This past weekend was an ‘organized’ trip to Dakar. Dakar is the biggest city in Senegal, with a population of 2.4 million people. The city is divided into various quartiers, some of which are really nice, some of which aren’t.
Papis who works for PA arranged a bus for the 19 people going on the trip. Upon the bus’s arrival, it was evident that in Canadian terms the bus should seat 10 people but here in Senegal it would seat 19, and therefore be a really cozy 4-5 hour car ride! We left at 6:30 ‘Senegal time’ which meant 7:45… needless to say it was really a cramped, uncomfortable bus ride that got us to our hotel at 1:30.am and a ride that I would rather soon forget. It was impossible to see anything along the way because it is dark at around 7:30.
The next morning we were to take the ferry to Ile to Goree. Since we were travelling en mass, we made it for the 12:30 ferry. Ile de Goree was really a highlight of the trip so far. It’s a small island off the south east tip of Dakar which has no roads and about 600 permanent residents. After walking around Dakar a bit in the morning, and living in the noisy hustle and bustle of St Louis these past few weeks, it was really nice to walk down quaint, narrow streets with flowers and birds and plain old quiet.
Ile de Goree is really known as the last stop for most of the slaves exiting Africa. I visited the Musee d’Esclaves which is a small inconspicuous building made up of guest rooms with a view on the top floor, and small, dark holding rooms on the bottom that separated men from women and women from children until they all boarded the ship to South America, the Caribbean and North America. Typically the museums I have visited here in Senegal have been really scant on details and generally out of date. That is how the museum was presented here, but having read up on the slave trade in the past, Musee d’Esclaves really held a significant symbolic importance to the subject. I would say that especially of the small, square doorway that opens up right onto the Atlantic Ocean-- the doorway touted has being the point of no return for all who passed through it.
The rest of the island featured regular families going about their days, and a slew of artists who weren’t as pushy as most vendors I have come across. There were also a few leftover bits of artillery from an old Dutch base but most were in a ruinous state and not much of that story was told outside of one small notation on the tourist map.
Overall Goree was a great place to take pictures and wander around the streets. It was definitely very touristy but once we moved away from the beach it was hard to notice. At 4:30 we caught the ferry back to the mainland. We were all going out for a real West African dinner in celebration of Briony’s (a doctor from the UK) 30th birthday.
Dinner was amazing. Briony read about this new place called La Calabesse which is located on top of the African Cultural Centre (more like expensive African souvenir shop with one statue in homage to some past President). We had the set plate deal for 12000 ($24) which included appetizer, main and dessert, and since there were a load of us eating, the Maître D basically kept the food coming till we said stop. There were several meat dishes such as fish with coconut, chicken with peanut, goat (?) with sauce (?) and other such things as beans, couscous, rice, and prawns of various presentations. All in all it was nice to sit at a table, with my own plate and a fork and knife AND have good food to boot (though I should say I have only had a couple of meals that I didn’t like back in St Louis). The meal ended at midnight, and I was toast so myself and 5 other girls decided to head back to the hotel.
To Be Continued…
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