Or, What a Difference a Day Makes
The first day in Dakar had been a bit of a bust. Yes, we got to experience some of the city, markets, and people. But if this is what Dakar is, I felt bad for the people who lived there, and I had a hard time being optimistic for them. I’m usually not like this, but the few positive experiences of the day were buried by the third-world struggles that are normally just background to me. But I would get a second bite at the apple, with the help of a local guide.
Dusty and I had looked at a couple of outings in Dakar and the surrounding area, and most did not seem to be worth either the time or the money. There was one that I felt would be the most immersive and show us both the hard history of the area as well as expose us to points of pride in the present and future. And the leap of faith would be taken on a chance encounter.
After a month at sea, our ship had finally gotten the swimming pool open, and they were going to celebrate. With Dusty resting in the cabin, I went up to the top deck to see how they planned to throw a party for a pool. The heat and humidity were in your face as soon as you opened the door to the pool deck. In addition, there were small green and white flies and flying beetles creating polka dots on the shirts of many of my fellow cruisers who I had joined.
There was some live music going on, and I made my way to "Mike's Bar," the outdoor pool bar near the back of the ship. I figured I could pick up some ice to take down to the room and chill out away from the bugs. About that time, Rina, a fellow cruiser and skilled exercise instructor, came to the bar to get something as well. I asked what she had planned for the next day. She said she really couldn't manage anything fun solo, and so far, nobody had asked her to join them. Jim, a fellow cruiser and a pretty good photographer, said he might join if there was a good idea.
At this point, Rina said she had seen an all-day guided private tour of Goree Island and the city of Dakar. I had been looking at something that sounded the same, but the price she quoted was nearly thirty percent more. I got out my phone, and we compared notes. It was the exact same tour, but she is an Aussie. The price difference was just the exchange rate between US dollars and Australian dollars. Between the three of us, we decided to go for it, and I was in the process of trying to make the reservations when a bottle of Dom Perignon Rouge was being passed from the bar behind me to the Captain of the ship and his officers just in front of me. By the time I had my confirmation, the cork flew, and glasses were being filled. The last glass of the prestigious bubbly was passed to Rina, and she passed it to me because she does not drink. I was just about to sample the first Dom Perignon of my life when I decided to walk the acrylic glass of pink champagne down to Dusty and let her know what we were doing tomorrow.
Dusty was grateful that I had thought of her when I got the champagne and knew that I had her in mind when we were making plans for the coming day. As long as it doesn’t cost too much or involve a ton of walking, she just wants to be there and enjoy whatever I am enjoying. I keep her from being too bored, and she keeps me from doing anything too crazy. By the way, the quality of the champagne did not merit the price of the bottle. I’m just as happy with a bottle of cava from Spain or sparkling wine from California.
By dinnertime, I had been messaged by Pape, our guide, to confirm everything for the next day. I was a bit concerned about an all-day tour getting back in time for our 7:00 PM departure, so I was actually quite happy when he suggested an early start to avoid the crowds. We would depart at 8:00 in the morning to catch the first ferry to Goree Island. He already had the tickets for the four of us and would pick us up at the ship. I did double-check that he was talking about meeting us at our ship and not at the ferry and was happy that we wouldn’t have to make a half-mile walk first thing in the morning. Getting Dusty going early was enough of an ask.
At breakfast, Pape messaged me again that he was now at our ship, 45 minutes early, and that we could join him when we were ready. This was about the same time that Jim was coming down to eat, and I tried to help him along with making coffee from the high-tech machines in the dining room. Unfortunately, I screwed up the recipe and gave him a triple shot of espresso with a little water and milk instead of a cappuccino. Oh well, at least he got a solid dose of caffeine. Not bad for an early start.
I went down to the big white van and met with Pape briefly before Dusty, Jim, and Rina came down the gangway. It turned out that we had gotten quite lucky with the guide we got that day. When the embassy from a country that speaks French, English, German, or Swedish comes to Dakar, this is the guy that they usually get. And we found throughout the day that everybody knows Pape. The captain of the ferry, the pastor of the church, the mayor of Goree Island, and just about every restaurant manager or shop owner.
