Not that long ago, I took a close somebody to visit my tailor in Guediawaye, Dakar. We were close to the Lycée Limamoulaye, certainly not the richest part of grand Dakar, some 2 hours from downtown traffic allowing. Lamine (the tailor) had his workshop right in the middle of the market. I could barely hold my excitement -- I had visitors, and a few families had invited us over for dinner. To make a long story short, I guess I walked a little too fast through the very narrow, filthy, and badly ventilated passages inside the market. When I turned around my companions were grabbing each others' arms for life dear, and the palest one said in a high pitch voice: "Please don't walk so fast, I'm afraid if we lose you they will put us in a pot and eat us alive."

I was not surprised to hear this, since the first thing I did every morning was to fight my adoptive sisters and their very sharp forks right outside my bedroom door.

Jokes aside, a few minutes later, he actually asked me to get them out of there in the first taxi, and I had to cancel the many activities I had planned for their entertainment that evening: a dinner with my adoptive family (they thought my house was disgusting), a wrestling match (they thought the stadium was disgusting), and some more socializing around (I guess they thought my friends were disgusting as well). What a disappointment. They thought everything I liked was revolting and scary. But how could that have happened? We've always been such good friends!! We've spent so much time together, we've read so many books together, danced so many songs together, watched so many movies together!! I remember for example when we watched Indiana Jones, oh, our beloved Indy with his brimmed hat and shiny little eyes, whip hanging from a side to keep under control those little wicked-looking colored people, some of which ate hearts from living humans. Or wait, that super cool movie, King Solomon's Mines. Now that's a classic including some pot and human cooking action!! Those good old times of popcorn and brave white men who could always avoid being devoured by the savage peoples. Sigh. Now that I think about it, no wonder my companion felt intimidated being one of the only three whites in a sea of blackness: he had forgotten his whip at home (although he remembered to bring the hat and the Coronel Tapioca jacket).

Via funkhundd

Anyways. I couldn't help thinking of this person yesterday when I read the news. It was with big pleasure that I sent him a link to this article, published recently in several African newspapers and titled: Les premiers Européens auraient été cannibales -- the first Europeans ate human flesh. And the remains that confirmed this were precisely in Northern Spain, the place where this person comes from. They found some human-sized pots in the area as well.*

In the subject line, a reminder: "humans for dinner today -- just like in the good old times!"

* This part is not true, I admit. But the rest in this post is.

Going alone to the cinema can barely be classified as a forbidden pleasure, but if the amount of joy derived from it was proportional to its degree of perversion it should be the first of the 8 (no longer 7) deadly sins. At least some movies have that effect.

The Journey of the Hyena is quite likely not a very good movie for contemporary standards: it lacks the rythm, the plot, the dialogue, and the post-production that would make it so. The Journey of the Hyena is purely a product from the 70s -- hippies, drugs, bell bottom pants and all included. The pace is set from the very first moment via the smoky voice of Josephine Baker singing (caressing)the beauties of Paris, the ever present main character of the story. "Paris, Paris, Paris" -- she sings -- "you're paradise on earth." And slowly but surely the two main characters weave a series of unlikely plots in order to reach it.

It is strange how timely some movies can be. The director could not possibly have anticipated the echoes that this story, essentially a story on the longing to migrate to Europe and the cleavage between different generations of Senegalese, would have right now. Yet that same longing, that "I'm going to Europe no matter what" attitude, as if "Europe" was the solution to all problems on Earth, remains present in the Dakar of today. The solution that is more an escape than an answer. Paris, Paris, Paris, the song keeps on playing, under the scorching song, over the water of a sea that feeds the illusion.

I liked the story. I liked its pace, so French, so unique, so Godard. And yet it is much more than a French movie, it is (from this humble perspective) one hundred percent Senegalese. An amazing work of cross-cultural syncretism for $30,000 in 1973 featuring nudity, animal cruelty, long silences, and broken dreams. Definitely not everyone's cup of tea.

But what I enjoyed the most about the movie is the way it sinks into the streets and spaces of Dakar. Having spent the last two and a half months licking its misery, I found it painful to see what I already knew: that the Dakar of the 1970s much better off than the Dakar of 2009. My jaw dropped when I saw the Square of the Independence, now a dilapidated sort of public space, in its splendor. The cars running on the city's freshly painted streets were the same that one can find today -- same models, same license plates -- only 40 years younger and with doors that didn't belong to any other car before. This was the time when Senegal, and particularly Dakar, was the shining star of West Africa, with the best university, the best port, the best everything. So many things have changed, and yet, not surprisingly, the heartache remains: all means are legitimate if the end is on the other side of the ocean.

Or so it seems.