Monumental Blogging Take 2
What is that small child doing? Pointing Westward? Nope. I have an alternate hypothesis…
Before I veer completely off-track, let me set aside the hypothesis and talk a bit about the monument that was inaugurated this weekend.
Here are some fun facts, Megan-style, that I have learned about the monument through conversations and various press articles:
- It cost 28 million dollars. Did you know that we (the U.S.) gave Senegal 540 million dollars in September for infrastructure projects? No, we didn’t pay for the statue, but in a way, I think we kinda did.
- President Wade says that because the statue was his idea, he is keeping 35% of the profits (but says he will use this money to go towards religious schools or something)
- Lots of protests on many sides of society here:
- With so much poverty and other pressing societal concerns, people thought this was just Wade trying to memorialize himself
- It was built using North Korean labor, in exchange for land in Senegal
- Last year Wade compared the monument to JC, and that provoked young Christian groups to protest, and Wade had to apologize
- Imams have said that it is idolatrous, and un-Islamic. A fatwa was even issued before the inaugural weekend that urged Senegal’s imams “to read the holy Koran in the mosques simply to ask Allah to preserve us from the punishment this monument of shame risks bringing on Senegal.
- Some (but not many) have said that the woman is far too scantily clad for a Muslim country where women dress so modestly. Heck, you wouldn’t catch me wearing that little on the beach at home. Others have said that it looks too
“Soviet”, styled à la “Worker and Kolkhoz Woman”:
- The hill on which they built the bronze (or copper, I can’t figure it out exactly) statue was improperly exorcised of the residing spirits by the Lebou people. Something about not enough bulls or goats being sacrificed, blood spread about, animals cast into the sea….the builders went to the land owner’s son instead of the father, and so the land is still not properly “settled.” Stories abound of bad things, accidents, etc. taking place both around the statue and throughout the surrounding suburb of Ouakam.
- During the inauguration ceremony a dog “appeared out of nowhere” after all the pathways were closed off. He walked in front of the heads of state and stopped in front of President Wade. This dog (xaj is the Wolof word) is being tied to all the mystical weirdness surrounding the statue. Here he is:
Not exactly Cujo. He’s probably just looking for a decent bowl of ceebujen, but I wouldn’t discount the animisme that still is alive and well over here.
So what do I think? Well, who really cares what I think. I’m just another toubab with no claim to this particular earth or the judgment of this country’s president. That said, I do have a guess as to what the young child is doing up there, perched on his father’s arm.
I mentioned that Senegal got a lot of dough last year to help improve its infrastructure (from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, to be exact). None of the streetlights work in Senegal. I don’t know when they last worked, but some still occupy intersections as if they were crumbling ruins from a bygone (or French) era.
Without such modern marvels of traffic control, the clever Senegalese have come up with a cheaper, more efficient way to control the many vehicular beasts of the city streets: the magical outstretched arm. I don’t think that it has ties to animism, but I can sure tell you that all a person need do is raise their arm and they are instantly able to stop lines of traffic dead in their tracks.
The arm can even stop toubab cars!
So is it a Monument to the African Renaissance, or is it a Monument to Senegalese ingenuity? You be the judge. It’s great fun to discuter in this country.