Drylands Research
Working Paper 20
DIOURBEL REGION: THE FAMILY,
LOCAL INSTITUTIONS AND
EDUCATION
Wendy Wilson Fall
2000
Drylands Research
Crewkerne
Somerset TA18 8BJ
United Kingdom
This paper was first presented at a workshop on Policy Requirements for Farmer
Investment in Semi-Arid Africa, held on 12-14 January in Bambey and Dakar, Senegal.
The research reported in the working paper forms a part of a study on Policy
requirements for farmer investment in semi-arid Africa, which was funded by the
Natural Resources Policy Research Programme of the Department for International
Development (DFID), United Kingdom (Project R 7072 CA). DFID can accept no
responsibility for any information provided or views expressed.
ISSN 1470-9384
© Drylands Research 2000
Typeset at Drylands Research and printed at Press-tige Print, Crewkerne.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the
publishers.
ii
Preface
Drylands Research Working Papers present, in preliminary form, research results of
studies carried out in association with collaborating researchers and institutions.
This working paper is part of a study which aims to relate long-term environmental
change, population growth and technological change, and to identify the policies and
institutions which are conducive to sustainable development. The study builds upon an
earlier project carried out by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in Machakos
District, Kenya, whose preliminary results were published in a series of ODI Working
Papers in 1990-91. This led to a book (Mary Tiffen, Michael Mortimore and Francis
Gichuki, More people, less erosion: environmental recovery in Kenya, John Wiley,
1994), which was a synthesis and interpretation of the physical and social development
path in Machakos. The book generated a set of hypotheses and policy recommendations
which required testing in other African dryland environments. Using compatible
methodologies, four linked studies are now being carried out in:
Kenya
Senegal
Niger
Nigeria
Makueni District
Diourbel Region
Maradi Department (in association with ODI)
Kano Region
(in association with ODI)
For each of these study areas, there will be a series of working papers and a synthesis,
which will be reviewed at country workshops. An overall synthesis will be discussed at
an international workshop in London in 2001.
In the Senegal Series the authors investigate the links between long-term change in
agriculture and investment by small farmers in the Diourbel Region during the period
1960-1999. The research leader is Michael Mortimore. He is assisted by his colleague
Mary Tiffen. The Leader of the Senegal Team is Abdou Fall of the Institut Sénégalais de
Recherches Agricoles (ISRA). They may be contacted at the following addresses.
Abdou Fall
ISRA
BP 3120
Dakar
SENEGAL
Michael Mortimore
Cutters Cottage, Glovers Close, Milborne Port
Somerset DT9 5ER, UNITED KINGDOM
Mary Tiffen
Orchard House, Tower Hill Road,
Crewkerne, Somerset TA18 6BJ,
UNITED KINGDOM
Email:
abdoufal@isra.refer.sn
Email:
mikemortimore@compuserve.com
mary@marytiff.demon.co.uk
Website:
www.drylandsresearch.org.uk
iii
Preface map
iv
Abstract
This report examines how change in family institutions and access to information and
political influence in the Diourbel region affect farm investments. Although most
inhabitants are Wolof, a quarter are Serer. Pre-colonial family and political institutions
were profoundly influenced by the French-induced commerce in groundnuts and the
parallel spread of the Islamic Mouride brotherhood. The Mouride dahra became a
vehicle for colonising new land, for intermediation with the alien political authority, and a
means of co-operation and social insurance, in both town and village. While dry season
off-farm earnings were important even in the 1960s, long-term migration to Senegalese
towns (including Touba, the Mouride capital) and even abroad became widespread by
the 1980s. By the 1990s this had evolved into a complex international trade and finance
network, stretching between several continents. The earnings of the young subsidised the
village and changed the balance of power between old and young.
The state has always tried to facilitate agricultural investment through co-operative
credit. Its failure is documented. The recent expansion of the Mouride trading networks
has provided an alternative credit system. To date, NGOs are not as flexible, as widereaching or as efficient in this regard. The formal educational system led to a social
division between an urban elite educated in French, and the villager, who found the
French primary curriculum irrelevant. This led to the continuing importance of Mouride
leaders and educational resources, based upon Arabic Quranic study. Migrations have
created a more sophisticated brotherhood, better able to exploit such state policies as
decentralisation, where transfer of some authority to the Communautés Rurales provides
a new vehicle for influencing state investments. The operation of these various
institutions in 4 villages is examined. In the late 1990s formal education remained
underdeveloped, but somewhat expanded with the appearance of Franco-Arab primary
schools. The expansion of radio and telephones have provided an additional information
channel to the Mouride network, enabling the dispersed family to keep in touch. Young
men in poorly remunerated jobs, or involved in fairly successful trade ventures, send
remittances back mainly to feed their families. If their resources permit investment, it
finances important social investments in marriage, or to construct housing for rent or
family use. State policy and environmental conditions militate against farm investments.
Résumé
Ce rapport examine comment les transformations des institutions familiales, l’accès à
l'information, et l'influence exercée sur le plan politique affectent les investissements
agricoles dans la région de Diourbel. Bien que la plupart des habitants de la région soient
des Wolofs, un quart de la population est constitué de Serer. Pendant la période
coloniale, les familles ainsi que les institutions politiques étaient profondément
influencées par le commerce arachidier et la diffusion parallèle de la confrérie islamique
mouride. Les dahras mourides servirent de véhicule pour la colonisation des nouveaux
territoires et d'intermédiaires avec les nouvelles autorités coloniales, mais permirent
également de favoriser l'entraide sociale parmi les émigrés dans les villes comme dans les
villages. Dans les années 1960, les revenus des activités durant la saison sèche étaient
encore importants, mais pendant les années suivantes, les mandats des membres des
familles qui avaient émigré à long terme vers des villes sénégalaises telles que Touba,
capitale du mouridisme, et Dakar, ont pris une plus grande place. Les revenus des jeunes
v
ont permis de subventionner les villages et de changer les rapports de pouvoir entre
jeunes et vieux. Dans les années 1990, ce phénomène s'est transformé en une opération
commerciale internationale complexe avec un réseau financier parallèle étendu sur
plusieurs continents, car l'émigration vers l'extérieur est elle aussi devenue importante.
L’Etat a toujours essayé de faciliter les investissements agricoles par le biais des
coopératives de crédit. Il existe de nombreux documents montrant l'échec de cette
politique. L'expansion récente des réseaux commerciaux Mourides a permis la création
d'un système de crédit alternatif. Jusqu'à présent, les ONGs n'ont pas été aussi souples, ni
aussi habilitées à offrir les mêmes avantages et services. Par ailleurs, le système
d’éducation formelle a donné naissance à une élite urbaine, éduquée en Français. La
population rurale manquait de ressources et d'un intérêt réel pour l'option d'une
éducation formelle française, et a eu une préférence pour l'éducation coranique. Ceci a
contribué à une croissance importante du rôle joué par les institutions Mourides dans la
vie des paysans de la région. Les migrations sur de longues distances ont favorisé
l'avènement d'une confrérie plus sophistiquée et plus capable de tirer avantage de
politiques étatiques telles que la décentralisation, où le transfert de certains pouvoirs et
autorités aux communautés rurales leur permettent d'avoir une influence sur la politique
rurale de l’Etat. Les opérations menées par ces institutions dans les quatre villages visités
sont examinées et analysées ici. L’expansion des réseaux de télécommunication tels que
la radio commerciale, la radio rurale, le télécentre, le fax et l’Internet a fourni d’autres
moyens de développement et de croissance aux réseaux dahra et dahira Mouride. Ceuxci permettent aux familles dispersées de communiquer; d'envoyer des fonds entre pays et
continents, et de faire des investissements au Sénégal, tels que la construction de
bâtiments, etc. malgré leur absence du pays. La politique de l’Etat et les conditions de
l'environnement naturel découragent les investissements agricoles.
vi
CONTENTS
1
PURPOSE
1
2
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE 1960s AND EARLY 1970s
1
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
3
Pre-colonial and colonial origins
The Mouride movement
Wolof families in the 1960s and early 1970s
Serer society in the 1960s and early 1970s
WOLOF AND SERER FAMILIES IN THE 1990s
3.1 The family in the 1990s
3.2 The Mouride movement in the 1990s
4
11
14
15
15
17
VILLAGE INSTITITUTIONS AND THE GOVERNMENT
5.1 The colonial inheritance
5.2 Modes of interaction with the state after independence
5.3 New community associations
6
11
GOVERNMENT CREDIT INSTITUTIONS AND ADVISORY SERVICES 14
4.1 The colonial era
4.2 The 1960s and 1970s
4.3 The breakdown of state credit
5
1
4
6
9
EDUCATION AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
6.5
Information and its control
Educational institutions
Educational policy at the regional and village level
Radio and telecommunications
Religious organisations and information
19
19
20
22
27
27
27
28
30
31
7
SOCIAL INVESTMENT AND CHANGING FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS 32
8
CONCLUSION
36
ANNEX: CHANGES IN THE FINANCIAL COSTS OF MARRIAGE
38
REFERENCES
40
vii
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to my field assistant Ms Oureye Seck for her
valuable assistance with people and documents, and to Dr Abdou Fall for inviting me to
join this exciting project.
About the author
Wendy Wilson Fall is a social anthropologist who lives in Dakar, Senegal with her
family. She has researched and written on Fulbe pastoralists and carried out social impact
assessment studies in Senegal and other countries. Currently Wilson Fall is Director of
the West African Research Centre (WARC).
Address: WARC, Fann Residence, BP 5456, Dakar, Senegal
Email: wilsonf@telecomplus.sn
List of acronyms and abbreviations
CER:
Centre d’expansion rurale
CERP:
Centre d’expansion rurale polyvalent
FCFA:
Franc de la Communauté Financière Africaine
GIE:
Groupement d’intérêt économique
IFAD:
International Fund for Agricultural Development
ISRA:
l’Institut Sénégalais de Recherches Agricoles
ONCAD:
Office National de Coopération et d’Assistance pour le Développement
SATEC:
Société d’Assistance Technique et de Coopération
SODEVA:
Société de Développement et de Vulgarisation Agricole
SSA :
Sub-Saharan Africa
viii
1
PURPOSE
This report is part of a study whose purpose is to examine the impact of different
government policies on farmer investment strategies. This is being done through a
comparative study of two districts in Senegal and Kenya, (see Preface). In Senegal the
study region is Diourbel, with its three departments of Diourbel, Bambey and Mbacké,
and an areas just to the south, the arrondissement (subdistrict) of Niakhar, in the
department of Kaolack. These have been chosen partly because of the richness of earlier
studies, which enable us to document change. The particular aim of this Human
Resources Profile is to examine the following.
•
•
•
Changes in the nature of the family over time and especially since the 1960s: It is
through family institutions that people make decisions on their livelihood strategies
and how to manage their physical and financial resources.
Changes over time in the way families acquire information and judgement, and
develop their children’s capacity: This affects the ability to choose wise investments
and to manage them efficiently.
Changes over time in the way villagers influence (or participate in) leadership at
the local level and develop modes of investing in community or group enterprises,
and of reaching up to institutions, leadership and resources at higher levels: This
affects their ability to influence policy makers and to provide a favourable local
environment for their investments.
Local institutions are defined here as those which exist on a village, intra-village, and regional
level. They can be categorised in the following manner: groupings based on kinship,
residence, religious affiliation, age or gender; production units and work groups; and formal
village associations or institutions such as co-operatives. Locally elected councils and their
officials form a newly important institution mentioned by many villagers interviewed in 1999
as significant for information on governance and development issues.
2
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE 1960s AND EARLY 1970s
2.1 Pre-colonial and colonial origins
Pacification brought an end to the conflicts which had occurred in Senegalese territory
between the various nation-states, ruled by Wolof, Tukolor, Serer and Mandingue
leading families. Present day Diourbel, Thiès, and Bambey were located in the precolonial states of Cayor and Baol, both Wolof territories. The eastern areas to the south
of present day Bambey, including Niakhar, were the north-western frontiers of the Serer
kingdoms of the Sine and Saloum. Thus, the populations of the study region are mainly
Wolof and Serer. As the region lay outside of the four communes recognised as French
territory, family life and social structure in the colonial period were not affected directly by
French law. Social change instead came as a result of three major factors: the pacification of
the Senegalese territory, the new emphasis on groundnut production imposed by the French
colonial government and the spread of Islam.
1
Wolof society in the pre-colonial and early colonial period was characterised by strong class
stratification based on genealogical criteria. This ranking was composed of guer (nobles),
jambour (free families associated with the management of the kingdom), neeno (artisan caste)
and badolah (poor, but not casted, farmers). Noble inheritance was based on matrilineal lines.