We all climbed into the van. Jim and I had our cameras hanging from our necks while Dusty and Rina were traveling a little lighter. Pape introduced us to our driver, and I promptly noted it in my iPhone notes, which promptly autocorrected his name to Montana. Technology can’t fix a bad memory, especially when it thinks that it knows best. It turns out his name is Mountaga. Our guide is such a rock star he helped me out with that later.
The early start did mean that we had a bit of a wait at the ferry terminal. The wait did pay off when Pape made sure that we got onto the top level at the front of the ship before it started to really fill up. He knew that the best views would be from that position. Not only was he a good guide, but he was also very aware of the wants and needs of a photographer.
Before the crush of passengers filled every available seat as well as much of the standing space, Pape shook hands with a half dozen people and greeted them in their language of choice. Among those he spoke to was the captain of the ferry. He wore his white captain’s shirt with epaulettes on the shoulders and had a big smile. I asked if I could take his picture, and he stepped from the deck into the bridge of the ship. At first, I thought that meant he would prefer that I not take a picture of him. A moment later, Pape told me he just wanted to straighten up a bit. This was a man of pride, and he wanted to look his best.
A moment later, Muhammad, the captain, was posing for a few shots at the wheel of the ship with our guide as well. I went back to sit next to Dusty and watched a bird flying up towards the top of the ferry where the flag of Senegal was flapping in the morning breeze. One of the young men working on the dock came running from the terminal with something in his hand. He climbed onto the rail of the ferry and reached up as the captain reached down. "It must be something important," I thought. Dusty would agree. It was a glass with a large shot of espresso. Our captain would be alert for the first crossing of the day.
A tall, well-dressed black woman in her thirties or well-kept forties introduced herself as Cindy Crawford. She said we really must visit her boutique on the island. She was much less aggressive than the merchants I had met the day before. She took a seat a few rows back from us as we left the dock.
The sun was already hot, but the wind helped to ease the intensity of the weather. We passed our ship on the way out, but the sun was behind it and it didn’t make a really good shot. As we approached Goree Island, there were several small fishing boats in the water that are emblematic of the country, Senegal. Again, the island and the little boats had the sunlight behind them. I took a few shots anyway because they may turn out okay, and it helps me to remember the journey. And, yes, Dusty and I held hands and talked along the way.
As we rounded the tip of the island and started to turn toward the little bay, the sun was at my back and the little photographer inside of me became very happy. White, yellow, and pink houses in French colonial style lined the shore of the bay with colorful boats in the bright blue water. It looked like a Disney technicolor Pirates of The Caribbean scene in so many ways. This was the start of my bipolar feelings for the island. On one hand, it was an idyllic beautiful place. On the other hand, it was one of the cruelest and most inhumane places on the planet.
Before the ferry had come to a stop at the dock, people were jockeying for position to be the first off. Pape had no such inclination. As the people poured onshore to get to the infamous slave house as quickly as possible, he pointed out some of the sights. The houses painted in white or plain stone were French slave businesses, the yellow were British, and the red were Dutch. At least that is what I recall. It is easy enough to research the books and resources that detail the minutiae of Goree Island, but that was not my focus. Yes, I wanted to hear the actual facts, and Pape really knew the facts. He and his father had been quite involved in the creation of this educational experience, and we were lucky to have him. There were at least two special purpose boats in the bay. The long blue open one and the white and blue one with a central cabin called the Vanessa Love. The first was for removing the trash from the island, while the second was for emergency medical evacuations. The island has no cars. There are a couple of donkey carts that are used for cleaning up the trash and such.
Before we actually started walking away from the slave houses, we stopped at Chez Nene La Retrouvailles. This was the little restaurant just off the beach where we would have our lunch later. The four tourists sat down, and Pape spoke to a young server in French, then introduced us to Nene. The plastic-coated menus that were too stiff to fold had the choices in French with small pictures of the items. Mostly fresh seafood and rice with plantains, but all would be made while we were out and about and ready when we returned. With Jim and Rina choosing the national dish consisting of nicely prepared chunks of barracuda and broken rice, while Dusty got the shrimp and I a whole small grouper, our lunch was ordered, and we were off to the residential part of the island.
