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I'm pretty sure I booked a direct flight to Dakar from Madrid, but when I double-checked my flight info, I noticed the plane was making a stop in the Canary Islands. We weren't allowed to leave the boarding area once we landed in Las Palmas, but, luckily we only had to wait for 45 minutes before re-boarding the plane. On the second leg of the trip I sat next to a Korean man named Jae Kwan. After living in the Canary Islands for seven years, working on a Korean boat, he spoke almost no Spanish. With what little broken English he could muster, we managed to fill out his embarkation card and chat for a bit. He was a mechanical engineer, and was going to Dakar to work on a boat for three days. He told me stories about working in Samoa ("Samoans, BIG!") and Hawaii ("America, BIG!"), which I tried my best to understand. After dinner, we both nodded off to sleep.
While I was delighted to find the Yoff/Dakar airport is named after Léopold Sédar Senghor, I found passport control to be less than welcoming. They wouldn't admit me unless I could supply them with an address for my stay in Senegal. Luckily Sami was outside the airport, so I left my passport with the police, and went to find her. She didn't know the address of the apartment where we were staying so she told me to tell them I'd be staying at Hotel Lumumba in Yoff. I went back in, wrote "Hotel Lumumba, Yoff" on the embarkation card, and received my passport. Some Spaniards were having difficulty understanding the police demands for a local address, so I took them aside and told them to write "Hotel Lumumba, Yoff" on their embarkation cards, too.
I'd already exited the airport once, so I was prepared for the swarm of taxi drivers and moneychangers who stand outside waiting to pounce upon new arrivals like flies on a piece of horse poop. Sami had a taxi driver waiting for us, but it took us ten minutes and a phone call to find him. Luckily I only had a piece of carry-on luggage, so we were able to make as swift a getaway as possible, and it was much better than having to negotiate prices with a taxi driver. There are no set taxi rates in Dakar. You negotiate the price you're willing to pay with the taxi driver before you get in.
First impressions: it was dark, dusty, wild, loud, alive and noisy. We found our taxi and headed off to Yoff village. The autoroute is new, I was told, but it's full of potholes and half of it is still sand. The cars bounce along like rickety jalopies, and that's because most of them are: no taillights, broken mirrors and windshields, sometimes no headlights, doors only open from the inside, and gasoil leaks. Cars and trucks share the road with horse-drawn carts, and people are always jaywalking across the highway.
We made it to our apartment, a nice, quiet spot with a sea view. The next morning, Sami took me to a local breakfast spot: a fly-infested tent on the side of the road (Rte. de la Cimetière, somehwere between Via Via and the horse parking lot) where a beautiful woman named Mamafat serves sandwiches. Mamafat is probably in her early thirties, and possesses a simple kind of mysterious beauty similar to the kind Whitney Houston once had. Way back when she was saving all of her love for us. With the help of a young girl who always has a baby strapped to her back, she feeds the male workers of the village. She has marinated beef and onion sandwiches (my favorite), spaghetti sandwiches, tuna sandwiches, lentil sandwiches...she cuts open a piece of baguette and fills it with whatever fillings you want. She serves the sandwiches wrapped in yesterday's newspaper. Her assistant serves Touba coffee (natural, mild, yummy coffee), and a delightful something called thé frais. I'm not sure what kind of tea leaves they are, but when she mixes the tea with powdered milk and sugar, it takes on a salmon colour. I had breakfast there everyday during my stay for about 750 CFA (1.15 euro). When I bid goodbye to her yesterday morning, I think I detected a tear in her eye. She could have just been batting away a fly, though.
After breakfast, Sami and I caught a cab to Trait d'Union where the exhibition was being held. While she and Sylvia, a German artist who was exhibiting in Yoff with Sami, finished setting up the show, I took a walk along the beach. I managed to walk for five minutes before meeting a young man who lured me to his "café". It was little more than a covered cabana made of sticks and a sheet. I sat down while he went to get tea. While I was waiting, another young man approached me and gave me a brief history of the fishing village. I don't remember everything he said, but I'm certain it ended with, "...anytime, you come to my family, everything is free for you!" After almost half an hour, the first guy came back with a cup of coffee instead of tea. He took a sip, then handed it to me and ran down to the ocean to clean out the teapot. I was pretty sure by this point I wasn't going to drink anything that took him half an hour to find, so I made like I had to be somewhere, thanked them both, and walked back to the gallery.
