The African Renaissance monument celebrates freedom from colonialism.
The waves had let up by the time the fishermen arrived. There were three of them, all muscles and sweat. Their faces glistened; their frayed shirts were sodden. As they paddled their gaudily decorated pirogue to shore, Rasheed, the boat’s owner and the employer of the other two, caught my eye and his face lit up. He took a long swig from a red water jerrycan, passed it on, and waved at me.
Soumbedioune, a suburb in central Dakar, is near the fish market (and a touristy, overpriced craft market). I had heard that this area is good for beachfront angling and I had met Rasheed the previous day, when he brought fresh fish to our hotel. We chatted a little. He promised to show me how to bait fish the next day.
When I arrived for the lesson, though, he told me business was slow that month (August) and they would have to go into deeper waters to make a good catch. He tried to woo me with a boat adventure “to the other side of the sea”, but, though I would have enjoyed the thrill of fishing, I didn’t want to go to sea with three strange men. Besides, I thought their dugout was too wobbly.
“It’s on the verge of capsizing,” I joked.
Rasheed was disappointed, so I said I would help count the day’s haul of seafood instead. He was the only one who spoke a little English and he translated to his friends. They laughed. “Rivers are like women; they change with the weather,” he smirked as they sailed away.
When they got back, the men moored their pirogue. It was piled high with fish – big bell-shaped baskets of bamboo filled with shrimp, prawns, lobster, thiof (a local fish), mackerel (grouper), barracuda and sea urchins.
Local women began to gather. Buyers and hawkers arrived and negotiated prices. I squirmed as Rasheed growled at them in Wolof. The women quickly hauled away the baskets of wriggling fish.
When we left Cape Town for Dakar, I was uncertain what awaited me. My husband and I needed a break, a getaway of some sort, where we could be “single” again, without interruption – away from the tears, tantrums, giggles and lullabies.
We had chosen Dakar because, as West Africans, we wouldn’t need visas to travel here. Besides, there were places there I had been longing to see, such as the African Renaissance monument and Gorée Island.
When we arrived that night, Dakar’s Léopold Sénghor International Airport was dank and charmless, and the taxi we took to the hotel was missing one of its headlights. Unsure of where to turn next, the driver groped along the pot-holed highway, his view narrowed to what one headlight could show him. He had to stop and ask for directions a few times, but we finally arrived at the hotel.
The concierge regarded us with tired, reproachful eyes. Grumpily he handed us the keys and dragged our luggage to our room. We scurried into bed without even looking around the place. I fell into the deep sleep of the jet-lagged.
The next morning, we woke up to a resounding call to prayer. I got up and pulled back the heavy curtains. All around me was a tremendous view of azure water, smashing on the pebbles of the sea shore.
Savana de Jardin is a cosy resort with a calm elegance. The garden below me is something of a fantasy Eden, an island of colour. This was the break I had been craving. From the restaurant, you can hear the gurgling of the sea in the bay.
We ate a local favourite (according to our waiter): seasoned split rice and braised thiof with roasted vegetables and a delicious onion-and-mustard crème. The Dakarois call it poulet de mer – chicken of the sea. I tried the locally made baobab juice. It has a thick, chalky consistency and a sweet-sour taste that reminded me of obiolo, a fermented sorghum drink made by the Igala of central Nigeria.
Almost the entire surf-pounded coastline of Dakar is a network of watercourses. The city is one of the chief seaports on the West African coast, midway between the mouths of the Gambia and Senegal rivers, on the southeastern side of the Cape Verde peninsula, close to Africa’s most westerly point.
Dakar’s harbour is one of the best in West Africa, protected by limestone cliffs and a system of breakwaters. The city’s name is Wolof for the tamarind tree and was the name of a coastal Lebu village once located here.
As we speed down a swoop of pitted road, flanked by a long stretch of graffiti-covered wall, the landscape shifts from a sun-scorched crumble of rocks to colonial-style houses intermixed with skyscrapers. This is downtown Dakar, the oldest city in what was French West Africa.
Along the way, we pass tin-roofed shanties and weathered houses, bland and beige like cardboard boxes. But there are murals and graffiti all over them, too. In Dakar, sculptors and painters flaunt their stuff. Aside from aesthetic purposes, graffiti is used to inform the youth about violence, drugs and HIV.
The following morning, it was musty and the air smelled like sunshine so, to escape an unreasonably humid Tuesday, we took a taxi to Pointe des Almadies. Of this beach, it is said in Dakar, you come for the fun but you stay for the fish.
