The residue of an unspecified ritual and journeying to no end

I’m standing on the beach in the north west of Saint Louis, pulling my shawl tighter around my head as the north atlantic gusts try their best to whip it away. The shoreline is littered with the waste from food production; the gulls furiously skawk and flap trying to fill their stomachs with fish entrails. Chicken heads and feet punctuate the dirty sandy, and a dead goat is unceremoniously flung into the tideline. The fisherman’s nets indiscriminately trawl the ocean and any species determined unfit for consumption are tossed aside, there is no place for animals with no economic value here I realise when stepping over a hammerhead shark on my way to the shore.

An hour ago I was sitting with my guide taking a coffee in the WAAW courtyard, as he tells me that ‘maybe we can find some magic, anything is always possible’ but what I’m hearing now on this soiled beach is a cold dark reality that the fisherman need to face.

 

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Heading out from WAAW towards the river he explained that once we cross the bridge from the island to the peninsular we’ll not only been crossing neighbourhoods, but ethnic boundaries. ‘all fishermen are Lebou, and all Lebou are fishermen’.

 

Guet Ndar, the Lebou settlement, is stationed on a landmass jutting down from the Mauritian border, held between the arm of the senegalese river to the east and the turbulent water of the north atlantic to the west, the waters creating the boundary and bounds of the fisherman’s lives.

 

A sharp left turn after the bridge takes us into the heart of the fisherman’s village. Widely cited as the most densely populated area in the world, my guide informs me that 70% of the population are under ten. The evidence to this fact is immediate – children tumble out of the stone and corrugated metal shacks, flooding the streets with their (creative) games. Their resourcefulness is completely charming, a tightly bound ball of shopping bags becomes a ball, a loop of string thrown over a compadres waist turns the yarn into a pirogue and the street into river. Unfortunately it’s incredibly difficult to observe with any anonymity; as soon as I’m spotted in the street the alarms go up ‘toubab toubab’ (a west african terms for a person of Caucasian decent, ‘whitey’ if you will) and children from all end of the intersections rush in a crush around me. I learn quickly that the biggest threat to my camera equipment isn’t theft, but grubby fingerprints.

 

Many draw parallels between Guet Ndar and Calcutta, and talk about this village as a place of destitution, but the impression of poverty is not so simplistic. A glance upward above the crumbling brickwork shows the house  are crowned with television satellites. It’s not unusually for each dwelling to have four LCD televisions, one for each wife, each in her own separate room.

 

Progress is slow walking through the streets, and my guide looks impatiently back as more children have thronged around my waist. Every child has the look of thrill and daring in their eyes as they shake my hand, grinning at their friends. For a small amount of time ‘touch the toubab’ seems more popular than football.

 

Once we make it to the beach my guide begins to explain the dark side of life. What you saw there is happy children, but.. the population is growing too fast, the houses can’t handle the extra floors built on top, the land is eroding into the ocean, it won’t be long until their graveyard is washed away, but they won’t move, they won’t move away from their ancestors

I look past the guides face to see the fisherman coming ashore. As soon as the boat reaches shallow water the boat is swamped by the wives and stripped off all its meat within seconds, leaving the bones of the bare pirogue free to return to the ocean for another catch.

 

 

The awful truth is that the water that feeds them is also consuming the land they live on.

However the biggest threat isn’t the world around them but their own bodies, their genetic make up. Their decision to isolate themselves has created a muddy gene pool, and birth defects are becoming increasingly common. Medical professionals have tried to explain the dangers of choosing a partner closely related to them, but instead they believe the children are possessed. They lock them inside, and believe only a powerful charm from a marabout has the ability to heal them.

 

Seeing illness and reading possession has a thick sticky history, and an even darker present with many vulnerable people continuing to meet a more violent end than these clandestine children.

(2nd photograph of myself with the children taken by Petra Hudcova http://petrahudcova.com )

 

We pack into a taxi and ask to go to the end of the road.

Actually, we request to be taken to the end of life.  The word sticks between my colleagues teeth slurring voie to vie. Our french needs more chewing.

 

The taxi grumbles along the path north bound, towards the Mauritanian border, the car-boot lock broken flying open over every bump. However this newly christened ‘road of life’ doesn’t last long and the path quickly dissolves into sand. We pay the driver and begin the rest of the journey on foot.

A skinny horse tethered between the acacia trees eyes us lazily as we stride out towards the North Atlantic. Towards the shoreline juvenile crabs skitter across the sand, scouring the oceanfront for carrion, their work leaving a multitude of furrows in the wet ground transforming it into the texture of elephant skin.

 

One mile up the beach something in the high tide line catches my eye; oval, leathery, a turtle shell bleaching in the Senegalese sun.

I have to use this.

I want to be a turtle.

This light hearted desire bubbles within me.

To feel what it’s like to have a shell, to transform into the turtle and take on it’s virtues. Sometimes with the street sellers clamouring for my attention I want to be able to tuck my head in, and escape into a impenetrable fortress.

Although this animalistic transformation has it’s roots in a more animistic tradition than what I’m here to research, this small action really capitalises on the immediacy of seeing something inspirational, and testing a work right there and then. I simply can’t help but play with it, it’s a beautiful object.

The heavy shell forces my movements into a slow uncanny trudge, leaving my own deep gauges in the sand, obliterating the fine lines of the crab.

 

I’m a strange human turtle.

