Finding Canada — In Senegal
the Globe and Mail, November 19, 2005

During my first week of volunteer work at a community radio station in Pikine, Senegal, a local radio producer tells me he lives near Canada. As I struggle to understand using my mediocre French, he explains that there is a neighbourhood in Pikine called Canada, named after a school the Canadian government built there.

It's not the official name of the neighbourhood, but it's the popular moniker for the area straddling the border between the dirt-poor Dakar suburbs of Pikine and Guediawaye, which I pass through daily on my way to the station. If you tell any taxi driver in Dakar you want to go to Canada, they will drop you off at this crossroads.

With the producer, Père Sy, at my side, I explore the dusty streets of Canada under the inescapable sun. Three women in colourful patterned dresses walk past Pharmacie Canada, carrying plastic basins on their heads. A sheep runs across the road near a tiny haircutting shack called Salon de Coiffure Canada. An off-duty truck driver sits under a makeshift canopy beside his flatbed truck, which is painted with the words "Astou Diop-Transporteur-Canada."

Walking through the entrance of the school, I pass a painting of a Canadian maple leaf next to a lion, a symbol of Senegal. The physical-education teacher, one Mr. Mbodj, proudly gives me a tour. Built in 1971 by the Canadian government, the school is officially named Lycée Serigne Cheikh Anta Mbacke, after a Senegalese marabout, or holy man, but it's best known as "École Canada" or "CEM Canada" (College de Enseignement Moyen Canada).

The concrete buildings of the school complex are a virtual archive of Canadian school materials from the 1960s and 70s: The moulded plastic chairs, green chalkboards and dusty chemistry beakers are still in use today, Mr. Mbodj eagerly explains.

But this school has been more useful than Canadian bureaucrats could have imagined. During my visit, it acts as a temporary home for hundreds of flood victims, who are sleeping in the classrooms until stagnant water can be emptied from their homes.

A few days later, I meet the school's former principal, Mansour Diop, an elegant man wearing a flowing boubou. Diop reminisces about the early days of the school, and the team of Canadian teachers who taught there during the first two years. The Canadian government built three identical schools in other regions of Senegal, he says, and in each case, they are referred to by locals as "Canada."

I haven't seen another Canadian since I stepped on African soil six weeks ago, but each day I pass through Canada, Pikine, it reminds me that there have been others here before me.