DECEMBER 24, 2018 MONDAY – LISBON
“Don't care too much"
Le palais, and the narrow alleys of Fes are behind us, on the other side of the Straits of Gibraltar.
Outside the tall louvered windows of our simple room at Residencial Geres are the plazas and wide avenues of Lisbon. Sometimes the Travel Gremlins get it right. They, and the minions and algorithms at TAP Portugal Airlines have turned our two-hour layover into a 24 hour stopover, 12 of them in daylight, in one of Europe's most beautiful cities.
Last night our first ever taste of Portugal was cold beer, a delectable ham and cheese omelet, crisp pomme frites, and chocolate mousse. Around us is a language as sibilant and soft as Arabic is angular and sturdy, even though Portuguese owes many words and sounds to that language. The jjjj and zhzhzh endings on words disguise their Romance Language roots, add an almost Slavic cant, unearned, and misleading.
Late in the morning our free (“but tips accepted…I have to feed my dog”) guide, Luiz (draw that zhzhzh way out) tells us Portuguese can understand much of their close Romance Language cousins, Spanish and Italian, but Portuguese is a mystery to speakers of those languages. Then Luiz smiles. One of his themes during our 4 hours together is ‘We are not Spanish.’
He leads us up and down the hills of the city, ending at the promenade along Lisbon's ocean-sized harbour. The city was founded 3,000 years ago here by Phoenician sailors seduced by this harbour, but little of Lisbon is over 250 years old. Destroyed one morning in 1755 by an 8 point something earthquake and tidal wave, the city was rebuilt from scratch. It is a walkable, stunning expanse of 18th and 19th century buildings, wide avenues, squares, and parks parsed out in a gridwork overlaying the rumpled topography. High on the hills are some winding alleys of the old Lisbon on sturdier bedrock, high above the waves. They're for next time, inked in, for next Spring.
We graze on the run, breakfast a moving feast of international calories, Italian cappuccino and thick Germanic apple cake, then flaky French custard tarts, foods of a cosmopolitan city. The tastes and faces of the city are European, Asian, African, both north and south of the Sahara, some gifts of Portugal's once world-wide empire, some attracted by the beauty, affordability, and tolerance of the city.
“Don't care too much" about unimportant things is our motto, says Luiz. Those unimportant things include race, skin color, religion, drug use. “You may recognize some of the smells here. We have decriminalized using marijuana and other drugs. Growing is ok. Selling is a serious crime.” I do not tell Luiz that as I stepped off the bus from the airport, a guy whispered in my ear “Grass? Heroin?”
By 6 we find a place to rest our feet--- in Lisbon Airport. 7 hours later we meet Ruth in the immigration line in another airport, far south, back in Africa, Dakar, Senegal’s spiffy new international airport. We came through here a year ago, on its opening day. At 10 pm that night the TAP check in lady tells me “il y a une problème": I do not have a ticket. The one in my hand has been cancelled. “On ne sait comment.” Life marooned in Senegal may have its attractions, but it's midnight and they elude me. Flurries of neatly dressed officials waving yards of printouts, and my passport, save me from finding out. They scoot me onto the plane just before take-off.
I have no good memories of Dakar International, but keep an open mind, as we face 7 sleepless hours.
It's 1am. Our flight to southern Senegal leaves at 08:00. Entertainment is in short supply, but at least there are chairs, and a café. I sign away title to our house in exchange for a toasted ham and cheese baguette. Then, about 6am, butt-weary and droopy-eyed, we get a frisson of excitement, way too déja vu excitement.
The Travel Gremlins have upped the ante.
The helpful lady at fledgling Air Senegal pounds keys, tosses tarot cards, polishes her crystal ball, shakes her head, and apologetically murmurs that NONE of us have tickets back north to Dakar on January 6 (to catch our flights across The Pond to North America). Moussa, our travel agent in southern Senegal, has not purchased the tickets we paid him for. This is surely a late night, sleep-deprived hallucination. Ruth has a more pessimistic---and probably more realistic---explanation, but there's nothing we can do at 6am on Christmas morning.
This news was not on the list I sent to Santa.
Stay tuned.
DECEMBER 25, 2018 TUESDAY – DIEMBERING, SENEGAL DAY 1
“Manger la lasagna en Afrique…c’est pas façile!
We beat the Travel Gremlins to southern Senegal.
‘BOB’ pops off the sign attached to the guy in the yellow airport vest. Annie, our host from 2017, has no room, but has come through with a car and driver to get us out to her village of Diembering, and our digs with her neighbor, Massimo.
The sands of the Sahara peter out just north of Senegal. This is ripe, melon-green Africa, and its rind of gold, miles of empty beaches. Massimo's ‘La Casa' sits where green meets gold, a ten minute walk through the dunes to where Africa slips across the sands into the sea.
Massimo is shirtless, up to his elbows in flour, kneading dough on a huge smooth wooden table. “fasciando la lasagne, je fais la lasagne”, and more dough goes through the pasta maker (“c'est de ma mère”) again and again until light shines through the long wide ribbons. Dough and flour cannot hamper Italianate semaphore, signaling over French vowels. I leave English at the door, save it for these daily ramblings. “It is one kilo of flour and a dozen eggs, nothing else” and arcs of flour baptize our entry into La Casa, now our casa for a dozen days.
We walk across the sand, past a well and stripling palm trees, to two of 4 whitewashed rooms in the one-story guest house protected from the African sun by a wide veranda and thatch roof. There are heavy doors facing east and west, always open to catch the breeze and the sound of surf from the ocean and draped with cloth to signal their arrival. Home.
