Cakes and soldiers

It’s strange, I’ve only been back in Dakar 4 days but even after 6 weeks in the UK, it feels like I never left. So far, so good. My flat is still in one piece (apart from lack of Internet); my colleagues were so welcoming (if a little too honest in their kindly-meant comments on how much I clearly ate while back home); sweet Senegalese tea is even better than I remembered; and summer is finally here, which, given that we are not that close to the equator, means brighter mornings and longer evenings – a bit like home really. Well, sort of.

I spent the weekend catching up with people and pottering about. My quartier has been a hive of activity all weekend with its own mini version of 4 Weddings and a Funeral.
Friday there was the funeral. I arrived home after the burial to find the whole street packed with people sitting and eating couscous, with more and more huge trays of food being carried out of one of my neighbour's houses. After several attempts at polite refusal, I accepted the invitiation of a group of elderly women to eat with them.

Saturday was a wedding. My neighbour made the wedding cake which somehow ended up in my fridge to look after (quite brave of her given my tendency to make any desserts in my vicinity disappear pretty quickly). Five round cakes in descending size, each with a hole in the centre and covered in cream, coconut flakes and green blobs of icing.


Sometimes things that seem so normal at the time would be so random if taken out of context... Picture 9pm on Saturday night, myself and 4 guests from the wedding each with an identical, cream cake in hand, traipsing down the stairs of my flat, out into the street, down an alleyway, across a dimly-lit road dodging taxis, stray dogs and potholes until we reached the reception, with Yvette, my neighbour, leading the way with a huge pole covered in tin foil in one hand and a plastic minature bride and groom in the other. Not the most risk-free way of getting a cake to a wedding!

The reception was outdoors and was packed, mainly with women in beautifully vibrant and intricate outfits, eating and dancing. Yvette proceeded to mount the cakes one by one onto this aluminium-covered pole which wobbled precariously with every gust of wind.


The bride, in a tasteful lacy meringue dress, with her eyebrows drawn on in purple pencil, stepped up to pose for the classic cake-cutting photo with (I presumed) her husband. I commented to a guest that they looked a lovely couple (thought it would be polite to make conversation as I'd been given a plate of food to join in the celebration).


‘Oh no, that’s not the groom’, the guest replied. ‘C’est le faux-mari’ (the fake husband).


Seeing my slightly bewildered look, the guest explained that often the groom doesn’t come to the party. He attends the ceremony but the party is more for the bride and her friends (hence the disproportionate number of female guests) and the groom waits at home for the celebrations to finish and the bride to return. That in itself didn’t seem that strange as I know weddings vary so much from culture to culture. What did seem a bit odd was that the bride was wearing a Western-style dress and attempting to follow a typically Western cake-cutting ceremony - a concept that to me, doesn't quite work unless you have both the bride and groom present...

Apart from weddings and funerals, I also went to the beach with my neighbours and their children. It’s not exactly paradise, but for a city beach, it does the job: clean, lots of shade from coconut trees and a view out onto Gorée, the old slave-trading island. (Best to focus on that rather than the industrial port to the right and the barbed wire of the French military camp behind!)

There was also an 'open-house' day at the French military camp, and seeing as it's next to the beach, we went along. Felt like I had stepped into another world. Surrounded by French soldiers in combats and hundreds of French families all enjoying what was basically like a school fete, with a tombola, BBQ and camel rides (instead of donkeys!). There are about 4 military bases in Dakar but no one seemed able to explain exactly what their purpose is. I think it's a historical thing and now the soldiers use the bases for training. My neigbours who are from Cote d'Ivoire were quite anti the whole French military base thing, particularly given their negative experience at home with the French army.

It's weird thinking there is this totally different reality going on behind the gates of the camp, that is so unlike the rest of Dakar. Good BBQ chicken though.