MAY 2023
Terence Channer
THE VOICE | 19
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Reflections on a world characterised by colour My recent visit to Senegal revealed beauty and struggle to survive on this divided planet
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FEW THINGS occurred to me during my recent trip to Senegal. One thing I couldn’t help but notice was the prevalence of very dark, flawless, beautiful skin. The young man selling cashew nuts at the roadside, the young female waiter at the hotel; the darkest hues. If I wasn’t careful, I could have begun to feel very pale with envy, but instead it reaffirmed ‘Black is beautiful’. There is nothing like a holiday to highlight the world’s disparities. This was my first time in mainland West Africa (I’ve been to Cape Verde off the coast of West Africa, but it didn’t feel how I imagined West Africa would feel). One thing is clear from my holidaying throughout the Caribbean, Africa and other parts of the world, is that global socio-economic disparities are starkly defined by race. Race and racism is something I’ve unashamedly chosen not to ignore but to tackle head on, since the day I woke up. I’m so woke to how human colours are not randomly socio-economically scattered, but are placed by the selection and design of a global system. Visit any tourist destination and the colours inside the resort seldom match the colours outside. Wealth and poverty,
HONEST WORK: A Senegalese street vendor awaits her next customer; inset below left, Gorée Island (photos: Getty Images)
Race and racism is something I’ve chosen to tackle head on privilege and under-privilege are colour coded – light to dark. There is nothing random about centuries of colour coding. Prime real estate (particularly beach front) is colour coded, uninterrupted and untouched by decolonisation and illusory liberation. Just ask Black South Africans, African Jamaicans, African Barbadians and other African Caribbeans, to name but a few of the global majority who long for real economic liberation. So when I confidently walk into a resort like I own the place, for some I look as incongruous as a pink tie with a brown suit. I look forward to the day when I can don my blue suit and matching red tie. I may even throw in a red silk handkerchief. But alas, I think that’s going to be for another’s lifetime. While in Senegal, I had the opportunity to visit Gorée Island. I should have felt deeply
emotional as I peered out to the North Atlantic, but I guess with all the tourists vying for the best spots in these chambers of West African slave horror, I just did not feel led to well-up. No, my eyes were not moist, (not like during Robben Island 2019), so there was no wrestling back tears. I even had a moment of humour when I joked that the young white woman that had dipped her fingers in what resembled a baptismal bowl in the female slave chamber near the Door of No Return, was atoning for the sins of her forefathers. My guide, Abou, laughed. How inappropriate of me. When Abou informed me that white tourists had once showed their appreciation for the Gorée Island tour by applauding as African Americans wept, my emotions once again eluded me. Where was my anger? Where was my righteous indignation? When he told me that a fight had broken out between Black and white tourists apparently over some type of insensitive
Senegal has no welfare state, just people making ends meet conduct, I just shrugged it off. Sometimes emotions are reserved for private rather than public display. Perhaps I’ll experience some delayed emotional response. The horror of slavery is something that I have emotionally invested in privately over the years, so perhaps this was my time just to be publicly clinical. I really can’t be sure why the roll had been called and my sadness, anger and distress were absent. I’ve heard of people laughing on hearing the death of a loved one – the laughter is then replaced with grief. One thing is for sure though,
and it is this; this was undoubtedly a chamber of horrors that marked just the beginning of centuries of the vilest forms of inhuman and degrading treatment. Man’s inhumanity to man. Then there was the hustle. Senegal has no welfare state, just people making ends meet in the most creative ways possible. I can’t ever recall seeing so many street sellers on any of my numerous trips abroad.
PATRONISE
I patronised a few street Senegalese sellers. However, I refused to patronise them in the other sense – I only buy stuff that I genuinely want, as one rival female seller found to her disappointment at Le Lac Rose (the Pink Lake). On the way back to the car, I was literally ambushed by these Senegalese saleswomen dressed in traditional African boubou. You can’t visit a country like Senegal without experiencing such aggressive sales pitches. This was a sight to behold.
If you know me – like many – I have a thing for chains and necklaces. Her rival had two bead necklaces and matching bracelets that I was happy to purchase. She had no necklaces, had pushed unwanted items in my face, so made no sales. She walked away, disappointment etched on her face. In this dog-eat-dog survival of the fittest business environment, the very fundamental business principles of supply and demand were so starkly at play – know your market, know what people want, know what sells and get your product to market. I hope that her disappointment at failure will turn into success in recognising what sells. During my trip to Senegal, I saw ‘Black is beautiful’ wonderfully displayed, I witnessed more of the colour-coded globe, I walked the slave chambers of horror, and I experienced the fundamental economic principles of the street market. All in all, I saw the beauty, inequity, horror and pragma-
Terence Channer is a consultant solicitor at Scott-Moncrieff & Associates LLP who specialises in police misconduct, injury and healthcare law. He is a passionate anti-racism advocate.
