battling the chef de gare. (Dakar part 2)

I relinquish all control over my movement here.



In the meantime, I meet some other Tubabs living in Dakar who want to make sure that I see the city and have some fun before leaving for scorching Mali. This mostly involves cold beer, swimming, soccer, and music. I am glad to be out of Mauritania and back in a country where people dance and smile.

I meet the first batch of Tubabs at Chez Dany on the night of the bar fight that gets Tony punched in the face. Things are a little less serene that night. Things are very silly that night.

Ben, the other Californian is drunk and dancing. He is speaking in Wallof and declaring his love for the city and all its inhabitants. It is good to meet people who love where they are living. For the next two days he shows me around town and takes me his school – Ecole de la Rue, where he teaches English. He showed up in Dakar seven months ago not knowing anyone, not speaking a word of French or Wollof and having never taught before. Now I watch him singing and dancing, switching between English, French and Wollof to explain grammar, to keep his girls awake and to make everyone laugh.

We walk all over town and drink café touba in tents, while he teaches me about Muslim mystics, dancing beggars, these children everywhere with their tin cans asking for sugar for their marabou, of going on pilgrimage to the African mecca and of making a life here.

My days are filled with walking, little chores, visits to the beach, bottles of cold beer, bags of bissap juice, and a steady diet of haricot and chocolate sandwiches and bananas. I swim in the ocean, hear lots of live music, stay up late talking with Danny and almost forget that I'm waiting to leave.

Danny and I leave the city and spend the weekend in a rented house on a beautiful beach with ten French kids. Back in Dakar on Monday morning; everything feels different. I am hopeful. I think I am going places. Danny takes off class and we go see that troublesome chef de gare, the only man who can actually get me on this train.

We wake early, make our banana and chocolata sandwiches, take café touba au lait in a tent near the corner truck stop, buy some chewing sticks and walk into town through the perpetual rush hour. How can the chef de gare say no to us when we are chewing sticks? Impossible.

We arrive, the boss is in his office. We talk, I get excited. He gives us a story, come tomorrow in the afternoon to buy a ticket, the train will leave Wednesday. Yes, yes, the train is here. No it won't leave before Wednesday. Vraiment. Absolutement.

I'm excited. I begin to dance. We take a little walk and come back.

The chef asks us to wait some more. He's decided he likes us now, because he picks up the phone to call someone. It's a long phone call. He makes another.

Okay, buy your tickets now. The train leaves tomorrow at one o'clock.
Vraiment? Vraiment. Absolutement? Oui.
Is the window open?
Okay, come, we'll open the window.

We find the ticket seller and make him open the window. A sign is posted with a day and a time. It is all very official. An hour later, I walk out of the station with a ticket in my hand, a stick in my mouth, the happiest toubab in Dakar.