Beneath a Baobab: Stories from Sénégal

Come to Joal with me.

This past weekend, I travelled to Joal, a small fishing village along the coast of Senegal. I went with four other people from my program--Lindsay, Sara, Rose, and Matt Petcoff (from Mac). We were escorted by Ibou, a family friend of Lindsay's.

Getting there was quite the experience. We met outside our school and took two cabs to the "garage." The garage, as it turns out, is a huge field filled with hundreds of old station wagons. From the moment we stepped out of the cabs, people flocked to us--drivers offering us a ride to any destination, vendors selling fruit, phone cards, jewelry, crackers, cookies, clothing. As we made our way into the "garage" the vendors followed us, new ones arriving every minute trying to get our business. Fortunately, Lindsay's brother, Alex, and Ibou were there to negotiate for us. They finally found a driver to take us to Joal. It was a "sept-place" car, a station wagon with 7 seats. We got to the car and placed our bags in the small trunk. Then three of us were squished into the back row, three more in the middle row, and finally another passenger travelling to Joal sat in the front seat. We remained in the garage for several more minutes. Looking out: faces surrounded the entire car, vendors reaching in through the windows offering their products. Men and women with large baskets of fruits and cookies balancing on their head. One man leaned in to tell us we owed him a favor. They kept opening the trunk, putting things in and taking things out. It was sheer madness. Finally, we left, not totally confident the car was going to make it all the way to Joal.

Traffic going in and out of Dakar is always terrible. There is only one road that connects the Dakar peninsula to the rest of the country and they are doing construction on it, so you can just imagine what the traffic is like on a Friday afternoon. Fortunately, or unfortunately--however you want to look at it, our driver seemed to be a professional aggressive driver, using the dirt median as a passing lane, and sometimes crossing over into the lanes of oncoming traffic, in order to get around the traffic jam in our lane. Every time I get in a car, I'm never quite sure that I'm going to get out of it alive. Part of the adventure of Senegal, I suppose. Once we were out of Dakar and the first ring of suburbs, traffic cleared up. Night settled quickly. We bought dates and water from vendors along the road for the driver and other passenger to break their fast. We made a pit and prayer stop at a gas station. When we returned to the car, after buying snacks, we found the driver praying next to his car on the silver sun visor for the windshield.

Back on the road again, the three of us in the back seat, nestled in, making ourselves as comfortable as possible in the very small space we had. We cruised down the road to Joal. Out my window were the most incredible stars; out the right window was a terrific lightning storm. It was hard to decide where to look. Often I opted for the stars, occasionally being rendered temporarily blind by the bright flashes of lightning. The sky would flash a purplish-white, the stars disappearing, then quickly returning to their original positions. It was a very happy moment with the wind on my face, the stars and lightning above, the comfort of night, and the music on my iPod. The headlights illuminated the tall grasses lining the road, and beyond that the land was dark. On the return trip on Sunday, I was able to see that the land we drove through was mostly open--the countryside, speckeled with baobab trees, and small farms. Corn plants look the same everywhere in the world, but these are not the huge farms I'm used to in the midwest. Here, the plants do not grow in uniform rows and columns, but rather in a more helter-skelter fashion.

Joal was in a black out when we arrived. Everyone was outside, escaping the heat of their houses. By the light of a flashlight, Ibou led us to the house where we were staying. Lindsay's host family owns a second house in Joal; her aunt lives there to take care of the house. We payed for the food, and she prepared the meals. It was really lovely. Like most Senegalese houses, it had an open courtyard. With the lack of electricity, there was not much to do, so we sat in the small courtyard and gazed at the stars through the rectangular opening in the ceiling. It was perfect. There were more stars than I've ever seen before. Dakar has terrible light pollution and so do most American cities, but here, in the small African fishing village experiencing a blackout, there was nothing blocking the ancient light from shining through. We went up to the rooftop terrace and gazed some more.

