We had good friends visiting Senegal and decided to make the trip up to St Louis, the former capital of all French West Africa. The town is built on an island, all pastels, straight streets, uniform buildings, and a sense of one-upon-a-time prosperity and organization.
But St. Louis is crumbling, and everything has moved to Dakar. Time has revealed the super-imposed grandeur as the façade it always was. There is some tourism money, but the town has mostly returned to its roots as a fishing hub. The fishermen here must go to Mauritanian waters to fish- nothing is left off the Senegalese coast.
We spent a few hours roaming the streets in search of a hotel and finally found the perfect- which is to say cheapest- option, with a roof to sit and drink in the crumbling glory all around. Tired from a long day’s travel, we were ready to pass out by 11, but then an eardrum-shattering booming started.
The side streets were thronged with tents to host social and religious gatherings. Ours was no different. The tent that had seemed harmless during daylight hours suddenly exploded with sound.
There seemed to be 5 or fewer people in the tent, but they were making up for their low numbers with sheer religious fervor. They sang their hearts out and pounded drums through speakers big enough to let the whole neighborhood join in listening. The windows rattled, the beds shook. The music constantly tempted us to believe it was over- there were frequent pauses, but these were really just opportunities for the singers to draw deeper breath and more thunderous inspiration. The next phrase after a pause was always shockingly loud. The music was fascinating and haunting, but we were not in the mood for it. We closed all the windows and turned on all the fans, but couldn’t escape it.
Eventually, we gave in and played some Monopoly Deal. Even more eventually, the unbelievably perseverant singers decided to pack up and go home, and we fell into the sweet and deep sleep of the nearly dead.
Travel exposes you to mysterious, foreign rhythms; this is always the best part of it, frequently the funniest, sometimes the most tiring. More than worth it!
