I leave Dakar full of energy. I feel like new. I shaved after 5 months, I cut my hair, I got deodorant and everything smells of soap because I washed the few clothes I have. It is not just any moment, it is a special one. In a way, I know that today I am starting the long final stretch towards Europe. It is true that I still have quite a long way ahead, I have the Sahara in between, and the whole Moroccan Atlas to cross, but it is a fact that at the end of the road lies the Mediterranean, and with it, the end of Africa. Although now it's not the time to think much about it, because I know very well that before that, a challenge of proportions that I still can't measure lies ahead of me. I don't want to get ahead of myself.
Instead of taking the main road to St Louis, I decide to take a secondary one following the coast to visit the famous Lake Retba, better known as Lac Rose (Pink Lake) lying just 30 km northwest of Dakar. According to the photos I have seen, the lake has a formidable color generated produced by its very high concentration of salt and a specific algae that live at its bottom. If Photoshop didn't intervene to fake reality in the thousands of images available on the internet, under the sun I should be able to see this almost supernatural colour, more fuchsia than pink. I don't want to miss it but luck doesn’t seem to be on my side, because the day I decide to leave is the first cloudy day in 10 days since I got to Dakar. I pedal during the entire morning with the illusion that the sky will clear, but by the time I arrive at noon the clouds stay the lake is nothing but an unappealing flat gray. The hard sand around it allows me to pedal its entire length along its shore, where I pass several rows of coloured barges that are parked on the sand, returning some picturesque beauty to this bleak day. A few meters further into the lake, I can see men and women submerged up to their torsos, pulling out buckets from the bottom of the lake overflowing with salt and water. The whole shore is covered by a curious white foam whose origin I fail to decipher, but is similar to the one that would come out when opening a washing machine in the middle of a full washing cycle. It is so pompous that it sticks to everything, from the hulls of the barges to my feet and the bike wheels.
After an hour or so, I get out at the other end of the lake kind of disenchanted. Soon after, my already delicate relationship with the Senegalese continues its deterioration process. Faranjis, Mzungus, Mondeles, and Brancos, each country or region of Africa has a name for us whites. I have heard them and even suffered them in each and every one of them. In Senegal, we are Toubabs. "Toubab, Toubab, Toubab!" resonates around me since I left Dakar, especially coming from children in the villages. It is a term that I had already heard in the south before the Gambia, but never with this level of frequency that becomes increasingly annoying the further to the north I cycle. Even if it is well below the level of Ethiopian torment, I must say that with the passing of the day it is making me feel quite jaded. It is not so much because of the repetition, nor for being always the center of attention, but rather for feeling true contempt and arrogance in the way they shout it at me. Something very similar to what I felt in Ethiopia and in certain parts of Kenya. In contrast, it is something that I never felt, for example, in Sumatra where every 3 meters each person use to shout a friendly 'Hello Mister!'.
To the dense symphony of 'Toubabs' that gradually undermines my good humour in each village I pass by, the invisible demon is added. That previously announced demon, the demon that all travelers told me about: the northerly wind that blows from Europe and beyond. It blows sweeping mercilessly across the entire Atlantic coast and the Sahara. I knew it was just a matter of time until I'd clash with it. What I didn't know is that it would happen as soon as I'd leave Dakar. Even though it is intense and constant it is still tolerable. It drains more of my energy but not to the point of consuming all of it. The real problem is that because I’m being forced to go slower, it multiplies the amount of toubabs-per-meter that I have to endure in each village.
Given that I can't find greater incentives to stop many times along the way, I keep cycling above my daily average regardless of the headwind until reaching St.louis on the early evening of the third day. When I cross the historic Faidherbe bridge the streets are deserted and poorly lit, but while I am looking for the lodging where I will stay I can already tell that I am in a place that I did not quite imagine. It is only on the day after, early in the morning, that I get to look out the window and confirm that initial impression. The day is absolutely radiant and dry and I feel I can finally breathe pure air. I am near the northwest shore of N’Dar (island of St.louis) the 2 km long by 400 meters wide island on the Senegal river where the historic center is located. From my room, I see the palm trees swaying with the morning breeze over the canal of sapphire-blue waters that separate the island from the famous ‘Tongue of the barbarism’. This, in turn, separates N’dar from the Atlantic Ocean. When I go out under the radiant sun, I feel the magic of going back 300 years in time walking along eerily quiet streets whose silence is only interrupted by the call to prayer coming out of the mosques in the distance and the laughter of some children playing here and there. The French colonial constructions painted in pastel colours frame the urban perspective. Judging by their condition, without a doubt, they saw better days during the more than 200 years in which St. Louis served as the capital of the French colony in Western Africa. Today they are in different degrees of ruin, many even uninhabited, but all without exception, contribute to the timeless atmosphere of this museum island.
