INTO AFRICA
By Bob Van Leer

  (DAKAR, SENEGAL, Sunday, Jan. 14, 2001) - The west African city contains so many new sights, sounds and smells it is an overload on the senses. We arrived here this morning, our first stop in black Africa.

  This former French colony has about 9 million population of whom one million are in the capital city of Dakar. It is about the size of South Dakota and is the westernmost country in Africa.

  Betty and I went on a tour to Retba Lake, "Pink Lake", about 30 miles from Dakar. To get there we had to drive through much of Dakar. This was Sunday and as we drove to the lake traffic was relatively light, but returning streets were jammed.

  The National Highway on which we drove most of the way is lined with shops of all kinds, from barber shops to auto wrecking yards. A shop may be anything from merchandise spread on the sand to crudely put together stalls to fairly substantial buildings.

  This is the dry season and everything is dusty. And, this is the western edge of the Sahara Desert.

  Traffic on the highway is mostly motor vehicles, but there are a few horse carts. Public transportation is extensive and is small, gaily decorated buses. They have rear doors and almost all of the rear doors are open and with one or more teen-age boys hanging from the back, not in the bus at all.

  The picture we saw in the city is, to us, not a good one. Everything except monuments is dusty, dirty and poor. Yet the people we saw appeared to be happy and well-fed. Our guide, Pepi, said there is no middle class in Senegal. On our tour, we did not see where the upper class lived.

  In the city there are crowds of people. Our guide said there is a movement from the countryside to the city to find jobs and there are none. There is also a fierce housing shortage.

  The lake actually is a little pink, a muddy, brownish pink. Pepi said the color is from a kind of bacteria that live in the lake. This is not fresh water. It is heavily salted and there is a substantial industry of harvesting salt from the lake. Men go out in boats and dredge the salt from the bottom into plastic pails that look as if they hold 50-75 pounds. Women take these to shore and dump them on top of piles of salt 3-6 feet high. It is gray-colored salt, not white. The salt is sacked from these piles and loaded into trucks which take off, presumably for refining.

  At one end of the lake was a small village where we stopped for an hour. All buildings were of grass mats fastened to poles with a straw thatched roof. There was some attempt to build concrete block buildings, but none were finished. The village chief cautioned us not to give anything to the children, but instead buy things in the village shops. But someone must, because the children were begging.

  Our guide had told us that girls were married at 14 to boys about 18. This is a Muslim country and men were entitled to up to four wives. He said parents usually selected the first wife. A bridal dowry of two to four cows must be paid.

  It's their country and they are entitled to their own customs, but it looks sad to us to see children having children. I saw one little girl who looked 11 or 12, rather than 14, and she was visibly pregnant.

  We were taken in four-wheel drive vehicles on our visit to the lake and after visiting the village, our drivers let some of the air out of the tires and we went driving through the sand dunes along the beach.

  Politically, Senegal was stable until six months ago when a coup deposed the party that had led the country since independence 40 years ago. Whether the new government is stable will have to be determined by time.

  A U. S. State Department publication says that the population is 95% Muslim and 4% Christian with the balance traditional religions. Life expectancy (1998) was 50 years. We get reports that AIDS is a major problem, but no reliable statistics on how large. The Wolof tribe predominates with 43% of the population.

  The country is poor. Per capita gross domestic product (GDP) was $550. This contrasts with say, Tunisia, but with a per capita GDP of $5500.

  Returning to our ship, we were treated to an exhibition of native dances by a very professional group which did an outstanding job. Particularly impressive was a man who did the limbo. He started with the bar about three feet high and danced underneath it. He kept lowering the bar and the final setting couldn't have been more than 18 inches high. To add a little additional zest to his finale, the bar was wrapped with something and set afire for his last limbo.

  Leaving Dakar, we are 1415 nautical miles and three days from our next port of call, Tema, Ghana. This is a huge continent and we will be following the coastline around Africa's western bulge, so most of our miles will be east, not south. We will pass by Ivory Coast, but will not stop because of the political unrest.