Obama in Senegal

So I don’t know if you guys heard but President Obama was here with the first family at the end of June. I’m the layout editor of our quarterly volunteer newsletter called the SABAAR and in doing design for our front page article this quarter an article by my friend, Cameron, caught my eye.

I just wanted to share it with you too.

BARACK OBAMA VISITS SENEGAL: LOOKING BENEATH THE STREAMERS & BALLOONS

By Cameron Colliersmith

For those of us who didn’t go to Obama’s visit in Dakar, it was hard to find out what he did when he came. People in my village mostly just got excited, and the griot in my village asked what gifts he would bring. During our weekly phone call, my dad in America asked why Obama was arguing about gay marriage in Senegal, and the President of the Communite Rurale I live in said there was bad traffic in Dakar. Going to the regional house, though, I figured I’d find it all out—press releases, interviews, his views on security issues here, a vision for African aid, anything.

The BBC radio just said a few lines about it on the 20:30 broadcast that night, and the one featured from Obama was, “We historically have been an enormous provider of development, aid to Africa — food, medicine.  But what I want us to do is to have a shifting paradigm where we start focusing on trade, development, partnerships where we see ourselves as benefiting and not simply giving in the relationship with Africa.”¹

So there it is, a focus on trade, not aid. News aggregations told me he made speeches to “regional judicial leaders” at a “civil society organization meeting” and had a press conference with Macky Sall. He also visited Goree and pledged to defend human rights. The only widely-reported part of the trip was a public argument about gay marriage, in which Obama defended equality under the law for gay marriage to Sall. President Sall countered that rights were “societal issues”, which different cultures had differing views on, and gave the example of the different approaches between the United States’ and Senegal’s view on the death penalty .The speeches themselves, though, were mostly congratulatory, and the majority of news stories covering his visit hardly even quoted them. It was a straightforward Presidential visit to improve trade.

What was Peace Corps role in Obama’s visit? He got to meet some volunteers, asked them “Yangi nos?” and thanked them for their service. Our president came all the way to this random African country we live in, thanked us, hung out with people we know, and then headed out to his next African country. On the news, Obama visited Africa to “promote investment and democracy.”² In village, people keep telling me he came to give Senegal ‘kalisi buy’ (lots of money). In the Peace Corps though, we just celebrated the recognition and felt proud for Senegal, but maybe didn’t think about how Obama’s policies affect us here.

What didn’t happen was a discussion about what Obama, as a president coming to visit this country on a publicity tour, means. The President of the United States came to Senegal. How does this President’s policies affect the people of Senegal? What about Africans, especially in the countries like Senegal, where the United States has close military connections?  Has the administrations policies in Africa lived up to its rhetoric, or has Africa been ignored? The New York Times quotes Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser  saying that “we, frankly, have heard a high-demand signal from the U.S. private sector for us to play an active role in deepening our trade and investment partnerships in Africa.” ³

Is that the best route for American-Senegalese relations?   Senegal is a 95% Muslim nation. How has this president’s policies and actions towards Muslims, affected Senegal, Senegalese expatriates, and Muslims around the world?

All of us have opinions on these policies and issues. Peace Corps volunteers, even more than many expatriates, are in a unique position to see effects of foreign policies of nations around the world.  Many of us volunteers see the effects of national and international aid. Village volunteers can watch the changes in price of daily commodities and hear the whispers of hope that the World Food Program comes to your village this year. Working with government agricultural extension programs services as well, allows some health volunteers to have a close interaction with this nation’s health care service, which has been changed immensely from structural adjustment programs, much like the agricultural extension programs around the country. Most of us live with Muslims, a group often vilified in America today and living in an almost separate legal system in many places. From Dakar to Kedougou, we saw African and French armies roll through the route internationale, some with U.S. Air Support.⁴ We have a lot of knowledge about things that President Obama directly affects and a unique position to learn more and contextualize a place the President felt worthy to visit.

In 1969, Bruce Murray, a Peace Corps volunteer in Chile wrote up a petition signed by over ninety volunteers protesting U.S. actions in Indochina.⁵ Can you imagine that happening now? Volunteers across Latin America could see the effects of nearby American policies then. When our president came, we all got excited and threw a party. Some former Peace Corps countries, like Afghanistan, Bahrain, East Timor, and Pakistan probably never got official Presidential visits. The Shah did visit Kennedy at the White House, though, back when the Peace Corps was still in Iran and the United States was funding the secret police. It’s tempting to just celebrate Obama coming to Senegal, because he is our president. Would volunteers have felt different if Bush had visited? ■

1. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/27/remarks-president-obama-and-president-sall-republic-senegal-joint-press-
2. Obama heads to Africa to promote investment, democracy Faith Karimi, CNNJune 27, 2013
3. Obama Looks to History and Future in Senegal By MICHAEL D. SHEARPublished: June 27, 2013
4. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2013/01/201311813241652988.html
5. All You Need Is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s, By Elizabeth COBBS HOFFMAN, 264.