as during the week, so quite often a Saturday night out wouldn't start until after 11.00. No matter how stiff our resolve to try the other venues, our nights out always seemed to start at L'Embuscade and end at the womb-like, supposedly Cuban-themed club, L'Iguane. Actually, the night never quite ended there; there was always time for the pre-dawn trip to the Patisserie for the very first, very freshest pain au chocolat of the day.