Avifauna and the Landscape: Senegal

This blog post will focus on some of the environmental issues brought up by the readings from this week.  I specifically focus on an organization called Wetlands International Africa that has its head office in the capital city of Dakar, Senegal.

This picture show the Djoudj National Bird Sanctuary, one of the many bird conservation parks in the region.

Wetlands International is an organization that works to sustain and restore wetlands and their resources   One of the principal projects they are working on is a community enhancement project in Lake Ouye, Malika, Senegal.  Malika, Senegal is located in the Dakar region of Senegal.  Lake Ouye is important because in the rainy season it is crucial for migratory wintering birds.  This project focuses on the conservation of the lake and avifauna by working together with the surrounding community. 

The Gambian wetlands

             According to the article by W.M. Adams, it is absolutely imperative that communities are well educated on the importance of preserving wetlands environments in West Africa.  This WIA project seems productive because it focuses both on migratory birds as well as informing the community about the importance of preserving this ecosystem.

            Another interesting concept brought up in the article by Ellis and Galvin was the idea of the side effects of regional climate variation.  In the Sahel, rainfall is the dominant driver of ecosystem dynamics.  Since the migratory birds come to spend the European summer months in Africa, they end up in the Sahel during the rainy season.  It is therefore imperative that there are preservation projects focused on conserving the avifauna of the region because they are an essential part of the ecosystem during this time.

Saint-Louis and Paradoxes of Landscape

For this week’s blog post, I decided to focus on a part of Senegal that I haven’t explored yet: Saint-Louis.  Saint-Louis is located at the mouth of the Senegal River and is the former French capital of Senegal.  Saint-Louis is a very physical manifestation of its history; the town is filled with 19^th century colonial buildings that speak of a bygone era.  Yet more than being simply a place that stands for the past, it could help explain some of the complexities of Senegalese culture as we know it today.

Africa Map: Red triangles on the far left showing the location of Saint-Louis at the mouth of the Senegal River

The French influence in Senegal is undeniable.  It is evident in the most abstract and in the most obvious.  The official language is French and most of the place names are French; however, only those educated in the colonial style French schools really speak it regularly.  Most people speak their own ethnic language, with Wolof being the most widely spoken.  This immediately introduces one of the many paradoxes in Senegalese culture. 

Africa Map: Map showing the French Colonies in 1930

Today, Saint-Louis seems to represent a lot of those paradoxes.  Its location places it both at the mouth of the Senegal River and at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean so that it is a bridge between river and ocean.  It is also located at the border of Senegal with Mauritania, making it a bridge between savanna and desert.  Finally, its deep involvement with the French connects it to Europe in a way that no other African city is.

Picture showing the Feidherbe Bridge to Saint-Louis.  Source: http://www.galenfrysinger.com/senegal_saint_louis.htm

From this short analysis we can see the fruitfulness of exploring the city of Saint-Louis in terms of trying to understand a part of Senegalese culture.  Hopefully seeing it as more than merely a beautiful place can bring out more interesting paradoxes and lead to deeper analyses grounded in the history of the landscape.   

 Chronology: Senegal and The Gambia 

1360: Wolof people establish the Jolof Empire

1443: Portuguese ships reach the mouth of the Senegal River, and a year later they land on the coast of Senegal at a peninsula they name Cabo Verde, meaning Green Cape.

1617: The Dutch turn the trading station on Île de Gorée into a major slave port.  The French eventually take Gorée from the Dutch in 1677.

1633: The French establish La Compagnie du Cap Vert et du Sénégal, the main trading company operating in France’s African colonies.

1659: French traders put down roots on the barely inhabited island of N’Dar at the mouth of the Senegal River.  They rename the place Saint-Louis, after the French emperor, and build and important urban center.

1677: The French gain control over the trading station of Île de Gorée, founded in 1455 by the Portuguese, then fought over by the Dutch, British and French.  Gorée’s architecture shows the legacies of all of its occupants.

1756: Britain and France are opposed in fierce territorial battles lasting seven years.  Britain briefly gains control of all of France’s possessions in the Senegal area, though soon has to return them.

1783: The Treaty of Versailles delineates the spheres of Anglophone and Francophone influence that dominates the region to this day.  Gambia is given to the British, and Gorée returned to the French.  Later attempts at unifying the territory fail.

1794: The slave trade is abolished in France, only to be reinstated by Napoleon eight years later.  It is finally abolished once and for all in 1815.

1820: Gambia is declared a British protectorate and, after failed attempts by Britain to exchange it for other colonial territories, it becomes a full colony in 1886.

