An American woman and her companion, a man from Guinea, are at one of the tables. She’s a New Yorker living in Dakar. She has silver earrings and a thick pair of Ray-Bans. I ask her what she misses about Dakar when she goes back to the States.
‘Oh, just about everything,’ she says, drawing out the words with relish. ‘The way people say hello to each other, take time to greet each other.’
Greeting is important in Africa. I’ve noticed that. It’s not something that should ever be hurried.
We fall to talking about countries and boundaries. Her friend Barik regrets the failure of an attempt to set up a West African federation after independence.
‘The countries shouldn’t have been isolated. Historically, there were huge states that covered large portions of the Sahara.’
The Mali Empire and the Ghana Empire were two such states. Rich and sophisticated civilisations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when, according to Barik, people travelled in perfect safety across vast areas. The modern states, he thinks, have created arbitrary and unworkable boundaries. He cites the River Senegal border between Mauritania and Senegal.
‘The same people live on both sides of the river, but they can no longer cross freely.’
We’re now away from the crowded Dakar corridor and passing through flat countryside studded with the curious battleship-grey baobab trees. With their thick metallic trunks and stubby branches, they look like some prehistoric arboreal throw-back, gnarled and twisted like old prize-fighters.
The baobab is not like other trees. It gets smaller as it grows older. It stores copious amounts of water in its trunk and can survive for hundreds of years, because it won’t burn. Its bark provides rope and packing material, its sweet-smelling flowers provide food and decoration and a medicine called alo, its pulp is good for blood circulation and its seeds for fertiliser. Scarcely surprising, therefore, that this ugly duckling is a source of considerable superstition, revered in every community and often used as a burial place. Looking at them as they pass by the window, they look friendless and faintly absurd, and it isn’t hard to see why people believe the story that the devil planted them upside down.
In a nearby couchette is an English teacher, an impressive Fulani woman in a pale purple robe and headdress and a striking silver necklace. With her confident English and her forthright, expressive delivery, she seems to epitomise the strength and presence that I’ve seen in many black West African women. Rather disconcertingly, for such an embodiment of the matriarchal virtues, her name is Daddy. Well, that’s how it’s pronounced. It’s spelt D-h-a-d-i.
I ask her about the role of women in West Africa.
‘She is the protector, you know, the keeper of, let’s say, a culture, a civilisation. It’s the role of a woman to take care of children, you know. She can give advice, she retains a lot of secrets.’
When I ask her what sort of secrets, she uses the example of female circumcision, or excision, which is still carried out here when girls are ten or eleven.
‘It is said that a girl must be excised. If she’s not excised she’s like a male.’
I’ve heard this justification for circumcision before. The belief that the foreskin is something female in the male and the clitoris something male in the female.
‘There is a woman who is going to be in charge of their education during that time of excision. She’s going to teach them how to take care of their husband when they get married. She’s going to teach them to be submissive to their in-laws, their husband, for a good wife is the one who is submissive. So, that’s why I was telling you that the woman holds the secret of African society.’
‘Is it changing? I mean all this being taught to be submissive.’
She spreads her hands helplessly.
‘This is something crazy. I’m not going to be submissive to my husband, you know. Maybe to respect my husband, but he’s going to respect me too.’
As for female circumcision, she thinks it will begin to die out. The National Assembly in Senegal has brought in a law against it, but the women who were practising it, the ones who held the secrets, are having to be given financial incentives to end their vested interest in this particular ritual.
Dhadi is a Muslim, but stoutly against the prevailing custom of polygamy.
‘First of all, I’m jealous. I don’t want to share my husband. And then second,’ she wags her finger to formidable effect, ‘in every polygamist house there is trouble. Because co-wives, you know, are jealous. Sometimes one of the wives will go to the marabout …’
‘The marabout?’
‘Well, he’s the kind of priest … he’s a seer. He can see into the future and also he can, you know, make some juju. And for example, if one of the kids fails his exam, she says to the marabout, “It’s my co-wife. She’s a witch. That’s why my kid can’t succeed.”’
She doesn’t hold out much hope that polygamy will go the way of circumcision. She reckons only 3 or 4 per cent of Senegalese feel as she does.
‘These are hard times. I believe it will change, but it will be hard, very hard.’
It’s not just what she says but how she says it that makes Dhadi exceptional. Or maybe not. Maybe African women are by nature more direct, more open, more honest and considerably less submissive than their menfolk expect them to be.
Night falls and we are still some way short of the Malian border. To the bar, where three or four customers are gathered in the gloom, drinking Cokes from the bottle. I’m the only one ordering beer, until the crew finish filming of course. The barman is a big man with a tartan cap and shades. A radio is crackling out. Highlights of a football game. Last night Senegal were playing a vital World Cup qualifying match with Morocco. I ask the result. It was a draw. Senegal are through to the finals.
Chicken for supper. It’s fine, but the bench I sit on collapses.
Day Thirty-Seven
DAKAR TO BAMAKO
After a night of slow jolting progress, during which I dreamt of baobab trees and disorder, we’ve reached Kidira, on the Senegal-Mali border. It’s been daylight for almost an hour and the train has been firmly stationary since then.
This is up-country rural Africa, with none of the shouting and hysteria of the city we left twenty-one hours ago. Because of the great heat, people move slowly, if they move at all. Employees of the railway unload packages without urgency, breaking off at the slightest excuse to slap hands, exchange jovial greetings and embark on long, animated conversations punctuated by inexplicably hysterical laughter.
When we finally depart Kidira at half past nine, we’ve slipped four hours behind schedule. Five minutes later we cross the Faleme, a tributary of the Senegal, cutting north to south with a red earth escarpment rising on its eastern bank. We’re now in Mali. By midday we’re alongside the Senegal itself, flowing strong and substantial, through the arid bush country, known by its French name, la brousse.
A long halt at Kayes, which has the reputation of being the hottest town in Africa, set in a bowl surrounded by hills full of iron-bearing rock. Check my thermometer. It’s 39degC in the shade, 102degF, not bad for February. The barman and restaurant car staff are out on the platform, seeking relief beneath an umbrageous mimosa. Opposite is a big handsome run-down colonial building, an uncommon mix of Franco-Moorish styles, red brick combined with horseshoe arches and elaborate balconies. It appears to be occupied by dozens of families. By the side of the railway track the words ‘Defense d’Uriner, 3000 Fr.’ are fading slowly from the wall.