Massimo calls us for lunch: chunks of stewed pork and couscous. It's delicious, but upstaged by the litter of week-old kittens mewing with Mama Cat on a bank of pillows. Mama is white with a tabby overcoat. Two kittens are versions of Herself. One is pure black, not a white hair anywhere. Two are the feline version of Holstein. “C’est beau, non?” beams Massimo. Mama ignores us all.
The family at La Casa is large in the way of Africa. Tito, Manuel, and Dauda are from the village. She cooks lunch and cleans up. Manuel is Massimo's son, as Abel is ours. He and brawny Dauda help with keeping the garden, chickens, pigs, and cows happy. Paolo is Italian and an old friend who lives nearby and helps out. He speaks excellent English, and paints African scenes on pieces of wood from old pirogues. He has trained his left hand to do it since his right was paralyzed in an accident over a decade ago. There are two other cats, and two yellow and mellow dogs who sleep in the sand. And, of course, Mama Cat and her five babies.
“Manger la lasagna en Afrique…c’est pas façile! No, it’s not easy to have lasagna to eat in Africa, but Massimo manages it. There are 5 of us. The pan serves 300. Of course it does. He's Italian. It's delicious with his homemade noodles (“they curl up in the humidity so I can't layer them and have to crunch them up, mais, c'est délicieux, non? ). The second shovel-full of lasagna comes with a warning: “There is tiramasu". Home? Indeed.
We fall asleep to the surf.
Menu:
Lunch: Stewed pork and couscous
Dinner: Lasagna
Tiramasu
Home-made hooch from Guinea-Bissau
DECEMBER 26, 2018 WEDNESDAY – DIEMBERING, SENEGAL DAY 2
The waves roll in, line after line of frothy lace unstitched from the horizon. The islands of the eastern Caribbean are four time zones straight west, gathering their own lace. In between is just blue ocean, heating in the sun, and spawner of hurricanes. A stumpy cliff of sand, relic of a season of beach-ravenous high tides, is warm against my back, semi-soft on my butt, and shade-giver. To our right and left is only beach, flat gold sand for tens, scores, perhaps hundreds, of miles. Edging trees, ravaged by those tides, lie recumbent, future fossils, now inky calligraphy on gold.
It’s a few weeks short of a year since we last sat on this beach. There are fewer trees holding the dunes and spilling pools of shade, and more dark carcasses tumbled onto the sand. The sloping dunes of last year meet the beach now as a sliced and eaten wall. Massimo tells us the beach has lost 100 meters to the sea in the 12 years since he moved here. Casa, and Annie's place, Akinye Lodge, ten minutes across the dunes, are high enough and far enough from the surf to be safe. Still, I don’t remember hearing the surf so loudly from Annie's place just a year ago.
We walk through the dunes to visit Annie. She is still “trés désolée" that she forgot to write our reservation in her ledger last July, but we shrug with Gallic insousciance and assure her we are “trés content" at La Casa with her friend Massimo, et al, 5 kittens included. (Note: La Casa may be less polished than Annie's but it's great fun, and at 40,000 Senegal Francs a day for our comfy room and three of Massimo's meals, it’s a lot better for our budget. That's $72 a day, total, for 2 of us. The beach is free at both places.)
Then we piggy-back onto her Wi-Fi.
Ruth, veteran of the uncharted dunes of Sudan, Chad, and Mauritania, loses her way on the many twining paths from beach to lunch, but, as always, keeps her sense of humor.
That's good prep for tomorrow. We go into Cap Skirring with Massimo to visit Moussa, our errant travel agent, to scare up tickets for our return flights on January 6.
Menu:
Lunch: Fish, with cabbage and pumpkin
Dinner: Chunks of potato dressed in
vinaigrette, salad of greens from the garden, fresh caught whole sole, fried
Tiramasu
DECEMBER 27, 2018 THURSDAY – DIEMBERING, SENEGAL DAY 3
“C’est ma famille”.
Massimo looks 45, but has a 42 year old daughter “in Italia", and more energy than his 20 year old granddaughter. He leads us on a blitzkrieg sprint out of the gate of La Casa and down narrow paths thru the village. His tales of the village are a true ‘running commentary
-if you see these trees, there is a body below, one tree at
the head, one at the foot, just a branch torn from a tree and stuck in the
sand, like the body
-that's where they keep hidden the family fetish that
protects them
-I hope nobody dies, but if they do, I hope you are here…funerals
are amazing
We skirt bouncing goats, lounging, snorting, and squealing pigs, a few shops, a guy repairing bikes and erupt from the paths at the huge fromagier tree, the center of ‘downtown Diembering’. “Massimo" “Kassumai” “Bonjour” bubble the ladies selling veggies in the shade of the tree. They are substantial, these ladies, wrapped in yards of brilliance, and topped with intricate winged head confections, great circles of color above the dust. They, like everyone, love our Massimo. He returns the favor. He spreads his arms and spins. “C’est ma famille”. Later we meet his 95 year old ‘grand-mère' and “the fetish of my family.” He loves this place. It notices, and returns the favor.
We 4 fill one of the cabs waiting under the tree, and head the 9 miles into Cap Skirring to Moussa of the Tickets. As Ruth predicted, Moussa of the Tickets “n’est pas içi”. He’s at the bank, always a drawn-out process in former French colonies where everything is done in quintuplicate--- by hand. So, we wait in the office watching ‘tout le monde' of Cap Skirring pass in front of us, entertained. Moussa returns, there's a flurry of French, assurances that we have tickets, then of hands over keyboards, and our tickets for January 6 emerge, clickety-clack, from the printer. Somewhere in French cyberspace there are 4 other copies.