One side of the island was dedicated to the residents and business people of the island, while the other housed and processed the slaves. We started in the residential area on purpose so that the rest of the people on the ferry could finish their time at the infamous slave house before we got there. The area was like walking through old-time New Orleans. Brightly colored houses with contrasting shutters closed against the harsh tropical sun. The streets reverberated with cobblestone streets and carts pulled by a donkeys used to keep everything nice and clean. A man is sitting there with a stone from the shore, a hammer and a chisel, chipping away small bits to make souvenirs elephants and such for the tourists. A statue of a pair of slaves with broken chains celebrates freedom near the French fortress looking out to sea. As I was looking at the statue and Pape was talking to the others, five goats come strolling through as if they own the place. Maybe they do.
We walked between a yellow and a pink house where the shutters on the windows were held open with little iron stops in the image of the master and matron of the house. They were the size of a chess piece and could be flipped either up or down to indicate who was home at the time. Whether it was an invitation to infidelity or not, I cannot say, but it makes a nice conversation piece.
More old houses. More beautiful homes converted to a bed and breakfast or a restaurant. But none of them were slave houses. If it was a slave house, it could never be used for commercial purposes. It would always be what it had been: a stain on humanity and something to never forget.
Further along, we came to the central square where the baobab tree stood next to the football field (soccer). We were told that the mayor of Goree was also the President of the Goree Football Club. Adjacent to the old tree and soccer field was an old estate owned by the French government. They would not return it to Senegal, and they would not restore it, so there it stood, just barely, while the rest of the island was being improved.
Pape picked up our tickets for entry to the House of Slaves, and we entered through the big green doors into the courtyard of the processing plant for captured Africans. A large double staircase wound up to the quarters for the owners upstairs, while between the two curving arches was a long, dark space where the bright blue of the Atlantic Ocean shone through the black space.
Pape told us the value of the people who were brought through this place. A sixty-kilo man was worth a rifle. A child with good teeth… a young girl with nice breasts…. It all became too dehumanizing to even want to hold onto the concept of human barter value. We entered the dark space where the slaves were held during the three-month cycle of the slave ship. To one side was the room where the “good” ones would be fattened up to keep their value. To the other was the tiny space under one of the stairs where up to six slaves would be locked for days if they fought back. The next room was where the girls with value as sex slaves were kept so that they would have a bathroom to keep clean for….
This led me to think about the ways that someone did not get onto the ship going to the Americas. First, one could fight and win in battle against other African tribes, die in battle so as not to be taken prisoner, die in the long walk from your home to Goree Island, get shot asa prisoner, or die of disease in holding (and have your body thrown to the sharks). Other depressing options include commiting suicide in the House of Slaves (and having your body thrown to the sharks), getting pregnant by a slave owner and staying in Africa becoming part of the whole system. It was an ugly, perverted system that forced people into impossible situations.
Then we made our way to the door. The door of no return, the door where once a day the slaves would be allowed to go to the bathroom until the day the ship arrived. At that point, the slaves would be marched out the door never to return to Africa in their lifetimes. At this point, some would try to dive into the water to escape. The sharks were used to seeing these shapes land in the water. It meant feeding time to them.
Rina was the first of our group to reach the door. I stayed back because I didn’t know how she would feel there, what kind of time she would need. After a bit, people started to gather behind me, and I just kind of took up the space in the hallway to allow her more time. Eventually, her time ended, and the next group came through. Once they finished, I took a moment to walk slowly toward the light at the end of the hallway and thinking about what they were thinking in those last moments. The women screaming, the children crying, the men maybe trying to stay strong for the others, or maybe they were doing the same. All the different languages of the tribes would make communication chaotic. The smells would be horrible. It hurt to be there, but not feeling would be wrong.
