A Raw Day

Like most days, I was up before the dawn. Like most days, I went to the Observatory Lounge at the front of the ship to watch the sun rise. But today was different. This was a day that I needed to get into words before the memories faded.

We were about to dock in Dakar, Senegal. An Islamic nation in many ways. I would respect the ways of the local culture and restrain myself when it came to photographs of what I saw. What I saw was raw. It had an impact. Not all good, but very, very real.

We were making a slow turn to port as we approached the harbor. This was putting the dawn at our stern. I could see that the sunrise would be coming soon. I could check the exact time on my weather app if I wanted to, but the feel of time and place was becoming more important to me than the numbers. That feeling pulled me to the back of the ship and down to where my photos would capture the prop-wash in the foreground and the brilliant colors of the soon-to-be sunrise in the background.

Paulie and Patti Joe had already been drawn to the same spot to await the next bookend for our travel day. Sunrises had become emblematic of turning pages in the story of our shared journey. The colors were nice. We all laughed about being there and doing what we were doing, while doing it just the same. Memorializing the sunrise had become a habit. Birds were circling and coming closer as we moved gently forward. Not seagulls anymore, but raptors of a sort I would look up later (Black Kites) and the ravens with the white vests that made me think of my first trip to Kenya seventeen years earlier.

Then I saw the island off the port side of the ship. The rails and overhanging parts of the rear deck were getting in the way of my view. I cursed the fact that I didn’t have my good camera with me and climbed to the next deck to get a clear shot of Goree Island. I knew the significance of this place and its place in history. African history. American history. Slave history. Human history. A stain on humanity that had been ingrained into modern consciousness in a way few things have. This was the place where Africans, who had been captured by Africans, were sold to Europeans to be sold to buyers in the Western Hemisphere to toil as beasts of burden.

As I reached the top of the stairs to the next deck and enjoyed my unobstructed view of the island, I saw someone standing with their arms resting on the thick wooden railing. I immediately recognized her. This was my friend, Alicia. She is a bright, beautiful woman with a very strong spirit. She is also black. I had to pause for a moment to try to understand what she was seeing. In life, we have the opportunity to see things through our own eyes. We only have one life. This was one of those times when I needed to allow myself to be part of humanity and more than just me.

She saw me. I asked in as open-ended a way as I could, “How are you doing?” I could see her struggle with the answer. She said she was struggling with it a bit. I told her that if she didn’t feel something here and now, she was not the person that I thought she was. She said, “This is the gate of no return. This is where slaves were sent off never to come home again. And I’m here. I have returned.” Her eyes welled up and a tear made its way out of the corner of her eye before she looked back at the island where her African-American story probably started. I excused myself and went back to chronicling the day so that I would not forget. Nobody should forget.

Dusty and I already had plans for a guided visit to the Isle Goree and a city tour the next day, so today was open. During breakfast, we spoke with a few others who had no plans for the day, and it was decided that a wander into town together to see the main square and market would be a way to spend either the morning or the day.

We all met at the gangway, and a few more people joined us since there were limited options for a last-minute excursion into Dakar. The heat was oppressive. The humidity was worse. It felt just like home in Florida, in July, not November. Sunscreen and long sleeves made it worse, but they protected us from the sun and malaria-carrying mosquitoes, as well as keeping in line with the modesty of an Islamic culture.

As soon as we left the port gate, they started to swarm. The vendors and wannabe guides, not mosquitoes. One offering a ride. Another wanted to show us wherever we wanted to go. Always smiling. Always a welcome to Dakar, Senegal, Africa. Politely refusing the offers left and right, some would drift away in hopes of finding someone more lost than we were. But with a group of about ten westerners in this port with limited knowledge, it was pretty easy to peg our group as easy pickings. Honestly, the group had a wide range of travel experience, but there were enough who would make eye contact or engage in conversation to create the vacuum that was filled by locals hoping to make a living from folks just like us.

Jeff tried to stick to the GPS that his phone said was the right way to go. Unfortunately, there were a couple of guys who wanted to know where we were going and where we were from. They would be happy to show us the way and welcomed us to Senegal, to Africa, to Dakar at least a dozen times as they shadowed us for blocks in the hope that we would take them on as guides and tip them generously at the end. Eventually, they drifted away after a bit. About four blocks later, the same guys showed up in a white van and blocked the road, offering to drive the more tired among us to, again, wherever we were going. By stepping over a bit of garbage on the sidewalk, we were able to move on without having to walk through their van.

The first market that we got to smelled of rotting produce. There was a man under a tree washing himself with a cloth as we passed. This was not where I wanted to buy anything to take home and definitely not anything to eat. I wanted to record what I saw, but felt it was an invasion of privacy and in the current culture, it crossed another line as well. This was their lives. I understood it and wanted to remember it. We moved on.

A few streets further and we came to Independence Square. This was the main city center with a large park in the center and traffic circling around. This is where the guy with the blue shirt and backpack began to try to adopt us as his tour group. He would point things out and suggest we go one direction or another. Often we chose to go away from where he indicated in the hopes of distancing ourselves from him. No luck.

We crossed the traffic into the central park area, and he just followed. I had not given up my photojournalist frame of mind and was comparing this park to the one we had recently seen in Casablanca. All of the intentions were good, but this was a sad, unkempt city block in comparison to the clean, trimmed Arab League Park in Morocco. After repeated approaches by vendors grabbing our hands and putting trinkets into them, we escaped from the park in the direction of the market, with blueshirt guy leaping to the front in anticipation of our next turn.

There were occasional fruit stalls and vendors on either side of the road, but no real central market as we had seen in other countries. For a moment, I was taken by the colors and patterns of both the fruit vendors and the clothing worn by the women selling them. Again, I was tempted to take a photograph of something positive, but I resisted to avoid a social faux pas. Pretty soon, we were going between two buildings and I was getting the strong smell of fish. To the right was a four-story building. To the left were little wooded stands where a woman was sitting next to the catch of the day. Unfortunately, there was no ice or refrigeration, so she was waving a stick with a bunch of feathers on the end of it to keep the flies off. The rows of chickens laid out for sale had most of their pin feathers intact and were only slightly less appealing than the fish. As the alleyway narrowed, the feeling of most in the group was that it was time to get out of here.

After telling the man in the blue shirt a dozen times that we really didn’t want him to walk around with us, we made it clear that we were going to leave and get away from him. There had been times of real connection with the people and the place that we were in, but the constant pressure from one "helpful" local after another was just too much.

We made our way back to the ship through a slightly different route to avoid some of the places we had learned we did not want to experience a second time. The fabrics were beautiful. Many of the people were warm and welcoming. The man carrying a bundle of sticks on top of his head while carrying another under his arm begged to be recorded, but he was deep in conversation and I wasn't going to interrupt. Women wearing bright fabric wraps with jars and baskets balanced on their heads pulled me the same way, but by now I was just trying to work my way back to the ship without misadventure. The heat and the pressure of the day were the kind of travel experiences that remind you how fortunate you are.

Dusty and I would still be visiting the next day with the assistance of a local guide. I planned to keep my eyes and my heart open. I had to see the world through the eyes of others. Otherwise, my time on this planet is limited only to what I can see and experience.