Back at La Casa a mystery awaits. Mama Cat moved her 5 babies overnight to a dark cave under the kitchen counter…but there are only 3 kittens. 2 have disappeared. The house is open at night. Perhaps a fox...All the Casa, now absorbing us, is sad. Massimo finds a cardboard box for Mama Cat and her truncated family.
A Senegalese-German couple and their 2 kids arrive, friends of Massimo. Dad used to back up Nina Simone and Tina Turner with his saxophone. A jazz concert is promised. Just after sunset the power pops off, and we dine by beer bottle candelabras. The night ends without a saxophone, just the sound of crickets and surf.
Menu:
Lunch: Balls of fish, bread crumbs, and parsley in
caramelized onion sauce, and cracked
rice
Dinner: Flounder fillet, lightly floured and sautéed, with zucchini
stew, and cracked rice
Bananas flambé
DECEMBER 28, 2018 FRIDAY – DIEMBERING, SENEGAL DAY 4
The morning beach is empty, except for the sound of surf, and defeated trees, broken fingers clawing at the sands from tilted root balls, great Medusa heads taller than we are. We carve comfortable butt and back rests into the bitten slope of the receding dunes, shaded by the still living trees behind us. The high tide has left small pools to reflect the sky on the beach, now stretched way westward by the low tide. To the north and south is Africa, endless. We are specks.
Back home, Massimo is whirling and laughing. The two missing kittens are not lost, just AWOL. Tito, the noon cook, who makes our Senegalese treats, finds them in another box, moved by Mama. We celebrate with cold beer. The kittens sleep. Mama just yawns.
Dennis tells Massimo that last night's ‘banane flambé’ is possible with the pineapple Ruth found in the town market yesterday. Massimo throws eyes and arms heavenward, wraps Den in wiry arms. “Ce soir, ce soir!!!’.and sure enough that flaming fruit is dessert tonight.
Our days begin and end with the soft sound of the surf. They unfold with the unhurried gentleness of small things.
Menu:
Lunch: Steaks of ‘lune’, moonfish, in savory onion sauce. And
rice
Dinner: Pizza with ham and olives, or pizza with anchovies
and capers
Pasta Bolognese
Pineapple flambé
DECEMBER 29, 2018 SATURDAY – DIEMBERING, SENEGAL DAY 5
This place has wrapped around us and seeped in. Massimo, Paolo, and Tito, the dogs, cats, kittens, great meals, sand, surf, black night skies oozing floods of stars…well, what's not to like? It’s like floating in a huge family locked into paradise.
“Let’s go to Cap” says Paolo, and we’re out the gate, crossing the sand, passing under the baobab, skirting the pigs (“wash your feet when you get back, get rid of pig ticks"), waving at the market ladies under the huge fromagier tree, packing into a taxi, and on our way, for 60 cents each, 9 kilometers down the road to Cap Skirring. Paolo laughs. “I like Massimo's for 2 or 3 days. Then I have to come here.” I get it. Cap overflows with the bustle of African life, irresistible kodachrome energy defeating the dust. Paolo is an artist. This is food for him.
We sidle through the clutter to Mister John, the Tailor Man. He, sewing machine, straw hat, and big smile fill the far end of his narrow shop. He will fix Ruth's purse strap by noon, and whip up pants for me and Den from two pieces of traditional fabric by tomorrow. The cloth costs $13, He throws in the tailoring for $4.50 more. This is folk art, hand tie-dyed indigo, deep as the night sky.
“Visitez chez moi" rumbles across the alley. She is magnificent, in the way of ‘traditionally built' middle-aged African women, upholstered in a rainbow, and determined to make a sale. She wraps Dennis in an avalanche of pizzazz and declares “Il est mon mari". How could a new husband refuse to buy a little something from his new wife? There may be a flutter of eye lashes with this, upstaged by a proprietary marital squeeze. We go cheap…a keychain for our friend Nűri, collector of same in Turkey, and one for me, now enveloped as ‘brother-in-law’, albeit a cheap one. ‘Sister-in-law’ Ruth rescues us from a charge of familial stinginess with her purchase of two pieces of indigo fabric dyed in neighboring Guinea-Bissau. The divorce is an easy whirlwind. A photo of our ‘new family’ including teen-age ‘son’s, Ali, a print, a hug, a wave. But, first, an exchange of cash as Ruth bags her trophies, and Dennis's ‘femme du jour’ bags another charmed traveler.
We turn seaward from Cap’s long cluttered strip of shops, walk about 500 meters, past bougainevillea in colors we don’t even imagine in Florida, stoop into a hut where Paolo's friend is drying and smoking fish. I pass on anything resembling ‘bacala’, the reconstituted dried codfish, repelled by my taste buds, but so dear to Italian grand-mothers, mine included, the only blemish on her culinary escutcheon.
Paolo takes yet another route from the huge tree in the village square through the unraveled skein of paths towards La Casa. I try to remember landmarks in case we do this on our own, absorb ‘turn left at the baobab and bright aqua bike shop` , then lose track. No matter. Befuddled ‘blancs' will always be pointed toward Massimo. Short of helpful fingers? Head west.
There's news at La Casa. Mama Cat's kittens have opened their eyes. Six French adults and 4 human kittens have arrived for 5 days. The human kittens are cute enough. I hope they stay in their box.
The late afternoon sun drags daylight away on its journey to the Caribbean. Madame Ruth breaks out her peanuts and we toast the twilight with cold Gazelle beer under the cashew tree.
