“In Senegal, pretty girls don’t walk. We take them places in vehicles.”

Often, though, I’ve found, walking is more comfortable. I did not mention this at the time, as walking is also significantly more time-consuming, and I was presently being offered a ride.
I’m going to give you the disclaimer now: this post is not thematic. I’m regressing to the more basic and possibly more boring format of semi-chronologically recounting the most interesting events of my fall break. I’m making no particular effort to be insightful. All I have to offer today is my adventure – but I can avow, ladies and gentlemen, that this was an adventure.
Oh, I had a plan. I picked as my travel companion someone who’s just as weirdly enamored with the very process of writing lists as I am. We quickly discovered, however, in one of our several break-planning sessions, that planning becomes slightly more difficult without such things as transit schedules or working phone numbers for locations listed in our guidebooks. At least, though, the guidebook provided us with a rough idea of the price we should aim to bargain for a sept-place taxi, and it was armed with this knowledge, a rolling suitcase, a duffel bag, and a backpack, that Amy Lou and I showed up at the Gare Routière early Saturday morning. We were promptly swarmed by young men, tapping us on the shoulders, shouting at us, asking us where we were going, trying to help us load our bags into their unsolicited vehicles. It’s funny; I learned a lot on this trip, but some of the most interesting things I discovered (lacking little in narcissism, apparently) were about myself and my instinctive reactions to things. I would not have told you that I could reach a state of fairly solid if self-consciously temporary emotional equanimity about sitting for hours crushed against strangers in the unfathomably hot bowels of a bus lurching so violently that I felt the inner bits of my head were unlikely to still be in the same places by the time I got off. I would not have told you that I could remain half-asleep despite being quite certain that there was a warthog in close proximity to my face. I would not have told you that I could actively enjoy some of the worst pasta I’ve ever made (then again, I’m not sure I would have told you that it’s possible to make bad pasta). I would not have told you that I could rinse the mud-caked bottoms of my jeans under a trickling shower, hang them out to dry, and put the same pants on the next morning without spending the entire day cripplingly distracted by my lack of cleanliness. No; apparently the two things that stress me out to the greatest degree of difficultly in maintaining an upbeat demeanor are mosquitoes and people in whose services I am uninterested forcing themselves into my bubble. I didn’t know that before. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. We haven’t even left Dakar yet.
Anyways… Gritting our teeth against the sensory overload at the gare, Amy Lou and I negotiated a sept-place to Sindia, a village about two hours’ drive down the coast. Sept-place taxis are one of the most common forms of long-distance public transit in Senegal. The name is fairly straightforward: the vehicle fits (“fits” being a term that designates space to sit but not to move) seven passengers plus the driver, one in the front, three in the middle, and three in the back of what is essentially a very small minivan. You go to the general area where the cars headed in your desired direction congregate, offer an outrageously low price in return for their outrageously high one, end up paying the equivalent of about $14 for two people plus the luggage, then get in the car and wait until the other spots fill up. It’s a bit like a fishbowl in there, except without the convenient “bowl” part – the beggars and vendors and men demanding commissions for having pointlessly annoyed you while you tried to find a taxi will stick their hands through the windows and the trunk, which would be very convenient if I felt like buying sunglasses, fruit, q-tips, or relief from the guilt seeping into my skin from the direction of the thin children’s faces pressed against the glass – unfortunately for my conscience and their financial states what I really wanted was for another passenger to show up so that we could leave.
That first sept-place to Sindia was fairly easy, and we were quickly able to get a bus to the first of our planned activities: Accrobaobab, a high-ropes course through baobab trees, which, upon discovering in the guidebook, I had informed Amy Lou was a necessary component of our excursion. I was right: it was absolutely beautiful, and immensely fun, and we found it after only a very brief period thinking we might be lost dragging a suitcase through shoulder-high grass with only a pair of baboons for company. We took our turns traversing hanging logs, nets, wires, and – yes – a flying pirogue, and standing on platforms high in the branches looking out over waving grass and the stark, vibrant, alien forms of baobab trees. At the end we were served ataya, the shot-glass tea – you know, just in case I didn’t already think this place was the best thing ever.

