A Memorable Weekend

June 18, 2009

So last Saturday was an exciting day, as I hosted a nine-year old friend from the nearby island of Goree. I was not entirely sure how it would go, as we’d never spent quite so much time together before, plus there is a bit of a language barrier (her native language is Wolof, see   ), but I wanted to introduce her to my world since I had been a frequent visitor to hers.
I met her at the ferry depot and she then took her first taxi ride ever (her usual means of transportation is of course the car rapide), so she peered rapturously out the window the entire time.  She was fascinated when we came to the school in which I live, too, no doubt imagining herself seated behind one of the little wooden desks or playing in the yard at recess.
We then went to the beach around the corner from me, at the surf school at the Ngor restaurant, where the water can be quite rough. My little friend was cautious, as she does not know how to swim, though we did splash in the waves a bit. When she spied her first ‘chapeau de chinois’ (apparently these are called ‘limpets’ in English and are a type of saltwater snail. I had never heard of them before, but the locals enjoy eating them), she at once became very industrious, prying an inordinate number of them off the rocks and wrapping them solicitously in a tissue.
I cautiously asked her what she intended to do with them. “Take them home and cook them, of course!’ she responded brightly. “Oh,” I said, with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. I spent the remainder of the afternoon trying to find ways to distract her enough so that she would forget to take them home, but she was astonishingly single-minded about it: she was a girl with a mission.

Once we arrived home, she set the dread things to boil and said that we must have a ‘sauce’ to accompany them, a ‘sauce’ that accompanies a variety of different Senegalese dishes. It consists of chopped raw onion, mustard, vinegar, lime juice, salt, pepper, and Maggi (a sort of consommé cube that is basically pure MSG, used in virtually every dish throughout the country, including the famous tangana sandwiches). Despite what you may think, it was absolutely delicious and the perfect accompaniment to our, um, sea snails. As she was chopping the onions on my counter (which she was just tall enough to reach), she spied a little plastic bag full of ‘pain de singe,’ or monkey bread, and gleefully announced that she would now prepare a local drink called bouye. She added soursop extract, milk and banana to make a truly luscious beverage and beamed shyly when I told her how impressed I was with her mastery in the kitchen – I had been matter-of-factly relegated to the role of spectator, which was perfectly fine by me.

The next morning, she prepared omelettes for our breakfast and we went to the Pointe des Almadies, the westernmost tip of the African continent, to share a big grilled fish and fries for lunch. We were sharing because I had promised that one highlight of our afternoon would be a trip to Nice Cream, the best ice cream parlor in Dakar. She ended up ordering a bubble gum flavor that turned her tongue a most unique color, and then we hit the big market at Sandaga, where I had promised to buy her one of the three-piece bathing suits here that are all the rage – a two-piece with a short little wrap to hide one’s bottom. Five dreadlocked men immediately fought for the privilege of being our ‘guide’ around the market, and I told them all rather world-wearily that we had no need. Undaunted, they continued to follow us until finally we let them bring a selection of bathing suits to us. We each found something we liked, however the bargaining that ensued took so much time that we were in danger of missing the ferry back to the island. I daresay this would have been fine by my little friend, who would then have missed school the next day, but the stern educator in me wouldn’t permit it, so off we sailed into the sunset back towards the island of Goree, blue-tongued and deeply contented.

About the Author : Tamara-Diana Braunstein brings us her stories from Senegal every week. She was born in Brooklyn, New York. She is a restless wanderer who earned an MA from the University of Freiburg and has worked in a youth hostel in the French Alps, a law firm in Montreal, the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as in university press publishing. At the moment her home base is Dakar, Senegal, where she is supposed to be teaching but is doing far more learning, as you will see by reading her blog at www.senegalschoolmarm.blogspot.com