Rough Diary: A Senegal Diary
I took a slender canoe, made from a single tree, out into shallow marsh water to a large mangrove where I saw women half-submerged in the murky water, fishing for oysters. As the canoe passed them, they lifted their heads from the water, shielded their eyes from the sun, and waved to us. I waved back. The canoe passed on, and they bowed back to the water.
The canoe cut through the mangrove and arrived at an island made completely of oyster shells: shells shucked for centuries until accumulated into a landmass between the grooves of the mangrove. On this shell island, rice and sorghum were grown, two of the most ancient food sources: ancient land, ancient food. Still standing in some areas of the shell islands were the traditional tiny huts of brown thatch on long stilts. They seemed like cranes about to lift off to the sky. I walked past them, shells crunching beneath my feet, toward the “mixed” cemetery on the island. My guide explained to me that Muslims and Christians, for centuries, have been buried there, each playing a role in the different sects’ burial rituals. He explained that the two religions have shared an intimate closeness for as long as forever in Joal: a typical family from Joal, like his, was made up of both faiths. The cemetery seemed to have more crosses, however, which were skewed in directions that appeared consistent enough to suggest a pattern. I asked why the crosses were laid out in these different ways, and he told me this was due to the different Christian denominations on the island, four I believe, the majority being Catholic. Later, indeed, I got to see the main Catholic church, which was in the center of the island, the altar laden with fruit offerings to various saints, all represented by white figurines.
We left the cemetery, crossing by foot the beautiful long bridge, recently built, of the shell island from Joal into Fadiout. Fadiout is a large island of about six thousand people. An extraordinarily beautiful place that reminded me of the rugged terrain of the parish of St. Elizabeth on the southern coast of Jamaica. I brushed my hand on the dusty, pebbly ground. Tufts of grass grew in sparse bursts all over the marl-like earth. I put the dust in my pocket and we walked on. My guide took me to the four public meeting spaces, all big gazebos built in a small square surrounded by flat-roofed residential houses. In the meeting spaces were men of different ages, broken up into small groups talking or playing checkers. Some looked up from their conversation or game and greeted us.
After the last meeting place, the guide said he would now take me to the King of the Sea.
***
The King of the Sea was ninety years old. He could be a hundred or over a hundred, depending on whom you asked. He was a very old man, one eye sunken so deep into his skull and congealed into a smooth lump of skin, the other, opened, small and clouded over with glaucoma. I was told about him before going to Joal and that I had to meet him. From all accounts he was an amazing man. I didn’t ask a lot of questions about him in Dakar, where I first heard about him; I loved the fact or idea of his title, King of the Sea. It was not a title, as was explained to me, but a calling, and I wanted to meet him on the terms of just that detail.
My guide and I arrived at the King of the Sea’s house, a small raw concrete structure crowded in by other houses nearby, nondescript and plain. A woman who seemed to be in her thirties took us to the living room, where we sat on a sofa and waited for the King of the Sea. Shortly, the old man came out of his bedroom to the living room, brushing his hands on the furnishings as he made his way to the large sofa, where he sat on one of the cushions in a far corner by the curtained window. The sofa seemed to envelop his small form like quicksand. He was dressed in white cotton pajama pants and a loose T-shirt with a thin gold chain with a cross pendant over the shirt’s collar. Above his head was a calendar with an image of Christ of the Sacred Heart, the same one ubiquitous in Caribbean homes: my grandmother’s house had one of these calendars, and I started to wonder if I had ever seen my grandmother sit directly beneath her calendar Jesus. A TV blared loudly from another room.
I stared from the sofa in front of him at the large white tiles on the floor, then back at the King of the Sea; I did again and realized I could see him reflected in the tiles. His shaved head had sprinklings of white on it. Then he began to speak. He lifted his head slightly up and down as if nodding and raised his right hand in the same rhythm to match his speech. His voice was husky but not deep. I listened intently to it as my guide translated softly, directly into my ear. He told me that the King of the Sea has welcomed me, that I’m not a stranger to him. Though by now various people have said this to me all over Senegal, to the point that it has become commonplace, here it moved me so much as I listened to the cadence of his voice, which, the more I listened, the more I’m convinced was like sea waves on a calm day.
I wish I could’ve thanked him in a shared language, but I asked my guide to tell him that I’m grateful to be in his home. He welcomed me again and said I’m free to ask him any question. I asked my guide to ask him to tell me, what is the work of the King of the Sea? His cloudy eye blinked, and then he began to speak at length, so much so my guide wasn’t able to keep up with translating and began to do something I hadn’t noticed since we met: he clicked his tongue to signal he was listening. The King of the Sea spoke for a long time. The guide clicked and I listened. After a while the King of the Sea fell silent. The guide then summarized for me.
The King of the Sea says prayers for fishermen before they go out to sea; he prays for a good catch and for the sea to be kind to the fishermen on their journey. If the catch is bad, the King of the Sea goes to the sea and makes sacrifice and prayers to the sea for a better catch next time. He repeats this ritual of sacrifice and prayers until the sea answers with good catches. The King of the Sea cannot—can never—spend a night away from the village; wherever he is during the day, he must be back to the village by nightfall. The consequences of staying away from the village for a night seemed dire, but I wasn’t told what they were.
After the guide explained this to me, I asked him to ask the King of the Sea how he became the King of the Sea and if he always wanted to be king. Again, the King of the Sea spoke for a long time, much longer than before. My eyes strayed from him, down to the white tiles and then outside to the window behind his head: the large light behind him framing his head was as magnificent as that in the print of Christ above his head. When he stopped speaking, the guide gave a rough summary.
One day the elders of the village came and said to him that since he was such a good boy who went to church and was a good son to his father, he would make a good King of the Sea. He was selected because he belonged to a particular ethnic group that was the minority in his village, which all Kings of the Sea came from. No, he didn’t want to be the king. But then regular people, his friends and family, first in jest, began to call him King of the Sea. That bothered him and he spoke to his father about his discomfort with the whole matter. His father reassured him that the matter was his choice and that he was free to say no to becoming the king. He didn’t say no then to his father after they spoke, neither did he say yes. One day after that talk with his father, he was leaving the hospital, whether as a visitor or as a patient was unclear, and he met an old friend about to enter the hospital—again it was unclear whether as a visitor or as a patient—who called him King of the Sea, and right then and there in front of the hospital he decided he wanted to become the King of the Sea. He spoke again to his father. His father was happy about his choice. The rites were performed, many decades ago, and ever since he has been the King of the Sea.
Was he a fisherman before he became the King of the Sea? I asked. No, not in any serious way. He was a farmer. He said this, and for the first time I heard him laugh.
–Ishion Hutchinson
Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He is the author of the poetry collections School of Instructions: a Poem, House of Lords and Commons and Far District and the book of essays, Fugitive Tilts.