down to work. Yesterday I arrived back at BCS after four days away in
Saint-Louis in the north of Senegal.
Saint-Louis is a unique place in many ways. The French developed it
heavily as one of their major centres of business due to its position at
the mouth of the Senegal river and close to the border between Senegal
and Mauritania. It's a very odd place geographically. It is split into
three parts, two of which are islands. From the first part of the town
on the mainland you cross a bridge onto the first of the two islands,
long and thin running parallel to the coast. This first island is the
main tourist centre and retains the most of the old French colonial
style. The second island is parallel to the first and a similar shape
but further out to sea. It is this island which was once joined to the
long strip of land where I stayed a few weeks ago for the men's weekend.
We travelled up on Monday, walking the 2km from the school to Sindia and
catching a minibus into Thies for just 60p each plus £1 for our
collective baggage. From Thies we sought similar transport up to
Saint-Louis. A group of white people in the gare-routiere soon attracts
a crowd and we had many people offering ridiculous fares to Saint-Louis
in their taxis. Eventually a guy came and asked where we were going and
offered us seats in his minibus at £2.50 each plus the usual £1 baggage
charge. We took it and soon found ourselves seated in a fairly empty
medium sized minibus waiting for it to fill up with other passengers.
When we eventually set off, after not too long a wait, the journey was a
fairly comfortable one considering the circumstances and we arrived in
Saint-Louis somewhere between one and two o'clock in the afternoon. A
taxi took us from Saint-Louis gare-routiere to our hotel without any
problems.
The hotel was a nice one. We were in the cheapest rooms which were dingy
but adequate including en-suite facilities and a continental breakfast
in the mornings at the bar/restaurant. After getting thoroughly confused
with the hostess about what board we were on and the price we would end
up paying we settled ourselves in the restaurant for a late lunch. We
all had the hotel's speciality omlette which was very tasty and very
filling and subsequently retired to our rooms for a siesta.
In general the week included lots of siestas, walking around the town
looking for restaurants, and eating great food. It was great to get away
and do nothing! On Wednesday morning we made an excursion to Parc de
Dioudj, one of the national parks, where they've created a wetland
habitat to attract all kinds of native West-African birds. We were
picked up by our guide at 7am from the hotel and made the 70km trip to
Dioudj by taxi where we drove into the heart of the park and took a one
hour cruise on the main lake in a pirogue (narrow wooden boat). Tracey
and I took about 300 photo between us. We saw loads of birds and even
some baby crocodiles. Hopefully I'll get on ADSL again before the end of
the holidays and upload some of the pictures.
We decided to cut our break short due to the Muslim festival of Tabaski
today which would have made travelling impossible so we paid up at the
hotel yesterday morning and made our way again to the gare-routiere.
This time we caught a proper car-rapide. If you don't know what one is
then imagine an old mercedes sprinter minibus, older than me, which
looks like it will fall apart after ten metres. The interior is fitted
with bench seats and it is crammed full with over fourty people. The
roof is often laden with luggage piled high, including at this time of
year sheep and goats (live). We were the only white people on the
vehicle, not surprisingly, and doubtless quite a novelty to many of our
fellow passengers as you don't get many 'toubabs' on car-rapides. Public
transport was very busy yesterday as everyone was travelling home for
tabaski. The guy next to me was trying out his English and I found out
he lives in Dakar and was going home for tabaski too.
When we got to Thies we stopped at Les Delices for a bite to eat and a
seat with a little more leg and bottom room which didn't vibrate. I
nipped in to the little supermarket for some groceries and left Ruth and
Tracey to relax with a soft drink. Being so close to home we were able
to relax a little and look forward to putting our feet up. Little did we
know what our next leg of the journey would bring.
Outside Les Delices we tried to hail a taxi. The drivers never know
Kiniabour but I tried it anyway and explained where it was. The first
guy wouldn't go lower than 11,000 and we were aiming for 6,000 so we let
him go. The guard outside the restaurant politely inquired where we
wanted to go and ho much the previous driver had asked for. He then
offered to negotiate a taxi for us for the price we wanted so we took up
his kind offer. The next car he stopped bargained hard and wouldn't come
down except when another taxi pulled-in in front of him ready to offer
us a ride. They settled on 7,000 and we shrugged our shoulders and said
OK, thinking of getting home. As the guy pulled away he asked what price
the guard had told us and I confirmed the 7,000 which he didn't seem too
happy about. At the end of the road there's a junction; this is where
things went funny. The driver took an unusual turning and proceeded in
what felt to me like the wrong direction. I tried to quiet my misgivings
and decided to wait and see where he went next. A little up the road he
pulled in at a petrol station to top up, at which I thought 'ok, maybe
he just knows the guy at this station or something, now he'll turn
round'. He didn't turn. The next junction approached and I saw a
signpost for Dakar to the right which confirmed my internal compass,
'please turn here' I thought... he didn't. According to signs we were
now headed towards Diourbel and I knew that wasn't right so, encouraged
by noises from behind me, I tried to subtly hint at our destination but
unsure of how to go about this, both linguistically and culturally, all
I could say was "Do you know Kiniabour?" and "I've never taken this
route to Kiniabour before!", neither of which provoked a response. Time
went on and we all grew more and more tense and eventually we arrived at
a village called Thienaba at which point the driver made a comment about
there being two places called Thienaba and this was one of them and the
other was just up the road. I was a little puzzled but didn't know what
to say other than to agree with him. When he reached the second Thienaba
he pulled over and asked where we wanted to be set down. Finally we
realised what was going on. Somewhere between our communication with the
guard and the guard's communication with our driver some wires had got
crossed and our driver thought we wanted to go to Thienaba, a place we'd
never heard of before and a region we'd never visited. A long and
draining discussion ensued between myself and our driver which I don't
have the energy to recount but, in short, we realised the error made and
spent some time despairing and asking each other what would happen next.
We settled that he would have to drive us to Kiniabour (should we be
able to find it - he had no idea even how to get to Popenguine) and we
would have to pay him extra for the trouble. Most unsatisfactory for us
who had hoped to be home by then recovering from a long day on the road.
He made protestations all the way back to Thies and seemed to be in a
foul mood for the remainder of our journey which also affected his
driving. The extra price negotiation was awkward. There were long
periods of silence where he would ask how much we would pay him and we
would sit there thinking it over and lamenting our situation. He wanted
too much, of course, and came up with all the reasons under the sun why
we should give him more than we wanted to. Ruth wanted to get home,
Tracey felt he was taking advantage of us and I felt sorry for him (and
vastly inadequate to communicate effectively in response to his
arguments). Eventually we paid him 14,000 which no-one was really happy
with but I don't think anyone could be happy after that experience. We
stopped and unloaded at the gate just so that the school guard was
around should we need someone on our side and walked back down the track
we started off on three days earlier.
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