8-page paper related to a topic covered between September 7 and October 10 (20%), due by Friday of the week after the topic has been discussed in class.

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Just as the Muridiyya estab-

lished itself in an arid

region through agriculture,

Ndem uses the historically

important trades of weaving

and agriculture to revitalize

its community. At the same

time, its spiritual center is

its motivation for economic

viability.

Religious Motivations for Local Economic Development in Senegal Laura L. Cochrane

Environmental and economic crises, including land degra- dation from drought and increased global food prices, have become localized challenges for communities across the Sahel. Towns throughout central Senegal have struggled to maintain the agricultural and business enterprises on which they once relied. Ndem, a village within this region, has addressed these challenges through its artisanal coopera- tive, now incorporated into a nongovernmental organization. While Ndem’s leaders have sound business plans, this essay argues that the continued viability of both the village and the cooperative is the result of a community-shared spiritual motivation for the work. Islam, the Murid Sufi order, and the Baay Fall suborder of the Muridiyya provide teachings that directly influence Ndem’s spiritual life and business practices.

The area surrounding the village of Ndem in the Diourbel administrative region of central Senegal is arid. It stays dry except for several weeks during the rainy season, when frogs appear, baobab trees sprout, and grass springs out of the desert sand the morning after the first rains in months. This vegetative memory recalls the region’s agricultural past. In the twentieth century alone, though, repeated droughts across the Sahel area added to the area’s desertification. Increased land degradation has led to decreased agricul- tural yield. Families cannot subsist on agriculture for their own food or for income from sales, making it impossible to grow or buy food. Meanwhile, Senegal’s current administration has embraced competition on a global food market, resulting in increasingly high prices for staples such as rice, while trying to reduce its reliance on foreign food imports.1 In this collision of envi- ronmental and economic crises, globalization has brought further economic uncertainty instead of prosperity. Without formerly reliable agricultural or other skilled jobs, young people often are compelled to move to nearby cities in the hopes of finding employment. With resulting urban overpopulation, though, even low-income and petty jobs in cities are hard to find. Many rural villages have lost residents who could maintain and even rebuild com- munities if they could find a way to survive in these home villages. Ndem

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and surrounding villages were once in the middle of this agricultural region, thriving on business enterprises that included weaving workshops. During the twentieth century’s series of droughts, these villages were then almost abandoned, and those who were left became reliant on external cash from family members working in nearby cities.

The story of how Ndem revived its economy and became a viable place in which to live again involves effective sustainable development, but also religious motivations for that development. Its business plan relies on weav- ing, a craft that has deep historical roots in Senegal, including casted and familial heritages. Ndem’s leaders have sound business plans for its grass- roots artisanal cooperative, and its nongovernmental organization (NGO) coordinates effectively with international partners and clients, but I argue that its success comes from a community-shared spiritual motivation for the work. Ndem’s population is predominantly affiliated with the Murid Sufi order. Its daara, a 300–person intentional spiritual-learning community, is Baay Fall, a suborder of the Muridiyya.2 Because those in the daara manage the artisanal cooperative, this essay will focus on Murid, and specifically Baay Fall, teachings and historical models that they use as guidance for their work. In addition to teachings specific to this order and suborder, Ndem’s residents cite Sufism’s call for inward spiritual learning and enlighten- ment, and Islam’s call to alleviate poverty and injustice. After introducing Ndem’s historical narrative, I outline the importance of the region’s religious life and its agricultural history. I then discuss Ndem’s commitments to environmental sustainability, particularly in reviving agricultural practices.

Ndem’s Historical Narrative and NGO Status

In the 1980s, a community led by Sëriñ Babacar Mbow, the great-grandson of Ndem’s founder, and his wife, Soxna Aïssa Cissé,3 came into being, with the goal of reversing the rural-to-urban migration that had left Ndem close to abandoned. Their plan had two foundations, which are historically relevant to the region. First, Ndem is a spiritual community, founded on Murid and Baay Fall teachings about spirituality and practical applications of faith. The Muridiyya began in central Senegal at the turn of the twentieth century. Because of this history, laboring to build a religious community in an arid climate has resonance for both the Muridiyya and Ndem. Second, Ndem’s leaders use weaving and related trades, such as dying and tailoring, as an economic base for their projects, as the region has a history of both growing cotton and weaving.