With loss of power to the French there were concurrent changes in the relation of the
Wolof family to the colonial state and to the former traditional rulers. Throughout the
nineteenth century and the beginning of the 20th century caste became less and less
significant to family economy and the welfare of the average peasant. The neeno
experienced the loss of their former noble patrons and occupational specificities became
blurred (Diop, 1981, 46-71). Weavers, leatherworkers and other artisans such as
blacksmiths, gradually left their crafts to devote themselves to agriculture. Others joined
the ranks of the griot caste (praise-singers) even though their families were not originally
griot.1
There were two basic dynamics of stratification beyond that of class: privilege based on age;
and privilege based on gender. The matrilineal practices at the time of the collapse of the
Wolof states appear to have been more important among the noble classes, and these began
to change under French rule, since there were no longer royal offices to which to aspire. In
spite of the original matrilineal nature of inheritance to power, men had authority over women
in everyday life and in household and family management (Diop, 1981). By the 1960s,
although there were strong ties of affection towards the maternal side, “l’Islam a fait
prédominer le lignage paternel au sein duquel se font la succession et l’héritage” (Rocheteau,
1975: 5). Kinship links were reinforced by a preference for cousin marriage, particularly on
the maternal side.
Colonialism profoundly marked the Wolof regions of Senegal (Diop 1981: 21). The
installation of the railway running north-south (St. Louis/Dakar) at the turn of the century,
began a general movement south-east that was further encouraged by the development of
groundnut production and the commercial policies of the colonial government. The collection
and evacuation points for the groundnut harvests eventually became commercial centres,
which also favoured rural to urban migration early in the colonial period. The initial
displacements were in the direction of the towns of Thiès and Diourbel, and continued in
migration towards Kaolack in pursuit of new areas for groundnut cultivation. Thus, Wolof
society expanded westward eventually to surround the Serer communities of the Diourbel,
Kaolack and Fatick regions, and beyond the present Diourbel Region into the Saloum.
These migrations were accompanied by social change. People switched allegiance, away from
the nobility towards religious leaders. A subsistence economy was rapidly replaced by a
commercial one (Diop, 1981). This impacted on household structure and the relative
importance of family labour. The marriage age, bride wealth prices and household
development cycles, all responded to the new organisational imperatives deriving from
the shift to commercial agriculture and the increasing cash needs of families.
1 Griots are considered to have a different social position from other casted groups, based on
their assumed Serer ethnicity, compared to other casted persons whose origin as captives
connotes a foreign origin.
2
Figure 1: Mouride expansion, 1912-1958
Source: O’Brien, 1971.
3
2.2 The Mouride movement
Sheikh Amadou Bamba, the leader and spiritual head of the Mouride movement, founded
what is now the city of Touba in 1887 (Ross, 1995). The French feared he might become
a figure of opposition and exiled him in 1895. This only increased the respect felt for this
mystic. In 1907 Sheikh Amadou Bamba was permitted to return to Diourbel, but not to
Touba. However, he continued to maintain an interest in the development of Touba,
where he was buried after his death in 1927. It became the focus of an annual pilgrimage,
and the residence of his sons and chief followers (Coulon, 1997). The French eventually
established a working relationship with the Mourides, who they appreciated for their
commitment to the development of new lands with groundnut culture. The railway was
extended from Diourbel to Touba in 1931, which led to a new wave of colonisation
(Pelissier, 1966: 306). This working relationship increased their usefulness as
intermediaries:
Pendant l’époque de crise de la conquête et du début de la colonisation, cette
attitude des marabouts d’opposition à la violence et de protection des populations
leur a permis d’apparaître comme les guides, les chefs de la société wolof et de
parvenir, ainsi, a réaliser le système religieux auquel s’opposait, jusqu’ici, le
régime monarchique (Diop, 1981: 201).
Mouride leaders, some of whom benefited substantially from the French presence,
became major agents of commercialisation in the rural sector, and of urbanisation,
leading to further disruption of kinship-based groups by market competition (O’Brien,
1975: 93). The spread of their influence at the eve of independence is shown in Figure 1,
when Diourbel Region was already estimated to be over 50 percent Mouride.
Sheikh Amadou Bamba attracted many talibé (students, disciples). These in turn became
community religious leaders, or sheikhs, termed marabouts by the French, and saints by
O’Brien (O’Brien 1975). They quickly became important grassroots leaders, surpassing
traditional chiefs. Each was a disciple or relative of the major leader, and each marabout
in turn had his own talibé, who formed his dahra. The dahra, originally a Quranic
school, evolved into a working group and a mission association, formed around a sheikh.
This was the organisational unit through which Wolof farmers migrated eastwards from
the Cayor and southwards from the Djolof region. The movement transformed the family
group into a unit within a larger social group led by a religious leader. The colonisation
of new lands, although accomplished by families, was carried out within the ideological
and organisational context of Mouridism. The family evolved in secondary importance to
the dynamics of social organisation as promoted by the Mouride leadership (Copans,
1968: 23).
There were basically two types of talibé: men who came with their families to seek land
of their own and the blessings associated with the sheikh; and boys and youths known as
tak-der, who came to work for the sheikh on his personal estates, and learn from him,
and who did not expect or get land from him till after many years of service. With the
assistance of their dahra, marabouts were able to put under cultivation huge expanses of
groundnut fields, and to colonise new lands which had formerly served as free pasture in
what is now the groundnut basin. The innovation that distinguished them from older
types of Quranic school was that the principle wet-season activity of the young tak-der
4
was agricultural work for his sheikh, rather than study, although there were religious
activities in the evenings. Some sheikhs also did teaching. After several years of work,
the tak-der might be given bride price to enable him to marry, and a plot of land of his
own, but his principal reward was the spiritual blessing earned. Eventually, the original
estate of the sheikh might be depleted by his land gifts, and he might move on to new
land. The original dahra became a village. The tak-der always formed a minority of the
Mouride population, but their labour was important in building up the wealth of the
sheikhs, and in providing the organisational structure which enabled colonisation of new
land in the face of opposition from Fulani, hardships from lack of water, and isolation.
O’Brien estimated that only 3.3 percent of the groundnut production of the Diourbel
Region in 1966 came from estates owned by the marabouts, although the principal
Mouride leaders owed very large estates centred on Touba. Most came from peasant
farms (O’Brien, 1971: Table xx).
The bulk of the talibé were independent peasants working their own land with their
families, expressing their devotion to their sheikh either by post-harvest offerings, or by
working for him one day a week, (normally Wednesday). While some of the early sheikhs
acquired rights over very large areas, unlike the traditional Wolof rulers, they did not
exact payments from the peasant in return for authorisation to cultivate, relying instead
on their gifts of produce or work (O’Brien, 1975: 68). On average the marabout received
less than one-tenth of the villagers’ land or labour, (O’Brien 1975: 75). O’Brien argued
that the
...economic tribute is in fact roughly proportional to the real material services
provided by the saints: agrarian pioneers give the most (ten years of their lives)
but also receive the most (a field ultimately wrested from the previous users of the
land). It is also true that all disciples are in principle potential beneficiaries of the
social security which the brotherhood provides: the saint is nominally obliged, and
sometimes effectively acts, to help any disciple who requests a material service.
Thus, by the early 1970s the strength of the dahra and their role in intervening on the
behalf of their constituencies was already noticeable. O’Brien also noted peasant farmers
from former pioneer dahra communities were increasingly devoting a field to the KhalifaGeneral of the Mourides, rather than to a local marabout, thus increasing the strength of
its central leadership.
Rights to land, once given to a family, tended to become unalienable, and transmitted
from father to son, rather than to a nephew as under a matrilineal system. This was due
to the increasing influence of Quranic law. The family head was then responsible for
distributing land to adult members (Pelissier 1966: 129-133) The new immigrants, being
poor, came without cattle. Mouride doctrine required the talibé to entrust his savings to
his marabout, rather than to the acquisition of cattle. In consequence, cattle did not form
part of the initial farming system, but Mouride leaders and others who acquired them,
entrusted them to the Fulani (Pélissier, 1966: 340).
The dahra provided a culturally familiar institution, which provided an escape from the
marked hierarchies of pre-colonial Wolof society. The flight of poor peasants, both in a
geographic and social sense, undermined the political and economic power of the
traditional Wolof elite. It provided a social identity to casted Wolof peasants and to
5
the badolah, based on new criteria such as religious devotion, loyalty to one’s marabout,
industry and willingness to consecrate a portion of one’s harvest to a religious leader. As
we shall see below, it gave young men an acceptable reason for escaping subordination
to their family elders. It also provided a source of information and mediation regarding
the colonial administration, and the marketing system.
A new form of dahra - called dahira - began to emerge in the 1940s in urban centres and
quickly spread back to the villages. The association is organised by the followers
themselves, in general without saintly initiative. It acts to provide mutual aid between
disciples and some minimal degree of social security as well as assistance for those
seeking employment. It can also function as a kind of trade guild, giving a degree of
competitive advantage, for example, to Mouride tailors, butchers, or petty traders. And
finally it provides political organisation for the disciples and some leverage on municipal
and even state authorities (O’Brien, 1975: 73).
In the twenty years following independence, the urban dahira evolved further and began
to include Muslims who had studied in French schools. “Identification with a Muslim
brotherhood subdivides into local lodges (or clusters of lodges), nominally teaching
centres but in practice also centres of social and economic power” (O’Brien 1975: 161).
Dahra were also perceived as vehicles for affecting political opinion and activism. Recent
studies (Babou, 2000, Gueye, 2000 and P.D. Fall, 2000) reveal that this trend has
continued and developed into a world-wide financial management system within the
Mouride community, extending to the modu-modu (the small traders who work the
streets in the foreign western towns to which they have migrated). These authors agree
that while the political nature of such organisations has waned, they have significantly
multiplied their financial and socio-cultural importance.
2.3 Wolof families in the 1960s and early 1970s
O'Brien described family and kinship in Wolof villages:
The basic unit is the compound, a head of family with his wife (or wives) and
children, frequently also a younger brother of the family head and less frequently
another family dependent or labourer. The compound head allocates groundnut
fields within the family, reserving the largest proportion for himself. His position
passes upon his death to his eldest son, securing an independent landholding
(from vacant land on the village boundary if such remains, from land in a new
migrant settlement, or from within the compound [land] itself) (O’Brien, 1975:
71).
The father’s brothers took responsibility for the household in the event of the household
head’s death, if the eldest son was a child.
Younger males, even if adult and married, were subordinate to the head of the compound
(borom keur), who allocated land for the family fields cultivated under his authority
(both for food crops and groundnuts) and who also gave out smaller portions of the
family land for the younger males and the women to cultivate for their personal revenue.
Rocheteau thought this could cause internal tensions, as the younger married men often
desired to establish their own independent households, where they could be borom keur.
6
Within the paternal compound they were only borom diel, head of a cooking unit
(cuisine, menage), but not of a full production unit. As such their position was,
according to Rocheteau, not dissimilar from the surga, outsider male labourers who were
paid for their labour by being given food and a plot to cultivate. A way of leaving
without causing the compound head to lose face was to join a religious leader as a
disciple, or, alternatively, a maternal relative. Joining one or other of these accounted for
a substantial proportion of immigrants he interviewed in new villages, but other
immigrants had arrived without either tie. Youths and boys could leave home as tak-der
(Rocheteau, 1975: 3-4).
Rocheteau describes the progressive waves of eastward migration of the Wolof:
Les zones de peuplement ancien avaient déjà atteint en 1904 … des effectifs
égaux, voire supérieurs à ceux qu’on observe pour les années 50. De la même
façon, les zones correspondant à la première grande vague des migrations, entre
1904 et 1929, et qui constituent aujourd’hui le cœur du pays Mouride,
(arrondissements de Ndame, Darou Mousti, Kael) voient leur population se
stabiliser aux alentours de 1930 .… L’observation de l’influence relative du
Mouridisme dans les arrondissements de peuplement wolof fait clairement
apparaître que l’influence mouride n’est réellement majoritaire que dans les zones
correspondant à la deuxième grand vague de peuplement…(Rocheteau, 1975: 4).
This was the position circa 1958, as shown in Figure 1. As community fractions departed
for new lands, kin networks were accordingly weakened. Even those who remained were
forced to substitute or forget former more intense social and kin networks as major
portions of families moved eastwards.
Copans (1968) notes that:
...le système de parenté semble avoir une importance très relative au milieu wolof
mouride. Ce phénomène que l’on peut démontrer au niveau de la cohésion sociale
villageoise, devient encore plus significatif si l’on entreprend de comparer le rôle
des quelques réseaux de parenté existants à la manière dont sont organisés les
santanne qui sont, il faut rappeler, les seuls rapports collectifs (en dehors des
prestations aux marabouts) qui existent au niveau de l’organisation de la
production agricole.
In this he agrees with O’Brien (1975: 71):
Kinship ties are as yet infrequent in such villages, the extended family links of
each compound tending to be with the particular village and region of origin of
the compound head. The saint, in the absence of any elaborate intra-village
kinship network (such as is found in long-established villages), is the only focus of
social solidarity at the village level. This is not to deny the possibility of mutual
economic assistance between villagers, especially in labour at harvest time. But
corporate economic activity in the ex-pioneer village is devoted above all to the
fields which are set aside for the saint.
