Saint-Louis

Saint-Louis was Senegal’s capital for centuries during colonization. It’s in the north of the country, four hours from Dakar, just below the border with Mauritanea. The twenty WARCers road tripped here for the weekend, our last group excursion before flying home. But there’s still four weeks until we get to that. 

Our hotel in Saint-Louis is in the old town, an island five blocks wide connected to the mainland and the rest of the city by bridge. The hotel was once barracks for French troops. It’s very old colonial, with a grand wooden staircase and shutters opening onto shabby back streets. I feel a bit as if I’ve stepped into Pirates of the Caribbean. The whole old section of town remindeds me of the British Virgin Islands, with all the concrete houses in pastels with wooden shutters and second-storey balconies. But instead of the vibrant blues and pinks of the Caribbean, the housepaint here is peeling or smudged black or entirely worn off. 

Saint-Louis is far past its prime. Our hotel must once have been beautiful, but now there are cracks in the walls and paint drips on the moulding and exposed patches of concrete in the stairwell. The city may be more picturesque than Dakar, but the dulled colors of once vibrant buildings just make me feel sad. 

Yesterday we took horse-drawn carriages through town, the sides of our seats painted with ads for restaurants and discotheques. We embraced our inner tourists (three months in Senegal and we still little more than tourists), snapping pictures of boabab trees growing up through house walls and a mother shielding her daughter’s face from the tubabs’ cameras and a seaside market that stunk of urine and salted fish. And as we rode around I started wondering how much the average Senegalese’s life has bettered since independence. Not much, it would seem. 

Today we visited a bird reserve, traveling by boat through of river flocked with thousands of pelicans. On the way to the reserve, our bus pulled off the road so that we could wander by foot into Mauritania. On the way back to Senegal, I stopped off in the one-room customs house to use the the bathroom and ended up drinking attaya (tea served in shot glasses) with the border guard. 

After a lazy afternoon of three naps and a philosophical debate, Alice and I snuck out for stealth crêpes (banana for me) for dinner while most of the others went out as a group. They might be at a discotheque dancing by now. I’m writing this post from a patisserie, where Alice and I are both drinking hot chocolate made with real milk, not powdered, and typing away on our Macs. I’ve missed this these past three months, missed being able to go out at night without being scared of the dark and of Dakar. I’ve missed walking across campus by lampost light to Nassau Street to grab hot chocolate from Small World before setting myself up to work in Chancellor Green. I would love to be back on campus.