Yesterday, Randi and I joined former ISM colleagues Mike D. and Devon S. and friends for an afternoon on Ile du Ngor. Ngor is located on the northwest tip of the Cape Verde Peninsula, in an area referred to as Les Almadies. Randi and I took a taxi over to Mike & Devon's. Taxi's are omnipresent here, rather like a common species of reef fish, patrolling for fares. Walk anywhere, even along our smaller, neighborhood streets, and passing taxis will toot their horns to let you know that they're available. Some will stop and solicit your business, especially if you're carrying something, as if to say why the heck would you want to carry that heavy thing when I could take you in my taxi! If the condition of the exteriors are any indication, the taxis double as bumper cars.
The taxi did get us safely to Mike and Devon's flat, after a slight detour around a stalled (in the middle of the road) car rapides mini-bus. Schools of taxis streamed around either side of the downed vehicle, into oncoming traffic, like half-backs weaving through a defensive line.
Bartering for a taxi fare is expected. We were told that 2000 CFA (about $4.50) should get you anywhere on the Peninsula. You tell the driver where you're going, and state your price. If the driver refuses, walk away, and more than likely he'll compromise.
Many who read this blog know Mike and Devon, both of whom taught at The International School of Monterey. They are a young, vibrant, twenty-something couple here on their first overseas teaching post. Both have taken full advantage of their first year in Senegal. Devon's learning to dive, drum, and dance. Mike is an accomplished northern California surfer with, as he put it yesterday, a flock of surfboards. Dakar has several world-class surf spots, as profiled in the classic surf film of the 1960s, The Endless Summer.
We drove out to plage de Ngor and met a half dozen other friends and colleagues. From Ngor beach you can purchase passage on a large pirogue to Ngor Island, a short ride across a protected bay. I snorkeled across with several others, my first exposure in the water with mask and snorkel.
Dave, an experienced local diver and surfer working with an NGO, reported that the visibility was poor. Given that context, I was pleased. The visibility was, conservatively, 15-20 feet, lower in areas with surge. The water was warm, perhaps 80 degrees F, certainly no need for a wet suit. I expect that the area across which we swam, along the rocks to the north of the beach, receives a good deal of tidal surge, thus the widespread growth of sponge on rock surfaces. The fish varieties were familiar, from growing up in south Florida: lots of territorial damselfish of various types, including the striped sargent major; boxy pufferfish, wrasse, moray eel (a juvenile), three small grouper tucked under ledges and rock piles; what I know as a blenny, a large parrotfish, etc. For a stretch of water likely subject to lots of human pressure, I was impressed. Dave explained that everything is better -- clearer and more prolific -- once you get out of the bay, especially around Ille de la Madeleine. I'm game.
There were scenes, from the vantage of the water, looking shoreward, which were captivating, for which I wished I'd had a camera (and reassured that we'd brought underwater video gear, though not with us that day). The beach on a section of Ngor was thick with bathers, Senegalese, a dark mass of kids, playing, shouting, while a colorful pirogue arrived loaded with new arrivals, all wearing orange lifejackets, the extended prow slicing up onto the beach. It struck me that, despite my familiarity with diving and the fish varieties, this was in fact Africa!
The group of us had dinner on the island, and walked up to the eastern-most point overlooking what Dave and Mike described as one of the most consistent surf breaks in Senegal. Devon recalled a day last spring, twenty-foot swells roaring in, no one in the water save Mike, Devon watching from this very spot, concerned for his safety, wondering what she could do were there an accident, what could be done?
There was chanting over a loud speaker much of last night, up until around six this morning. I was up early, five AM-ish, recording the chanting from an open window. I decided to walk down the street to investigate, imagining that the sound was being broadcast from the mosque en route to school. Our street was quiet, dark, and empty, save a single guard with whom I exchanged a subdued bon jour. The source of the chanting was down a side street, and in the distance I could make out a large group, many covered. I choose not to intrude, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, armed with a high tech microphone in my pocket.
Note two recordings of the chanting on BOT at http://www.becauseoftime.org/ISD/ScenesDakar.html.
As Gaucher suggested in his presentation last week, Senegalese culture is richly layered: traditional beliefs and practices co-mingle with the practice of Islam here. Devon pointed this out yesterday while on Ngor Island. Infants, she explained, are given a grigri, a protective leather amulet, sometimes containing verses from the Koran, worn around the waist. They could be seen worn by a number of girls there on the beach.
(ADDENDUM: I just spoke, by phone, with two Peace Corps volunteers, one working in Senegal, one in Guinea. They both spoke of the use of grigri: Boys tend to receive them more than girls because the infant mortality amongst boys is higher; grigri tend to contain verses from the Koran, sometimes copied then burned, the ashes saved, the specific verses used determined in consultation with a marabout or imam. There are different kinds of grigri. By example, there are fertility grigri, which a boy may purchase, as perhaps in downtown Dakar, for a girl.)
This whole topic -- the melding of the traditional/animistic with the orthodoxy of Islam -- is of immense interest.
One could easily spend a lifetime here, as anywhere, protected within the bubble of one's own culture, and never experience the richness of world out there. Here, the degree of difference between the expression of culture within the privacy of one's home, and that practiced out there, can be extreme.
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