Stories from Senegal

September 12, 2026Bimbling Beck

Of all the places we’ve been so far, I felt like I had more of an insight into some aspects of Senegalese life than life in other countries we have visited. This was helped by the amount of time we spent there (three entries into the country, lasting around 74 days in total), some of the wider exploring and visits to cultural centres, and also the time we spent with people who lived and worked in Senegal - who helpfully also spoke English.

Nonetheless, as always, this is just our little overview of a country that was incredibly vibrant, contrasting and full of life. Here are a few of our stories and experiences of Senegal.

Colour

After a considerable time in the desert, we found Senegal to be bursting with colour. In fact the greenery started a little before the border in southern Mauritania but as we approached the huge Senegal River, the landscape began to change. After all the brown and sand there were green trees, rivers and pools, revealing in us a deep, and perhaps primal, joy.

Shortly after crossing the border, we started spotting beautifully decorated buses and trucks covered in slogans, artwork and intricate metalwork. Each one was individual and done with what appeared to be such care and passion.

A highly decorated medium sized lorry with bright colours and decorated metalwork

A brightly decorated yellow and blue minibus with text reading "LAMP FALL" and "BEUGUE BAMBA" drives along a street past an OLA Energy gas station. In the background are light-colored buildings and a tall communications tower under an overcast sky.

Then the first town, Saint Louis was filled with large and colourful but often crumbling buildings in the style of French colonial architecture. The waterways surrounding Saint Louis were bursting with painted Pirogues - traditional fishing boats. Predominantly made from wood, with a few of the modern ones made from fibreglass, they were painted with iconography including sacred figures, names, and football teams - shout out to FC Barcelona for being one of the most popular icons in Senegal and The Gambia.

Hundreds of narrow wooden pirogues all brightly decorated lined up along a river

Brightly painted traditional wooden pirogue fishing boats float on calm water along a city waterfront. The number 28 is painted on the bow of one boat near the foreground.

Noise

After the hustle and bustle of the city of Nouakchott, Mauritania, we re-entered the desert, but on arrival in Saint Louis the sounds of urban Senegal were different. There were the same shouts from market stall owners and the calls from the Minarets, but there was also music. Lots of music. Bars and restaurants in the tourist parts of Saint Louis featured live and recorded music. This we hadn’t heard so much in Morocco or Mauritania where music appeared to be more reserved for the home or a special occasion. Maybe though we just weren’t in the right place at the right time!

We were lucky to have arrived around the time of the Saint Louis Jazz Festival and were happy to delay our departure south to make sure we experienced it. Sam has been to plenty of jazz gigs and festivals but he was particularly excited for this one, as the write-ups all suggested a history of collaborations between visiting and local artists. It didn’t disappoint and we relished the experience of going to the gigs and meeting some really nice folk - musicians and punters alike.

Three men play percussion instruments on a stage

The programming was great, across a variety of often hard-to-find smaller venues (who doesn’t love a hard-to-find venue at a festival?) across the city. We liked it so much that we blogged about it previously.

The sounds of the languages drastically changed in Senegal too. Leaving behind Derija and Hassani Arabic, we experienced the new sounds of Wolof (the most widely spoken language), Pulaar, Serer and Jola. These Senegalese languages have a very different sound that sounds to me more pronounced than Arabic, which I found to be lyrical and fluid. To me it was like the difference in sounds between German and French, the former of which I find much easier to get my ear around. After meeting the wonderful Maren in Saint Louis, a white Wolof-speaking woman from the US, I took great pleasure in trying to learn some greetings and basic language. This I found to be quite a lot easier than in Mauritania or Morocco, partly because of the sounds, but also maybe because the people tend to be a lot more gregarious and loud so you can just give it a go confidently and all end up laughing if it goes horribly wrong…

Wildlife

Both colourful and noisy, the Senegalese bird life was out of this world. There were so many new species that we’d never encountered before, brightly coloured feathers and varied calls that we soon became familiar with. Everyday there was a new species to look up and make note of. In particular we became quite familiar with the Yellow-crowned Gronolek, Abyssinian Roller, Pelicans, Long-tailed Glossy Starlings, Western Red-Billed Hornbill and Beautiful Sunbirds. To help me with this, I used the Merlin App which shows me the birds that I’m likely to see and I can record those that I can recognise. I have used this app in the UK to identify bird sounds but the catalogue for West Africa is lacking and it doesn’t have enough data yet to recognise calls.

