Don't Drive At Night! Danger! And a Little History on the Banks of the Senegal River

Covering a lot of Ground in Senegal - not always easy 

This is a Fort in the village of Podor, where are spending three days on the banks of the Senegal River 

After our frenetic pace of activity in Keur Soce, we set out for a trip to the north of Senegal with a destination of Podor, a remote village on the Senegal River.  It's a long way, several hundred miles, so we scheduled a stop in the middle in the city of Saint Louis (pronounced San Luwee).

The timing of this trip was not the best, as we encountered the tail end of the annual pilgrimage to a holy ground for Senegalese, in a place called Touba.  You may recall, the guy that went nuts on the plane was originally headed to that place, only he didn't get there on our flight ...!

Leaving Keur Soce and heading north, we made good time until we hit the traffic of all the vehicles heading to and from Touba.  It was intense, with every kind of imaginable vehicle carrying way too many people.  It was downright dangerous - for example, the way a loaded dump truck was barreling down the road with 85 people stuffed in the back. 

Blinded by the Light ...

It took us a lot longer to get to Saint Louis than we thought.  Eventually the sun went down, and one of the worst things in Senegal is driving at night.  It's treacherous.  The drivers here - when they see an oncoming car or truck or bus - blast you with their brights at the worst possible time.  Instead of dipping their brights, the turn them on when they see another car.  It's incredibly dangerous.  You can never tell when they're going to blast you, often within the last 100 yards and it's blinding, so you can't hardly see the road (which often has no lines painted on it).  Scary and nerve racking. 

But we made it to our hotel in Saint Louis, a really nice place on a spit of land between the mouth of the Senegal River and the sea.  Although it was a dark night, we've been here before and knew it was next to the ocean, and of course you could hear the waves.  After a lovely dinner outside on the patio, we fell into a blissful sleep.   

In the morning we were rewarded with sunny warm weather.  We enjoyed a cup of coffee on the veranda with nice flowers all around the grounds and birds chirping, it's a real nice setting.  We made our way back up the peninsula, passing innumerable brightly colored fishing boats and tons of activity with the fishermen returning from their all night excursions out into the ocean.  

This is where the majority of Senegal's fresh fish comes from, and they eat of lot of fish here.  The fishing and harvest operation is quite a thing to see in-and-of itself. 

Then we hit the open road to complete the trip to Podor.  In the past on this trip, it could take hours and hours, with rough roads and bad weather; it's hard to make good time.  However, they have just completed a new road all the way from Saint Louis to Podor, and it's marvelous.  I should say "We completed a road" because it was built by Americans, or at least designed and paid for.  It's a terrific road with smooth surfaces, even curves, nice shoulders, seductive slopes (wait! am I describing a woman here?  sorry ...) 
But it's maybe the best road in the country.  I spoke to a British guy later who described it as "unbelievable"!

Especially when compared to the other roads (often bad, sometimes terrible).  Anyway, we got through with a lot of driving, even at night, and reached our ultimate destination of Podor.   It's a town/village of around 10,000 people on the banks of the mighty Senegal River.  I say mighty because it's a major river through a dry region and forms the border between Mauritania, Mali, and Senegal.   It's a big river, big enough to have river boats you can sleep on make the trip up from Saint Louis. 

A floating platform in the middle of the Senegal River, with Mauritania on the other side

We will be here for three days, with a focus on Andando activities and programs, and a concert festival put on by Baaba Maal, a world famous musician who was born here.  More on that later.

This is a view from the roof top deck of our hotel with the village of Podor in the background

The Hotel here in Podor is surprisingly nice, recently updated to standards far above some of the other accommodations.   







The history of Podor goes way back, with a fort built here by the French in 1780 (shown at the top of this blog post).  It's such a remote place, hard to imagine soldiers coming up the river three hundred miles to establish an outpost here.  
There are no soldiers in the fort now  ... time passes  ...  I'm just sayin'