TO ABENE
On Friday, we went to the beach in the morning. Little Miss Kaddy, too, of course.
For lunch, we ate Ablai’s chicken “nuggets”, which were far better than any we had ever eaten in America. Ablai showed us where he grew basilica at the side of the kitchen. It is a delicate, flavorful leaf that tastes like a cross between the regular Ameircan basil and the more nuanced, fragrant Thai basil.
When we were done eating, we returned to our room and packed to go to Abene for a few days with Antje, Karambe, and Sarjo. Janko arrived at 3:15 and drove us to the border where we passed through customs—a one room shack inhabited by a bored-looking man at a desk who halfheartedly questioned us before logging our names in a massive and decrepit ledger that had obviously seen better days. Lastly, he stamped our passport with an oversized stamp, the lackluster thud of bureaucracy signaling that we were now free to roam about Senegal at our will.
After we cleared customs, we waited for the boats that would carry us over the border. There on the shore, Karamba encountered an old schoolmate from Berending—Saikou, who is now living in Abene. An exceedingly friendly man, he promised to come to see us at our resort, Les Baobabs, on Saturday, and help show us around Abene.
When the time finally came to wade into the water to board our boats, we looked back to see an epic drama unfold onshore. Sarjo, who was wearing a pair of brand new, white sneakers, was so reticent to get them dirty that he went so far as to phone his cousin (who happened to live nearby) to come down and carry him, piggyback-style, into his boat. The ridiculousness of this left us all laughing uproariously, of course.
After landing on the Senegal side, we piled into a caravan of 4x4 vehicles and after a brief drive, arrived at Les Baobabs Resort. And what a lovely place! After settling in, we wandered the beach for several hours where we found a huge, abandoned house surrounded by dunes. It startled us, sitting there in the waning light, as if it were waiting for someone just like us to come and find it enticing in its peculiar loneliness. We explored carefully, taking in the rotting, empty rooms with a sense of dark fascination before turning back to resort.
*
That night, we ate dinner with the group at the resort’s restaurant. Grilled vegetables and salad with platters of butterfish and sole—a long, flat fish with a hoard of tiny bones that Antje stripped out in one motion. The meal was lively and full of Julebrew and laughter.
“You are from, Ciato?” Sarjo asked us at one point.
After a moment we realized that this was his pronunciation of, Seattle. We said that yes, we were.
“I have a cousin!” He exclaimed. “He too, lives in Ciato!”
He brought out his phone and began to dial.
“Lamin!” He shouted. “Talk to my friends from Ciato! You are neighbors!”
And indeed, Sarjo’s cousin shouted back a greeting through the phone from his home in Everett, a city that was only a few miles north of our apartment in Kirkland, Washington.
Tor shook his head with an incredulous smile.
Only in Abene, I thought.