Isle de Goree

The Baobab Center arranged for me to tour the Isle de Goree today with one of their tour guides. The Isle de Goree is was the last stop for a large number of slaves who ended up in Europe and the Americas. It's about a 20 minute ferry ride from Dakar. My tour guide brought her husband with us. They were both very nice, but made it obvious that they'd rather just be talking to each other very fast in Wolof than talk to me. The husband was fasting, and it was terribly hot today, so he was tired. And my tour guide hadn't felt well all week so she didn't feel like doing much. So, instead of taking me into the museums to narrate them for me and walking me around the island to show me around, she merely gave me money for the admission to first museum and waited for me outside with her husband.

The first museum I went to was the House of Slaves. It was a house that used to be the "point of no return" for many West African slaves. I saw the rooms specified as holding chambers for children, those for young girls, and those for men. It was an eerie place. The second story of the house held a lot of information about the slave trade as well as artifacts such as shackles that were used. In the "welcome center" of the museum, there were many pictures of Bill Clinton, as well as one of Chelsea and Hillary from their visits. There was one picture of G.W. Bush.

After that, we went to get lunch. My guide, Ada, and I both had hamburgers and hibiscus juice to drink (which is a specialty in Dakar; the juice, not the hamburgers). The hamburger was absolutely huge and there were a good number of fries crammed into it, as well as a fried egg. Hamburgers are always served with a fried egg on top (basically, the egg replaces the lettuce and pickles and onions that Americans would eat on a hamburger). It tasted alright, but would have been much better without the egg, with half the fries, and not drowning in ketchup. After lunch, I was given money for another museum and pointed in the right direction. It was the History Museum. It consisted of 10 rooms, with very limited displays in each, except for the religion rooms (one for Islam and one for Christianity) and the room dedicated to the slave trade with were filled with items.

After that, I wandered around the island by myself while Ada and her husband sat on a bench. The people on the island are quite poor and will do anything to get you to buy from them. They're ridiculously persistent and, may I say, a bit annoying. Ada has many friends on the island, and since they had seen me with her earlier, they all insisted that I buy things from them since we're friends by association. They would tell me how stiff the competition is, but that they of course had the best things and the cheapest prices. I ended up buying a pair of earrings from a friend of Ada's for a dollar (she had tried to get me to pay her $20 for a skirt, two necklaces, and a pair of earrings). She was not very pleased with me that I didn't buy more. It was my first lesson in bargaining here. I hate it, but it's really not as bad as I figured it would be. In the end, if you know the appropriate price for what you want to buy, you can get it for that amount. I ended up finding a woman who I liked who actually had nice things, much of what was on the island was not very great quality of course. And I bought a sarong-type skirt that I've been wanting as well as a necklace. Many of the women in Dakar dress up very nicely when leaving their house, but wear sarong-type skirt wraps with a tank top or tshirt around the house. Since I have a limited amount of clothing here, I figured it would be good to keep my clothes clean for going out, and just have a few sarongs to wear when I'm at home.

I also made friends with a guy named Ibrahima. I was weary of him at first, cause I figured he wanted to bring me somewhere so that I could buy something from him like everyone else was trying to do, but that wasn't the case, he was just bored. He's about my age and lives on the island. He walked around with me for a little while as I wandered around. He, like all the Senegalese I run into, was amazed that I'm learning Wolof, and he tested me on how much I know. It was terribly hot today, and after wandering around for a bit, I knew I wanted to cool off, drink some water, and go home. So I met back up with Ada and her husband and we caught the ferry back to the main land.

Now I'm at home, sitting in front of my fan. I'm no longer roasting and sweating profusely, for the first time since 9am (it's 5pm now). After a quick trip to the telecenter across the street to post this and send some emails, I think I'm going to spend the rest of tonight studying French and reading (in English).