Afidi, the woman who owns the office-cum-gallery, took Sami and I shopping for vernissage provisions. We drove to a bakery in Ngor, a nearby town, and then stopped to get gas. While the car was being fuelled, all sorts of vendors approached the car windows, trying to sell us t-shirts, shoes, sunglasses, etc. We drove across the street to the market to load up on beer, water, napkins, fruit and vegetables. We we went back outside, we noticed we had a flat tire. A security guard was there, already changing the tire with the "help" of two Bayefall. These guys are supposed to be Sufi mystics, but most of them just wander around town in blue outfits begging for money for their leader (whose picture they wear on large lanyards around their necks). Once the tire was changed, and Afidi had worked things out with the security guard, we got back in the car. The Bayefall reached into the car, stroking our arms, trying to get us to give them money. Afidi made some wise comment in French, and we drove back to the gallery for a successful opening.
Thursday we headed to Dakar for my first time. The busses are as rickety as the cars, only bigger. It's quite a nice ride, though. People board the bus, sit down, then pass their money to other people, who pass it to the ticket salesman, who hands the ticket back to whoever gave him the money, and they pass the ticket back to the original person. Imagine trying to give your money to someone on the bus in the States to buy your ticket for you! I also noticed that the highway doesn't really have lanes. People just pass whenever they feel like it, some people drive on the shoulder (sand) - somehow it all makes sense. Dakar is a zoo! From the bus we walked through the marketplace where people shout, follow you, try to get your attention in a mixture of languages so you'll buy phone cards, food, souvenirs, toothpaste - pure madness. We went to the Novotel to use the bathroom then went outside for lunch. In front of the Novotel there's a tent where a woman cooks up the plate of the day. We had not-so-good Tchebou Djen (fish and rice) for 500 CFA, then headed off to see some of the Biennale.
Friday the village awoke to no running water. It arrived at some point during the afternoon, but by that point, we had already taken the boat to Gorée (cost of return 15-minute boat ride = 5000 CFA). On the boat we met Sonia and another woman who told us to visit their jewellery shops on the island. When we landed some guy tried to tell us we had to first visit the tourist information point before visiting the island. Luckily, Sami was hip to his game, and told him we were there to visit the Biennale exhibitions. He tried to tell us the exhibitions were over, but we had a catalogue to prove him wrong. Sami told me that one way they try to suck money from tourists is by having them pay a tourists fee to the visitor center to a guide who may or may not accompany on your island stay. We wandered off alone on the island. We stopped to visit Bobo, a nice rasta who has his own café on the island, located, as luck would have it, right next to the shop of one of the jewellery-selling women who accosted us on the boat. We told her we'd visit her later. Sami bought my CD for Bobo, and we listened to it while eating lunch, provided by a woman named Aby who has a restaurant in the same enclave where Bobo has his tea shop. She made us mafé (beef in peanut sauce) and fried fish. After spending time there we walked up to the top part of the island to the permanent artists spaces. Lots of artists live in caves underground on the island and exhibit their work aboveground among the defunct cannons. This island was one of the major points of departure for slave ships. One of the artists we met, Mousa, sleeps in a tent on a ledge. When he unzips his tent first thing in the morning, the only thing he can see is the sea. But I bet he doesn't wander home drunk too often. He showed us his home underneath ground, and after walking around for two minutes I can understand why he doesn't sleep there - it's stifling hot!
After we walked around the artist commune (and dodged some more vendors), we made our way to the island historical museum. We learned that of the roughly nine million (documented) slaves shipped to the Americas, only 4.5% were sent to the States. The majority of them went to the West Indies, with South America following close behind. So I only had a 4.5% chance of being born in the States as opposed to Haiti or Brazil. One of the most impressive characters we ran across in the museum was Ayouba Souleyman Diallo (1700-1773). Wikipedia paints him out to be a rather harmless figure, but the four lines underneath his picture in the museum summed up his life as such: "Owned slaves in Africa until he was captured and sold into slavery himself. Freed by British, returned to Africa to resume life as slaveholder."
When we left the museum we happened upon Sonia, who tried to get us to come buy some jewellery from her, or in her words, "Only LOOK!", but we told her we were still touring the island, and would come back later. Apparently, while we had been touring the island, we'd missed a weight-throwing competition, and we arrived at the dock just in time for the presentation of prizes. The athletes were all larger than life: they must have been at least seven feet tall and eight miles wide. There was a German woman, a French woman, an American guy, and two guys from Italy. A group of schoolchildren had been brought over to the island to watch the competition, and they were all wearing shirts from the event. After the prizes were handed out some Senegalese pop star sang to the crowd, and all the children went wild, dancing. After they were finished, we went back to Bobo's for one more glass of tea. Then we rushed back to the dock to lose ourselves in the herd of children in the hopes that Sonia and her cronies wouldn't spot us.
