Africa 2006

Mme. Samb is a force to be reckoned with.

She is an expert commercant (merchant) of Senegal and the Gambia, undertaking the nine-hour car and ferry journey between Dakar and Banjul on virtually a monthly basis. She ties her graying hair back in a tight ponytail and enhances it with an attractive silvery hair piece. She doesn’t need to fast during Ramadan because she has diabetes and “cardiac problems”. Most importantly, she can haggle with the best of them.
Mme. Samb was also my companion on a 24-hour whirlwind trip to the Gambia, from which I just returned. I met her through yet another connection arranged by Arona (his friend Pene is her brother-in-law) to give me the best possible introduction to the region.

For me, the adventure began at Mme. Samb’s small flat in the Medina neighbourhood of Dakar, where I was deposited at 1am on Saturday after I returned from the north. I was to stay with her for the evening, since we needed to wake up at 5am to catch the earliest car to Banjul.
It was one of those evenings which seems painfully long at the time, but which I am already beginning to laugh about: Mme. Samb has one tiny bedroom and one small double bed, which we were to share for the evening. There was a small fan doing an inefficient job of keeping the area cool. The lady of the house spent a while walking around topless to prepare herself for bed (as far as I have seen, topless in homes is not uncommon), and for quite a while I though I was going to have my first topless female bedmate (well, big trips are for new experiences right?), but she put some light clothes on, uttered a spectacular belch, and lay down next to me. Her throaty snoring vibrated the bed all night.

We departed early the next morning (or was it just a few minutes after I had finally managed to close my eyes…?) once all nine of us were comfortably seated in the white station wagon which took us to the border. From there it was another car, and then the ferry to get to Banjul.

I would like to tell you all sorts of interesting details about this friendly country, but I must honestly report that the majority of it was then spent at the hotel showering and sleeping off the long journey.

The hotel’s owner also discovered that I was going to write some travel articles about this trip. She immediately sent me over to the Ministry of Tourism to hold an interview with a very helpful official. I could not bring myself to say that a one-day visit mentioned in an article in Iceland was probably not going to increase visitor numbers by a noticeable amount, and so tried to ask some vaguely relevant questions and made my way back to Dakar, stopping to allow Mme Samb to do some discount shopping at the market.
Mme Samb assured me that if we left at 15.00 we would certainly arrive in Dakar by 19.00 or perhaps 20.00. We arrived at 12.30 (at one point we spent a half-hour sitting still in a sweltering car, while Mme Samb and the driver exchanged in a stubborn war of wills over a difference of 1 Euro in our fare). The car we travelled in was made brighter because all of its multi-coloured warning lights were illuminated. On the other hand, the speedometer was broken at 60 km/hr so at least I never knew how fast we were travelling.

We were dropped off under a dark underpass in Dakar where Mme again engaged in several discussions about the best taxi fare, and I finally made it back to my last night in comfort at Arona and Miriama’s.

Tomorrow I leave for the three-ish day train journey to Bamako in Mali.

And thanks to the unforgettable Mme. Samb for today’s journey, another colourful addition to my trip.

I took a short trip to some villages of Northern Senegal with Suleymane, a cousin of Arona’s. He comes from Geoul, a three-hour drive north of Dakar. I stayed there with his extended family on Friday night. We broke the fast in the courtyard under the full moon (well, they did; I haven’t been fasting) and I taught the many children around how to sing English songs. The high birthrate was quite evident, and there were friendly children everywhere, all of whom waved and smiled and followed me when I walked around the town. The whole family was incredibly welcoming and generous, cementing my positive impression of Senegal.
Suleymane introduced me to many of his friends, including Sharif, who Suleymane told me isa descendent of the Prophet Mohammed. Sharif is a shepherd to 3000 camels of which he is very proud. He offered to build me a house in the village if I wanted to move to Senegal. He also wanted me to find him a Canadian wife – anyone interested can drop me an email!
My main trip in the north was to the city of St Louis, also a UNESCO site. It is tantalizingly close to the Mauritanian border (about 100 km), and Sharif, who is of Mauritanian origin, had offered to accompany me there even though I didn’t have a visa. Unfortunately, though, I had to return to Dakar to be able to wake up early for my next journeys.
The route back to Dakar was my first evening car ride, and while Suleymane drove much slower than he had during the day, the various evening threats are clear; my “favourite” was on the capital’s outskirts when we saw a crammed mini-bus driving without any lit headlights – on the wrong side of the divided highway!

The Ile de Goree is a 15-minute boat ride from Dakar harbour. There are no cars or bicycles allowed on this tiny island, only 300 x 900 metres. It has 1200 inhabitants, 800 of whom are Muslim and 400 Christian.
Between 1536 and 1848 (when France abolished slavery), the island served as a point on the slave route, where people taken from the interior were imprisoned in several buildings on the island and sold as slaves in the Americas. Over the nearly three centuries, between 15 and 20 million slaves passed through here.

My trip to the island was today’s excursion, and I was accompanied by Arona’s aunt, Coumba, and her five-year-old son, Mohammad. The Ile is a much calmer place to explore than Dakar, and despite the persistent souvenir sellers, is a very relaxing. In addition to the musee des esclaves, which explains the island’s history, I enjoyed slowly basting in the sun as I walked around the dusty alleyways and pink houses.
And I bought my first souvenir, a necklace made from coconut shells, a purchase made not so much for its beauty or value but for the fun of watching the saleslady, Amina, and Coumba debate the price in animated Wolof (the lingua franca of Senegal). Judging from the gestures and the occasional French word, I suspect the genial conversation was something like:

Amina: Eliza is so nice and she is my first customer of the day so I have a special price for her of 5000 CFA (about 8 Euros).
Coumba: Outrageous! This is just a small necklace made from coconut. It is not worth more than 2000 CFA.
A: (Laughs uproariously). Ah, that’s a nice try my friend but look at the quality of the workmanship!
C: Pah! You are taking advantage of a foreigner. I would never pay more than 2500.

