lured to Senegal

After the allure of that first Senegalese wedding, a few more uncomfortable run-ins, continued sickness of an undramadic but unimproved sort, and general indecision, I end up not heading straight overland into Mali as intended and instead find myself jumping into a car bound for Senegal.

I am just not ready to leave the ocean just yet. I need to do a little dancing, eat some more fish and see a doctor. Senegal helps be do all of these things with grace. Landing in Dakar for a few days also gives me a chance to sort out some embassy paperwork, write more and try to get myself a seat on the infamous Dakar-Bamako train.

I'm in a bushtaxi, waiting in the Rosso bound lot in Nouakchott for one more person. We leave when the car is full. Anytime a taxi arrives, all the boys jump up and fight for the new passenger. We are three partially filled cars. After an hour of waiting, a taxi pulls up and body jumps out completly covered up in a dusty black turban. But, I know those runnign sneakers...

Either some toureg has robbed my poor Dutch friend Merijn, or it is the devil himself. I jump out of the cab and fight with the rest of the touts who are only mildly suprised when I grab the turbaned man by the shoulders and kiss him on the cheeks. I hurry him into our car and off we go.

During the next ten hours of driving and then waiting at the border for the guard to return the passports without a bribe (after five hours of waiting, he is convinced we are not going to pay up) I am happy indeed to have a fellow traveller to talk to.

The ride is long. We are stopped every twenty minutes or so at police checkpoints where our sassy smuggling carmates pay off the police each time. I still wonder what these ladies had in those sacks on the roof. At one stop the policeman comes over and appologizes to Merijn and I after pocketing the cash. It adds up pretty quickly and soon the girls are asking us for cash to bribe the police with.

Merijn and I decide to stop in St.Louis for a day or two before continuing on the Dakar. The town is beautiful and lush with a crumbling colonial charm flavor. But the days pass quickly with hot showers, good food, a real bed. I even manage to catch a Yossou N'Dour concert and visit a famous wildlife reserve where I see nothing but hundreds of dead fish, a cat skeleton on the beach and the carcass of a goat.