Menu:
Lunch: Chicken and
potatoes in vinegar and onion sauce
Cracked rice
Dinner: Baked grouper stuffed with onions and tomatoes,
salade, potatoes and green beans in Vinaigrette
DECEMBER 30, 2018 SUNDAY – DIEMBERING, SENEGAL DAY 6
“It's easy here, but never important.”
Paolo needs another dose of Cap Skirring ‘life in the big city’. He likes this addition to his English repertoire, and the irony. We have pants to try on at Mister John's sewing machine and Francs to fish out of the ATM. We walk through the village to the square around the huge fromagier tree, hop into a car, pay our 60 cents each, and 20 minutes later two of us are ‘dropping trou' at Mister J's. The fit is perfect. Madame Ruth, Fashionista in Residence, is impressed. Mr. J. has matched the chevron pattern on Den's, and used the solid deep blue edge of mine to stop the column of stripes from running off my legs.
Across the alley, Den's erstwhile ‘wife' welcomes us all back to the marital shop...and goes in for the kill, as her ‘chére belle-soeur', sister-in-law via her short-lived marriage to Dennis, plucks more indigo beauties from her stash. The price has gone up of course. Ruth buys 3 more for her shop in New York. Our ‘belle-soeur' gifts us 4 bracelets of raffia wrapped in bright patterns, too small for us, but big in charm.
The ATM, gathering place for anyone needing cash, is empty, ripe for plucking. I reach into one pocket then the other...my little red metal ‘truc' (thing, whatchamacallit, whatsit) is gone. And with it my bank card and credit cards. This is way on the other side of ‘bad news’, but...‘nobody died' (as dear friend Deborah, says), so we keep cool. Mr. John's? Nope. The street? Ditto. The car!! Paolo has the driver's portable number. Bingo! “Il a trouvé le truc", but is back at the village waiting for fares to Cap. He'll call when he gets to town. This is Africa. He'll get here when he gets here.
We have plenty of time for a celebration. On the beach. Paolo’s friend Abdul runs a 4 foot by 8 foot juice bar on the strand of beach catering to tourists turning pink on the spit of Senegal's sun. The paint job on the shop---and Abdul--- are pure Bob Marley ‘Rasto', right up to Abdul’s towering knitted wool dreadlock cozy. The mixed orange and banana drink is also pure… pure thick juice and pure heaven.
I'm not so convinced of the purity of the sloe-eyed young woman lounging across the other bench at Abdul’s. She's beautiful. Paolo notices. Anyone would. They play in French and with eyes. His parting gambit is to Abdul. “Don’t let her get away. I’ll be back.” Her eyes shrug. We leave. Paolo shrugs, too. “It's easy here, but never important.” Then, “love is a western invention.”
The driver delivers ‘le truc’. His surprise and smile when I add a tip to the fare seem genuine.
On the walk back through the village Paolo says “I like you. You are interested in things.” We like him, too, and that is important.
Menu:
Lunch: Thick slabs of
fish stuffed with greens and fried
Red cracked rice
Dinner: Pasta
carbonara, salad, potatoes and green
beans in vinaigrette
DECEMBER 31, 2018 MONDAY – DIEMBERING, SENEGAL DAY 7
2019 is just hours away, waiting beyond our countdown…
Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen…
“Bob! Huitres!” It’s 08:30, this is breakfast time, and not in any universe I can imagine is it also ‘oyster time’. All my previous encounters with slimy shellfish have not ended happily, but Massimo's enthusiasm magnetizes me to his arm and he drags me out to a huge pot sitting on sandy embers to try once again. He grabs a cluster of oysters, snaps one open. It looks much like the rest of its ilk, though smaller and less related to nose slime. It’s also warm, almost crunchy. And delicious. Massimo beams. He delivers a bowl for my breakfast. Then another for lunch, partnered most felicitously with a salad of raw onions and garlic, and a bit of mustard, super delicious. Who knew? The last day of 2018 has brought oysters into my menu, though I doubt I’ll ever replicate ‘huitres àla Massimo’, fresh harvested from mangroves and slow cooked on sand over a wood fire.
Sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen.
“Bob" is the Go To Guy now, my name super easy, thanks to Bob Marley, hero all over Africa. It rings out mid afternoon….
“Bob!” “There is dancing, with spears and knives in the village. Tito will dance. Will you go?”
Massimo points, Tito waves, and I’m off. Tito leads me and the French folk towards the chanting, stops to pick up some plastic chairs, and plops it and me right in the middle of things. Women, wrapped and coiffed, voluptuous towers of color, speckle the crowd in the big square. Center stage, the young men, loincloths tied over Spandex, magnifque Bodies by God, cut the air and stab the dust with spears, machetes, axes and knives, dancing truth and victory into a mythical battle. Their short chant is repeated, the staccato of voices and leg rattles (Coke cans and pebbles) matched by basso stomp of bare feet moving the dancers slowly in a circle, first clockwise then the reverse, half hour to round the square. In wider orbit, kids, lined up in size order, from three feet to six, in loincloths, too, miniature warriors, watch and practice their moves. A tall man in a dress beats a wooden drum, erstwhile tree trunk, mumbling beneath It all. Two gunshots add high notes, bright pings.
People mill, chat, marshall their ‘portables’ to take photos and videos. A matron rushes an especially vibrant dancer, fluid, muscled obsidian, body by several generous gods, and presses paper money into his hand. (Maybe she couldn't get into the Spandex?) A baby pig adds its snorty oink as it races after its mother, already pushing through the crowd, ignored. A motorcycle rumbles around the edge of the square, then a pushcart. This chanted and stomped story the dancers tell is free of the stiff geometric orthodoxy of western ritual. It's embedded in the swirl of daily life, with no edges.