The smaller household led to the need for santaane – voluntary labour groups for
7
agricultural tasks that needed to be accomplished quickly. In one season in one village in
the 1960s 125 santaane were organised by the working population of 200, mostly for
lifting groundnuts, but also for other harvesting and weeding operations. This was an
alternative to hiring immigrant agricultural labourers or buying an animal drawn lifter.
Both the latter could be done on credit. The Wolof in this village preferred to use the
available credit to buy rice, which was used for the meal to reward the group help (Couty
and Copans, 1972).
While millet was planted initially to supply the new settlement with food, groundnut
cultivation was undertaken as soon as possible. Often it was then cultivated till
productivity dropped, when millet was reintroduced. O’Brien quotes a sample survey of
1951 as showing production per head of 0.2 tons of millet and over 0.5 tons of
groundnuts (O’Brien, 1971: 192). This left the average peasant with very little cash
surplus after he had met his obligations. Most families had also to undertake dry season
activities, often seeking work in towns or visiting urban relatives, and the sheikh might
send his tak-der on urban begging missions. Roch noted four main centres of attraction –
Thiès, Mbacké-Touba, Kaolack town and Dakar. He also notes that the towns already
had difficulties in accommodating these mainly uneducated work seekers. Of the 42
seasonal workers from the village Darou Rahmane II in 1974, 33 percent were
undertaking petty commerce, another 33 percent were pursuing crafts, and only 10
percent were wage-earners in what could be termed a modern occupation. Hence,
earnings were low. Already, Touba was important, and in Darou Rahmane II heads of
families had earned between 1500 and 3000 CFA by their activities during the three great
annual pilgrimage days (the Magal). The typical dry season migrant was a man in his
40s, often the compound head. He was estimated to earn the equivalent of a quarter to
an eighth of the value of his groundnut sales by his dry season activities (Roch, 1975).
Since groundnut sales did not represent pure profit, as costs of production have to be
deducted, the proportion of income earned in the dry season was, of course, higher.
Roch sees these activities as a means of adding value to the groundnut revenue earned,
by transforming it into the capital required to support the dry season hawking. In a few
cases the investment of the agricultural receipts sufficed to establish a small shop in the
village and even more occasionally, in one of the bigger towns that were the centres of
groundnut collection, or in Dakar (Roch, 1975: 68).
A second enquiry, which Roch made in 1969 in Missirah, showed that at the time, dry
season migration was far more common than permanent migration to a town. Amongst
the 110 compounds, there were only two to three departures per year for permanent
removal to a town. Of the 22 departures recorded for the past 10 years, 12 had gone to
Touba-Mbacké or Diourbel; six to the Dakar region, and four to other African countries
(Roch, 1975: 70-2). Roch noted also that the youth of Darou Rahmane II did not
migrate to the towns, and that they rarely went to school. If they did, it was to a Quranic
school. He noted only two departures for study; one to a primary school and one to
secondary school in St. Louis (Roch, 1975: 70).
In summary, it can be stated that the growth of Mouride movement provided new
identities for both casted peasants and non-casted farmers. New social organisations
were established using Mouride adherence as the criteria for affiliation. In the 1940s,
urban dahira also became important in addition to rural dahra. The former developed
important functions of social solidarity for Mouride urban dwellers, and was to grow in
8
importance after independence, establishing significant commercial networks as well.
2.4
Serer society in the 1960s and early 1970s
Pelissier remarked that the major difference between Serer and Wolof society was that
free people had always constituted the majority in the Serer context, while Wolof society
was considerably more stratified and hierarchical (Pelissier, 1966: 207). In fact, Serer
society has sometimes been simplistically viewed as one of two strata: the free farmer
and the griot. Gastellu identified four strata: aristocrats, free peasants, casted people, and
captives (Gastellu, 1981: 27). There were inequalities in social status. Several institutions
exist in binary opposition: the chef de village and the chef de quartier, the chefs de
habitation and simple residents; the maîtres de terre and the everyday farmer. However,
within these relations of rank is a multiplicity of forms of interaction, within age groups,
between Ego and grandparents, between wife and her maternal uncle, complicity
between nephew and maternal uncle, Ego and paternal aunt, or Ego and wife of the
maternal uncle. Each of these relations in traditional Serer society has its particular
significance. Younger people perform agricultural tasks for their elders, while women
and men specialise in production of particular crops in addition to collaboration on
certain major ones, such as millet.
The Serer overlap with the Wolof in the southern part of Diourbel Region, but the best
historical data on them comes from the arrondissement of Niakhar just to the south. There
we visited Sob, a village studied by Lericollais in the late 1960s. This area was once part of
the Wolof Kingdom of Baol, which itself seceded from the Djolof kingdom whose centre lay
further north. With the advent of colonisation and the dismantling of Baol, this territory was
attached by the French to the ‘administrative circle’ dependent on Thiès. Diourbel became the
capital of what became the new ‘circle’ of Baol around 1908. Our second Serer village,
Ngodjilème, is located in the Communauté Rurale of Ngohé, which, since independence
has been part of the arrondissement of Ndoulo in the département of Diourbel. Gastellu
studied the village1965-70, in work published in 1981.
Gastellu (1981: 20-23), reporting from various government documents, shows the Serer
during the colonial period were considered as hostile the colonial state, to Islam and to
strangers. They considered not only Europeans as strangers, but also other Senegalese
who were not Serer, though to a lesser degree. In many cases, a stranger was not
allowed to enter into the village proper, but was received on the outskirts of town. The
Serer were also considered by the colonial authorities to be hostile to technological
innovation, and interaction with private traders. Gastellu in the 1960s noted fewer users
of animal drawn implements than in Wolf villages. However, he noted that some
observers saw signs of social change by then, due to religious and commercial factors.
Serer resistance to cultural change was shown in their agriculture, which was characterised by
intensive land use and highly developed fertility maintenance, achieved through the close
association of animal husbandry with crop production and the planting of acacia albida. In
contrast to the Wolof, the Serer resisted complete dependence on groundnut production but
inserted it within their family subsistence production system:
Mais, tandis que les Wolof ont dans une large mesure substitué l’arachide à leurs
anciennes cultures vivrières, les Serer ont, du moins jusqu’ici, intégré cette culture
9
nouvelle à leur système traditionnel de production. Bien mieux, en l’associant à
leurs productions vivrières fondées naguère sur la simple alternance de la céréale
et de la jachère pâturée, ils ont élaboré de véritables assolements. Loin de
détériorer l’antique céréaliculture, l’adoption de l’arachide a donc provoqué le
perfectionnement des techniques sur lesquelles elle reposait (Pelissier, 1966: 237).
They were, in the late 1960s, still mainly dependent on agriculture. In 1970 in Gastellu’s
study villages, there were 575 men; and another 101 were reported as having outmigrated, i.e. about 15 percent. These had gone, in order of importance, to Diourbel,
(urban and rural), Sine-Saloum (rural) and the Dakar area (urban). Up to the 1950s most
out-migrants were looking for new land, and hoping for marabout support, while in the
1960s they were becoming more urban-oriented, looking for an alternative to failing
agricultural incomes. Very few women and children were reported as having migrated.
The largest number of out-migrants (72) was reported for the most recent decade, 196170, and most of these were of the Mouride persuasion, moving to rural areas. A smaller
group, 42, were Catholic, mostly moving to towns (Gastellu 1981: 475-95). In 1970
Ngohé had a Catholic mission and primary school, but poor access to a secondary
school, and hence to modern and better paying occupations. Gastellu (1981: 496)
calculated that only 10 percent of adult men and women had a secondary activity that
could be called ‘modern’ and of these, only a small minority had jobs that demanded a
relatively important qualification. Many of these latter were in-comers who had come in
to work for the Mission. Most secondary occupations remained the traditional and casted
activities.
Gastellu blamed the educational system for the poor range of activities open to the
inhabitants:
Le véritable handicap réside plus profondément, dans le système d’éducation: si
les habitants de Ngohé ont été privilégiés pour l’accès a l’enseignement primaire
grâce à l’école de la Mission Catholique, ils étaient, par contre mal placés par la
suite pour l’accès a l’enseignement secondaire, en concurrence avec les agents
des villes, non paralysés par l’urgence des travaux des champs. Il ne s’agit pas là
d’une politique consciente, mais d’une inadaptation totale de l’enseignement
sénégalais, d’origine coloniale, aux conditions du pays…. (Gastellu, 1981: 497).
He quotes an observation that even the primary school curriculum was ill adapted to rural
needs, with its insistence on the benefits of ‘modern’ civilisation, while reference to the rural
Senegalese environment was either missing or unreal.
The Serer were known for a particular kind of egalitarianism, which survived into the
1960s, according to Gastellu. He attributed this to their elaborate forms of lateral
exchanges of material goods and favours between affines and cognates, within the
patrilineal or matrilineal lines, or across these kin networks depending on the nature of
the social event in question. He identified an accumulation unit, based on matrilineal
inheritance, which dispersed the capital (mainly livestock) of the economic actors on
death amongst relatives outside their own nuclear household. The extensive networks of
gifts, and other forms of exchange and matrilineal inheritance obligations discouraged
accumulation by a few patrilineal descendants:
10
…le producteur est dépouillé du surproduit acquis par son travail au sein de
l’unité d’exploitation au bénéfice d’une unité collective d’accumulation. Ainsi, les
gains obtenus ne servent qu’à satisfaire des besoins immédiats sans jamais
déboucher sur une accumulation individuelle (Gastellu, 1981: 66).
As within Wolof society during the colonial period, its male head directed the family
compound (or concession, as it is termed in census lists). During the colonial period each
compound head maintained a list of persons for purposes of paying the head tax. Before
the land law of 1964 it was the maîtres de terre (also usually the male head of
household) who had responsibility for decisions regarding land use and distribution, with
some fields being family fields under his direction, and others allocated to adult members,
male and female, to provide for their individual needs. Already by the time of Gastellu’s
investigations, the main functions of the concession head were social and administrative,
and the economic units were the individual cuisines or menages within it. In Gastellu’s
sample, just fewer than half the concessions had only one economic farming unit, the rest
having two to four farm units (Gastellu, 1981: 67). The Serer village household often
included more generations than the Wolof compound. For example, in Ngodjilème, there
were 20 households with three generations active in production activities on shared
lands, as opposed to 10 with only one generation and 17 with two generations (Gastellu,
1981: 79).
Within this household-based segmentation, each individual belonged both to his quartier
(the neighbourhood of residence) and his ‘neighbourhood group’, a poor approximation
in English of a spatially defined group named Kentand in Serer, which is based on
common kin linkages and is often called upon for group labour needs. In Ngodjilème in
1970 there were still 442 people active in the Kentand of the village, indicating its
importance to the village’s social and economic life. The post of Djaraaf, or chef de
quartier, is also reported to have existed at this time (Gastellu, 1981: 63).
Despite his emphasis on the stability of Serer social institutions Gastellu noted one
important change without commenting very much on it. This was a massive shift of
adherence to Islam (particularly to the Mouride branch) which took place in the 1950s,
although without the strong sheikh-talibé relationship characteristic of the Wolof
(Gastellu, 1981: 457-68). He reported 78 percent were Muslim, 12 percent Christian,
and 10 percent animist (Gastellu, 1981: 357).
In summary, it can be said that even in the 1960s there were few essential differences in
the family structure of the two ethnic groups. Critical differences existed in the nature of
process (family decision-making, wealth distribution) and function (more maternal family
importance in the Serer community and family).
3
WOLOF AND SERER FAMILIES IN THE 1990s
3.1 The family in the 1990s
In both Serer and Wolof villages the extended family compound remains characteristic,
and research carried out in the Departments of Diourbel and Bambey in 1992-3 found:
11
…a preponderance of fairly large compounds (an average of six women, one man
and fourteen children) and with a tendency for all the members of the compound
to be eating together as one unit (68 percent of the compounds were found to be
functioning as one consumption unit during the dry season). Male out-migration
to urban areas gives an additional dimension to the compound units: men from
each family live together in towns and their wives and children visit them there.
Thus the composition of the compound units can vary dramatically from day to
day (David and Niang, 1995: 35).
Nevertheless, there appears to be a strong contrast to the 1960s. Gastellu (1981), for
example, found the most typical production unit to consist of one man and one or two
women. While allowance has to be made for the fact that Gastellu was observing the
farming season and David in the dry season, there does seem to be an increasing sexual
imbalance within the rural family. The extended family unit takes on more importance
because of the absence of men, given that many decisions and some important work roles
remain in the male sphere.
While Wolof society is not characterised by extensive lateral sharing of wealth between
affines or along matrilineal kinship lines, in the present era, newlywed wives customarily
spend significant amounts of cash on gifts to the husband’s family, and this is also true
for the first naming ceremony of a new couple. Community solidarity beyond kinship
lines and the immediate household continues to have great significance in Wolof society,
to the extent that kinship in most cases is only slightly more determinant than religious
institutional networks.