In Popenguine, another short bus ride away, we met up with some of the other CIEE students, who had rented a house there for the week, complete with lights and a fan that proved totally useless once the power went out at around 7:30 p.m. It was in the candle and cell phone-lit darkness that Matt, Paul-Philippe, Rezina and I made the afore-mentioned pasta on the concerningly archaic gas stove, which, I’ll note, was not bad because of our cooking skills but rather because we mixed it with canned tomatoes for lack of being able to find actual sauce anywhere in the village. The mango juice, however, was delicious, and in close to true Senegalese style, we shared the only three plates we could find between the seven of us in the damp, laughter-laced candlelight.
The next day, I was offered a ride on a giraffe. Unfortunately, the man was joking (I had said that I would, just in case – hey, if Kesha can do it, right?), but I did get to see some giraffes, as well as antelope, buffalo, ostriches, crocodiles, and rhinos at the Reserve de Bandia.



This was probably the most tourist-y thing we did over break. Many of these animals are not currently native to Senegal but were rather imported from East Africa. The last giraffe here was killed by poachers in 1920. We were driven through the brush and mud puddles in a 4WD, and, the time one such puddle proved exceptionally large, the driver stopped to wipe a small speckle of mud off my pants for me. So here I am, simultaneously risking seeming a terrible person for stooping to the lows of an unnatural experience rather than going only for the authentic daily life of Africa and seeming a terrible person for saying that it was interesting to get a brief window into what oblivious normal tourists see when they come here, which involves, among other things, the nicest restrooms I’ve seen in this country so far, the kind of thing you might encounter in an American airport. Apparently it is possible to simultaneously fail at cultural immersion and feel obnoxiously superior to those pasty Europeans in their safari hats and privately hired cars. Note to self: find mental state that is not really irritating, and therefore by default neither of the above, and attempt to implement such state immediately.
The next day we traveled. Amy Lou and I took a bus from Sindia southeast to Kaolack, an approximately two hour trip that took closer to four because of our regular stops for often unidentified purposes, during which we sat, generally at precarious angles with one side of the bus’ wheels off the road, doing some pretty intense mental cartwheels to avoid thinking about the feeling of the crowded heat when it wasn’t even cut by the wind coming though the windows and cracks in the sides of the bus when it was moving, while people selling nuts and bread and plastic packages of water tapped on the windows. In Kaolack we carved our way through the obligatory crowd of solicitors into a sept-place bound southwest, and proceeded to watch out the windows as the landscape got more remote and the road got more like a very, very retro handheld video game. Any conception of lanes quickly disappeared as every vehicle swerved off and on the highway on either side to avoid the massive pockmarks in the pavement. I also had an interesting conversation with the man sitting corner behind me, something like,
Him: (taps me on the shoulder) “You are eating.”
Me: (awkwardly nods, attempting to suppress recently discovered low tolerance for strangers touching me) “Um… yes.” (returns to concentrated attempt to keep flies off of bread and bread off of the floor as the vehicle lurches)
Him: (taps me on the shoulder) “You are eating.”
Me: “Mm-hm.”
Him: “You are eating a lot.”
Me: (ignores him, making valiant efforts to control simultaneous irritation and concern that eating on public transit is actually a major cultural gaffe, despite the fact that I’d seen others do it)
Him, after about two minutes: “Give me some food.”
I did, actually. I didn’t really need the entire half-baguette, and, besides, I still haven’t gotten over my constant worry that I’m doing something culturally wrong every time someone makes any comment to me. After eating his section of bread, the man proceeded to alternately sing loudly and cry loudly, while occasionally grabbing for my shoulders and those of the woman next to me – for the next half hour. Finally, the woman yelled at the driver in Wolof, he pulled over, and the man in the front seat traded places with her, subjecting himself to the man in the back’s whimpering and clutching, and batting his hand away whenever it came too close to me. It was a long drive, but at least I felt, for once, like I wasn’t the one being obviously socially inappropriate.
