Dakar
We awoke this morning to an unusual sight – Dakar, a big city! After so long in wilderness and tiny towns, this was an amazing thing, representing our transition from “the real world” to that of human fabrication.
In the morning we boarded a ferry for a quick ride to Goree Island. This tiny island is covered with fortifications and colonial houses. The town was at once familiar and exotic. The buildings might have been from any Mediterranean port, but in the courtyards grew Baobabs. The sun was bright, the breeze was cool. Houses were gaily painted in burgundy, lemon and ochre. Yet from this island emanates the melancholy of blackest Africa. It is a blackness not born of Africa, but had a trans-continental genesis. For Goree Island was one of the greatest distribution centers of the slave trade – a pulsing artery from the Heart of Darkness. We toured a slave house, were human property was sorted and stored for distribution. We saw the massive fort that kept the enemies of successive occupiers at bay. Yet outside, day to day life churned on with the exuberance, energy and drive of the moment. Women walked past, babies slung on their backs. Children pattered in the sandy streets, or eyed us with curiosity in friendly clusters. It was an odd place, beautiful and ugly, vivacious yet encumbered with history.
Our trip has been about islands, and the biogeographical consequences wrought from isolation. Human history is not free from these forces. The founder effect of the few people colonizing the Americas left their descendants susceptible to disease. Goreee Island became a slave center because Africans survived slavery better than Native Americans. The isolation of islands can protect vulnerable indigenous species or can guard against the escape of desperate people.
In the afternoon we took a tour of Dakar. We saw the ministries, palaces, mosques and schools of this capital city.
Our journey has been remarkable in breadth, carrying us from the Antarctic region to the Equator and beyond. The variety all that we have seen has been bound together by themes of diaspora and discovery, colonization, isolation and exploitation, all applying both to wildlife and humans. The things we have seen and the things we have come to understand will resonate within us for years to come.