In addition to the birds that were a feature every day, we came across monkeys, huge caterpillars, tortoises, crabs and various fish washed up on the beaches! And BIG bats.

Dozens of bats fly across an overcast sky framed by the dark silhouettes of leafy treetops.

Sam was, of course, very taken by the sounds of all this stuff. He took many recordings of bats (these were actually in Guinea-Bissau but similar vibes), birds and was particularly fascinated by the stridulators. HOW do such tiny things make such an immense and penetrating cacophony?

Sam wearing a teal helmet crouching beside dry bushes with his audio recorder along a sandy dirt road in an arid savanna. Sparse acacia trees spread across the sun-drenched, dry landscape under a clear sky. — Sam recording stridulators...again!

The agriculture appeared to be diverse and not as monoculture as we had seen in Guinea-Bissau, which was almost entirely mango and cashew trees in the areas we passed through. The agriculture in Senegal seemed to slot in more to semi-wild forests and less cultivated areas, which perhaps was a reason for us experiencing greater diversity there than we had in the also green mainland of Guinea-Bissau.

Culture and traditions

The jazz festival was certainly an insight into one part of the Senegalese music culture but it wasn’t our only musical experience. In Toubacouta we arrived in time for the Niumi Badiya Festival (Senegambia Cross-border Friendship Festival), which involved lots of music and dancing from each of the villages and communities in attendance. The terrifying spirits of the Kumpo, the Samay, the Niasse and the Kankurang made an appearance and had all the children running in fear. It was pretty intimidating to be chased by people in costumes wielding huge machetes!

A performer wearing a traditional costume covered in grass dances — The Niasse

A man on tall stilts crouches in front of a tent looking into the crowd — The Stilt Walker

Performers wearing vibrant red, full-body fringed masquerade costumes dance in a dusty open-air plaza before a crowd of onlookers gathered near village buildings.

We met Fula women who stumbled on our wild camp spot when collecting firewood who were super friendly and had traditional inked lips and gums. With no common language, we had a great ‘chat’!

With a host family we ate a shared dish of Thieboudienne (pronounced "chebu jën"). Eating together out of a central bowl, sometimes with hands and sometimes with spoons, is a really important part of Senegalese culture. We saw it in the streets where large groups of women or men shared dishes, and there was always someone carrying a large dish (often on a bicycle or moped) wrapped in a cloth to or from their homes.

People sit around a large metal bowl filled with rice, fish and vegetables — Delicious Thieboudienne

Other food we enjoyed was the spaghetti sandwich which was almost always served with a spicy coffee called Touba. You could get a shot of this fiery drink for around 10p from street stalls. Being close to the ocean, the Senegalese diet involves a lot of fish including the Lotte (which we later discovered was Monkfish). I also tried coconut that had fallen straight from the tree for the first time.

Beck holds a small coconut and a knife, revealing the white flesh

At MAHICAO (The Museum of Art and History of West African Cultures) we saw an eclectic mix of artefacts and displays giving more information about some of the beliefs and traditions from a huge range of countries, not only Senegal. This included lots about Mali, a country that due to the conflict, we don’t feel comfortable visiting right now. A shame as it looks to have an incredible history and Sam loves Malian music. In time, maybe things will improve and we will have the opportunity to explore it. Who knows.

Brightly coloured, traditional children's costumes with complex embroidery — Children's traditional costumes

A naive wooden sculpture of a woman riding a bicycle. Also our computer desktop image. — Not a traditional sculpture but an example of some of the West African tourist wares

Communities and people

We’ve encountered a broad variety of communities on our tour through Senegal. Some of which we’ve gotten to know on a surface level, and some we’ve gotten to know a bit better.