Weaving is a historically casted trade within the occupational caste known as ñeeño, which included, for example, blacksmiths. Tamari (1991:223) defines the Wolof ethnicity’s castes as specialist groups that created flexible social stratifications within Wolof society. Castes were not rigid, but as recognized cultural categories, they guided social life. The ñeeño were respected for their skilled trades, yet suffered social discrimination

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because of their low status within the caste system. Today, weaving contin- ues to be important for familial lineages within several ethnicities, and it is regionally recognized for its historical importance. The prestige that comes from this regionally valued skilled trade, though, does not often include wealth. Weaving workshops throughout central Senegal often struggle for financial sustainability.4

Ndem’s organization has had moderate financial success, with interna- tional financial partners and clients. As of 2006, the artisanal workshops are incorporated into a nongovernmental organization. While the term NGO has a broad range of meanings, as Gill (1997:145–146) explains, one of its defini- tions is to act as an intermediary between (often external) financial partners and projects benefiting local residents—a description that applies to Ndem’s NGO. Gill notes that NGOs can arise from grassroots organizations. Ndem fits this description, as it originated from an artisanal cooperative, starting with weavers and expanding to multiple crafts with historical roots in the area. Today, Ndem’s arts-based workshops help fund additional projects in the area, including a health dispensary, local schools, experimental agricul- ture, a renewable fuel source, and a deep well for clean water. In addition to reviving weaving as a viable craft, Ndem’s leaders’ plan to reverse their region’s emigration includes being environmentally sustainable: they want to rebuild communities in this region, but this goal relies on reviving a degraded environment.

Even with their external funding, the goals of Ndem’s NGO remain driven and defined by local visionaries, including Mbow, Cissé, and sev- eral other administrators. Their vision for Ndem, in turn, is motivated by teachings taken from their Sufi order and suborder. Several scholars (for example, Labatut 1995; Renders 2002) have noted that too often, studies of development projects in arid regions have focused on external aid groups who work with uneducated local agriculturalists. Instead, they call for a closer look at locally driven microprojects, particularly those organized by religious groups, which address economic and environmental concerns. The importance of faith-based groups that work to alleviate poverty is particularly important to keep in mind for Senegal, with a population that is 94 percent Muslim, 4 percent Roman Catholic and Protestant, and 2 per- cent practitioners of indigenous religions (U.S. Department of State 2010), and with a religious discourse that is public and omnipresent, in popular song, radio and television shows, neighborhood conversations, and politics. Leaders and lay people from each of these religious groups have told me in interviews how important religious communities are for local economic development projects. This involvement from religious groups becomes salient when looking at the importance of socioreligious institutions in all aspects of Senegalese social life, from religious education to health care and community networking.

One example of such social projects that Labatut gives is of communi- ties planting acacia trees to fence in livestock and farming areas; another is of several villages joining together to organize small-scale irrigation efforts.

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At the same time, both Labatut and Renders add that a region’s economic conditions require many projects to participate with foreign or state aid orga- nizations. Renders argues for a more nuanced view of development, in light of these organizations that emphasize a religious and cultural framework for development, rather than one tied to a secular state. Both authors point out the relevance of both trends—state development tied to modernization and local development tied to community and religious ideals—for discussions of local organizations with development goals.

These studies have highlighted how Muslim organizations have con- tributed to regional development projects, whether in concert with or sepa- rate from state financial support. While numerous other Senegalese faith- based groups carry out social projects, Muslim groups are in the majority, reflecting Senegal’s Muslim-majority population. Research on Senegalese Muslim groups’ social projects has included special focus on education (Leichtman 2009; Ware 2009), health (Foley 2010), agriculture (Patterson 1999; Perry 2000), and women’s empowerment (Leichtman 2009; Sieveking 2007). Education is often the most prominent focus, whether specifically Quranic schools or schools that provide Quranic education alongside other academic subjects. Ndem likewise has built elementary and secondary schools to allow villagers to live in a place where their children could attend school, and the village’s mosque provides Quranic training for children and adults. Their other initiatives focus on health care, agriculture, and the artisanal campus.

The literature on NGOs often comments on the uneasy relationships among states unable or unwilling to provide necessary care for citizens, secular international groups, and local religious groups that are particu- larly suited to address the needs of their own communities. Focusing on these relationships, numerous studies have highlighted how NGOs become mediators for state services (for example, Gill 1997; Grimaud 2010; Laird and Cadge 2010; Medina 2010; Richard 2009; Schuller 2009), or even states’ stopgap justification for not addressing inequalities of wealth and services. Senegal’s three presidential administrations in its independent history have struggled with this very balance, as described below. From state control of agricultural production to reaching out to a global market, the difficulties of forming a solvent economy leave little room to attend to societal needs—a gap that religious groups have filled. Whether because of the state’s inability to provide funds or its prioritization of funds elsewhere, communities would suffer without such local organizations.

