Our sunny Senegalese Christmas

It's hard to evoke the sunshine of the Senegalese coast from behind a rain-soaked window in the California winter.

The view outside my window today

Less than two weeks ago, we lifted off for our first foray into sub-Saharan Africa. Senegal is an excellent place for a trial run of exploration in this continent. Though the trip could have used a few more tourist attractions, it wasn't without some valuable experiences. And it may have been exactly the slowed pace we needed after the year we'd just endured.

We arrived after dark on Christmas Eve, haggled our way into a taxi, and eventually made our way to the coast line where we found ourselves a skiff (think glorified motorized canoe) to take us over to our Airbnb on the N'Gor Island, just off the coast of Dakar. This venue turned out to be one of our better decisions, an artist's escape mere miles yet a world away from the noise and pollution of the capital city, where the only sounds to lull us asleep were from the waves crashing against the cliffs.

Our Airbnb on N'Gor Island off the coast of Dakar

A maze of packaged dirt trails weave across N'Gor Island, past high walls and decorative doors that enclose the private residences and show off their inhabitants artistic talents.

One well-planned day is really all you need for Dakar, unless you plan to venture deep into the heart of the city's markets, not a place for the weak or soft-hearted. As a toubab, or white person, you'll be incessantly stopped in the streets of Dakar by locals trying to sell you something. The Senegalese never bother getting straight to the point of what they're vending, instead striking up endless friendly conversation, which makes them that much harder to shake and that much harder to turn down when they finally hit you with their wares. Needless to say, a bit of wandering through the streets past some of the major monuments, under the heavy heat a few blocks beyond the reach of the ocean breeze, was enough for us to decide that the markets were out of our league. 

A few highlights of Dakar, mostly its colonial buildings. Much of the city was so nondescript, either dilapidated single-story structures or characterless high-rises, that I didn't even realize I'd forgotten to photograph it until writing this blog post. I did, however, enjoy the nod to my dear leader (bottom right) propped up, quite appropriately, next to a trash heap on the side of the road.

After a half-day in Dakar spent dodging salespeople, haggling your way to a deal or two, eating freshly caught fish, and perhaps relaxing over a mint tea, a local speciality, it's worth spending an afternoon at Dakar's top tourist draw and Africa's first UNESCO World Heritage site, Gorée Island. Boats only leave every hour or two, so it's important to plan ahead and to come prepared. A visit to this island not only requires exact change for the fare but also a passport or other form of government-issued idea, something we were lucky to have had on hand. Honestly, the island in and of itself isn't much to see. What matters is what its simple buildings have seen. Gorée Island, located off the coast of Africa's western-most city, was a major point of departure for slave ships headed to the New World. About 33,000 of the approximately 15 million slaves traded over four centuries were held prisoner on Gorée Island before leaving for the New World, and plenty others couldn't hold on long enough to ever leave the island. One surprisingly historical tidbit I learned during our visit was that métisse women on Gorée held high social status. These women, referred to as signares, were often integrally involved in and personally profited from the slave trade, quite the opposite of the fate that would have awaited them on an American plantation. Gorée has become a sort of pilgrimage site for those seeking roots lost to the history of the slave trade, a destination for anyone from locals to the pope and US presidents. 

Gorée Island, Africa's first UNESCO World Heritage site and a place of pilgrimage for those commemorating the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Consciences thoroughly racked, we were ready for destination number two. A five-day trip is hardly enough to properly see the country of Senegal. We'd been forced to choose between a venture northward to the colonial city of St. Louis and southward to the finer beaches and fishermen's villages along the Petite Côte. Opting for the latter in search of a more authentically African experience, we hopped into a taxi on to Toubab Dialao, about an hour's drive south of Dakar. 

Sights along the route from Dakar to Toubab Dialao

It didn't take too many minutes on the road before the over-crowded mini busses and taxis started sharing the lanes with horse-drawn carts, and traffic slowed to avoid the goats and cattle wandering alongside it. It was fascinating to see so much development happening alongside such modest shacks where locals sheltered from the sun under corrugated tin roofs draped with spare fabrics. The city of Dakar has been undergoing rapid expansion. Only a year ago, the local airport had to close, with the city rapidly encroaching upon it, to be replaced by a larger and more modern facility well beyond the ever-expanding city boundaries. It will be fascinating to see what becomes of this country over the next few decades, if they continue to manage to keep the Islamic extremists outside their borders.

