Cachiouane, Cassamance, Senegal
My non-airconditioned room in the impleuvium with a circular courtyard and slanted roof for the rain to fall into during the rainy season wasn’t actually too bad. The animals started waking up around 6. I could hear goats and sheep calling out in the pre-dawn light. The stars last night were incredible since the island didn’t have electricity and the solar lights that most households rely on were few and far between. The Milky Way shown brightly and I spotted the Big Dipper on its side and Orion.
The round building called and impleuvium was constructed by hand and has 8 rooms around the courtyard.
Breakfast was fresh baguettes from the baker in the house next door. He has an outdoor wood-fire oven and makes mini-loaves of French bread. Instant coffee and sugar cubes and powdered milk is the norm and Titina cut open a soursop for us before we took a group photo and got onto the boat back to town. Michel drove us and two other villagers to the Elinkine. If they want to take the public boat off the island it has to be full, meaning 30-40 villagers also have to want to go, so a lot of the 700 people who live on the island hitch a ride with the hotel boat, which leaves whenever guests are coming or going.
Michel drives the Campenment Sounka Chez Papis motorized canoe.
Titina showed us the women’s garden last night. It’s surrounded by a chicken wire fence to keep the animals out and each family has a plot. It’s the end of the dry season and not much was still growing but we saw turnips, tomatoes, mango trees, soursop, and white and red bissap, which looks like a weeds and is used to make juice and cook with.
We stopped by some of Titina’s relatives’ house. Two young women had a baby girl named Marie. Titina took the baby who eventually peed on her. The baby wasn’t wearing a diaper or any pants, likely to make clean up easier since it didn’t seem like there would be money for diapers or anywhere to buy them. We were offered (but declined) tea made on a metal stove over coals by a woman also named Marie who was undoing her corn rows.
The man of the house looked to be in his 50s or 60s. His French was not as good as the hotel staff, but our guide Paco said that unless Senegalese people have interaction with foreigners or international business, they don’t practice their French since they speak Wolof or Jola or another local language with their family and friends.
Paco took us on a tour of the village, which included stops at two sacred wells that never dry up, even in the dry season. The wells are safe-guarded from the pigs, cows, sheep and goats that roam free by a stick fence. Legend has it that a man from the very north of Senegal had a vision of a light in the south that he was compelled to find. He dug wells by hand along the 2,000 KM journey including the two in Kachouwne. People come to drink out of the calabass fruit bowl and wash themselves. The calabass is a green fruit the size of a watermelon that grows on bushes and looks like it has no business hanging from the branches rather than sitting on the ground. The fruit is cut in two and dried to make bowls that are sometimes used as drums. As a symbol of respect for the sacred well, people leave their shoes outside the gate when they go in to pour water on themselves and drink.
Awa, Youssou, Modou and Titina welcomed us with drumming and dancing on the beach.
We finished our day back on the hotel bar patio where we play a dice game and mancala with the hotel staff. Their uncle owns the hotel and the 6 of them take care of it. Their French is good since they interact with foreigners all the time at their 11-room hotel. Youssou had a bum right leg that’s smaller than his left and ends in a stunted, curved foot. Michel drives the boat. Awa and Titina, run the kitchen and bar. Modou and Samba play cards and hang out while they’re waiting for the rains to come back. They’ll work in the rice fields until they go back to school in the fall.
