Pictures:
1. Dakar sunrise.
2. The Royal Palace gate
3. The Dakar Cathedral Dome
4. One of the sand paintings
5. The sand painter and his tools. The white bowl on the right is the glue, the other bowls are sand. You can see the piles of color on the painting. Certainly doesn't look like much. When he picks it up and bangs it on the table, the painting appears as if by magic.
March 26 – Dakar, Senegal. It's also our second time in Dakar and I'm hoping for a better experience this time. Aggressive salesmanship has been perfected to a high art form here. Apparently the underlying assumption is that if you really irritate someone he'll buy something just to make you go away.
Dakar is located on the Cape Verde Peninsula and is the westernmost African city. It's actually a commune, one of 67 communes in Senegal created by the French in 1887 during the colonial period. The surrounding area was settled by the 15th century and the Portuguese had already settled Gorée Island and began to use it as a base for the exportation of slaves. Gorée was captured by the Netherlands in 1588 and the island went back and forth between the two several times before finally falling to the British in 1664 and then the French in 1677. Although infamous for the volume of the slave trade through the island, the French tried to abolish slavery in 1794 only to have it re-established by Napoleon in 1802. It remained in place until 1815 when it was permanently abolished. Despite the prohibition, the illegal slave trade continued until 1848.
Today Dakar is a financial center for West Africa. It's a very busy port and the city is a 'demented ant's nest' as Frank the port lecturer is fond of saying. The place is a riot of sounds, smells and sights. Crowds of people on the streets and very busy traffic insure that you know you are in a major city.
90% of the population is Muslim, 6% Christian and 4% Animists. Ethnically they are 43% Wolof, whose language is used as the commercial language, 24% Fula and the rest smaller tribes. 42% of the population of the country is under 14 years of age. The average life expectancy is only in the middle 50s and that's why they are so young as a whole.
This is a dirty, tumultuous, busy, crowded and noisy city. Reminds me in some ways of India but I didn't see anything like the huge slums that surround most Indian cities.
Sometimes I awake early while traveling and am so rested that I decide to get up. This happen this morning and when I went out on the veranda to take a peak about I was greeted by a very nice sunrise. The common wisdom is that the more polluted the sky you are looking through the more color there will be in the sunrises and sunsets. Sunsets and rises are somewhat problematical for pictures, somewhat easier to adjust for if they are bright not so easy if they are dim. This sunrise was pretty dim but the colors were interesting, blue ocean and lower sky, changing upward to violet, red and orange in order.
Our tour is in a regular bus here so it's not nearly as interesting as the open Gambian truck, but it will be smoother at least a small compensation.
Our first stop was the Royal Palace. There was a single ceremonial guard at the front gate. He was, however, armed with a later model USA M-16, a very useful and fairly modern rifle, especially when compared to the arms carried by the Royal Palace guards in Casablanca. His red tunic and hat, blue pants with yellow intertwined stripe (much like the snakes on a medical caduceus) down each leg and black boots presented a very businesslike demeanor. Combined with his size he was an imposing presence. Last time we were here you could cross the street and pose for picture with the guard but not anymore. Across the street was as close as you could get.
Just as we were leaving an NCO and replacement guard staged a small changing of the guard ceremony just for me as everyone else had left for the bus. I'm significantly faster than 95% of my bus mates so I can lag behind and still be on the bus before they are. This really helps with the photography since I usually sit at the back of the bus and by the time I get off there's a mob scene in front of the great photograph, all photographing something else not nearly as interesting.
Our next stop was the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Dakar. It's a fairly nondescript building from the outside. The front façade has one entrance at the center and is flanked by two fairly short, plain towers on each end. Inside it's very elegant but still simple. Only two colors were used on the interior walls and columns, white and gray. It's laid out in the traditional three-aisle format with the Latin cross footprint. The central aisle's ceiling is twice as high as the side aisles' because they have balconies above them and the nave goes all the way up.
There's a large dome at the crossing where the transepts intersect with the nave. It has a most unusual painting. Circling the base of the dome are people representing the history of Christianity. The theme of the piece seems to be the resurrection or the return of Christ for the church. This is represented by a pyramid shape of people ascending to meet a lone figure waiting for them. The top person on the pyramid is at the center of the dome. Interestingly, while all the figures around the base are very dark skinned, apparently Africans or Berbers, the people that make up the pyramid of those ascending are of many colors including fair skinned, light haired European types. So the earthly story is told in figures that the locals can relate to but the multitude gathering for the ascent to heaven includes all peoples.
To the left of the pyramid you see Moses holding the tablets of the ten commandments facing one of the Apostles and between them is the pillar of cloud that led the Israelites by day in their wilderness sojourn; a wonderful homage to the transition from the Law to the Gospel. Bravo to the artist for his portrayal of the Scriptures.