In Ngodjilème, young men marry and start a household between the ages of 20 and 25,
usually with young women of their village. They remain in the compound of their fathers
where they receive their own room or house. If their father should die, the management
of the household goes to the younger brother of the father. If the latter is not living or
not present, the oldest son assumes responsibility. In Sob young men also marry around
the age of 20 to female relatives, and reside in their father’s compound. This information,
when compared with the findings of Gastellu and Pelissier, indicates that the differences
noted between Serer and Wolof community life and marriage customs have continued to
the present era. What has changed is the level of cash and the direction of cash
expenditures in each case.
When the assembly of labour is needed, it is generated through the use of non-kin based
labour groups, such as the santaane. This lessens the need for heavy social investment in
family ties. Wolof society is rather characterised by considerable person-to-person credit,
debt and gift arrangements, particularly among women from different kinship groups (i.e.
for weddings, baptisms and savings societies or tontins).
During the era of structural adjustment the perceived need for cash by the average Wolof
villager dweller has increased several fold. In the villages of Darou Rahmane II and
Ndiamsil Sessène we found a marked shift from conditions described for the period
between the mid-1970s to mid-1980s. With the end of subsidies for peasant farmers,
more youths have fallen back on their family Mouride networks to find ways of earning
cash for family subsistence needs. The closing of numerous factories in the Thiès and
12
Dakar regions as well as the closing of the national railway to regular daily clientele have
led to a search for work in new directions. In Ndiamsil Sessène, elders reported that
more than 10 youths had migrated in all directions, to Dakar, Touba, and Europe. Due to
Darou Rahmane II’s proximity to Touba many of the young men have migrated to that
growing urban centre. Even in the Serer villages of Sob and Ngodjilème, elders attested
to the fact that many young men who in earlier times would have been farmers are now
abroad earning cash. Village and kin contacts influence the direction of out-migration. In
the latter two villages, there has apparently been more out-migration to Dakar where
there are village-linked associations and other personal contacts to assist the migrants.
Many young men had left for Dakar, Kaolack, Mbour, and Fatick. Some had even gone
as far as Richard Toll to work in the sugar industry or to set up commerce there.
David’s larger sample permits some quantification. In five of her six villages 70-80
percent of the men were away in the dry season, while in the remaining one it was 60
percent. Of these, 52 percent were seasonal migrants, four percent had been away one to
two years, 18 percent three to five years and 26 percent over five years. Thus, compared
with Gastellu’s time, the percentage of men on long-term migration had risen
considerably, from about 20 percent to about 35 percent. Their destinations were also
very different: 70 percent had gone to Dakar, 20 percent had gone to a foreign country
(Italy, eight percent, France five percent, America five percent, Ivory Coast two
percent). Only 10 percent had gone to other areas of Senegal, five percent to another
part of Diourbel and five percent to Casamance (David and Niang, 1995: 43-44). South
Africa has recently become a major destination for Senegalese traders, with hundreds
going there every year.
For reasons that may be connected with their educational background, few of these men
have found skilled work. In David’s sample, 46 percent were street sellers, 18 percent
taxi or lorry drivers, 12 percent travelling salesmen, 12 percent mechanics or tailors
(David and Niang, 1995: 44). All the women in her sample received remittances from
their husbands, and most also received clothes and food. The few employed workers sent
back an average of US$39 per month; the self-employed managed only US$22. The
average was $27 - barely enough to feed a woman and her children. Harvests generally
provide food for only four to five months per year. Food is the first priority for
remittance income; other expenditures in order of priority were said by a group of
migrants in two villages to be house construction, carts and horses, clothes, stone
perimeter fences for the compound, and the payment of taxes and debts (David and
Niang, 1995: 45). Increased amounts of cash circulate in both Wolof and Serer
communities for ceremonial and life-cycle functions such as marriage, baptisms,
communions, funerals and the return from the Hajj.
As David comments, this leads to an interesting situation in which a large number of
compounds are effectively managed by women, yet are headed by men. In her sample,
the compound head’s first wife managed 32 percent of the compounds, the compound
head being in Dakar for the dry season. But the compound head maintains his control
over the family and farm, and for all important decisions a woman must send a letter with
the taxi-man to her husband to take his advice. However, many fewer men than before
take an active role in farming in the wet season. While an average of five men are absent
from each compound, only two come back during the rainy season to perform
supervisory tasks and tasks which are regarded still as strictly male, such as clearing
13
fields and operating all the machinery for seeding, weeding and harvesting. Women do
not use machines or carts (David and Niang, 1995: 36, 46-9). The manual labour gap on
the fields has to be filled by women, children, and any seasonal labour they can employ.
Remittances are not used for hiring labour; the seasonal labourers are given seed and
land to plant in return for their labour, but only one third of the compounds sampled had
adequate seed and land to spare to get share-cropping labour. Serer women are less
likely to employ labour than Wolof women are, but there is also a somewhat lower level
of male out-migration from Serer villages.
In terms of the ratio of available labour to grain production potential within the context
of existing cash needs, many farmers have opted to cultivate limited fields for millet and
to rely on family subsidies for the purchase of rice.
3.2 The Mouride movement in the 1990s
During this era links between rural and urban dahra have strengthened and multiplied.
Collaboration between various dahra takes place several times a year for the organisation
of various religious festivals and holidays in Darou Mousty, Touba, and Prohan. For
these reasons, the role of the dahra has become increasingly diversified and important to
rural Mourides. As in earlier years, affiliation with a dahra also brings access to wide
information networks and financial opportunities. As the state has been less and less able
to provide social assistance to the rural population and at the same time less vocal
regarding the future political and ideological direction of the country, the dahra has taken
on a special social role as a point of reference for moral or spiritual matters, and also for
developing a world view in an increasingly urbanised and fast-changing society. It has
become a sort of anchor for many who would otherwise feel overcome by all the changes
which have taken place in the last ten years, particularly in family life.
We have seen in this chapter that as the Mouride community expanded eastwards, they
exerted influence on the Serer community and adherence from such communities was not
only significant but also decisive in the growth of Mouridism. By the time of the 1988
census, the Mourides were the substantial majority of the Diourbel Region (Barry et al,
2000). The rural dahra, and the urban dahira, became important institutions for the
reproduction of knowledge, social ties, and even financial networks among the Mouride.
Due to the facilities available with this resource, out-migration to urban centres in
Senegal as well as abroad have become commonplace as youth ascend to the decisionmaking position that was once reserved for elderly men. Increased cash access and
mobility have created an unprecedented opportunity for household decision-making for
young men in the region, as their families increasingly depend on their contributions for
survival and farm investment.
4
GOVERNMENT CREDIT INSTITUTIONS AND ADVISORY SERVICES
The perceived poverty of the peasants and their inability, unwillingness, ignorance and
lack of experience in occidental-derived programs for investment led the state to provide
institutions for credit and agricultural guidance.
14
4.1 The colonial era
The credit institutions which existed on the village or intra-village level in the colonial
period were based on kin affiliations or regional networks with rural entrepreneurs, often
people who were well placed in the colonial administration. Interviews in the field
indicated that Wolof peasants remember such a period as far removed from current
conditions and probably not as comfortable for them. Some nostalgia is expressed for the
sort of inter-family solidarity which existed earlier, but the growth of alternative forms of
accessing investment monies were welcomed. Conditions were harsh in that the farmers
carried most of the risk, and choices for terms almost non-existent. However, the
colonial administration was omnipresent and to a large extent this was the only credit
system available except for the occasional trader. Farmers therefore responded positively
towards the colonial government’s Sociétés de Prévoyance (Providence Societies),
established in 1910.
Some farmers appreciated the Providence Societies, and a great many found ways to
exploit them for personal gain. Sometimes fictitious relatives and family members were
listed to increase loan possibilities. However, the large majority did not join in the early
days. In 1915 membership was made compulsory for all heads of household. Most
farmers, according to O’Brien, saw these structures as just another manifestation of
colonial power, manipulation, and interference. Interest rates were high at 25 percent, in
view of the absence of risk the colonial administration enjoyed. Annual subscriptions
were low and helped encourage farmers to enter the cash economy. All decisions were
made by the French administration. However, the Mouride establishment was able to
benefit, as their large agricultural estates were often equipped through this programme.
In general, fungicide, fertiliser, food, and seed loans went to the more wealthy and
powerful. It was not an institution created to bail out impoverished farmers. These
societies remained the dominant institution of agricultural administration throughout the
colonial period (O’Brien, 1975: 125). The functions of the institution grew steadily with
time, and in 1933 the societies were empowered to buy and sell agricultural produce.
Large quantities of groundnut seed were distributed each year.
The administrative character and name of the Providence Society changed in the
transitional period leading up to Senegalese independence. In 1947 and 1953 the
principle of voluntary membership was restored, with an elected management committee.
However, in 1960 the Societies were formally abolished, to be replaced by new
structures.
4.2 The 1960s and 1970s
After independence rural credit and advisory services were delivered by expanded
parastatal organisations charged with supporting agricultural production. Such
institutions were an outgrowth of the earlier government policy that organised farmers
into co-operatives.
Co-operatives and ONCAD
The Co-operative Programme was developed and extended with the partial
nationalisation of the groundnut trade after independence (Gaye, 2000). A state
marketing board purchased the groundnut crop from the producers, who were all
15
organised into co-operatives. It worked through the Office National de Co-operation et
d’Assistance pour le Developpement or ONCAD. O’Brien explains that:
...the government by 1968 had made it necessary for virtually all commercial
farmers to join a co-operative in order to sell their crops. Membership by 1966
included 80 percent of compound heads in the groundnut-producing region.
This did not mean they were democratically controlled. State officials and local notables
dominated them:
....the co-operative movement increased the institutional resources for rural
notables... Co-operatives had involved local notables in a national apparatus of
economic and political control, an institutional grid in rural areas which could
take over from the out-going colonial administration (O’Brien, 1975: 131-133).
The centrally controlled marketing co-operatives, offering the controlled government
price, were characterised by lax accounting, fraud and inadequate supervision, which
eventually led to farmer disillusionment and also crippled the state. The combination of
drought and monopolistic policy, moreover, led to outstanding peasant debts to the cooperatives, and 20 percent were unpaid in 1970 (O’Brien, 1975: 140). These increased in
the next decade (Gaye, 2000).
[ONCAD] allocated groundnut seed credit on a tax-roll basis – each household
was allocated a fixed amount of seed credit for each adult household member on
government tax rolls. Borrowers were charged a flat, in-kind interest of 24
percent that was deducted from the value of their harvest at commercialisation…
In theory, delinquent borrowers were denied future loans but, in practice, the
government tolerated low repayment rates as it periodically reduced or eliminated
the amount owed, particularly in response to poor harvests or when elections
approached. Borrowers learned to expect the periodic debt annulments,
repayment rates were low, and the resulting outstanding debts became a crippling
burden on state finances (Warning and Sadoulet, 1998: 118).
Opinion now in Senegal blames ONCAD’s laxity. The journalist Abdou Karim Diarra
reported in the newspaper, Le Matin that this organisation did more to enrich the
educated minority than the poor majority. He wrote that much of the wealth of today
comes from this period of scandalous management. ONCAD carried a debt estimated at
100 billion (FCFA) which was finally refinanced in 1998 when the debt was purchased by
the BCEAO (Central Bank of West Africa). (“Quand l’Etat veut prolétariser les
paysans,” Le Matin samedi 13 – dimanche 14, mars 1999).
Extension services
As a gesture of support to Senegal after the ending of preferential tariffs (Gaye, 2000),
France created the Société d’Assistance Technique et de Coopération (SATEC), which
was opened in 1964. This structure had a primary objective of providing agricultural
training to Senegalese groundnut farmers, with the view to increasing overall
productivity. For four years from 1964 to 1968, this structure trained farmers in seed
selection, and distributed small farm equipment at subsidised cost and through credit.
16
This intense intervention resulted in the doubling of previous groundnut production
levels. The French withdrew, as it appeared that the major goal of SATEC had been
achieved. The Senegalese government had created the parastatal organisation Société de
Développement et de la Vulgarisation Agricole (SODEVA) in 1964, so that it could
develop in parallel to SATEC operations, and take over most of its functions. This
structure had similar objectives to SATEC, with a strong emphasis on improved
cultivation techniques and the integration of agriculture with livestock management by
encouraging the use of pairs of oxen for animal traction. It was also subsidised by the
state (interviews with SODEVA staff, 1999). In fact, farmers rapidly came to prefer
horse or donkey traction (Faye et al., 2000).
4.3 The breakdown of state credit
Under structural adjustment in the 1980s the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank required Senegal to gradually divest the state of most of its parastatal
organisations, large civil servant payrolls, and control of light industries. The first half of
the decade witnessed the dismantling of a great variety of state supported enterprises,
including agricultural credit programs. In the civil service, special programs offered
rewards for early retirement. As the civil service began to shrink, and as salaries
remained virtually stagnant while costs on imported goods continued to rise, rural
producers lost two important sources of cash: government supported subsidies of
agricultural equipment and materials and remittances from relatives who worked in the
public sector.