On the other side of the canal is this geographical rarity called ‘La Langue de Barbarie’. It has the shape of a “tongue” of sand, some mere 300 meters wide and for about 25 km it channels the last section of the Senegal river until it flows into the Atlantic Ocean. To get there, I have to cross the canal which is the most congested parking of wooden barges that I saw in my life. All of them lined up, rubbing one another along the entire length of both shores. The owners of those that are parked in the center of the canal, must jump from one to the other until they can finally reach firm ground. The intricate coloured designs painted on their hulls define their identity while reflecting the love that their owners put in them. I cannot help but remember how curiously similar it is to the love that Pakistani truck drivers put into their heavily decorated trucks.
Once on the other side of the bridge, I go back yet another 100 years in time. The sidewalks disappear. Here, I am the only one walking among the horsedrawn carriages in which local people move around. However, I am glad to have come on foot, otherwise, I would not have been able to pedal along the sandy alleys along which I get across the fishermen's neighbourhood. It is a world the colour of the sand, of constructions in progress or perhaps, constructions that will never end. Its structures are sewn by cables that thread the facades on one side of the street with those of the other, serving the neighbors with the perfect space to hang their laundry. Ì get the feeling that, unintentionally, they are seeking to fulfill a structural function, because without them, I think the constructions would fall apart.
Below, everyone's life is in full swing. Men are sitting in the shadow at the door of their homes. Some bathe their goats, others simply talk. Children ran around without paying attention to me. They are so entertained playing hide and seek in between the world of barges parked in the middle of the alleys that they don't even care about wasting their time harassing this Toubab. Women walk around in their elegant dresses challenging the austerity of the neighborhood, their vibrant colors breaking the monotony of the beige hues that predominate in the environment. Musicalising the bustle of daily life in these alleyways, there is the echo of the waves of the Atlantic that resonates between the wavering walls of the constructions. All of them run the risk of someday, not in the distant future according to the scientists of climate change, be swallowed by the ocean.
However, when the sun sets on the ocean, while I look at the children playing football on and off the water and the sand, nobody seems to fear the advent of such a catastrophe. That is a fear that almost no one in Sub -Saharan Africa has the luxury of affording. What is the relevance of thinking about it when your present conditions circumscribe your future to that of just a handful of days later? It is curious that we Westerners, who have the luxury of planning our future long term, are the ones destroying it by causing more destruction without repair and/or by simply procrastinating. In the West, following the habit of appropriating that of the others, mindfulness became fashionable in order to teach to develop the ability to be present without distractions moment by moment. Inadvertently, no one has forced Africa to learn mindfulness as much as the European powers that sowed the seed of the origin of many of the current African miseries. Thanks in great part to them, in Africa there is no other way than living one day at a time because the future is a luxury that belongs to the rich.
Until another time Senegal
I leave Senegal with mixed feelings. I haven't had a bad time except for those days in which I spent all day swallowing dust along the alternative road to Dakar. It is a beautiful country, with very interesting cities (Dakar and St.Louis), something that I cannot say about almost any other country in sub -Saharan Africa with the exception of South Africa. The landscape is not attractive, but that is not the strength of the Sahel anyway. The food is definitely on a higher level than the rest and women ... Mon Dieu! Together with the Gambians, they take the prize for the most absolute beauty I saw on the continent. They have even displaced the Angolanas, but only in appearance, never in charm. What takes me to the people themselves, with whom I never felt truly comfortable. In the vast majority of countries, the goodness and affection of the people transform the experience. One drops the guard, opens fully to human experience with them, and feels a tingling that touches the heart. In Senegal, as had happened to me in Cameroon and much earlier in some parts of Kenya, this was not possible because every enjoyable encounter was generally followed by a rough one. Many men seemed always up to a raw confrontation, throwing resentful comments at me or with the simple intention of being provoking. While that was what always kept me on guard, I sincerely do not hold any animosity. I cannot blame those for whom it is much harder to leave behind the atrocities to which the colonisers have subdued them in the past. The good thing is that I have also met exceptional people and that is the memory with which I decide to stay. I do not know if life will bring me back here, I will surely not look for it as a specific destination, but if it were indirectly, I have no doubt that I will be happy to return.
