Spring Break - get ready, it's a long one!

So, big adventures recently. Last weekend I went with my family to their rural village Dialo on the Petite Cote, a really fertile river/ocean inlet delta. Then, I spent a few days in Saint-Louis, which is the old French colonial capital, right on the border with Mauritania. ANd, to top off spring break, we headed to Rufisque, another budgeoning settlement near Dakar.

My host mom, Robert, and Cecily (the other American girl who lives here), and took a taxi to the Gare Routière in downtown Dakar around 1pm on Thursday, which is probably the absolute worst time to travel long distances. It was smoking hot, right in the middle of the day. The Gare Routière is where most of the long-distance travel starts from – you have everything from large buses to taxis, and car-rapides to sept-place taxis (it’s like a station wagon, but with seats in the very back instead of a trunk). It was my first time here, and I had no idea what to expect. The minute we got out of our taxi, we were bombarded with men asking us where we were going, everyone promising they had exactly what we needed. Mostly it’s in Wolof, unless it’s obvious you’re not from here. My mom led us through countless rows or, rather, clumps, of sept-places, buses, and car-rapides to a white van, which I believe is called the Ndiaye-Ngiaye. I think it was meant to fit about 10-15 people, but we managed to squeeze in about 20-some. Three-seat rows had 5 people in them. There are never set times for transportation. You just have to wait for the car to fill up, and then you take off. For us, it took about an hour to get a van full enough for the driver to head out.

I’ve heard that almost all the automobiles in Dakar are at least 15 years old. At LEAST! The vans like the one we took are rusty all over, and you don’t really want to look at the roof to see cracks in the really rusty areas while they’re piling all sorts of baggage on top, making the roof bend in and out at various places, especially when the ride gets really bumpy.
While we were waiting in the van, drenched in sweat, street vendors paraded by the windows selling everything from barbies, watches, sunglasses, and razors, to oranges, peanuts, plastic bags of water, and hard-boiled eggs. (Side note – one thing that still makes me uneasy here is that eggs are rarely ever refrigerated…..but I’ve never heard of anyone getting sick from it here). Randomly, you’ll see a hand shove a handful of such goods through the window right in front of you, the vendor shouting “bon prix! Cinq-cent francs!” or whatever their good price is. The egg thing was a bit funny, because I didn’t immediately realize that they were already cooked. They sell them out of the carton, so I was thinking, “What the heck is anyone going to do with a raw egg in a jam-packed car/bus?” That seemed like the last thing you’d want on a long, bumpy ride. But, then I realized they were cooked.

So, this trip that was supposed to take 3 hours actually took about 5 hours. Our trip coincided with a Muslim holiday celebrating the birth of Mohammed, so the roads were packed like you would see in LA during rush hour. Nothing moved faster than 3 miles an hour. Rufisque is a town (more like a giant suburb of Dakar) through which almost all traffic heading out of Dakar has to go through. It took us about 2 hours just to get out of there. Again, street vendors are everywhere on the roads where long-distance travel generally occurs, and especially in Rufisque where everyone knows the traffic is slow. Sitting in a traffic jam with thousands of cars that produce the rankest fumes is pretty tough on the lungs.

Most of the rest of the trip was pretty slow until we got out into the rural areas. It’s pretty shocking how different cities are from the rural areas here. The rural areas are, for the most part, just like you might imagine most of Africa. People live in little clumps of huts made out of sticks and brush. Some of them now have a concrete brick base, but still have a thatch roof. About 2 hours outside of Dakar, horse-drawn carts were the most common form of transportation.

