rest and renewal in dakar

highway to touba

190km of highway forms a straight line from Dakar to Touba. An expanse of sun burnt grass and dispersed trees hug both sides of the road so that at speed the yellows, browns and greens of the natural landscape blur in your periphery. At a slower pace, herds of cattle, goats and the occasional camel lazily graze on the grass or leaves. Over turnt cars can be spotted abandoned on the hard shoulder, no trace of the passengers or indication of their fates, but the site doesn’t seem to garner second glances from anybody but my wife and I. The heat gets more oppressively intense the further we move away from the breezy coasts into the interior of Senegal.

Our driver, among others, makes a stop at Thies, where the gas station and shop doubles as the backdrop for impromptu fashion shoots. Everybody is dressed in their Friday best on the way to the spiritual home of the Mouride tariqa (a Sufi brotherhood) and the site for the largest mosque in West Africa. Looking on in my white khameez it’s as if the crowd were draped in Joseph’s technicolour dreamcoat. Bright fabrics and wooden tasbih beads (prayer beads)rest wrapped around bodies, arms and rear view mirrors. Stencil-like Images of saints decorate the metal exterior and glass windows of packed mini-buses like tattooed skin.

The faces of Shaykh Ahmadou Bamba, Ibrahima Fall, Mame Saliou, Sope Serigne Fallou or Ibrahim Niasse feature heavily on necklaces on the chests of men, as if to keep their remembrance close to their hearts. A moving mass of man and machine with a shared destination: retreat from the bustling city and its bountiful distractions.

patterns of retreat

Two days ago I was in Dakar, where with the balcony door of our suite just slightly ajar, we could hear the waves crashing against the rocks on the Atlantic coast from our bed.

As I write this in London, the sound of the sea echoes in ebbs and flows, but this time courtesy of the white noise device my wife insisted we buy despite my claim that “we could just play it off YouTube on our phones”. Of course if I were doing that I couldn’t be writing this, so credit where credit’s due. Still, Yaseen is peacefully asleep in his cot a few feet away, opening a window for reflection.

My wife and I have just come back from our first time abroad together since 2018. As a much delayed honeymoon, it had a distinctly different feel than it may have had as a newly married couple almost three years ago. It served a different purpose. It was a deep exhale after what felt like a relentless relay race whilst holding our breaths.

There’s a peculiar mix of feelings upon return. On one hand there’s the obvious joy of being reunited with Yaseen having spent over a week apart, but also a sharp reminder that these kinds of getaways will likely be few and far between in the coming years. I don't have a particularly strong sense of sadness about this fact, though there is a shadow of loss in that knowing.

A little to my surprise, a couple days shy of our flight back I was already looking forward to picking up the life that I was previously seeking respite from. That’s not an indictment on the experience itself, which was beautiful in so many ways. It’s something I’m realising is a feature of my relationship with travel. It follows a pattern: an initial period of excitement and deep immersion soon after arrival; followed by rest; renewal in perspective; and lastly integration.

renewal > escapism

With familiarity removed, deep patterns of almost reflexive behaviours and associations are starved, clearing the mental cache of accumulated debris. With space freed, senses heightened, permission is granted to absorb novelty, creating an expansion in fields of imagination. I begin to envision new possibilities for life. Proposals that on home soil were little more than fleeting thoughts return invigorated, imbued with urgency and conviction. I think about my health, my routine, family plans, prayer. All of a sudden the idea of picking up the French I haven’t used for 14 years doesn’t seem absurd. I’m having open, candid conversations with my wife about areas of improvement in our relationship and intimate details of past ones. I’m thinking ahead to Ramadan next month, and what I can do to prepare.

I’m acutely aware that this holiday wasn’t real life. Real life isn’t breakfast buffet, no responsibilities and endless leisure. But in this temporary overindulgence my appreciation for what I have at home was nourished. Perhaps why periods of feasting are embedded in cultures throughout time and space. Before this holiday, I admit, the balance of endurance to enjoyment was quite a way off centre. This was needed.

I'm reminded of a period of time between 2015-2018. At least once a year I would find myself on a coach or train heading to a meditation retreat somewhere in the English countryside. New age spirituality and 'wellness' culture has perhaps destigmatised the concept in the mainstream over the years but it sounded weird; even cultish to people I knew. For me, it was an intuitive call to recalibration that I would listen to having felt consumed by the wilderness of secular habitation. The intensity of discipline in 10 days of deep internal work felt like a necessary off-set to the outward facade of London, ego and social media in your 20s. Would I live a monastic life of 10 hour daily meditation long-term now? No. But for the same reason why I wouldn’t approach life like a perpetual search for sensual pleasure. Real life isn’t permanently living in a self-indulgent bubble of feeling good. Whether constructed by the materials of hedonism or under the guise of spirituality, the delusion is maintained.

The goal of retreat is always to reset but eventually re-enter - refreshed with insights and energy to better fulfil my roles, and Senegal proved to be a great incubator to this end. Rested and refuelled, I feel primed for the perpetual balancing act that lays ahead, God willing.