The dancers finish, smashing their weapons into the dust. Story retold, duty done, they pose for photo ops, or better, rush into videos, flailing weapons at the air, then bend over laughing, and do it again.
Twelve, eleven, ten
Back home at La Casa, tonight's meal, fire-roasted whole young pig, progresses from the butcher to the barber to the cook. Dauda (he of the lasagna on Day 1) and Company rotate the carcass in embers to burn off the hair and char the skin. Then they butterfly it flat and lay It out on a grill over the ember. Massimo bastes and directs. We drink beer. And something alcoholic and delicious made from passion fruit.
Nine, eight, seven...
We almost don't recognize Paolo when he walks in out of the twilight, clean-shaven, sporting a fresh hair trim, almost mutton chop sideburns. The guy is impressive. Ready for some action? At Abdul’s? If not, as Ruth affirms, there will be no shortage of ladies---Paolo “has a presence”.
The French folk have come prepared. They invite us for a spread of foie gras and other goodies on toast. Goodies does come even close. There is more beer. French Lady 1 puts down her wine, and reveals a secret that might endanger her French passport. Last year, on a skiing vacation she would ski down everyday to the Italian side to eat. “Bien sûr, Italian food is the best.” There are no Gallic Gasps from the others, just Knowing Nods. Massimo kisses everyone. There is more beer. Yes, and Japanese whiskey.
Six, five, four…
The roast pig, chopped now into fist-friendly pieces, is phenomenal partnered with fresh baguettes and a huge salad. It goes well with...more beer. Not so well with bowls of tiramisu, but we multi-task and manage. And wash it all down with hibiscus juice doctored with ‘cana’, clear white firewater from Guinea-Bissau.
Close to midnight here in this time zone Massimo, several laundry baskets of sheets to the wind, conjures up his daughters in Italy on his portable, his kisses time travelling to 2019. On the sand around a huge driftwood bonfire French Lady 2 plays the flute to her brother’s drums, music for sending 2018 off.
Tito conjures up champagne flutes. Massimo pops bottles of champagne. We count and chant…
Trois, deux, UN… Bonne Année!
We toast with the bubbly, double-cheek kiss all around, languages tripping over the flutes. We, too, have our rituals. I wonder how Tito describes them?
The kids get what it’s about, and run in to wish Mama and her 5 babies ‘Bonne Année.
After all that booze I am surprised I can walk, but I am fine, sober, and happy.
2019 is here. We cannot imagine being in a better ‘here’ to welcome it.
Menu:
Lunch: Oysters with onion salad, fried fish, rice grown by
Massimo
Dinner: Fire-roasted young pig, salad
Tiramisu
JANUARY 1, 2019 TUESDAY DAY – DIEMBERING, SENEGAL DAY 8[1] [2]
“They don't cut the girls here".
The effect of all that booze is left in 2018. It has not made the transition to the first morning of 2019. Neither has any news from outside. We’ve been days without Internet. Ho hum.
The ocean may carry news from over the horizon. The waves are tremendous today, way too high and strong for safe swimming, or even decorous dipping, perhaps messages from a storm brewing out there, sending surge this way, and---maybe---a hurricane towards the Americas.
We dig seats in the sand under the trees, just the two of us in sight. Ruth is grilling, well oiled, far down the sand. I don’t resist for long the beauty of the froth left by the collapsed waves. The water is warm-cool, perfect. I dip once, feel the treachery, walk out. In a few minutes I am dry. By noon the shade is retreating behind us, and we walk back through the dunes. Cold shower, lunch, nap, read, scratch some of yesterday into my log, look in on Mama's Five, scratch Gordo and Guapo behind their floppy ears…and it’s time for a cold La Gazelle under the cashew tree. Ruth brings peanuts.
After dinner Massimo calls for someone to walk Tito home in the dark. The guys are sweet-faced, young teens. It hits me that 2019 is the 60th anniversary of my graduation from high school. I was 4 months past my 16th birthday, about their age. My rite of passage was to toss my flat hat into the air. They'll get circumcised.
“They don't cut the girls here" says Massimo. “These are Wolof people. Wolof do not have the custom. It's illegal in Senegal. But some tribes do it anyway.” He goes on. “The boys are cut, maybe several at the same time with the same knife, then spend two months in the bush learning the customs of their people from the elders. Some have died from infection, so now many mothers take their small sons to the hospital for the cut, and bring a little blood to give the fetish.”
“Look at those guys. They are beautiful, les Africains, even when they wear their pants like this…” And he jumps up, pulls his pants down over his flat ass. “They have great butts”--- and draws big curves in the air--- not like us blancs who have nothing back there. And the women, too!! They shake like this…” And both hands shimmy through the air.
Massimo in full throttle is major theater. He's speaking French, so the guys understand. I’m laughing too hard to notice their reaction.
We love this place.
2019 is well-launched. Thank you, Massimo.
Menu
Lunch: Squash and carrots in rich brown meat sauce and rice
Dinner: Fillet of capitaine, oven roasted potatoes and garlic,
salad
Tiramisu
JANUARY 2, 2019 WEDNESDAY – DIEMBERING, SENEGAL DAY 9
The waves are less aggressive today, but not yet friendly.
The last high tide pushed right up to where I sat yesterday in my seat carved out of the sand ridge. My seat is gone, gobbled by the tide, the sand wiped smooth by its retreat. Nearby, a tree gasps, its tangle of roots almost all unsanded by the tide and hanging in the air. The tree will die. One more surge and it will fall, carrying the shade with it. I dig a new seat, grabbing the doomed shade.
