Kaolack

Kaolack is a young city on old ground. The Serer kingdom of Saloum had its capital at Kahone, a short way up the river, and the surrounding country was fought over in the nineteenth century during the jihad of Maba Diakhou Ba, whose Rip state lay to the south. The site of modern Kaolack was a landing place on the Saloum, where sea-going boats could come up the river from the delta, and salt from the flats had long been traded inland.

The city was made by groundnuts. As French rule spread in the late nineteenth century, the interior was turned over to peanut farming, and Kaolack became the collecting point: warehouses, oil mills, weighing stations and a river port grew up to move the crop to the coast, and traders — Lebanese, French and Senegalese — built the commercial quarter that still stands. Railway and road links to Dakar and the interior confirmed its position as the crossroads of central Senegal.

In the twentieth century the city acquired a second identity. In 1930 Ibrahim Niass, known as Baye Niass, founded the quarter of Medina Baye on its edge, and from there his branch of the Tijaniyya spread widely in West Africa, drawing students and pilgrims from Nigeria, Ghana and beyond and giving Kaolack an international religious standing that has outlasted the groundnut boom. The peanut economy has since weakened, with falling prices, exhausted soils and competition from Dakar's port, and the city has grown without its old industrial base.

Kaolack is a Wolof-speaking city in a mainly Serer region, and it lives at that junction, with Fula, Mandinka and Gambian traders adding to the mix. Its public culture is above all religious: the Tijaniyya presence at Medina Baye and Léona Niassène gives the city a calendar of gatherings, sermons and visits, and the sight of students from across West Africa in the streets is ordinary here. Quranic schooling is prominent, and religious scholarship carries prestige comparable to any profession.

Commerce is the other culture. Kaolack's identity is bound up with bargaining, credit and the long-distance trade routes running to Mali and The Gambia, and market families pass their trade down the generations. The Lebanese community that came with the groundnut business is part of the commercial landscape.

Beyond that, the city follows the national pattern: sabar drumming at naming ceremonies and weddings, mbalax on the radio and at concerts, wrestling followed closely in a region where the sport has deep Serer roots, and football played on every open ground. Manners are formal — long greetings, food shared from one bowl, three rounds of ataya tea — and hospitality to strangers is a point of pride.

Kaolack counted just under 300,000 people at the 2023 census, with more in the surrounding communes, making it one of Senegal's larger urban centres. Its people live from trade above all: the market, transport, warehousing and the movement of goods to and from The Gambia and Mali. Groundnut processing, salt production on the river flats and the administration of the region provide most of the rest of the formal employment.

Housing runs from the older colonial-era buildings and shops of the centre to the low, spreading quarters around Medina Baye, Léona Niassène and the outskirts, where compounds of cement and corrugated iron line sandy streets. The day starts early around the market and the garages, stalls between prayers, and revives in the cooler evening.

The city's difficulties are well known locally: extreme heat, flooding in the low quarters during the rains, poor drainage and refuse collection, the long decline of the groundnut trade, and a shortage of work that sends young people to Dakar or abroad. Its position on the country's main roads, however, keeps money and people moving through it.

Kaolack eats the food of the peanut basin. Mafé — meat or fish in a thick groundnut sauce, served over rice — is the city's everyday dish, and roasted groundnuts are sold by the cone at every transport stand and street corner. Millet appears as thiéré, steamed couscous eaten with a sauce, and as lakh, a sweet porridge with curdled milk, especially at ceremonies and in the mornings.

Ceebu jën, fish and vegetables over broken rice cooked in tomato, is the standard midday meal, made here with fish brought up from the delta and the coast, and yassa with lemon and onions is as common. In the evening the dibiteries fire up, grilling mutton over wood to be eaten with bread and raw onion, and stalls sell fataya pastries, accara bean fritters and nem to people coming out of the market and the mosques.

Drinks are non-alcoholic almost everywhere: ataya tea brewed strong and poured in three sweet rounds, bissap from hibiscus flowers, bouye from baobab fruit, ginger and tamarind juices sold cold in sachets, and Café Touba, coffee spiced with grains of selim, poured from flasks on the pavement. Salt from the river flats and groundnut oil from the local mills go into much of what is cooked.