I met Thiam and Yamar just as they were preparing to leave for Abdallah Wallo. They proposed that I go with them, but I had to stay in Dakar for another week. If I wanted to come after that, however — they would be waiting for me. The only way for me to get there was by minibus. I must arrive at the bus terminal at dawn, they admonished, when it is easiest to get a seat.
So, a week later, I went to the terminal. Gare Routière is an enormous, flat square, still empty at this hour. A group of young boys materialized instantly at the gate, asking where I wanted to go. To Podor, I said, because the village I was traveling to was in the department of that name. They led me to more or less the center of the square and, without a word, left me there. Because I was alone in this desolate place, a group of vendors, shivering in the still-cool air (the nights are cold here), gathered around me, pushing their wares — chewing gum, biscuits, baby rattles, cigarettes, sold individually or by the pack. I didn’t want anything, but they kept standing there; they had nothing else to do. A white man is such an anomaly, a foundling from another planet, that it is possible to stare at him with interest almost forever. After a while another passenger appeared at the gate, then one more after him, and the vendors moved off in their direction.
Finally, a small Toyota van pulled up. These vehicles are built to seat twelve, but here they accommodate more than thirty passengers. It is difficult to describe the number and nature of all the additions, the welded-on extensions, the little benches inside such a bus. When it is full, for one passenger to either get out or get in, all the others must do so as well; the intricate calibration of the internal arrangements is as tight and precise as the workings of a Swiss watch, and whoever occupies a place must take into account the fact that for the next several hours, for all intents and purposes, he will not be able to move so much as a toe. The worst are the hours of waiting, when one must sit in the hot, airless bus while the driver collects his full ensemble of passengers. In the case of our Toyota, this process lasted four hours. We were just about to set off when the driver — a powerful, well-built young man named Traoré—announced upon getting into the bus that someone had stolen a package that had been lying on his seat, with a girl’s dress inside. Thefts like this are a common occurrence the world over, but Traoré fell into such a rage, a fury bordering on insanity, that we all cringed, fearing that he would tear us — innocent passengers! — limb from limb. It was yet another instance of something I had observed in Africa before: the reaction to a thief — although there is plenty of theft here — has an irrational dimension, akin to madness. Because there is something inhuman about stealing from a poor man, who often has but one bowl or one tattered shirt, that man’s response to the theft can likewise be inhuman. If a crowd catches a thief in the market, on the square, on the street, it can kill him on the spot — which is why, paradoxically, the task of the police here is not so much the pursuit of thieves as their protection.
Initially, the road skirts the Atlantic coast, passing through an avenue of baobabs so formidable, gigantic, lofty, monumental, we might as well have been driving among the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Like elephants among other animals, so are baobabs among trees: they have no equals. They are from some other geological era, from another context, from another nature. They cannot be compared with anything else. They live for themselves, and have their own individual biological program.
After this kilometers-long forest of baobabs, the road turns east, toward Mali and Burkina Faso. In the town of Dagana, Traoré stops the bus. There are several eateries here. We will have our meal in one of them. The passengers divide up into groups of six to eight, and sit down in a circle on the floor. In the middle of each circle, a boy from the restaurant sets down a metal basin half filled with rice generously covered with a brownish, heavily spiced sauce. We begin to eat. And this is how we do it: one by one, in turn, each person extends his right hand into the bowl, takes a handful of rice, squeezes out the excess sauce, and lifts this compressed dumpling to his mouth. We eat slowly, seriously, mindful of the order, so that no one is wronged. There is great tact and restraint in this ritual. Everyone is hungry, and the amount of rice is limited, yet not one goes out of turn, hurries another, cheats. When the basin is empty, the boy brings a bucket of water from which everyone, again in sequential order, drinks a large cupful. Then we each wash our hands, pay, step outside, and get back on the bus.
A moment later we are on our way again. By afternoon we reach a town called Mboumba. I get out. I have ahead of me ten kilometers of country road, through dry, burnt-out savannah, hot, loose sand, and crushing heat.
So, morning in Abdallah Wallo. The children have already scattered throughout the village. Now the adults emerge from the huts. Men spread out small rugs in the sand and begin their morning prayers. They pray enclosed within themselves, hermetically oblivious to the bustle around them — children running, women going about their chores. At this early hour the sun already fills the horizon, illuminates the earth, pours into the village. One feels its presence immediately; all at once, it is already hot.
Now begins the ritual of morning visits and salutations. Everyone visits everyone else. These are backyard scenes — no one enters the houses. For the mud huts serve only as sleeping quarters. Thiam, after prayers, starts his rounds with his nearest neighbors. He walks up to them. A mutual exchange of questions and answers follows. How did you sleep? Well. And your wife? Also well. And the children? Well. And cousins? Well. And your guest? Well. And did you dream? I did. Etc., etc. This goes on for a very long time, and the longer we ask, the more detailed is this exchange of courtesies, the greater the respect that we each evince for the other. At this time of day, it is impossible simply to traverse the village; with each person encountered one must enter into this unending exchange of questions and greetings, and one must engage each one individually: addressing a group, collectively, would be rude.
I accompanied Thiam for the entire length of the ritual. It took a long time to complete the full circle. As we moved in our morning orbit, I noticed others circulating in theirs; the entire village was in motion, and from all directions one could hear those ritualized “How did you sleep?” and the reassuring, positive “Well. Well.” As we walked the village, it became clear that in the tradition of its inhabitants, and even in their imagination, the concept of divided, differentiated, segmented space does not exist. There are no fences, boards, or wires, no hedges, nets, ditches, or demarcation lines anywhere. The space is single, communal, open — transparent even; there are no screens in it, no erected barriers, dams, and walls; it puts up no limits, offers no resistance.
Now a portion of the people go work in the fields. The fields are far away; you cannot even see them. The soil near the village has long been exhausted — barren, sterile sand and dust. You must walk for kilometers before you can plant something with the hope that, if the rains come, the earth will yield a crop. Man has as much land here as he can manage to cultivate, but the fact is that he will cultivate very little of it. The hoe is his only tool, he has no plow, no draft animals. I look at those setting out for the fields. Their only nourishment for the entire day is the bottle of water they carry. Before they reach their destination, the heat will already be frightful. What do they cultivate? Manioc, corn, dry rice. Wisdom and experience dictate to these farmers that they work little and slowly, take long breaks, conserve their strength, rest. For these are weak people, poorly nourished, without much energy. If someone were to start working intensively, toiling, going all out, he would grow weaker still and, in his exhaustion, easily succumb to malaria, tuberculosis, or any of the hundreds of other tropical diseases lying in wait, half of which are fatal. Life here is a constant struggle, an endlessly repeated effort to tilt in one’s favor the fragile, flimsy, and shaky balance between survival and extinction.