Note (3/2/21): This is a creative mash-up of some of my previously published Senegal blogs with a bit of new material. It was written for and submitted to Nowhere Magazine’s 2021 Emerging Travel Writers’ Prize. TBD for results on that!
Update (9/8/21): After many long months of waiting, this was unfortunately not selected for the prize… That’s okay, though! Writing it was a great experience and I hope you enjoy.
Blissful cacophony, burnished sand, football jerseys, sticky rice, ancient wrestling, blessed oils, postcolonial remnants, Toubacouta & Dakar
It’s sitting under the broken shade of a huge baobab tree in a far-flung Senegalese village that I begin to piece something together. More like squatting, really — on a crumbly cinder block — I, along with my study abroad group, am squinting and coughing through a discussion with an Arabic schoolteacher punctuated by frequent sandy gusts. The young man is telling us (in his native Wolof, via French translation) all about his school’s place in the Senegalese educational system — one which is surprising, in its complexity and degree of variance.
The building in question is off to our left about 100 feet, just three square rooms, slat roof, and cinder walls. Though it’s an early Saturday afternoon, several dozen high-pitched voices chorus strongly, floating over strains of song presumably conveying joy over this lengthy recess from their teacher. The local children who attend French primary school frolic around even more freely — the brave clamoring to be near us, the shy peeking from a distance, the stoic ringing the circle like bodyguards — as they don’t have class on weekends.
We don’t normally, either. For over a month, now, an average weekend has seen me not in the village, but the city. Several hours northeast, the Dakar peninsula juts out like a micro-fragment of the African continent: all squat buildings and cracked pavement, vibrant colors and craggy beaches, hot sand gritting between sandaled toes and bits of red rice lingering on the fingers. But for this study abroad experience, it’s also my home.
Sandwiched between two other tall-skinny row-house-type buildings, chez moi resides squarely in Mermoz, one of Dakar’s bustling residential neighborhoods. It’s a somewhat cacophonous existence, and the daily wake-up has become routine: a rooster caw-caws vigorously; the crazy, stray cat on the roof begins several rounds of bone-chilling yowls; our neighbor’s two goats bleat; the day’s first of five calls to prayer reverbs through the alleyways; and finally, strains of hushed Wolof pass between the early risers of my host family.
Soon after, my Maman will shuffle downstairs with tea and baguettes, and I’ll greet her — stumbling just slightly over the French I know and Wolof I’m learning. The trickly shower I take will be cold, but the food warm.
There’s much to get used to here. The calendar reads February of 2020, but rather than weather the icebox of the American Midwest as I’m accustomed, I’ve hopped, skipped, and jumped 5000 miles due east. I’m a third-year, Global Studies major at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and though I’ve eagerly anticipated studying abroad since high school, there is no prep for the initial shock of it.
Much like any outsider parachuted magically into an unfamiliar place, if I wanted to, I could view these first topsy-turvy weeks in a negative light — as a series of “not’s.” I was not expecting family living to be so radically different, not prepared for the onslaught of people I’d be asked to know; I’m not able to communicate well with my family in their native tongue, and not prepared to navigate maze-like Dakar myself. I am — quite simply — not Sénégalais, and never will be.
Yet, I’m here, and this is the most basic — and comforting — reconciliation to make. Life is different, life is slower-paced, but life is good. Around a knee-high wooden table that Maman rolls out from the corner, we eat dinner from a communal platter with our bare right hands. I talk NBA basketball with my adult brother, and Playstation FIFA with my teenage one. My two-year-old sister snuggles up close when we watch Rio en français. And, the 16 of us newly minted Senegalese toubabs (see: foreigners) — despite it all — are finding our way.
Through our first walking commutes to classes at the West African Research Center, weaving around roadside fruit stands, choking dust clouds, and unattended cows roaming the streets. Through evening runs to a popular outdoor gym, lines of spartan equipment straddling craggy Atlantic cliffs. Through learning the tough way which drinking water can be trusted, and which sketchy people cannot. And, outside the urban oasis that is our shaded, French colonial-style school, by being left to our own devices to figure the rest out. The good, the bad, the awkward; the confusing, exhausting, humbling, nerve-wracking, and new.
That’s a better way to put it. New, not not. A series of “new’s” that manifest randomly, at home certainly, but even more so when out-and-about. It’s the blessing and curse of the traveler: something unexpected always awaits, whether you like it or not.
A bit startlingly, for example, here one learns that a taxi hails you, rather than vice-versa. Armed with cute- but ever-sounding horns, a penchant for rapid bartering, and rarely the right amount of change their patrons need (Senegalese society is almost entirely cash-based), Dakar’s drivers prowl the streets day and night for unknowing prey.
