Rioting Good Christmas

12/25
So im sitting here in Tamba's movie room on watching a great B movie classic, Army of Darkness. Wow what a movie. Well any way this is my christmas entry as it is x-mas. So some interesting things happening here in senegal. Lets start from the beginning shall we.
So on the 22rd shelia came into kédougou for xmas and everything seems normal in town. Thomas tells us that the student youth in the town hold a meeting that evening to plan a march to protest the lack of jobs in the region and this combined with the fact that the students in the schools were striking because the teachers were striking because they hadn't been paid. So this was supposed to be a peaceful march Thomas's host sister had informed him when he specifically asked if they were going to burn things. So yeah that ought to get you thinking about how this ends up!
So the 23rd rolls round and i go into the CTC to go to the internet cafe with Shelia. We take off and head down the main road thats right outside the regional house and runs into town. We take off down the road and i can see 3 big plumes of smoke up off in near distance. Its not that unfamiliar here as lots of people burn their scrub grass and fields here quite regularly. So we keep going on down the road and thinking that this was normal until we start seeing lots of youngish students in the streets. again not that unheard of as the students do strike and they were this day. So we keep going until we come around a gentle turn in the road and are confronted with a large mob of students burning tires and the house next to the christian school, the car next to it and were in the process of setting more fires to the brush next to the road we were on. It was at this point that we decide that its best to turn around and head to the other Cyber on the other side of town. So we take off and head back, passing the military base where it is clear the troops are mustering to take care of the situation.
We get to the other cyber fine not passing anything looking remotely violent or threatening. We find out at this point at the cyber that the president of guinea has died and the government has taken control of the country and suspended the constitution. good times. I manage to get off my email to my trees for the future counterpart who wanted to know about my counterparts field and what had worked from the last year and what hadn't. Unfortunately the day before a 1/8th of my counterparts field here in kédougou was burned by accident, yay cigarette butts. So that kinda gives me a significant amount of work to do now as everything that was there needs to be replanted. But more on how ill have lots of work in a little bit.
So we make it back to the CTC fine after this as the power gets cut to the entire town and we leave the cyber. When we get back we let everyone know to stay away from town and stay put in the CTC as gun shots are being heard now from the CTC. So basically we end up staying there for the rest of the day as we kinda figure its not safe to be wandering round the town in all this. So we chill at the CTC not really having any news of what all was going on. We play catch in preparation for the west african invitational softball tournament in the field that peace corps owns behind our regional house. All the while we were doing this there were gun shots off in the distance and three big plumes of black smoke coming up from the center of town.
So after a while we head back to the kitchen hut and talk to some of the guards/workers that are at the center for news. It starts to trickle in now that some serious shit is going on in town. Rumors of the prefecture, and the prefecture's house as well as the tribunal and the governors office being burned makes us a little cautious. We let our safety and security coordinator know about what all is going on at this point and receive text's from the list server about the situation in Kédougou. Its now that we start making day bags in case we have to make a run to get out of town. We realize that we need to consolidate everyone in the here at the CTC in case we do need to leave and its now that we find out that one of the volunteers in the city is unaccounted for and not answering her phone. It turns out that she had gone to tamba and was safe but we don't find that out until we send one of the guards to go to her house to try and find her. By the time all this is sorted out it actually works out that he went out to look for her as he came back with a lot of information.
So when the guard got back this is what he had to say. The market had been attacked by the rioters, the police had killed one of the student rioters, marital law had been declared because all of the big government buildings had been burned, that the red berets had been flown in to help restore order, and that the road in from tamba had been shut down. So at this point no one is leaving the CTC even to go to the boutique down the road. So basically we spend the day talking to the guards and the workers who are building a new common area at the regional house getting info and just trying to keep light hearted. So another guard comes back in after going out to asses the situation with more news. The police station has been burned now and unofficially there are 4 deaths. All the while this is going on, steve wood out in togué has his family from america with him and was supposed to come back into town to leave that day. welcome to senegal!
To keep busy i decide to clean/orginize the bike shed which is kinda a mess from lots of use. In doing this i feel a lot better about being locked up in the CTC. While in the process of doing this i come across a box trunk that had gotten wet and who's contents were now completely moldy minus a few well protected/sealed items. This trunk was the old trunk that had all the board games in it until it got wet and moldy. Of the pieces that didn't get destroyed, was the pieces, cards, and instructions for risk. Being the macho dudes that we are, we all thought what a great idea it would be to make a map and spend our captivity playing risk. So that then takes priority, making the board and getting ready for dinner. I run back to my house right before the curfew thats been imposed by the military is implemented to grab a few things i need for the night, and am soo roundly criticized for being a wus and for being afraid and not spending the day there. This of course is all the while my family and brothers and sisters were at the riots in support of it. whatever i leave and head back to the CTC for dinner and a interesting night. Before dinner we come up with a shit hits the fan plan of action of how we would sneak out the back of the CTC and take our bikes down to the river to escape to dindefelo if really needed.
