Begay, Botè, Happiness!

As we walked about during our two days here, we encountered a number of friendly people, changing my preconceptions from a few things I'd read about travelling in Africa.


Firstly, as Barney and I were on my way back to our room, and Dree had gone to get some water, we were called in to sit with a family in their shaded courtyard. With me and Barnes on limited French, we stumbled through a few conversations as chairs were brought out. Luckily one man spoke some broken English, and somehow three years of lessons came flooding back! The grandmother (four generations lived in the same house) offered us some food but we politely declined: looked a lovely fish dish apart from the flies covering it. We politely declined. One thing though is that Barney the Dinosaur transcends all cultures, creeds and nationalities. "Je m'appelle Barney", "Barney l'dino?!" Cue laughter. Priceless.


The next day we headed across the west bridge, towards the sea, notable only as the east broidge was designed by Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Tower in Paris). This was a lot different to the island, with far more rubbish, cars and people. We cautiously wandered through the market and (possibly via somebody's backyard) to the beach. This is a real 'working' beach, with the shacks that the families live in facing the sea and pirogues (carved, painted wooden fishing boats) parked on the sand, much in the way that we would park cars in front of our houses. If I drove...


The beach went on for as far as the eye could see in both directions and was swarming with hundreds of children - playing football, swimming etc. The sea was amazingly warm for the Atlantic, but there was quite a lot of litter and fish guts/heads. To be expected; this is not the Costa del Sol! On the way back to the bridge I took a few photos (feeling more confident now, using the SLR in foreign places), and a man in a full length blue tie-die robe ran towards us. I thought he was about to tell me off, but all he wanted was to have a proper photo with me! Tried to get an email address to send some of the pics to him, but he didn't have one.

Our best experience in St Louis, was as we were walking up towards our hostel, a man from inside a tailors shop beckoned to us. We went over and he brought some chairs out and had a chat - in French of course. His name was Aziz and he made us some traditional African tea. Bit of a kerfuffle to be honest; get the small pot out, get some coal from the back, some water fro,m the shop next door, and to heat up the coal sufficiently meqnt fanning the coals for about half an hour. Tiring work, but well worth it for the authentic, Arab-influenced green tea. They are served in small glasses (like shots), then lots of sugar is added before being poured from one glass to another a few times to cool. Very local! We were even given the third-pouring, which has the best flavour.

We stayed there, sitting on the streetside for about three hours, chatting away into the night on all sorts of things, with more French returning the more I conversed. Barney is still at the 'bonjour' stage, but makes us laugh by saying "cheers" at the end of everything! Aziz invited us back after we'd had something to eat, and we returned with some of Dree's Fortnum & Mason speciality teas to show Aziz how we male teq back home. Did have to buy a load of milk though!

During the evening we met a whole host of people - the whole community seems to congregate on the street after work, putting chairs outside their house/workplace. Just a superb atmosphere. Aziz was working late - was the first day of school tomorrow, and he had a pile of kid's clothes to get through. So we sat outside talking to all sorts of friendly characters; a homeless ex-soldier, a teacher, a taxi driver, a bloke who said he was the "premier football hooligan in St Louis" (in jest). It was superb relaxing with a group that were so friendly. Here's hoping to more experiences like this!