It took about 4 hours to get to Fimela and then we took a taxi to Dialo, my host family’s village. This was where Marianne lived until she got married. You can tell where the Christians live here in Senegal when you start seeing pigs running around. Marianne is building a house in her village for when her daughters visit from France, and also for other visitors. The house is quite ways away from everyone else in the village – you have to walk about kilometer from Dialo on the road, and then through some brush off the road. There is a concrete wall that completely surrounds the house, which resembles the African huts you typically think of, but this one is HUGE! Like, the ceiling in the main room is about 25 feet high. The courtyard is mostly dirt, but they’re building a garden, petit à petit. There are some cashew trees and some bougainvillea bushes, and then a bunch of other types of flowers and plants. They get water from a well because I found out later that piped water is salty there.

Basil is the “guardian” who lives at the house, takes care of the garden, and just watches over things for Marianne. He likes making attaya (Senegalese minty, sweet tea) all the time. Since it took like all day to travel, went into the village the next day. We walked about a mile down a dirt road, surrounded by palm trees and cashew trees and tall grasses. DIalor sits along one of the many ocean inlets along the Petit Cote, so we could also see the ocean most of the time. Along the way, we met several people, and I learned some greetings in Serrer, the language of this area. Hello is “Balndo” and how are you is “Noflaye”.

We met all the extended family and friends, who live altogether in a group of houses with a common dirt courtyard area. There were chickens with chicks and roosters strutting around. Goats and sheep bleated behind little fences, and every once in a while a pig would waddle through. I met my host brother’s family and his 5 brothers. Apparently a French couple adopted one of his little sisters, so she only comes to visit sometimes. Peanut butter-making is a big income activity in this village. I spent about 2 hours helping some of the women crack open peanuts and separate the chaff. Others ground the peanuts using wooden mortar/pestels.
Marianne was with us cracking peanuts. There was one really big woman (I mean,really big, like tall and large) and she was doing work around her house topless (it’s not a big deal here). But, her breasts I’m not kidding must have been like 10 gallons each. So, it was just a little shocking when she and Marianne got into a really heated argument in Serrer. I had no idea what was going on. But, there were a couple times when I actually thought I was about to see a fight! But, then they’d start laughing. But, it just sounded so intense! And then, afterward, Marianne asked me “Why didn’t you stand up for me?” and I was like “Seriously? I had no idea what was going on!”

Afterward, we went to the historical site of Leopold Senghor’s house in the village. Senghor was famous poet, and the first President of Senegal after it gained Independence from France. I was sitting on the beach with Robert, Cecily and one of Robert’s friends, who was like 17 I think, and she kept insisting that I teach her how to dance like Americans. That’s awkward because I’m not much of a dancer. But, we danced anyway!

Later in the day, after asking half a dozen people about the possibility of crocodiles being in the water, we went swimming and the water was amazingly warm! There were some mangroves, but not many. I learned that oysters grow on the roots of mangroves. I asked Marianne why there weren’t many mangroves, and she it’s because of desertification? I’m not sure how that works, but ok.

We went back to the house and watched the birds and just hung out in the garden. Then, that night I woke up at like 3am because something was flying around in my room. And, you when you wake up in the middle of the night and you’re still half asleep? Well, I just laid there listening to whatever was flying around, torn between turning on the light and just cringing under my covers. But, I got up and turned on the light. It was a bat! I couldn’t find my glasses, and it kept flying right at my face so I swatted blindly at it with a pillow. Finally it disappeared (I don’t know where, maybe it roosted in the straw ceiling again). Next morning I tried to explain what it was in French, but I didn’t know the word for bat in French, so they thought I was talking about a big bug, and then a bird, and then just looked at me weird and finally Robert said “Aht-EEM!!” That’s Serrer for bat. And, in French it’s “chauve-souris”, literally translated = bald mouse.