As we emerged from the darkness of the door back into the central courtyard, we saw that a huge group had arrived shortly after us. A man was standing on the staircase speaking in French to the people in the courtyard as if it were a political rally. We wound our way up the opposite staircase into the display in the master's quarters upstairs. The history and timelines were there in the standard format of a major museum. I took it in and moved along. The view from the back was beautiful and blue and could almost make you forget what had happened just ten feet below. Along the parapet above the courtyard, Pape pointed out the positions that the snipers would occupy to shoot from above. Before we finally left, Pape showed us the chains and weights that were worn and carried by the people who came through those doors. I couldn’t touch them. They looked like they were originals that carried harsh memories in their physical bodies like ghosts in a prison cell.
Going back out through those green doors felt like a release. After all the beauty and pain we had seen, we were back in the present day and returning to Chez Nene La Retrouvailles, the cute outdoor restaurant with the long benches where we had placed our orders just an hour or so earlier.
One of the staff poured water from a garden watering can over a small blue plastic basin for us to wash off the morning grime before serving us lunch. Once we sat down, the plates of food were brought out, and glasses were filled with bottled water. The server then put a small woven grass coaster on top of each glass to keep flies out while Pape waved a small fan over the plates. This seemed to be just the way things were done because there really were not that many flies, but it was probably such a common problem that it was polite to treat guests this way.
Everything looked as good as it did on the menu we had ordered from. Everything was fresh. A local sauce was presented in a small bowl with a small spoon. We were warned repeatedly that this was a very hot condiment to be used sparingly. The ingredients: habanero chiles. I was the only one foolish enough to give it a try. Fortunately, I had some experience with these chilies, and it took only a small amount to get the desired effect. Rina was quite uncomfortable having my fish looking at her during lunch, so after a quick photo of the lovely plate, I removed the little bastard’s head and wrapped it in a napkin.
The small park between the restaurant and the ferry had a sculpture of a ten-foot-high bright red heart. It begged for photos to be taken, and we all obliged. I was even able to convince Dusty to let Pape take a photo of us together. Pape liked my camera. I liked the way he used it. It was a nice picture.
The crush of passengers returning to Dakar from Goree Island was even more than the early bird group we had come out with. We were returning to the mainland in order to complete our tour and visit several sites in the city. We met a couple of other people from our ship while on the ferry, and they said they were going to the Monument of African Renaissance. We hoped to be able to give them a ride, but unfortunately, we would be making a stop at the local market along the way.
As we disembarked the ferry and made our way back to our van, we were once again offered trinkets, jewelry, pictures, and more by roaming vendors. All the while, women dressed in their brightly colored dresses and headscarves worked their way past the same vendors without being offered a thing. Imagine that.
We passed many of the same streets and buildings we had walked past the day before, but this time Pape was there to make sense of it all. When we finally arrived at the large round building that looked like a giant yurt, we recognized it from the day before. We had passed it by, thinking that it was closed. Maybe the time or activity level gave us the wrong impression, but here we were again. This time, Dusty chose to stay in the van while Rina, Jim, and I followed Pape into the building.
It was Sunday, so the traffic was light inside. There were still all the standard goods one would find in the market, but just not fully stocked and not packed with shoppers. The fish that was not exactly fresh hit me in the nose. Remembering my experience from many a nasty outhouse in my military past, my mouth came open and not a breath would go through my nostrils until I was surrounded by fruits and vegetables. Not my favorite foreign market, but I did appreciate the walk through and the history of the building from the point of view of a local.
The long drive from the market to the monument took us through the diplomatic and administrative centers of the city. On the way, we passed the Sheikh Anta Diop University, which brought out great pride in Pape and opened my eyes to the other side of Dakar. It is the largest French-speaking university in all of Africa. Many leaders of other countries in Africa graduated from this university. It was a big deal. Another thing he pointed out was the outdoor gym, miles of outdoor exercise equipment on the other side of the road overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. All of this was free for the public to use, and much of it was occupied even at one o’clock in the afternoon.
Pape had called ahead to talk to someone about taking us directly to the top of the hill where the monument was so that we would not have to climb the 220 steps up to the base. He said we were getting VIP treatment and that the elevator to the top was normally a long line, but Jim and Rina would not have to wait long.