Religious and Social Life in Central Senegal

One of the most visible and populous Sufi orders in Senegal is the Muridiyya. As several Sufi orders gained prominence in the late nineteenth century, Muridiyya founder Cheikh Amadu Bamba (1853–1927) promoted an egalitar- ian society, in which the Wolof hierarchies did not exist. To practice this,

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he moved his nascent Murid community to central Senegal, apart from the Wolof kingdom’s royal courts. In doing this, he insisted on the supremacy of God over secular authorities, even while creating an authority that existed outside the purview of Wolof secular authorities. Coulon (1999:197) empha- sizes Bamba’s piety, quoting Bamba’s poem Paths to Paradise: “Familiarity with rank and power, which can bring prestige and prominence, merely takes the believer further from the sight of God.” In the Murid communi- ties, however, caste distinctions did arise among Bamba’s disciples. In these agricultural settlements, those of the ñeeño supported the community through their families’ trades, including blacksmithing, weaving, and farm- ing. This redefined labor as a form of devotion, not a caste differentiation (Glover 2009). Bamba’s teachings on the importance of labor as devotion to the Murid community5 gave new legitimacy and importance to these skilled trades. Peanut plantations became a place to practice that devotion, and to provide both a sense of community and economic viability to the new Murid towns (Buggenhagen 2001:380). Peanut agriculture, as many scholars have noted (for example, Cruise O’Brien 1975:60; Villalón 1995:118) became synonymous with the Muridiyya.

Similar to Ndem, Bamba’s new settlement was in the arid central Senegal region, apart from the luxury of the Wolof royal courts. Two contem- poraries—Bamba and Malick Sy (1853/1855–1922), leader of the Tijaaniyya in Senegal at the time—joined other nineteenth-century reformist clerics in criticizing materialism among religious leaders, as they felt this distracted from students’ spiritual work. Bamba rejected infighting among political and religious leaders to found a religious community set apart, focused on inner spiritual development and practical applications of faith (Babou 2003:312). He named the order Muridiyya to highlight the importance of inner spiritual transformation: a murid is a constant disciple of the faith, seeking God.

Soxna Aïssa Cissé connected Ndem and the Muridiyya’s history in an interview on the founding of Ndem by referencing two spiritual leaders: Cheikh Amadu Bamba and Cheikh Ibra Fall (ca. 1858–1930). Fall was one of Bamba’s first disciples and the inspiration for the Baay Fall suborder of the Muridiyya. The contemporary Baay Fall movement within the Muridiyya has taken its name from “Father” (Baay, in Wolof) Fall. Cissé explained that the center of the Ndem project is the shared spirituality of its residents and artisans: “Baraka, grace, is our reason for being for the project: the grace of Sëriñ Touba [an honorific for Bamba] and Fall. The project is global, but the center is spiritual” (Cissé 2009). This comment reflects Bamba’s emphasis on spirituality in his interpretation of Islam. Along with spiritual leaders of the time, he emphasized Sufism’s focus on developing an individual’s inner spiritual knowledge while working to create a spiritual community.

Fall became an ascetic disciple with extreme devotion to Bamba. Unlike Bamba’s other disciples, who sought to balance spiritual and physical work, Fall focused on labor, rather than spiritual training, to support Bamba and the Murid community. His choice created discomfort among Bamba’s other disciples because of his all-encompassing devotion to Bamba, shown

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through manual labor (Babou 2007a). Cruise O’Brien (1975:50–51) notes Fall’s controversial position in the new Muridiyya, yet he suggests Fall’s attention to material concerns was a balance to Bamba’s preference for a prayerful life. This disciple’s dedication inspired generations of followers. Baay Falls continue Fall’s work by following his example in devotion toward their marabout and committing themselves to labor for the Muridiyya. One of the more controversial aspects of the Baay Fall movement is that its prac- titioners consider their labor a form of prayer: many consider themselves thus exempt from daily prayers and fasting during Ramadan (F. Diack 2011; McLaughlin 2000:201; Villalón 1995:69). As a Baay Fall informant in another town explained, he not only labors, but has the constant prayer shared by Baay Falls on his lips while he works: the dhikr Laa illah illa Allah ‘There is no god but God’ (Ngom 2011). This is a prayer that McLaughlin (2000:202) cites in her discussion of Baay Fall popular praise songs, and one that Ndem musicians integrate into their informal late evening concerts. Many Baay Falls wear dreadlocks and patchwork, symbolizing their dedication to labor for spiritual goals above striving for earthly wealth and luxury; others adhere to Fall’s example without the outward symbols. While Baay Falls have a regional reputation for aggressive—and therefore criticized—exuberance (Savishinsky 1994), this does not describe Ndem’s quiet community.

