Tile flooring at the guest house in Saly. Sun setting over the trees in the background. 
Night on the street in Saly. Street lights shining down on the palm trees that line the road. 
Walking along the rocky beaches in Saly. Looking out to the Atlantic Ocean. 
Interior of a French restaurant in Saly. White walls looking out to warm lighting in the dining room. 
Looking out to the moon and the evening sky through the trees.
A series of photos taken in Saly, Senegal. Tim Donahue // Wavelength
By: Tim Donahue
February 13, 2023
I’m drinking a Coke by the ocean with a polka-dotted pen that’s been lent to me as I seem to have lost all my manual writing utensils, and it feels like I haven’t written in ages.
I finished a manuscript by the pool on our last day in Saint Louis. It’s a 50,000 word work of literary fiction and I haven’t been able to think about writing since. In the wise words of Austin Powers, “I’m spent.” There’s been time to think here, time to read and finish my manuscript with a clear mind ready to be filled with creativity. The space was useful, it has been the entire trip so far. There’s been added capacity in my mind, and now that I don’t have something to fill it with, I’m feeling my lack of creative fulfillment for the first time.
Luckily, for the sake of my suffering stamina when it comes to writing about myself, I’m almost done! We arrived in Saly, the final location of our trip, on Sunday.
As touristy as Senegal gets, Saly’s rocky beach is patronized by predominantly white faces. It’s an odd feeling here in the land of the French retiree, it’s like crossing over to the dark side. My white hands are in no way clean, but for two weeks Senegalese people have been identifying my American-ness as a cause for celebration. They wave at our bus when we drive by, and give fist bumps when we walk near them on the street. All the levity of our warm welcome has been opposed by the local and historical attitude that the area takes towards the French.
We seem to be here for the sake of our own relaxation. Our excursions have slowed to a halt, and Saly provides a comfortable setting to decompress and focus on our impending final exams.
Now, in Saly, we walk by Senegalese people and they recognize us as part of the problem. We eat and drink without a care in the world, we are eager to learn but offer very little in return for the kindness that we’ve been shown. We act, in a way, like our recognition of and presence in Senegal is enough, like we are somehow separate—for our youth, our American accents, or for our political leanings—but how can we be separate from the problem when we have nothing to offer in return? I feel like a leech, I feel blind when I take for the sake of a selfish education.
I’m not going to pretend that Saly is without its silver linings. My stomach, for just one gruesome example, couldn’t handle much more of the Senegalese food. I’m babying myself in the comforts of French culture—reading good, eating good, and studying good—but everything lacks the satisfaction that came with the reality of our experience in Dakar. Maybe I’m conflicted, maybe I just have too much information jammed in my brain, maybe I miss home and the wind and the mountains in the distance. I’m enjoying my Coke, though!
February 16, 2023
It’s six in the morning on our second to last day in Senegal, we have our final exams tomorrow and I’m being eaten alive by mosquitos. Currently on my knees thanking God for my malaria pills, I’ll be off to Paris sometime in the next 72 hours.
I went on a walk last night and reminisced, I imagined all the faces and settings that I might never see again. Those sights that will vanish upon my departure. The roads were black packed dust and I made a point of choosing ones I hadn’t walked down before. I grasped to uncover more of the country, even just another side street.
I started missing Senegal in real time, our way of warm weather communal living has turned into something on which I rely, and my heart hurts for the solitude of my life back in Bellingham. I thought of our excursions, of days packed with literature and religion if not bus rides and diarrhea. It saddened me, though I thought ahead to Paris and suddenly three Senegalese weeks seemed like the perfect amount.
February 17, 2023
It’s 7:28 a.m. in the morning and I’m out of books to read. There’s an hour until my final exam, and ‘A Moveable Feast’ sits—in all its glory—completed, in my suitcase. There’s nothing to do but to study, or wait, and I’m all studied out for the moment.
The world is bigger, and brighter, than I ever thought it could be. People, and I’m sure of this now, are better together.
[An excerpt from the reflection portion of my final exam, with permission from Christopher Wise.]
Senegal expanded my world. From the language barrier to the permeation of French culture, from the devout and widespread Islam to the way people give me fist bumps on the street. Good and bad, everything is nothing like I expected.
The pace of life is what got me the most. I’m the type to get up and go to bed fueled by my ambition. Call it dedication, or call it an anxious fear of being forgotten, I control all I can with hard work and white knuckles that are usually writing. This couldn’t be the case in Senegal, we were late for almost everything and loose with the schedule of our days. I worked when I could, but sometimes I couldn’t, and I had to find a way to accept that. The control freak inside me was screaming for the majority of our first few days in Dakar, food didn’t sit and I grasped for my routines until I just couldn’t reach anymore. My arms got tired, and I had to let go.
In that sense, this trip has been beyond a healthy experience for me. It’s not because I avoided the things I was scared of going in, but because I faced them. I worked through them without having to hold onto a thing. I can breathe deep now, above anything, Senegal is a place to wash over you.
That being said, this is not a perfect country. I thought the way women were treated in the States was bad [and it is] but here they can’t even walk down the street without being asked for a marriage, invited onto the back of a motorcycle, watched, whistled at, having kisses blown in their direction, or receiving an unwanted kiss on the hand. These are all things I’ve heard from classmates on this trip alone, and while the misogyny might be just as real back home, there’s no doubt that it’s more blatant, more comfortable with itself, here.
Maybe it’s better that way, less sneaky. Maybe it’s a good thing [as a man who tries not to be creepy] that I can’t turn a blind eye to the way the women around me are being treated. Covert misogyny, American misogyny, can be brushed away as someone who doesn’t have to deal with it. Women here don’t deal with it in darkness, but in broad daylight and on the busiest streets.
It’s not better that way, I take that back. But it’s put me in situations where I have to decide whether I need to act, whether it’s my place to step in or leave these women to handle their own business like the sovereign and powerful people they are. Unacceptable as the widespread misogyny in Senegal may be, it has led to some of the most unique education I’ve ever received.
All of this comes down to a difference in culture. Senegal is widely an Islamic nation, and with that denomination comes a complicated history with the way women are treated inside of the religion. This, of course, permeates into everyday life, and then to the very fabric of the culture it is tied to. But the scope of Islam is massive, expansive in a way I’d never imagined, and while a woman’s role changes as Senegal turns more and more to modernity, a culture is a hard thing to change overnight, even harder when it’s a culture of millions that has been ordained by God.
Some of us were talking last night and we all came to the conclusion that—in spite of all that we’ve learned on this trip—we feel more ignorant than we did at the start of the quarter. Through Senegal, and learning about Islam, I’ve opened myself up to a blindspot so wide that I can’t help myself from thinking that there must be more. I’ve surprised myself in my reflection, I thought I’d find this realization daunting, but I don’t. It’s a reason to travel, to learn beyond a college degree, master’s degree, and a PhD. This trip has left me with more questions than answers. It’s empowered me, it feels as if it has freed me from something I have yet to identify.
I’ll let you know when I figure that one out, maybe on my next trip.