I watched Robert and his brothers & friends “faire la lutte” – Senegalese-style wrestling. All the other little boys in the area came to watch –even the itty bitty ones. There was one boy who looked like he’d just learned to walk, and he was doing the lutte dance already! So cute.
We spent 3 days there, and then left on Sunday. We had to get up at 3am to catch a car that was heading to Dakar. So, we walked in the dark for about 30 minutes to Fimela, a nearby village. The car wasn’t there, and we’d just missed a van heading the same way. So, we sat on the road for about 2 hours waiting for the next transport option – Ndiagn Ndiaye. They’re the white vans. We were the first ones in, and as we went through different villages, we picked up more and more people. After about an hour, it was jam-packed and there were several women holding bunches of live chickens by the legs sitting around me. It was another long day of travel because everyone was returning to Dakar from the Muslim holiday.

The next day my friend Nancy and I decided to go to Saint Louis, the old French capital. We went to the gare routière again to take a sept-place. The minute we stepped out of our taxi into the lot, we were bombarded again with guys asking where we were going. Someone said they had a sept-place going to Saint-Louis, so we followed him. And, it was actually a Ndiag Ndiaye. But, ok. We might a French guy (Jean-Baptiste) and a British guy (Raphael) on the same van. Apparently, for the first few minutes, they had me pegged as French and Nancy as German. We ended up hanging out with them most of the time in Saint-Louis. The ride up to Saint-Louis took about 5 hours (it should really only take 3). The driver kept stopping at various points and giving little pieces of paper to people off the side of the road. I’m still not sure exactly why, and I never could get an answer.

It was the Sahel – really dry and scattered trees. I saw a lot of goats wandering around, and some camels eating leaves, and sometimes some cows. So, Saint-Louis is made of 3 sections. There’s the mainland, which is all residential, like Dakar, but with some pretty French architecture. Then, you cross a pretty big bridge to get to a long island, which is the historical capital Saint-Louis and all the streets are full of French-style buildings – beautiful colors. Then, you cross another bridge to get to a second island, which is called Guet Ndar, a pretty big fishing village.

We all stayed in a hostel on the first island, which was full of French tourists. We did a lot f walking around, just exploring the town. It’s a lot calmer than Dakar – such a relief! Barely any traffic, and lots of space. We went to a nightclub, which was weird. We walked in around midnight, and there were only like 5 people there. Three were sitting down, and two girls were on the dance floor, watching themselves walk back and forth in front of a big mirror. Strange. Ok. About an hour or two later, the place was pretty full, but it was pretty much all American club music, and there weren’t many good dancers. Me, Nancy, and the other 2 guys finally jumped to the dance floor, and that was again awkward because then all the Senegalese girls left and the Senegalese guys kept pushing us together to dance with Jean-Baptist and Raphael. And, since I’m not much of a dancer, the whole thing was weird. But, we all laughed it off.
The next day, we hired a taxi to take us along with an older French couple up to Parc National de Doudj. It’s one of the biggest wetland protected areas, and is a big wintering area for European birds. But, man, that taxi ride. It was basically 4-wheeling for an hour in a taxi. Dirt roads the entire way, and we kept going up and down random little hills, and there were bumps everywhere, and a bunch of side paths when the roads were too bad. My knuckles were white at least half the time. We took a boat out into the river and saw thousands of pelicans and herons and cormorants. We saw a couple crocodiles and random feral horses and cows. But, my favorite – phacocheres!!! PUmbas! Warthogs!!! They’re so cute! And they were everywhere. When we got off the boat, we found a family of warthogs sleeping under our taxi! There were like 5 little babies. One of the adults got pretty angry when we got too close, and almost charged us.

Later that day we headed over to Guet Ndar. The waves there were intense! I can’t imagine taking a little pirogue out into those waters! We saw a couple making their way back to shore as the sun was setting. The beach there was covered with trash unfortunately. We met a fisher who then gave us a little tour of the fishing town. He showed us the 50-foot long (at least!) racing pirogues that they build for a big ocean race in August. And, he showed us some pirogues being constructed. Then, he was talking about pelicans, and I couldn’t really understand what exactly he meant. He took us down a little side street and outside someone’s house, next to some goats were 2 big pelicans! He told us they fish with pelicans sometimes. They tie a rope around their feet, tie a cord around their throat so they can’t swallow, and then send them out and they scoop up fish in their big bills, and then the fishers bring them back in. Sad, but true. Hassan (our guide) also told us that fishers there frequently cross the border of Mauritania to fish, since Senegal’s fisheries are so depleted.

