Naturally Fun

Dakar is a world of its own, as are most African capitals, who take on a culture and an economy of their own largely separate from the rest of the nation. But not far from Dakar is a world of escape even more unique than Senegal's capital. The urbanites and expats take refuge there on the weekends, but the Petite Côte also plays host to numerous troops of French traveling on package tours.

"This place has the same relationship to France that Cancún does to the United States," observed an astute colleague, and that helped me put the rest into perspective: ostensibly luxurious hotels with deep pools and carefully manicured garden borders, fishing excursions into the deep waters off the coast for Marlin, massage with essential oils, henna treatments, and gift shops full of neat little things. The dozen or so hotels that have set up shop along the long, placid coastline south of Dakar all vie with each other for "correctness" and quality of restaurant. They're nice enough, and comfortable (though the word "luxury" means something much greater in the Yucatan and elsewhere. This isn't Monaco, after all). But I had the pleasure of traveling to the Petite Côte in the company of several dozen well-educated African colleagues, and was able to see the place through their eyes.

I learned more about France and the French than I did about Africa that weekend (I'm sure one would learn more about Americans than Mexicans in Cancún, as well). The open buffets at dinner had been carefully calibrated to French tastes: dishes of carefully pickled crudités before the meal, long platters of cheeses (some of them oozing), and tall baskets of bread, alongside trays of mysterious whipped meats, blended mysteries, and strange little things encased in clear gelatin. There was lots of seafood – after all, we were seaside. And the bar was stocked with Pastis, Martini, Cointreau, and the like.

As revealing was the entertainment, i.e. the evening "spectacle" in which Africans danced, sang, and performed. One entertainer purported to reveal "African wisdom" that was rather a series of careful one-liners unrelated to any African proverb we'd ever heard. Others play-acted funny skits that were risqué, but not too risqué. On call at one hotel was a troupe of Colombian dancers, all morena, slender, and well groomed; they were desperate to chat with us in Spanish, and complained at length how far away they were from everything (Latin America, obviously, but even the temptations of the Senegalese capital!). Seemed like they were well paid, though.

My favorite was "African night" in which the evening meal purported to be African traditional dishes like chicken cooked in ginger sauce. I asked my African colleagues if they recognized any of it: No (It was delicious anyway). Same went for the dance that evening: beautiful but unrecognizable to any of my Senegalese friends. Was it from another region, like the Congo? "... or France!" responded my Senegalese friend. Outside, the hotel had arranged a sidewalk fair for artisans, mostly retired Frenchwomen selling interesting jewelry they'd created.

It seemed clear that if we don't understand Africa, it's because we haven't really tried. We have learned to like traditional African food and music without preserving the authenticity of what we've adopted, much the way American Chinese food is only vaguely Chinese, and Italian pizza around the world is anything but. No worries, as Africa continues to grow and develop in its own way. But we will apparently someday discover that we are at a disadvantage, and what we "know" about Africa turns out to be anything but the truth. Perhaps, deep down, we remain afraid of this scary and different continent, even after all these years.