Qu’est qui ce passé?
We’d been noticing construction kinds of noises for a few days. Sometimes it sounded like the DjiboKAs were remodeling, sometimes the avocat neighbor. It wasn’t until I was in the back with a fist full of keys and an armload of stuff for the storerooms, that I saw the big yellow scoop of a front end loader reach up high, just beyond our back wall. ‘Bronwyn, we need to start paying attention”, I cautioned as we planned an après-nap investigation.
We walked around the KA’s house to find …. Nothing….. next door. I had that feeling you have when a passing aquaintance shaves his beard and you look and look and say, “Did you just grow a moustache?, knowing something is different. We looked and looked and I finally remembered Yero’s house, the tall brush and trees surrounding it, the four new babies that came out on the women’s backs to greet us when we came with Christmas bags for little Marta and Nelson, the something of a maize patch, the lines and lines of pagnes, the all morning long carrying of water to the house from the KA’s robinnet, the abandoned car, the little path leading to Yero’s bread stand.
Did they just put a bread stand here? Yero’s bread stand was the only remaining thing sauf dust and chunks of cinderblocks. I remembered our first weeks here, when eager to find a baguette vendor, Yero’s breadbox (clearly labeled chaud pain) appeared from nowhere. It was indeed a metal box with a window from which one man could sell baguettes. And indeed, he did. Each week the bread box was new and improved, speaking to Yero’s ingenuity, community spirit, and casual but consistent entrepreneurship. First a carefully placed line of stones suggesting a patio with two entrances appeared. Then neatly raked gravel filled the rectangle. Then a little broken paving stone path led to the entrance. Then the box got an “addition” of a palm frond covered roof supported by slender sturdy tree trunks. Then two baby trees appeared, each surrounded by a shade to keep them safe from the sun…. Then the roofed area was enclosed by a narrow block wall, mudded over with the skill of a master Santa Fe adobedero…. Then another addition off the back… another palm roof….
Yero had plans for a kitchen. Soon, I was thinking, the guidebooks would lead us to Chez Yero for traditional plats Senegalaise pas trop cher.
Qu’est qui ce passé ici? We inquired at the breadbox. Ou est Yero? Est la famille?
“Somewhere in Ouakam”, was the only reply.

Il faut trouver un geologiste
I’ve been intrigued by les roches here. The rocks are everywhere. They are carefully placed to line many streets. They show up randomly on street corners. Always roundish, always grayish, they come in small(brick size), medium(suitable for a chaise) and grande(more like a boulder). It was unclear to me whether they were concrete or rock- they were all so perfectly ….round-ish. I clearly needed the help of a geologist to explain this phenomenon. I considered researching at the university, but with its constant student or teacher strikes, I let that fall off the to-do list. On one bike ride in the neighborhood, I got a clue. Men were at work digging the foundation for a new villa. The rock underneath was solid and grayish. Alongside of the large pit, men hit the rock pile. They chinked away at the big pieces with a maddox until they had a pile of medium rocks. Then they chinked away at the medium rocks to fashion smaller and smaller roundish rocks, each one made by hand, no two exactly alike. It wasn’t until recently that Mohammed gave me the final clue. Speaking of Les Mamelles, he revealed that near these hills, bord de la mer, one can trouve a volcanic crater. Ahhhhh… speak to me of the rocks, then, Mohammed, you know- the roundish ones.... Basalt. Volcanic rock. Lies beneath the whole of Dakar... Enfin, j’ai trouver un geologiste.