During out morning drive from place to place around the city the vendors were actually following our bus from stop to stop usually arriving there by taxi before the bus even pulled up. I got a chance to tell the same people I didn't want anything in four different locations. I should add quickly that the lady vendors were not really a problem, but the behavior of the men is intolerable.
We took a driving tour around several sections of the city and wound up at a local craft center. There was a 2-man ensemble, with one man playing the wooden xylophone they have here and another man playing a stringed instrument called a Kora. It has a half sphere shaped sounding board at the bottom made from a calabash. It has at least 20 strings in two banks of 10 that run from the head of the neck to the calabash bottom, about 5 feet. The musician places the calabash on his knees in the seated position with the flat side and strings facing him and the neck straight up in the air. He uses a dowel like stick in between the two ranks of strings like the slide on a steel guitar. There may be more than one technique for playing this instrument. I'm not sure. The music was lively and easy on the ears, very melodic.
There was a sand artist demonstrating the local art of sand painting. Essentially he paints the shapes he wants in a sticky substance wherever he wants the sand to stick to the board he's using as a canvas. Then he takes the colored sand he wants from a bowl and sprinkles or pours it onto the sticky surface. When he's done applying the sand it looks like a mess. He takes the board in both hands and bangs the edge of it onto the table and the painting appears. It was pretty cool. The sand is all natural colored rock from the area ground very fine. There were yellows, red, tan, brown, white, pink, gray and black sands in wooden bowls on the table around him.
Next was at a craft village and this was no a fun experience last time we were here. I guess if you don't mind being constantly followed, pestered and grabbed by strangers it wouldn't be so bad. If I had been there by myself it would not have been a problem but Diana was with me and I didn't like some of what I saw. We stopped at exactly the same craft village this time. Forewarned is forearmed and that old adage was absolutely true here. We did go in but when the vendors approached us I just looked at them and shook my head slowly. Diana was able to look around a little bit without being accosted. The key is you can't speak to anyone. If you answer any of the questions they throw at you (ex. Where are you from? How are you?) it's permission to engage you in an intensive and aggressive sales pitch. If you don't speak to them at all they eventually move to a more inviting target. It's such an uncomfortable place it's a wonder they ever sell anything.
After leaving the market the bus took us on a scenic drive along the seacoast. In 2008 the Harmattan winds were blowing. These winds are like the Santa Ana winds of SoCal or the Sirocco in North Africa. The wind blows so hard across the Great Sahara that it carries fine sand for thousands of miles. These are the same winds that carry the sand to Cape Verde. The visibility was awful. Today it's wonderful and the coastline is very pretty with mile after mile of nice looking beaches.
We're stopping at the African Renaissance Monument along the coast. It's a 160-foot tall statue that's made of 190 tons of bronze and copper. It was dedicated in 2010 to the joy of some and the distain of others. It commemorates Senegal's 50 years of independence from the French. The $27 million cost was funded by South Korea. It shows a man and woman standing on a rock outcropping. The man in holding a child at shoulder level in his left arm and the child is pointing into the distance. The heads of the three figures are aligned at about a 45 degree angle upward ending with the child's head being a little above the line but his extended arm completes the line. It's a striking statue.
Since we are heading out of town to the Pink Lake we have acquired a police motorcycle escort. About half the bus panicked because they thought he was there for security and murmurs started going around in waves as each tried to spread the fear to everyone else. Our guide caught the undercurrent and announced over the PA system that the escort was to clear traffic for us so the trip would not take two days.
Traffic here is a mess. They work on the 'make your own lane' method all the while honking their horns apparently indiscriminately. I should probably say that I was unable to discern a pattern to why and when they decide to honk. Maybe it's like SONAR and they get an echo back from impending targets. I'll say up front that the escort probably saved us and hour or two of driving time. Many drivers gave way but a small stubborn minority, mostly buses and trucks would not pull over until he got aside of them and yelled in the window. Maybe their vehicles were so noisy that they couldn't hear him, but that's doubtful. Whenever we passed through a village or highway intersection traffic was severely backed up and there was not way for him to clear it. If the intersection was under police control the officer would stop the traffic on the other side of the street and we'd cross over to drive through the intersection on the wrong side of the road. That saved us a lot of time.
Nevertheless it took about an hour and thirty minutes to drive the 50 miles to the lake. On the drive we passed through several villages with markets of all types, livestock, food and general merchandise. In some place the traffic is always so slow that foot vendors walk on both sides of the street and between cars. Our passage creates some amount of chaos for these vendors as traffic had to scatter to let us pass through.
