Niangal Senegal

Mane Serigne Diop, mariner, fisherman and master of his own boat waits just beyond the breakers, choses his moment then accelerates the old outboard, as the wave starts to lift the stern. The red and yellow, the blue and white, of the decorated pirogue surfs the wave, making the familiar manoeuvre look deceptively easy. Before the boat has even grounded its keel on the beach, women and children charge down to surround it. First on the scene, Mane’s wife, defensive as ever, throws handfuls of sand at anyone too eager to help themselves to her fish.

With each rushing wave Mane and his crew fight to hold the boat, laden to the benches with iridescent blue-green mackerel. The women are already beginning to scoop fish into large bowls and carefully balance them on their heads. It has been a good day. The shoals of mackerel come inshore to spawn in the spring. Everyone will eat well today, and maybe they will even make a little money.

Boat after boat surf onto the beach to unload. A frenzy surrounds each boat, and a continuous flow of women, with bowls of fish on their heads, head up the beach to the waiting charrettes and ponies. Loaded with fish they trot off to the fish market and the drivers shout out to clear a way.

The sand is a sea of people. A calm group of women gutting fish and brewing tea sit next to a gang of youths dancing to the beat of a boy drumming on a bucket. Every available hand, including a passing tourist and a well dressed man with a child in his arms, haul and push the now empty boat. It crawls up the beach on rollers, disturbing a gang of children who have started a fish fight with the undersized discarded fish. The commotion of the passing boat momentarily distracts a boy until, ‘thwack!’. A fish catches him in the face, so he returns to the important task of revenge. A large elegant lady carrying fish, casually reaches up to the bowl on her head and tosses a fat fish to land beside her friend, who surreptitiously brushes sand over it and marks the spot with a flip flop. The charrette driver drops two fish beside a young guy sitting alone. He knows the man has no work, but when the sea is generous, everyone deserves to eat.

The drumming and the dancing, the carrying and the hauling, the running child, the shouting and the laughing, the fish flying, the blood and guts in the crashing waves. Somehow in the raucous chaos of the beach, an orderly procession of fish migrate from boat to market, and the waiting lorries.