Dakar

Thom and Robin arrived at Hotel Fleur de Lys the next morning.  We commiserated about my phone theft, but Robin related:  “Thom and I agreed, if there’s anyone to not have it ruin the trip, it’s you”.  Yes, bummed, but I still have my iPad to communicate, my DSLR for photos, and insurance.  That said, I was cautious this next day and decided to rely on my friends for photos, rather than take an expensive camera onto the streets until I got a better feel for risk.

Our first day together we walked to the plaza where I met Baboo.  As we crossed the plaza I again heard greetings called out but this time we ignored them. Then I heard “Mr. Bill”.  I turned and there was Baboo approaching me like a long lost brother.  We hugged and I introduced them to my friends who looked in wonder that I already knew a local.  I laughed with Baboo that he could not take them to the factory because we were busy today, and we headed to the Museum of African History.  

The Museum is in a new building with an excellent display on the origins of early hominids.  I was very moved looking at their rock art, human skeleton models, and thinking about our common early ancestors on the plains of Africa.  I’ll discuss this more at the Cradle of Humankind outside Pretoria. 

In the evening we walked to a restaurant not far from our hotel in Plateau.  Being in a group of three we generally felt safe walking the unlit streets at night (kind of like hiking in Grizzly country).  So far in two days I hadn’t seen a single white person and the restaurant was no exception.  It was a nice French bistro with a good cocktail bar.  A group of musicians were playing a rhythmic african beat and encouraged the local ladies to get up and dance, which several did. Culturally, an attractive Senegalese woman has a large bottom and is equally proportioned above.  They do serious booty dancing.  They can move parts of their bottom like Hawaiians - separately, together, in opposition.  These very large woman are incredibly sexy in their movements.  “It’s all about the base, the base, the base”.  But they are not doing it for tourists.  After the dancing, one woman politely came by and asked us not to take any more video.  We felt very fortunate to participate with them in their local culture and happily obliged.  

Our second day together we hired a driver to take us to the north end of the City - Almadies.  We drove by a main attraction of the city the African Renaissance  Monument. This heroic statue is in celebration of the freedom of the African from the bondage of slavery.  

We continued northwest until we reached Point des Almadies, the furthest West Point of the African Continent!  While some see no value in going to the furtherest (name your compass point) of a continent, I always find it humbling - whether at Terra del Fuego in South America, Antarctica, Cape Flattery on WA Coast, or Cabo de Roca in Portugal; I always stare across the expanse of sea and visualize human’s smallness in the vastness of the world.

After our lunch, we asked our driver to take us to Yoff, a traditional fishing village not far from the point.  The sea was rough that day and most of the fishing boats, pirogues, were on shore.  Hundreds if not thousands of them lined gunnel to gunnel, stern to bow, for over a mile.  Some still ventured out because it was their only livelihood.  The crew would roll their boats from above high water on logs or inflated drums into the crashing waves, then gun the engine to break over the surf before the next wave swamped them.

This stretch of beach was absolute squalor.  I’ve not seen anything like it except maybe in India.  Piles of rubbish, plastic and fish remains.  Woman in their colorful outfits, worked behind the row of boats gutting and cleaning the fish the men brought back.  They’d drop the heads and offal into plastic tubs, then carry the full stinking tubs on their heads to the water line and dump the contents onto the beach.  Crows, goats, and cats would scavenge the filth to find morsels to devour.  Weaving between the slop, women and men pushing pirogues out to sea were donkey driven carts on large rubber tires hauling supplies back and forth.  

Our dinner that night was in a traditional Senegalese restaurant and we all had Yassa, a spicy dish of onions, chicken and rice.  After two days (three for me) in Dakar we planned several nights on two islands, one off the coast of Dakar called Goree, a slave trading port of the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries,  and the other the former capital of French West Africa, before break up into multiple independent states in the 1960s.