Eddie comes to Africa!

So, I was trying to wait to post this blog until after eddie had sent me all pictures we took but my patience isn’t all that great so the pictures will just have to come later! Eddie has already uploaded some of them so here is a link in case you’re interested to look at some now… http://www.flickr.com/photos/edman24365/ . Also, apology in advance, i tried to make this as short as possible! wasnt quite very successful...

Picking up where I left off in my last blog post, on Eddie’s first day in Dakar we hung out with some of my PC Mauritania friends who had stayed behind an extra day so they could meet Eddie. First, we went to the artisan market and bought what became known as ‘the circus’ and then we went to the Dakar central market which can be described as nothing short of chaos. I am used to crazy African markets but this was like the Boghe market x100. Pickpocketing is a huge problem and I realized how much I took for granted the feeling in Mauritania that my belongings were always secure. Bargaining was its usual hassle and it felt great to throw in the line “I live in Mauritania, don’t even try to tell me that costs that much.” But in general, things in Dakar are more expensive then Mauritania, either because of their general better quality or big city atmosphere so I didn’t really buy anything (although Senegal wax prints are so hard to not buy!). We had a great night at our hotel hanging out on the private beach/patio area, watching the sunset and then having some drinks and playing cards while eddie enlightened us all with new American music and we enlightened him on the horrible selection of Senegalese beer/liquor.

The next day all of my friends left to go back to Mauritania and Eddie and I explored a little bit of Dakar. During WAIST I had seen some great sights, unfortunately only from the taxi, so we started by walking along the coast near central Dakar seeing both la Mosque de la Divinite and la Phare de Mamelles (lighthouse of Mamelles).

Dakar was a little too cosmopolitan, crazy, and hectic for my taste and we were happy to get out of the city and go to Ile de N’Gor, a little island right off the coast of Dakar. The only way to get to the island is by using pirogues, a small handcrafted African canoe. Luckily the ones in Senegal are powered by motors (in Mauritania all they have is paddles), but it was still pretty intense crossing a little part of the Atlantic Ocean in a wooden canoe. We were the only white people on the canoes so I felt better that the locals trusted these little canoes (and often with their babies strapped on their backs). Then I realized rationally I wasn’t too nervous about capsizing because I can swim (again, unlike the locals), but how much it would suck for all of eddies cameras and electronics to get wet haha… I didn’t want his first few days in Africa to have successfully ruined all of his prized possessions!

Ile de N’Gor is a picturesque little island that I would describe as “Venice meets the Caribbean”. You could walk the whole island by meandering through the little alleyways in about 15 minutes. Everywhere you look are beautiful views of cliffs leading into the Atlantic Ocean. Our little hotel was great with a private lounging area (away from the hassles of the public beach vendors) and a great Italian restaurant. And our room had its own private little balcony overlooking the water were we could sit out at night and watch the glow and chaos of Dakar, from a safe distance. The calm and tranquility of the island unfortunately gave us our first (and certainly not last) money dilemma when we realized that atms were few and far between and credit card machines at hotels are practically nonexistent…

After a few days of relaxation we traveled across Dakar to take a ferry to the Ile de Goree, known for its historical role in the slave trade. I was amazed by the architectural beauty of this island, perfectly preserved with brightly colored, 17th century French colonial buildings and cobblestone alleys. We visited “la maison d’esclaves” (house of slaves), a stopping point in the trans-atlantic slave trade. Slaves from mainland Africa were transported here before they were forced onto ships to cross the Atlantic. It was a pretty emotional place to visit as an American, knowing the dark role that it played in our history. While we were there, we crossed paths with an African-American man, around 70 years old and wearing an Obama-Biden pin, who was looking out of the famous ‘doorway to slavery’, with silent tears rolling down his face. The rest of our time at Ile de Goree was spent wandering the streets, admiring the art and architecture (and in eddies case taking a million pictures haha). There is a huge collection of artists and paintings and you could spend hours just walking around and admiring the work (not without the usual African hassle).

