Life in Dakar

We lived in Dakar from mid December to the last half of March.  Memories come flooding back as I think about living there.  In the beginning, I was lonely and scared.  Having a six month old daughter brought me out of that quickly.

The Dakar natives loved Eva.  They learned immediately that I did not understand what they said, and they'd turn to her to talk as if she understood.  They'd get her to laugh and smile.  Eva was very white with white blond hair and I think that was part of the attraction.  It didn't take long for my instincts (from having moved to lots of new places my life) to regain my self assuredness and curiosity and that motherly trait that made me protective and never showing fear in front of my child.

Eva and I lived on a city street above a dentist's office.  We had bought her an old fashioned walker and she took to it right away scooting herself easily across the smoothe stone floors at home.  Her favorite spot was looking down from the balcony at the back of our apartment.  A family lived down there and when any one would spot her watching, would wave and speak and even sing to her.  It was good she was occupied, because it was a lot of work there for me not having a vacuum, or a washing machine.  I swept with a broom and washed cloth baby diapers by hand and dried them on a clothes line I strung from the pillers of the balcony.  My stove was a single burner that used propane and left a layer of black soot on the pots I sat on it...especially the boiler I used to sterilize baby bottles.

There was a little store a couple of blocks away where I could buy french baguettes and butter,  There was a butcher shop that sold sliced meat and cheese.  We were within walking distance of a "plague des infants"... a children's beach.  There was a palace down that direction, too but the street was blocked off with guards in uniforms who waved us away from the palace itself.  We watched from the front balcony in the afternoons right after prayers when the changing of the guards rode horses on the street in front of our apartment to and from the palace.

There was an open market a ways away from us, a long walk carrying a baby but a nice way to kill time.  At the edge of the market was a group of boys who would follow me asking if I would hire them to carry things for me.  At first I told them no, but later on I figured out that if I would hire one it did not cost much and the others would leave us alone.  I never wanted to buy much .. a couple of potatoes. A few eggs.  Never more than a serving or two of anything.  At first it caused the stall sellers to show some anger toward me.  I think it was in part because I was not a "good" customer and partly because I was not able to argue and barter with them over prices.  But even there, a baby girl and a market "garcon" with me was all it took to decide they'd put aside any upset with me to smile and talk to Eva.  And the boy never seemed to mind walking me home carrying my groceries.  And flowers cost so little that I bought a bunch every time I went there.

When Bob came in from offshore two weeks later I knew my way around.  He had friends on the rig.  A cook he called "chef" sent food saying the amount was too small to serve to the rig workers...steaks and casseroles and cakes and even ice cream.  A superintendent sent me addresses to find his wife and a church group and a club for english speakers... and a rattle thing he'd made for the baby.

Bob was "friends" with a street salesman who called him Boss that he called Joe who brought us to different restaurants and to a movie house -not a theater.  You had to stand up to watch the show and it was pretty crowded but the movie was a Hollywood production in English with subtitles on the bottom.   Joe told us about the resort and the Artisan Village and Ille le Gorre.  He walked with us to show us the "garment district,"  and we bought fabric and chose patterns and ordered clothes to be made.  I have two jackets from there still today.  Joe "translated" for us speaking to the tailor shop owners.  He explained about how he could tell different people on the streets where they were from by the clothes they wore.  He told us one lady was very rich because she was big and round and her nails were long and polished, which meant she did no work.  He taught us how to say our address so we could speak to taxi drivers and they would understand. He laughed at the women who seemed to be fussing at Bob and explained they were angry because Bob was carrying the baby... woman's work!

Joe offered to bring me a "girl" to do my cleaning and laundry.  When he did, he brought me a gift-- a live chicken he had been carrying upside down by its feet.  The girl named Marie was from a jungle village staying with her father's sister in town.  She spoke Waloof and a smattering of French.  She and I communicated in French.  I spoke a smattering too.  Enough to tell her she was hired.  She left to go tell her aunt she had a job and I fixed Joe coffee.  Eva got tired of looking at the chicken in the box and rolled herself over to Joe holding up her arms asking to be picked up.  When he lifted her and sat her on the table in front of him she started rubbing his face then looking at her hand.  Joe laughed loudly telling me she was trying to rub his black off.  Then he reached out and rubbed Eva's cheek but her white didn't rub off either.  We all three laughed.  Even Eva.