1848: The key colonial centers of Rufisque, Dakar, Gorée and Saint-Louis become self-governing communes, where citizens enjoy the same rights as those of France.

1857: France opens a military post at Lebou village of Ndakaru.  This act is considered by many as the official founding of Dakar.

1864: Omar Tall’s forces are finally defeated by the French, but his missionary zeal inspires followers to keep fighting jihads for another three decades.

1884-1885: Colonial powers gather at the Berlin Conference to “carve up” the African continent in line with their territorial interests. 

1889: After the demarcation of colonial territories at the Berlin Conference, it takes France and Britain another five years to agree on the current borders between Senegal and Gambia.

1895: Saint-Louis in Senegal becomes the capital of the vast, French owned area of Afrique Occidentale Française (AOF; French West Africa), stretching from Senegal in the west to present-day Sudan in the east.

1906: Léopold Sédar Senghor is born in a small fishing village in the Siné-Saloum region.  A sharp intellectual, he follows simultaneous careers in politics and poetry, and becomes the first president of independent Senegal.

1960: On 4 April Senegal and Mali are granted independence as a joint federation—an idea strongly supported by Senghor.  But the alliance only lasts four months before the two countries split.

1965: The Gambia becomes and independent country with David Jawara as prime minister and Queen Elizabeth II as titular head of state.

1970: Gambia becomes a full republic. 

1980: Senegal proves its democratic maturity when president Senghor steps down after losing the elections and makes room for former Prime Minister Abdou Diouf. 

1981: Newly elected Senegalese president Abdou Diouf leads his first military intervention—in neighboring Gambia.  Though his army’s support helps thwart a coup, 500 people are killed in the events, causing hostilities between the two nations.

1990: Throughout this difficult decade, the separatist movement in Senegal’s Casamance clashes frequently with government forces, claiming the lives of hundreds of people and damaging the tourist industry that flourished in the region.

2000: Abdoulaye Wade, leader of the Parti Démocratique Sénégalais, becomes president of Senegal in democratic elections, running a campaign with the slogan sopi (change).

2002: Nearly 2000people are killed when the ferry MS Joola capsizes between Dakar and Ziguinchor, a catastrophe provoked at least partly by dangerous overcrowding.  Senegal’s biggest disaster leaves the country in shock.

2003: President Jammeh’s claims that major oil resources have been found off the Gambian coast provoke skepticism on one side; hope on the other.

2004: Prominent Gambian journalist and government critic Deyda Hydara is assassinated while under surveillance by secret service agents.  They still unsolved murder brings the issue of press freedom in Gambia into sharp focus.

Site Survey: Gorée Island, Senegal

Gorée Island is a tiny island located approximately 3 kilometers from the main harbor of Dakar, Senegal, making it the closest point on the continent to the Americas.  It is about 45 acres large and has an estimated population of 1,300 permanent residents.  The island was named an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978 for its involvement in the Atlantic slave trade.

Africa Map: Gorée Island is denoted by the red triangle 

Perhaps the most physical testament to the slave trade in Gorée is the House of Slaves.  The House of Slaves is a small fort that served as a warehouse for slaves making the journey across the Atlantic.  It was built by the Dutch in 1776, and it is the last existing slave house in Gorée; the first were built by the Portuguese, the first European colonizers on the island, in 1536.  The shipping of slaves from Gorée lasted for 312 years—from 1533, when the Portuguese launched the slave trade, to 1848, when the French halted it. 

Today, thousands of visitors a year visit the island to learn about this gruesome part of African history.  There is only one hotel on the island, however, and most tourists don’t even stay over night.  It is said that Gorée is a very tranquil place, and that most people that visit act less like tourists and more like pilgrims visiting a holy shrine.

Entrance to the House of Slaves: http://webworld.unesco.org/goree/en/screens/0.shtml

This site raises a lot of questions about the prevalence of the slave trade in Senegal.  While I was researching, I found some conflicting opinions on importance of Gorée Island in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  Some scholars claim that only about 200 slaves passed through Gorée on their way to the Americas. I believe that the importance of it, however, is not diminished by the amount of slave traffic that passed through there; the important thing is that it serves as a testament to the atrocities of the slave trade.

Literature and Landscape

The two books I read for this week are The Language of Landscape by Anne Whiston Spirn, and South Africa: The Structure of Things Then by David Goldblatt.  I’d like to use narrative structure to compare ideas in the two books. 

