Birds and Boats

Wolof word of the day: pic (pronounced kind of like a mix between peach and pitch). It means pimple. It is apparently not rude to talk about pimples here and people always ask me and other Americans why we have them on our faces. One time someone even complimented my friend Katie on how nicely her pink shoes matched her pimples. Of course, it also means bird because why would one word only mean one thing?

Last weekend was spent in northern Senegal, specifically St. Louis, the former capital of French West Africa. The city itself is beautiful, situated on an island in between the mainland and a peninsula called the Langue de Barbarie. During the colonial period, the French people lived on the island and the slaves and other Africans lived on the Langue de Barbarie, in what is now the village des pecheurs. On our first day, Meera and I wandered over to the fishing village, and ran into this guy named Tahir who gave us a little tour of the area. He is a fisher himself so he explained everything that was happening: the pirogues (fishing boats) would come in, people would unload the catch (mostly sardines) and then guys with horse carts would come and load the fish on their carts and ride down the beach to the fish market, where trucks were waiting to take them to all the regions of Senegal. The market is where they smoke and dry the fish, so we left with the smoked fish smell clinging to our clothes and hair, even after a few showers. Of course, at the end of our tour Tahir told us he couldn't fish because he injured his hand and asked us for 13000 CFA (about $26) for a sack of rice for his family. We gave him 1000 ($2) and ran away. 1000 francs is actually quite a lot of money for a Senegalese person, and the story was probably a lie, and he had probably just been waiting for some toubabs to come to the beach so he could give them a "free" tour then ask them for money because they would feel bad for him. Senegalese people are actually lying about 70% of the time, usually about really stupid stuff, but if you ever call them out on it, they say that it was just a joke. This is hard for us to understand because we're used to jokes that are meant to be funny.

Another highlight of the weekend was the boat trip up the Senegal River. We met this German med student named Hanna in the hostel where we were staying and she asked if we wanted to do this day-long boat tour with her, so we came along. Our guide was named Babacar and it seemed as though the further away we got from St. Louis the less well he spoke French. He kept trying to tell us things but we couldn't hear him over the roar of the boat's engine (in spite of the roar it went slower than most row boats) so there was a lot of smiling and nodding. The best part of this trip was our first stop in a tiny village just north of St. Louis, called Bopou Thiot. We got to visit the village school, where there were two professors for three classes, and they explained a lot about the education system to us, including the fact that if the students do well enough on their high school entrance exams, will have to commute (presumably by boat) to St. Louis for high school. After that we went back and hung out with the women and small children of the village (all the men were out fishing and all the older kids were at school) and one woman made us ataaya while the others did laundry and the children all gave us fearful looks and ran away whenever we said anything to them in Wolof. We made it all the way to a dam in the river before heading back; we walked across the dam to a point where I think I can say I set foot on Mauritanian soil. Babacar walked across the border to buy us some muffins, and Meera had to hide them in her bag because we weren't declaring them to customs. By the end of the trip we actually started to go slightly crazy because of how long we had been on the boat (roughly 8 hours) and so it ended in tears of laughter.

After our few days on our own we met up with the school group for the weekend. The first night we went to a cultural soiree (sabar) which included lots of singing and dancing, a fire eater, and a comedy troup who performed a sketch in which two friends fought over who stole whose song about cous-cous. All the Senegalese people thought this was hilarious. In fact, it was only funny because of how not funny it was.

We also went to the Djoudj bird sanctuary and spent even more time in a boat (but only about 2 hours) and saw pelicans, flamingos, warthogs, and crocodiles. We didn't excactly get to this park on what one would call a "real" road, and on the way back we had to turn around and go a different way because our enormous bus couldn't get over a mound of dirt onto the road we needed to turn on.

Lastly, we changed the schedule for the last night in St. Louis because the program did not actually include any free time spent in the city, so we took a taxi from the university where we were staying downtown. This proved more difficult than normal because the bridge into town was closed due to President Abdoulaye Wade's visit to St. Louis. As we were walking by the governor's palace, Meera and I saw The Man himself standing out of the sunroof of his limo waving at people.

A note on the president: people actually do refer to him as "gorgui" (the man) in Wolof. He is 94 and has been in politics since 1960, when he ran for the first time against Leopold Senghor. He has run in every election since then and finally got elected in 2000. I could tell you a lot more about him and Senegalese politics if you asked me but this blog is supposed to be fun and not about politics.