The Tourist Corner: Wrestling, Drumming and Dancing

Since there’s a wrestling match today at a stadium not far from my house and part of my study abroad experience in Dakar included attending some cultural events to not only observe but to also participate, this blog post is long overdue but still relevant. The two events that I am going to talk about are la lutte and sabar. As I mentioned in an earlier post, traditional wrestling is very popular and people get excited when their favorite athletes are competing. We had a trip organized to see a fight in Dakar and then when we traveled to the area of Sine Saloum, the village put on another wrestling match for us. 

Watching Traditional Wrestling in Mar Lodj

The wresting was very interesting in that the fighting didn’t last very long, but the preparations took about ten-fifteen minutes. Apparently, there’s a lot of gri-gri involved and the athletes have marabous that prepare different gri-gri for them. Some threw weird combinations of drinks over their body. Some picked up the sand that their opponents had walked on and threw it in their diaper. It was after all this work that the actually fight took place and five minutes later, the match was over. While this was happening, there was singing, drumming and dancing. At the one in Dakar, two men dressed as lions were making scary sounds and were part of the entertainment crew. At this event, we got to sit in the adult section since the people here were quietly watching the match and behaving themselves. In the other parts of the stadium, people were jumping up and down, throwing things at each other and otherwise having a great time. When they came to film us, I was laughing so hard because there was no action on our side as we were trying to understand what was happening. 

Sabar that I attended was a friend’s of my host mom. It was a drumming session in the neighborhood with different people jumping in the middle to dance. They took turns dancing and how they knew which dance went with which beats, I can’t tell you. At one point, they got me and Emma to join the circle and we were told that it would be rude to decline. Let’s just say that I embarrassed myself since I can’t really dance. This went on for a while and it was amazing to think that when the drummers would play certain rhythm, people, including the kids knew what to do. I have a theory that they all start learning these Senegalese dances at such a young age that there’s no way I could learn them all in four months and then pretend to look good.