After Ile de Goree we braved the massive Dakar garage and took a taxi brousse to St. Louis. This was Eddie’s first public transport experience and I am confident now that he understands my dread of traveling in Africa haha… it’s a random, huge parking lot filled with empty “sept places” (station wagons with third rows that can fit 7 passengers) and little signs every once and a while pointing out the major cities you could go to. Luckily St. Louis is probably the most popular destination so we only had to wait a few minutes for the car to fill up with other passengers. But if you ask Eddie about the few minutes we had to wait he’ll tell you horror stories of bargaining for prices, people grabbing at your bags, people shoving food/trinkets for you to buy, can kids begging for money, and people yelling “hey toubab!”. For me it was one of the most pleasant garage situations ive been in, but I guess for a normal person it was understandably insane.

The trip to St. Louis is only a few hours and Eddie got to see a lot of the traditional African landscape including the encroaching desert, endless amounts of goats/cattle/donkeys, the random group of camels, and his favorite- baobob trees. We checked into our hotel which was located on the ocean and had a nice pool/lounging area (which came in handy after Eddie got sick and leaving the hotel really wasn’t an option). We visited the St. Louis market, which is much more do-able then the Dakar market. Eddie had fun picking out crazy African fabric to get things made from back home while like usual, I had to be continuously bargaining and using phrases like “J’habite en Mauritanie, je connais le prix vrai!” (basically, I freaking live in Africa, don’t try to rip me off buddy).

Through our hotel we arranged to go on an overnight camping trip in the Desert de Lompoul sand dunes. We took an amazing private SUV with a great French couple to the desert, stopping along the way to look at baobobs and take photos of some of the herds of camels. Once there, our guide took us on a hiking trip in the dunes up to the highest point where you can see the ocean miles away. We ate lunch in a huge khima (Mauritanian style tents with sides) then had the rest of the afternoon to explore the camp. Right around sunset we took a camel ride through the dunes, me on the saddle and eddie on the camels ass haha. Dinner was an amazing 3 course meal, a perfect mix of traditional Senegalese and French food and topped off with a bottle of wine.

Getting from the desert campement to our next destination, a small fishing village south of Dakar called Toubab Diallo, was a little bit tricky and included a military size cargo truck, sedan circa 1982, 7 place (that popped a tire midtrip), and then finally another sedan. How we actually made it in one peice and in better time then I imagined is completely a mystery haha. At first look, Toubab Diallo just seemed like all the other small fishing villages we had passed along the way but once we got to the hotel area I found out why the travel book had so highly recommended it. I don’t even know where to begin to describe the amazing hotel, maybe something like a combination of an artist colony and an oasis. Every square inch of the hotel grounds (which is more like a campus setup) is covered with handcrafter sculptures, mosaics, gardens, and artwork. The artisits (both visual and musical) are paid to live and work at the hotel and you can wonder through their workshops and the never ending little nooks and balconys overlooking the ocean. The restaurant was amazing and the beaches were the cleanest and most beautiful that I saw on the whole trip.

The hotel staff also helped us coordinate a trip to the Reserve de Bandia, a safari like trip complete with our own personal (English speaking) tour guide and driver. We were lucky enough to have sightings of most of the major animals they had there including giraffes, crocodiles, warthogs, gazelle, buffalo, ostriches, monkeys, and rhinos (before our tour guide spotted them with us they hadn’t been seen in over 3 days!). Plus countless amounts of birds and baobobs, two of eddie’s recent obsessions.

Toubab Diallo brought a sad end to our amazing trip and we headed back to Dakar to pack up and do some final shopping before we both had to head home (me for cheese and alcohol, him for souvenirs haha). Saying goodbye the second time was so much harder than the first back in June when it hit me that Eddie would be leaving and I would have to face the Dakar garage and public transport in the morning by myself like I have been doing for the past 9 months. I am so fortunate to be able to share this part of my life with him so that Africa can become a little part of his life too. He was able to meet my friends, learn some French/pulaar, experience countless of my daily frustrations, understand my African inside jokes and appreciate the luxury of private transportation (although being on the coast in the cold season gave him no experience in Mauritanian heat haha). I couldn’t have asked for a better vacation… and now it’s less than 4 months till I come home for my summer!