Go North, Young Woman!

Saint Louis is a strip of coast and two islands linked to each other and the mainland by bridges, in north western Senegal. It was the old colonial capitol of French West Africa; any Africans born there were awarded French citizenship. Saint Louis embodies, to my mind, a compromise between the ragged, teeming life of West Africa and the stuffy, sanitized, bleached produce world for white tourists. There is a smooth gradiation, a gentle decline from one island to the next: meticulously maintained faded colonial loviness to uncut, pastel painted, salt worn, raccous delapidation. So gradual that one is surprised, suddenly, to find oneself standing on a stretch of beach packed with dead fish as far as the eye can see, or to look down and realize the sidwalk has disappeared and your bike -that you rented on the neatly paved and swept toruist side of the island- is sinking in sand. I love delapidation. Leaves of siding sagging and pealing away, bone thin carriage horses, the worn paint on concrete, the garbage strewn beach at sunset with flocks of garbage picking birds and boys playing soccer and women building fires in oil drums, the sunken, broken fishing boats, the sand dune grave yard that goes on for blocks with signs for headstones stuck in the sand. The huge sandy expanse of beach, the tide coming in in the evening with a strong cold wind, and the air lit up in a hazy, yellow mist. The boys, the rude boys who grabbed my bike, coming down the streets in troops of jeans and T-shirts were softened and haloed.

Yesterday I drove from Rosso, at the border, to Nouakchott. I attached myself to a Mauritanian woman, Fatou, in the car from Saint Louis. When we got out at the border she told me to follow her and not speak to anyone. I snaked along behind her through the throng of hustlers and money changers, the border parasites, keeping my eyes on the ground and her silver high heeled shoes, squinting in the mid-day sun and the river glare, wishing I could hold onto her skirts and be towed along. We drove to Nouakchott at night, and the sand dunes in the moonlight looked like they could be covered in snow. We kept slamming the brakes to avoid donkeys and camels on the road.