Fishing in the Mangroves and Wrestling

Nu mu demee?

The other weekend I visited a friendly fellow volunteer in a small village outside of a town called Joal (on the Petite Cote- a noted tourist area). This is a pretty area and his village is in a quiet, isolated area of the region. He’s on a peninsula in between the Atlantic Ocean and a river. Turning to your left and seeing water is almost as sweet as turning to your right and seeing more water. The combination of palm trees and the ever-present baobab adds further to its natural beauty. To top it off, this is also mangrove territory.

We had the pleasure of fishing in the mangroves one morning. This involved a net about 15 yards by 5 feet with a pole on either end. You stake the net around a section of the mangroves. Then you jab sticks into the mangroves and the water underneath them to scare the fish out into the net. We only caught about 25 small fish in a couple hours (you can catch twice that in half the time, I am told) because the water was too cold. I had a blast anyways- mangroves are cool.

That night there was wrestling in one of the villages. The Senegalese have two major sports: futbol and wrestling. Futbol may be played more on a daily basis throughout the entire country, but wrestling is more culturally significant. Huge dudes jog around throwing sand, water, and other unidentifiable liquids on themselves while they wait to wrestle. The event went on for three hours and the whole time they have people wailing on drums, singing in this feverishly high-pitched and fast-paced tone; it gets you juiced [excited]! The wrestlers wear basically nothing but short shorts and an assortment of gri-gri’s (small trinkets tied around their arms that give them mystical strength and protection), and they dance to the music to get pumped up for their matches. This all sounded kind of lame to me before I saw it, but I have been converted. These guys are hard core, and their dancing is the embodiment of power and strength.

The wrestling as a sport itself is kind of cool, with the occasional long match ending in sudden climax. There are no punches thrown and you win by getting the other guy to touch the ground with anything besides his feet, hands, or knees. After a big or hotly contested match, the winner’s arm is raised in triumph and he stomps out a victory dance to the drumbeat. American football’s end zone dance might find its origins here. Meanwhile, the loser writhes in agony on the ground. He sometimes runs after his opponent or the referee to dispute the contest and must be restrained by 3 or 4 of his entourage. After watching this happen a couple times, I realized that this display was exaggerated on purpose in order to portray of the agony of defeat. Wrestling (beri ci wolof, lutte en francais) is a prototypical Senegalese event that I’m glad I got the chance to see.