Ile Goree

Goree itself is tiny, less than a kilometer wide and a 3-minute walk wide. But it was picture perfect, with stone buildings mixed with pastel pinks and yellow and fiery red, yellow and purple bougainvillea spilling out everywhere. I get off the ferry, crossed the tiny beach and went in search of a hotel room, but was quickly tailed by a nervous teenager with a terrible stutter, who led one to an artists auberge which proved too expensive. I asked him to leave me because I wasn’t interested in paying his commission and he just laughed and pooh-poohed the very notion of a commission. But he led me to a “keur” recommended by the artist that I would have been hard pressed to find otherwise.

I dropped my bags, grabbed my camera and headed out to find the museum, but ended up down an alley lined with vendors -- I passed them all but the last one, where a little fat girl came running up and telling me to visit her boutique. I asked, laughing, if it was really her shop and she said yes, so I asked how much her necklaces were and she told me 2,000 CFA – a very good price. I was just turning to leave when her mother bustled up, grabbed me by the arm and started plying me with cadeaux. I ended up buying seven necklaces for $20, not a one of which I actually need and all of which will be gifted. I hadn’t even received my change before another vendor was pulling on my arm demanding I come to her stall next. As much as I said no, she just kept tugging at me, unraveling rather ugly batiks and telling me she would sell them for another 5,000 CFA, about $12 and about 4x their value. I walked away with her following and eventually got it that I wasn’t buying, she called me some sort of name I didn’t understand. It was the first of several unsatisfying encounters with unreasonably aggressive vendors, a product of their over-saturation on the island.

I found my way to the museum where a man offered to split his breakfast and we chatted for a few minutes before I entered the museum which was pretty impressive and built right into the existing circular fort. The views from on top were pretty good.

I walked up toward the Maison des Esclaves, a beautiful example of what UNESCO funding can achieve. The building – rose coloured with ancient red bricks and a dual spiral staircase – used he bottom floors for housing “pieces of ebony,” including children and young girls before they were led out a door to a waiting ship and sent off to Brazil or the Americas. The top floor was used as a house, built by one Anna Penin, a signare of mixed heritage who is given rather kind treatment in the women’s museum. The upstairs now contains a rather good exhibit on the slave trade itself, but more interesting were the handwritten signs around the walls, comparing the slave trade to the Holocaust. I don’t know anything about the author’s relationship to the museum or why he thinks people should be reading his posters while at a heritage site. After the maison, I wandered to the beach to find food and ended up eating the most delicious rice with seafood – shrimp, octopus, lotte, dorado. It was divine. After lunch I went to the women’s museum, a pretty surface account of women’s contribution to Senegalese society that seemed not to mention that while they represent 52 per cent of the population, their literacy rate is one-quarter that of men and they don’t – and can’t – participate fully in either politics or religion.

I wandered up toward the castle, hoping for a bit of shade and a breeze, but all I found were ruins surrounded by typically pushy vendors. It seemed every time lane and street was crammed with vendors, all selling the same necklaces, batiks, carvings, masks and bags, none of which I wanted. More than one hissed at me when I refused, but the ultimate was a young woman who’d greeted me earlier in the day and forcibly dragged me to her boutique in the market, where she prattled on about picking something for my mother, my sister, my wife, my boyfriend – “don’t be scared of the price, you’re my sister, you’re my friend” – while displaying the most pathetic and tacky collection of kitschy crap, the stuff made in high quantities from third-quality woods. I gamely picked out a kitschy piece of fabric, figuring it could may be turned into a jokey wrap skirt and a rather ugly batik wrap that could make a good alternative to a beach towel. After much “don’t worry, you’re my friend,” the young woman finally quoted a price of 15,000 CFA, about $50. I was so shocked, I tried to hand the stuff back to her and she kept saying “tell me your price! We’re discussing it! This is how it’s done in Africa!” I told her her starting price was too high, in fact, was insulting and she told me, “How am I to know how much money you have in your pocket?” and I thought, honey even if I had 18,000 CFA in my pocket, why would I spend it all here? Anyway, after much badgering from her and her bitchy girlfriend, I finally told them I’d be willing to pay 2,000 CFA, at which point the girl finally took the things and started packing them away. “What do you think you’re going to get for 2,000?” her friend asked indignantly. Now you know how I feel about hearing your price. I told her I could buy the same things elsewhere for far cheaper and she said fine, go buy them then, as though we were on the schoolyard, so I simply turned away, tossed a casual “merci, eh!” over my shoulder and left, hoping I’d left the impression I wasn’t’ as bothered by the experience as I felt. Even after nine months here, I still have the occasional experience like that that reminds me just how much of an outsider I am to those around me and how I will always be immediately judged on the colour of my skin.

