West Africa is an interesting mix of cultures and traditions. Muslims and Christians live comfortably alongside each other although, judging by the number of large mosques, it appears the greater population of Dakar are Muslim. Clothing is varied from women with beautiful brightly coloured and heavily patterned long dresses with matching headwear, to the more modest long clothes and scarves of the muslim women and modern day western clothing. The men mostly wore western style clothes of jeans and t’shirts, although older men wore traditional long tunic with baggy pants, all more subdued than the peacock coloured women. In the same way I felt like I was being pulled in two directions by the mixed messages we were hearing and experiencing. On one hand you have the small communities that welcome tourism and international visitors, but then on the other you have a stone wall of inflexibility and lost opportunity.
We started our day early, catching the 8.30am water taxi ashore and having breakfast of egg and onions inside a fresh baguette, bought from a street food stall across the road from the Yacht Club. We had the usually cheerful morning greetings from the group of men who were gathered outside Djago’s sail loft as they waited for him to throw them a scrap of work. They were a mix of lovely men – one who was blind in one eye, another with the biggest smile you can imagine, another who was tall, strong and a little sullen. There was a lovely feeling of trust, although they were also keen to fleece you for as much as they could get away with!
We jumped into a beaten up yellow taxi and headed into town. It was Saturday but the roads were still busy. Our driver, Barsau, drove fast and determinedly! We had booked him for half a day and he seemed to want to get us to as many places as possible, as quickly as possible! When we arrived at the Victorian central station, he appeared surprised that we wanted to stop and get out! The day continued with stops at a couple of mosques, the catholic cathedral, Place de l’independence, The Presidential Palace and finally to a national monument to recognise the suffering caused by the slave trade and the West Africans who were forcibly taken from Senegal and neighbouring countries, to start a life of slavery in the US, Europe and Caribbean. I ended up buying a painting from an artist who approached us on the street and was drawn to both him and his art!
One of the places we had wanted to visit was the Marche Sandaga, a large street market which sells everything from fabrics and gold watches and anything in between! As we approached the market our taxi (which earlier had a flat tyre), started misfiring and Barsau pulled over at a busy intersection to check under the bonnet. Having four white passengers in a broken down taxi was like a magnet for all sorts of hawkers to make a bee-line to us. We were sitting targets – literally! One man, dressed in camouflage clothing was particularly persistent and, even though Barsau kept telling him to go away, tried convincing us to get out of the car and walk with him to a large fabric and clothing factory. We refused and, as soon as Barsau could, we drove off with the man shouting behind us. We reached the market and Barsau pulled over to let us out, telling us to be very careful, when suddenly the man appeared beside us having ran down the road chasing our car and yelling at other men to follow him. We all made the decision to stay in the car and asked Barsau to drive off, which resulted in more banging on the car roof and loud shouting as we didn’t dare look round to see what was happening behind us!
When we stopped at the Presidential Palace we were dropped off at a side road opposite the main gates to the building. The gates were guarded by a man wearing a smart red jacket and red cap with white gloves. He stood outside the ornate iron gates with the large imposing white building of the palace behind him. The road was surprisingly quiet so we walked to the pedestrian crossing in front of the gates and started crossing the road. Two burly policemen suddenly started shouting and gesticulating at us, telling us to turn back and directing us further up the street. We dutifully followed their instructions, only to be turned back again a few minutes later. It appeared we were not allowed to approach the gates or stop and look at the palace. We turned back and noticed we were standing next to a very nice, lush park with iron fencing around it but we were beside a large open gate. We wandered in to look at the green sanctuary in an otherwise dusty city. Once again a large policeman appeared and, although we didn’t understand what he said to us, it left us in no doubt what he meant and we turned around and retreated yet again! As we made our way back to the taxi we noticed a large bird with a long tail and big curved red beak, sitting on the railings – later identified as a red billed hornbill (thank you Andrew, and thank you Ruffian for the picture!). This, along with the small red finches, flocks of black kites, stalks, herons, cormorants and even vultures made the day memorable. The kites are similar in numbers to pigeons in other cities. They sat on ledges of tall buildings, circle overhead, sweep over the sea and sat on roadside wires. The vultures were sitting on rooftops in the city giving us an almost foreboding feeling as we made our way back to the boat.
