Toubab Diallaw

It's been a while since I last posted... I find it's very difficult to take pictures in Dakar, since taking my camera around makes me feel - and look - like a tourist (with all the accompanying harassment, attention, street kid curiosity, etc.) rather than the hardened resident I'd like to picture myself as. (The good thing about brown curly hair is that there is a chance of being mistaken for a Lebanese local - the Lebanese, who seem to run all the major businesses in Senegal, are widely hated for being a financially privileged minority, but at least they aren't French backpackers.)

So it's a treat to go somewhere like Toubab Diallaw, the sleepy little seaside village where I day-tripped last Sunday. Toubab Diallaw - weirdly meaning "white guy Diallaw," and possibly originally named after a slave-trader - is a popular weekend get-away for Dakarois who want to escape the city, hang out on the (gorgeous) beach, and generally kick back. It's about an hour and a half from Dakar, mostly on nice roads that go through mango groves and past gigantic baobab trees. I went down with S., a fellow grad student; and her Senegalese friend M. (who is certain he saw one of the players on Senegal's national soccer team lounging by the pool of one of the more swanky Toubab Diallaw auberges). The beach alongside T.D. itself is beautiful and heavily utilized - lots of soccer, wrestling tournaments, teenaged flirtation, and seaside restaurants. We parked ourselves on the beach about a kilometer down the coast from the town itself, where it was completely deserted, and where S. negotiated the use of a beachfront terrace from the staff of a closed-down hotel. (It was an odd arrangement but pretty perfect.)

The red sand-filled streets were pretty deserted on a Sunday, so we had to go on quite an expedition to find lunch. In town there are plenty of options, but down where we were (a long hot walk from the main hub) we were finally thrilled to find a local "restaurant" - really just a large house where one woman cooks up a big dish of tieboudienne for anyone who might pass by. (There is no menu, and no other options. Thank goodness tieboudienne - a combination of white fish stuffed with spices, tomato-ey fried rice, and cooked eggplant, turnip, cabbage, and carrot - is delicious.) We ate on the fabulous shaded rooftop - with a great view of the town between the household's drying laundry - which was surprisingly cool and breezy, and the matriarch sent a younger member of the family down the road to bring back a box of cold fruit juice from the village store. Lunch was served on Senegalese time - maybe an hour and a half after we sat down; as S. joked, enough time to catch and cook the fish - but was well worth it.

One of the coolest things about T.D. was the resident "wildlife" (wild to me that is, but apparently run-of-the-mill for locals). First of all, there were several types of large lizard, including an incredible variety with blue and green streaks (see photo). Plus, we saw all sorts of great birds - the coast of Senegal is a major stop-over for just about all migrating European and African birds - including purple swallows, many tiny colorful warblers or finches, white egrets, at least one pelican (!), and the charming yellow weaver-birds that are pictured above.

On the way home we stopped at a roadside mango stand where seven elderly women sat, each with a different variety of mango piled in front of her. Bought a gigantic pile to bring home.

** CORRECTION **

In the photos of Yoff below, I mistakenly identified ambiant sheep as goats. As I now know, if the ears and tail point down, it's a sheep - regardless of the fact that the sheep here don't grow anything resembling wool. (Which I guess makes sense given the climate.) Also, as one Dakarois who keeps sheep on his rooftop explained to me, "un mouton ca fait 'baaah,' mais une chevre ca fait 'beeeh.'" Indeed.

Daytrip to Yoff

On Sunday I took a daytrip to Yoff, a "village" that lies along the northern shore of the Dakar peninsula, to visit U., a friend who I got to know when she was at Amnesty in London and I at CPJ. (I put "village" in quotation marks because Yoff feels more like a poorer, unpaved suburb of Dakar, though here the term is vague enough to be used for everything smaller than Senegal's main three cities.) U. is married to a Senegalese man whose family lives in Yoff, and the two of them share an apartment near the sea. To my delight, the day began with a delicious lunch of fish yassa (locally caught white fish roasted with onions and lemon juice), proceeded through a long walk on the beach, and ended with an elaborate preparation of mint tea at U.'s inlaws' home.

To get to Yoff you take the No. 8 bus from downtown (right around the corner from the apartment where I'm staying, in front of a ruined former movie theater and across the street from a posh air conditioned French-style pastry shop - Dakar's downtown truly is weird). An hour and a half, 175 CFA (35 cents), and some serious urban scenery later, you get off in the sandy streets of central Yoff. Immediately the ambiance is different from Dakar proper - people are much more laid back, and not a single person tries to hassle you to buy anything.

The town lies sprawled along the beach (see photos below), and many of its residents make their living from fishing. Additionally, the original community of Yoff is religiously and ethnically distinct from other Senegalese from the region (meaning those who lived in the area before it became a major urban center; today's cosmopolitan Dakar, which comprises people from all over Senegal and West Africa in addition to the expat community, can't really be said to have a main "ethnicity"). Those with deep roots in Yoff are known as the "layene," speak a particular dialect of Wolof, and follow a specific religious leader or "grand marabout"; marabouts head the "mourides," the Islamic brotherhoods that define much of Senegalese culture and lifestyle. (They're very hard to figure out from the outside however.) The descendent of the founder of the sect still lives in Yoff, in the beautiful seaside house pictured above.

All over Dakar there are murals depicting the founding Mourides on the walls of buildings, usually fairly schematic images in black and white. The ones in Yoff are particularly elaborate.

