New neighbors: Senegal rediscovered as a travel destination

Dhe truck maneuvers through the traffic of Mbour with heavenly succor, Alhamdoulilah written in brightly colored letters under the windshield. He lets a herd of zebu pass, overtakes horse-drawn carriages, a quad rumbles past, a worn-out Peugeot rumbles next door. Passing two SUVs. people, people everywhere. They stand in front of shops that transfer money, in front of vegetable stalls, plastic vendors, T-shirt shops. Then they rush ahead, laden, while others remain dozing in the shade. This is what the villages on the trunk roads look like in Senegal: busy, connected to the modern world.

And then there are villages like Dioral or Pointe Sarène. Dioral is inland, ten kilometers from the coast on the N1, and then five minutes further on a sandy track. A few round huts stand together, a tree provides shade. Children crowd around us. Red sand covers everything. Women crush millet with long sticks, rhythmically in hollow tree trunks. In a corner, men wash their feet at a faucet. Apart from the things that are used on a daily basis, there seems to be few items here. Some plastic buckets, metal wash bowls, colorful clothes, traditional and modern.

resentment among the locals

But the rural world and modern times interlock in Senegal like water and land in one of the mangrove forests. One juts into the other, the horse-drawn carts drive on tar roads, and the smartphones ring in each of the round huts. Both worlds have come together in Pointe Sarène, a fishing village on the Petite-Côte. Because less than a kilometer away, the largest hotel in Senegal, the RIU Baobab, opened this year. 500 rooms, 250 jobs, four pools, all on a so-called dream beach. The ivory-colored, elongated buildings blend into the landscape. It is the first hotel that the Spanish hotel chain will open in West Africa.

But what do the people in the neighboring village of Pointe Sarène say about this? What does the village chief Michel Sarr say? The local press reported displeasure. Locals wanted their land back from SAPCO for farming and animal husbandry. The authority, the “Société d’Aménagement et de Promotion des Côtes et zones touristique du Sénégal” drives tourism forward; Jobs are rare here. Foreign trawler fleets have made local fishing unprofitable, so far too many men have set out in their boats for the Canary Islands, Europe, 1,600 kilometers away. Far too many never arrived.

The village is dozing. A young man irons a colorful boubou in front of a tailor’s shop. With a charcoal iron. A girl goes to the store to get something to eat. The beach bar is deserted. Colorful fishing boats will soon be out. In the health center, a woman is waiting in the shade of the porch. Everything lasts, the electricity is out.

We meet Michel Sarr on the terrace of his house, with pink bougainvilleas on the balustrade. He became village chief in 1984, like his father and grandfather before him. Sarr, a friendly man with a floor-length boubou and gold watch, says he’s happy the hotel is good for his village. “Some found work there. Migration has decreased significantly.” And there is now a tarred road leading to the village. They would have to accept RIU, “working together with discipline and loyalty”. He hopes that his neighbors will help him set up a clinic and clean up garbage on the beach.