Here the Saharan breeze is accompanied with a flocking of fine sand particles that seem to settle in every mechanical and organic crevice. I begin to sweep the sand from my room and break out in a sweat. Such a tiny act of physical labour makes my head light, maybe I really need to think about the way I expend energy in this 39 degree heat. By my third day the malaria pills create a nausea that eats away at my stomach, the heat makes me faint. I should have drank more water. If I’d reached for the water bottle first before my camera perhaps I’d not be limited to writing from bed now.

 

I’ve learnt the hard way that a regular cup of tea is not adequate hydration.

 

So while I’m upping my water consumption to 5 litres a day to re-hydrate my shrivelled organs, let me share the photographs I’ve taken the last couple of days, a few postcards if you like, from Saint Louis.  Isn’t the light gorgeous here?

 

 

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It’s the night of my first day in Saint Louis, but I feel like I’ve been here a week already. Maybe it’s because I’ve slipped in and out of consciousness so many times in the last 32 hours.

 

My arrival in Senegal coincides with the Islamic New Year. It is marked by flamboyant festivities in the street, turning my first evening in Saint Louis into a phantasmagorical swirl of sequins, wigs and shimmering make up.

The custom to cross-dress on Tamkharit has developed over generations of Senegalese children and this night does not disappoint. The streets are flocked with young girls with white chalk beards, boys in sparkly bustiers and men in full drag regalia, dancing and chanting in crowds that quickly swell and surge to the beat of bucket drums and disperse just as swiftly.

The carnival atmosphere can be liken to Mardi Gras or gay pride, however unfortunately despite homophobia being a recent import from western culture, it’s now throughly entrenched into Senegalese law.  An interesting result of this persecution is that involvement in a homosexual relationship is practically unthinkable, allowing same sex friends freedom to show a great deal of affection for each other, without any questions about their sexuality being raised.

Swarming around me, boys in sparkling dresses dance chaotically with each other before exploding into giggles and run off down the street hand in hand.

I watch them disappear between the flickering street lights, as a rising chorus of beats and bellows signals another wave of revellers approaching. Swallowed by the jostling crowd, I’m carried with the current, before a towering man in costume breaks through the wall of people. Swathed in leafy cargo netting, dishevelled wig barely clinging to his head, his erratic movements split the crowd, scattering the onlookers as they giggle and trip to move out of the way of his wildly swinging limbs.

This ritualistic blurring of gender boundaries is a subject I’ve been fascinated by in my exploration for the liminal. The strange uncanny incarnations I’ve witnessed on the streets of Saint Louis this evening has been thrilling to behold and will no doubt influence my practice here.

 

First photograph by Kateljne Schiltz www.flickr.com/photos/dofrek

Second, Third and Forth by Raoul Ries, a fellow artist in residence at WAAW Centre for Art www.raoulries.com

I step out the airport taxi on to a sandy street. Sand! I know I grin, I’ve never lived anywhere where the city streets are sandy, and the exoticism thrills me.

It’s now 3am, but the city doesn’t sleep. The roads are populated with street sellers, garnering attention for their wares; small carts of fruit pilled with oranges and bananas, and petit tin nescafe stands with hand painted logos.

Arriving at Hotel Via-Via my only desire is to sleep, but the Senegalese night has other ideas. It’s pressing a dank oppressive heat, and a cold shower offers only temporary appeasement. Restless in the dark I grapple with the button on the standing fan, and it offers just enough relief for me to drop off for a couple of hours.

 

I’m starting to rethinking my commitment to the idea of incorporating a sweat lodge scenario into my work. But that idea belongs to another place, I’m here in pursuit of the old West African magic that survived and evolved through the French colonisation. I’m on a quest for the icons, amulets and rituals that have woven their way into daily life of todays Senegalese, distorting the orthodox Islamic religion that now dominates much of West Africa.

My inquiry begins in the next morning with a lengthy taxi ride from Dakar to Saint Louis. Five hours north of the capital, close to the border of Mauritania, Saint Louis was the first French settlement in Africa, once a trading port for ambergris, hides, and slaves, and now the seat of my investigation.

 

We are barely 2 mins from the hotel coming upon a roundabout when a short wide man roosting on its perimeter jerks up and signals us to pull over. It’s clear from the smart dark uniform stretched over his chest that he is an Official in some capacity, and immediately requests to check the luggage. The driver steps out as official struts around the car, words are exchanges quickly in Wolof, then a hand full of notes are pulled from the glove compartment. Our bags are not checked.

‘El Hadji,’ I murmered softly..

‘Yes?’

‘Corruption is a big problem in Africa, isn’t it?’

‘Oh no’ he said loudly, sucking on his pipe. ‘It’s no problem at all. If you want to bribe someone just go ahead and do it’. 

 

The fatigue of my journey soon hits me, but sadly I’ve no head rest to lie on. Only the driver has this luxury, and his has a small fire extinguisher taped to the back, maybe if I had more energy this would concern me. My head flops against the side door window and I witness a flickering stream of African images:

Women swathed in bold patterns carrying great bowls of goods balanced their heads, their swaddled infants strapped to their backs. A young man coercing a horse and cart backwards down the road, the geldings feet forced into a slow reluctant moonwalk. The thick trunked baobab trees, each branch blooming into a storks nest. Goats, sheep and a mud bathed pig grazing lazily between stalls erected from sticks, selling fruits, meat, and as we travel further north, baskets, clay pots and nuts.

We past mile of men working in a trench parallel to the road, wielding pick axes with such strength as mirages flicker and undulate on the road in the mid day heat.

I spot one man working in a woollen bobble hat, a trickle of sweat runs down my back.

The traffic swells as we near the city of Saint Louis, the waters of the Senegal river lapp along the road edge, a bridge, another, a right turn at the women selling clementines on the corner, and we arrive at WAAW Centre for Art.