For the past 24 hours, I have been in transit. I left Dakar airport the night of the 29th. Because of a fuel shortage at the airport, the plane had to fly 30 minutes, stop in Nouakchott in the middle of the night, and get more fuel pumped from an enormous truck while I tried to glance at the desert landscape in the dark. We finally made it to Paris in the morning. I had missed my connecting flight, but was able to get on the next plane to New York. When I finally arrived at JFK, my luggage was still in Paris.
I’m writing this from LaGuardia, because I am continuing my travels onwards in order to spend New Year’s Eve in Santa Fe. I feel a disconnect between my body and mind because of all the flights, languages, borders crossed. Airports don’t feel too different from one another. I could be in Paris, and I could be in Chicago. My body has been traveling faster than my mind. It was only a few days ago that I was sitting under palm trees, having bissap juice and Thiéboudienne for lunch, recognizable by locals who greeted me on my daily walk. This now feels like a dream.
Right before I left, I decided that I wanted to ceremoniously walk to the border between Senegal and Mauritania. Only a 45-minute walk from the residency. I first walked through the Northern part of Guet N’dar island, the thin island parallel to Saint-Louis island. One aspect that I had to get used to while being in Saint-Louis, was the constant attention because of my skin color. I was automatically noticed, especially by kids. They would yell “Toubab! Toubab!” which means white person in Wolof. They would also say “Argent, argent!” (asking for money with their hands out) or “Ballon!” (some of them wanted a soccer ball).
In Saint-Louis, but I assume other parts of Senegal as well, there are Quranic schools that make children beg for money in the streets. From what I’ve heard, families from villages in Senegal send their children to these boarding schools in the cities to learn the Quran by heart. It seems like the schools are unfortunately using children to make money, and not feeding them enough. Some kids even ask Toubabs for money saying it’s “pour le lait” (for milk). I realized that most of these kids only know these four or five French words. Bonjour, lait, argent, ballon, and sometimes “Comment tu t’appelles?” I’m not sure what to make of the situation, and I am not one to judge since I am an outsider, but it’s unfortunate that they is not government funding to make the schools have better living conditions. One very skinny boy named Mamadou followed me around often, and I asked him if he had friends, if he remembers his family but all he would respond with was those same words. I thought about giving him the rest of my change before I left but couldn’t find him.
Anyway, I walked to the border past hundreds of kids. If the kids are not in the Quranic school, they are children of fishermen. If they are men, they will be fishermen themselves when they grow up. Walking up to the beach that separates Senegal and Mauritania, hundreds of boats are being pushed into the sea. The waves looked dangerous, the small wooden boats worried me. I watched as fishermen prepared their boats, in awe of the nets and colorful boats. Fishermen in Senegal have a high social ranking. And they make a lot of money selling their fish as well. Before a journey to the ocean, they sing a powerful chant. A boat blessing.
Suddenly, there is sand and a beach but no more boats. There is a wide expanse of space and nothingness. I smiled. The border was a row of trees, so I stopped there. There was nothing else giving it the appearance of a border with another country. There was no stop sign, no “welcome to Mauritania” sign, no guard or line on the ground. I looked out into that distance for a bit. I could see sand and more sand, a contrast to the blue sky. Another country. Only seen by its lack of people and buildings, and by the line on a map.
I’m often reminded of a line from the movie “La Grande Illusion” by Jean Renoir. Two French aviators who were placed in a German prison camp during World War One manage to flee on foot. In one of the last scenes, (sorry spoiler) they finally make it to Switzerland.
Maréchal: You're sure that's Switzerland?
Rosenthal: Positive.
Maréchal: It all looks the same.
Rosenthal: You can't see borders - they're man-made.
I thought of this as I gazed into the distance. I could have continued walking into the landscape, but this imaginary idea of a border stopped me. There was probably some kind of border control eventually.
Tonight, we will cross the border of time - into 2024. A new year, also a (sort of) man-made threshold of time. Soon, some countries will have already celebrated the new year, and we will follow with a toast to it when our time says midnight. The distance of the year ahead of us like a wide open landscape, a blank page, an expanse of nothingness that we will fill in by walking towards it.
Happy new year everyone!
Best,
Mána