Assorted Reflections on Senegal

Much of the fruit for sale in the street is imported. This is where used American t-shirts retire. Cabs hail us more than we hail them. And we only get out price for the taxi ride when we start to walk away in refusal. Unlike Morocco, once negotiations are complete, the vendor becomes very friendly. Water and juice come in plastic bags, which pop loudly when empty under passing car tires startling strangers and not locals. The president is 90 years old and is running for re-election in 2012. Clearly, the Monument for the African Renaissance is a legacy project of sorts. It is bigger than the Statue of Liberty and equally as impressive, although only a year-and-a-half old.

European standards are available in Dakar for European prices most Senegalese couldn't dream of affording. Women are important in business, unlike Morocco. The country is 85% Muslim but prostitution is legal. And most women in bars or nightclubs are prostitutes. Nobody ever has change for a 5,000 cfa note ($10), despite the fact most transactions occur in portions smaller than that. Boys walk the street with pots of coffee and sell plastic cups full for 25 cfa (5 cents). Cold water by the bag is 50 cfa (10 cents) and is often carried by the dozen in a bowl of ice on top of a female vendor's head. You bite off the corner to drink it.

Goree Island is a profound place. Profoundly peaceful now. Profoundly horrific then. Then sharks occupied the waters, well-fed on the blood and bodies of slave captives. Today only hawks and falcons circle, screeching harmlessly overhead. Eerie reminders they are. It is a tiny and humble island. 1,500 people live there, every single one selling something, like much of urban Senegal. Hard to imagine Goree as the command center for the slave trade from West Africa. Even harder to imagine how the slave masters lived on the second floor of the plantation-style house turned slave museum. Especially considering the squalor and suffering on the first floor. It must have smelled horrible. Declaring the Africans soul-less seems not enough to live with yourself in that place as a slave master.

Goree Island slave castle. The door of no return is in the middle of the photo.