Articles > St. Louis (Senegal)

In the bars of St-Louis one might find very old hands reminiscing old hat – of the good old days, la mission civilatrice – as Gauloise smoke curls between strains of urgent Afro-jazz. The Gallic impulse sets in before you even step ashore but this need not put one off.

Eiffel, no less, designed its long mainland bridge with grey low-arched girders, brought over second-hand from the Danube in 1897. General decline and neglect lend a faint but fetching air of melancholy, and UNESCO World Heritage Site status may yet spruce it up. Around 2½km long and a few hundred metres across, St-Louis lies moored in the mouth of the Senegal River within a gull’s screech of the Atlantic. There are hints of Zanzibar, snatches of shabby Marseille and – in the paint-peeling dining room of my favourite though admittedly grungy restaurant – thin echoes of Havana.

Its rise mirrors that of French West Africa. Determined colonials had long eyed this tantalising coast. Named after Louis XIV, in 1658 it became the first French settlement of l’Afrique-Occidentale, trading in slaves and gum arabic. By the early 19th century, it was a thriving port with 6000 inhabitants, all of whom – black, white or Métis – were made French citizens. The little town remained capital of Senegal and Mauritania until 1958, long after its heyday.

There are few formal sights; St-Louis does ambience, best absorbed by strolling between the twenty-eight info-signs pegged to facades or street corners. They recall old trading houses like Deves & Chaumet, Bordeaux merchants whose empire (which included the first peanut oil factories) stretched from here across West Africa. The Senegal River became a great trading artery, its banks here lined with quays and warehouses. Then there were “Les Signares”, matriarchs of French and Senegalese blood who through marriage became a kind of propertied aristocracy. That era is still celebrated each December with processions of huge wooden lanterns, fanals, depicting their spacious courtyard mansions that survive and – even where dilapidated – lend the place much of its character.

Its former importance is underlined by the still-open French and Belgian consulates, the latter a particularly handsome building. The central Hôtel de la Poste, built in 1850 as a warehouse, ranks among St-Louis’ landmarks. Here wined and dined the bourgeoisie, today replaced by well-heeled tourists. Hunters’ trophies and wonderful old aviation posters line its walls, evoking the days when seaplanes paused here on the aéropostale route to Rio and Buenos Aires. The aviator Jean Mermoz, one of its pioneers, stayed here regularly in the 1930s (aficionados should make for room 219) until his plane disappeared near Dakar in 1936.

That evening I met another visitor; we discussed the joys of Senegal and West Africa. “But St-Louis” he lamented, “it’s not very African!” The town’s French veneer perhaps muffles the perception of those who stick to its core. Meanwhile I set off do dip my toes in Mauritania, which starts a few kilometres away, but you need not venture even this far to see and smell the ‘real’ Africa. By the decaying Pont Geole, lethargic boatmen waited to ferry passengers to and from the Ndar Tout quarter, part of a slender spit of land that parallels the coast for about 25km. I turned north and walked past more crumbling homes where children played in their yards or washed horses in the river, and old men with fat sunglasses sat in the shade of trees.

The bustle gave way to a pungent tang of drying fish, here slit and spread on nets strung across poles in the dunes. The slitters – weather-beaten women in once-fabulous gowns and smudged headscarves – sat beneath tarpaulins brewing campfire tea and chatting. They made bawdy jokes and offered a cuppa. On I walked through thin patchy grass, an arm of the Senegal River on one side, a low bank of sand hiding the Atlantic on the other. Two men sat smoking; “Mauritanie?” I asked; “Ici!” they cried, urging me back towards the beach.

It is a vast, empty swathe of blinding sand mobbed by a thundering ocean and a film of spray. A couple picnicked on the dunes; she sat in Senegal, he in Mauritania. Here, at least, it is a porous border with just a few rotting sticks by the shore marking the frontier. I returned by the beach where delighted boys pranced around a turtle carcass and fishermen picked patiently at their nets or snored in the lee of their hulls.

By late afternoon what seemed like half the town had gathered to watch the launch of fishing boats. Feverish crowds suggested this was no easy task, that we were in for a little maritime theatre. Forty-foot skiffs wallowed in the surf like weary seals and had to be coaxed out amidst pounding waves. There was a moment – of truth, if you like – for each boat where, with its prow pointing skyward, it hung in the air as if to belly flop. Yet they all got through to ride the swell and spend that night at sea.

Sixty tranquil kilometres north of St-Louis lies the ‘Parc National des Oiseaux du Djoudj’. Named after a small tributary of the Senegal River as it nears the Atlantic, Djoudj is one of the only permanent stretches of water on the southern fringes of the Sahara. The park is among the world’s most important sanctuaries for migrant birds, many of which – like the tourists – winter here from France. Don’t be put off; it’s a magical place of remarkable statistics – an estimated two million birds comprising around 366 species visit annually.

Turning off the main road from St-Louis, hardy brahmin cows grazed amidst sparse vegetation while a handful of dusty villages sketched harsh, tenuous lives. Much of northern Senegal is flat, bleached savanna that is forever being nibbled by the encroaching Sahel. Now in mid-winter, it seemed the Sahel had gorged on a lean land and swilled the shallows dry. Relief lay just past the dirt airstrip (moneyed weekenders swoop in from Dakar) and the main park entrance – an enticing stretch of rippling water with nodding reeds and bright splashes of pale lilies.

Djoudj nurtures varied wildlife – marsh mongooses, jackals, nile monitors and pythons – but birds are the prime draw. From humble teals and ducks to striking crowned cranes, flamingos and cormorants, even non-twitchers relish these vibrant wetlands with their vast skies and intense light. Some guides are very knowledgeable and eager to divulge, for example, that pelican chicks eat regurgitated, part-digested, day-old fish juice while their parents consume about 1.2kg of fish daily. With this sort of diet, it’s no wonder you smell them before you see them, and the white pelican breeding colony is probably the single most visited part of Djoudj.

This entails an approximately 10km round-trip by boat, a bewitching ride past tentacular lakes, channels and marshes. Small, inoffensive crocodiles bask in the shallows and shy herons skim away in fright. Deep in the park and set on a small, almost predator-proof island, from a distance the reeking colony resem-bles a sort of avian aerodrome with these splendid birds wheeling and gliding in mock formation. Closer to it’s like Heathrow on Easter Friday – an excited crush of beaks and feathers tempered by an almost comical alertness.

Back on land and despite being a little cavalier in my transport arrange-ments, I relished the ninety-minute walk back to the park’s entrance….until huge jumpy warthogs crashed about up ahead. Just as I wondered about beastly exclusions to my travel insurance, a 4WD appeared with the French consul from St-Louis at the wheel. Hop in, he urged, to which my heartfelt reply was “Vive la France!”

Articles

• More from Amar Grover