Our white van turned off the road and onto the little trail that led to a guard shack with a wooden bar across the road denying us entry. The guard in his uniform walked around to the window, and Pape pulled out his pass that allowed admission, expecting the bar across the road to be lifted. French words were exchanged rather quickly, and it was clear that the road was not opening up for us. The guard walked back to the two other officers sitting under the tree for more discussion. After a while, Pape got out and walked over to talk to the small group. Then it happened. He took out his phone and showed it to the guards. They started to laugh.
In a moment, he was back in the van, and the bar was lifted by the guard pressing on the big square counterweight on the other end. Pape said that the road had been closed because of an accident that had happened just a while before. Winding up to the top, we got our first good look at the 52-meter tall statue. About the same height as the Statue of Liberty. A tall, muscular man with a woman standing behind him. His right arm was around her waist, and his left arm was holding a baby. The right arm of the woman was pointing backward toward Goree Island. The left arm of the baby was pointing toward the New World across the sea.
We stopped and got out of the van, and Pape showed us the special pass that had allowed us access to the closed road. It was a photograph of his son, who is an officer that the others at the gate recognized. They all had a good laugh, and so did we when we found out.
In the short walk up to the monument, we were told about the importance of the location adjacent to the lighthouse at the western tip of Africa. The symbolism was the Renaissance of Africa from the history of slavery to the new age of independence and freedom. As we approached the top, the wind really picked up. It was all I could do to keep my hat from flying off my head. It seems that either we were lucky, or our guide had made sure to get us to one of the best places to see when there was no crowd. Either way, I was happy to see there were not too many people there, and there was no line to go inside. While Jim and Rina went inside to ride the elevator to the top of the man’s head, I would stay outside and get some pictures of the massive bronze statue and spend a little time sitting with Dusty.
I climbed down some of the 220 steps that our driver had avoided to get some perspective on the sight. When I did, the child seemed to be pointing at the sun. Not an easy thing to photograph, but it did carry a symbolic imagery if I could pull it off. After a few cool shots, a man in a long white traditional kaftan with a red kufi hat came to ask if I wanted him to take a photo of me in front of the monument. I thought for a moment and said I would rather take a selfie with him in it too. A short pause and a big smile later, we were standing together making a mutual memory.
When Rina and Jim came down, I asked if they liked the view from up there and I got a mixed message that came down to this. "I’m sure you got better pictures than we did." That was enough for me. Glad I stayed on the ground.
A few pictures of a bird trying to land on the finger of the baby and the last lighthouse seen from Africa, and we were on our way. The next stop would be a drive-by shooting of the Mosque of Divinity. The mosque was a recent addition to Dakar. A holy man had a dream about a mosque that was in the shape of the name Allah written in Arabic.
It was to be built at the site of a fish market, and the rest was done by the community and the worshipers of the area. We pulled over, got out, took pictures, and moved on. By now, we were getting into the late afternoon with two stops left before our return to the ship.
The stop at the shopping village approved by the government was a lot cleaner and more organized than what we found on the streets of the city. The crafts were beautiful, the vendors less pushy, but we had no room in our cabins for stuff. As much as we enjoyed it, we were starting to wear out. Two more stops and our day and our brains would be full.
The Cathedral of Dakar, designed to look like a mosque, is fronted by four Black Angels. The cemetery of their predecessors has been paved over. It is a unique cathedral that tries to fit into a largely Islamic nation.
A short stop at Independence Square, where we had been the day before came next. I noticed that as we took a short walk around, a small child ran up to us, Pape gave him a coin. The boy ran back to his mother and returned to ask for more. After a polite scolding, he walked away. Pape said that the disappointment of the people in the area was largely a result of the promises made but not kept by the government. The roads had been torn up to replace the drainage and sewer system over a year ago and still not completed. The shops are supposed to be put into new indoor spaces, which he says should be done soon. He said the country plans to invest about 30 billion dollars over the next five years to make massive improvements in their infrastructure. I can now understand both the frustration and the hope that I see in different faces in Dakar. I am also hopeful that the people of Senegal can find the opportunities and dignity that they deserve. I hope that this is their Renaissance.
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