Postcards from Dakar: The Beach

A few weeks ago, I finally got to the beach for the first time. As I was preparing to come here, I had heard from several sources that Senegal had great beaches, so I was really looking forward to some sand and sun. Unfortunately, all those great beaches that I heard so much about are not in Dakar. The Dakar coastline is mostly rocky cliffs, which means either no beach at all or beaches with pounding waves. This is good if you’re a surfer, but bad if you’re a swimmer. You’re not even allowed to go into the water on many beaches because the riptides are so strong. Also, some of the beaches are sort of unofficially designated as “work-out” beaches, meaning that they’re packed with guys lifting weights and doing crunches, which is not necessarily the kind of environment that a girl wants to put herself in if she’s clad only in a bikini and shades (or anything, really).

So, if you’re looking for sun and sand in the Dakar area, your best bet is to go up to Ile de Ngor. Ngor is a village sandwiched between the swanky Les Almadies and the traditional Yoff, and there’s an island just a short pirogue ride away. This island has a few small beaches and lots of resorts and houses belonging to rich people, including, I think, Akon. It kind of feels like the Nantucket of Dakar. But it’s only a dollar to get there, and if you cave in to the pressure of the guys working on the beach and pay for a mat-and-umbrella set up, its only another two dollars, so you can totally get the feeling of being at a resort without having to pay for it.

The beaches are really small compared to what I’m used to at Cape Cod and Rhode Island, and I’ve heard that they get really crowded and insane when it gets hotter, but in the middle of March, its still too cold for the locals to have any interest in swimming or sun bathing, so the only people there are the toubabs on vacation and the people trying to sell things to them. Men and women selling scarves, woodcarvings, and jewelry walk from mat to mat, greet you in French and English, and if you show anything even resembling interest, they’ll set up shop at the bottom of your mat and give you a full tour of their wares. I was there with Miranda and we spent probably half an hour talking to a woman selling jewelry. She told us what everything was made out of, and some of it was actually kind of pretty, so we bought things. I can’t remember what I paid, but I know that it was dirt cheap compared to what I would have paid in the states and exorbitantly expensive compared to what any Senegalese person would have been willing to pay.

The beach is lined with little kitchen shacks that sell food and drinks and have tables and chairs on the sand, so we had lunch there too. It was quite lovely. You can watch people fishing on the jetties, which is cool because you know that the seafood that you’re eating is as fresh as it could get. We also saw a guy bring in three huge marine creatures that were probably some variety of shark. That was interesting. No one seemed to be in any rush to bring these into a kitchen and cook them, so I don’t really know what happened to them. One minute, the guy who caught them was showing them off to all the vacationing French families, and the next minute they were gone.

That was a really nice day. I read, I napped, I swam, I got a tan in some places and angry red sunburns in others, and generally had a good time.