Although Senegal is a Muslim-majority country, about a quarter of its residents are Christians, a fact which doesn't seem to perturb the locals in the slightest. To the contrary, they generally enjoy celebrating each other's holidays.

Christmas wishes along the Dakar coast greeting those hopping onto the skiffs for N'Gor Island

Plenty of restaurants in Dakar were closed on Dec. 25 (to our chagrin) and many other buildings had little Joyeux Noël signs, Christmas trees, and garlands hung. And when the calls to prayer rung out from the mosque just next to our hotel in Toubab Dialao, the locals on the beach would hardly bat at eyelid as they continued sipping their afternoon tea. It's refreshing admidst all the horrible news you'll see these days to get to immerse yourself in such a warm, kind, and reasonable society where extremism has no foothold. The Senegalese we met were all adamant that such attitudes had no place in Senegal, which each local explained with what is clearly a broadly-used Senegalese expression, "On partage tout sauf nos femmes," literally translated as "We share everything except our wives." It's their way of saying what's mine is yours, mi casa es tu casa, and it's an expression of "teranga," the Senegalese national value that's tough to translate. Teranga basically means that you should treat everyone you meet with a warm and welcoming attitude. Teranga is pervasive throughout the culture. It likely goes a long way to explain why we didn't spot many homeless or visibly underfed people on the streets of Dakar, and it's also why we found it so tough to try to figure out how to avoid getting trapped by those kind but persistent salesmen.

In Toubab Dialao we ran into the first real snag of the journey: a serious shortage of ATMs. Senegal is a cash-based economy. It is an uphill battle to try to get your hands on small-denomination bills, which can seriously dampen your haggling game. Apparently, once you leave the capital city, simply getting your hands on any sort of cash becomes an uphill battle. Upon arriving in Toubab Dialao and discovering that there were no ATMs within even a half hour's drive of the city, we found ourselves budgeting out the second half of our stay, booking a taxi, and paying $50 for a round trip to the airport just to find ourselves an ATM. (Did I mention that taxis are hardly a bargain, even after the haggling?) Having blown through a much bigger chunk of our journey's budget to date on various painfully pricey taxi trips, we tabled any further excursions beyond the beach-front cultural center where we'd booked our final two nights. I will say, there are worse places to spend a couple of days of forced relaxation.

Our home away from home in Toubab Dialao, Sobo Bade's chambre droit, where we spent our last two nights in Senegal under a charming thatched roof with arguably Sobo Badé's best views.

Out and about in Sobo Badé

Sobo Badé is an arts and cultural center founded in the '70s by a Haitian immigrant and artist who moved to Senegal in 1964. It is an assembly of two compounds that include guest rooms, a restaurant, a small theatrical performance area, artist's and musician's workshops. The architecture style is something along the lines of Gaudí meets Disney's interpretation of Africa. It was utterly charming. Sobo Badé hosts daily concerts and cultural events, and is home to a small army of local cats who gleefully visit the diners despite the efforts of the waitstaff and their handy water spritzers. 

A sampling of Sobo Badé's small army of cats

We felt so at home that we enjoyed all our meals inside Sobo Badé, even treating ourselves to the best meal of our trip, a Thieboudienne, basically a fish and rice dish served with a stew of tomato sauce, onions, carrots, cabbage, cassava, and peanuts. It may have looked like a giant brown mess into which a full fish had been dropped, but the taste was fantastic: warm, cozy, flavorful, rich, and well-spiced, made all the more delicious when eaten in the cool salty night air, accompanied by the sound of the waves crashing below us.

Meals with a view, and even an unexpected lunchtime guest

Sobo Badé's local beach, and a view up onto Sobo Badé from it (top left)

Five days go by before you know it. We sipped our last mint tea, bid my newest feline friends au revoir, and rolled our suitcases out to the taxi, airport-bound. I didn't want to leave.