Cissé explained the Baay Fall commitment to labor by pointing out that Islam is the primary influence for the project. Zakat, the Islamic pillar of charitable giving, she said, can be interpreted in broader ways, such as fight- ing poverty and injustice.6 This is a common interpretation: Laird and Cadge (2010:233) similarly describe informants who use participation in commu- nity-based health organizations to fulfill the directive of zakat: they practice their faith by applying their faith. Cissé explained that Muridism, founded at the turn of the twentieth century, gives its followers new ways of addressing modern challenges, still relying on foundational Islamic teachings:

In Sëriñ Touba’s plan, he said to pay attention to the environ- ment, and to create environments favorable for people. The modern era is troubled with materialism. It’s Cheikh Ibra Fall who created the way to work for the soul. Ndem is a marriage of culture and spirituality, the reunion of these hearts. It’s a revalorization of craftwork, in the face of the modern competi- tive market. It’s a miracle in a dry environment, with an illiterate population. It’s God: there’s no other reason. (Cissé 2009)

Just as the Muridiyya established itself in an arid region through agriculture, Ndem uses the historically important trades of weaving and agriculture to revitalize its community. At the same time, its spiritual center is its motivation for economic viability.

Analogous to Bamba’s rejection of royal wealth, Cissé sees a con- tinuation of the “modern era, . . . troubled with materialism.” In numerous

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informal conversations across Senegal, informants including Cissé have told me about wealth disparities in Senegal, and prices that have led to many families’ inability to buy sufficient food. Cissé argued that Bamba brought Islamic teachings about charity to a modern era: these teachings are, in Cissé’s words, Ndem’s “reason for being.” Taking specific applications of Bamba’s teachings a step further, Ndem’s goal is to create an “environment favorable for people.” This goal is as challenging today, in a degraded envi- ronment, as it was for Bamba’s new community. Both Ndem and Touba were established in challenging cultural and environmental circumstances. Bamba’s new Muridiyya moved from the powerful Wolof kingdoms to focus on developing the order. Similarly, Cissé and Ndem’s other leaders are build- ing a community that can “work for the soul” by establishing a place focused on alleviating poverty in one small region.

Ndem’s villagers individually and as a community take inspiration from Sufi orders’ teachings about Islam, and apply them to their everyday lives in diverse ways. One afternoon in 2011, Fallou Tall, one of the original settlers of Ndem in the 1980s, was working on a thatch fence around his house that had been knocked down by a recent windstorm. He explained that with every spare hour, he must work to improve the community, fol- lowing Cheikh Ibra Fall’s example. In another example, Moussa Diack, one of the artisanal campus’s managers, echoed Bamba’s emphasis on practical applications of the faith and inward spiritual development when he spoke of the need to balance the work of Ndem with spiritual learning: “Each develops the other” (M. Diack 2011). These examples speak to the integra- tion of Murid and Baay Fall teachings, and the work of the community, but also each individual in Ndem.

Because religious groups have such far-reaching social, spiritual, and political influence in this region, many projects’ sustainability relies on a degree of integration with these organizations. I define sustainability as a process of self-sufficiency. Sustainable financial plans enable busi- nesses to live off their income, rather than relying on continual external inputs. Sustainable environmental practices use available resources in ways that will enable the people to continue to be productive. The relationship between spiritual goals and local sustainability goals highlights personal and community motivations to overcome regional challenges. Clay and Olson (2011:13–14) likewise state that sustainability includes considerations of a community’s vulnerability and its resiliency. How far can entire villages go to work against poverty? How can they erase obstacles to living in one’s home village? What aspects of Sufism, and in a broader sense, Islam, speak to these challenges? These questions rely on a thoughtful integration between a community’s needs and the religious groups that form the spiritual basis for that community. This is not an argument for an unconscious naturalization of practices, for that perspective would ignore the continuous and conscious work necessary for these projects’ success. Instead, the sustainability of these projects relies on established and locally valued social organizations.

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Central Senegal’s Agricultural History

To borrow Clay and Olson’s conception of sustainability, Ndem’s vulnerabil- ity comes from its environmental and economic contexts. Central Senegal’s seasonal rainfall is typical of the West African Sahel, in that it lasts for about six to eight weeks per year, from the end of June through August. People throughout central Senegal plant their main crops of millet and groundnuts immediately after the first rains of the season, as both the timing of rains and their duration are unpredictable. Season-specific summer rains evaporate more quickly in the heat than rains dispersed throughout the year (Middle- ton 2009:18). Areas with seasonal rains in the summer tend to be more arid as a result. Evaporation affects the groundwater levels. Ndem’s explosion of greenery following the first rains betrays the presence of groundwater; careful irrigation practices protect these reserves. As Ndem’s leaders find ways to grow their village, they must find sustainable ways to live within a difficult environment.

Central Senegal’s droughts increased during the last century. The first droughts of the century were in 1910–1918 (Clark 1995:198; Labatut 1995:26; Rogers 1977:282). The noted poet Sëriñ Muusaa Ka connected water imagery associated with Bamba in his lament for the drought and the economic crisis of the 1930s: Bamba is the limitless well of spiritual guidance, for example (Camara and Mitsch 1997:175). Ka’s elegy mourned the loss of social rela- tionships that resulted from this dual crisis—a problem that Ndem’s leaders faced with mass migration away from the region, and are seeking to prevent. The 1968–1974 drought caused an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 deaths, with 90 percent reduction in livestock in some areas (Cruise O’Brien 1975:1; Rogers 1977:282). This was followed by a drought in 1982–1984. These repeated droughts have led to land degradation: decreased agricultural pro- ductivity within an already arid region, leading to food shortages in the short and long term (Thomas 1994:319). Scholars questioning what factors are to blame for droughts and land degradation, such as Geist and Lambin (2004), agree on the complexity of the problem. Labatut (1995) describes the same complexity, specifically in Senegal, adding that economic circumstances are intertwined with the causes and the effects of drought.

The combined effects of drought and decades of state economic con- trol over agriculture have led to the region’s agricultural decline. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the French colonial administra- tion controlled the region, underscoring the importance and lucrative pos- sibilities of groundnuts. To encourage this production, they doled out land to marabouts, who in turn cultivated peanuts with their disciples’ labor. Under President Léopold Sédar Senghor, Senegal’s newly independent state in the 1960s and 1970s relied on local contacts to manage nationalized agriculture (Diouf 1992:118), so that only a few local elites had lucrative access to state resources. This narrow chain of access eventually weakened private businesses because farmers were forced to rely on state patron- age (Boone 1995; Cruise O’Brien 1971; Patterson 1999; Schmidt 2009).

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Additional obstacles—including land degradation and French withdrawal of price subsidies in 1967—contributed to economic and environmental crises of the first decades of independence. Without control over their enterprises, farmers found it difficult to adapt to changing environmental circumstances. Similar to market control, Senegalese state elites controlled financing for possible “development” projects to address these problems (Renders 2002). These combined challenges, particularly the decline in agriculture, led to increased migrations to nearby and foreign cities, in the search for new livelihoods (Buggenhagen 2001).

Abdou Diouf’s administration (1980–2000) dealt with its economic challenges in part by decreasing authority over both agriculture and the private sector. In the 1980s, foreign debt and continued Sahelian droughts eroded state and local finances (Boone 1990:343). In 1984, Senegal adopted the World Bank’s policy of shifting economic burdens of agriculture from the state to local organizations (Duruflé 1995:74; Lecomte 1992: 88). Senegal’s structural-readjustment policies reduced funding for education, health care, and agriculture, and thus eliminated state-sponsored agricultural coopera- tives (Ka and van de Walle 1992; Patterson 1999; Perry 2000). In part because of this change in state economic strategies, and in part because of the early 1980s drought, agricultural incomes fell during this decade, discourag- ing local production and increasing the need for foreign food aid (Quiroga 1990). In the place of state-dominated enterprises, communities and private businesses organized and the informal sector grew, relying on regional and international marketplaces instead of the state alone (Patterson 1999; Perry 2000).

These trends have continued with Abdoulaye Wade’s administration (2000–2012). Wade has been one of several African leaders pushing for greater access, and even greater administration of, world markets. In addition, he has chosen to look outward to foreign investors to face growing internal pressure to fund needed infrastructure projects within Senegal, including better roads, a cleaner water supply, health advancements, and stronger businesses. Taylor and Nel (2002:165–166) argue that Wade, similar to many state elites, has embraced competitive globalized markets, yet at a cost to internal businesses and local development. The global food crises and economic crises of the first decade of the present century became local crises in Senegal. In informal conversations during fieldwork in 2009 and 2011, many Senegalese blamed rising food prices, as for bags of rice, on Wade’s trade agreements with inter- national bodies such as the European Union. The challenges facing Senegal are not unique. Phillips (2010) discusses similar postcolonial struggles in a Latin American context, with local experiences of poverty and relatively new states’ inabilities to fully address these needs. In another similarity, Phillips’s study shows that these gaps in services leave room for religious groups to step in and address the immediate needs of their own communities.

Placed in the context of this environmental and economic history, Ndem’s residents are working to reverse the trend of many villages in cen- tral Senegal that have been forced to abandon a rural agricultural lifestyle.

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Because of this decline in agriculture, Villalón (1995:69) notes the shift to urban areas, especially the urban markets in Kaolack and Dakar where Murids dominate trade. This is not just an abandonment of a livelihood: the Murid identity has strong ties with agriculture because of their history and Bamba’s teachings on labor. Until Mbow, Cissé, and several other elders decided to commit to this project, Ndem was close to abandoned (Cissé 2009). Today, as in many villages in the region, Ndem relies on the staples of groundnuts and millet, grown in fields several kilometers from the village. Millet is a mainstay grain in daily meals, but groundnuts are used primarily for animal feed, for sale, and for fuel (explained below). An additional field adjoining the village grows vegetables. These fields are places to experiment with pest control. Ndem’s residents are committed to organic pest control: using chemicals would further strip the land. As an example, one field was infested with an invasive worm. Regional agricultural experts suggested planting aloe along with eggplant. Both crops thrived, and the pest problem was solved.

In addition to farming crops for sustenance, Ndem in 2010 started to grow cotton to supply the centerpieces of its artisanal enterprise: the spin- ning, weaving, dying, and tailoring workshops. Cotton had not been grown in this region for decades, because of the large amount of water necessary for its success. Weavers across Senegal, however, are struggling to find a supplier for cotton, particularly after a bulk supplier of spun cotton in Dakar shut down. Most workshops, such as the Ndem NGO, work with traders who buy cotton in Mali and sell it in Senegalese cities. Once production increases, growing cotton will close the circle of textile production for Ndem and help them become more economically sustainable. In 2009, the NGO started a spinning workshop, which allows them to use raw cotton. This workshop employs additional people from the region—an important part of enabling people to live in their home villages. Without a continuous local supply of cotton, however, the process of creating textiles for sale is not yet completely locally sustainable.

Practices of Environmental Sustainability

In addition to growing crops and creating textiles and other artisanal prod- ucts, Ndem’s workshops seek ways they can recycle and reuse all available resources: using materials wisely has become a moral, spiritual, and envi- ronmental imperative, as well as a business strategy. Taking care of God’s creation is motivation for recycling, as Fallou Tall explained, combining a basic tenet of Islam with the Baay Fall dedication to labor: “God created the earth; we work for God” (Tall 2011). Several of Ndem’s leaders called recycling la force de Ndem ‘the strength of Ndem’ during their explanations of workshop practices (for example, Gassama 2009). On a large scale, this commitment is visible from the moment you walk into the village: the sandy

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ground is not littered with trash. Other cities and villages sport ubiquitous scraps of plastic and paper in the sand, and heaps of trash on their outskirts. The increase in trash happened in the 1990s, I am told, when the plastic bag became omnipresent. The environmental and public health toll of this trash is fouled air (as the trash is burned) and increased disease, harbored and fostered by the trash heaps. Repeated cholera epidemics in Senegal have been traced to trash heaps polluting the water; during the rainy season, they provide standing-water homes for malarial mosquitoes. In other words, walk- ing into Ndem and not seeing trash on the ground is noticeable. Taking care of creation leads to a better environment for people, as Cissé explained: “to create environments favorable for people” has spiritual as well as practical, earthly connotations.

Eliminating trash takes effort. Ndem’s local boutique still uses plastic bags, yet many in the community are not reliant on them: people use cloth bags in Ndem more than in other communities, and they wrap many other things in recycled paper to carry home from the store. While some families practice precycling7 habits elsewhere in Senegal, having an entire com- munity adopt them makes a difference. Each household contributes to this effort in small ways, with even young children picking up wrappers and bits of paper they see on the ground. The larger contribution, however, comes from the artisanal campus. The scrap-metal workshop not only recycles local scrap metal, but imports it regionally. Parts of car frames and machinery are cleaned and transformed into delicate sculptures and small metal animals for older children’s toys. In another area of the campus, seamstresses transform bits of cloth into patchwork animals, stuffed with more scrap cloth. Women make necklaces, creating beads from tinier pieces of scrap cloth and stringing them into long, fashionable strands of multicolored beads. All these crafts are offered for sale, with the proceeds reinvested in the NGO.

The next step in environmental and financial sustainability arises from the need for cooking fuel in a place with few trees and expensive cook- ing kerosene, and the problem of peanut shells creating trash piles. Several people, including Ndem villagers and a consultant from Europe, have cre- ated a recipe for combustibles: machines combine groundnut shells and clay into a wet mixture, and then tumble them into charcoal-sized pieces. These combustibles, once dried and fired, become the village’s fuel source for cooking. A slightly different mixture, able to withstand higher temperatures, becomes oven bricks for baking bread. Additionally, the combustibles can be used for certain colors of natural dyes, in the textile-dying workshops of the artisanal campus.

Each aspect of Ndem’s sustainability efforts is integrated into the larger goal of rebuilding and sustaining its community. The village would not be possible without a source of clean water, fuel for cooking, agriculture, and schools. The artisanal campus would not be possible without the administra- tors who live in the village and can be at the campus throughout the day to handle daily operations and any conflicts that arise.

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Community Participation

As with Cissé and Moussa Diack, Sëriñ Babacar Mbow emphasized the relationship between inner spirituality and outward labor for a community. In one conversation, he used a Wolof proverb to describe Ndem’s work: Nit nitay garaban ‘People need/restore people’ (Mbow 2009). Garab can mean ‘tree’ or ‘medicine’, alluding to natural medicines. When I asked him to explain the proverb, Mbow used the word restore, referring to the healing aspect of the word garab. He brought up this proverb following a conversa- tion about love as the center of all creation, spirituality, and more specifi- cally, the Ndem project. Only people, in other words, can restore people: community is at the foundation of this restoration. Ndem’s individual resi- dents find motivation for their work in beliefs derived from Murid and Baay Fall teachings, as described above. This inspiration will not find practicable fruition, however, without the commitments of an entire community.

The exodus because of drought and unemployment has spread small towns and villages thin: while some wage earners can commute weekly to their urban jobs, others move away permanently, sending only wages back to their families. Either scenario strains relationships among families and larger social networks. This is an effect of Senegal’s repeated droughts throughout the last century. Conversely, building a shared sense of belonging, revolving around a community project, lends strength to the community and the proj- ect. Using shared beliefs as inspiration for that project likewise strengthens the project and the beliefs. The beliefs then become applicable to, as Cissé described, the “modern era” and its challenges. Implementing abstract ideas in practice reconfirms individual and shared commitments to a faith. That is, daily practices such as those that Fallou Tall and Moussa Diack described strengthen a community’s commitment to faith and what they consider practices of it. The Muridiyya leadership has been particularly effective in sharing ideas, using technology such as radio and broadcast religious imag- ery to connect individual communities and reinforce the order’s teachings (Guèye 2003). These efforts, within a village or across a bandwidth, create a sense of belonging and further motivation for participation. Similarly, appli- cations of theology to community work have, in recent decades, replaced an emphasis on abstract theology in Latin American faith communities (Phil- lips 2010). This trend has shifted many Latin American models of faith-based development projects to the same community emphasis. Participation in communities, with all their economic and political challenges, has in turn shaped theologies and therefore their organizations that address poverty (Phillips 2010).

Cissé, Mbow, and other administrators of the Ndem project have sev- eral integrated goals that draw on these principles. They seek to employ as many people as possible from the fifteen villages surrounding Ndem that are a part of their project. Men’s and women’s employment within the smaller region decreases rural to urban migration that disintegrates rural village populations. Employment within one artisanal campus creates a sense of

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community, as people work together over time. While not everyone who finds employment in the Ndem cooperative is Baay Fall, most of its manag- ers are; they share the inspirations for their work that Cissé described. In addition, central Senegal is predominantly Muslim. This provides a critical mass of people motivated by, or at the very least sharing, religious principles.

