Not all who wander are lost
The next morning started with a big drive ahead – the Benin to Togo border crossing. We started the day early with breakfast not starting when breakfast was supposed to be available. This is one of those small details that sounds petty until you are the person standing there, mentally calculating how much coffee, protein,…
This was our morning leaving Senegal for Benin. There is a particular kind of early morning airport departure that feels less like travel and more like being quietly processed by an invisible machine. You wake up too early, say goodbye to people who have somehow become part of the fabric of your trip, and then…
We took the ferry back to Dakar from Gorée Island still carrying the weight of that morning. Gorée doesn’t really let you walk away clean—it lingers, sits heavy, asks you to hold onto it longer than is comfortable. And then there’s Dakar. A city that, almost immediately, pulls you back into something louder, more chaotic,…
The island of Gorée is located less than 4 km off the coast of Dakar. It is a solemn emblem of the trans‑Atlantic slave trade: for centuries, enslaved Africans were held, chained, shipped from here. One of its most visited sites is the House of Slaves with its “Door of No Return”, which we would later…
The Morning: From Saint‑Louis to the Heart of Touba We woke early in Saint‑Louis, rubbing sleep out of our eyes over a rather uninspiring hotel breakfast—again. The scrambled eggs were half‑gone, the croissants picked over, and despite going early, it felt like we’d shown up to a buffet someone else had already looted. Brendan gave me…
We’d had such high hopes for Saint-Louis, Senegal, not to be confused with the one in Missouri. A romantic, artful island steeped in colonial history and protected by UNESCO—it seemed like the perfect place to pause, soak in Senegalese culture, and catch our breath. But by the time we arrived, the air felt less like…
