High winds and high seas

Senegal has been hit by a tremendous storm, its most recent development being that Dakar is cold, with a biting wind whipping sand through the houses and along the streets. I was in the south for ten days or so, initially working and lying by the pool (at the same time) while I checked through the internet what the situation in Guinea looked like. Then I went off for a week to Boucotte, a village on the coast of Casamance, where I thought I would have a lovely relaxing time.

It was quite clear by the first day at Boucotte, when I had already finished two books and was the only person staying in the campement, that I hadn't brought enough to read or to do. I am not someone who can sit down and do nothing, I get fidgety and need to be usefully employed if I am to be relaxed. The young guy working at the guest house felt sad for me, I think, and while the wind whistled through the empty buildings with the sea roaring on the other side of the trees, I ate in silence while this guy sat on the other side of the solitary table and stared at me, just to make me feel less alone. I did try explaning to him that I wanted to be alone, that I had things to think about, but he just laughed, unsure, and carried on staring at me.

By day 2, I was ready to get out of there. I walked the 6 km or so along the totaly deserted but clear white sand beach to the nearest town, Cap Skirring, thinking I would find somewhere to stay in town. But when I was abused on the beach by rastas who accused me of being racist because I didn't feel like hanging out with them (and eventually handing over money or completing marriage vows), I decided enough was enough. I would go anywhere, just as long as it wasn't there.

When I eventually got back to the hotel I saw my escape route: a 4x4 truck which had brought a group of French tourists. After a painful night in which I was made to sit alone with my back to the group, like a naughty school child, by the young guy who clearly doesn't have a clue how to run a friendly guesthouse, I managed to get a lift with the group in the morning. Being being tourists and impressively excited about everything, the first stop was a village school. Across the sandy yard, a fierce wind was blowing.



We sat in a class while the corrugated iron roof rippled and roared in the wind, and the teacher, in a suit made from colourful African wax print fabric, told us how tough it was to run a school in a rural area. Every day, he said, parents would come to the classroom and ask for their sons and daughters to come and help them in the field, planting or harvesting rice. If the teacher refused, the child would never be allowed to come back to school. When an entire generation grows up illiterate, never experiencing school themselves, it has detrimental effects on the next generation.

Luckily the teacher seemed to be ahead of the game, and although the state has failed to provide the class with any books, he had bought one himself and would write up on the board any reading exercises that needed to be done so that they wouldn't get behind. And when he had first started there, 95% of the school were boys. Thanks to going from house to house and asking parents to let their daughters come to school too, that figure is now roughly half and half.

I made some friends at the school while we played around the tree which has the school bell attached to it. It's made out of an old car wheel and gets banged with a stick to call students to class.










Really cool girls with lots of funk.

So that day, in the relative luxury of a 4x4 truck, I was delivered with the French tourists to Carabane Island, my favourite place on earth. There I lay on the beach and read and when the books were finished, I wrote. For two days, because of the wind (which brought the sea up to the wall of the house, so that we were marooned on our own house-shaped island) there was no fish. So Loulou, the only other person in the house, and I made up creative recipes with onions, rice and one aubergine. At last, on the final day, the wind died down and Loulou went fishing. Within ten minutes he came back and threw the net at my feet: fifteen wriggling fish. He and I grilled them on the fire and it was, kind of, blissful.