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The first thing I see on the Senegalese island of Fadiouth are the wading pigs. The first thing I remember seeing. Only the camera has recorded the woman who wades beside the swine.
“God willing, you’ll return here for your wedding,” our guide, Jean-Paul, tells my partner Ben and me as we cross the bridge leading to the island. Ben’s dad looks on without comment.
In my memory, Jean-Paul is wearing a Senegalese outfit quilted from thin, multicolored stripes of patterned fabric. In reality, he sports a polo shirt above his quilted pants, and a woolly red hat and headphones above that. The large cross around his neck proclaims that he’s as Catholic as his namesake pope; he appears keen to share a religion with us. He already shares it with 90% of the inhabitants of Fadiouth — an island of Christianity in a predominantly Muslim nation.
Christianity explains Fadiouth’s substitution of pigs for Senegal’s omnipresent goats. Clams explain the pigs’ partial submersion: the animals are digging for food. The local pork, Jean-Paul reveals, is naturally salty.
In fact, clams explain the entre island, built over centuries from discarded shells. For a moment, I’m…
