And here was one of the beds I slept on: open air with chickens walking around, a hard plastic woven mat over uneven bamboo slats. Complete with sandflies and a giant spider that we found earlier in the evening!
Ok, now for the actual activities we did. On Thursday morning we left Dakar at 5 am, taking a sept-place taxi to Tambacounda, a journey that took about 12 hours. We had heard horror stories of the condition of the road and were happy to find that most of it has been paved (expected to be completed in a year or two), but the last three hours of the drive were largely unpaved, and very dusty. Which led to my forehead looking like I had gotten a really bad fake tan. The rest of my face is somewhat naturally coloured only because I was wearing a dust mask.
Upon arriving in Tambacounda, we had to take a 4X4 to Niokolo Koba Park, arriving at our campement at around 10:30. While we were all exhausted, a night-time arrival was an opportune time to see some nocturnal animals, mainly civets and bats, crossing the path of the trucks headlights along the way. Sidenote about campements: they’re organized into individual “houses” where 2-4 people can stay and there is a central open-air covered area where meals are served. The price of a campement bed is about 2500 to 4000 CFA ($6 to $10 CDN) per night, and meals run around 2500 CFA each – definitely a great option since many rural areas have campements available.We spent two days in Niokolo Koba, searching for animals as we drove around for a couple of hours in the morning, returning to the campement for lunch and a rest during the hottest portion of the day, and then heading out for another drive in the late afternoon. While we didn’t succeed in finding the elusive lions that are present in the park, we did find many baboons, antelope, birds, crocodiles, hippopotami, monkeys (including about 8 who live right around the campement), warthogs, and a leopard (unfortunately not really in the wild, it’s in a cage because it was orphaned by poachers 20 years ago and has been raised by humans since then), and a scorpion. The most notable animal encounter was definitely when I spotted a crocodile beside the road but when we stopped the truck he looked dead and was also really far from any water. The guide threw a few stones at him to try to get him to move (we were all safely sitting in the back of the 4X4 at this time) but we got no response even though the stone actually hit the crocodile. So the guide got out of the truck, grabbed a long stick, and poked the crocodile in the tail, at which point he woke up turned his head and snapped his jaws and then scurried off in the opposite direction at which point the guide ran to the truck thanking his lucky stars that the crocodile hadn’t run toward him. We all screamed as this happened, me so loudly that Lies’ mom claimed later that she was more scared of me than the crocodile.
After two days in the park, we spend out third night at a campement in Dar Salaam which is the village right at the gate to the park. That evening we heard chanting and music coming from houses in the village, and upon asking at the campement what was happening, one of the employees led us to the village leaders who allowed us to observe the special ceremony. There were men playing djembes and all of the women were walking in a circle singing verses of the Koran. We were able to dance with them for a while, and then sat down to observe. Sitting near the village children, all of the girls braided the hair of Ellen and myself after touching it tentatively and requesting permission – but I think that the texture of our hair proved more challenging than expected as the braids started to fall out as soon as they were finished. The girls also gave us bracelets and crowded around us until we left – a sharp contrast of generosity compared to the demands for “cadeau, cadeau, cadeau” (gift) that we were met with by children in the more touristy villages later in the week.
Two 4X4s picked us up in Dar Salaam the next morning and we drove to Kedougou, stopping at the market to pick up gifts for the villages we were visiting: candles, matches, soap, candies, and kola nuts. We then continued on to the base of the mountain where the village Iwol is located and prepared our bags for the night, each of us also taking 3 1.5L bottles of water with us, which didn’t leave much room for anything else. We then hiked up the mountain for about an hour and a half.
On arrival in Iwol, kids immediately grabbed our hands and proceeded to be our entourage for the next day. We had some fun with them that night taking turns singing songs and playing with a stuffed animal serpent that another group had left there (Lies and Jonathan very convincingly reenacted the crocodile incident with the serpent, much to the delight of the kids). Iwol is a Catholic village, but like most people in Senegal their beliefs are also mixed with animism (it’s said that Senegal is 95% Muslim, 4% Catholic, and 100% animist). There is a sacred tree in the village where many women and children fell ill after pounding millet under the tree in 1987 and one morning all of their tools were found inside the tree’s root structure, so the village did animal sacrifices to get rid of the demons in the tree. Today the tree stands in the middle of the village, and children are allowed to play on it. Another notable tree in the village is a gigantic baobab which has a trunk circumference of 23.5 m!
It was shocking to arrive in Iwol and see children with distended bellies from malnourishment on every side. Worse still was to see the treatment of one village girl who has a handicap in her legs or feet which makes her walk noticeably differently. This girl immediately latched on to me and I held her hand as we walked into the village, but a young man from the village kept insisting that I let her go because her feet were not good. Later, when playing with all of the kids we encouraged her to join the group but village elders shooed her away, even hitting her at one point with a switch after she sat on one of our knees. While they're happy and playful, life certainly isn't easy for any of these kids.