When Marie returned, Joe left and I showed my new "girl" the closet where I kept the mop and brooms and Ajax and rags.  She went to work immediately!  As soon as she had pushed a rag over every part of the floors and furniture and even on top of the chifferobes, done the dishes, brought in the laundry and folded the diapers she came to say she was leaving.  I told her that if she could understand me, to please take the chicken with her when she left.  Apparently she didn't understand, because she left carrying a sack of trash with her.

Next morning Marie returned and first thing she went to see Eva, who was still sleeping.  She then went to work cleaning the same floors she'd cleaned the day before.  When Eva woke I showed Marie how I bathed her and dressed her and what I fed her and where to find everything.  I showed her the empties of those things I needed from the market and the two of us went out together.  She fixed a long strip of cloth around and under Eva like a sling with Eva as a counter weight.  Ingenious!  Later she taught me that trick but I don't know if I could do it today. .

We walked in a direction I'd never walked in before.  Marie showed me the hallway where she lived with her aunt.  I thought she was going to a different market than the one I usually frequented.  She kinda did...it was a big building with Bon Marche in letters above the door and inside a grocery store with shelves and aisles and baskets with wheels just like at home.   I bought baby food that had pictures on the label so I knew what it was even though the words were in French.  I bought vegetables and pasta.  I bought ground meet in the butcher shop.   I wanted half a pound but did not know the word so I asked for 1 pound, not realizing everything was sold in kilos.  I used the American sign holding up my forefinger for one, but in other countries the thumb means one and the forefinger two, so I bought nearly five pounds. Bob worked 14/7, gone for too long at a stretch, but I managed to stay busy.  I had a tiny refrigerator with a tiny freezer, but I had enough space to store a meatloaf I made and hamburger patties and a casserole I served when he came home. 

Because my spouse was the lowest "man on the totem pole" so to speak, I did visit the other wives of the crew he was on, but no one from the rig sought me out as a friend. I did visit my friend Callie Blackorby and she and Ronnie and Sissy visited me, too, but our houses were very far apart. 

My neighbor in the apartment that used the same staircase as I did was an American flight attendant from California married to a pilot from Air Afrique so she spoke French.  I showed her the supermarket and while we were shopping there I asked her the word for half... moite.  I was going to buy the more expensive  ground meet on the left because it was leaner but my friend told me that one was expensive because horse meat is a delicacy.  So I bought half a pound of the ground beef on the right.  It was too late to think about the already devoured "hamburger" that was already cooked and gone.  And I can answer yes when anyone asks if I ever ate horse meat.

When I went to the English speaking Ladies Club I had the address for, I met an Irish woman whose husband worked on the Global Marine Endeavor same rig as Bob.  She and I walked home together and realized her apartment was across the street from my own.  We visited and went places sometimes, but mostly, Eva and I wandered the city on our own.  We walked long distances and I lost a lot of weight, so I went a number of times to the garment district.  I found a church where English was spoken, but I didn't have a sitter, so often needed to leave services early to hush my crying baby.

I found a steakhouse near the house accidently when I was out after dark headed home and hungry, followed a couple through the doors.  It was a restaurant, but it was not right then open for business...it was a wedding reception and the couple I followed were the bride and groom. A young girl seated me got a high chair for Eva then sat down and tried to communicate with me asking questions in a combination of French and English.  When I realized what she was saying about the wedding party I tried to leave but everyone was talking telling me to stay and eat with them.  Eva fell asleep on the lap of grandmother in a rocking chair but I had a wide awake party with foods I never tasted before and wine! 

