Bonjour-Mundo!

The past two days have been great! The night before last we attended a concert of Senegalese music and had a great time. The band had two vocalists, two acoustic guitars, one electric, bongos and a regular drumset. Although I enjoyed the music. the people who got up and danced where almost more entertaining for me…they included one guy, who emily aptly described as dancing like a rubberband, some other senegalese aomen, and perhaps most entertaining of all…the 60 or so year old french woman, man could she get her groove on! 😉

Yesterday was probably one of my most favorite days so far and what brought about the title of todays post. First we took a ferry to an island off the coast of dakar, an old slave post known as goree island. It was incredibly peaceful and beautiful. The water was a perfect blue and was even more set off by the colorful buildings. There are no cars or motorbikes on the island so everything is a bit more relaxed then dakar. We wandered through the streets, sat and enjoyed the sunshine and the birds flying overhead, took lots of pictures…hopefully I can get them on here soon!; had lunch; and I successfully bargained for a really nice ebony mask.

 After goree, we returned to emilys for a quick nap, then we took a taxi to this neighborhood called medina to meet emilys friend laye. Medina is a sight to see in itself, a very poor area of dakar. The smell in the air is not exactly roses, and the garbage overflows in parts. Children are playing everywhere and soccerballs are kicked up and down. Along the central street there are market stalls that seem to go on forever. The market is strangly juxtaposed however with a bright and shining rainbow foods like grocery about halfway down that we bought dinner in one night. It is the oddest sight.

In any case, last night after we finally found laye, he gathered up a bunch of supplies while we waited in his familys home. Then he took us down to where the locals buy their fish. Emily has talked about this market on the other blog and it truly is wonderful. Its right on the beach and happens as the fishermen bring in their catch in the early evening. First we walked through where all the boats are piled up. Huge dugout canoes; all painted in bright wonderful colors; just like the mini busses that drive around town. Then you pass into the fish part, and man are their fish. Tables and tables and bowls and plates and aisles of fish. All fresh caught and all sorts of sizes and colors. We worked our way down to the bottom and the fish are layed out on steel plates in the sand with the waves rolling in behind them. It was almost as if they had washed up from the sea just for us to eat. Laye picked us out a bunch and then we headed up to get small baggies of sauce and some onion and cucumber. After walking a little further down the beach, we found ourselves a spot and laye proceded to start a fire and set the fish upon our little grill. We cut up the vegetetables and he mixed them with the sauces. And then as soon as the fish were cooked we had ourselves a picnic listening to the waves crash and the pebbles roll back with the tide. It was delicious.

I am enjoying Senegal more and more each day. Things are going very well, and I am so lucky to have such an excellent tour guide! Thanks to Em!

Tags: Dakar, Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, March 17th, 2006 at 5:23 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.