listen to africa

We were in St Louis when I last wrote and we’re in St Louis now, but we’ve been halfway around Senegal in the meantime – enjoying a holiday from our semi-permanent holiday, catching up with family (my brother and his girlfriend), picking up new microphones and generally getting to grips with the way things work – and sometimes don’t – in Senegal.

We spent most of the holiday in a wonderful and remote little camp by the Atlantic Ocean called Le Thiossane. Occasionally, we ventured out of the camp to cook on fires on the beach, visit the Bandia Reserve (where we recorded a white rhino and a flock of weaver birds) or take a pirogue to an island. Mostly though, we divided our time evenly between eating copiously and sitting in an open sided hut, watching the sun rise / cross the sky / set over a salt water lagoon.

I’m not going to write much about the holiday (hurray!), just this short list of things we learned along the way:

1. Giraffes don’t often make a noise. They do though stare disdainfully at your boom pole.

2. Crabs do make a noise – an extraordinary bubbling one, which we utterly failed to capture.

3. Hyenas, Giant Eagle Owls and jackals all make slightly improbable noises.

4. Always remember to turn the monitor levels down (or take the headphones off) before recording hyenas at close range.

5. Huw is an intrinsically funny name.

6. Bex has ‘beaucoup de derriere’.

7. Senegalese food is exceptionally lovely.

8. A 110 kilometre journey can take seven hours by car, if there are enough floods, gridlock, and four separate and independently-caused breakdowns (the car’s, not ours).

9. It takes three payments, four buildings, seven officials and 11 stamps to extract two microphones from Senegalese customs. (In Senegal, as in much of Africa, bloated government departments were a way of employing potentially troublesome intellectuals and students and of rewarding loyal supporters while a fledgeling government found its feet. It’s a habit that’s stuck.)

10. We were burnt out after the Sahara. Now, we’re enjoying feeling refreshed and energetic for the first time in months. Maybe we’ll even do some cycling soon…