A young man hacks his machete at a tattered carcass. It appears to have been a small goat or sheep–it’s hard to tell at this point. Meat hangs off the ribcage in strands. Little is left of the lively animal that once stood tethered to its post, bleating and barking at passersby. It has now been reduced to a pile of bones, stained crimson like the pavement below it.
The butcher continues to swing his blade. He cuts at the meat with an unflinching rhythm–hack, hack, hack. He pauses only to wipe the sweat from his brow, then resumes his process.
This may be an everyday occurrence here, along the waterfront boulevard in Dakar, yet the act attracts even a few locals. A group of curious Senegalese boys flinch with every swing of the machete. Hack, hack, hack. The youngest covers his eyes. The smell of sweat and blood travels with the wind, in my direction.
I decide to continue on. There’s a lot more to see further down the coast.
The promenade along the Corniche extends nearly half the length of the Cap-Vert peninsula, displaying many characteristics of Dakar that each equally contribute to the identity of the 21st century West African capital. Palm trees jostle in the Atlantic winds. Loose sand shifts across the cracked pavement. Coastal cliffs hang over beaches maxed to capacity with either drilling footballers or the wooden pirogues of Lébou fishermen. A few men sort through the morning’s catch, throwing an occasional fish onto a bed of burning coal. A black smoke rises and disperses in the wind.
I’m passed by joggers in track suits. They run alongside the concrete walls and hedges concealing private homes and gardens manicured by Wolof-speaking gardeners. Five-star hotels, high-end shopping malls, and trending night clubs dwell in the rank odor of the shanty meat and fish markets next door.
Two hundred or so years ago, this coast looked different than it does today. I imagine a few fishing boats afloat offshore the largely uninhabited peninsula, a fire burning under the day’s catch, and the smell of fish spreading with the coastal air, as it does today.
But the clock ticks rhythmically toward the future. With every swing of the machete, the city grows. Buildings go up and up. Hack, hack. Workers hammer at steal-framed construction sites. Another few hacks cover a plot of sand with the sodded turf of a five-star lawn. All the while, goats bleat their anthem of captivity from tenement rooftops.
Time has bestowed this city with complexity. Despite a history lost beneath the towering skyscrapers and bustling markets of 21st century Dakar, the city boasts an increasingly indefinable identity of both tradition and modernity. For good or for worse, Senegal is as much the scars of post-colonialism as it is the fishing and herding villages of yesteryear. Old meets new in a single moment, before contributing to a wholly untellable story.
As I walk further down the coast, the metronomic hacking is lost in the sounds of commuter traffic. Up ahead, a Mercedes passes into the left lane, revving its engine and honking its horn. It speeds passed a horse-drawn buggy.