To take one is both a step back in time and a helluva wild ride; as most cabs are beat-up, black-and-yellow Renault’s and VW’s decades out of production. The hoods sometimes smoke, seatbelts are discouraged, yet drivers wind expertly — almost casually — between the street-cows, clustered market alleys, and legions of other motorized bumblebees clogging their way.
When out on the streets, everyone’s always trying to sell you something — from bagged peanuts to knockoff football jerseys to literally themselves for marriage — and taxis are no exception. They beep, the vendors spout, hopefully and sometimes aggressively, then you usually signal them away. It’s the delicate city dance, except instead of sugar plum fairies it’s wide-eyed students and men hollering in Wolof.
Cacophony, through and through. A good kind, though: one that leaves you mentally wired, papered with sooty residues, and pining for some silent time to process it all. But also one offering equal parts inspiration and humility from each day’s passing — and excitement for tomorrow.
I know, at least, that’s how this trip has felt. After departing Dakar early on a Thursday, the excitement barely awaited our arrival. Pulling off a bumpy tongue of hard pack road unsuspectingly, we would soon descend into a village-style paparazzi firestorm. Through a gauntlet of shaking hands, shouting dozens of Bonjour’s! Salaam Maalekum’s! Ça va’s?! — all while wading thickly through the fray — we would then parade-march with at least fifty hyped-up kids and our program staff to see various local people and places of importance.
It’s what this whole weekend has been, in essence: a whirlwind. Sixteen people who still lack any simple title — toubabs, foreigners, Dakarians, college juniors, Wolof-mumblers — scuttling around on a bus like some manic, out-of-place beetle.
We’re in the south-western region of Fatick, but more specifically near Toubacouta, which depending on your perspective is either: A. a large village, B. a small town, or C. a welcome oasis from Dakar smog (I’m locking in this last one).
Though this is our first multi-day excursion out of the city as a group, it’s far from a beach vacation. In the past 48 hours, we’ve had site visits at a local health post (staff: 1 doctor and 1 mid-wife), an oceanside mangrove forest (wild hog encounters: 2), a French primary school, with a group of women regarding micro-finance, at a women’s community garden, and now… whew… meeting this schoolteacher. It’s a tiring routine for an unacquainted city beetle: absorb the sights and info, ask questions, scuttle; other sights, more info, questions, scuttle; pause, eat, drink attaya tea, scuttle…
Which is perhaps why, in addition to a certain butt getting sorer and certain face sandier, my attention drifts away from the topic at hand (“factors parents weigh between Arabic and French schools”). There’s a second baobab straight ahead of me a ways, a grand, old one which seems to look on pityingly — at these poor creatures withering in the bone-dryness. Between the two is a rickety utility pole, jabbed down like an errant toothpick, propping a power line that from my angle stretches directly from tree into tree.
It’s a funny juxtaposition: two baobabs, treasured symbols of Senegal, leashed by a random wire, internationally generic. The former a racine, a root; the latter a fil, a thread, a connector.
Sometime, on some wall, somewhere en route from Dakar, I remember passing a block-letter slogan fading away like bygone propaganda: L’éducation est le meilleur passeport pour l’avenir
Education, as we’ve been seeing first hand, while varying in its types and quality, is certainly deeply enracinée — deeply rooted — in Senegalese culture. Religious education, family education, formal education: though many embody past traditionalism, it makes a good deal of sense that their continued existence is probably the “best passport for the future.”
A bit later, sprayed to a messy Lego heap of bricks, read a much easier message to decode: Re-élection Macky 2019
People had quite high hopes for Mr. Macky Sall, fourth-ever President of the Republic. He was supposed to be a catalyst, a fil, an Obama-like fresh face bridging the progressive reformism of the younger generation with the boomer-like staunchness of the older one — an attitude embodied by his corrupted predecessor, Abdoulaye Wade.
But, by and large, his tenure has disappointed. He hasn’t brought any sweeping social changes, hasn’t fought the incredible and controversial lobbying influence of Senegal’s Islamic Brotherhoods (amongst other religious powerhouses). He hasn’t done much to advocate for the nation’s extraction from exploitative post-colonial dependencies on France and others, but has managed to paste his face on every random place possible: storefronts, billboards, murals, buses. Recently, I literally saw his cut-out on the butt of a woman’s skirt. It’s as if he’s toeing the political line gingerly, appeasing everyone and no one, one foot on the fil but never quite out of reach of the ol’ tree.
Or how about this very village, a perfect embodiment of the complex interplay of past and modern, root and shoot? One in which the young people are floored by our presence, yet sport Barcelona jerseys and spray paint Messi and Ronaldo on alley walls, homages to heroes a world away; in which mini satellite dishes adorned with Chinese flag logos post over single-room homes like foreign sentries; and where a woman ceremoniously presents a seat at our discussion to the village’s highest elder, steps away, then whips out her smartphone to document the moment.