From 1985 the Senegalese Government introduced the Nouvelle Politique Agricole
(NPA). Two key objectives of these reforms were the disengagement of the state from
agricultural markets and the ‘responsibilisation’ of the private sector and the producers
themselves for input provision and output marketing (Warning and Sadoulet, 1998).
SODEVA lost 75 percent of its personnel, signalling the beginning of the end of its role
as a major actor in groundnut production. The withdrawal of the state also reduced
access to improved seed and small farm equipment (Faye et al., 2000).
At this time, SODEVA organised small farmers in the Sections villageoises, with the aim
of creating more efficient co-operatives, less under state tutelage, as the main channel for
formal credit (Gaye, 1987). A section has two components, the general membership and
the governing board. The active membership typically comprises around 50 individuals
from a village or a village quarter, and is primarily made up of male household heads,
although dependent males and women can, in principal, be members. The members of a
section elect a governing board, including a president, a secretary, and a treasurer. The
president functions as the village intermediary, and has primary responsibility for
determining how much groundnut seed credit to allocate to each member of the section
in each year. If any member of the section defaults on his loan the entire section receives
no further credit until the outstanding loan is repaid. Rather than forego future loans, the
members of a section generally pool their resources to repay the defaulting member’s
loan (Warning and Sadoulet, 1998). In the late 1990s SODEVA was phased out, to be
replaced by the Agence Nationale de Conseil et d’Assistance aux Rurale. Credit
provision is anticipated through World Bank support. This is not yet operational.
In the mid 1980s agricultural inputs were no longer available at subsidised prices, and the
17
credit programs which made their purchase possible disappeared (Gaye, 2000). Most
formal sector credit is now based on group guarantees under various development
projects, particularly those funded by the European Community, the German
Government, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) funded through various
sources. In interviews at Ndiamsil Sessène in 1999, it was clear that villagers confused
which inputs had come from which donors, via large, regional organisations that were far
removed from the daily life of the farmers. Such organisations held quarterly or annual
meetings to which villagers were expected to send representatives, who then reported
back to their village elders. This was reported for both men and women’s groups
belonging to national and regional federations under the CNCR (Cadre Nationale des
Conseils Ruraux). Our interviews showed that not all villages had access to these
sources, creating hardship because groundnuts are a particularly credit-intensive crop;
seed is expensive and only about ten groundnuts are yielded for each seed planted
(Warning and Sadoulet, 1998).
While formal credit is much reduced, informal credit is probably expanding. The
Mauritanian traders who, before the late 1980s, could be found throughout the rural
sector selling goods and providing, in some instances, seasonal or other forms of shortterm credit for agricultural and household goods, have been almost completely replaced
by Mouride traders, known as the Baol-Baol. They are known for their pre-agricultural
season loans for agricultural inputs and their unfailing return at the harvest period for
payment. The Baol-Baol are part of the national and international Mouride commercial
network, albeit representing the lowest rung which works in the most isolated and cashpoor communities. Today they can also be seen in rural weekly markets where they sell
agricultural equipment for credit or trade in kind. In spite of rural development projects
which offer credit to farmers at lower interest rates (close to international indices) they
still dominate the rural credit market. Farmers tend to turn to these informal credit
mechanisms because of easy access, cultural proximity (no need of French, no need of
literacy), and timeliness.
One possible gain from this shift in credit supply is the return of money into the rural
sector, or at least the reduction of money travelling outside of Senegal. However, it
appears that most of the money traders earn from providing cash credit and other
agricultural related services (seeds, agricultural machinery and implements, fertiliser)
goes to urban centres or a few fast growing villages.
In summary, the rise and fall of the groundnut market is linked to the growth and demise
of many state institutions. As the influence and investment power of the central
government has waned, the role of non-governmental voluntary associations has
increased, although they have not fully replaced the services that were once offered by
the central government. In particular, credit opportunities have significantly dwindled
since the changed economic policies of the Senegalese government in the early 1980s.
18
5
VILLAGE INSTITITUTIONS AND THE GOVERNMENT
5.1 The colonial inheritance
The colonial period was marked by a gulf between rulers and ruled in terms of language,
education, culture and law. O’Brien tell us that
A dominant culture and mode of political and economic organisation were thus
forcibly imposed upon an agglomeration of subordinated societies now contained
within the arbitrarily drawn boundaries of the new colonial territory of Senegal…
Official French policy…hinged on the debate between the tendencies labelled as
‘assimilation’ and on the other hand ‘association’. Assimilation...was never seen
as anything other than a very long term objective, and in application never
reached beyond a small educated and urbanised elite, (while) association as a
policy principle indicated little more than a vaguely defined paternal tutelage
(O’Brien, 1975: 89).
Most elite Senegalese were separated from the masses by the educational system which
concentrated them in the cities. Some rural elites were created by the civil servants
posted to various large villages or small towns, This led to the great importance of
persons who could act as intermediaries between the peasants and the authorities.
The French colonial administration was a bureaucratic hierarchy in which the upper
levels of officialdom were exclusively French, and this extended down to the
Commandant de Cercle and the Chef de Subdivision. It was only after this level that
local actors could aspire to participation in the administration, through structures such as
the Sociétés de Prévoyance that have been described earlier. The highest administrative
level available to them outside of the groundnut commercialisation system was that of
canton chief. The canton chief’s functions, however, were essentially that of tax
collection, military recruitment, and the provision of compulsory labour. Such
appointments (for the French generally selected these personnel, usually not from the
traditional ruling family) were accompanied by specialised training and 18 months
military training (O’Brien, 1975: 97). O’Brien says this about the canton chief:
The canton chief stood at the cultural and political boundary between ruler and
ruled, and his position as privileged intermediary could be used to establish
considerable independent authority… He was a sub-tyrant whose excesses could
only be curbed by the occasional intervention of superior tyrants. His power
within a narrowly defined sphere was great, but the basis of his former legitimacy
(when it existed) had disappeared as he no longer performed any function valued
by the mass of his subjects (O’Brien, 1975: 99-100).
Gastellu (1981) describes the greatest political debate in Senegal at the end of the
Second World War as the issue of French citizen privilege in the four communes versus
the classification of ‘native’ in the remaining areas of the country, urban and rural. This
classification affected the way in which rural people perceived their relationship to
political and administrative posts and the services that they should provide. Leopold
Sedar Senghor’s campaign of September 1948 was the first of its kind seen in rural
Senegal (Gastellu, 1981: 442). According to Gastellu, it awakened the Serer peasantry to
19
the fact that they belonged to a new national entity, and not only to an isolated rural
community. They were no longer subject only to traditional political actors and religious
leaders; they began to understand that the State was another option for solving problems.
During the colonial era local people attempted to retain control of their institutions
within the new framework of a foreign polity. Kin relations and traditional posts such as
that of Djaraaf among the Serer, or village Marabout among the Wolof, continued to be
important to the extent that they functioned as protectors or intermediates between the
village and the larger society. This can be illustrated by three conflicts in Ngohé in 194951. One concerned the succession to the post of Chef de Canton of Mbayar, which was
on the regional level, another was regarding the preparation for the national level
legislative elections of 1951, and the third was around the question of which office had
legitimate control of Ngohé town itself. The two contestants from the Ngodjilème
quarter were both descendants of the founder of the quarter, one from the maternal side
and the other of paternal descent. Initially this conflict was brought before the colonial
authorities as a land dispute, centred on control of a mystical tree, which had the
connotation of the site of the ‘chief of cults’ for the area. In fact there was a
syncretisation in local Serer tradition that whoever had charge of the tree was also the
intermediary between the community and the colonial administration. Effectively, the
patrilineal line in the first instance of court intervention gained this position. There were
several different court actions, wherein the lamanat rights were at one time abolished,
then put back in play, this time to the advantage of the uterine line. Finally in 1952, after
court review in Diourbel, this post, fought over through the metaphor of a cultural
symbol, was again returned to the patrilineal descendants of the original lamanat family
(Gastellu, 1981: 445).
Within this context, expedience suggested a preference for religious leaders rather than
traditional chiefs as intermediaries in the Wolof zone. Some religious leaders were used
by the French to conduct periodic campaigns to increase local agricultural production.
Sometimes these situations were used by Mouride leaders to increase their own power
and prestige. Wolof chiefs tried to use their administrative status to act against Muslim
opponents, but they increasingly lost their following (O’Brien, 1975: 105).
5.2
Modes of interaction with the state after independence
The co-operatives
During the early 1960s, as the new Senegalese state attempted to re-organise the rural
world, government was still experienced through the payment of taxes or the
participation of villagers and their leaders in various agricultural programs and
particularly the co-operatives. Although the co-operatives had the purpose of provision
of credit, marketing of members’ produce, and supply of agricultural implements, the
government was very much present and co-operative officials were important
intermediaries with government. The only other major vehicles of interaction with the
state were party politics, and later, the animation movement. Party politics allowed for
some farmer participation but also provided for more instances of influence, manipulation
and political favours. In many rural communities access to government services or high
visibility when selections were being made for project eligibility, was conditioned by
party affiliation. The animation movement, on the other hand, initially had a distinctly
20
different aura of community development.
Animation Rurale
Animation Rurale was introduced in 1959 and was initially directed by the Prime
Minister, Mamadou Dia. In January 1960, the Dia government launched an 18-month
survey, which was conducted by a French firm. The government did not accept all of the
study’s findings, but the First Development Plan was significantly influenced by it. The
plan urged universal education, the use of French as a common national language,
promotion of inter-regional trade, ending the isolation of the so-called peripheral regions
outside of the main groundnut producing zones, and diversification of Senegal’s
economy to reduce dependency upon groundnut monoculture. Animation Rurale was
therefore supposed to create development institutions which would promote modern
agricultural techniques in a broad spectrum (millet, rice, cotton, sugarcane, fruits,
vegetables, livestock) and to provide inputs. It was also supposed to promote civic
activity and self-help. The program included 1) rural expansion centres 2) multifunctional
co-operatives and 3) the rural animation service. Of all that was proposed, what remains
today is a very weak animation service on the sub-prefecture level, and the CER (Centre
d’Expansion Rurale) which has now become the CERP (Centre d’Expansion Rurale
Polyvalent). Although the plan of 1963 provided CFA 700 million for buildings and
vehicles, it made no provisions for ensuring staff for these properties (Gellar et al., 1978:
55). This condition has plagued the CER, now CERPs, throughout the last two decades.
Writings on Animation Rurale point out that its mission of promoting peasant–
government dialogue, promoting socialism and encouraging self-help and selfdetermination ensured that the program would have a short life. Its objective of
recruiting village volunteers as “animators” and challenging local bureaucracy in the end
made the program unpopular with the government. The role of the CERP today includes
what is left of the Animation program. This is mainly through the inclusion of one
woman staff at each CERP (where there is complete staffing) as an animatrice to help
technical staff transmit their message, particularly to women.
The successor CERPs now collaborate with NGOs working in their regions and tend to
cover those communities which are either not too far away or which have some NGO
support which assists them logistically. This problem of lack of logistical support from
the government is a continuing theme.
The Communauté Rurale and decentralisation
The era of structural adjustment has seen the replacement of the old-style government
institutions with a new element of local government, the elected council for the
Communauté Rurale, a subdivision of the arondissement which groups several villages
together. Structural adjustment started in 1984, when the state began slowly
implementing programs recommended by the World Bank and the New Agricultural
Policy. The second phase followed the devaluation of the FCFA in 1993. The impact of
the State’s withdrawal was greatly magnified when devaluation brought into high relief
the cost of living without subsidies, as imported foodstuffs and other commodities had
become part of normal expectations.
21
During the late 1980s, as government parastatals such as SODEVA were being
dismantled, local government and technical agencies experienced increased pressures
from local communities for technical as well as social assistance and support. While the
urban headquarters of each department were given the status of self-governing
municipality in 1960, decentralisation, although a stated objective of government policy
from the early 1980s, did not reach the rural areas until the mid-l990s. The law
determining the transfer of responsibility for managing rural communities from subprefects to presidents of rural councils was passed in 1990, but the law concerning the
Local Community Code (the so-called Decentralisation Law) was promulgated in
February 1996 and only took effect on 1 January 1997. During the 1990s more than five
new political parties were formed, so this drew considerable public attention. Elections
would no longer be just a question of the ruling party and one opposition party.
Senegal currently has 320 Communautés Rurales among the 10 regions, each with its
own administrative structure and elected officials. A typical rural community groups
together a number of neighbouring hamlets and villages. These are sometimes widely
dispersed, but in principal share common natural resources and certain administrative
services. An elected rural council deliberates on legislative issues, and votes an executive
leadership. Each rural council has several working committees. Posts on each committee
may be filled by an elected official from any party. These committees work on particular
sectors, such as education, land use and tenure, health, and development initiatives.
