I am back in Senegal on another radiant day. I pedal along the streets of the border town of Keur Ayip zigzagging through a traffic jam of taxis, horse-drawn carts and people coming and going without following any road rules. My concentration is divided between the delight of seeing Senegalese women wandering exquisitely wrapped in dresses of vibrant colours and not colliding, falling or getting a flat tyre between the stones, cracks and fractures of a road that has seen better days. All of us going about our lives under the same sun that like a despot subjugates us all equally.
It's been months since I forgot what rain is. The dry season had the enormous benefit of minimising the presence of mosquitoes and consequently the risk of contracting malaria, but on the other hand, I am virtually traveling deep within a great cloud of dust. The sealed road stretches and rest periods were never long enough to give my lungs time to oxygenate and heal. And just when I thought the worst was over, I find that the main road to Dakar is under construction, forcing me to take the alternative detour.
Under normal circumstances, a detour is the ideal escape from the dangers of traffic and the hubbub on the main arteries of a country. However, when all that same traffic comprising trucks, shared taxis, motorcycles and mini-buses is rerouted via the same dust and gravel shitty detour, the result is the worst nightmare a bicycicle traveller can imagine. For the next three days I try to survive inside this toxic cloud, suffocating from dust, hot air, deafening traffic and exhaustion. I carry the filth impregnated in my sweat, my eyes burning to tears in an environment where the danger of an accident seems ever more tangible. On the other hand, people do not always contribute to making things easier. More and more they remind me of the feeling I was left with after Cameroon, that of a society that is half adorable and half despicable.
An angel named Papis
Annoyed and exhausted, back on the recently paved main road, I arrive at Ndiass, a small town 40 km before Dakar. It's late afternoon and I decide to stay there because I don't want to take the potential risks I've already taken so many times by cycling at night. This is not the time to run out of luck, but after making two complete passes of the town, from one end to the other going back and forth, I can't find any place where I could stay or even hang my mosquito net. This is usually the common problem of many towns so close to big cities. They are no more than stopovers where no one stays. Those heading to Dakar are too close to stay the night here, while those coming from Dakar arrive too early to need to stay overnight. Nonetheless, I get the feeling that there are too many people to be a satellite town of the capital, and most of them turn out to be mostly apathetic. Until now, Senegal is a country where I believe that a part of its population has forgotten the hospitality of the religion they practice.
While there is still day light, I don't have enough time left to risk continuing pedaling to a next town that might or might not exist, let alone Dakar. Therefore, I keep walking absorbed in the dilemma, perhaps waiting for the magical moment that always comes, the one in which everything is resolved. Suddenly, a man sitting on his doorstep snaps me out of my cloud of thoughts by asking what I'm looking for. A part of me calms down because I sense that this is the advent of the solution, but when I talk to him I find a person that looks at me with distrustful eyes, scrutinizing each one of my words, my appearance and my every movement. That's why I'm not the least surprised when he later tells me that he's a retired gendarme. The problem is that his ambiguities make it difficult for me to discern whether he wants to help me or is just interrogating me for the sake of killing his boredom.
When I tell him that I am looking for a place to sleep, he tells me that there are several accommodations around and, in an unexpected gesture, decides to come with me me because they are not marked and this town is nothing more than a maze of sand alleys. Despite the fact that he is the one who going in to ask about availability, they all claim they are full and refuse to even to let me camp inside the property. Shortly after having exhausted the options, we return to the door of his house by the main road. At this point, with just under 10 minutes to go before it gets dark, it's clear to me that he has no intention of offering me a place to stay either.
In the past, I have rarely had to reach the point of insisting in order to persuade someone, but in this case I see no other solution because the people around do not inspire any trust in me. What’s more, no more than a few meters away from where we are sitting on the sidewalk, we see that his house has a small patio where I could perfectly camp. There’s also a small shop front next to it that he himself tells me is empty. However, after several indirect and direct attempts at persuasion I get nothing from him, until after a few minutes he tells me that I can sleep right there.
Right there where? - I ask confused, wondering if he's being serious.
Here - he tells me pointing to the piece of sidewalk that corresponds to the entrance of his house.
Here? - I repeat in disbelief pointing to the sidewalk - On the street? Where all the people pass by, and on the edge of the road with all the truck traffic coming and going from Dakar?
Yes, here - he confirms before telling me that he is going to have dinner with his family.
I am so puzzled that I can’t even utter an answer. The worst thing is that given the circumstances, I am begining to ponder the option, because after all, I have already slept in all imaginable places. The problem is that nothing in this place triggers a minimum degree of trust in me and in situations like these my instinct is everything. My instinct is what has to a great degree ensured my integrity to this day, and that’s why I decide to trust my intuition, and without further words leave.