I could not wait to bring Bob there during his 7 days home.  We brought our friends Gary and Callie to eat there too.  The steaks were perfect!  Gary ordered well done and I ordered rare and they were fixed to perfection.

Gary and Callie went to the beach with us, too.  Gary had lots of tattoos and the children on the beach never stopped staring and getting close asking to touch him.  Once at the beach Bob and Gary dared one another to swim to an island a good distance away.  I had Eva so I asked a man with a boat if he would take us across.  When we got there Bob and Gary were sitting on the porch of a building with drinks in front of them.  Turns out the island held summer resort homes.  Bob and Gary went to what they thought was a bar and ordered drinks.  The people in the house just went and got them beers.  They didn't know any difference until they tried to pay for the drinks and the vacationers brought a fellow who spoke English to explain.  When we wives and kids arrived, the French people invited us to stay, too.  We asked the boatman to come back and get us in an hour and once again Eva stole the show.

Eva and I took taxis when the place we wanted to go was far away.  She and I took several tours  of the artisan village where people made carvings and pottery and wove cloth.  It was reallby interesting to me and I was always bringing home a mask or an animal or a purse or blanket.  Eva loved it there, too because everyone talked to her and played with her, young and old alike.  Bob went once but he did not like it much.  He spent most of his week onshore eating and drinking with the other Americans from the rig.  Eva and I went along on those outings, but I often had to go run an errand at the bank or post office or take her home while Bob stayed. 

One day Bob came home unexpectedly and told me the rig was on its way to Norway and we had 17 days before we needed to be there so we three packed our things, dropped off a few boxes of household dishes and towels at the Global Marine office and picked up airplane tickets to Frankfort, Germany to lay over there for a 2 weeks.  We planned to visit the places that Bob had visited years before when he was stationed in Europe as an Air Force mechanic working on NATO planes.  We wanted to see Holland tulip gardens and drink beer in the Dutch Cities like tourists.

Dakar in the midst of desert, mountains, jungle and ocean

When the loudspeaker voice calling prayers in the nearby mosque startled me from sleep the next morning I discovered after one night in Dakar Eva, 6 months old, was covered in mosquito bites.  Poor baby!  The taxi driver on the way into the city taught me to say mosquito in French.  The word sounds like moo-stee-k or moose teak.

The Global Marine office was busy with people everywhere coming and going, unlike the day before.  The secretary from the day before saw us and rushed up and took the baby.  Said she thought Eva had chicken pox.  (She said , she had them as a child and was immune.)  She gave us back my passport with it's brand new Visa stamp and sent us to a pediatrician...even called a cab that was waiting for us when we exited the building and the driver knew right where to take us.

The language barrier hit us squarely when we got to the doctor's office.  It was a matter of us not understanding what anyone said then following wherever we were led to take Eva's vital signs.  I guess if they needed any answers or payment they called Global Marine's office.  The doctor tried a few times and ways to tell me it was not something...probably chicken pox and that it was bites.  Good thing I understood "moose-teak".  He wrote a prescription and I think they tried to tell me where to fill it but I don't know.  The taxi driver understood pharmacy though and brought me to a store where I got it filled.  That was not the end of my problem though.  The pharmacist gave me an envelope with a dozen little glass tubes... the kind that had been used (a long time before 1968) to hold perfume samples.  The end of the glass tube was a bubble that you would break off to release a tiny bit, a little smell of the contents.  What to do with that, I wondered?  A taxi driver once again helped me.  He said it was an insect repellant to put nearby where the baby would be sleeping to ward off the moose-teaks.  Good thing I didn't use it as an ointment or an oral dose!!

Next stop, we went to see our landlord.  He was a roly-poly-smiley Lebanese man behind a huge desk in a bare office.  His name was Nasrallah.  His English was easy to understand and when he saw Eva he understood the problem and showed us an apartmemt downtown upstairs above a dentist's office and furnished in every room.  We spent one more night at the big unfurnished gated house this time surrounded by the smell of insect repellant.  One more evening call to prayer at night, and another alarming mosque call the next day.  The 3rd day in Dakar we moved downtown.

