The tour began by leading us past several artists and shops selling bracelets and necklaces. One of them recognized having talked to Natasha on the ferry and tried to sell her a necklace right there. After we repeated “we don't have time. We'll come back later” enough times, she accepted it and let us “OK, but I have a lot of competitors farther on. So don't buy from them."
The tour of the island mostly consisted of going places that there was a good view. There were a few important sights, like the first school in Senegal. There was also a tank to commemorate the part that Goree had played in World War II. There were people on the tank, so we decided to climb onto it for a picture.
While the rest of us were trying to figure out how to get up, Nathan climbed up and over the edge of the tank and onto the area below. Everyone else “Great, but how do you get back up?” We scrambled on the edge and managed to sit fairly well.
“We're going to get tetanus from the rust,” Natasha said. “Just kidding. You don't actually get tetanus from rust. You get it from dirt.” Her laugh was frightening.
To get out of the cannon, Nathan needed to climb onto the very top, pose for a couple dozen more pictures, then climb down the turrets. The rest of us just got to slide down to the ground below. Who had more fun getting down depends on your definition of “fun.”
Then we went up a pretty significant incline so we could see Dakar. I mean, it's not like we couldn't see Dakar from the restaurant that we ate lunch at, but this way was better, I suppose? I don't know.
There were a lot of goats on the island. Right after lunch Natasha had stopped to take a picture with some. In all of them she is making a ridiculous face and tilting her head, and the goats are looking at her like “who are you and why don't you go far, far away.” On our tour of the island, we saw even more goats. She didn't take pictures with all of them, but she did bleat at a couple of them. She really liked goats.
We came down and were going to our last stop on the tour when the woman from the boat came running up to talk to Natasha. “You said to wait until you finished your tour. I waited, and now you're going to buy something.” She was not prepared to accept “we're not yet done with our tour” as a valid response. She stopped Natasha and started putting necklaces around her wrist.
The rest of the group followed the tour guide to our final destination, and I stayed with Natasha. “How much?” she asked, more to make the woman go away than anything else. The woman didn't respond, just kept giving her more and more necklaces. “How much for this one?”
Meanwhile, another woman saw me and came over to start trying to sell me her necklaces. “No thank you.”
“Why not? Do you not like my necklaces?”
“They're very pretty, but I don't have the time. I'm with a group touring the island...”
“You don't have time? You just stand here and you tell me you don't have time? You have time!”
She kind of had a point. I moved on to my second defense.
“I don't have money.” I had not Senegalese francs, and had not yet learned that paying for things in Euros worked pretty well.
“I know you have money.”
“No, I actually don't.”
Natasha had finally gotten a price out of her woman (6,000) and had declined and walked away. I joined her, heading towards the tour group. Natasha's woman (“La femme des colliers,”) followed us. “OK. 3,000.”
We made it to where the rest of our tour group was, and the necklace ladies left us alone. We were directly across from a mosque, and there was the ocean beneath us. It was pretty, and we stopped there just to rest and relax for a while. And also to hope that the necklace ladies would leave. I was trying to figure out if there were any ways to leave our area without walking past them. I ended up with two alternatives- we could either scale a pretty steep cliff, or we could jump into the ocean ans swim towards shore. Walking back through them was really our only reasonable option. But first, we could try and wait them out.
Another tourist walked by them, took a picture of the mosque, and then walked past. He got talked into buying a necklace from Natasha's lady. Natasha complained about this show of disloyalty, but after he finished the purchase, the woman left. The man immediatelygot talked into buying a necklace from a different woman.
We all got up and headed back to where we'd started to do some shopping from there. Natasha's necklace lady came running back down to catch up with her. She lowered the price even more, to 2,000. Natasha just kept saying no until she went away. Natasha felt a little guilty about it, but she really didn't want a necklace.
“She seemed really upset,”Nathan said.
“Nathan, shut up.” I said.
“Did she?” Natasha asked, pleadingly.
“Yeah.”
“Shut up.”
“Oh. I feel so bad now.”
I saw a goat and I pointed it out to Natasha to cheer her up.
“That's the goat she would have been able to buy, but now she can't.”
“She did sell a necklace, though. To the other tourist.”
“You're right, she did. Maybe she will get to eat.”
“Probably. He seemed really gullible too. I mean, he went straight from her to another woman and also bought things from her. I bet he paid close to 6,000 for it.”
That cheered her up considerably. I did feel slightly bad for the other tourist. I wonder when he finally left, or if he just kept buying necklaces from different woman for hours because they kept showing up.
The experience with the necklace ladies was unfortunately the norm, not the exception. Every single person was really aggressive about sales. Even I, who had some experience with haggling, found it disconcerting. The people who hadn't haggled before were completely overwhelmed and frightened.
If you were standing around looking (and we were in a pretty large group. There wasn't anything we could do apart from stand around looking and try to buy something) someone would come over and ask what you liked. Indicating anything specific was akin to saying “I love this and will not be content until I own it.”
At one point, I pointed almost-randomly at a picture and asked how much it was. The seller did not leave me alone for the entire rest of the day.
“How much are you willing to pay?””
“I'm not, actually.”
“This is Senegal. This is how you shop in Senegal. I name a price, you name a price, and we go from there.”
I fucking know that's how it works, but I don't want to buy that painting.
It didn't matter how many times I or anyone else said I didn't want to buy the painting. He would not leave me alone. When I did buy a painting off someone else, he was there to ask “now do you want to buy mine?” No, I just bought your painting, I want to buy yours even less now than I did before.” When it became clear I wasn't going to name a new price, he kept lowering his. At one point he leaned over to whisper his great new price in my ear. I have no idea what he said because my mind was too busy screaming “get away.” Any inclination I might have had to buy a painting from him died with that move.
We didn't fully shake other people until we went back to the hotel. Between that and the slight coolness, it was considerably better than the outside.
That night, we went out for a “specation musicale.” This turned out to be people drumming, people drumming while we danced, and then someone playing the cora. The cora is a stringed instrument, and the person playing that night sang along. He had a really good voice.
It was hot, especially when we started dancing around, but a lot of fun. It was slightly more structured than the dancing the first night had been, by which I meant we only needed to follow the lead of one or two dancers instead of improvising our own steps. I thought it was quite the improvement.