The next morning we walked down the mountain to arrive in the village of Ibel where we visited a nearby marble deposit where Europeans have been removing large quantities of stone from an area surrounded by poor villages. From what we could understand from the villagers, locals are paid for labour but any other money goes to government in Dakar and the village itself is not paid for the land where the marble is removed.
For the rest of the day we stayed at the home of our guide and had a relaxing day of making baobab juice (bouye) which may be the best beverage on earth. Baobab fruit is very dry when you break it open, and the white fruit comes apart in pieces that contain large black seeds and pink fibrous strings. The fruit can be eaten straight, by being sucked on like a candy but in my opinion the preparation of bouye is a far better usage. The fruit pieces are added to water and then stirred for a very long time until basically only the seeds and fibres are left. It is then strained and thinned with water, adding sugar and pineapple juice to taste. Obviously not having access to pineapple juice, we added pineapple juice mix to ours which gave it an amusing fluorescent yellow colour but it still tasted great. Cheers!
That evening a group of Bissari dancers came to the village to perform a dance for some shepherds who have moved into the village to graze their livestock during the dry season when there is little vegetation further north. The dancers also encouraged us to join them and you should all be prepared that when I return my dancing style may involve a lot more random leg and arm movements. Look forward to that. Unfortunately the dancing stirred up a lot of dust which gave us the only big scare of the trip. Ellen had serious difficulty breathing during and after the dance but after getting her laid down for about fifteen minutes she started to feel better. There was a doctor in the village, but the nearest hospital would be in Tambacounda, which was about a 4 or 5 hours away so we were really feeling our isolation and helplessness when we had nothing to do to help her except pray.
Once Ellen was better, a few of us headed to the village mosque where many villagers were staying up all night to pray during the night of 1000 prayers, an annual religious celebration. It was there that we gave our gifts to thank the village for housing us, and in return the village elders prayed a blessing over us and then thanked us in French and English! We then headed back to our nice comfy beds (see beginning of blog) but I was so tired that I actually slept quite well.
For our final full day of activities we drove to Dindefello, a village famous for its nearby waterfall and installed ourselves at the campement there. We then headed out to hike to the waterfall, and I was so busy watching my feet so as not to fall that I didn’t realize when we had arrived at the falls. This picture does not do them justice, but the falls looked like something designed for a luxury resort: water trickled over a large section of rock cliff which was conveniently terraced so we could walk up and sit under the falls and at the bottom a large pool of water for swimming, surrounded by rocks which were at convenient angles to form lounging chairs. Oh, and did I mention that we could hear chimpanzees screaming in the trees and Jonathan even saw trees shaking from their movement? Ya, it was pretty much paradise. And I swam in the water even though my parasitology friends are all shaking their heads right now. But come on, it was worth it . . .
That afternoon we walked up to a village on top of the mountain to visit it and asked our guide before we left if we would need flashlights, but he insisted not. However, upon the descent in the dark on loose and jagged rocks we started to realize that maybe it would be a good idea to have flashlights anyway. Moral of the story: always be prepared, just like the Cub Scouts.
Speaking of which, I was prepared with a pretty handy assortment of medical supplies, which made me the trip doctor (providing medical advice and treatment on about 6 or 7 different occasions). Take note all you med school kids, observe that everyone in my group is still in good health, and be proud of me.
After spending the night in Dindefello we visited the village in the morning and then began our trip back home, arriving in Tambacounda that night. This day of travelling was the toughest for me in the trip, as at every turn when we had to pay the 4X4 drivers they were demanding more money than had been the agreement, the same happened again when we hired at sept-place to go to Kedougou, and then on arrival in Tambacounda we agreed to hire a sept-place to go to Dakar, but after walking with us to our hotel, he demanded half of his payment in advance to return the next morning but wouldn’t give us anything as security. Added to this was the large numbers of kids in Tambacounda who demanded money from us at every turn. It is exhausting to be regarded not as a person but just as a source of money. And it made me reflect on our week of giving gifts to villages as was advised by our guide. In villages where we stayed the night, gifts seemed natural as a gesture of thanks, but in some of the other villages we just walked through handing out goods and didn’t even have time to visit with villagers – obviously just supporting the notion that we’re there only to give handouts. However, the staff at the hotel where we stayed in Tambacounda were incredibly helpful, helping us to find a new sept-place and a place to buy sandwiches – both much appreciated after an exhausting day of travel.
And finally, it was back to Dakar, leaving from Tambacounda at 5 am and arriving in Dakar at about 4 pm after sitting in traffic outside of Dakar for 2 hours (this traffic jam is consistent and incredibly frustrating as it takes about 2 hours to drive 30 km). And that was the end of my week. Our group is planning another trip now to the Cassamance region from May 1-7, and I’m also heading to Togo for the Rotary District Conference from April 16-23, but until then I’ll be staying here in Dakar.
