San Louis

Africa gets a lot of bad press.

This is probably because Africa is a pretty messed up place most of the time. War, famine, ethnic cleansing, resource exploitation, environmental damage, you name it, Africa’s got it. But Africa isn’t all what you see on TV or read about in the papers.

The Senegalese people were probably the friendliest people I met throughout my trip (except for Bermuda, but those people depend on tourism, so it feels like maybe they try at it). Everyone smiled, said thank you and wanted to be your friend. Granted, many of them were trying to sell you something, but in Senegal saying no won’t lose you any face. You just have to be firm and polite and generally people will leave you alone. It helps to have an intimidating beard.

During my last week in Senegal we found time to take a three-day trip north on a guided tour. On our way north to a bird reserve we stopped in San Louis, one of the largest cities in Senegal, and a major maritime hub for the region.  San Louis is a base for most of the fishing that happens in the north part of Senegal. Pirogues, long wooden boats, whose design probably hasn’t changed in five hundred years, head out to sea every day and return each night full of all kinds of fish.

Without a doubt San Louis was the filthiest place I’ve ever been to. India runs a close second, but I’m pretty sure even the Gangees was cleaner. The streets, the shoreline, and the roads were crowded with the detritus of the fishing industry. Discarded nets, rotting fish guts, trash of all possible description was layered feet deep on the shoreline, crowding onto the roads and permeating the city with the sick stink of decay.

It was downright shocking. Ngor was mildly dirty. There’s trash in the streets, but some effort is made to collect it, though discarding it generally involves burning it in large piles on the beach. But in San Louis, there was literally no point, you’d have to burn the entire beach.

We spent around three hours wandering around San Louis. In that time we discovered how the pirogues were made. Jordan, utterly fascinated by any kind of shipbuilding, climbed over a massive, half built boat, nearly ten meters long. It was perched precariously on a pile of garbage, lending a hint of the surreal to the already haphazard nature of it’s building.

Spray painted on the prow of the pirogue is a strange image I’ve seen nearly everywhere in Senegal. It is the outline of an old man wrapped in black robes, with the lower half of his face covered. What you can see of his face is deep and craggy, with eyes that somehow bore into your soul despite a lack of any real detail. It is a dark and foreboding image to my eyes, and is often paired with a similar one, only painted in pure white.

One of our guides, Marmadu, points to it and nods, enthusiastically. “Bon, Bon!” (good good!)

Through sign language, his limited grasp of English and my extremely limited grasp of French, I come to understand that the image is that of Ibrahima “Lamp” Fall, or as he’s colloquially known in Senegal, “Fall, the Light”. Lamp Fallwas one of the earliest adherents of Morudite Islam, which is the most prevalent form of Islam in Senegal and the Gambia. The man in white was Lamp Fall’s mentor and founder of Mourudite Islam, Bamba Mbakke.

I found myself extremely taken with this, simply because “Fall, the Light” is probably the coolest name for a holy man ever. And whereas I had previously viewed the dark images as sort of an “evil eye” to ward off danger, I now saw them for the good luck symbols they were. Lamp Fall made a name for himself by saying that you could substitute the prayer and fasting portion of Islam in exchange for hard physical labor and devotion to one’s master, basically if you have his sign on your stuff you’re saying that you’re loyal and you work hard. That’s something I can relate to.

Not long afterwards we made our way further north to the Djoudj National Park, a migratory bird sanctuary that Pat tells me is one of the top three in the world. Exhausted from San Louis, and lulled by the tires on the road, I fall asleep in the warm sun.

Doug