The last place we visited was a huge sculpture of a man, his wife and child which depicted the families who were torn apart by the slave trade. The statue faces West, towards the Statue of Liberty and is the second biggest sculpture in the world. It was commissioned by a past President of Senegal and stands alone, above the city which stretched out in a hazy, low level sprawl below us.
The museum, within the structure was an interesting example of an exhibition which had been cobbled together by someone who had no experience in telling a story or a solid plan in mind! The guided tour took us through rooms of displays which included life-sized clay figures of men and women pre-slave trade to what the future may look like after human Genetic Engineering was permitted…….? We were also taken to a room which displayed a range of gifts presented to the President, we assume when the monument opened, but this was not explained, ranging from ornate carvings and spears to a woven handbag, very similar to one I owned many years ago. We then went into a room which was completely empty accept for a small stage, which the guide told us was built for meetings and was soundproofed….? We all dutifully filed out again and into another room which displayed clay pictures of people from Martin Luther King to Barrack Obama and various Presidents of West African countries…. for what reason, we have no idea. Then it was time to take the lift up to the 15th floor to a viewing platform which was inside the hat of the man. There were about 30 of us on the tour, but the lift could only take three people at a time and the viewing platform could only hold six, so the wait was long and the visit at the top, quick! To say it was a shambles is a little unkind, but sadly, accurate!
Isle de Goree is accessible by ferry from Dakar and is the place where most slaves from West Africa were shipped to Europe, USA and the Caribbean. We visited the small island after we had gone to the police to complete our check out procedures so we could leave the next day. The island has remnants of the old structures, many of these were once grand buildings but now falling into disrepair and, it appeared, used for housing. The island was clean in comparison to the rest of Dakar, and had a large community of artists and craftspeople living there. The somber and sobering history of the island was very much felt, although the constant barrage of hawkers trying to sell us touristy items detracted from the over powering sadness and shame I felt as a privileged white mid-class European. It seemed a little odd that here was a place where white people harassed and captured blacks and, as we tried to fight our way out of the small shops, the same was happening to us in reverse – but we managed to get away with most of our dignity and money in place!
Driving the streets of Dakar we saw sights that are engrained in our memories – lines of women washing clothes and hanging them to dry beside the dusty street, row after row of street stalls selling expensive looking couches, beds and heavy wooden furniture, tired looking horses pulling heavy two-wheeled carts ladened with items, numerous disabled beggars with sad, pleading eyes asking for money, women carrying their beautiful babies strapped tightly to their backs and people going about their daily lives to survive. The day was fun, tiring, eye-opening and humbling. We often take for granted the life-lottery we won being born in a wealthy, civilised western country. Steve and I are now seeing first-hand what life looks like for the majority of those people less fortunate than us, and it’s not an easy life – it’s dirty, unforgiving, relentless and hard but through all this hardship there is beauty, laughter and hope.
Back at the Yacht Club, we collected our beautifully dressed dinghy from Djago, bought some new shorts from Mama Bijou, stocked up with fresh fruit and vegetables from Mama Legume, bought some nuts from Mama Nuggat, filled our gas bottles from a lovely one-eyed man who always greeted us with a beautiful smile each morning, said goodbye to Sajio and prepared to leave the next afternoon for our sail south to Gambia. As the call for prayer echoed around the bay, we bade goodbye to Dakar. We were leaving Senegal with a lifetime of memories and half the Sahara Desert on our boat but unlike the dust, Senegal will stay with us for the rest of our lives!
(Some pictures provided by Ruffian)