An example of the deeper kind of connection was meeting Maren who I mentioned earlier and was studying the fishing populations of Saint Louis and their changing future as parts of the coastline has started to be effected by sea level rise and storm surges. Spending time with her gave us the opportunity to ask more questions about the local people to try and get a better understanding of their lives. This gave us a springboard from which we could do our own research online into the current situation.

A man stands with a cart full of fish watching people unload buckets of fish from a boat — The fish arrive into Saint Louis

A boy carries a basket of fish through a wide, rustic outdoor fish market filled with concrete curing vats and wooden shelters. Scattered sacks and curing stations line the sandy terrain beneath a hazy sky. — Fish are dried on the shore

A guide we met on the street in Saint Louis also invited us on a mini tour around the fishing village and we were wholeheartedly welcomed into the community! Although it was far more hectic, we actually felt far more comfortable on the fisher island. We could wander around and were paid little attention compared to on the tourist island, where we were frequently asked for money or invited into shops to look at trinkets we couldn’t take on our bikes.

Beck is surrounded by a group of children smiling and waving at the camera — Kids of Saint Louis

Children featured a lot in our tour of Senegal which is unsurprising in a country where 60% of the population is under 25 (compared to around 29% in the UK). The vast majority were friendly and interested in us and our bikes. We did however, find it pretty tiring that almost every encounter involved a request for a ball or money - not something we experienced much in Mauritania, and even less in Morocco. This slightly tainted some of our encounters, as rather than a genuine conversation or shared interest, they just wanted something from us. But we’re fairly obviously Europeans and if you don’t ask, you don’t get. We only had a couple of worse experiences where kids chucked stones at us (something we found that other cyclists in that area had also encountered), but it seemed to us that the kids were more likely to be bored than aggressive. Most were extremely polite, respectful and just wanted to talk about English football teams!

Beck smiles alongside a group of local boys on the side of an arid paved road. Behind them stands her fully loaded touring bicycle with green panniers against a dry landscape with sparse trees and a power line. — A group of boys on their way to school

So let’s focus on the majority of kids and young adults who we engaged with on our tour. In Saint Louis we stumbled upon the evening skating and wheeling crew. We sat quietly watching the sunset and the folk demonstrating their amazing skills.

A boy does a hands-free wheely on a bicycle on a street in Saint Louis — Saint Louis vibes

A young adult on rollerblades jumps over a high jump about 5 foot high — Roller blading in Saint Louis

Football was obviously very important to people and each village appeared to have its own football team. Some of their emblems were painted on the walls of buildings and dates were marked when a particular team won a league. They were proud and wanted everyone to know of their success!

Graffiti on a wall celebrating two local football teams and fair play — Local football teams in northern Senegal

Despite a more mixed religious make up, Islam played a prominent role in Senegalese culture and the festival of Tabaski took place while we were there. This is the West African name for Eid al-Adha, the major Islamic "Feast of the Sacrifice”. On the day we cycled through village after village where people were gathering at mosques in their finest clothes. The colours and sequins were out of this world. Children and families had matching outfits and everyone looked absolutely amazing. After the service at the mosque, and as the name of the festival suggests, the butchery began and white sheep, mostly a breed called Ladoum, were slaughtered and hung from every tree. The near-constant sound of knives on bone as we cycled by will live with us forever.

A group of large white sheep on the shore of the river in Saint Louis at night — The Ladoum sheep in Saint Louis before Tabaski

A large sheep with curled horns — A Ladoum portrait

Two women in long red dresses walk away along a dusty dirt road while balancing large metal vessels on their heads. In the background, simple concrete block buildings stand under overhead utility wires and a clear blue sky. — Big feast = big cookware

Senegal was also the first place in a while where we noticed the practising of other religions, particularly the Christian communities in the southern part of Casamance. We spotted churches here and also visited Shell Island at Fadiouth, where the communities of Muslims and Christians live and are laid to rest side by side.

A small, finely decorated such in a lush forest — A church in Casamance

A selection of graves on an island made from scallop and clam shells — The Shell Island cemetery

We also saw evidence of the animist beliefs, particularly in the southern part of the country near Sine Saloum where there were many huge and sacred Baobab trees. We learnt that these beliefs can be held in harmony with other faiths and one of our local tour guides identified as a both Muslim and held animist beliefs.

