trying to fill my time - a visit to the market

Well today I should have been in Jeddah, at the start of a tour of Saudi Arabia, but like most other trips planned for this year, it was cancelled and I am spending this holiday period at home in Senegal.  Fully aware that things could be a lot worse (I could be in the UK... ) and that I therefore cannot complain, but also aware that this is the first time in my working life that I have 'wasted' leave from work by staying at home.

We can still travel around Senegal, but with a recent spike in cases (78 new cases reported today - not many in a country of 17 million, but much higher than we had been seeing until around a month ago), the government has closed the beaches, gyms and swimming pools, prohibited all live music and large gatherings, and required all entertainment venues (including restaurants and bars) to close by 11pm.  So a recent idea to take the bus to St Louis to see the Christmas parades was thwarted, and there's little to do here in Dakar right now.

However it occurred to me that I had never been to the big HLM market - the best place to buy fabric, and somewhere a foreigner can walk around without being hassled in the way that they are in the centre of town, although pickpockets and opportunistic thieves are apparently common.  So I went there this morning, the market within walking distance from home at this relatively cool time of year - carrying nothing except a little money well-hidden in a tight jeans pocket under a long Tshirt.  No camera!

I managed to find the famous fabric section, and looked in particular at the various wax fabrics on sale.  Suddenly there was a bit of a commotion in the corner of the square I was in, with a few young men running into the square.  "A battle" I heard someone say, but the young men looked reasonably happy and we all went back to what we'd been doing.  Not long afterwards, however, when I was browsing along one of the narrow, twisting alleyways of the market, it started to feel a bit tense.  People kept looking back in the direction I'd come from (although I could see nothing of interest there), and some were packing up some of the wares they had out the front of their stalls.  I couldn't find out what was going on, as no-one around spoke French and I have only around ten words of Wolof.

It seemed to calm down again, and I continued browsing, but then noticed people packing up their wares again, and I was beckoned to the back of one stall.  Whilst I was there, quite a number of young men ran past, and I noticed that many of them were carrying lumps of broken paving stones in their hands.  But then they passed, and the hand gestures showed me that I could go back out into the alleyway.  As I continued, however, I could see that people were still packing up, and looking anxiously along the alleyway.  Some stall-holders were pulling down the shutters, and locking up - and again I had to duck into a stall as some stone-carrying youths ran past.  I heard someone refer to lacrymogene (tear gas in French - I guess there's no Wolof word for that) - it clearly was time to either find my way out of the market or persuade someone to shelter me behind their shutters.  I saw a local woman try (and fail) to persuade a stall-holder to let her hide inside, so decided to leave, and eventually found my way out to the main road.

There I saw stones all over the place, barricades lying on their side, and heavily-armed riot police around.  No smell of tear gas, however, and no sign of all the young men I'd seen running through the market earlier. 

Talking to the security guard on my building, and checking an online local newspaper, I later discovered that this had been part of an ongoing dispute between the (unlicensed) street-vendors and the authorities who kept trying to 'move them on' from the places where they tried to set up.  There had (at some point) been an exchange of stones and tear gas from the two sides, as well as tires set alight.  It seems that I had picked an interesting day to visit the market although, perhaps fortunately, had missed the main part of the action!

trying to see owls

With 12 days of annual leave still to use up (or lose) before the end of December, and international travel still being so difficult, it seemed like a good time to travel within Senegal - after all, there was a waterfall down south that I hadn't seen, and a few birds that had eluded me so far.  So I contacted the best-known birding guide in the country with a list of the birds I most wanted to see (plus the waterfall) and asked what he could do.

He responded very quickly with a suggested itinerary and price, which I accepted, so a few days later he turned up in the hired 4x4, and we set off on the long journey south.

The first stop was at the lodge in Wassadou on the River Gambia.  I spent a few days there on my own just over a year ago, and to be honest the guide didn't really show me anything that I didn't find myself last year, but still it is a nice place to spend a few days and this year the hippos were close to the lodge.

From there we went further south, via Kedougou to Dindefelo, a small village only 7km from the Guinea border, famous for its waterfall.  He told me that he might change the itinerary planned for the return, omitting the night in Kedougou.  I queried this, said I thought that was a known spot for one of the owls (top of the 'wanted' list I'd shared with him).  He wasn't aware of this, but admitted that he hadn't in any case brought a spotlight (without which you cannot see owls after nightfall, and clearly he didn't know of any daytime roosts).

By this time he was starting to complain about joint pain, grimacing as he tried to make certain movements.  He admitted to me that he had been suffering from some kind of arthritis-like affliction since April, for which he'd had numerous tests and tried various medicines, but so far without a diagnosis or anything to cure it.  He'd decided to take me on as a client so as to see whether he could guide a trip though the pain - and it was becoming apparent that he could not.

On the morning of the walk to the waterfall, for which a local guide (from the village) is compulsory, he backed out half-way there, telling me that the pain was too great and he could not continue.  For this particular walk it didn't matter so much - there may have been some Bar-breasted Firefinches around, I suppose, but probably no owls...

The waterfall was pretty, and I managed a quick swim in the pool (although I didn't stay in for long as the water was really cold!), and wandered slowly back to the village.

Late afternoon, the scheduled time for the next bird walk, the guide suggested that if we walked really slowly, he might be able to cope.  But to see the nightjars we should have been climbing up the escarpment, not meandering about near the lodge at a snail's pace.  Early the next morning he called my phone and told me to get up and meet him near the car as an owl was calling.  It was indeed calling, from high up in a tree, but without a spotlight we couldn't see it.

After breakfast he told me that we would have to abandon the trip as he could not continue - so we started the long (two-day) drive home.  He also told me not to worry about the money - that I would be reimbursed.  But when the conversation turned to the detail of the reimbursement, it was not an easy one.  He started by asking me how much money I thought I should get back.  I told him that the simplest way of calculating this seemed to me to be to use the number of days; I'd paid for 12 but would be back on day 8, therefore was owed for 4 days - one-third of my holiday and therefore I expected to get one-third of my money back (being $600).  Oh no!  The vehicle - by far the most expensive element of the trip - had been hired (and paid in advance) for the full trip, and he would not get any refund for that.  Plus he had miscalculated when he priced the trip originally and included nothing for himself.  He started to go into the specifics of the cost of different elements and I interrupted to ask him how much he thought I should be reimbursed.  $300, he said.

I had some really mixed reactions, as on the one hand he had been dishonest by not being upfront about his physical condition when I contacted him, not giving me the choice as to whether or not to take a risk on his health (which I wouldn't have - there's another guide I could have used), and I was also conscious of his failing to bring a spotlight for the owls.  But on the other hand, he was in a lot of pain with a condition that the doctors had so far been unable to properly diagnose and cure, and which might stop him from ever working again, at least in his specialist field.  He had also told me that with the virtual halt in tourism to Senegal resulting from the pandemic, he had not worked since March.  So I finally told him I'd take a refund of $200 - at which news he cried.  I wasn't sure whether he was crying in gratitude for my generosity or in frustration with my lack of generosity, and still have conflicting thoughts as to whether I should have held out for the $600 or let him off completely.