Yesterday, I wished upon a baobab tree

No day is predictable here and yesterday, detoured from scuba because of high waves, I ended up weaving through the small paths of a local Lebou fishing village on the shores of Plage (beach) Ngor. The Lebou are their own ethnic group but I think somehow they are related to the dominant Senegalese ethnic group, the Wolof, because they supposedly speak their own dialect of Wolof (the national language in Senegal with French as the official language). But I'm curious as to how it manages to survive linguistically with the dominance of Wolof. But that's for another day.

Now, as little ants crawl across my keyboard, I'll try to retell the story of the Lebou as it was told to me. Our guides began by drawing a map of Africa in the wet sand telling us that this first Lebou village on the farthest tip of West Africa was formed 600 years ago, "the only thing next is America." They're all fishermen and each family has its own specific fishing technique with the one example given to us where the spiritual leader who talks to the pelicans, "they talk like this 'sshshhbshssh' just like someone would talk French or Wolof and then we all rev our motors and follow the pelicans out to sea where we lay down our nets." When they come back to shore with the fish, they let the pelicans feast until taking the catch (tuna, eel, octupus are a few that I saw) to a collaborative where it's weighed, refridgerated, and sold to people from all over who come to buy the "good and cheap fish of the Lebou."

"You can go off on your own and sell your fish the hotels, any hotels, the Europeans, or you can go someplace else and sell, but then you are on your own if anything happens to your boat or to you, you have to only help yourself. Where here if my motor is not working I can take it in and they will help fix it. Or if my family is sick, they will take care of them," our guide explains the collaborative system of the village.

The boats are made out of two different kinds of wood (a fromagerie tree and another that I didn't catch the name) found in the Casamance (the southern region of Senegal). First they take the tree trunk and chip away the middle and then each day during a month or so they take a bucket of water and splash it in the inside so eventually it will hollow out, "you see we don't have machines like you, so this is the way we do it." Then they nail the top piece to the bottom and anchor it just off shore so the wood can expand. Three times a year they have races with other Lebou villages.

The Lebou are both muslim and animist. It is pretty common in Senegal and in West Africa for people to combine both their traditional religious beliefs with the "colonizer's" religion. One of the aspects of this for the Lebou is their sacred baobab tree where spirits and perhaps even the ancestors live. This is the baobab I said a prayer under wishing for the good health of my family closing my eyes and dropping my flower stem over the locked gate.

We paid our dues to our guide and to the village (because that's how things work in Africa) by buying a half-sac of grain to be put in the community grainery. Then we hitched our ride in a car rapide back to Dakar.

Hardly noticable until once your inside it, I did appreciate the feel of this little village with everyone greeting each other as they traversed the small paths, the lack of visible trash, the good smells of breaking-the-fast food wafting out of houses and from little outside cooking pots. And that it was calm and people seemed happy with children running about, the elders sitting calmly in the center chatting and saying their prayers, women resting in the shade. Our guide liked to keep repeating the authenticy of the village and though I doubt his words more so because I struggle to imagine that anything is really authentic anymore, it was worth the price of grain for a tour.