‘Is this different from the other clubs you’ve managed?’
‘Oh … yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘The other clubs were,’ he pauses for quite a while, searching for the right word, ‘rectangular.’
Day Thirty-Five
DAKAR
The national sport of Senegal is la lutte, wrestling, and there is a competition tonight out in Pikine, one of the poorer suburbs of Dakar, which will be attended by Mor Fadan Wade, the great hero of Senegalese fighting, and one of the president’s bodyguards. Though we have an early start to catch the Bamako train tomorrow, this sounds like an unmissable opportunity.
It’s a long drive across town and the paved roads have turned to sand by the time we pull up beside a collection of low, dimly lit buildings. We’re warned to watch our belongings, but the young men who crowd around the bus offering to carry our gear are exuberant rather than threatening, and I feel more secure out here than in the centre of town.
A circle of white plastic chairs marks the ring where the wrestling will take place. The sandy arena is illuminated by floodlights on tall poles and a PA system is already in operation blasting out exhortations to the slowly gathering crowd.
I’m taken through an entrance behind the floodlights to meet the man himself. A passageway opens onto a small courtyard, which resembles a scene from my first illustrated Bible. Mor Fadan, a huge man with shaved head and wearing a light blue robe, dominates the space, and around him are gathered, in various attitudes of deference, men, women, children and, of course, sheep. A steady stream of people come in to shake his mighty hand. Someone calls me over and the fawners and grovellers are pushed to one side as I’m led before him.
His sheer bulk could bring out the fawner and groveller in anyone, but it’s the only thing about him that’s intimidating. His handshake is soft as putty and his voice is deep and measured. He answers my damn fool questions with extraordinary patience. Yes, this is his house. Yes, he has two wives, but bashfully adds that he can’t remember how many children, and, yes, he is the African Olympic Wrestling Champion.
He talks of the popularity of the sport, which is second only to football in Senegal, and it’s clear that this man who can fill stadiums is only here tonight to encourage the young local boys. The entourage closes in again, someone finds me a Coke and I escape outside for a breather.
The ringside is filling up and the ring is full of leaping, strutting, chasing and grappling children mimicking their heroes. The nighttime chill reminds me of the desert. It must have been around 35degC/95degF on the streets of Dakar this afternoon. Now it’s cool enough to pull on a sweater.
Mor Fadan asks me to sit beside him during the fights. This is quite a moment for a shy boy from Sheffield, entering the ring and being introduced to the local mafia as Mor’s new bosom buddy, but there’s still no sign of any serious grappling taking place.
The contestants are parading around the ring in a rhythmic dance, all linked together and kicking their feet out in a sort of macho hokey-kokey. Then, one after the other, they approach the thudding drums and dance up against them, rhythm fighting rhythm, as they strut their aggressive poses, kicking the sand like angry elephants. The drummers, stripped to the waist and glistening like contestants themselves, keep up a relentless, brain-scouring beat.
A couple of comperes work the crowd, screaming themselves hoarse, urging, exhorting, praising, joking. It’s after midnight when the local politicians, bigwigs and worthies make their appearance, all anxious to clutch, and be seen to be clutching, the champion’s hand.
By now, the contestants, uniformly lean, wiry and young, are stripped down to single elaborately tied loincloths, like underfed sumo wrestlers, raising the level of excitement amongst the women in the crowd. (There is none of the public segregation we saw in the Arab countries). Their cries and shouts of encouragement merge with the throbbing of the drums and the relentless yelling of the comperes as the bouts, at last, begin.
Starting with a curiously fey stance, like cats on their back legs, the wrestlers flap at each other’s hands, before grasping each other in a shoulder lock. A flick of the legs from this position can send an opponent off balance and onto the floor, and once a shoulder hits the sand the bout is over. Some contests last a few seconds and others can go on for minutes, as bodies freeze in perfect equilibrium, each one waiting for a moment of weakness to send his opponent tumbling. It lacks the theatrical flamboyance of Western wrestling but makes up for it in a fascinating contest of balance, coordination and sheer physical strength.
By one o’clock the crowd has grown to several thousand and I’m told this will last long into the night. Mindful of the fact that we start a thirty-six-hour train journey tomorrow, I’m going to have to go. A discreet exit is not possible. As I get up to leave one of the comperes spars up to me and draws me into the ring, dancing before me and grasping me in mock combat until he releases me with an enormous beam on his face. The crowd laughs and applauds. As we drive out of the dusty run-down suburbs and head for the sea, I’ll not easily forget my night in Pikine.
Day Thirty-Six
DAKAR TO BAMAKO
The railway line that runs for 760 miles from Dakar on the Atlantic Ocean to Bamako on the River Niger was built long before the countries it connects came into being. When work began in Bamako in 1907, Mali was called French Sudan, and when the railway reached Dakar in 1923, Senegal was an anonymous part of French West Africa.
Not surprisingly, the station from which we are due to leave at ten o’clock this morning is a confident example of the colonial style. It consists of three arched bays, framed by red and brown brickwork, with wrought-iron canopies, pilasters supporting decorated tile friezes, separate entrances marked ‘Depart and ‘Arrivee‘ and a big working clock in the central tower. On either side of the central facade are louvered galleries, which look to be occupied. Laundry lines swing in the breeze and I think I can see sheep up there.
We’ve been warned that Dakar is the pickpocket capital of the world, and exploratory arms have already stretched through the minibus windows. An opportunist salesman tries to interest us in a range of ‘Titanic’ sports bags, which, as the volume of our luggage is already proving a problem for the porters, is an act of mindless optimism.
As the Bamako express only runs twice a week, there’s a certain amount of nervous tension as we walk ourselves and our procession of porters through ‘Depart‘ to the platform where our train, twelve coaches and four freight wagons long, sits waiting in the sun. The coaches, old French railway stock painted light and dark green with a red stripe, bear the barely legible name Chemins de Fer de Mali. A General Motors diesel is panting heavily at the front.
We pull out of Dakar twenty-one minutes late and run for a while past red-brick, red-tiled sheds. These soon give way to a depressing run of goat-attended rubbish dumps and people squatting down beneath fading signs that read ‘Defense d’Uriner et Deposer ses Ordures‘ (No Urinating or Dumping of Rubbish).
The train is a huge consumer unit, a small town on wheels, and wherever we stop we attract crowds of suppliers. As we crawl through the suburbs of Dakar it’s like taking a train through the middle of a department store. On both sides of us are piles of handbags, underwear, men’s fashion, ladies’ fashion, shoes, scarves, robes and hats. All within inches of our rumbling steel wheels.
The restaurant car is going to be a vital part of our survival strategy. First signs are encouraging. It’s comfortable enough, with a mural painted at one end, and not too busy, as most of the passengers bring their own food or buy at the window.