Was that a CAT I Saw?!
“Now I see why this place is undiscovered,” Kerri remarked wryly. We had just spent 2.5 hours sitting in Dakar traffic trying to make our way to a resort area called Toubab Dialaw. Once we got to Rufisque, we had arranged to rendezvous at the big baobab tree so that we could be shown the shortcut to the highway.
“Promise me we’re not really meeting at a TREE,” I said in utter disbelief. “It is a hotel or something called the Great Baobab, right?” Sure enough, it was in fact a tree – on est en Afrique - but as always, things did work out as planned; we got to the highway in record time thanks to our guide and turned off at a village called Yene. From there we spotted various hand-lettered signs for Sobobade, our hotel, and found ourselves bouncing down a pitted dirt road guaranteed to set your granny’s hemorrhoids aflame.
From Sunny Senegal to Gray Britain
Over the summer, I took a trip to see friends in the UK, and my hostess did me the great honor of wanting to throw me a party in her lovingly planted and very spacious garden.
In typical British style, prep time was spent putting caviar decoratively on blintzes and raspberries on beds of whipped cream whilst looking fearfully out of the window to see if the weather would hold or whether we would have to move all the lawn chairs back into the garage. (Ultimately you will be glad to learn that the weather did hold and that we were able to swill champagne on the lawn just as my hostess had envisioned).
To Expat or Not?
One of the biggest difficulties you are confronted with when living and working abroad is developing a social circle. As a schoolteacher, you have plenty of daily social interaction, but of course evenings and weekends are a different story altogether. High-minded and lofty idealist that I am, I had decided not to seek out the local expatriate circles here in Dakar, arguing that if I just wanted to spend my time with US citizens, I could just as easily have stayed at home.
But take it from me: no matter how seasoned a traveler you may be, there is something inherently wonderful in interacting with someone who knows your culture intimately, who can laugh with you at a random reference to an Entenmann’s crumb cake or a Brady Bunch episode, who can enjoy the subtleties of your native tongue or appreciate a play on words.
Ode to Esslingen
You may remember my friend Nicole, who very sensibly decided when she visited me from Germany that travel via public transport to the east of Senegal was not something she particularly wanted to do (http://www.traveling-stories-
To top it all off, Esslingen even has a cinema located in a big industrial chimney (for you, dear reader, the cinema may not be thrilling enough to warrant inclusion, but I can assure you that seeing a film there was a big event for me, as there is no movie theater to speak of in Dakar. Having come from New York, home of the Angelika, the Film Forum and all sorts of other landmark cinemas which I was accustomed to attending fairly regularly, it came as quite a blow to learn that I would have no real opportunity to see recent films during my stay in Senegal). As it turns out, this trip to the cinema was my only one throughout my entire stay in Germany – there always seemed to be other things that were far more compelling, like coloring with the kindergarteners, hiking through the vineyards, watching my cousin’s daughters practice riding their unicycles and so on.
Paradise Regained
It was an incredible high to be speeding to Leopold Sedar Senghor airport two days after graduation (I am delighted to report that we had a 100% pass rate, despite those students who were notorious partisans of least effort, see story http://www.traveling-stories-
sleep - no haggling in stores = bliss.
Coming Full Circle
The end of the school year is approaching, and it seems I have come almost full circle, because just the other day I was introduced to a young man who came to Dakar for a ten-week internship. An interesting fellow, he is a computer science and religion major from Indiana, and he described with something vaguely akin to relish the giant cockroach that tried to ’spoon’ with him on his first night in town.
He then recounted his own trip to the tailor’s, a mere 2 bedraggled shacks down from a spot used as a central goat meetin’-and-greetin’ spot, and he managed to take it all beautifully in stride. I remembered my own first meeting with the school principal during which we were interrupted by the bleating of goats, and this in turn was followed by a flood of memories: I remembered my first ride on a suitably rusty car rapide, the view of fly-covered sides of beef hanging in the midday sun, and the brightly colored boubous of the mango sellers before they were turned from the pavement.
Bound for Bandia
Known as a fairly big private reserve that was established in the Dakar area in 1986, and about one and a half hours or 65 km from the city center, Bandia is a huge tourist attraction: mistakenly so, if I may be permitted to comment. On the way there, you pass a wonderful forest of baobabs, which is certainly typical of the region and impressive to see. Upon arrival, you are decked out with a guide and possibly a rental jeep and all sorts of things that cost a lot of money and then you proceed to see a sleepy rhino, a happy family of giraffes, some wild boars, and that pretty much completes the picture. If I am not mistaken, there are a few ostriches and grazing gazelles as well.
More unusual than any of this is the sight of a griot, or singer of the lower caste, whose remains are on view within the hollow trunk of a baobab (these trees, which lose heir leaves during the dry season, can live up to a thousand years and their trunks become increasingly hollow with the passage of time). So if any of this is worth going out of your way for, be my guest. The website calls the trip an unforgettable experience, and though it may well be, it is simply not what I had in mind when I pictured my first time in an African game park. I wanted lions and zebras, not hours of time spent in the hot sun hoping beyond hope to see something more exciting than a wild boar.
Plight of the Talibés
The first time I came out of a European-style supermarket here in Dakar, I was immediately surrounded by a group of pitiful-looking young boys wearing threadbare clothes and clutching empty tomato paste cans, begging me for money. The vision is heartbreaking, the story behind it even more so, sadly. These young boys, known as talibé (pronounced TAL-ee-bay, from the Arabic ’seeker’ or ‘learner’), were traditionally sent by their parents to study the Quran with an influential spiritual leader, or marabout (marah-boo), to deepen their knowledge of the holy writings.
In exchange for this religious instruction, parents might provide money or gifts. Children would also be expected to help the marabout, often by offering donations they would receive for reciting the Quran. Asking for money in this way was said to teach humility and appreciation for whatever one has while preparing the children for life’s hardships. At the same time, the practice could be said to encourage the practice of zakaat or almsgiving (one of the five pillars of Islam) among members of the wider population.
Why They’re Better Mixed
I remember when friends of mine began having their first children, both in the US and in Europe. Virtually everything they bought was top of the line, organically produced, etc - vegetable-based paint for the baby’s room, organically treated wood for the cradle, lovingly raised New Zealand sheep hand-shorn for the carpet (perhaps I exaggerate here, but only slightly), baby wipes containing organic chamomile and aloe vera, even special bathtubs and bottles ergonomically suited to a baby. Read more
Ode to the Ile
The Ile de Goree, or