Bob and I had two more days of his 7 days onshore before he bagan his 14 day offshore hitch.  We spent them seeing the sights. We visited the bank so I could get money when I needed.  We visited the open market.  We were followed by hawkers and sellers with ebony masks and filigreed jewelry.  We went to a cafe and ordered off a menu written in French.  We visited a hotel where the unspoused workers stayed, La Croix du Sud.  I ordered pomme de terre frites with mayonaise and the waiter made fresh mayonaise right at my table.  I called a lady carrying a basket of flowers on her head over to offer her a dollar to buy a bunch and when she shook her head "no" I offered her 2 dollars more and she took the money and left the whole basket, all the flowers included. We visited a butcherie where we bought a pound of sliced ham.  We visited a bakery where we bought fresh croissants.  We went to a little corner store near the house and I found gerber baby food and spam and french bread baguettes.  We bought an old fashioned "walker" the kind that is a folding metal frame with a cloth seat.  We bought a handmade quilt for the bed and a handle pan for the stove.  Both days flew by and before I knew it Bob was gone and I had 14 days to fill, just me and Eva.

Dakar, Senegal, West Africa

I arrived in Dakar right before Christmas, but it didn't seem like it because below the equator the seasons are opposite of the seasons above the equator.  Also, West Africa has so many different religions that don't celebrate that particular holiday. There is little decoration and no Christmas caroling or music.  My memories from there are spotty because I stayed very busy the 3 1/2  months, December to April that I was there.  A baby grows and changes a lot during the 2nd half of it's 1st year.

When we first arrived, me carrying a baby and a diaper bag and pushing another bag along with my foot, we were put in line to go through customs.  At the window I could not understand what anyone was saying.  It was all French but with a thick accent-- then I heard Bob's voice behind a barrier so I could not see him, but he could hear me saying, ''I don't understand.'' And I heard him say, ''Tell them three days.''  Apparently I came in with a visitor's visa and the first thing we needed to do was take a taxi to the Global Marine office to give them my passport and visa to get it properly stamped.  The city seemed to be in the desert and on the long ride from Dakar's airport I saw stretches of sand and buildings that looked like they were made of sand and people riding camels and cars, many more cars than I imagined would be with us on that desert road.

Beyond the desert we came into a city with storied buildings that seemed to have popped up out of nowhere.  If it had not been for the buildings that were not tall enough to be called skyscrapers, I might have thought I was in Houston with the glass windows housing stores and shops of every ilk along the entirety of each city block.  It looked a little like New Orleans with balconies on the faces of buildings and locked gates leading to courtyards between the walls and the glass of the doors and windows.

At the Global Marine office there was one secretary behind a desk who took my passport and said she would take care of it.  She cooed over the baby Eva and told me where some American friends I knew , Gary and Callie Blackorby and their children Ronnie and Sissy, were living in Dakar.

The place Bob had rented was back toward the desert but I could see houses and businesses and a mosque.  He'd rented the main part of a huge adobe house.  We opened and entered through a locked gate in a rock wall in a silent neighborhood.  The house was mostly empty and so huge and so empty our voices echoed.  Bob said it was in the process of being furnished by the landlord.  There was a mattrass in one room, and a chest of drawers.

That first night Eva slept in a drawer next to our bed.  The kitchen was empty but had lots and lots of countertop and two cook stoves, a big one with an oven and another with two big burners, no oven, but a cupboard below that had a butane bottle inside. It was hot in Dakar, in our house, and tho there was a bathroom with a shower, the water was cold because we hadn't gotten fuel to light the little 5-gallon hot water heater.

There were windows but no way to close them and no screens.  Bob told me the landlord had sent men to install screens, and that they'd put wooden slats into the centers of the ledges around the windows.  As they were leaving and Bob was asking when they would return to install the screens, the foreman said to him, "Finis.  Finis."  I have seen that French word at the end of movies and think that it means, " The End."