Community

You’ve probably heard us bemoan one of the major things we miss whilst touring: community. It’s bound to remain pretty illusive when we keep passing through places without putting down any roots. At the jazz festival we met people working in Senegal and our shared language allowed us to exchange more stories and connect on a deeper level than we can normally do, which we lapped up. We even met up with some of our new friends when we returned to Senegal on our way back northwards.

Beck and Sam smile with two girl friends — Reuniting with our South Korean friends in Dakar

The Zebrabar was another place with a different type of community. It’s on the list of many an Overlander (however you travel) and we stopped here three times on our way in and out of Senegal. Here we met like-minded people. Our adventure could be seen as a bit of a wild one and leaving to go travelling might be conceived as an outsider’s life, but among these crowds, you meet people who aren’t using the same reference points. It’s refreshing. Here we are part of the Normal Crew, a different community.

Beck and Sam sit around an outdoor dining table with a group of people — Friends at the Zebrabar

So many places we’ve cycled through, we’ve received such warm welcomes. Again, the attempt to greet people in their own language opens up so many doors (sometimes literally) and you can see that making the effort significantly alters the interaction you’re going to have. Making an effort to forge some sort of connection or community rather than just travelling through it is definitely a priority for us.

Quaxing

No doubt it goes without saying that we LOVE quaxing. We did a good dose of it before leaving on our tour and of course we’re always carrying groceries and all our other belongings on our bikes these days. We love to see bikes piled high and we always give an extra large smile and a raised fist when we see it. Here are a couple of good ones from Senegal.

A cyclist rides along a paved rural road carrying a towering bundle of colorful clothing stacked onto the back of their bicycle. Lush green trees and wooden fences border the quiet countryside road.

A person rides a bicycle carrying a large sack down a narrow city street flanked by parked cars and multi-story buildings. Pedestrians walk ahead on the left, including a man wearing a shirt reading "CAN," while a yellow sign on a building to the right reads "AFRIQUE GALERIE ART AFRICAIN SACRE."

A worn bicycle with a green front fork is parked along a sidewalk curb, carrying a massive wooden crate strapped to its rear rack. The bike rests in front of a sun-drenched, white-plastered building.

Everything Rebar

As we’ve seen elsewhere on our tour the culture of hand-making, decorating and repair runs deep in Senegal. It often results in an aesthetic beauty that is foregone through precision design and machine-made products. It’s a bit like how Sam likes his music. Wonky.

One thing we noticed to be hugely prevalent in terms of hand-making was rebar. It’s everywhere. It’s used in the way we’re familiar with, and can often be seen protruding from concrete slabs, but it’s also used as a basic raw material to make pretty much anything.

Repurposed vehicle seats function as chairs (with rebar legs) around small covered tables on a tiled patio under a rustic, shaded canopy. In the background, a touring bicycle loaded with gear is parked near white building walls and old appliances. — Rebar bus seat chairs

Embossed white paper napkins rest in a rustic wooden holder with a weighted rebar on a reddish outdoor cafe table. Sunlight casts warm shadows across the table with a woven chair and sandy patio in the background. — Rebar napkin weight

A rusted rebar horseshoe lies flat on coarse, light-colored sand scattered with small pebbles and shell fragments. — Rebar horseshoe

A metal rebar outline sculpture of the African continent with country borders stands on a sandy beach overlooking a calm ocean at sunset. — Rebar Africa

Contrasts

Senegal was a country of contrasts. It’s hard to describe what exactly we experienced in those terms but having travelled through remote villages and major cities, the realities were poles apart. In a way much more pronounced than if you travelled from, say, London to a Cornish village. Interestingly, the UK and Senegal have a similar Gini Coefficient, but the wealth baselines mean that those experiencing poverty in Senegal are experiencing a threat to basic survival and a lack of the most fundamental infrastructure provision.

Rather clumsily, we’ve tried to illustrate this and other contrasts below: