Langue de Barbarie

           We’ve been at l’Université Gaston Berger for a couple weeks now. We left the hostel in the morning to meet a few important people at the University, and then we went to see our rooms. The plan was that we would all have Senegalese roommates and live relatively close to each other in the same building. As we are slowly learning, set plans rarely work out in Senegal. Patrice and Michaela are both living in Village M, but in different buildings. Patrice’s roommate is from Chad, and Michaela’s roommate is from Mali, although she hasn’t shown up yet and has apparently been in Mali for a few weeks while there are no classes. We're not sure she exists. (Right now the professors are on strike and have been for about 5 weeks, so there has been no class.) They roomed Stella and I together in Village H, which is around a 10 minute walk from Village M.

Our room is definitely smaller than the doubles at HWS, but there is still enough room for both of us and all our things. After you walk in the door, you’re in a small room separated from the beds by a curtain. To the left are our closets, and to the right is a small room with a sink and a shower. Our shower only works in the late hours of the night, though, so we take our bucket and go down the hall to the bathroom, fill it up, bring it back to our shower, and take a cold bucket shower. We’re lucky that we even have running water, because Michaela on the third floor of her building doesn’t have it and needs to go down to the first floor bathroom in order to get water for her shower. Once you walk past the curtain, you’re in a room with both of our beds, a desk, and a shelf. Michaela and Patrice both have a similar set-up, but their rooms are bigger.

Before Professor Joseph and Professor Pinto left to go back to Dakar, we went on a tour of St. Louis on a horse-drawn carriage. Our carriage driver was great and not only told us about the history of the island and of certain buildings but told us some (questionable) jokes as well. He first took us to all the corners of the first island of St. Louis, and then we went across a small bridge to Langue de Barbarie, which is where the fishermen and their families live and work. Our tour guide said that although this island looks extremely poor, “it is actually rich because every man works as a fisherman and has four wives who each work to dry the fish during the day.” Because supposedly “each man has four wives,” there are also tons of children running around in the streets and on the shore.

We took a left after the bridge and headed towards the south of the island. We passed many houses and buildings that looked similar to those on the first island, but many streets we passed here had men sitting with their nets who were obviously the fishermen that our tour guide was talking about. Next we passed huge 18-wheelers that they use as refrigerators to keep the fish fresh and cold; they would fill handmade straw baskets up with ice, and surround the fish with these baskets in the trucks. As we continued the road began to get thinner and on the left we saw the shores with lots of pirogues (fishermen’s boats), and women and children waiting for the men to come back to shore with the fish. On the right was a large wall, behind which were both Muslim and Christian cemeteries, each with hundreds of graves. 

We stopped past all the cemeteries where the paved roads disappeared and where there were straw fences and restaurants on either side of us. We walked towards the west coast of the island to eat lunch, were we had the trademark dish of Senegal, ceebu jën (fish and rice), with a view of the ocean. Before lunch we went on the beach where Patrice met a man with dreadlocks who invited him to play drums after lunch. So after we ate, we all went over behind another straw wall and played drums while one of the musicians sang “Waka Waka.”

On our way back we took a different route, and instead of seeing the 18-wheelers we got to see where the women dry the fish. It smelled horrible, but was really cool to see. Once we got back to the first island, our tour guide showed us the north and south of St. Louis and said that back in colonial times, the North used to be the “Muslim side” and contained the Muslims and the mosques, and the south was the “Christian side” and contained the Christians and the churches. We ended the day by having drinks on the deck overlooking the Senegal River and the Pont du Fedherbe.  

                               Street in the city near the French Cultural Center

                                Pirogues on the shores of Langue de Barbarie

                                       City street on Langue de Barbarie

                                                 Fisherman with their nets

                                                     Refrigerator Trucks

                                        Ice baskets to keep the fish refrigerated

                           Road to the beach. Shore on left, wall of cemetery on right.

                                 Women waiting for the men to return with the fish

                                                     Goats love trash

                                              Communal ceebu jën bowl

                                         "Restaurant" we ate at on the beach

                                          One of the Muslim cemeteries

                                           Street where women dry fish

                                      Drying fish, burning trash, smelling awful

                                       Street on first island of St. Louis

Touba

              Last Tuesday, we left the Alafifa hotel at around 9:00 am because of a delay with the taxis and the baggage. We were told that instead of going straight to Saint Louis, we would be taking a detour through the city of Touba. Each year (based on a lunar calendar) there is a sort of pilgrimage that Muslims from all over Africa take to Touba. It’s the burial site of Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba, who is said to be one of the most famous Soufis in Senegal. Being able to see Touba during this pilgrimage is a once in a lifetime opportunity, apparently, so it was worth a few extra hours in the taxi. We got to see all different styles of living during our 11 hour drive. First we passed through the center of Dakar, where people were walking around with a purpose, some wearing traditional dress, some wearing clothes that you could find in Western countries. As we left Dakar on the main road, we were slowed because of all of the public transportation buses carrying people to Touba. Each bus was packed like sardines and had several men standing outside the bus on the bumpers and hanging on to the back door. Some even had people traveling on the top of the bus where the luggage is kept. It was because of all this traffic that I got to see the differences between Senegalese driving and driving in the United States. In Senegal, even though there is a “speed limit,” there is no speed limit, because there is usually nobody around to enforce it. Our taxi driver would drift to the left to see if anyone was coming, and either drift back if there was a car or speed along the wrong side of the road until we had passed the slower drivers or until a car was coming at us head-on.