But even after all this, the unexpected’s aren’t done playing out. Similar scenes refract once more just hours later, at a traditional Senegalese wrestling match we attend in a different village.
It’s a chaotic event — primal and laced with energy — les lutteurs stomping around in a sandy pit, all muscle and loincloth and grimace, their limbs bulging with holy talismans and entire bodies sopping with specially blessed oils. Music and dance are integral, so drummers pound out steady beats while two older women trade lines into microphones. Occasionally, hype men will bust out their best moves, whipping the crowd into cheers.
The cord establishing the ring, though, might as well split two whole time periods, like the magical divide in Field of Dreams. Outside, almost every young male spectator screams NBA or soccer fandom. Messi and LeBron James, LA Lakers and Miami Heat and Barça’s, of course, comprise the majority of jerseys, but I’m mostly stunned to glimpse my beloved Green Bay Packers peeking out on a little boy’s sweatshirt. As for the young women, halos from blue-lit phones illuminate them giggling in packs, most wearing jeans, faux luxury brand t-shirts, and flaunting tressed up hair and jewelry. There are adults and elders too, occupying the front rows of white plastic chairs, who sit more respectfully but not any less engaged, in colorful dresses and handsome boubous.
Normally, these tournaments take many hours, or even multiple days, to crown a champion. For us, they’ve condensed to a single thrilling evening, match after match, with only a single intermission during which our group is “encouraged” (read: forced) to show off our amateur Senegalese dance abilities — jumping and gyrating to the crowd’s obvious delight. We sit back down after, all shamefully gassed given the level of fitness on display. In not too long, one huge man thuds another huge man down on the sand, and tonight’s victor is decided. The prize? Not a giant check, but a 50-kilo burlap sack of rice, that our champion hoists overhead as if he’s only just warmed up.
Still, it’s an exhausting event, even for the viewer. In Senegal, the popularity of this ancient sport isn’t currently wavering, but the world around it most certainly is. The young fan base remains energized for the moment, but as the Chinese keep installing tech, internet and media consumption rise, and global influences of all type continue their relentless full-court press, you have to wonder if one day these fans might just avoid the hassle, and pick LeBron over la lutte.
So, it’s sitting under the broken shade of a huge baobab in a far-flung village that I begin to piece together just how unique this moment in time is — for the people, the communities, the nation. But roots and wires don’t offer up many answers, just a lot of questions. Through four short days, I’m left pondering:
Which education really is the best passport? Traditional or modern? Religious or secular? A hybrid?
Is Macky truly at fault here, or is he perhaps a symptom of an infantile democracy, imposed suddenly only 60 years ago by a retreating invasive power? Can this political system possibly bridge the variance found within the country?
What will be the result of this clash of tradition and modernization? Especially between generations of Senegalese forever fixed together, but tied to the wider world in such different ways?
And maybe most of all: When should certain roots be uprooted, and certain linkages not be strung?
Pretty soon, we’ll pack up for the last time and scuttle our way back to Dakar. Though it’s been a great escape, I’m looking forward to seeing my family, getting back into the city rhythm, and perhaps running over to a certain gym by the sea. I’ll also remain a bit shell-shocked, having viewed anew the complexities of post-colonial, globalizing, rapidly changing Senegal in such visceral light. Again, the questions are many, the answers few.
But regardless — in both city and village — it all seems to work out okay. Life simply marches on. Back home, the kids at the neighborhood park kick around happily in rough sand pockmarked by litter — le foot in this footing is a better workout, anyway. Rusted-out rims awning Mermoz’s dirt courts look like tetanus-in-a-dunk, and surely lopsided, but teenaged LeBron’s sport their #23’s nevertheless, living out hoop dreams under a sweltering sun. The local vendors on the way to school don’t seem to mind polite but firm rejection, or the swirling street chaos encasing them.
I suppose it’s all working out for me, too. I’m an outsider, a toubab, a traveler, and can’t hide it. But maybe this is beyond the point. As time passes, the daily routines and surprises I’m privileged to be visitor to feel less foreign, and evermore valued. Because each day I shoulder my backpack, open my family’s door, and step out into the bustle of this country — and brief period of life — I’m nestled within, I know I’m on borrowed time. I know the newness won’t last forever.
Innumerable paths have wound and converged to bring me here; a watershed moment in my life just as for this nation. My crossroads, Senegal’s crossroads, briefly overlaid. Sooner than I realize, these roads will diverge once more.
But I think that’s where the beauty of it comes from. Beauty from the short-lived, not in spite of. So more than anything, as I slip back into the blissful cacophony of this place, this time, I know it’s the ephemeral that should be cherished after all.
Jake Marble 
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