In The Language of Landscape, Spirn uses poetry and literary allusions as a vehicle to speak about the landscape.  She often references Mark Twain and his descriptions of the Mississippi River to talk about the ever-changing nature of the landscape.  She also uses the phrase “literature of landscape” to characterize the way in which one should read the landscape.  Just like in literature studies, one must closely “read” aspects of landscape in order to further understand the hidden connections within each landscape or part of a landscape.  One must also be able to literally and figuratively read the stories that the landscape is telling.  Each part of a landscape—the rock, the hill, the tree, and the path—has a story to tell.  The history of a tree is hidden in its trunk and in its branches and in its leaves.  The difference between the story that a tree has to tell and the story that a person constructs, is that the former makes no moral judgements or distinctions between what constitutes a worthy story; it simply accumulates occurences.  Man incorporates these stories into his culture, oftentimes creating narratives about survival, power, and failure around them.  In this way, a narrative dialogue between the landscape and its human inhabitants is formed.

            Goldblatt’s book South Africa: The Structure of Things Then looks at landscape through the lens of photography.  This automatically struck me as a very interesting way in which to capture ideas about landscape.  The camera is a fascinating medium in that it can bring out aspects of the landscape that can otherwise go unnoticed.  For example, in the picture of the Hindu Temple on page 8, given the perspective the picture is taken from, you can see another building through the doorway on the left.  This provides an interesting counterpoint to the structure of the temple.  If you were looking at the temple in real life, you probably wouldn’t really put the other building in context with the structure of the temple.  In a picture, the photographer can frame the shot in such a way that interesting landscape qualities are brought out and emphasized.  On the other hand, photography is a limited medium in that it can only capture visual aspects of the landscape.  Goldblatt must make up for this by providing a narrative history.  Still, he doesn’t fully engage all the senses in his description of landscape the way I think Sprin does.  Sprin practices what she preaches.  She compellingly uses of narrative to make the landscape quite literally come alive, and, in doing so, is able to engage all of my faculties.  Goldblatt, in part limited by the medium, falls a bit short narratively speaking, and ends up making a less forceful, but still interesting point about the nature of landscape.

Sensescape in Senegal and Gambia through Africamap

It’s rather difficult to understand the sensory issues at play in Africamap since a huge part of the sensory experience comes from actually being physically in a space. One can only imagine what is smells like on the Gambian shore or on the streets of Dakar, where vendors sell all kinds of international and native foods.

Street market in Dakar.  Source: http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Senegal/Cape-Verde-Peninsula/Dakar/blog-270570.html

After some extensive searching and thinking, however, I thought of a couple of ways in which Africamap helps address sensory issues in the landscape. It is, of course, difficult to ascertain the smell, taste, or touch of different things or places, but Africamap does provide a visual and auditory context for various locales. By turning on the Picasa feed and then searching for a specific place, you can automatically access hundreds of pictures that people have uploaded to the web. Alternately, by turning on the Youtube feed, one can access videos pertaining to a specific place. For example, if you type “Dakar” in the search box, you get this video with highlights from a weekend on a beach in Senegal. In this way, you not only have visual access to some aspects of the Senegalese landscape, but you also get to experience some of the sounds of the waves crashing on the shore or the kids playing in the sand.

PBT Train station in Dakar, Senegal

You have to use your imagination a bit to access your other three senses. For example, under the places tab, I searched for a railroad station and found that two are located in the vicinity of Dakar. One was in Bargny, Senegal, and the other in Thiaroye. After some preliminary research, I discovered that they are part of the same railroad line, through which operates the Petit train de banlieue (PBT) which runs regularly between Dakar, Senegal and Rufisque and serves over 25,000 passengers daily. In this case, one can imagine generally what sounds trains make. What is difficult to capture, however, is how this sound plays in with the rest of the soundscape.

Africamap: Red triangles showing the location of two train stations

Another search I did was for cemeteries. I found a cemetery on the coast of Gambia, called the Fajara War Cemetery. Since it is located so close to the beach, you can probably hear and smell the ocean. There is probably some sort of distinctive smell as well, perhaps of flowers or offerings that people bring to the dead. 

Fajara War Cemetery, Gambia. Source: http://jordanatherton.blogspot.com/2010/01/canadians-at-fajara-war-cemetery.html

Landscape Perception and Other Miscellenea

Africamap: Map showing Saint-Louis (indicated by red triangle) and Rao

Africamap: Map showing French colonies; 1930

The source I chose for my region was an article by J. Joire, entitled Archeological Discoveries in Senegal, published in the 1943 issue of Man.  This short document essentially outlines the archeological discoveries from an excavation conducted on various sand mounds in and around Rao and Saint-Louis Senegal.  After the excavations, it was concluded that these were actually funeral barrows of the Serer people.  While the term funeral is often overlooked as a colloquial term, funerals are actually ceremonies laden with ritual.  Most people are only intimately familiar with their own funeral traditions, and there is, as with most things, a temptation to project one’s own traditions on those of others.  Conversely, there exists the opposite problem, where one expects that other’s traditions will differ so vastly from theirs so as not to be comparable in any productive way.  This excavation revealed that while there are many ritualistic differences between Serer practices and other funeral practices around the world, there are also many similarities that indicate that Senegal was constantly evolving and was subject to the same kind of foreign influences that societies are now.