La Plage de Yoff

U.'s husband's cousin, Ousmane, showed us around Yoff, taking us on a long stroll on the beach, which seems to stretch to infinity in both directions. Ousmane's kids were our playful companions (pictured above, horsing around). The family has lived in Yoff for a couple of generations, and Ousmane seemed to know everyone.

While Yoff is falling prey to a cheaper form of the same construction boom as Dakar, it still feels much like the fishing village it originally was. The sandy roads aren't paved, and in fact many residents still make their living trolling the sea. The long beach that sprawls along the Dakar peninsula's northern coast, comprising Yoff as well as the more upscale areas of Ngor and Almadies to the west (which are more like suburbs of Dakar), is very much a public space, where people gather to stroll, chat, play huge ranging games of soccer, dump household trash (unfortunately) and of course push their pirogues out to sea. Pushing the boats out is a collective activity, necessitating the help of dozens of women and children, not to mention the yellow slicker-clad fishermen themselves.

Goats wander freely, while horse-drawn carts are the preferred mode of transport. At one end of the town is a fish market, run entirely by women (while fishermen are always men and boys), selling an impressive variety of fat, meaty fish, all supposedly caught "de facon artisanale," or with traditional lines and nets. Of course, fishermen in Dakar have long complained that large-scale commercial fishing is ruining the trade - and in fact, "tchoff," a tasty white fish used to make the national dish tieboudienne, is apparently so scarce as to be practically non-existant these days. That said, a three-pound "lotte" (pictured at bottom; not really monkfish as lotte refers to in France, but still a delicious fleshy fish) bought from a market woman on the Yoff beachside will set you back 500 CFA, or $1.

Elections

Top: One of the many posters around town advertising the party of President Abdoulaye Wade. The party's slogan, SOPI, means "change" in Wolof.

Bottom: A poster featuring the ruling party's slate for the district of Dakar - the poster has been defaced by an opposition call to boycott.

On Sunday, Senegal will hold legislative elections, following the presidential elections in February that returned Abdoulaye Wade (who is over 80 years old) to power. Wade used to symbolize Senegalese democracy, since he came to power fairly and peacefully in 2000 after winning an election against the party which had held power since independence. However, lately he's turned more autocratic, briefly imprisoning a well-known journalist in 2004 and his main political opponent in 2005 (they've since "reconciled"), and otherwise throwing his weight around. (If you're at all interested in the press freedom angle, the briefing I wrote two years ago on Senegalese journalists' attempts to lobby for greater legal protection is still, sadly, relevant. Even though reforming colonial-era national security laws that threaten the media and political critics was one of Wade's campaign promises in 2000, they remain on the books today. The briefing (with pictures of Senegalese media outlets) is at: http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2005/senegal_05/senegal_05.html)

The presidential vote was generally considered free and fair, but the opposition said that Wade used state funds (likely, given that every single billboard in the city seems to have Wade's face on it) and shady voter registration tactics (more difficult to gauge) to ensure victory, and announced they would boycott the legislative elections. This was probably initially intended as a bargaining tactic, but instead of bringing the ruling party to the table, Wade rejected any move to negotiate. The result is that Wade's party will sweep the elections, with turnout assumed to be at a record low.

Commuting

There are seemingly endless ways to commute to work in Dakar, and I intend to try them all. While both SUVs and horse-carts abound in some neighborhoods, most people seem to rely on some form of mass transit. The most colorful are the "cars rapides," which are beautifully painted share-taxis that seat 8-10 people at a time; their routes are completely opaque but the young men hanging off the back doors are always eager to take your money (generally less than 100 CFA, or 20 cents, from what I understand) and usher you inside. Photos to come I hope.

Next up are the white-colored, larger vans that seat 15-20 people at a time; these seem to function similarly to the cars rapides.

At the top of the price scale are the taxis, which are barely functional yellow-and-black '80s-era Renaults. Besides getting picked up and dropped off at your door, the main advantage to taxis is that they have radios, which blast a mixture of mbalax dance music and impassioned Wolof-language talkshow debates. (It's possible to get a sense of what the debates are about by following the sprinkling of French mixed into the Wolof.) With an older driver you might get one of the Islamic prayer-oriented stations, which is much less fun. Using taxis for everyday movement can really add up - a trip across town can cost up to $4 dollars (including bargaining) if traffic is bad.

What I have settled on so far in terms of getting to work is the public bus system, newly put in place in the last two years. The buses are made by Tata, the giant Indian multinational, and bizarrely, for someone who has lived in India, they are clean, have plexiglass windows that open and close, and are considered an upscale alternative to the cars rapides. My route seems to feature mostly university students, well-dressed people commuting to work, and the occasional city policeman (commuting, not working on the bus).

The main annoyance to commuting at all in Dakar is the traffic, which is particularly bad in the bottleneck between the northern, more spread-out areas and the crowded downtown. The city is re-doing the main highway (see poster above), which could help eventually but is unlikely to be finished by the time I leave.

Stands that sell everything from phone cards to watermelons

Walking around northern Dakar

Some photos from my walk from the northern suburbs into the posh central neighborhood of Point E.

At top is a view of the street where the office is located, in a northern neighborhood called Mermoz. Not sure what the picture of the shrimp signifies.

Next is a quintessential Dakar scene: a horsecart on the main road, followed closely by a bulldozer headed to one of the city's ubiquitous construction sites.

Below is a street in Point E, home of Dakar's best outdoor music cafes, in addition to the Syrian Embassy and the West Africa Reuters bureau.

At bottom, a huge baobab tree shelters a bus station.