Teranga in Senegal

Sunday it are the local swimming championships in Sokone. They don’t have a swimming pool, but there is enough water in between the mangroves. Twenty little boys, all dressed with the same blue swimsuit and white bathing cap are sitting under a big white party tent. Before the start they shake hands to all the important people and line up neatly in a straight row into the water. The distance is fifty meter around an improvised wooden pole in the water. At the finish line they receive a little paper with a number, which is their result, just like the queue at the butcher.

All week long I acquainted with the Senegalese time. They say themselves “En Senegal nous n’avons pas une montre” (we don’t have a watch in Senegal). On an agreed hour you need to add at least two hours and even then you will be early. On my way to the big city Kaolac the rusty sept-place, a big car with seven passengers, breaks down and stands still for more than one hour. There is something broken, but nobody knows what and the driver has gone. The other Senegalese passengers don’t mind waiting, while I’m clearly full with Western blood. On Tuesday evening there is a wrestling event, the national sport in Senegal. The game starts at seven o’clock, European time. Two times we find a completely empty wrestling arena, there is no wrestler to see. But when we come back the third time at eleven o’clock an incredible scene starts. The arena has the size of half a football field and is enclosed by an improvised woorden fence. The spectators are sitting and standing around the middle ground where the wrestlers are preparing for the fight. The preparation is a full of special rituals. The wrestlers walk around with a strange dancing move and are decorated with odd objects. At several moments they stop and scrape some signs into the soil. Every wrestler has a team of helpers who pitch precisely a collection of plastic bottles filled with a coloured substance in front of them. The wrestler takes the bottles and throws the content over his body, sometimes twenty different types. This way they call for the help of God. A group of drummers and singing women escort the presentation ceremony which brings all the fighters in a deep trance. “C’ets le magique” says Lamin when I ask what is the meaning of the objects and bottles.

The preparation of every fight starts with a new serie of rituals. After this the wrestler is checked by the referee because the mixture from the bottles can make the body too slippery. The battle itself is a cat and mouse game where two muscular bodies are waiting for minutes for that little moment of inattentiveness of his opponent. A fraction of a second is enough to throw your opponent on his back. The winner goes to the next round, the loser has to go home which sometimes leads to a great deception, desperation and even a complete trance. After a spectacle of three hours there is one victor who goes home with an amount of money or some cows and a bag of rice. This wrestling game makes the list of most special moments that I ever encountered.