The place was hopping – a wild place with a party atmosphere. All around us was a riot of colour, towering green palm trees and dark shimmering waters. Enormous, brightly coloured beach umbrellas dotted the white sand and bare-bellied women gyrated boisterously to Senegalese music blaring from speakers. Couples watched from wooden platforms.
Under thatched roofs, tents and awnings, men gambled and argued. Shrieking children romped about and boys wrestled among the boulders strewn over the sand as though by some giant hand. The smell of roast fish filled the air.
From the city side, the beach is not attractive. But, once there, you are calmed by a balmy breeze.
“It’s a pretty cool place,” Jon said while we ate grilled thiof and drank bissap juice, which is made from a species of hibiscus native to West Africa. I dipped my feet in the cool water.
At dusk, the moon rose yellow like a wolf’s eye, glinting off the dark water. Then a soothing drizzle began, upsetting the idyll of that Dakar evening.
On the way to Marché Sandaga, central Dakar’s main market, on the bus, I sat beside a woman muttering long-winded prayers to herself in Arabic. I stole glances at her and she smiled at me.
Senegal is an avowedly Muslim country (92%). Some women wear burqas but a good majority dress much more liberally than I had expected – in tight-fitting jeans and leggings, and with heavy make-up and red lipstick.
Marché Sandaga is a maze of disorder. The heat stifles the air like smoke – my nostrils were filled with the heady smell of cheap perfume and overripe fruit baking in the heat. On the streets near the market, harried hawkers proffer their wares in makeshift shops dotted along pitted roads. Tricycles and pickups buckle under loads of passengers, stirring up dust that never quite settles.
People sit on the busy streets well into the evening, making fires and brewing touba, a spicy coffee flavoured with Guinea or black pepper.
Pyramids of mango, tomatoes, nuts, plums and vegetables are on display. It’s a collision of things you would never expect to find in one place – the complete works of Shakespeare, The Sound of Music and Gone with the Wind soundtracks on vinyl, rat poison, Louis Vuitton handbags, mosquito repellents, baby food, camels, chicken coops, coffins, fresh coconut water, plumbing supplies, salted cashews, potting soil, beads and masks from various African countries.
Relentless hustlers, effusive and unabashed, try to coax you into buying something. This can exhaust the tourist, but the bustling entrepreneurial spirit is appealing. Many Dakarois have small businesses, which are vital in a developing country like Senegal. It reminded me of my country, Nigeria, especially Lagos, where folks scramble to come up with “crazy cool” things to do and sell.
As I walked through Sandaga, a chant suddenly broke out next to me. Two blind, bearded beggars in long, flowing djellabas groped along with sticks, guided by a lithe teenage boy holding a large bowl. They chanted a haunting Arabic song in unison.
I stood there staring at them but the commuters swept past, taking no notice. The beggar-singers seemed to be a local fixture. I dropped some coins into their empty plate.
On the last day of our trip, we took a taxi to the Quakam district to see the controversial African Renaissance monument. Symbolising Africa’s freedom from colonialism, the sculpture is huge, about 50m high, taller than the Statue of Liberty.
We had caught glimpses of it from our hotel but only when we reached Quakam, close to breast-shaped hills called the Collines des Mamelles, did I feel the statue’s overpowering immensity. It took 251 steps to reach the foot of the statue. Standing at its base, we felt very small.
The bronze statue depicts a shirtless man holding a child high in one hand while the other is draped around a young woman with windswept hair. Entwined, they all look towards the horizon.
The mercurial Abdoulaye Wade, immediate past president of Senegal, launched the African Renaissance project in 2006. His idea was to build the tallest statue in Africa. It cost an estimated €24-million and was unveiled in 2010. Many Senegalese believed that spending so much on it in a country where poverty is still rife and electricity is scarce was unacceptable. Wade paid the North Koreans, who built the statue, with state-owned land in Senegal, which sparked controversy.
The locals told us that the sculpture was just like Wade’s regime – “expensive, pretentious, foolish and empty”. Religious leaders and imams were opposed to the lewdness of the young woman’s skimpy skirt.
But, in spite of all the sore points, the statue stands tall, attracting tourists in fedoras and sunglasses from all over the world.
For a fee of 3?000 Central African francs (about R83), we took an elevator up into the man’s head. Inside it are polished wooden floors and arched walls that meet stylishly above.
And the view from up there is astonishing. The city was spread below us like a Persian rug. Besides a few uncompleted buildings, the rooftops below gleamed and shone like sequins.
This was Dakar at its most sublime, a world immune to the vagaries of inequality and corruption, devoid of poverty or injustice, and the chants of desperate beggars.