After disembarking in Toubakouta, discovering that representatives of the campement where we had a reservation were actually going to meet us in Soukouta, a nearby village, walking to Soukouta with our bags despite the protestations of motorcycle drivers whose services we had not budgeted into our plan, we waited for nearly three hours. It’s funny; in the U.S., if such a thing happened, people would be falling over themselves to apologize and explain. Here, a woman pulled out two plastic chairs for us in a small courtyard, and proceeded to continue cooking and cleaning, leaving us to the mercies of a gaggle of small children trying to touch our skin and bags and singing “tubaab, tubaab.” Apparently, the oh-my-gosh-little-kids-are-so-adorable instinct naturally selected into the inner reaches of my female brain is strong enough to trump even my utter readiness to slap the next person brilliant enough to observe that I am, in fact, a tubaab – which is fortunate for all concerned, really.
It was dark by the time we were escorted into the pirogue (not a flying one, unfortunately) that would take us out into the middle of nowhere. When we disembarked, our luggage and that of the other two tourists, a French couple, was loaded onto a donkey cart. Since for some reason they hadn’t realized there would be four of us rather than two, there wasn’t space for us to ride and we stumbled instead the couple kilometers through tall grass and mud. I would like to say that at this moment my mental state was one of intrepid appreciation for the high adventure in which I was presently engaged – for goodness sake, I’ve defined a sizable chunk of my own personality by a quest for amorphous “adventure” since I was about six. As you may have guessed by my sentence structure, however, that wasn’t precisely the case. In fact, I was making a valiant last-ditch effort to scrape together a temporary emotional equilibrium regarding the possible lack of showers, toilets, water, or dinner at our pitch-black destination. This all was seeming like an increasingly likely possibility with every spear of grass sticking to my shoes, and it was definitively not part of what my six-year-old self had anticipated with regards to “adventure” – as I recall, the image back then ran more along the lines of dragons and dashing knights whom I would be able to accompany on horseback totally effectively while wearing a ball gown.
Anyways.
There were showers. Alxamdulilaay. There was also very delicious three-course dinner included in the price of lodging. Indeed, the only problem was the mosquitoes. Before you admonish me for lack of preparedness, I’ll have you know that I came armed with a higher concentration of DEET than is probably good for the chemical balance of my body. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of such things diminishes significantly when one is doing things like taking a shower in a grass hut, which, while lovely, is not exactly fully sealed such that bugs can’t fly right through the gaps in the walls. It took Amy Lou and I until our third and last night to really polish the mosquito-thwarting strategy: as soon as the sun starts to set, bring everything you need until bedtime into the dining area, which is draped with mosquito netting, and you can sit there reading, doing homework, or talking to the employees, the French tourists, and to each other before and after the meal. When you return to the hut, shower and prepare for bed as rapidly as possible – it takes a few minutes for the light to attract the onslaught. Then, collect everything you may need during the night – water bottle, cortisone cream, book, glasses, flashlight – and dive in one fell swoop under the mosquito net and proceed to seal yourself in until morning. You can then have the vindictive satisfaction of listening to the mosquitoes keening against the netting, their every effort to cause you further discomfort rendered futile. You may also hear a warthog. Yes, I’m certain it was a warthog. At least, I’m as certain as one can be while half-asleep that I heard snuffling just outside the thin wall next to my bed, and to my knowledge the only things that snuffle on the reserve are warthogs. Quod erat demonstrandum.
There are other beasts in the mangroves as well, most notably lizards, birds and crabs. The mangroves themselves look like science fiction, thick tendrils of roots in the water, the salty delta rising and falling every day to expose desolate red mud laced with the trails of small creatures in shells, stretches that look like the end of the world – and cover verdant tangles of green and purple plants crawling up to tall grass and the wide fronds of palm trees, landscapes that look straight out of the just-post-primordial soup beginning of the world.




We went on kayak and foot tours of the alien forests, and waded and swum in the warm water through the arching roots. Mangroves are their own unique ecosystem. They germinate while still on the parent tree, then drop into the water. Their roots grow from above, grasping down towards the delta to suck nutrients from the mineral-rich water and eventually become covered with oysters. If you stay quiet, knee deep in the mud and salty river, you can hear the sharp cracks of shells opening for air. The campement where we stayed is situated on the south side of the Reserve de Bamboung, a community-maintained protected nature area. The workers at the campement also look after the reserve, and proceeds go to the maintenance of the reserve and the nearby villages. The entire thing has a near-zero ecological footprint, down to the solar-powered lights.