When we arrived at the lake we stopped at a very nice resort to use the facilities and then boarded, my favorite, open air trucks, for the trip around the lake. We are going to do a complete lap of the lake, which is not huge but is sizeable. Like the Dead Sea this lake is extremely salty. The minerals and its depth combine to give the lake a color that can range from copper to pale pink. Today it's a coppery orange. As it evaporates a sediment forms at the bottom that has created a local industry, 'salt gathering'.
We drove to the area where people work in small boats gathering the muck at the bottom of the shallow lake. They pole the boat to shore where women are waiting with laundry sized plastic tubs. The men shovel the muck into the tubs that the women then put on their heads and walk up the beach to dump the muck in large piles. These piles are left to dry. Once a pile dries two men, one with a shovel and one with a pick break up and load the resulting 'salt' into 25 kilo bags for shipment to places in Europe to use on the roads. I call it 'salt' because it's mostly made up of some sort of chemical salts but I'm sure that only part of it is sodium chloride. There has to be a large percentage of heavy metal salts included that would make using it in cooking very hazardous. So it winds up coating the bottoms of cars in snowy parts of Europe eating through the floorboards. Our guide wasn't sure about the content but he did know it is not used as table salt. As little as a liter of Dead Sea water has enough heavy metals in it to kill you. I doubt that this product is any safer.
As we continued around the lake we came to an area where there were crops growing. I recognized some pepper plants and some corn and beans of some sort. A little farther on we drove through a small traditional village that probably does the farming. There are no paved roads here and most of the vehicles we've seen in this area are donkey or horse carts.
A little way from the village we entered a large area of sand dunes. When the driver stopped and let some air out of the tires I figured we were going to head out into them for a ride. At this point he changed from his previous very sedate and careful persona into one of the Carrington Daredevil drivers. We went up and down huge dunes making sweeping, sliding turns and occasionally experiencing zero g humps at the tops. It was great fun but I could tell some of my fellow riders were not all that pleased by the dune buggy experience.
Eventually we crossed the dunes and were out on the beach. Our driver seemed to take a great deal of pleasure in zipping through the water with one of the pairs of tires. Since I was on the ocean side I had to put my camera under my shirt to prevent water and sand from possibly getting into the moving parts. Not a good result.
We returned to the resort in about an hour and settled in to lunch. The seating was on the second floor of the building and open on one side overlooking the resort's gardens and some of the rooms. The resorts rooms are on the perimeter of the gardens and each is in a round concrete building with a thatched room designed to look like the local traditional housing. The exterior walls are stucco and painted a pale yellow ocher to mimic the local building bricks. They are decorated with unique paintings of local scenes or traditional items such as ceremonial masks.
Lunch was table service and consisted of a salad, entrée (in my case fish kabobs) and watermelon for desert. I can't eat watermelon but those who had it said it was very sweet. The fish was unidentified, the waitress only knew its local name and that wasn't anything familiar, and since it was already cut into small cubes I had no chance to identify it. It was pale, firm and very tasty.
After that it was onto the bus and back into Dakar. Since we are going straight to the port it was possible to do about half the trip on the main highway and that cut the drive time to a little less than an hour.
Our entertainment for the evening was the Prinsendam Singers and Dancers. This is the first time we've seen the full ensemble and I was somewhat surprised to find that both of the dancers are women. I expected one of each gender but was not at all disappointed by being incorrect.
Their show was 'Broadway Melodies & Memories' and they were great. They sang music from Broadway's Golden Age, the '40s and '50s to the 'Rent'. There are six singers, very strong tenor and baritone male and soprano and alto female voices. The other two singers are also excellent but are more style than voice. One is the singer/dancer, sort of Gene Kelley type, and good at both, the other is the comic Zero Mostel type and also very good. The two dancers are Amazons, taller than all but two of the men and both of the female singers. The space on this ship's stage is somewhat limited but they managed to get enough space to work in some great dancing. The singer/dancer and the baritone can fill in when a male is needed for a dance number but it's pretty obvious their job is mainly to present the women.
I wasn't sure how I would like the transition from production shows to cabaret style but on this ship with its restrictions I think the change is for the best. The mix is usually two singers, two singer/dancers and six dancers split evenly among the genders. That's a lot of folks for this small stage. It's deep but very narrow. Plus, all six of the singers in this company are better than all but the best singer in the previous style and have much more experience. I don't suppose it's a very tough gig to do two shows once ever 9-10 days and travel the world the rest of the time. Probably easier to get experienced people for that that the repetitive one week cruises where they work two days a week minimum.
I'm looking forward to two days at sea to rest up. We don't have any 8-hour tours scheduled for then next few weeks.
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