But nothing happened that night, minus matt beating the crap out of us in risk. The military had pickup trucks rolling around all night with three dudes in the back with m-16's and flack jackets ready for trouble. The next morning after talking to the guards, we find out that pretty much every brigade in eastern senegal was in fact in Kédougou. Also, and more importantly, the rioters had pretty much done a number on every government building in the town. So our friends and contacts at eaux et foret had their office burned out as well as, we think, the wulla naffa NGO who are partnered with USAID had a car at least and at worst their building torched. Their building is attached to eaux et foret so we kinda assumed it got hit as well. But none of this happened at night time, this was all at the end of the day the day before, so everything was pretty much calmed down by the curfew.
So we decide that we should go out and asses the damage from the night before as we were curious and were also wondering if there was still a risk. So we decide upon splitting up into smaller groups so its not a group of 6 white people walking around gawking at the damage. So i go with matt and shelia up the bandafassi road and try to go past the military camp and can see the two road blocks on the road on the way to the base. Were waved away from the street so as to miss the base where we had found out that all the families of the police and government were being protected there. while we were skirting around the camp we saw some guys sitting in trees, they were snipers protecting the base and the families there. We end up over by the cyber we ended up going to the day before, which is owned by the uncle of Matt's host family. it turns out that he has a nice garden that has potential for some ag/fo stuff and i go there a lot so potential.
So after stopping in there and making sure he was ok and his shop hadn't been looted we moved on down the road. Its down this road that the police station, hospital, and tribunal were on. So we come to the police station first. Shell of a building totally burned out, 5 cars burned out over 5 motorcycles burned out. It was really something else seeing it like that, i bike past it alot, almost everyday. We basically walk past to check it out but it looks calm there. We keep going down the road and come to the hospital. A couple lines of riot police are standing in the entryway to the hospital, with hundreds of rocks scattered in front of it where they had fallen from being thrown. We go in and talk to the head Dr. there so as to asses what was going on.
So as it turns out that one of the students that was killed was being held there and the families of the Dr.s and the hospital itself. So when we get in there the head Dr. says that they are going to have a meeting to settle whether or not they were going to shut the hospital or not. So we kept on walking down the street and get a call from michelle, the volunteer who was in tamba saying that she had come back to Kédougou and was at her house. So Matt tells her to stay there and that we would come and get her. As we keep walking we get to the main cross roads in town where the courthouse is and next to the burned out courthouse in the street where we need to go to get michelle is a large crowd of students facing down with the police. We skirt round it but as we start going around into the surrounding houses the cops cut and run and the military comes in. So now they are standing off against the students.
So nothing really happens, i guess they disperse, we book it into the neighborhood next to the street passing the busted up post office. It wasn't burned out though, just doors, windows, and large western union sign all busted up. So we make it to michelle's house and get her and instead of going back the way we came, we shoot down to the river to skirt round all the trouble. This works great and we make it back to the CTC just fine. When we get back we kinda hang out a bit and Steve Wood and his family show up having gotten a ride from a local. We hang out for a while and around lunch time everything seems pretty calm so i ask if i can go back to my house to grab a bag. I take off and get to my house and watch a little TV with my fam about all this. They all agree with the striking, maybe not the destroying but the reason behind it yes. I kinda bust their cops a little as they burned a bunch of our work partners and the courthouse has all the records of everything for the city. Also rumor has it they stole the money that was sent down to Kédougou for paying the people up at the sabodella mines. so thats a little ify.
But they make me lunch and after that i start making a bag when i get a call saying we are all leaving because the country director said we should leave the city. So i pack my bag and head back to the CTC and by this time everyone else is getting ready to leave. The country directors adopted son helped us arrange our rides. So two sept places show up in about 20min. So once thomas is back from his house getting things, we load up and head out. So its kinda a light hearted car ride, very uneventful, but we do end up passing 10 truck loads of troops and equipment heading in the opposite direction. But we get to tamba and the regional house to a nice x-mas eve dinner the tamba volunteers had made.
So today has been a pretty chill day, just sitting around watching movies. Army of darkness, dr. strangelove, a bunch of the rome series, and some of the bourne identity. Right now im sitting in a hotel next to the tamba regional house on some nice wireless. So yea getting ready for x-mas dinner away from home in rather odd circumstances. Hope no one else has anything even remotely close to this type of an x-mas experience. Merry Christmas from lovely west africa, weve got riots, coups and all sorts of fun!

Oh yeah nothing stolen, so its all good!