We left on Thursday, bound back to Kaolack, where we had decided to spend one night. From the campement staff, we determined that the best way to get to Kaolack apparently involves walking from the tiny village of Toubakouta out to the main road, and standing there looking conspicuously in need of a ride until a sept-place or ndiaga ndiaye (translation: really sketchy long-distance minibus) with extra space happens to come by. So, one donkey cart ride (this time we did get to sit, and even got a man walking beside us nicely swatting flies away with a leafy branch) and one pirogue journey later, Amy Lou and I ended up on the side of the deserted highway-esque path lined with tall grass inconveniently not quite tall enough to protect us from the heavy press of the sun on our shoulders. The occasional vehicles that came by tended to be discouragingly full, discouragingly going in the wrong direction, or discouragingly not public transit. We were at a fairly entertaining moment in the series of distracting stories we had been trading back and forth when a man emerged from the foliage behind us, sporting some of the less attractive short dreadlocks I’ve seen, which is, unfortunately, saying something. He proceeded to stand uncomfortably close to us, prompting me to ask him as politely as possible what exactly he wanted. I’m still not sure if his response was incomprehensible because he was speaking Malinke, Serer, or some other local dialect that I don’t understand or because he was muttering nonsense, but his demeanor was such that it seemed like it could have been either. The same exchange occurred several times, and then he started obviously eying our bags with disconcerting interest. Amy Lou and I exchanged uncomfortable glances, tightening our grips around our belongings, and she picked up her backpack to put on her back.
As I said, some of the most interesting things I learned on this trip have to do with my own instinctive reactions to things. I would not have told you that my unthinking response to a strange man suddenly grabbing my companion’s umbrella out of the side pocket of her backpack would be to bound up to him while she froze in place, start telling him off loudly in French, and, when I couldn’t reach the umbrella, push him hard in the chest. I have no idea if this was a good strategy or a terrible one, objectively. I didn’t process until afterwards the fact that he might have been armed or at least much stronger than me and willing to demonstrate as much. But the result was that he threw the umbrella several feet away from us and retreated back into the bush. Fortunately, Amy Lou and I had not yet concluded our discussion of whether it was safe to remain where we were or if he would shortly be back with his weapon-wielding friends when a ndiaga ndiaye finally pulled over.
We made it to Kaolack without further incident, save many unpleasantly warm stops of our vehicle, for policemen checking papers, for gas, for other passengers getting on or off, or for no apparent reason of any kind. Kaolack itself had been a bit of an enigma. Amy Lou’s guidebook was very gracious; my guidebook’s opening line was “Kaolack is not a place to live the good life.” Both were right, in their way. The west central city does indeed have an even more serious trash problem then Dakar, with massive piles smashed under the billboards and gusting about with the wind. We got to appreciate this during an hour-long walk into downtown over a distance that we had ascertained from the scaling on the map in our trusty guidebook was under a mile.

The shopping, however, is infinitely better in Kaolack. We went to the (apparently) famed covered market as well as an artisan village. I would have found both overwhelming before having visited Sandaga and the artisans in Dakar. People still called out to us and commented on their wares, but, unlike in the capital, they weren’t constantly following us or shoving articles into our hands and generally impeding our desire to stay for one more second in their eagerness to extract money from us. They also seemed to start off asking less ridiculous prices and be more willing to stick to them than the vendors in Dakar, who I’ve resolved to never pay more than a third of their initial offer. I can honestly say that this was an enjoyable shopping experience rather than simply an “interesting” one.


We left on Friday, after a visit to the Grande Mosquée, which we were not quite Muslim enough to try to enter and instead circled with a camera. The sept-place back actually felt easy, hot but not utterly unbearable, looking like it was about to fall apart but not any worse than the others, the men swarming us irritating but not too hard to ignore.
And that’s what I got out of this patchwork trip, I think, aside, that is, from a wonderfully good time. I got the real live sensory proof that I can trek up and down the west coast of Senegal, armed with a friend, some shampoo, and a jar of nutella, that I can not only survive but be happy without scheduled transit or full local linguistic competence or electricity or any clue what I’m supposed to be doing next. I can do an adventure. My six-year-old self wouldn’t recognize me. But I think she would have been proud.