Postcards from Dakar: Meet me in Saint-Louis, Day 2

The next morning after breakfast and no showers, we piled onto the bus and headed even farther north up the Senegal River (which forms the border between Senegal and Mali) to the Parc National des Oiseaux du Djoudj. Even the bus ride there was like a mini-safari along a dirt road so narrow and precarious at one point that we didn’t think the bus was going to make it. We saw monkeys, lots of families of warthogs, and two huge pythons on the side of the road. The park itself is on the river and is a wildlife reserve for lots of wetlands birds. Pirogue (boat) tours are given by the local park rangers and a nearby private hotel.

It is forbidden to fish and to hunt in the park, which makes it rather difficult for the people of the seven villages enclosed within the park to earn a livelihood. To try and compensate for that, the government (I think?) gave the villagers several pirogues and trained them to be the park rangers so that they could make some money off the tourism. This is why we waited a very, very long time for the local boats to show up instead of taking the hotel boat, which was sitting there empty the whole time we were waiting. There would have been more local boats, but apparently, not that long ago, a villager was found dead in the park. The other villagers blamed the rangers for his death and burned a lot of the boats in retaliation. That was another moment of mixed feelings, when we found that out. It seemed like it was a good thing to support the local people, but the local people don’t seem to be particularly in favor of that kind of support. The tour was a nice leisurely river cruise. We saw lots of birds, pelicans in particular. They would swim around in little groups and dive for fish at the exact same moment, like synchronized swimmers. We also saw lots more warthogs, some huge lizards, and a couple of crocodiles.

At the end of the tour, we bused back to the University and had a very late lunch. After that, pretty much everyone else made an impromptu visit back into Saint-Louis, but I stayed at the university. I had been sort of sick but still functional since Wednesday, but by Saturday night I really needed to spend some time working on getting better. All I had was the obligatory gastrointestinal complaint that everyone who comes here has to have at least once, and I was fine by Sunday morning, but it was really bad timing. I missed getting to spend more time in Saint-Louis, which I desperately wanted to do, eating a dinner that I ordered off of a menu instead of just one of 30 identical meals, and going out dancing afterwards. I did, however, manage to scrounge enough water together to take a bucket shower, so that was a big plus.

On Sunday morning, we packed up and headed back towards Dakar. We took a sort of random pit stop at an old baobab tree on the side of the road. The whole center of the tree was missing, but it was still alive, so that was kind of cool. I’ve heard that baobabs just don’t die, and this one seemed to be living proof of that. We had lunch in Thèis and got back to Dakar in the early evening. Overall, it was a pretty good weekend, but if I get the chance, I’d like to go back and spend a little more time in the city. It seemed like we didn’t quite do it justice.