Eventually dinner was ready. We ate fried fish and fries by candlelight. (Fried seems to be Senegal's national flavor.) Then Ibou wanted to take us on a tour. It seemed a bit silly, since without electricity you can't see much. He seemed to know everyone he passed and he doesn't even live there. He's from Dakar, but spends the month of August in Joal every year. We went to a hole-in-the-wall bar with room for only one table, and had a beer, again by candlelight. We sat outside where the air was a bit cooler, and chatted with the couple other residents also enjoying a drink. I was proposed to by an older man who supposedly works for the mayor. He was either really drunk, or has a bad slurring speech impediment. The power came back on, and after our beer we continued our tour. But the storm we watched on our way to Joal, arrived in the village. The winds picked up, and for the first time since arriving in Senegal, we all felt cold. We turned back to go home. The yellow glow of the streetlamps illuminated the eerily empty streets ligned with a solid wall of store fronts. Dust and trash rose and swirled in the wind. Fast moving rain drops and dirt stung our eyes. The image of the street in the storm is another that seems permanently imprinted in my mind.

The storm continued for a couple hours. Back at the house, they collected the rain water in buckets to be used to clean the walls and floors later. Nothing is wasted in this society. The power went out again and we enjoyed the sounds of the rain and thunder by candle light.

The next day we got an early start and went to Leopold Senghor's childhood home. It is now a museum. It was good to learn about the country's first president and one of the founders of the Negritude movement. Following the museum, Ibou gave us a tour of the Catholic cemetary in Joal. He unlocked the gate, and inside, in addition to all the graves, were 3 sheep and a donkey. Their owners put them in there to graze on the grasses. This way, too, the grounds are maintained. It's a win-win situation.

Then we walked to Fadiouth or Ile des Coquillages--an island created by seashells from fishers. A native of the island gave us a 3-hour long tour for $2. Highlights of the tour included the big mosque, several churches, and saint's shrines. We concluded at the cemetary, on it's own island. The caskets are buried beneath sea shells and it has a section for Catholics and a section for Muslims. One day I will get around to posting pictures. I think they will be a much better way of describing the sights of this island.

Exhausted we walked back to the house and enjoyed a delicious lunch of chicken and rice. I went to town, as I often do these days when eating meat, and cleaned off the meat of every bone. We then returned to the beach and enjoyed a bottle of wine and the fresh air.

As I've remarked in other posts, I have a different value set here. Well, my values are the same, but I behave differently. (Take for example, the fact that I eat meat.) I was telling my friends that sometimes I litter my coffee cup while I'm in Dakar. (After every dance class, we buy cafe Touba, delicious spiced coffee, to break the fast with our teacher and drummers. They toss their cups to the ground when they're finished, and sometimes I find that to be a very convenient option.) So my friends got upset with me, and lectured me about littering. Which is funny, because I'm normally on their side of the conversation. So to make up for my actions in Dakar, I did a little beach clean-up. It was a futile effort, because there was way too much garbage strewn about, but it felt good to get back in that mode of thinking and acting. The whole way home I continued to pick up litter.

The sun set as we walked home. Huge puddles from the rain storm reflected the palm trees and beautiful pinks and purples of the setting sun.

Once back at the house, we took bucket showers and had dinner--beef and spaghetti. Then we went back to the bar from the night before. We invited our tour guide from the Senghor museum to join us. Many hours later, we returned home and went to bed, exhausted from our long day.

Sunday, we woke up and packed our belongings. After eating 3.5 baguettes amongst the 6 of us and a cup of coffee each, we hit the road. Before leaving town, we made a stop at the fishing port. You could see the fishers in their pirogues (long colorful fishing boats). Inside, men brought in baskets of fish and dumped them onto already-huge piles. It was quite a sight, and a smell.

We finally got back on the road, again crammed into a 7-place station wagon. By daylight, I was able to see what I missed on the way to Joal. There are all types of scenes to be remembered, the helter-skelter corn farms, the baobabs dotting the landscape, two young naked boys playing by the side of the road, colorful building fronts, horse-drawn carts on the same road as us, donkeys, goats, sheep.

I love weekends in Dakar with my family. It's fun to be home to see how the household operates and observe all the preparations for each meal, but it was really nice to be able to travel. It was good to see another part of the country, especially a city that is not Dakar. Joal is an adorable town. I've traveled a few other times here via class field trips. As you drive, you go through the country and occasionally pass through small towns. I was happy to discover what is beyond the walls of the buildings lining the roads.

posted by Hannah Gelder @ 12:54 PM