Ndem’s community goals and projects require principles of environ- mental sustainability, to be able to live in a degraded environment. Creative thinking about fuel sources that eliminate trash and use a natural resource, or organic farming methods that use beneficial crops instead of damaging chemicals to eliminate pests, make living in this environment possible. Sustainable community practices, however, are equally necessary to Ndem’s work. The entire community must have motivation that sustains them in difficult circumstances. They center environmental practices such as recy- cling, working to improve the village’s structures, spiritual learning, weav- ing, and agriculture on Islamic teachings of zakat, Bamba’s teachings about applying faith and Fall’s example of laboring for spiritual goals. Religious teachings, already important to social life in central Senegal, provide a sense of community and inspiration for Ndem’s laborious work.

Conclusion

Creating an agricultural lifestyle with degraded land requires enormous effort and physical labor. Ndem’s locally generated development project shows the necessary shared commitment and shared motivation of an entire community. When describing the motivations for their work, participants in Ndem’s community and projects toggle between foundational Islamic and Sufi teachings that have a global reach, and those specific to the Murid Sufi order. Ndem has found a regionally and religiously relevant example for their work in Bamba’s first Murid community, the teachings of its leader, and the example of a prominent disciple. As Labatut (1995), Phillips (2010), and Ren- ders (2002) each argue, faith-based organizations’ locally generated economic development projects are small in scale, but they often are particularly effective. The common purpose, communitywide participation, and local relevancy embedded in such projects, motivated by religious principles, give them direction and collective strength. Putting these shared principles into practice—a notion that Bamba integrated into his teachings—dialectically reinforces the practices and the faith principles behind them.

One institution that fosters this collective participation and religious community in Senegal is the daara. The original purpose of a daara was to foster a spiritual learning environment and create an economic base to support the community; in contemporary cities, the economic base of the equivalent dahira, an urban prayer and fellowship group, is made up of sub- scriptions (Babou 2007b:204; Diop 1981:79). Ndem’s work shows that even in rural areas, the daara model can be updated from the peanut plantations that supported Bamba’s Murid settlements. Ndem relies on agriculture and

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craftworks that they sell on an international market with an up-to-date web- page. Their reach extends outward in other ways, too: while supporting their daara, they address contemporary economic poverty and environmental drought. Ndem started as a daara and a community-based organization and then incorporated into an NGO. Within these institutional frameworks, it addresses needs that state services have not been able to fulfill.

Ndem’s model of development integrates a spiritual community and historically relevant professions with its goals of economic and environ- mental sustainability. This combination is an astute response to a region in which religious communities are seamlessly integrated into social life, and in which environmental degradation is a major challenge. This description fits countless communities across Africa, with variations only in religious beliefs and types of environmental disasters, including drought, increasing pollution, eroding coastlines, and changes in weather patterns. In addition, economic crises that are local, national, and global in scale will continue to confront Ndem. This, too, is a familiar challenge, as the continuing global economic crisis and shifting national governments because of elections or revolutions concern localities. How small rural communities respond to these challenges, employing the resources and the strengths that they have, will determine whether they remain strong communities and viable places to live.

aC K n o W L e D G M e n T S

The ethnographic research for this paper was made possible by an internal grant from Central

Michigan university. The author thanks ndem’s administrators and residents, who welcomed her

into homes and workshops and granted the interviews that provide the basis for this research.

She is grateful for the anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved this essay.

This paper was developed from a presentation at the 2010 african Studies association annual

meetings.

n oT e S

1. For an accessible breakdown of these policies, see oxford Business Group 2009.

2. Daara usually refers to the house of a spiritual leader where people gather to study. historical

sources as early as the 1600s show that daaras were present in several areas of Senegambia,

including the Wolof kingdoms. In a Murid context, as Villalón (1995) explains, it also refers

to an agricultural settlement in which disciples work for a marabout, a local Muslim leader.

ndem aligns with both definitions, as the house of the marabout Sëriñ Babacar Mbow is in

the midst of the daara, and the people of ndem’s daara work on a communal farm to supply

the entire community.

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3. The names Soxna (for women) and Sëriñ (for men) are Wolof titles of respect for elders,

particularly spiritual leaders.

4. This observation is based on the author’s research with a variety of weaving workshops within

three different towns in central Senegal.

5. Instruction in a work ethic is part of spiritual teachings across West africa in addition to

moral traditions of several ethnicities, including Sereer (Searing 2002) and Diola (Davidson

2009). Magassouba (1985) and Cruise o’Brien (1975) note that Bamba’s teachings on work

ethics echo teachings of other Sufi orders in the region, though both acknowledge that the

Muridiyya has flourished in the desert because of this emphasis on labor.

6. See van hoven (1996) for a history of interpreting zakat in Senegal.

7. Precycling refers to not using resources, thereby eliminating the need to recycle them.

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