We took the boat back to Dakar with the screaming schoolchildren and the Amazon weight-throwers. On the way, I spotted Jae Kwan's Korean boat. At the dock, we headed to the dock artisan shop. Who should we find waiting for us there, but Sonia?! She didn't seem very pleased that we'd left the island without even visiting her shop. In fact, she scolded us and walked away. After poking around the shop for awhile we went to L'Imperiale for a drink to decide what to do next. We picked a couple of restaurants/clubs that we thought would be nice, but after wandering around and not finding them, we decided to go Indigo (26 Rue Félix Faure, Dakar). They had great Vietnamese and Senegalese food. I ordered chicken, but I'm pretty sure they served me pigeon. It was tasty, nonetheless.
On Saturday we went to the Yoff food market and walked to Almadies to find some barber friend of Sami's named Artur. We didn't find him, but we found his house. Then we had a great Vietnamese lunch at Hong Kong II and, later, joined Sylvia for dinner at Fatouh Kim in Almadies. The food there wasn't so good, but it was abundant, and the sea view was great. I spent most of the time feeding a demanding stray cat the gristle from my lamb chops.
Sunday I headed to the island of Ngor with Afidi and her two sons. To get to Ngor you have to take a skiff from Yoff (return trip = 500 CFA). The trip takes about two and a half minutes, but once you see the sailors scooping water out of the inside of the boat with children's sandcastle buckets and ride along with water splashing into the boat at every wave, it can feel like 15 minutes. However, once you arrive at Ngor, life is different. There's still a few peddlers begging you to buy their wares, but it's much more peaceful than the mainland. There are always two grills going to supply you with cheap, good food while you sit on the beach, and if you feel the need to sit at a table while you eat, you can always go to one of the beach restaurants. There are two beaches - a little one, and a big one. I prefer the little one, because the guy who rents out the beachmats will watch your stuff while you're swimming, and the price for everything is two-thirds the price it is on the big beach. Most of the tourists go to the big beach, which is another reason not to go there.
Monday was another day spent at Ngor. Learned the food on the beach was a third the price of the food in the restaurants. We saw a young man swim to Yoff and back to Ngor in under twelve minutes. I asked him if he did that everyday, and he replied, "Why, yes! I'm a swimmer!" The boat back was overloaded, but no one seemed to care, and we made it without sinking. The lifejackets are only obligatory when you leave Yoff and are unnecessary, as it seems everyone on the boat could either swim the 200 meters to shore or would be too afraid to swim, even in the shallowest of waters (like me).
On Tuesday, Sami and I visited the fish market. The fisherman come in from the sea, the horse-drawn carriages go to meet them in the sea to take the fish, and then the women take the rest of the fish to sell right there on the beach. Some people come to buy the fish they will eat that day; others to buy enough fish to sell in different parts of town during the day. It's a pretty overwhelming experience - the smell of fish in the air, people yelling, holding up still-breathing carp and then throwing them down on the sand to scale them and wrap them up in newspaper. After having some millet beignets (and, of course, after I went to visit Mamafat one last time) we took one last trip to Dakar. We saw some more of the Biennale exhibitions before lunching Chez Loutchas (101, rue Moussé Diop, Dakar)). This place is ridiculous. It reminds me of those roadside stops in El Paso and Amarillo where if you can eat a 1-lb. steak, your meal is free. They give you enough food for two very large, very hungry people. Sometimes they even serve it in the skillet in which it was cooked. The electricity went out while we there, so we had to move to a table closer to the window, but I think we would have waddled out exhausted out of that place even without the added heat factor. After lunch we managed to take in a couple more exhibitions before I had to catch the plane back to Madrid.
What I saw: Gangs of goats terrorising highway traffic. Cute sheep learning how to walk. A huge pelican. Cute stray cats and dogs who are afraid of people. Beautiful people who are either afraid of people or try to get them to hand out cash on demand. A lot of trash. Happy Children. Happy adults.
Senegal = Safety third. Cleanliness fourth. Community first. Happiness first, too.
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