Africamap: Map showing Trans Atlantic slave trade routes

Like all rituals, funerals leave their mark on the landscape in a myriad of ways.  In this instance, archeologists discovered various precious objects ranging from silver rings to iron swords.  The one particular object that caught my attention was the sword with the cross-shaped hilt.  This description made me think about the Denbow article that we read this week.  Denbow, among other things, addressed the issue of Christian and foreign influences in the Congo and the significance of "whiteness." Using Africamap to explore some of these issues, I discovered that Saint-Louis is located on the western coast of Senegal, making it an excellent entry port for the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  In addition, it was subject to the influence of French colonizers as well as Catholic missions in the area.  Seeing that Saint-Louis was a city so exposed to foreign influences makes discovering objects such as a sword with a cross-shaped hilt much more interesting.  A symbol like a cross that has so many Christian connotations but that can also have unknown connotations in the Serer culture can tell us a lot about the landscape and how people shaped the environment in which they lived.

Africamap: Map showing Catholic missions in Saint-Louis from 1889

One recurring idea from Professor Fennell’s lecture last Monday, is the idea that cultures don’t exist separately from humans.  This is to say that cultures, much like landscapes, are fluid entities that are shaped by the humans that create them, and are, therefore, as unpredictable and varied as people themselves.  Additionally, Professor Fennell asserts that because of this, each individual has the capacity to change their culture.  I found this idea particularly compelling, not only because I happen to agree with it (albeit with some minor reservations), but also because it relates well to what we’ve been reading in class.  As I’ve discovered, landscapes function in a very similar way; they are fluid structures that evade definition and shift incessantly under our feet.  The relationship between a landscape and the people that inhabit it is a symbiotic one; each depends on the other for survival, and there is a constant back and forth that defines the relationship and each part of the whole as individuals.  Culture, Professor Fennell ascertains, is structured in the same way; it as dependent on the people that help create it as they are to it.  

Africamap: Exploring Senegal and Regions of Western Africa

Much to my surprise, on a map, Senegal appears interrupted by a long, thin strip of land that runs along part of the east-west axis of this 197,000 square kilometer land mass.  From a birds-eye view, Gambia looks thin enough to be a river, and in fact, the border mirrors the boundaries of the Gambia River.  This strange arrangement of having a country completely enclosed or almost completely enclosed within another country occurs in southern Africa as well, where Lesotho is completely enclosed by South Africa. 

Having little to no previous knowledge of the geography of Western Africa, this spatial arrangement struck me as rather bizarre.  The more I thought about it, however, the more I started to question my initial reaction to it; after all, isn’t every country located within another?  Isn’t the United States located within the same landmass that constitutes Canada and Mexico?  Gambia is unique in that it is only surrounded by one country not two; however, thinking about it in terms of these questions allowed me to ponder the significance of man-made boundaries in relation to changes in landscape.  The United States is such a large landmass that changes in culture, language, and economics from Mexico to the U.S. and from the U.S. to Canada are stark and noteworthy.  Gambia, on the other hand, has a size of approximately 10,500 square kilometers, making it about 1/18^th the size of Senegal.   Taking into account its size as well as its admittedly strange geographic location, we can begin to think about how man-made boundaries affect how people perceive the landscape.     

 Using Africamap as a jumping off point, I began to explore any differences I could find between Gambia and Senegal.  I was rather unsurprised to find that there aren’t too many discernable disparities between the two (keeping in mind the limited data available).  The only notable differences that I found were in the 2006 IAG (Index of African Governance) scores and in language families.  Since I don’t know much about the Index of African Governance, I decided to stick with differences in language.

Africamap: Senegal and Gambia map showing language differences

The official language of Senegal is French, while the official language in Gambia is English.  This difference is fundamentally due to colonial history: Senegal is a former French colony, while Gambia is a former British colony.  It’s impossible for me to know, without further research, the implications of this difference.  While I assume that there is much crossover, I also assume that this difference isn’t without its political, cultural, and economic ramifications.  This is a topic that I wish to explore in much greater detail as I journey through Senegal this semester.

Africamap: Senegal and Gambia map showing differences in 2006 IAG scores