To all my Northeastern family and friends who are braving today’s cold front (hey, it’s November, the warmth couldn’t last), and to my pals in the parched deserts of the Southwest, I send you these images from one of our favorite places (so far) in Senegal. The village is Toubab Dialao (pronounced too-bob jallow), and the hotel is called Sobo Bade. We heard about it through the expat grapevine as well as saw it written up in our Lonely Planet travel guide, and decided to take a quick weekend getaway last month to pay it a visit.
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A few weeks ago we visited an interesting island located 20 minutes by ferry from downtown Dakar. It’s name is Ile de Goree, a busy trading center in the 18th and 19th centuries that is also famous for being a slave-shipment point. However, it is probable that very few of the 20 million slaves taken from Africa passed through Goree.
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Abraham and I have asked ourselves that question countless times since arriving in Senegal. There was the time we were walking past a building under construction, and witnessed something we had never seen before. It took 16 men to get cement to the top (4th) floor of the building. Four were at street level, tossing shovels full of cement in unison up to the second level, where four more men were standing and proceeded in unison to toss shovels full of cement to the 3rd level, and so on to the 4th level where four more men were waiting. Abraham, in his business sense, remarked that there must be a more efficient way. Still, this was low-technology in action, and it was almost beautiful to watch the coordination as the cement traveled up the building. If only we had our camera.
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