Two great cities—St. Louis, Mo., and Saint-Louis, Sénégal. So much alike that the parallels are uncanny—and yet so very, very different.
Both cities owe their names to the crusading French king canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1297. Both owe their origins to French explorers who, in the 17th and 18th centuries, coursed the great waterways of the world in search of land that would enrich la patrie—and trade opportunities that would line their pockets.
St. Louis lies just below the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, a site chosen in 1763 by Pierre Laclède when he made his way upriver from New Orleans to establish a new outpost. Saint-Louis rose in 1659 on a site near the Mauritanian border, where Louis Caullier established an outpost on an island near where the Sénégal River flows into the Atlantic Ocean.
Both cities are closely associated with the heroic age of flight, when aviators compensated for the shortcomings of their equipment with personal bravery that bordered on mania. Here we celebrate Charles Lindbergh, a one-time mail pilot who climbed into the Spirit of St. Louis on May 20, 1927, for the first solo flight across the North Atlantic. In Saint-Louis, the locals celebrate Jean Mermoz, another former mail pilot who climbed into Le Croix du Sud on May 12, 1930, for the first solo crossing of the South Atlantic.
Both cities lay claim to music, particularly the blues and jazz, as part of their heritage. St. Louis was one of the birthplaces of jazz. Saint-Louis hosts, every year in May, an international jazz festival that is one of the most highly anticipated events of its kind in Africa.
The American and African incarnations of St. Louis have so much in common that it’s tempting to cite their similarities and come to a full stop. Indeed, Sister Cities International recognized the likeness and formally joined the two. But for perspective? Say aloud the word N’Dar, the name given to Saint-Louis in Wolof, the most common of the 15 or so tribal languages spoken in Sénégal. The sounds of Wolof will tie an English-speaking tongue in knots—a first sign of difference. Though the likenesses are striking, the two St. Louises are separated by more than 4,600 miles—and by cultures that are worlds apart.
In Saint-Louis, bright African colors dance before your eyes, smells rising from the kitchens tell of spices rarely used here and the rhythms of the day are dictated by the departure and arrival of fishermen who go to sea in pirogues, sturdy oversized canoes made of heavy African woods.
The first French settlement in Africa, Saint-Louis rose to prominence because it dominated the river on which ivory, gold, gum arabic and, for a time, slaves flowed to Europe and the Americas. Urbanized in the mid-1800s, the city claimed pride of place as the capital of French West Africa from 1895 to 1902 and as the capital of Sénégal from 1840 to 1958. But as the 20th century unfolded, the action shifted elsewhere, and the river port of Saint-Louis was eclipsed by the deepwater port of Dakar.
Saint-Louis fell upon hard times. What was in place remained; little or nothing changed. But in recent years the clouds have begun to part; in the lack of new development, the city’s residents have discovered the proverbial silver lining.
The city’s classic French-colonial architecture—much of which dates from the mid-19th century—has been so fully preserved that, in 2000, UNESCO declared Ile Saint-Louis a World Heritage Site. Imagine narrow streets that stretch before you to the tip of the island, modest two-story houses whose stucco walls are painted in eye-soothing shades of rose and yellow, roofs sheathed in terra-cotta tiles, houses whose delicate wrought-iron balconies insist that the eye linger to trace their curves. Or populate the streets of your imagination with les maisons portugaises (houses in the Portuguese style) facing the street, each heavy wooden door flanked by two small windows, the door opening to reveal an interior courtyard with a veranda along which the rooms are aligned. Add the golden light that bathes the city in the magic hours that follow sunrise and precede sunset, hours when the landscape is suffused with a warm light that seems to rise from inside, and you realize why Saint-Louis is a photographer’s paradise.
One of the great delights of Saint-Louis is its size. Though today’s city stretches onto the mainland, visitors tend to focus on the island, the administrative center where the former homes of French colonists whisper softly of the history they’ve witnessed and the adjacent 15-mile strip of sand, Langue de Barbarie, a densely populated fishing village from which some 200 pirogues depart daily.
From the island side of the Faidherbe Bridge, the northern end of the island is an easy 15-minute walk; the southern tip is closer still. To help you find your way, the syndicat d’initiative (a.k.a. the Chamber of Commerce) has an excellent cartoon-like map and a self-guided tour available in English—but by far the best way to see Saint-Louis for the first time is to arrange for a balade en calèche (a tour in a small horse-drawn carriage) with a guide who knows the city’s secrets. Idriss Ben Geloune brought the city to life for my wife and me with painful tales of the slave trade (in the 18th century, 10,000 slaves a year passed through Saint-Louis), heroic tales of the Spahi who repelled Mauritanian raiders and of the famous tirailleurs Sénégalais who fought so well for France in World War I, sad tales of fishermen lost at sea and memorialized in the Cimetière des Pêcheurs, even an amusing tale about the construction of the Faidherbe Bridge (Gustav Eiffel was not, contrary to popular opinion and many guidebooks, responsible for the design).
