It was on Sunday, November 8th, that I got my first blister in a West African work camp. The Youth Department of the Government of Senegal has organised, on every second Sunday since September 20th, " Cleanliness Days (Set Setal) ". Mrs. Fall, once a school Director and now the dynamic organiser of these " Days ", told me that an Organising Committee - including a good number of women - would meet before every one of these "Days" (which take the form of work camps" to choose the location. Of course locations in need of cleaning up are not lacking in Dakar, mostly on account of the absence of road cleaning services in the city.

The Friday evening preceding the project, I attended a meeting of the Organising Committee, which was comprised of approximately 300 people. Zone Leaders and Team Leaders were picked and the work was divided among them. I was told at the meeting that there would be about 500 volunteers, not an unusual number it seems, at work the next day. I signed up for the camp then and there; it was something I really wanted to see with my own eyes. What I saw was a little disconcerting, in spite of all the hard work done by the Organising Committee but it seems to be a formula well adapted to the African way of doing things.

Pin-Ups and the "ton-ton's"
The meeting was fixed for 8 a.m. in front of a cinema in Dakar's Medina section. When I got there, two trucks were already there, plus a few men, Team Leaders, and six policemen. Little by little more men came along. There were firemen, Red Cross people (with DDT sprayers), and volunteer drivers for the trucks that had been lent by private companies and the town public Works Department. Then, Mrs. Fall arrived, accompanied by four lovely ladies who worked for a while and then disappeared. In addition to these pin-ups, there was what I consider to be an indispensable element of motivation, in this case incited by the "ton-ton's"(respectful and friendly name for a senior person). They paced the work without stopping. If they went faster, we worked harder, if they slowed down, we slacked off. It was something to see-and hear!

We got to work about 8.30, everyone going off after his Team's "ton-ton". Our job was to clean out an open gutter, which luckily, was dry at the time. We divided up into four groups, two at each end of the 600 metre long gutter and one on each side of each end. We were meant to meet at the middle. There were about 100 of us, all told, not counting about 30 children who worked hard along with us, jumping down into the gutter to throw out the garbage that had collected there. They were followed by the firemen, who used a flame-thrower to kill off those weeds that might have remained and then washed the whole thing down with hoses, giving, from time to time, a free shower to one of the laughing kids. All the volunteers seemed to be from Dakar or the surrounding area and not just from the part of town where we were working. Someone told me that at a previous camp, held in a Lebanese Quarter of Dakar, there had been quite a few inhabitants from the area who had participated. Only one Frenchman, a Minister in the Government, took part in the first few camps. That Sunday I was the only European working and several passers-by smiled and shouted "Thank you! Than you!" to me.

The Youth Minister and a Boxing Champion
The Minister for Youth was there, and not just as a spectator. He set to work with a pick and you could see that he had some experience in that kind of work. The work of pulling up shrubs, clods of grass, etc. was pretty hard and with the exception of a few solidly built workers (like the Minister and the boxing champion of Senegal), the volunteers relieved one another. Usually, the work camp would last all day Sunday, cut only by the noon meal, which the girls would prepare. On the Sunday that I was working, the day had been planned to stop at noon because of various sporting events that were taking place that afternoon. As it turned out, however, we didn't finish our particular job until 2:15.

I should say, that in spite of a half-hour break that I took to have a look at some of the other Teams, the preceding two hours seemed hard to me, especially since I'd forgotten my hat and there hadn't been a hint of shade. In one of the villages that I had visited (another Team was working there), I was told that the Youth Department of Senegal was thinking of going forward with a second stage in their work camp programme. "Cleanliness Days" would be continued but, at the outset, some of the volunteers would be diverted to construction activities. For example, I saw four or five young men, surrounded by a crowd of curious onlookers, making cement blocks for a youth centre. I hope that the second stage will be as successful as the first has been.

Pierre Martin
June 1960
"Work camps across the World"
A fortnightly publication of the Co-ordination Committee for International Voluntary Work Camps.