The sky has lost its blue. It and the sea are grey, metal, and hard. Way, way out a white roil of surf gnashes at the horizon. There must be a reef in the way of the sea, hard and stubborn now, but sure to be chewed into sand.
La Casa is stuffed. The 7 French adults, and their 5 human kittens, (two Frenchlets and 3 Frenchlettes), have taken over Massimo's house. We 3 are in 2 rooms in the annex. In the end room is the French Lady who only sleeps here (with her handsome Senegalese ‘copain', several decades younger, and ‘bravo’ to both) because there is no room at her friend's place (or so the story goes). Massimo’s old friends, Italians Juliana and Livio , have moved into the remaining room, the one Massimo and Paolo shared when the French families filled Massimo's house. Massimo is now sleeping on the divan in the open house where we eat. Paolo has been squeezed out and is back in his house in Cap. Manuel and Massimo's other son sleep somewhere.
Other residents, the ones with more legs, do not sign up for the Bedroom Bingo, stay put. Mama Cat and the Five Catlets have their uncontested box, Black Cat, and Other Cat lounge wherever, as cats do. Guapo (Handsome) Dog, and Gordo (Fat) Dog are, as always happy dozing in the sand.
Tito and her friend only come to work. Today they have brought their 3 adorable tiny daughters, more entertaining than the Frenchlings, who are cute, too, even if they scream, churn, and whirl, as kids do.
At lunch everyone, 2 and 4-legged, is here eating, or eying, Tito's delicious chicken stew, except Paolo and one son. This crowd is great for Massimo's bottom line, stretched skimpy by a guest-free October, November and early December, but lots of work. Even his energy has its expiration date. It might be yesterday.
talians Juliana and Livio join us at the smaller table for supper, spin stories of their 4 or 5 previous trips here, and of the Christmas week music festival 5 or 6 hours’ drive north, just south of the border with The Gambia. The seed is planted, sprouted, and producing fruit as fast as we can say Frequent Flyer Miles. We will return to Senegal in 11 months for the festival, then come south to Massimo for New Year's Eve, roast pig, and a few weeks in January.
Leaving here in 4 days will now be a little easier.
Menu:
Lunch: Chicken and potatoes stewed in onions and carrots, rice
Dinner: Pork stew, salad
JANUARY 3, 2018 THURSDAY DIEMBERING, SENEGAL DAY 10
“…the fětishe sends green snakes and nightmares to remind them”
Senegal is flat, the honed edge of Africa slipping under the Atlantic. Our pirogue chug-putt-tuk-tuks over the water of the delta, the only sound, past mangroves blurring into islands. Pelicans, egrets, herons move specks of white across the green. We sit on boards low into the cool held by the water. It disguises the power of the sun, thwarted by our sunscreen. The water is ‘douce’ from the Casamance River draining the mountains far to the east, salt from the sea, brackish where they meet, both, and neither, a challenge to life, always opportunistic. The mangroves thrive here, as do the oysters clustered on the stalks, half of each day banished to the air by the tides.
I like these places where things meet, edge-places, their people making do, surprises.
A man who fishes for sharks holds up the head of a Hammerhead, one of life's odder experiments, now dried and headed for China as an aphrodisiac, a billion Chinese not yet enough. A neighboring island offers seven crocodiles in a pit, a clump of toothy grins. Last year, north of here, in another delta, we clattered through a village on an island made only of oyster shells. Here they burn the shells to make whitewash for their houses, canvas for a second coat of colors, the houses now great cubist bougainevilleas.
These are low islands, skimpy in their protection from the water. We pull up close to shore on our last for the day, drop off the pirogue, wade through warm water to the sand, then walk into a village. Our piroguiste stops under a wide fromagier tree and points. A crooked stick dripped with ropes leans out of the sand over white bones next to an upended white bucket. He begins his story, here gleaned from his French.
“This is the
village fétishe. That is where the ‘féticheur', keeper of the fétishe, sits. If
people have a need, they come here. It could be small, maybe a pig is sick, or
big, maybe they are going to France to get a job. They have to give something,
spill it onto the earth by the fétishe. For something small, palm wine is OK. For
something big, it must be blood, a chicken, or pig. For something really big,
it’s a bull. The meat goes to the people in the village. A small piece stays
here with the fetish. You can see the bones there, by the fétishe. People don’t
give something until they get the result they want, but if the fétishe helps
them and they don't pay then the fětishe sends green snakes and nightmares to
remind them. Nobody wants that. Sometimes people go far away, to France, and
forget the fétishe when they get the job. Then they get nightmares. They tell
the family here to pay, and when they do, the nightmares stop. That’s the way
it is”.
Is it human to put something between us and the randomness of the universe? Probably. Unfortunately, we also waste time trying to prove that our something does it better, surely unprovable, except to the believers.
We chug back to Massimo's, the water, ‘douce’, salt, brackish, carrying our pirogue.
Menu:
Dinner: platters of
huge prawns, salad
JANUARY 4, 2018 FRIDAY - DIEMBERING, SENEGAL DAY 11
“If he brings me money I will tear it up into little pieces and bur[3] n it.”
We leave in 2 days, a parting too soon. For 10 days, La Casa, the event that is Massimo, and Tito, Manuel, the babies, kittens, two dogs, Diembering, Cap Skirring, the beach, and Paolo,---and even the cold showers---have seeped in. This is no longer a vacation. It’s a coming home.
