Thirty Years World Heritage: Goree Island, 1978-2008
Goree Island exploded in a three day celebration, and I caught the tail end of it. I left early on a Sunday morning, in time to take the 10 am ferry, and stood patiently on a looong line surrounded by a bunch of people unwilling to queue up properly. (Ferry tickets, by the way, are 1500 CFA for residents and 2500 for visitors, who are also expected to pay a tax upon arrival which I have learned to avoid by moving quickly and decisively in another direction).
After you get the ticket you are still not home clear, because you must go through a manned turnstile and may once again have to show proof of residency – it would be far too easy to ask any local to buy your ticket for you, so the guards pay close attention. Once you are seated on the boat, you are a captive audience for all the musical instrument vendors and boutique owners (who all greet one another by name, the island is small and they are regulars on the ferry), who will smile brightly, offer you a seat, ask you all sorts of questions about your visit so far (remember just how easy it is to pick out the tourists here!) and then begin their relentless patter: “Please come and visit my boutique, pour le plaisir des yeux – just for the pleasure of looking.” This is insidious, because if you do stop by just to look, as they have suggested, they will make you feel so guilty that you will invariably end up buying something you did not want or need all the same – this has happened to me on more than one occasion.
Quality of Life Issues
Later on this year in the global issues part of my class I will be discussing topics as diverse as the death penalty, abortion, and euthanasia, but that is not what I wanted to touch on here. Rather, I wanted to reflect for a moment on my life as it was before I left Bay Ridge and my life as it has been since my arrival in Dakar.
From the Bay Ridge Avenue stop in Brooklyn, a 10-minute walk from my apartment, I would get on the decrepit and smelly R train, where I would usually stand patiently until my stop at Canal Street in Manhattan, a ride of about 35 minutes. I developed all kinds of strategies for saving time, such as switching from the express to the local, choosing my exits to get me as close as possible to my destination, etc. I would have to fiddle in the depths of my bag for my ID before I would be allowed to make the mad dash to the elevator, and there, unlike here, I would sit at a nicely appointed desk with phone, Filofax and binders and carry out the tasks entrusted to me.
Halloween, Senegalese Style
Let me begin by saying that it is rather odd to be in a place that is warm on October 31st. I remember hiking in the crisp clean air of Cold Spring back in New York this time of year, admiring the striking reds and yellows of the leaves and the carved pumpkins adorning most porches, then coming back down to the main street to watch the joyous faces of the children participating in the local ragamuffin parade. Here, if I were to carve anything, it would probably be a watermelon.
Here, also, I did what I typically do, from slathering on the sunscreen to going for a quick after-school dip in the ocean to unwind (though the temperature of the water has dropped considerably, another indication of Senegal’s little winter).