The next day, we checked out the morning fish market on Guet Ndar. There were hundreds of tables piled high with freshly-caught (and now fly-covered) fish. There were also dozens of semis and vans being filled with fish to head to Dakar and other towns. The stench was barely bearable. And, I don’t even want to describe what we were walking in.

After 3 days in Saint Louis, we made it back to Dakar. Nancy and I went to the HLM marché, which is the big market for buying fabric. It’s huge. I got some fabric for like a $1.25/yard and am waiting for it be made into a skirt and shirt.

To finish our spring break, Nancy, Rebecca and I headed up to the Rufisque area. This was another big French settlement, which is now just a big sub-section of Dakar. Our goal was to go to the Lac Rose (a big pink lac as salty as the Dead Sea, and pink), Le Village des Tortues (turtle village), and the Keur Moussa monastery. They’re all within a few kilometers of each other. But, to get there, we took like 3 different Ndiag Ndiayes and then had to take a taxi from Rufisque to Lac Rose. I had called Le Village des Tortues earlier in the day to ask about good places to stay overnight in the area. Lamine, the director for the place gave me the name of his friend at a restaurant at Lac Rose. So, we headed there for lunch, and found out his friend Amda was married to this French lady Françoise, and they owned and operated a little restaurant on the beach of the Lac Rose. Françoise told us that she takes people to stay at her house all the time, and for cheap, so we waited till they had finished at the restaurant for the day, and then we all piled into their car and drove into Rufisque where they got some groceries, and stopped by a wedding. Then we drove about 20 minutes out in the country where they have a big house with a guest house, which is where we stayed. We had dinner with them – Françoise was an amazing cook and made some kind of pasta with a yummy olive sauce.

Nancy, Rebecca, and I stayed in e guardian house, which is in the courtyard/garden of the big house. We walked into the bedroom and I saw a giant gecko scamper down the wall and behind a picture frame. I made a mistake by telling the other girls, who freaked out when I took the frame down to show them. So, then it ran away again and we couldn’t find it. But it was so cute J Geckos are totally different than the typical lizards you see in Dakar.

Then next day we went to the Keur Moussa monastery which is a beautiful little church community out in the bush. I was a really beautiful place, and the music during the mass was interesting – typical Gregorian chants mixed with djembe drumming and the kora (a harp-like African instrument). The nuns and monks there make a lot of food products like mango jam, cashew wine, and goat cheese, so we got some and had a picnic at……le Village de Tortues, which is a little sanctuary for African tortoises. It’s an education center, but is really more of a breeding center. We saw some giant tortoises who had been abused (they’re a good luck charm in West Africa, and some people keep them tied to trees, so they just walk around in circles and often don’t get taken care of properly). And, we also saw some week-old baby tortoises who were about 2inches long. So cute!

Then, we made our way back to Lac Rose to go swimming. Outside of Dakar, everyone who has a car is a taxi when they want to be. So, we ended up in a station wagon with about 8 other people headed for Lac Rose. After a while we found out that our driver spoke hardly any French. So…..we had a hilarious time trying to explain what part of the lake we needed to go to. It’s a pretty huge lake, and we ended up not where we wanted, meaning we got towalk through the industrial salt-harvesting part of the shoreline, which was cool. I mean, when else do you get to see 30-foot mountains of salt next to a pink lake? We went swimming finally and there’s nothing like being able to ball yourself up like a cannonball in the water, and not drop an inch lower in the water. Nobody could possibly drown there.

That’s spring break! Finally – sorry it took so long! More to come soon, if you were able to read all that! Ba beneen yoon, inshallah! (until next time!)