Why do you go away? So that you can come
back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra
colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you
started is not the same as never leaving.”
-Terry Pratchett-
-Terry Pratchett-
Today was the second last day on Madge and we had only
one more stop on the itinerary before arriving into the big smoke of Dakar and
the end of the journey. I am sad that I
have to say goodbye to people, but after nearly 10 weeks overlanding I am ready
to finish this amazing experience. Time
to get back to my bed, my TV, my friends, my life, well for at least 5 days
before I fly the coop again to Australia for my birthday and my friends, my
family and to blend into a society where for 5 weeks I will blend in, have a
rest from looking ‘different’ and having to work hard at buying things and
watching your back-just to reset my African batteries to then tackle 2014 head
on back in my adopted home, back with the babies and forging my future in
Kenya. Yes, there was a lot to look
forward to and I am actually proud that I have not wished any of my days away
on this trip, no boyfriends to worry about, no phone cards to buy to keep in
touch with said boyfriends and it made this trip about me, for me and not having
to worry about other people and you know what?
I liked it.
We had been told by Youssou that the roads were quite
good all the way to Saint Louis and in a car should take around 6 hours, so on
Madge we were looking at a full day to get there, but after reading LP(Lonely
Planet) it sounded like it was worth the trip.
Saint Louis was not originally on the itinerary, we added it and decided
yesterday to spend the 2 spare nights there after cutting out the Zucchini
portion of the trip and it has all just worked out, which makes a nice change
after some of the changes that we had on the trip. As the days draw to the end, I have started
working out the stats of the trip, the amount of hours on the truck, how many
borders, how many kilometers (Sam and Zoe to provide), how many tins of tuna,
how many chickens consumed… you know the usual stats of a 70 day trip. I’ll provide all the numbers on my last entry
for the trip, but to give you one number I have sat on the truck, on Madge for
308 hours, in 68 days!!!!!! I have
broken up the hours for each section, so that everyone knows how many hours
their bottom also sat on Madge and I think the numbers have freaked a few
people out and it has given me some street cred for the hard core time I have
done, and I deserve the street cred and I will take said street cred as I have
worked hard for it.
We left Toubakouta at 8am and backtracked the 2.5 hours
back to the town of Kaolack for Sam to use the ATM again, food purchases and
then we passed through the town and were back on the open road once again at
10.45am. The wave machine was not
getting any luck early on in the morning, these Senegalese people are a tough
bunch and after Ian and I received yet another ‘bird’ (the finger) from a
teenager, we just stopped waving. Cold Turkey. Stuff em.
We decided that we would only wave to people if they waved first. It was tough as you sometimes make eye
contact with people and the urge to wave was so great, but they stood their
ground and I stood mine and nobody received anything. How sad to finish such a wave fest for the
last 7 weeks with Ian together in a country that either doesn’t like waving,
doesn’t like foreigners or just can’t be bothered because it is just too
hot. The day warmed up pretty quickly
and the scenery was one of desert proportions and you just expected to see
tumble weeds blowing around. It was
arid, it was dusty, it was hot and you wonder how people make a life out here,
but they do somehow but I can only imagine that it is not an easy life and I
guess I would be unhappy as well and would want to wave to fancy foreigners in
a big truck. There was more use of
donkey and carts in this part of the country and they even had their own tracks
off the main highway (which is an excellent idea) and they seemed to be the ‘bush
taxi’s) of the north.
We arrived into a dusty town called Touba at 11.50am and
it was a strange town. It was just as
arid as all the other places we had seen, most buildings were sand colored, the
colour of the desert that surrounds the town, but it was massive, all single
story and then when you least expect it a fancy home with 2 or three stories complete
with air-conditioning units and then the local homes and businesses again. There were unfinished buildings, which isn’t unusual
as that happens all over Africa, but there was just something about the town
that gave it an air of what was a boom town had then lost its income. After reading about the town in LP (Lonely
Planet) it is actually a really important commerce town in the whole country
and also a very religious pilgrimage place as well. Touba is a city in central Senegal.