Geloune’s knowledge was encyclopedic—but it wasn’t his best quality. Though he put the best possible emphasis on every facet of local life, he was also honest about the rough edges of a city that still has no streetlights, a city with ambitiously named avenues of unpaved beach sand.
Quick with a smile, well spoken in both French and English, Geloune let his pride in Saint-Louis become more and more evident as he led us from site to site. In a city where conviviality is the order of the day, he knew how to make teranga, the Wolof word for “welcome,” come alive.’
Though Saint-Louis is relatively new to tourism, there is much to do beyond soaking up its intoxicating atmosphere. Shopping can be a bit unsettling at first—few prices are fixed, so bargaining skills are essential. There are no “big box” stores in this other St. Louis, only small family-run boutiques. Business transactions grow from personal transactions; in fact, business transactions are personal transactions.
Walking one day on the rue Blaise Diagne, named for the first black man to represent Sénégal in the French National Assembly (1914), I stopped at the Galerie Khadin Rassoul to look at African masks and carvings. Ten minutes into our talk, the owner, Nor Gueye, cleared two African chairs I’d been admiring, fashioned from two intersecting planks and elaborately carved. We sat and talked about the countries represented in his collection, the uses and symbolism of various masks and carvings, the animistic spirit that made masks possible. The better part of an hour had gone by before we began to talk prices. To behave otherwise would not have been gentil.
Three national parks lie within an easy drive of the city: the Parc National des Oiseaux du Djoudj, the Parc National de la Langue de Barbarie and the Réserve de Faune de Guembeul. Accompanied once again by Geloune, who knows birds every bit as well as he knows history, we traveled to the Parc National de la Langue de Barbarie for yet another balade, this time not en calèche but by pirogue. Each year the parks in northern Sénégal host some 3 million migrating birds—almost 400 species. Our two-hour balade didn’t exhaust the possibilities, but we were dazzled by ospreys, cormorants, egrets, herons, terns and hundreds upon hundreds of pelicans, standing and posing, strutting about as if on parade. Later, 100 photographs later, we crossed the river, followed a sandy, gently sloping path that wound through the filao trees and across the dunes and stood awestruck on the eastern shore of the Atlantic Ocean, staring out at the nothingness that Jean Mermoz dared to cross.
What more? If you can muster four people, you can arrange for a camel ride, a day’s trip into the bush to visit a traditional African village or an overnight camping trip into the desert, just over the border in Mauritania. If it’s sun, surf and sailing you’re after, arrange a few days’ stay in one of the campements a few miles south of the fishing village on the Langue de Barbarie.
Good hotels abound, but if you want the atmosphere of the colonial city, the centrally located Hôtel de la Poste has a leg up. An 1850s-vintage colonial-era hostel, recently updated, it’s more a destination in itself than a place in which to rest. Guest rooms, spread over three floors, open from outdoor walkways that surround an interior courtyard; brilliant flowers spill from their pots and over the protective railings, a riot of color that generates a festive atmosphere. Like the colonial houses that dot the island, the Hôtel de la Poste has a story to tell. Passengers from the flying boats once stayed here. Mermoz was a frequent guest—and the breakfast room is a quirky shrine dedicated to his memory. Our room, looking across the river to the mainland, included a spacious private balcony where we settled in the late afternoons to enjoy a cool breeze, a glass of wine, great white egrets roosting in the trees before us and a bird’s-eye view of foot traffic crossing the Faidherbe Bridge.
Eating in Saint-Louis is part of the adventure. African specialties are easy to find—chawarma (think spicy kebabs) and Sénégalese specialties such as yassa poisson/poulet/d’agneau (rice with fish/chicken/lamb). Thanks to the colonial past, Vietnamese food is available, but most of the cooking derives from the French influence—and it’s as good as what you’ll find in Paris, though less expensive. At Le Flamingo, the outdoor riverside restaurant linked to the Hôtel de la Poste, I couldn’t resist the spiced pork chop with mustard, my wife the couscous-stuffed lamb. We both finished with chocolate mousse with orange confit—right before the carcass of a goat floated past to jolt us back to earth.
On a night away from the hotel, I was seduced by the duck with olives and fresh pasta, my wife by the peppered steak with garlic potatoes. I preferred the local triple-chocolate mousse to the version I tried earlier ... but why split hairs?
Likeness, difference; the combination holds your attention. Though this sister city to St. Louis is still unspoiled, tourists have begun to arrive—almost 50,000 last year, a substantial number for a city of fewer than 200,000 souls. More will come as word spreads of this new take on the “spirit of St. Louis.” True, distance is a drawback: At 4,600 miles, Saint-Louis is by no means an easy place to reach.
But if you’re already a St. Louisan, it’s well worth the trip.
Story and photographs by David Collins