Local communities have the power to grant, assign, repossess and allocate government
property (land is the most important). They also have the authority to set conditions for
allocating public lands, maritime and river rights. To some extent, rural communities also
have authority over local health services, sports and youth programs and services,
primary school maintenance, and the option to seek funding from private sources
(Waldstein et al. 1999).
Rural populations in many areas feel that they may actually be able to control and initiate
change in their localities. In this sense, the formidable cynicism that has developed over
the past several decades has reduced somewhat. It is striking that all villages visited
during the field studies of l999 mentioned the rural councils for the settlement of land
disputes, rather than a village notable. In Ngodjilème, a village notable has been elected
to the rural council, giving continuity to the custom of having such a person deliberate or
intervene regarding land use. In general informants mentioned their satisfaction that
decentralisation was bringing governance issues and responsibilities closer to home, but
few understand what this may mean in real terms. For instance, interviews indicate that
most peasant farmers either do not trust even a local administration to re-invest their tax
dollars equitably, or they do not understand that the purpose of taxes is to raise revenues
for local development and maintenance, or both. It is therefore too soon to judge the
impact of these new administrative processes.
5.3
New community associations
Town associations
Some villages are represented in the urban areas by town associations created by people
originating in a particular village. These associations, in addition to offering material
support (see below) are important for circulating information. Informants said that they
22
often rely on such associations for crucial information needed in household or farm
management. They also provide information about year-round urban opportunities, for
example, in education, as well as seasonal opportunities for unskilled labour. This was
particularly so in the case of Ngodjilème.
The Sob Town Association is based in Dakar and has its own office. It has established a
fund, part of which is managed in Dakar and part in Sob village. This association
organises a yearly traditional wrestling match in the village, which raises considerable
funds. This year, the returns were sufficient to purchase four cattle for fattening, one
each being distributed to the four sections of the village.
Neither Ndiamsil Sessène nor Darou Rahmane II, both Wolof villages, have town
associations.
23
Village Development Associations
Village development associations seem to have grown with the withdrawal of the state
and the growing importance of NGOs in Senegal. Since NGOs normally require a local
formally organised collaborating structure, villages have quickly recognised the value of
such organisations. In some instances villagers have simply re-named the original cooperative or section as the village development association or committee depending on
the organisation’s requirement. What differentiates these associations from their more
centrally managed predecessors is the absence of government control (though not of
national politics). Such associations may be created either in response to a particular
village problem, or in response to a national movement for organising various sectors of
the rural economy, such as the Federation of Senegalese NGOs.
The village development association has taken up some functions that before were
carried out through kinship duties. New agricultural enterprises, village health and
sanitation, new water works and the acquisition of new animals for individual herds now
occur through association and participation as much as through family networks.
However in the sample of villages visited, there was significant variation in terms of
levels of organisation. Some of this variation was clearly linked to the presence or
absence of NGO activity, extension activity, or parastatal technical assistance (such as
that provided through ISRA or SODEVA).
Ndiamsil Sessène has a GIE (groupement d’intérêt économique) which includes both
men and women. In addition, Ndiamsil Sessène belongs to a regional association which
groups some 20 villages which co-operate on various self-help projects or in submitting
assistance requests. Through these mechanisms they have received training from
RODALE International (an NGO) and from the CNRA (Centre National de Recherche
Agricole). A year ago, a storage building was built for the village women by the IFAD,
through the auspices of the regional network to which they belong.
In Sob, there are four different village development associations. There are two women’s
association (mentioned above), one group of men and women responsible for the
management of the village borehole (which involves collecting monies for amortisation
costs), and one group of men and women who manage the fund established by the Sob
Town Association. Sob is affiliated to the Committee of Village Development at the
Communauté Rurale level, which deals with development issues for the entire territory
which it represents.
In Ngodjilème, there are village representatives who participate in a regional association
for their zone. In early 1999 they had no locally executed project a local or international
NGO. On the other hand, it does not appear that any one from Ngodjilème has sought
out such collaboration with any particular NGO, illustrating the difficulties in information
circulation. Villages that belong only to regional structures but have not evolved to the
point where they have a local association that acts on its own to secure funding or NGO
partnerships are at a disadvantage. However the regional adherence has given some
village members of the association training in certain agricultural techniques at a group
training session, held in Bambey.
The village of Darou Rahmane II has no village development association. It has also
24
never been visited by any NGOs or other development agencies proposing development
activities or projects.
Women’s Village Associations
There are various types of women’s village associations. There are those formed by
women in a village out of a shared need, and others that are created after contact with
outside organisations such as other women’s organisations or local and national nongovernment voluntary organisations (NGOs). Sometimes, women’s organisations are
committees which represent either all the women in the village, or which all those
involved in a particular activity such as gardening or animal husbandry. These are
considered partners or sub-groups of the village wide development association.
Sob has two women’s associations, a testimony to the strength of organising ability of
people in the village, and probably also to the impact of their town association. They
engage in income-generating activities to bring in funds that are reinvested or shared
among the members. Most activities are related to agriculture. One group, part of a
larger organisation created by the rural commune service at Niakhar, is funded by
member contributions of FCFA 500, which allowed them both to gain their official status
and to re-distribute FCFA 7,500 among themselves as a credit. For each FCFA 500, the
women are required to reimburse FCFA 1,000. This worked so well that the women of
this organisation were able to open up an account at the Credit Mutual Society in Fatick,
with the sum of FCFA 83,725. The bank then loaned them FCFA 200,000 which they
reimburse at the rate of FCFA 45,125 per month in six months (distributed among 40
women).
In Ngodjilème, there is a women’s economic interest group, or groupement d’intérêt
économique (GIE). Each participant makes her own choice of economic activity. Most
are centred around a nearby weekly market. The majority purchases millet locally which
they sell in smaller portions at the market. They do not at the moment have their own
land for vegetable gardening. Although they once obtained from the village chief a plot
of land to work on communally, the lack of water from a well or borehole eventually
discouraged them. Since then, they have not engaged in communal activities. The GIE
still meets in the case of a shared problem, at which time they all contribute to a common
fund to respond to that problem. Thus, although the women intended to conduct
collaborative activities through their GIE, what actually happens seems more a
formalisation of traditional responses to emergencies. Lack of investment money, in spite
of the fact that Ngodjilème benefits from occasional contributions from its town
association, keeps them from doing more.
Probably due to the regular influence of various NGOs, the women of Ndiamsil Sessène
have their own collective farm plot. On this plot, they cultivate millet, groundnuts,
cowpeas, and sorrel. This allows them to gain a small income which they share in reinvesting for the maintenance of their agricultural activities. In addition to this activity,
women cultivate the same crops individually when possible, engage in small commerce in
neighbouring towns, and in small livestock raising. The earnings from such activities can
either be contributed to collective enterprises or used for individual needs.
The women of Darou Rahmane II were very vocal regarding their lack of a women’s
25
association. They thought it was unlikely that they would get their own collective farm
plot to generate funds for women-specific needs such as maternal and child care. They
seemed frustrated because they feel an increasing need for cash to meet household needs.
This is the village in the field study which gave most evidence of diminished importance
of kin networks, but the dahra seem unable to respond to new needs of women. Many
had sons who had gone to work in Touba or in other towns, but the women said that all
remittances were used for family subsistence needs or contributions to the religious
community. Farming activities seemed much less remunerative in this village than in
other areas visited during the field interviews.
National Voluntary Organisations
Since the early 1980s Senegal has witnessed an increasing number of national voluntary
organisations. Most villagers are aware of the Cadre National des Conseils Ruraux
(CNCR). This national organisation, which is an offshoot of the Fédération des
Organisation Non-Gouvernementale Sénégalais (FONGS), has committees which
represent the various interest groups of the rural sector according to production
specialisations. These include horticulture, livestock management, rice farmers, women
farmers, etc. They are active through the various sub-committees or local grassroots
organisations which make up their membership. Occasionally they are the conduit for
bilateral or multilateral funding for interventions in the rural sector and thereby provide
training or other inputs to Senegalese farmers. In addition to these two major
organisations, there are national women’s organisations to which many village women
who were interviewed belong. Occasionally, the women themselves express some
confusion as to the origin of these associations, which betrays their external beginnings.
The most active in the region covered in this study are RODALE International,
WINROCK International, Christian Children’s Fund, the Association for the Humane
and Integrated Development of Senegal, (a Senegalese NGO) and CARITAS. Funded
from abroad, these NGOs assist in the implementation of development projects in the
sectors of credit, health management, agricultural production, and literacy. All have
offices in Dakar, Thiès, or Kaolack. Most if not all staff are Senegalese. Currently most
NGOs require some contribution in kind from their village partners, and in the case of
credit programs they also often require some savings in cash from participants.
Parastatals
During field studies villagers also made reference to various state-sponsored
organisations serving the rural sector. Of all the state-sponsored organisations active in
the rural sector, ISRA was the best known among villagers interviewed. Three out of the
four villages studied were familiar with ISRA and its functions, and had received visitors
from ISRA within the last five years. Visits bring technical information regarding soil
management, seed selection, and tree management in particular.
International agencies
International donor agencies and their field staff provide a less important, but significant
source of information. We found that in two villages farmers had participated in activities
sponsored by United Nations agencies and from activities sponsored by the European
Community.
26
6
EDUCATION AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
6.1 Information and its control
As we have seen, information during the colonial era circulated within two major
networks: kin and residential units, which exchanged with like networks at local markets
or during ceremonies, and hierarchical administrative networks. The salient feature of
information use and access during the colonial era was the manipulation of information
as a valuable resource. The importance of intermediaries current with central government
decisions, contributing to local administrative decisions, and with the capacity to
influence administrative policy, continued through the 1970s and the position of
intermediary was still being seen as desirable long after independence. According to
Warning and Sadoulet
...the reason for this lies in unmeasured benefits that accrue to the intermediary.
These benefits can be understood in the context of the economic and social
organisation of rural communities. Rather than engaging in single-stranded,
impersonal and immediate market transactions, an individual typically transacts
with selected members of his or her community in multi-stranded, personalistic,
inter-temporal interactions. Exchanges in the economic, political or social sphere
at a given date become inter-temporal obligations that are compensated at a
future date with exchanges in the same or another sphere… (Warning and
Sadoulet, 1998: 119).
The control of information formed part of the power of those who were specially placed
vis-à-vis the central government and government programs such as the Providence
Societies, the Co-operatives, and even the Animation movement. They were often also in
a position to attribute or withhold cash payments or earnings possibilities. Thus
information, until recently, was canalised. The canalisation arose partly out of the
separate languages of the state (French) and the people (Wolof or Serer in this region).
This is in turn linked to the failure of the state to incorporate rural people into its
educational institutions. With the continued evolution of decentralisation, the Mouride
movement, and the technology of communications, information flows are now more
diverse and widespread.
6.2 Educational institutions
Educational facilities can be categorised as the following today:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Public, government schools teaching in French
Private, secular schools teaching in French
Private, Catholic schools teaching in French
Community operated literacy classes in local languages
Community operated Quranic classes with a local marabout
Quranic classes belonging to a local Mouride brotherhood system
27
•
•
Franco-Arab schools, run from locally paid fees which teach French and Arabic
Specially organised training sessions by local NGOs for women; usually short-term
functional literacy tied to specific development activities, i.e. health or gardening.
The perspective applied here is that Quranic schooling is a part of an education system
when it exists in the context of organised, regular classes.
Access to state education was extremely limited during the first decade of independence
and generally concentrated in the urban centres. The concentration of the educated elite
in the urban centres, particularly Dakar, exacerbated the stratification of critical
knowledge. However, as parallel systems developed, particularly the dahra system and
the increased mobility of rural farmers from the northern Groundnut Basin, other circuits
of information became important.
The existence of town associations in Ngodjilème and Sob now takes on a new meaning
in the context of early information networks. Due to the association of the Catholic
church and missions with the development of French curricula for Africans, villages
connected to such institutions also had some links with their urban counterparts. In
predominantly Wolof Mouride villages, however, the centre of their attention was not
Dakar, but Touba and Islamic learning. Even contacts with power brokers in Dakar were
generally through Touba, though the growth of urban dahira allowed for more direct
contacts between rural Mourides and their confreres in Dakar.
6.3 Educational policy at the regional and village level
In the colonial period, the limited state-supported educational system was designed to
meet the needs of the administration and industry. Primary and secondary education, and
the curriculum, was exactly as in France. The newly independent state did not change
this, but concentrated on the expansion of the middle, secondary and higher levels,
because of the high demand for these in the cities. State provision has an urban bias, and
at independence it was estimated that 50 percent of school age children attended school
in the large cities, compared with 12 percent in rural villages. Primary education
enrolments have multiplied by less than seven between 1960 and 1992, whereas
secondary enrolments increased eleven-fold. The Government bore almost all costs of
the education provided. The weighting towards the secondary and higher educational
sectors resulted in a high cost education system but a poor level of coverage, compared
with other Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Senegal in 1995 had an adult literacy
rate of 27 percent compared with the SSA average of 49 percent, and for Senegalese
women it was only 18 percent compared with the SSA average of 38 percent
(Berthélemy et al., 1996).