Feeling rather angry, like I wanted to go back and give that girl a piece of my mind, I wandered around the fish museum, too distracted to really take in all the exhibits, which had a distinctly “high school science fair project” feel about them. By the time I left, still not fully cooled down, I took small comfort in the idea that while ultimately I saved myself from spending money I don’t have on things I don’t want and would only have to lug around, this girl lost her first – and I’m willing to bet only – client of the day.

Back at the auberge, I slept for a couple hours, then headed out with my camera to see the sunset. The weather was decidedly damp and chilly and the beach was crowded with people waiting for the boat back to Dakar.

An older, jowly Moroccan man talked at me for a while about how “propre” Senegalese women are and how many interracial mixes here are and how it’s perfectly acceptable to hook up with someone else while traveling without your partner, so long as there are no children at home. A little girl, fat and no doubt related to the girl from the morning, trundled up to ask when I was going to visit her shop. Never, I answered, as I have no money. Fine, how many tresses? No way. Back and forth until she had plaited one braid and I literally pushed her away before her conniving little hands could do anymore. She came back with a little baggie full of rubber bands – the kind that snap your hair off – and tried again this time telling me having my whole head done would be only $5. No. Fine, it’s free if you don’t’ like it. No. And after repeating, “I don’t want braids,” roughly 15 times, she finally flounced away with a cutting “fine, donc!” I bought some bread and headed for bed.

I couldn’t get out of bed when the alarm sounded at 6:30 a.m. – my hope to get up for sunrise – but I was up and out by 8 a.m., when the sun was still rather weak and the beach relatively deserted. I took some photos chatted with the fishermen, then waited more than an hour and a half for the ferry to appear, a very damp and chilly wait. All morning, I was thinking, no problem. I can still get a small car and be on the beach in Toubab-Dialao by 3 p.m. And the travel gods laughed, because it was pushing 5 p.m. by the time I arrived, after a hellish day spent trapped inside a tro tro with three screaming babies – sometimes solo, sometimes in concert, but all the time – squished five abroad sitting by a young punk who actually sprayed perfume under his arms about 20 minutes in the ride. I made a bit of a scene when I got into the van, as I’d been met by a hustler I was convinced was trying to rip me off. He wanted me to pay 2,500 CFA, a price I found rather high, considering Toubab is just south of Dakar. After much back and forth, and zero help from other passengers, who pretended to be mute when I asked if this was the correct fare, I handed over the money and made him write legibly how much I’d paid. I got my revenge on the passengers, sadly, by holding up the van for 20 minutes, when it became clear they’d driven right past my stop. I demanded my money back and insisted they pay for the car going the other direction. Turns out the fare was 700, plus 300 for the bag, not 2,000 and 500 as the asshole hustler had charged. The galling thing about being charged double or triple to ride a minicar is that you’re riding a freakin’ minicar! You sweat, feel hot, tired, cramped, and uncomfortable, just like everyone else. So why should you pay more. And ripping off the whitey who takes public transit is like stealing from a beggar, we’re the ones who can least afford it. Actually, the ones who can least afford it started handing up coins and bills to help me, thinking I couldn’t pay the fair on the next tro-tro.