But…in 2 days we have a date with TAP Airlines, notoriously fickle, and unpredictably flighty. We need Internet to check if TAP will stand us up (as it did a year ago), change the time, date, and place at the last minute (as happened 2 weeks ago), or greet us with a wide open jet way as agreed. Paolo knows a place in Cap Skirring with a better than even chance of both electricity and a good connection. Two beers into the afternoon TAP comes through: our date for Madrid is on. Oh well…
Paolo vents. There is some drama going on between him and Massimo. Of course, there is…they're Italian, inventors of opera. This one does not involve misplaced babies, crazed gypsies, or collective IQs of 3, just the usual operatic misunderstandings (so maybe a wee bit of the latter). In this opera they are about paintings (Paolo's) and meals (Massimo's). We come into it in the middle of the great Quartet that ends Act Two:
Paolo (basso), Massimo (baritone, offstage voice), Ruth (soprano, voice of reason, Dennis (tenor), Bob (messenger, non-singing super), all Stage Center, around a table, twice as many beer bottles as there are people.
Paolo: (pulls out 5000 CFA note and throws it at Bob in a rage): “Here, take this and give it to Massimo”
Ruth: “Don't get involved"
Dennis: “Good idea"
Paolo: (via cell phone to Massimo, offstage): “You will get your money!”
Massimo: (offstage): “If he brings me money, I will tear it up into little pieces and burn it.”
Paolo: (taking money back): “OK. See, everything is OK now.”
Dennis and Ruth: “What the….?”
Bob: shrugs
Curtain falls on Act Two. Stay tuned for Act Three.
We order more beer. Paolo is much happier, jaunty, even. Halfway back to Diembering he hops out of the cab. “See you tomorrow. I'm going to visit my girlfriend.” Jaunty?? Yeah, right…’jaunty'. Act Three is postponed.
Back at La Casa all is well because there is food to discuss and eat, always usurper of drama’s right to life up front and central for Italians. We learn that the best meat for perfect pasta carbonara is not prosciutto, or bacon, but pig cheeks. Massimo pulls one out of the reefer to show us that the flappy slab has the right combination of fat (a lot) to meat (not so much). Livio, Giuliana and Lara, all native eaters, ooh and ahh. We are not convinced.
Then we taste Massimo's cheeky carbonara.
Menu:
Lunch: Fish and
rice
Dinner: pasta àla
carbonara, salad
JANUARY 5, 2018 SATURDAY - DIEMBERING, SENEGAL DAY 12
“You will dance with me"
Act Three of the opera is cancelled. Paolo, the erstwhile ‘jaunty’ basso, does not show up from his intermission chez his girlfriend. Apparently, he was ‘jauntier' than he looked, or she more than he expected.
No matter. Massimo plans a full day for us. Its our last full day and he's slowly gluing us to La Casa and life in Diembering.
Palm Guy shows me how to trim a palm to harvest liquid from the flower stem. It drips slowly into a plastic bottle through a funnel tied from palm fronds. By tonight it will ferment into palm wine, Vintage 6pm. It's closer to rough rum than wine, but does the job. (Trust me on this.)
Tito, who manages breakfast and lunch, and keeps La Casa earthbound through the dervish tornado that is her boss, deserves a night off, and invites us all to a party in the village. “You will dance with me" is not a suggestion.
Dennis has a questioning tummy, begs off lunch and the party. “Perfect" spins Massimo, “We will go to my fétishe for help. We will buy 10 liters of palm wine. He will get better.”
We walk out of La Casa, across the sand, up the hill, pass the burial ground, the trees with the bats, and into the village. It is deep night. Our headlamps cut light funnels from the dark. We slip through them and come out at the fétishe. It is a stick, rope, rocks, vaguely humanoid in the shadows. The two féticheurs welcome us, accept the jerry can of palm wine, ask our request, pour wine on the ground in front of the fétishe, then into a bowl, then into cups. We all sip. The féticheurs sip. Massimo chugalugs three cups. The remaining wine will go to the village.
It is finished. Dennis will be well. “Simple, non, cette réligion.” And, effective, we hope, beyond Dennis. The crusty patina on that formerly white jerry can cum carafe and ‘punch bowl' had a certain ‘je ne sais quoi' quality, somewhere between litter box and bottom of chicken coop.
We follow the booming bass speakers to a concrete bunker. A hand grabs me out of the dark. I think it's Tito. The lithe shape is right. The skintight outfit is not her usual graceful wrapped skirt. We gyrate and stomp. The crowd thickens. I am shanghaied by a young guy, elfin under a towering Rasta cap, without bones, and with a Cirque du Soleil repertoire of moves. I last about five minutes. Make that three minutes. Outside, voluptuous Yvonne, formerly of La Casa, is dishing up barbecued chicken and pork from a campfire. I get a leg so I know mine is chicken. Its that dark. The food is delicious, regardless of how many legs it started out with. The beer is cold.
Elf, the Dancing Dynamo, still captured inside by the music, waves through the metal grate on the windows and we dance again, partnered by a concrete wall, managing à trois. And ‘trois’ is how many times older than his legs are mine. Two minutes, max, and I wave goodbye.
Groups of villages pass, going to the music, as Massimo, Ruth, and I walk slowly home. Massimo says he can do it without light, especially when the moon is bright and the sand glows. That’s not tonight. We chase circles of light towards the sound of surf.
Our room is quiet. Dennis
is asleep while the fétishe does it work.
JANUARY 6, 2018 SUNDAY – DIEMBERING TO DAKAR, SENEGAL
“per uno nuovo amico.’
Dennis wakes up recovered. Massimo hugs everyone. His fétishe delivered.
Tito looks a bit underpowered. The three kids are crabby. They got no sleep with all that music.
