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.