            The next style of living we saw was that of the outskirts of the city. The streets were packed with a hundred people on either side, waiting for buses or taxis to take them to Touba. We cut down a side street to avoid the crowds, and there we saw the kind of living that we had seen in Senegalese movies. We saw small houses that were basically all courtyards, where you could see women inside washing clothes and children running around, with maybe one or two rooms that were covered that probably contained beds. Next we passed through towns that were not quite suburbs, but were not rural either. We passed donkeys and horses pulling carts carrying people or products. In one of these towns, we stopped to wait for the other taxi, and Professor Joseph bought us all our first Gazelle Limonade from a small store on the side of the road. After 4 hours of sitting in a packed car with our bags on our laps in 90 degree weather, it was extremely refreshing. Once the other taxi had caught up, we drove around the corner to have coffee and bread and local juice with Papa’s mother and father and sisters (Papa is our advisor in Senegal) in their home.

            Once we left there we went directly to Touba, which took another couple hours because of the bus, taxi, horse, and donkey traffic, even though it was only about 20 or so miles away. As we got closer to Touba, the crowds became more and more dense. Finally we were in the city but were barely moving because of all the people in the road. We were lucky enough to get close to the enormous mosque in the town center, but had to turn and drive past it because we couldn’t possibly drive around it like we had planned. Before leaving the Touba, we stopped at a random house at the edge of the city to try the famous café Touba that is so popular around here. To steal Michaela and Patrice’s way of describing it, it tasted like a mixture of barbeque sauce, alcohol, and mint. Maybe it’s an acquired taste, but it made me nauseous and still does every time I smell it, which is a lot. Either way I plan to try it later on in the semester and see if my tastes have changed.

            Finally, we were on our way to Saint Louis. Between Touba and Saint Louis we were able to see a third style of living. On both sides of the road, in the middle of the savannah, there were villages scattered every couple hundred meters with huts made of straw and a straw fence surrounding each village. There were tons of cows, sheep, goats and donkeys along each side of the road. As we drove there were fewer and fewer villages, but every once in a while we’d see a group of goats or sheep or cows or donkeys, so we knew there were villages nearby. The women were outside talking or grinding grains and the men were outside sitting in the shade. Both groups wore very colorful and traditional clothing. As the sun began to set we had passed all of the villages and were driving through the savannah. We made it to Saint Louis by around 8:30 pm, and moved in to a hostel in the city for the night because it was too late to move into the dorms. 

                                                    Center of Dakar

                                    Bus in Dakar that would take people to Touba

                                        First style of living: Outskirts of the city

                          Second style: Papa's house was in a neighborhood like this

                                         Minaret of the huge mosque in Touba

                                                 Mosque in Touba

                                               Crowded street in Touba

                                Third style of living: One of the villages we passed

                          Savannah as the sun began to set on our way to St. Louis

                                         Our room in the hostel in St. Louis

                                                    Outside the hostel

Dakar

            My first day in Senegal felt like three days. After a 7 hour flight from NYC, we arrived in Dakar at 8:00 am local time. Getting off the airplane I was struck by the view of the extremely large African Renaissance statue in the distance, which could be seen past abandoned buildings, houses, and small mountains. As soon as we left the safety of customs we were bombarded by many people asking to carry our bags or telling us to choose their taxi. I could barely make it to our professor because there were about 10 men surrounding us trying to take my suitcase and expecting a tip. This was not unique to the airport; everywhere we go people come up to us and try to sell us things, trying to figure out where we’re from and charm us by speaking the same language. If you try to be polite and friendly, they will never stop following you, so we just have to keep moving and avoid eye contact.

            We headed a bit later to Goree, the island that marks the western most part of Africa. It is home to the Maison des Esclaves, which is where people from around Africa were taken after they were captured, waiting to pass through the “door of no return” that would take them to a lifetime of slavery. It was an intense experience to see the size of the rooms the slaves were kept in, and the places where they kept those who “rebelled” were even smaller. It was kind of surreal to think of what went on where I was standing a couple hundred years ago. I asked how many people were kept in these small spaces at a time, to which the answer was, “as many as they could fit while still being able to close the door.” The island itself is a very pretty place, but also very touristy, and there are people all over selling things. At lunch a man walking around singing and playing a Kora asked our names and sang to us, using them to make up a song. My first Senegalese meal (Poulet Yassa) was chicken with a kind of caramelized onion and rice, which was very good, while many others ordered an entire fish, sharp teeth and eyeballs included. Later that night, we had dinner in what looked like just a large room in somebody’s house with tables and chairs, but the food (once we got it, after over an hour and a half of waiting and eating peanuts) was very good.

            Today we walked around the city near our hotel, and spent a lot of time in the phone store trying to get SIM cards and new phones. We also went to Le Theatre National (de Daniel Sorano), which seats over 1100 people and hosts many different concerts, dances, and plays. At lunch I split a pizza with Michaela, but it was definitely not enjoyable. At least now we know what not to order. Because we were so tired, we came back to the hotel pretty early. We’ll eat at the hotel tonight if we’re hungry so we can get some rest before leaving for Saint Louis at 7:00 am tomorrow.

                                              African Renaissance statue

                                                       Statue on Goree

                                                   Poisson Yassa at Goree

                                                    My Poulet Yassa

                                                      Goree

                                                 Maison des Esclaves

                                                       "Door of no return"

                                                         Beach at Goree

                                                          Street in Dakar

                                  People selling things on the street near our hotel