Position: 14:00.78N 016:41.9W
Date:
10 November
2009
Yesterday morning we motored in convoy five miles up the
river to Hakuna Matata camp, which is a basic riverside holiday lodge catering
to a fairly limited number of Europeans from Dakar and groups of ornithologists,
sports fishermen and scientists who come to the camp to explore the delta.
Olivier, the charming young Frenchman who had rebuilt the
lodge four years ago was laying on a traditional Mechoui feast for us that
evening. Two large pits were dug in the sand, filled with logs and set alight.
When the flames had died down, young pigs, goats and lambs were roasted over the
glowing embers as we tucked into plates of cockles, collected that morning from
the shallow water at the river’s edge. The meat, once carved on the plate,
turned out to be disappointingly fatty and tough. As with my two meals in
Dakar, I managed only to get a
couple of mouthfuls of meat out of it all. Still, the couscous and vegetables
were delicious, as was the fresh fruit which was served afterwards.
Once the meal was finished, a group of the local
villagers came and performed some traditional dances to the hypnotic beat of the
Djumbo drums. They then performed a sort of pantomime with singing and drums
re-enacting the Arab traders taking the villagers off to be sold as slaves. Very
moving. Finally we were treated to a wrestling match by two giant and
muscle-bound examples of Senegalese manhood. All great fun. Some of the rally
audience said it was a shame that the dancers were not in traditional dress, but
in T-shirts. But this, I think, was to miss the point. This was not a troupe
wheeled out to entertain tourists. These were just the local villagers who had
turned out to welcome the rally and entertain us (the arrival of the rally fleet
every year is a big event which brings in a significant amount of money which
ripples beneficially through the community). It was a memorable
evening.
This morning we had another early start. We had arranged
for a pirogue to come and collect about 15 of us to explore the bolongs, the
narrow mangrove-lined backwaters separating the hundreds of islands of the
delta. Armed with cameras, binoculars and bird books, off we went. Colin had
been in seventh-heaven since our arrival. The place is absolutely stuffed full
of exotic birds of every size, colour and habit. He had gone ashore for a walk
in the salt-marshes and coastal grassland behind the camp the evening before and
couldn’t turn the pages of his bird book fast enough. By the time he had
returned from his walk he had already identified nearly 40 different species. He
was wetting himself with excitement at the prospect of adding further to his
already long list. His greatest ambition was to see a Goliath Heron which stands
a full five feet high. The pirogue trickled along the banks of the mangrove
swamps and an enormous number of birds flitted from tree to tree, dive bombed
the water for fish (which were leaping out of the water all around us) or walked
in the shallows, picking tasty morsels out of the sand with their long pointed
beaks. A twitcher’s paradise indeed. Everybody wanted to sit next to Colin who
was giving a fascinating running commentary on the different types of birds and
their characteristics. We rounded an bend and there, side by side, were an
osprey and the Holy Grail, an enormous Goliath Heron. A double whammy. Colin, at
that moment, had a small orgasm.
Having passed a group of men putting a net out in a large
circle and then drawing it in onto a sandbank we arrived at a small fishing
village. We were introduced by our pirogue captain to the village’s headman who
was enormously proud to show us all around. We visited the hospital, two small
rooms, where the clinician explained that one of the rooms was used for the
numerous child deliveries. Until recently a woman would have had, on average,
about ten children. Now, however, they were putting contraceptive implants into
their arms (voluntary, of course) and this had reduced the average number of
children to about five. There was a sad little chart on the wall showing the
number of monthly deaths of children under the age of five from malaria,
diarrhoea or pneumonia.
We then went to the school room where a classroom of
fifty or so extremely lively young children were being taught. They were
frightfully excited when we were ushered in and sat down at their benches next
to them. I immediately had my Tilley hat nicked from me and it was grabbed by
one then another of the little things who all tried it on to much hysterical
laughter. Once order had been resumed, the teacher told us about education in
Senegal and the
dearth of teachers. Secondary education was also a problem because the children
had to go away for that, living with other families who required money to feed
the youngsters. The money often not being available meant that most children
were not able to progress to secondary school. The children were all naughty,
happy, pretty little things. A delight. Once the lecture had finished, they all
sang us a song with great gusto and clapping, and then we all joined in a
rendition of Frere Jacques. Honestly, it brought tears to the eyes of many of
us.
As we made our way back to the pirogue, a number of women
had got a out a selection of wood carvings, jewellery made from shells and
fishing line and paintings made from different coloured sand sprinkled onto
painted glue (made from fish bones). Amongst one of the displays were three old
and intricately carved small wooden doors – about 18 inches square. They are the
traditional doors to the family granary used by a particular tribe and found in
Senegal,
Mali and
Mauritania. They
were asking quite a lot by their standards so after some good-natured
negotiations we agreed on a price and I am now the proud owner of a lovely
memento of my time in
Senegal.
The following morning the fleet was to return to
Dakar in preparation of their
passage to Cape
Verde on the 15th. Due to admin
error (on behalf of the organisers I hasten to add) Neil was not going to join
us until the morning of the 18th, so Colin and I were able to stay
alone in the delta for a few more days. A number of friends I had made amongst
the crews of other boats were to leave in
Dakar before Colin and I returned,
and the next time we were to rejoin the fleet would be in Mindelo in the
Cape Verde
Islands in ten days time, so Colin
and I decided to hold a drinks party on board. I knew that had the Absent
Downstairs Skipper been on board, everything would have been perfect. But she
isn’t, and we simply had to try and use her impeccable standards as a target. It
was actually a jolly good incentive to get the boat into some semblance of
cleanliness and order, the standards of which had inevitably slipped a little.
So the afternoon was spent tidying up, cleaning, polishing, hovering and
generally making good.
