San Louis - Fish, Fries and Friends

I rode to Saint-Louis from Dakar in a sept place - literally, “seven place”, which is a shared taxi that holds seven people. The ride was long, but I was very lucky to have been given the front seat with all of its ample legroom - I would not get that fortunate again. Senegal’s roads are excellent, and this one in particular passed by what seemed to be acres of beaches, and then moved through scrub land, punctuated by baobab trees. In this area, I spotted venues of vultures (venue is the term for a group of vultures, unless they are circling, in which case they are called a kettle. Who comes up with these things?) who have come there, apparently, because of the ample supplies of road kill - I saw donkeys and goats march into the roads with the most cavalier of attitudes, but my driver managed to swerve and honk with enough force so as to not hit them.

Saint-Louis became the capital of France’s colony in 1673, and served also as the administrative seat of the adjacent Mauritania from 1920 (that country is visible from the top of the island, where I ate delicious Vietnamese food and enjoyed the view), until the independence of those two countries. The city abuts the Senegal river, where the tiny island of Saint-Louis hovers between fresh water and the long peninsula Ndar (the city’s Wolof name), at the other side of which fishermen ply the Atlantic ocean.

Mauritania:

After I’d settled into my hostel, I was escorted on a walking tour of the island by one of the gentlemen who hang about said hostel looking for work. Over the course of three hours, we walked the streets, visited a gallery and a museum, trudged through the sand-filled streets of the peninsula to see the sea, and finally took a horse-drawn taxi back. And the entire time, we spoke only in French. It was exhausting.

I learned a very important vocabulary word from my guide, and one not in French: “Toubab” is the local word for white person. I heard this word repeatedly as I was walking around. Children would screech it and then come running up to me, but they got bashful when I responded with a smile. My guide said that this word is not specific to any of Senegal’s many languages, but is an “all-African” term used across the country and its neighbors. Moreover, although a toubab may by white or Asain, Arabs are referred to as “naar,” which is Arabic for fire. Perhaps because Lebanese people are so hot?

The next day, I took yet another tour, this one to a near-by village where people live in a more “traditional” way, with one-room homes, no electricity, and cell phones. This guide mercifully spoke English, so I learned much more than I had the day before. In particular, we talked about Saint-Louis’ fate. My guide was not very optimistic. It seems that, since the city was designated a UNESCO-protected site, the African inhabitants have been steadily forced to abandon their homes. One of the terms of protection is that repairs must be done only in the original materials, and those materials were imported by the French colonialists in the 17th and 18th centuries. They are not abundantly available to local consumers today. As a result, people are selling their houses (for loads of cash, I might add) to foreigners, and building much larger homes inland. The guide was also skeptical about the efficacy of preservation in this location since the island is steadily shrinking, due to climate change. He told me that only 30 years ago it took half an hour for a fisherman to walk from the river to the see on the peninsula of Ndar. Now that same walk, which I made with my first guide, takes five minutes.

My hosts in the village were very kind and went about making us tea with generous allotments of sugar. The family was perhaps as fascinated with me as I was with them; I was drilled about how old I am, why I was traveling alone, and why on earth I am not married yet. “What are you waiting for?” was, I believe, the exact question. In their context I have been waiting a long time: my guide informed me that these women all married at around the age of 14 or 15, and then had gone on to produce 7 or 8 babies. The question of age brought up a topic I fancy: how well can people tell others’ ages, especially across races? The villagers were shocked that I am 27 and thought I would be perhaps 19 or 20. I felt the same about a woman who informed me that she was 33 or so - she looked 20 to me! And I remember a Chinese-American friend of mind saying to me once, with not a little bitterness, “White people can’t tell how old we are!”

But can we really tell how old anyone is? I have great difficulty with this in any context, but among Americans I think I have a better grasp (although I am often proven wrong). People have generally always thought I'm older than I am because I am so tall, and I know that the opposite is also true for the miniature among us. So perhaps the difference is as much cultural as it is racial. There are certain gestures, patterns of speech and activities that we associate with maturity, and these are necessarily different from one group to another, and yet it's still difficult to know. Anyway, I’ll take the youthfulness compliments while I can get them, and continue wearing my SPF 100 sunscreen!

That evening, I purchased masks from a very kind gentleman I encountered in the marketplace. When all the salesmen have nearly the same product, I head for the one who seems kindest. After we’d talked for a while, he posed for a picture with me and then gave me his address, requesting that I send him a copy. His son walked me back to the hostel (I owed them more money - my bargaining was not as effective as I might have liked), and on the way we chatted in French. The conversation rapidly turned to religion for this man, whose name is Bamba, is a devout Muslim. He wears several images of the patron of Touba on his person, and when I asked further questions he pulled out of his backpack a biography of the shaykh, and a book of the holy man’s poetry (in French and Arabic). Bamba offered to escort me to Touba the following day, and I decided that he seemed as kind and generous as his father, so I accepted. I am very glad that I did so.

First, though, I had to eat dinner. Bamba took me to a tiny restaurant on Ndar whose staff consists of one woman, Bintu. She was overbearing in a very friendly and charming way, ordering me to sit in her kitchen and watch as she cooked me a fresh fish with potatoes, salad and tasty brown sauce.

She did all this without a stove, or a counter. Then, whenever I paused while eating, she made sure to chastise me: “Manger! Manger!” She was concerned that if I don’t eat enough, I will not develop a lovely, rotund backside (this was communicated through French and body language). Unfortunately, no amount of fish is going to overcome my genetic defects in that arena.

After I finished my meal, Bintu insisted that I come see her house, which is on the island near the prison. I know this specifically since she also gave me her address, and phone number, and insisted that I stay in touch. Her house was up a flight of stairs, and once inside I met her mother and another woman, whose combined girth took up the entire bed. I wonder whether they can make it up and down the stairwell. Then I went back to the hostel to sleep since the following day I would leave at 7 am for Touba.