We are reprieved from goodbyes until 1 pm. My valedictory to the beach is to sit, and let it tell its story. There's less of me, it says, eaten by the sea. But I am still Africa and will be here when you get back.
Act Three is on. Paolo, chipper, and in need of a shave, makes his entrance. There are shrugs, and the opera is over. Until next time.
One of Paolo's portraits on wood comes home. He signs it ‘per uno nuovo amico.’, for a new friend.
Annie, from Akinye Lodge across the dunes, and our hostess from last year, comes by in her 4x4 to carry us up the dunes to her place. Elisa, her cook, wants to hug us goodbye. Annie's place is rich with the beauty of African design. Massimo's is rich with the energy of African life. I'm glad we had Annie's. We will return to Massimo's. (And maybe to Annie's, for one of Elisa’s rum fantasies at sunset.)
Then, we're gone.
The flight is uneventful except for the staggering beauty of the Senegal Airlines flight attendant, a fine parting gift. Hotel Saint-Louis Sun is familiar, still creaky. But…there is hot water. For us. Ruth has none because she doesn’t turn on the heater. We are very hungry, and beer-thirsty. Late Sunday evening Plateau, Dakar's upscale center, closes down. Hunger and thirst have recourse only to a Europeanized touristy place. We climb down off our high horses. The sandwiches are delicious. There is no beer. Senegal is an equal opportunity place for its religious folk, the biggest groups being Moslems (who don’t serve alcohol, but are open on Sundays) and Christians (the flip side). We survive. We rediscover hot showers.
JANUARY 7, 2018 MONDAY – DAKAR, SENEGAL
We have forgotten the mosque is right next door. The call to prayer lifts me off the bed, early for this long day. Our flight from Dakar leaves at 02:00 am tomorrow morning, flies to Lisbon, where we wait 8 hours, then on to Madrid in the afternoon, and then we bus to our AirBnB. We have 14 hours to kill between checking out of the hotel and boarding our plane.
Ruth shops. The two magnificent hand-spanning rings she bought here last year from a French anthropologist need a buddy, three being so much more interesting and ‘fashion’ than two. The lady lets Ruth dismiss anything on the shelf. Then retrieves a velvet bag from her purse, releases an avalanche of lovelies. THE ring fills Ruth's hand with more amber and silver. As happened last year, the lady reels Ruth in smoothly. Madame has ‘le style’, Madame knows no other ‘personne’ will have such a ring, this ring is ‘à moi’ (mine, really and truly of me and my style, my very own), I can sacrifice a bit for Madame, ‘la banque’ is just over there. Done. It is pure theater. But, Madame is ‘très heureuse'.
And inspired. “Let's take the boat out to Gorée Island” gets her a tacit reprieve on comments about being reeled in and us on a half hour cruise out to the beautiful island with an ugly history. This is where slaves left their homeland forever, herded, chattel as cattle, onto death ships for The Crossing, a death sentence physically, emotionally, spiritually. Gorée is beautiful now. Stone and wooden houses drip bougainevillea across narrow lanes, their walls galleries for local artists and artisans, many of quality, most just enthusiastic, but all diminished by sellers of garish Chinese tourist schlock.
The evil done here, the hate, inhumanity, the cries must be embedded in these stones. Do they seep out? There is something here. I no longer think it would be good to spend a night or two here sometime. Gorée stones seem to whisper. We leave.
At 1 in the morning,
and for the sixth time in 7 years, we hug goodbye in an African airport. Trip
Number Seven is already ripening: winter 2019, at Massimo's…and to some other
place, TBA. To Be Announced, To Beautiful Africa.
JANUARY 8, 2018 MONDAY – DAKAR, SENEGAL-LISBON-MADRID
It has been 36 sleepless hours since the mosque roused us out of our beds in Dakar yesterday morning.
We land, sleepwalk through Madrid’s Metro, thankfully color-coded for the brain dead, find our AirBnB at 6pm, manage a beer, a Spanish omelette of eggs and potatoes in the bar down the street and ………
JANUARY 9, 2018 TUESDAY – MADRID
Manuel, our AirBnB host, and ours digs, are even better than the reviews. There is hot water. The neighborhood is totally non-touristy. There is hot water. The local bar has great food and a waitress who speaks English. There is hot water.
Also smoked salmon with Spanish cream cheese, and lettuce, at the Mercado de San Miguel, foodie heaven. Some year we'll come back when we’re wide awake and raid the olive, cheese, sangria, paella, wine, fried calamari, and pastry tapas stands. Then skirt the anchovy, the sardine, and the dried fish places and go on to the other ones with real food.
Could be soon. We land in Paris in 74 days with no plans other than to get somewhere cheap, and cheaply. Spain meets the second condition, if not quite the first. But, if a tapas ‘gorgey' is on the menu, we'll open the travel wallet and let the moths out.
Dinner at another bar does not threaten the moths. A cold draft beer appetizer sets the taste buds for crispy croquettas caseras, home-made croquettes, and ‘ensalata mixta', with tomatoes, greens, olives, tuna. The croquettas are a creamy potato and cheese confection, silk wrapped in crunch.
We leave Manuel’s at 06:00 tomorrow morning, 51 days after landing in Madrid on our way to Egypt, Morocco, the surprise day in Portugal, then Senegal, and back to Madrid. I start rehearsals as a Chinese Mandarin in 9 days, and as a Babylonian soldier in 4 weeks. At the end of March, two days after the final performance we fly to Paris---and beyond--- for 51 more days.
How did we ever find time to work?
JANUARY 10, 2018 WEDNESDAY – MADRID-LONDON-CHARLOTTE-SARASOTA
Uhhhh, never mind.