The Diourbel Region has consistently had the lowest rates of educational enrolment in
the country. According to the 1988 census, only 25 percent of its 7-12 year olds were in
school, and these were concentrated in the three communes (see Barry et al., 2000).
According to the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Planning, in 1997-98, 87.4 percent
of the region’s population have never been to school, 8.3 percent had gone to, or were
in, primary school, and only 1.8 had been to the first cycle of secondary school. The
Diourbel Region had only 248 of the 3,505 public primary schools which exist today in
Senegal. Secondary provision is restricted to three lycées and five middle schools. The
28
lycées are in the three communes which are the headquarters of the three departments. In
terms of primary attendance, 21 percent of urban population had attended primary school
as opposed to only 4.7 percent of the rural population. Recorded attendance at rural
Quranic schools is also low at 1.8 percent. In all cases, women were roughly 10 percent
behind men in any form of instruction.
Access to different types of educational institutions in Senegal depends on diverse
factors. These include political networks of the village in question, size, religious
affiliations, and access to special NGO or aid-funded projects. The Mourides tend to see
the state system as alien to their religious philosophy.
Under the decentralisation law of 1996, the government transferred to local collectives
the responsibility for the management of public schools. The policy is to achieve basic
education for all Senegalese (ten years of formal schooling) by 2017, by means of
creating more primary schools and adult education through maternal language literacy
programmes. However, primary education is still entirely in French. Literacy in local
languages comes through scattered NGO or aid-funded projects.
Berthélemy et al. (1996) think the low demand for primary education in rural areas is
because secondary schooling often meant parents sending their children to a town, and
the primary curriculum was inappropriate to rural needs. The main benefit for those who
achieved secondary was employment, mainly by the state, and with economic stagnation
and state cutbacks, its attraction for rural parents became even less. The policy of
favouring academic secondary qualifications at the expense of primary and appropriate
technical education for small-scale rural enterprises is believed to have slowed the
growth of the informal enterprise sector (Berthélemy et al., 1996). Farmers at the
Bambey workshop in January 2000 confirmed they saw no relevance in existing primary
school education; they thought that informal apprenticeships or Quranic schooling (that
might lead to a respected profession as a sheikh) were more valuable.
Achievements at the village level
The case of Sob Village: Lericollais (1972) makes no mention of a school in Sob. In
1999 Sob still had no schools, and its children in the past had never consistently attended
the Arab and French schools set up in neighbouring villages. There was a school in Sob
teaching Arabic between 1981 and 1997. We were told there are only four people who
know how to read and write in Arabic, but none in French. Literacy classes in Serer
began ten years ago, sponsored by the Protestant church and a few can now read and
write basic texts. Students go outside the village, mainly to Niakhar, for primary school,
and some have reached secondary school.
The case of Ngodjilème Village: Ngodjilème has had a Catholic primary school for three
generations. Already in the late 1960s this had led to some access to modern sector jobs,
compared to villages with no school. Gastellu (1981) found that 18 persons amongst the
118 whom he termed the elite minority could read and write French, but most had no
schooling, and only one had attended Quranic school. Those who had been to school had
also most access to urban opportunities. In 1998 quite a few people knew how to read
and write. Some of the young people who have emigrated have become doctors and
teachers, according to village elders interviewed. Other youths have become students in
29
Dakar, or in nearby Diourbel. There is now a government school as well as the one run
by the Catholic Mission and a local Quranic school. Villagers, according to informants,
are free to send their children to whichever they like. Apparently, many take advantage
of at least two of the schools, thereby assuring both a European and Islamic education
for their children. In 1999 there were no literacy classes in Serer.
Wolof villages heavily influenced by Mouride institutions appear even less likely to
support French-language schools.
The case of Ndiamsil Village: There is only one school in Ndiamsil Sessène, and this is a
Quranic school, privately donated five years previously by a member of the Mouride
brotherhood. There were, in 1999, five people in the village who could read and write in
Arabic. Ndiamsil Sessène does not appear to have the kind of support from its youth that
Ngodjilème and Sob have. Most have left for school and work opportunities elsewhere,
and do not form any sort of village-related association. Mouride support systems
intervene occasionally for village assistance, (as in the case of the school). In villages
closely associated with such networks, indirect investment via the Mouride system
appears to supplant direct investment that might otherwise have been carried out by
village leavers.
The case of Darou Rahmane II Village: The village had two relatively new school
buildings - one was for French classes and the other for Arabic and Quranic classes. The
French school was recently closed by Mouride decree following some discrepancy over
the use of the buildings, which were acquired from outside the village. Quranic classes
continue.
6.4 Radio and telecommunications
Although the movements of Senegalese troops in World War II provided some
international contacts, during the first twenty years of independence governmental
institutions predominated in terms of rural information networks. The differences of
quality and quantity of information in the years following the mid-l970s are to a great
extent attributable to radio, and later, to telecommunications.
Radio
Currently Senegal has six radio stations. Each station has outreach programs for the rural
sector as well as programs of general interest to all Senegalese. Such programs include
discussions on women’s health, agricultural product transformation (such as juices, grain
preparations), agricultural price listings by region and commodity, and international and
national news in the most widely spoken local language, Wolof. Senegal also now has
two television stations, and both television and radio have news programs in the main
local languages, including Wolof, on a regular basis.
Telecommunications
From the colonial period when information passed from low-rung civil servants to
selected peasants, and from peasant to peasant via market encounters, Senegal has
become a place where voluntary associations such as farmers’ groups travel to the
30
nearest town to find a ‘telecentre’ from which to send a fax to Dakar. The proximity of
telecommunications is a striking characteristic of rural life in Senegal today. Touba, now
the second largest city in Senegal, has hundreds of telecentres. Rural farmers have the
opportunity (funds permitting) to contact anyone anywhere in the world, and they do.
The centres are often used to send requests for cash to sons and daughters living abroad.
At least half of the NGOs (non-governmental organisations) operating in Senegal have a
computer, and many of these now use email. Farmers with children in town, or who have
relatives who work with such organisations, know that they can approach them when
they have long-distance communication needs. This has had an unprecedented effect of
increasing access to information for Senegalese who are not politically connected.
An increase in the number of farmers with knowledge of, if not access to,
telecommunications can be expected as the rural farm economy increasingly depends on
off-farm relatives. More and more Senegalese peasants have moved into the commercial
sector, or depend upon relatives who are active traders. Most of these have done so
through contacts in the Mouride community.
6.5 Religious organisations and information
Religious organisations provide information in two major ways: by providing personal
networks over a wide geographic distance, and by providing opportunities for
information exchange when persons belonging to such networks meet under religious
auspices. The major religious networks in the study area are those of the Mouride
Brotherhood. The Senegalese Catholic community is important to a minority. They
provide different sorts of information, but share the possibility of providing political
access for their community members, as each is represented in the major urban centres of
Senegal.
For villages heavily involved in Mouride culture, the Ndiguel, (proclamations coming
from the Khalifa of the Mourides or his representatives) are a form of public information.
These decrees and observations on daily life or special events are well circulated and
respected within and by the Mouride network. The brotherhood is represented on the
village level through the local marabout and through their various dahra. A large
community may have more than one dahra, based on gender or on their adhesion to a
particular marabout. In other communities the dahra often include members from nearby
villages. Within Mouride society much economic information and commercial
networking often takes place, as talibé tend more and more to be small traders or work
for large Mouride-run commercial enterprises. They may learn through such resources
how to start a small dry season business, where to get their stock, where the better
markets are for their particular commodities, how to access informal credit sources, and
other details such as access to transport, etc. This system is now world-wide and runs
competitively parallel to the formal banking system, formal development projects, and
formal commercial distribution networks. It should be noted, however, that due to the
mystical nature of the relationship between the talibé and the marabout, or dahra,
information is often not understood in context, as it is often passed on without
questioning its logic or origins, depending on who is informing the listener.
The Catholic community in Senegal was the first portion of Senegalese society to
become literate and familiar with occidental culture. Membership gives access to
31
information relevant to educational opportunities, urban employment, and development
projects sponsored by Catholic organisations such as Catholic Relief Services,
CARITAS, and other small groups. Local pilgrimages take place each year to
Popinguène in the Thiès region. Each year various regional conferences and meetings
take place. While important locally in some areas such as Ngodjilème, it is a very small
minority in Diourbel Region (Barry et al, 2000).
7
SOCIAL INVESTMENT AND CHANGING FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
By social investment we mean the time and money families spend in strengthening the
social networks on which they depend for emergency help, support in old age, help at
critical times in the farm calendar, information and work opportunities, etc. It includes
kin based networks, marriage alliances and family celebrations, neighbourhood networks,
contributions to community celebrations and work projects etc., as well as donations to
and receipts from religious based organisations.
As was discussed in the section on the family in colonial times, social investment was
expressed through three major networks: kin networks, residential units and networks,
and religious affiliation. The twenty years from 1960 to 1980 were characterised by
extensive state intervention in almost every aspect of the economic life of the Senegalese
rural peasant farmer. The intrusion of the cash economy, sometimes through small local
accumulations of cash, most often through indebtedness and tax payments, had a
definitive impact on the rural economy and family life styles. This is most easily found in
the literature describing rising marriage costs, the monetarisation of labour relations, and
the dwindling of household grain reserves due to transfers of land and labour to
groundnut production.
Since structural adjustment began in the 1980s, social investments have experienced still
greater changes. As we have seen, the residential patterns of families in the zone have
changed significantly as members are divided between those remaining in the rural sector,
and those, mainly the young adults, working in urban centres or abroad. This has
changed the course of social interchange and the balance of power between old and
young, rural and urban.
A good deal of the money earned by the Baol-Baol traders both within the country and
abroad is invested in the marabout-talibé relationships of the traders concerned. This is
evident in the rapidly growing nature of Touba Mosquée and the continuing political
clout of the marabout system in general. Investment from such sources is not as apparent
in secondary towns like Bambey, Diourbel, or Fatick, but Dakar and its densely
populated suburbs such as Pikine and Guediawaye continue to grow. In the late 1990s
one finds a construction boom which may partially be accounted for by the newly
established commercial systems which are seeking less risky areas of investment.
On the whole, it can be said that in the last thirty years there has been a generalised
movement of capital from kin-based management directed to farming, towards
investment via non-kin networks, such as the dahra and town associations, which is often
large scale and urban directed. As local institutions directly related to farming activities
32
lose importance because of the decreasing profitability of the agricultural enterprise, rural
people tend to invest less in them. The kin-based institutions which served as checks and
balances between maternal and paternal family relations on the compound and village
level tend to receive a lower level of investment than the urban-oriented ones.
At the present time, even in Serer communities of mixed Catholic and Muslim (nonMouride) religious affiliation, cash for village needs tends to be contributed more by
community members who have emigrated away from the village than from regular,
village-based sources. This is probably reflective of the cash-poor situation of most
communities in the region. This cash-poor situation on the household level is partly the
result of surplus cash being re-invested elsewhere (such as in small enterprises) which is
then expected to earn long term additional cash for household or village-wide use.
To some extent, villages have become agricultural centres subsidised from family
contributions from abroad. These contributions aid village-wide development activities as
well as funding large, traditional celebrations such as weddings, baptisms, and religious
holidays. This signals an attempt by village leavers to create income-generating activities
which will render their relatives more financially independent. It also allows for those
who have left to be more independent from their village relatives. Those who leave rarely
return to the Wolof villages, and returns in Serer villages are sporadic.
Throughout the area of study, we found that a large proportion of productive youth,
mostly but not exclusively male, had departed for work elsewhere. Most remittances are
sent for help in buying basic necessities: medicine, bags of rice, religious holiday
requirements, and so forth. Rice is now present as a preferred grain throughout Senegal,
whether urban or rural.
The substitution of rice as a preferred grain has several consequences for social
investment and family/kin cohesion, especially in the light of substantial out migration of
productive young males. The use of purchased rice does not require the labour input that
millet would, neither does its purchase require the water and other natural elements that
its cultivation would require. Women do not have to pound rice to prepare a meal, and
men are not needed to clear the land, do the planting, or assist in stocking activities as
they would with millet cultivation. Purchasing rice provides greater food security than
farming millet as long as it is available on the market at affordable prices.
Purchasing rice also allows those who have left in search of cash earnings to continue to
contribute to the rural household. However, it does not forge the close knit social
relations that are the result of daily co-operation in farm tasks. It also poses questions in
terms of how women’s time should be appropriated if they are no longer busy weeding
and carrying out other millet-production related tasks. In some cases, this has resulted in
more time available for gardening activities in those areas where women have access to
land, either individually on family farms, or collectively through local community groups.
However, in many cases this freed labour time is transferred to the increasing labour
needs for the search of water and cooking fuel, still firewood in most instances. As has
been repeatedly documented, in some areas women must go further and further to search
for suitable firewood. In other instances they are required to supplement found wood
with purchases of firewood when this is possible. The purchase of rice also sets up a
cycle of cash needs that reinforces the position of those who are out of the village, and
33
makes those who live in the village continuously dependent on their remittances.