It is the holy city of Mouridism and the burial place of its founder, Shaikh Aamadu Bàmba
Mbàkke. Next to his tomb lies a large mosque,
completed in 1963. Shaikh Aamadu
Bàmba Mbàkke, commonly known as "Cheikh Amadou Bamba" (1853-1927), is
said to have founded Touba under a large tree when, in a moment of
transcendence, he experienced a cosmic vision of light. In Arabic, ṭūbā means
"felicity" or "bliss" and evokes the sweet pleasures of
eternal life in the hereafter. In Islamic tradition, Ṭūbā is also the name of the tree of
Paradise. In Sufism,
this symbolic tree represents an aspiration for spiritual perfection
and closeness to God. Aamadu Bàmba founded Touba in 1887. The holy site remained
a tiny, isolated place in the wilderness until his death and burial at the site
of the Great Mosque, 40 years later. The Great Mosque was finally completed in
1963 and since its inauguration the city has grown at a rapid pace: from under
5,000 inhabitants in 1964, the population was officially estimated at 529,000
in 2007. Along with the neighboring town
of Mbacké (founded
by Aamadu Bàmba's great-grandfather in 1796), the Mouride conurbation is
Senegal's
second largest urban area, after the capital region of Dakar.
Touba is the holy city of Mouridism.
Aamadu Bàmba Mbàkke, Senegal's most famous Sufi, was more than a
spiritual master; he had a social mission as well, that of rescuing society
from colonial alienation and returning it to
the "Straight Path" of Islam. The city of Touba
played a major role in both these endeavors.
Life in Touba is dominated by Muslim practice and Islamic scholarship. A
major annual pilgrimage, called the Grand Magal, attracts
between one and two million people from all over Senegal and beyond, from as
far away as Europe and America.
Other, minor pilgrimages occur throughout the year. For Mourides, Touba is a sacred place.
Forbidden in the holy city are all illicit and frivolous pursuits, such as the
consumption of alcohol and tobacco,
the playing of games, music and dancing. The Mouride order maintains absolute
control over its "capital" to the exclusion of usual state-run civil
and administrative services. The city constitutes an administratively
autonomous zone with special legal status within Senegal.
Every aspect of its city’s life and growth is managed by the order
independently of the state, including education, health, and supply of drinking
water, public works, and administration of markets, land tenure, and real
estate development. At the heart of the
Mouride holy city lies its Great Mosque, purported to be one of the largest in Africa. Since
its completion in 1963 it has been continuously enlarged and embellished. The mosque has
five minarets and three large domes and is the place where Amadou Bamba,
founder of the Mouride brotherhood, lies buried. The mosque's 87-metre high
central minaret,
called Lamp Fall, is one of Senegal's most famous monuments. The name Lamp
Fall is a reference to Sheikh
Ibrahima Fall, one of Bamba's most influential disciples. The mosque is frequently visited by tourists
and worshippers alike.
As there hadn’t been a lot of lunch opportunities to find
shade and it was almost midday when we got to Touba, we decided to stop here
and have some lunch and we drove past the Grand Mosque and it indeedly lives up
to its name. I took a quick snap from
the truck as the town did not seem too welcoming to us and mosques can be a
little tricky to navigate sometimes as a woman.
We found a small park that had some shade and as we unpacked the truck
for lunch, some people went for a walk to the mosque to take a photo. There was a local guy that came to the truck
offering a tour and also the appropriate covers to wear in the mosque grounds,
but I tell you the heat was just horrific and I could not imagine even walking
in the sun to the entrance of the mosque, which would have only been 800m down
the road, but some people did brave the heat to have a look from outside the
gates and only Helen and Cathy were the only 2 that went inside to have a look
around and they were lucky enough to have been taken under a lady’s wing and
she showed them a few areas inside the mosque which is pretty cool. When they came back they were extremely
sweaty as they had to keep their heads covered whilst inside. We finished lunch and had some left over
bread rolls that we offered to some of the local people that had come to watch,
but some of them declined the bread, even though they looked homeless and
hungry, but who are we to argue and we eventually did find some people who wanted
to take the bread.
