Ile de Madeleine

Last week I was lucky enough to make the hop from mainland Dakar to l'Ile de Madeleine, where there is a national park, perfect for bird watching, and baobabs, of varieties both miniature and enormous (the standard) are scattered about. The three other girls in my environmental class, my professor, the lovely Awa, an obligatory guide, and myself jumped into a pirogue, the little colorfully-painted wooden fishing boats, and bounced atop the ocean waves to the island.
The boat propelled forward with the push of waves, gliding just above the surface until it again smashed into contact, and little dropplets of salt water misted back, as if to fool us into thinking the ocean is gentle, only as a game until another massive push came from below and our toy boat was again flung through the air. Along with the boat bumped my mind, between the physical beauty around me and the question of whether or not I had accidentally stumbled into the world of mythology, with Poseidon just trying to impress us with the ease of his power, surrounded by what seemed to be the very islands Ulysses found so dangerously magnetizing.

Fortunately, the islands could only allure from afar, and we moved passed, stepping off the boat at only l'Ile de Madeleine, and I was able to leave Ulysses to deal with the modernist struggles of life by himself while I climbed baobab trees.




Baobabs have this fruit that makes some tasty smoothy-consistency juice: