Senegaleasy Does It

Saint-Louis really was a refreshing break after some hectic travel in Mauritania and it felt good to have reached Sub Saharan Africa. Founded by the French in 1659 this was the first French colony in Africa and it still retains much of its old colonial charm. Situated on a narrow strip of land in the middle of the Senegal River, we crossed over the old steel bridge “Pont Faidherbe” designed by Gustav Eiffel and arguably the city’s most iconic landmark, to reach the small old town. We spent some days just breathing in the quiet ambience, cute streets and crumbling French architecture taking us back in time to a foregone era of colonialism. After these chilled out days, we were introduced to a new form of transportation, one I think I will be seeing a lot of in the near future. Known simply as a bush taxi or in Francophone West Africa a “Sept Place” it is an old Peugot station wagon, where the boot has been converted and three more seats have been put in, giving it seven passenger seats. We found out the hard way, that these rear seats are slightly higher up and therefor mean you will have to sit with a slightly tilted head and crooked neck for the entire trip, in this case roughly five hours before we reached the Senegalese capital of Dakar.

The contrast was pretty obvious on arrival, gone was the silence and the chaos met us straight away, but I liked it. We found a cheap hostel in the S.C.A.T. Urbam neighborhood and this was to be my home for some time. I knew I would need to be sorting out some future visas, an annoying fact about West Africa, but I guess I have always been spoilt on past trips with my Swedish passport. I arranged my travel permits for three countries, Guinea Bissau, Guinea and Sierra Leone, something that took up a lot of my time, but when I wasn’t running between embassies, banks and internet cafés I did see a lot of this big city which is built up of a bunch of different neighbourhoods on a peninsula and during my nine days I managed to see most of them.

One day we paid a visit to the nearby and tiny island of Gorée. There are no paved roads or motorised vehicles here and it offers some much appreciated silence. However the tranquility comes with a somber history as this was once one of the epicentres of the European slave trade. Ruled by the Portuguese, The Dutch, The English and finally the French, it was sad to think how many lives had been sold from these old houses and dungeons before taking the traitorous trip across the Atlantic Ocean.

Another interesting sight to see was the recently erected Monument Of African Renaissance. This giant bronze statue (the tallest in Africa at 49 metres) has come with a lot of controversy though, it was built by a North Korean company who have specialised in supplying African countries with communist like monuments, the financing of it has come under scrutiny. Also the statue depicts a man, woman and child and much debate has come about the appropriateness of the woman’s clothing seeing as Senegal is a more than 95% Islamic country. After my time in the metropolis, which saw saying farewell to Tre and also included my first real nights out drinking of this trip (and more shockingly a couple of accompanying, terrible hangovers) I decided to keep heading south for some beach life.