… And so it went, until we settled on 3000.
And now I am back in the apartment with my necklace. Arona’s friends and family have been generously planning extensive trips for me in the coming days (to St Louis in the north tomorrow and then later to the Gambia) so stay tuned….
PS: You might be wondering where all the photos are. I have been taking them, but they are about 3 mgs each and my technically challenged mind cannot figure out how to make them small enough to post on this site. So for the moment I will try to write descriptively and you’ll have to use your imaginations.

My first moments in Africa began well.

Beyond the visual feast, was a feast (of sorts) for my nose: odourfully (?) speaking, the markets (especially the marche Tilene which I visited this morning with Arona’s aunt) are a pungent combination of raw meat, overly ripe fruits, piles of raw and smoked fish, exhaust fumes and the occasional snippets of sweat or flowery fragrances from the soap section. It was at times nauseating, at times pleasant, and always memorable.

This morning I also paid a visit to the Embassy of Mali, where I applied for my visa to the country (the current plan is to take the train to Bamako, the capital of Mali, next Wednesday – if it is running, which seems uncertain until just a few hours before departure). Filling in the French-only application reminded me that it would be very difficult to get by here without any ability in that language; very few people seem to speak English.

En route to the Embassy and back, I noticed that if there was anything I had forgotten to buy at the market, it could have been sold to me while I waited in the always heavy traffic, as salespeople ply the roads offering products you never knew you would need (my favourite was a man with a metre-long office-style fluorescent light bulb). There were also a lot of goats on the streets.

***

I could go on and on, but I will rest now before this evening’s eating begins again (yesterday night there was a wonderful chicken tagine). Tomorrow I am going with Arona’s aunt to the Ile de Goree, just off the coast, which is a UNESCO listed heritage site, an old Portuguese trading base and later a point on the slave route.

If anyone has questions or wants more detail on anything, just drop me a comment to the blog. I am verbose enough as it is without encouragement, but at least I can try to make it relevant!

My Africa blog is getting fancier! You will see a nice photo above you now. It’s courtesy of Mieke Rietveld and is of children in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Mieke and her husband sponsor a school there which I will visit on my trip.

The photo was cropped to the right size by Rakel Guðnadóttir, graphic designer extraordinaire and my brother-in-law’s wife.

And the whole thing – header, photo, and entire blog site – was posted and set up by Björn Helgason, who has far greater technical skills than I could ever aspire to.

Basically the only thing I am contributing to this site are the words.

One week to go and the final preparations are underway. On the weekend I bought a new digital camera and even a battery-operated MP3 player, finally putting my 10-year old cassette Walkman and two mix tapes to rest.

This is me at 2pm this afternoon in the Icelandic sunshine:

Notice the striking resemblance to Cindy Crawford? (Hint: It’s the mole above my mouth, plus full mane of chestnut brown locks).

I got tired of being confused with Cindy all the time. And so, this is me at 6pm this afternoon, when the sun was fading:

Now less Cindy Crawford-like and much more prepared for travelling around Africa, where I can enjoy life without a hairbrush and with only occasional shampoo.

Next Monday is the big day. If anyone finds him or herself at the relaxing Terminal 2 at Heathrow, please don’t hesitate to meet me for coffee during my five hour layover en route to Dakar (via Milan!!).

PS: For those particularly interested in the saga of my hair, see my column for the week on Iceland Review’s website. Or click here for the link.

Boy, am I ever getting fancy now. It seems that blogging fever is taking over my life – two posts in two days.

If you look to the right of this post, you should see a little area where you can enter your email address and be on the mailing list for this site. Theoretically, that means that you’ll get an email every time a new post is entered. The function doesn’t seem to be working at full capacity just yet, but I can also send emails to newsletter members and will do this when I post new entries so it is still worthwhile to register! (You will also get an email asking you to confirm the registration).

Welcome to my blog on my trip to West Africa.

This first entry is being written during one of Reykjavík’s most beautiful days of the year: windows are open, pools are packed, and T-shirts have been dug out of closet corners. But this sunny 18C (well, maybe 20C) is positively chilly compared to what I will enjoy in less than one month’s time.

Here are the basics:

Dates: Monday 2 October to Monday 20 November. Exactly seven weeks.

Countries: Senegal; Gambia; Mali; Burkina Faso; Benin; Togo; Ghana. (What are these places like? Visit www.fco.gov.uk to get advice by country. Swallow with salt.) I trust you can find an atlas to locate the countries.

Shots acquired: Yellow fever; Hepatitis A&B; Meningitis; Typhoid; Polio; Diptheria; Tetatus; Cholera (only because it also protects against e.coli which apparently causes over 50% of the diarrhoea in Africa); Malaria tablets

So far all I have is an open ticket with Al Italia to whisk me to Dakar, Senegal (via Milan) and ship me home from Accra, Ghana (via Milan). I have no other visas or tickets, but I do have one kind offer of accommodation for when I first arrive in Senegal.

Why am I going? Mostly because I have always wanted to visit this region. Also, now that I have one commission under my belt for publishing a series of articles about the trip, I think there are some tax breaks. But the more commissions the better, so any leads appreciated. And it will be more exciting that watching the darkness of an Icelandic winter creep in.

Please feel free to post comments (only encouraging and complimentary ones, obviously) or questions and then I’ll feel that entering the world of the blog has been worthwhile.

I’m looking into prettying up the look of this site with some exciting Africa motif. Stay tuned.

Eliza