We left Touba at 2.10pm and it took us a while to clear
the city limits. It really is a massive
town and influential in the commerce of the country and so much so that they
even had their own petrol stations and a lot of shops and businesses were
called some form of ‘Touba’ even after we had well and truly left the
city. One thing I have noticed about
Senegal besides their unfriendly people is that it is a country full of
rubbish. Trash just litters the road
side, tons of it, all blowing around in the desert winds. It doesn’t smell, it is just empty plastic
bottles, drinking bags and anything else they don’t want they just toss onto
the ground. Senegal is becoming my least
liked country on the trip and that is even with Cap Skirring thrown in as its
diamond in the rough, it earns the country some brownie points, but not enough
to get it out of the dog house. Add the
weather into the equation and it actually doesn’t do too much for me as a
country and the landscape has been so different to what we have seen in the
other 8 countries.
We arrived into our final destination of Saint Louis at
4.45pm. We had to cross a bridge to get
us to the island where the old capital of Senegal used to be located and at the
end of the bridge our hotel shone like a beacon. We were now on the coast and the heat of the
day and the ocean breezes cooled the day down to a bearable temperature and the
second we got off the truck and dodged the street sellers hawking their
touristic goods (which I would take a look at later) when we entered the hotel
we knew we were going to be spending our last 2 nights of the whole trip in
somewhere special. The hotel, and it is
a PROPER hotel, was an important part of the Saint Louis history. Hotel de La Poste has a scrubbed white facade
and with its black-iron balcony and the wood-paneled lobby it promises
historical charm. Dating from the 1850s,
Saint-Louis' oldest hotel was the meeting point for the pilots of the colonial
airmail service. Celebrated pilot Jean Mermoz used to stay in room 219 - the
numerous images on the wall won't let you forget that. The hotel's Safari Bar
is full of colonial flashbacks and can be hard to bear with its nostalgic
memorabilia. It was a unique place, with
a charm all of its own and a sense of history and we were staying here. What a GREAT way to end the trip. Our rooms were just as good as the rest of
the hotel with working air-conditioning, a TV, Wi-Fi in the room and get this
HOT WATER!!! It was HEAVEN.
We were to meet at 7pm for dinner and had just over an
hour to chillax, wash my hair in the hot shower and catch up on some
internetting until dinner. The one thing
that has frustrated me a little was that a time would be set for dinner and
when you got there, people would still be drinking and ordering more drinks not
caring too much for the time or the people who may have been hungry or not
drinking (like myself). So it didn’t bid
to well for me when I came downstairs and there was a bunch of people from the
group already there around tables with chairs and there was no spare chairs to
sit at and nobody made an effort to move to make room, all except Richard and
that drove me nuts to start with (thanks though Richard who copped my rant) and
then they started to order more drinks.
It’s just crappy and I would have thought that Sam would be a little
more on top of things like that and then add my hunger, my tiredness and day 68
to the list and I was a little pissed off.
Zoe picked up on it all and at 7.20pm started to move people who wanted
to go and then the others could follow after, which everyone was happy to move
right up. As Richard calls me at times
like this ‘I was a little fractious’. We
had to exit the hotel dodging the hawkers that were still around and walk a
short block to the restaurant which is still part of the Hotel de la Poste, but
just not on site. It was an outdoor
place alongside the river and with a wonderful view of the lit bridge
connecting the island with the land the restaurant had friendly service and a
good choice of dishes to choose from. It
had something for everyone and I didn’t think the prices were too bad, they weren’t
cheap, but they weren’t super expensive and after asking Zoe about some of the
dishes I decided on an entrée and a main and when my main meal came out in the
form of a beef steak, it was the biggest steak I have seen in a LONG time and
nearly measured from my wrist the bend of my elbow! It was MASSIVE and I knew that I would not
have any food envy tonight as I got stuck into my chunk of meat for dinner. My how I have missed beef. I also lashed out and had a few cocktails and
when the bill came I only ended up paying the equivalent of 30 bucks and that
included the 2 course meal, 2 cocktails, a sprite and the tip. It was a wonderful meal, they served our
group of 12 quite fast and we all enjoyed our meals. I would highly recommend going and having
dinner at Flamingo when in Saint Louis.
It was back to the hotel after dinner to our
air-conditioned rooms, in a comfortable bed with no mosquitos, 24 hour power
and I know for a fact that I went to sleep with a smile on my face
tonight-exactly the same way I had woken up this morning.
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