A Goat in the Road

I left St.Louis after a memorable stay in the cute French Auberge de Jeunesse, where I befriended a lovely young Belgian couple who went with me out to the famous bird conservatory an hour or so away from the Ile. By my last day in town my French had improved tremendously, so much so that two American Peace Corps volunteers who were on vacation and quickly getting into a bottle of gin at 4 in the afternoon turned around from their activities to say "your French is marvelous!" I hung out with our guide from the bird park, an extremely warm guy whose wife owned the Moroccan restaurant in town-- a beautiful couple with heaps of energy and a great perspective on the day to day of life-- and learned more about Le Plat National. The night before I was to leave St.Louis I had a dream that I found an unraveling nylon tassle in the bottom of my bowl of soup. I picked it out and flicked it onto my saucer, proclaiming to my fellow diners "See? I knew I'd wind up with a string in my soup!" In the morning I awoke, feeling weary of the day of travel that lay ahead: from St.Louis all the way in the north I was to take a sept-place to Thies, where I would switch to another car to take me to Mbour at which point I would find a taxi to take me to a village where a French friend of a friend has a horse ranch. I left the auberge early, ready to forge ahead, and was quickly shot down when the bank teller informed me that Dakar is the only place in Senegal where one can cash travelers checks. At 8 in the morning I quickly ran through my options, but with only a few crumpled CFA notes in my pocket decided maybe the best thing would be to return to Dakar.

So, I set off. This time I found a sept-place with a great seat in the middle, and as we cruised back down the coast at an incredible speed and with great ease, I looked out the window at dry fileds of grasses and silvery trees and felt quite content with travel, and being able to take the detour in stride, and then we hit a baby goat. Dead-on, right in front of us, our car going to fast to slow down for the confused little one. My fellow passengers made a few mumblings, the car rolled on, and so did my day. We reached the outskirts of Dakar in record time, but as we approached the city, traffic seemed to slow, and people kept getting out of the car, until there were only two of us left and the driver, and traffic had stopped almost completely. Ahead, Dakar looked like a burning hell with a grey sky , plumes of black smoke billowing up out of cans that had been lit on fire. We tried to go one way, then backed up over railroad tracks, tried to go another in traffic facing the opposite direction, and that didn't work either. Finally we stopped the car, and my companion passenger said we should get out and walk. The people couldn't wait any more for things to change, she said, and now, there's a manifestation. We walked away from downtown, straight into a cloud of black smoke, over a plank, through construction and mayhem, and me with my traveler's back pack thinking 'this is not a place to vacation.' Eventually we found a taxi, and my lovely companion got in with me to make sure I'd get to my point of arrival safely. In the quiet neighborhood where SIT has its program center in Dakar everything felt calm. I got lunch, eventually changed money, and after a day of scrambling and hauling my pack around, wound up crashing in the beach palace several SIT students are renting for their month of independent research. I fell asleep early on the couch out in the open air of the terrace, and woke the next morning to the call to prayer and a brilliant sunrise, the ocean breezes making it just cool enough to wrap up in a light blanket.

The enire SIT group came on over to the beach house for Thanksgiving, an affair which lasted most of the day and well into the night with token Senegalese dramas like the water going out, the lights going out, and then the gas for the stove running out. Somehow, with cocktails of ginger juice, lime and gin, and the promise of food that was certainly on its way, all obstacles were overcome, and by the evening call to prayer we were assembled around a table laden with stuffing, roasted chickens, fruit salad, corn bread, corn casserold, and squash pie. While the mosque sounded in the early dusk we said our thanks, and after seconds even more friends showed up-- Wolof teachers, and Senegalese neighbors, and eventually the guitars came out, and the digital cameras were flashing to capture the revalry, and many hours later I finally drifted off to sleep with a full belly, and Anna (one of the students) singing like an angel songs that I wished would never end.

This morning I packed my pack up, manged on baguette and nutella with the girls who had been hosting me, and pondered what to do next. Steph will arrive by Sunday in time (I hope) to catch the plane to Morocco...I'm a little restless here in Dakar, and am wondering if it's not too crazy to go down to Mbour now and profit just a little more before Sénégal is done...