Once again I am wandering on foot, pushing the bike adrift contemplating my options. I head to the market by the road, at the midpoint between the entrance and exit of the town. I try not to slip on the remains of crushed vegetables and smashed fruits that carpet the entire ground. Although it is late and some stalls have already put down their tarps, I find the congregation of people who remain shopping surpriing as much s reassuring. In situations and places like this, it is always better to be surrounded by many people than by few. Between the hustle and bustle, the crowd and the darkness it is also much easier to blend in and not attract unwanted attention.
Another half hour passes in which I converse with one person or another to no avail. It never ceases to amaze me the vibe that persists in the middle of the road late at night. It is so much that I really go unnoticed. It's so unusual that instead of being the center of attention like I'm used to, no one here shows any interest in my presence, or even seem to wonder about it. 45 minutes go by, an hour goes by, it's already late, and I still can't find a solution when suddenly, a man about my age shows up in the crowd and with a warm smile asks me:
- Are you the guy who’s traveling by bicycle?
- Yes! - I answer surprised - How do you know?
- Well, I just had a conversation with the man you've been talking to, the gendarme. He told me about you and that you were looking for a place to sleep but he told me that you were suddenly gone. That's why I thought I'd take a look around here and see if I could find you because I thought you might need some help.
- Yes indeed! I need it. I asked him for help but his response was to offer me to sleep on the street at the door of his house and I don't feel safe.
- hahaha! Yeah, it's just that he didn't trust you. He told me to come at my own risk if he wanted to help you, because he believed you might be a terrorist. My name is Papís, you can come and stay at my house if you want. I live near here.
This is the magic, the true magic of traveling the world being exposed to the environment and to the people. In times when anxiety strikes during moments of uncertainty, suddenly as if out of nowhere, comes the humanity of total strangers who, although we do not know it, are there watching over our well-being.
Just 150 meters into town, the bustle of the market and the main road are left behind, leaving the town in silence. I follow Papís in the dark, pushing the bike through the sandy alleys trying not to step on any scorpions by accident. On the way, he tells me that Ndiass' popularity is due to the construction of the new airport in Dakar, located just 5 km from here, where he works. Halfway through his account, the edge of town reminds me that I'm back at the foot of the Sahara when my bike completely sinks in the deep sand and I need to interrupt him to help me push the remaining 200 meters. The sand penetrates through the corridors right up to the very door of the room he rents on the ground floor of an austere cube-shaped building that the desert is devouring.
Sitting around the gas stove where Papís is cooking dinner, we talk with the same lightness of two friends who have known each other for a long time. The warmth of situation helps to prevent the oppression of a hermetic room devoid of windows, natural light and ventilation.
The pan begins to shake signaling the boiling of the water for the rice. I tell him about some of the adventures that have brought me here, my experience in Africa and what lies ahead. On the other hand, he opens a window for me to the stories that he has had to live up to now.
-Well, the truth is that I've had quite a difficult life. Things have not turned out as I expected- he begins to tell me, with his always serene look and an affectionate smile, while he stirs the rice in the saucepan that continues to shake over the fire.
…”Many times I have lost everything. My father left home when my brothers and I were little. My mother worked all day and the money was never enough for us. I started working when I was very young, we lived in the Cassamange region, and little by little I saved money to start a small business together with a friend. We had a little grocery store. A year passed and we were doing well, until one night thieves broke in and accessed the small safe where we had kept all our money to pay pending bills and restock supplies. We lost everything and we had to close it because we couldn't pay for anything and what little we had was used to pay off debts.
Having to start again from scratch, having nothing, I decided to try to join the army to have a salary to live on and help my mother in my village. I passed all the hard physical tests and exams, but at the end of it all, I didn't pass the medical exam and I was rejected. When I was a teenager I had a girlfriend, and once while we were having sex one of my testicles was accidentally torsioned. At the hospital they had no choice but to remove it. That is the reason why I was not allowed to enter the army, for having only one testicle.
After that I kept doing informal jobs here and there until I met my wife with whom I had two children. She had a friend in our neighborhood who was married to a man who was in the military. He treated her very badly, cheated on her and also beat her up. One day I tried to talk to her so that she would leave him, so that she wouldn't allow herself to be mistreated like that. After she made the decision to leave him, he found out that I had been counseling her. At that time he came to confront me accusing me of meddling in his affairs. He began to provoke me, threatened me and attempted to force me to go talk to his wife to retract myself. I refused, and the situation escalated into a physical fight. As a result we went to the police, who sentenced me for meddling and beating up an army soldier. I was sentenced to 6 months in prison, and since the soldier had contacts in the police, he made sure that my stay during those months was the worst possible one”
As he continued to tell me his stories, my emotions moved me to the point of tensing my entire body. At this point I interrupted him, perhaps as an excuse to release the breath I was holding and exclaimed: -Prison?! I can't imagine how hard a prison is here in Senegal- I feel stupid for the comment, but I don't have other words to say.
