‘They did it all,’ he says generously, before adding, ‘in the Moulinex.’
Much laughter.
Marie-Madeleine is probably better known in Senegal than Jacob, as she appears regularly in a TV soap opera, in which she plays a tough woman refusing to be traded between husbands. All of which makes for an interesting insight into marriage a la Senegal.
Jacob explains that Islam gives the man the right to have up to four wives, but legally, under the Family Code, he must choose monogamy or polygamy. Once chosen the option cannot be reversed.
Marie-Madeleine remembers the day she and Jacob went to the tribunal to get married.
‘They asked Jacob, “Do you want to be monogamous or polygamous?”’
Jacob goes on. ‘When I said monogamy, the judge just looked at me and said, “Hold on. Are you crazy, man?” I said why. He said, “You’re a man, you’ll regret this.”’
Marie-Madeleine heaves with laughter.
‘And how long have you been married?’ I ask.
‘Thirty years.’
As I leave I tell them we have to be in Dakar next morning. Jacob grimaces.
Has he ever thought of moving to the capital?
He shakes his head dismissively.
‘Never!’
‘Why is that?’
‘Dakar has no soul, no life! Pas d’ame!’
Day Thiry-Four
DAKAR
I peer desperately through the window of our vehicle looking for the soul of Dakar, but all I can see is a 30-foot-high Coca-Cola bottle and a lot of sheep. Then we plunge down beneath a flyover and onto a thickly clogged four-lane highway leading to the centre of the city.
Six hours after leaving St-Louis, we’re picking our way slowly through suburban neighbourhoods sporting parking meters, traffic lights, health clubs, even a cyber cafe, and more sheep.
I’m bewildered by all this ovine activity, until I learn that we are a week away from Tabaski, the day on which Muslims commemorate the story they share with Jews and Christians of Abraham being commanded by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, only to spare him at the last minute and allow a sheep to be substituted. At Tabaski the head of every Muslim household must kill a sheep and cook it for his family. The deed must be done personally and the sheep must be alive on Tabaski morning, so a frozen supermarket sheep will not do. Which must account for the enormous number of fluffy white creatures massed in the city of Dakar this afternoon. Wherever a few blades of grass can be found they’re nibbling away - on traffic islands, motorway verges and football pitches. Jarga, a sheep-fattening product, is advertised on billboards, and a banner spread across the street proclaims ‘Promotion Tabaski! Gagnez des Moutons!’‘ - ‘Win A Sheep!’
It’s not only sheep they’re selling. Every traffic jam is a retail opportunity in Dakar. Salesmen come tapping at the glass, offering up a formidable array of carved heads, sunglasses, hi-fi equipment, shirts, cutlery sets and carving knives (presumably for doing the deed on Tabaski morning). So slow is our progress that at one point salesman’s enthusiasm successfully coincides with occupant’s boredom, and Peter, our camera assistant, purchases some irresistible electronic bargain. The goods are handed over and Peter is sifting uncertainly through his CFAs when the lights change and we move unexpectedly rapidly across a busy intersection. The salesman plunges into the traffic and races suicidally after us. Just as he catches up, another bottleneck clears and we accelerate down a main road. All of us inside are now rooting for the waving figure behind, who, with total disregard for personal safety, leaps, vaults, twists and turns his way through the traffic to reach us just as the lights flick to green. Like a relay runner stretching for the baton, he grasps the money, and a great cheer goes up as we pull away.
Evening at our hotel overlooking the sea. Yellow weaver birds are busy in the trees, which swing and bend in a pushy westerly breeze. A couple of miles offshore is the low rocky outline of Goree Island, dark as its history. Goree was a trading depot for the rich produce of the African interior, gold, skins, gum arabic, but above all the several million slaves bought from Arab and African traders and shipped to the plantations of America by Portuguese, English, Dutch and French. Not that it was a business for which Westerners were originally responsible, for it had been going on long before they arrived. It’s estimated that between ten and fourteen million slaves were transported across the desert between 650 and 1900. Goree has become the symbol of this most cruel of all Saharan trades, and is now a World Heritage Site, with many black Americans coming over to remember ancestors for whom Goree Island had been their last view of Africa.
I order a Gazelle beer and open up my map. I’m at the most westerly point of the African continent. However, there is a train that leaves this city twice a week for Bamako, the capital of Mali. It will take us back into the interior and to within striking distance of Timbuktu. That, I remind myself, is why we are here.
Dakar has a reputation as a lively, liberal, cosmopolitan town with a thriving music scene, which is why we find ourselves, late on this first evening, in a thatched shed down by the Fish Market. One side is open to the sea and the Atlantic slurps gently against a jetty, causing soft breezes to waft in and aerate the sticky atmosphere inside. Unfortunately, these cooling breezes also carry a pungent aroma of sewage and rotting fish. This seems to make absolutely no difference to the enthusiasm with which everyone throws themselves into dancing, foot-tapping and drinking to a six-man band called Nakodje. The sound is a fusion of Western and West African, with saxophone, clarinet and guitar lining up alongside Fula flute from Guinea and a balaphon (like a xylophone) from Mali. The audience embraces white and black, men and women in equal numbers. I find myself sitting next to a group of staid-looking Senegalese men in suits. They show a surprising interest in our filming and are keen to know if my programmes sell in Senegal. When I shake my head apologetically their eyes light up with relief, and they explain that they are Muslim and if it had been on Senegalese TV their wives would have seen them drinking beer.
The manager, a rangy black man with rubbery legs and red eyes, has taken a shine to me and announces my presence here to a bemused audience.
Towards the end of the evening, I’m at the bar drinking a last Flag beer and talking to Malek, the young Senegalese bass guitarist, who’s halfway through a business management course, and Tom Vahle, an American member of the band, who has taught himself to play the Fula flute.
‘It only has three holes in it. It’s a combination of singing and blowing at the same time.’
An arm snakes round my shoulder and the face of the club manager looms close to mine. He’s seriously unsteady now and I’m not altogether sure what he’s on about.
‘I’m Lebou,’ he says with a flourish. ‘We are fishermen, right. Dakar belongs to us.’
He’s also an ex-basketball player, now sixty years old. I’m impressed and ask him how he stays in shape. He leers, wobbles, grabs my head and whispers loudly in my ear.
‘Making love. Every single night.’
This boast completely convulses him and induces a brief coughing fit. My recollections of the ensuing conversation are hazy, to say the least, but I do remember a nicely surreal exchange when he was expanding on his previous experience.