Due to their absence, young men are less and less likely to become socially indebted to
extended family members (i.e. maternal or paternal uncles). Essentially, they are not
present to incur social debts, to receive favours, or to borrow money or materials. Elders
are losing access to the critical means of extending and maintaining their influence with
young men beyond their own children. The major remaining factors over which they have
influence are the appropriation of village lands (for which they can lobby if they are not
directly responsible, usually with the village chief or the conseil rurale), and the choice
of marriage partner or provision of assistance in marriage. Interestingly, residents of Sob
and Ngodjilème have reported that dowry costs have increased considerably (see Annex).
In both Sob and Ngodjilème we found that the majority still marry, or hope to marry,
among relatives. Marriage remains one of the areas where the old still maintain influence
(though it is diminishing), and the linkages and debts it establishes remains crucial to the
security of parents.
The cost of marriage for young men at in the Wolof village of Ndiamsil Sessène has gone
from FCFA 15,000 in times past to as much as FCFA 300,000 today. Informants in the
Wolof villages of Ndiamsil Sessène and Darou Rahmane II agreed youth are no longer
obliged to marry within the family. In fact, there are competing interests between kin and
social or religious opportunity. Those who are close to maraboutic families often like
their children to create kin relations with these local leaders. Parents are more willing
than ever before to marry their daughters and sons outside of the kin network, as long as
the prospective partner is Mouride. However, 68 percent of David’s sample had still
married within the village, and marriage to a first cousin was still regarded as the ideal
(David and Niang, 1995: 36). The male marriage age is higher amongst the Wolof than
the Serer due to the periods youths spend outside the village in search of income (field
interviews 1999).
In contrast, informants in the Serer village of Ngodjilème claim that marriage custom has
not changed much, but this is in terms of the prevalence of cousin marriage rather than
increased costs. At Sob village, informants remarked that although the cost of marriage
has increased substantially, the customs surrounding marriage, such as choice of partner
among kin, have not changed. It is possible that in the case of Serer communities the cost
of marriage has gone up relative to the need to maintain the importance of kin relations.
Certainly, the high level of investment between affines, reflected in the high bride wealth,
would seem to infer the continuing importance of maintaining kin-based networks of
surplus wealth circulation. To go further, one could pose the question as to whether such
investments do not also serve to maintain close kin relations that mirror land use custom
and which discourage the flow of cash outside of the social (not necessarily
geographically defined) community.
In Sob villagers attested to the fact that the sorts of community support mechanisms that
existed thirty years ago have all but disappeared. This increases dependence on children
who have emigrated. One villager in Sob described the following:
If a neighbour had a bad harvest, another would lend him some sacks (of millet)
until the next harvest. He would be able to reimburse when he was able, if at all.
Now, all these forms of support are gone. If someone lends you two sacks of
34
millet this year, you will reimburse him three at the next harvest.
In contrast to this loss of neighbourly, more personal support, the village now operates a
savings fund. Once a year each villager makes a contribution (men FCFA 1,000; women
FCFA 500). Through this mechanism the village was able to make cash participation to
the installation of a borehole in their village in 1988. This system has continued and
recently allowed them to begin a cereal bank. This cereal bank re-sells millet at affordable
prices which are below market prices.
35
8
CONCLUSION
In the Machakos study, it was found that young people who left home often sent money
home to assist their families. This money served to augment farm investment capacity
and investment in for children’s education. In the Diourbel Region, Senegal, we have
found that young people who leave home also send money back, but that this money is
more often used for providing food security, paying taxes and for ceremonial
expenditures. In other words, family living expenses must be secured first, as the farm
family is not usually in the position, under current conditions, to meet its primary needs
solely on the basis of farm-related income.
In both the Machakos case and in the northern groundnut zone of Senegal, the family has
evolved from a large patrilineal unit to a more nuclear family. Families in both areas are
now less likely to keep relatives’ children on a long term basis; and sons tend to break off
from their father’s household more often, and earlier in their own family cycle, often after
the birth of their first child. On the other hand, Senegal differs significantly in not yet
seeing increased husband/wife equality as in the Machakos case. The participation of
some women in development activities through some form of local association, which
may secure village land to be worked communally by them, gives them access to
personal income and a chance to prove themselves to the men in the village. As yet the
husbands, fathers, brothers and sons, have some say as to the degree of independence
that women might want to claim.
In north-central Senegal, as in Machakos, Kenya, there is a general widening of
leadership as more and more villagers join local development associations and widen and
diversify their educational and economic base. Wider leadership is occurring due to nongovernmental organisation presence in the rural sector, as well as the activities of
national organisations such as the Cadre National des Conseil Ruraux and the Federation
of NGOs of Senegal. External funding from abroad via bilateral and multilateral donor
institutions has also created new opportunities for local leadership. The new emphasis on
decentralisation in Senegal has created substantial hope for greater participation in local
government. Local rural councils and their specialised committees (health,
transportation, etc) have created a new forum for discussion of local problems.
Throughout north central Senegal one observes a greater individualisation of youth as
they take advantage of wage opportunities on a seasonal or more permanent basis
outside the village. While immediately after independence city-based families tended to
belong to a fairly restricted elite class, the much enlarged urban population has created
more rural-urban links within a kin-based context. This has resulted in more frequent
despatch of money to the rural sector. However, as mentioned above, most of these
funds are needed for subsistence.
In 1999 people are increasingly aware of what they do not have, even while they have
trouble deciding what they need first. Senegalese society has increasingly become a
consumer society. The battle Mamadou Dia attempted to wage for the ‘socialisation of
the peasant’ and for the meeting of commercial needs by village co-operatives, is pretty
well lost. Some inheritors of the animation movement have transformed this initial idea
into more supple entities, the groupement d‘intérêt économique, which are essentially
36
small investor’s groups which enjoy the same tax privileges as NGOs, but are profitmaking entities conducting small businesses, mostly in the service sector.
Given the current insecure nature of land tenure in the rural sector in Senegal today, (Lo,
2000) one can postulate that families remain on the land both as a result of lack of urban
opportunity and as a way of retaining land title for future generations. It appears that
people remain in villages 1) in response to land tenure insecurity and 2) the perceived
social and economic risks of urban living rather than because of village-based growth or
development. A working hypothesis might therefore be in Senegal’s case, that the
current government policy environment does not favour farm investment but tends to
skew rural decision-making in favour of remaining on the land in order to maintain the
family patrimony, while at the same time encouraging their young to seek urban or
foreign income-earning opportunities.
During the period of 1962-1970 as described by O’Brien (1975), the privileged rural
minority was made up of ‘saints’, traders, and locally elected co-operative officers. It
appears that now there is an emerging commercial class arising from marabout ‘saint’
support and accelerated by land penury. This is the rural response to opportunities
created by the withdrawal of the state. Unlike the earlier traders of whom O’Brien
speaks, these entrepreneurs are most often part of a private sector long distance
network, which extends far beyond the borders of Senegal. Local marabouts remain
important, but they are increasingly faced with a growing diversity among their faithful,
now including university students, large numbers of civil servants, and locally elected
officials. While this broadens their area of influence, it also diffuses their particular
influence or concentration on any one sector of their communities.
The current diverse nature of Senegalese society requires a greater balancing act than
before, which can be observed by the greater importance being placed on the standard
tenets of Islam, and less importance being placed on local particularities, except in the
case of ‘saint’ villages or areas in geographic proximity to such centres. The position of
local marabouts continues to be important in political and social terms, and is played out
in local terms through the large tracts of land controlled by maraboutic families.
However, this is a situation that is a constant to the rural farmer rather than a new
reality. As such, contemporary decision-making among farmers in affected communities
includes acceptance of land-access limitations as a permanent reality. It should be
remembered that most of these lands were given away or otherwise acquired when
current village elders were small children.
In Serer or Wolof society, there has been a transposition of the collective work force
from within the village to urban settings where cash can be earned. In addition, the
absence of youth should be seen as savings, as they are not present to consume, and the
lands available could not provide them with a living. Given the low level of productivity
of the land, it is perfectly logical that farmers’ cost benefit analysis would lead them
quickly to understand that there is a lack of incentive as well as resources to make the
investments necessary for more intensive land use.
The preceding description of local conditions leads one to hypothesise that productive
youth are worth more to their parents working away than their labour potential on farm.
It would seem that those remaining are custodians responding to land scarcity conditions,
37
cash poverty, and tenure insecurity. Since accumulated wealth was formerly expressed in
land and livestock holdings, drought has had a major impact on socio-cultural as well as
economic comportment. As dependence on external cash sources become increasingly
dominant and institutionalised, farmers apparently adjust by increasing food purchases,
which also allows them to leave lands which produce only marginal results.
Traditional rural solidarity was to some extent a romantic myth. The numerous
kingdoms, fluctuating alliances and confederations of the pre-colonial period ended in
French domination. Solidarity was often a result of peasant affiliations based on their
dedication to various marabouts who were perceived as saviours from the inequitable
rule of traditional secular rulers. It was this tension between rulers and ruled that led
Mamadou Dia and others to promote the rural animation movement and the later cooperative systems.
The fact that chiefs were selected by the colonial government to rule has probably had a
greater impact on village social and economic coherence than we are able to realise at
this point in time. The continuous presence in the rural sector of outside authority for the
last 150 years has also had an effect on the development, sustainability and potential
diversity of local institutions. To the extent that recent models such as locally developed
development committees can perform independently and liase with locally elected
officials or other representatives of government, there may be greater village coherence
now than in earlier eras, although it would be hard to produce evidence. It is especially
hard to observe because the village is no longer defined by physical space. The large
numbers of young men who remain long distances away from their home communities
for substantial periods of time has extended the economic and social space of the villages
beyond their geographic limits.
ANNEX: CHANGES IN THE FINANCIAL COSTS OF MARRIAGE
The following narrative of the changes in marriage preparations, taken from an interview
with someone from Diourbel, is revealing of the continued cost and importance of social
investments:
Today, marriage in this region can cost anything from one million to two million
FCFA. It is the modu-modu who have caused these prices to rise, due to the fact
that they have cash. It is even more expensive than it is in the Fatick region. It
goes like this: for a very young, inexperienced girl, one must first pay around
FCFA 75,000 just for the right to talk with her. Normally, there may be more than
one suitor, and they compete with one another. The following weeks, the girl will
explain to her parents who has come and what they brought. The parents will then
make some inquiries as to the moral and economic character of the families
represented by the suitors, as well as seeking information of a mystical,
supernatural character (for example, if there are sorcerers in their family, or if the
family is known for witchcraft). The families follow traditional practices to
ascertain whether they think the prospective bride, or groom, is someone with
‘luck’, or will have children who ‘bring luck’. These practices include interpreting
the way the person walks, their physiognomy, or even their body gestures (i.e.
38
placement of hands, way of standing). The young woman is exhorted to be active;
more than usual, so that people who observe her report that she is not lazy or
prone to sickness.
The parents of the prospective bride make their choice. They go to see the
maternal uncle of the young man who has been selected as the best candidate.
Afterwards, the younger or elder brother of the candidate goes to visit the father,
the mother, and the mother’s brother. Actually, the candidate’s relatives go to see
surrogates of the girl’s parents, usually the sister and brother of her mother, and
the brother of her father. At this time also they must give something, customarily
a kilo of kola nuts.
A gift of approximately FCFA 50,000 is given to the brother of the father of the
prospective bride, and a goat and kola nuts to the mother’s brother. The sister of
the prospective bride’s mother also receives FCFA 50,000 at this time. The
relatives of the girl meet together to discuss their response. The day that the
parents of the prospective groom should come to visit is arranged between the
two families. If the families concerned are Christian, they should also at this time
purchase/receive a gift of wine.
The next stage is the puut inbeen. This requires a goat, 50 kilos of rice, and all
that is necessary to prepare a meal for a large group of people, maybe FCFA
15,000. This is for the whole household of the girl. Following this gift, there is
siip njoong, at which time a gift of a bed is presented to the girl, which may or
may not go to the mother. At this time, the candidate has the right to sleep with
the prospective bride on the bed. The day that the bed is brought, the friends of
the candidate bring provisions as were given for the puut inbeen, but this time
they are for the consumption of the young lady’s close friends, age mates and
close female relatives of her age. The young people eat together, and most of the
friends leave late that night. Early in the morning the prospective groom leaves,
and the girl is left with her aunts.
After these ceremonies, the groom is expected to make gifts of a rather expensive
nature such as a tape player, a radio, and a suitcase full of clothes that may cost
up to FCFA 200,000. After these gifts, the date of the marriage is decided upon.
Following the choice of date, the groom should purchase and supply to the
bride’s family a cow, 100 to 150 kilos of rice, and all that is necessary to prepare
a very large meal. He should also cover the costs of the hiring of a taxi, if he
doesn’t have a car, to pick up his bride along with his friends and close relatives
of his age. Before, we used horse carts, but no one wants to do that anymore.
39
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