Letting out a small ironic laugh but without ever losing his calm smile or altering the serene tone of his speech, he continued:
…”yeah, the truth is that it was indeed very hard, because he made sure that I was in the worst possible place. In the cell there were sometimes up to 20 in a space of this size” - he tells me pointing to the room we are in, about 15 m2 - “the walls were all rotten and the floor, where we slept, was always filthy. We had to stick very close and tight to each other, but since we didn't fit in being completely stretched out, we needed to bend our knees and arrange ourselves like puzzle pieces so that we could fit. However, this was the case of my cellmates because I was not allowed to sleep among them. The guard came at night to force me to sleep at everyone else's feet and right on the edge of the side gutter where everybody peed. That way, during the night, when some got up to pee, they had to stand behind me, with me lying below between them and the gutter. That is why I found it so hard to sleep, because I would wake up frequently by the stench and the drops of urine that fell on me”
Every time I think I've heard it all, the story continues.
“We used to get sick a lot too. The heat in summer was hellish. There were a lot of rats, cockroaches, fleas and because of the mosquitoes we often got malaria. Here in the prisons they don't serve food, your relatives or friends are the ones who have to bring you something to eat every day, otherwise you just don't eat. Since during my stay my wife left me and ran off with someone else, I had no one to bring food to me. So I had to rely on the food that some of my cellmates would share with me, and sometimes not eat altogether if they didn't have any. Six months later, when I was released, my wife had moved to another town with my children, so I haven't been able to see them much since they were born. Finally, I decided to come here to work on the construction of the airport. At first, everything was fine but suddenly the Saudi company that is in charge of the project started paying us 50% of the salary. The excuse was problems they had with the government. After 6 months of earning half our wage, they stopped paying us altogether. It's been 3 months now that we're going to work without being paid. Now the project is paused because they say the government doesn't pay them so they can't pay us but he still need to show up at work. We complain but they tell us that if we stop working they will not pay us what they owe us and they will fire us. It is very difficult"…
After a pause, Papís smiles with pleasure because the food is almost ready but by now my stomach has completely shrunk and I have suddently lost my usual voracious cyclist appetite. His serenity moves me. Papís tells me about his life but he doesn't complain. There is no regret in his account but rather a dignified smile that reflects acceptance devoid of any hint of resignation.
We are well into the night already. Together, in that little room with a sand floor, sitting on two stools holding our plates in the air, we shared this delicious dinner that he cooked for me as if I were his own brother. Papís does not stop laughing like a curious child while we talk. I feel the genuine attention he pays to every detail of the things I tell him, the appreciation with which he looks at me. On the other hand, I see the supernatural energy that emanates from him to face a level of adversity that I cannot even conceive of in my fantasies of the wildest tragedies. It is the same loving energy that he radiates.
When we finish eating I am not allowed to do the dishes. Instead, he invites me to get ready for bed because, like a good brother, he wants me to have a good rest. When I begin to pull out the inflatable mattress out of my dry bag, he immediately stops me to tell me it's not necessary. He stresses that I am in his house, and therefore he will let me take his mattress so that I can sleep more comfortably and protected from the mosquitoes under the mosquito net. Intoxicated by this mixed infusion of hospitality and embarrasment, I try in one way or another to explain to him that my mattress is very comfortable and that I always sleep on it and that I cannot allow him to sleep on the floor. Nevertheless, Papis finds every excuse to render my arguments unacceptable, and he asks me to please sleep in his bed so that I can be comfortable. I am left so moved and with so many powerful emotions in my head that I can hardly fall asleep despite my exhaustion.
The next day, I wake up to the hissing hum of the simmering stove. I need to make an effort to be able to detach the eyelids from my pupils. At that moment, I glimpse the figure of Papís and hear a warm "Bonjour Nico!". It's hard for me to wake up and I need a few minutes to understand what time it is. Having no windows, if it weren't for the light coming through the door that is ajar, I would think it was still night. It's 6:30 a.m. Papís has already gone out to do the shopping and is back preparing breakfast on the little stove. As soon as I come back from the communal bathroom with a fresher face, everything is served. Two fried eggs, a slice of bread, and Nescafe. The kindness and affection of this man know no limits. We have breakfast together before I pack my things to leave.
Rarely have I met someone who has lived through so many difficulties, many of them beyond the scope of my fantasies, speak so calmly and carry on with such light-heartedness, stripped of any trace of resentment in the heart. Papís fills me with such respect and admiration that I feel completely moved. The mere presence of him exudes a loving energy that embraces my soul. Without looking for it, he has given me teachings that I will always try to keep in mind for the rest of my life. I will spend the rest of the day pedaling to Dakar reflecting on everything I need to learn from these last 24 hours. Undoubtedly, experiences like these are the ones that change my life and for which I celebrate traveling the world in this way.
