Palmarin

Palmarin's story belongs to the Serer, who settled the strip between the ocean and the delta long before any European reached the coast and who left their record in the shell mounds heaped along the creeks. The land here is thin, salty and easily flooded, so villages were placed on low rises, and life was organised around fishing, salt and small fields rather than the grain farming of the interior. The commune's villages — Palmarin Ngallou, Palmarin Ngounoumane, Palmarin Diakhanor and Palmarin Ngueth among them, with Facao giving the place its other name — grew up as separate settlements and are still known by their own names.

Politically the area lay at the edge of the Serer kingdom of Sine, whose rulers held the country north and east of the delta until the French took control late in the nineteenth century. Palmarin remained remote: reached by track and tide rather than road, it stayed a place of fishermen and salt workers through the colonial period and the first decades after independence in 1960.

Two changes have shaped the modern commune. The sea has advanced, taking ground from the villages, breaking through the spit at the mouth of the Saloum and pushing salt further into what farmland there was, and the response has included mangrove replanting and a community-run nature reserve. The other change is tourism: from the 1990s onward, small lodges appeared along the lagoon, offering an alternative to the resorts of the Petite Côte, and they now provide much of the wage work in a commune that otherwise lives from the water.

Palmarin is strongly Serer, and Serer identity here is layered rather than divided: households may be Muslim or Catholic, and traditional beliefs about the land, the sea and the ancestors continue alongside both. The point of Sangomar at the delta's mouth holds a particular place in that tradition as a dwelling of the spirits of the dead, and the coast is full of sites treated with care rather than curiosity.

Kinship and age-groups organise village life, with work parties for fishing, salt, repairs and replanting drawn along those lines, and women's associations run the shellfish harvest and much of the small trade. Ceremonies mark naming days, weddings and funerals, with drumming and the wrestling that the Serer take more seriously than almost anyone in Senegal; bouts after the harvest draw people from across the commune.

Visitors are a recent presence and a normal one, and the etiquette expected is the same as elsewhere in rural Senegal: greet before asking, accept tea, ask before photographing, and take a village guide rather than wandering into the reserve or onto sacred ground. Many people speak Serer at home, Wolof in the market and French with officials, and the older generation remembers when the road ended well short of the villages.

A few thousand people live in the commune, spread between its villages, and the population is young, with many of the men and women of working age absent in Dakar, Mbour or abroad. Ngallou is the busiest settlement, with shops, the transport stop and most services; the others are quieter lines of compounds between the beach and the salt pans.

Work follows the water. Men fish from pirogues launched off the ocean beach or in the creeks, and the catch is sold fresh, dried or smoked; women gather oysters and cockles in the mangroves and run the drying racks. Salt is the other old industry, raked from evaporation pans in the dry season and carried inland. Small fields of millet and vegetables, a few cattle and goats, and wages from the lodges fill out household incomes.

The rhythm is tidal and seasonal: early starts, a long pause in the afternoon heat, and evenings spent outside. The commune's pressing problems are physical — erosion of the shore, saltier soil and wells, mangrove cut for fuel, and falling fish catches — alongside the lack of paid work that keeps young people leaving for the cities.

Palmarin eats what the shore provides. Fish grilled over wood is the standard meal, from capitaine and mullet to sole, barracuda and shrimp, served with rice, onions and lemon. Oysters gathered from mangrove roots are grilled or dried; cockles and arches are boiled and dried in quantity and cooked into sauces that reach well beyond the commune. Dried and smoked seafood is one of the delta's main exports to the inland markets.

The Senegalese repertoire is cooked here with local ingredients: ceebu jën, fish and vegetables over broken rice cooked in tomato; yassa with lemon and heaps of onions; mafé, a groundnut stew; and soupou kandja, an okra and palm-oil sauce. Millet appears as thiéré, steamed couscous, and as lakh, sweet porridge with curdled milk, and among Serer Christian families ngalakh, a millet, groundnut and baobab mixture, is made for Christian festivals and shared with Muslim neighbours.

Drinks are cold and local: bissap from hibiscus, bouye from baobab fruit, ginger and tamarind juices sold in sachets, and ataya tea in three sweet rounds. Palm wine tapped from the trees behind the villages is drunk locally, and the salt harvested on the doorstep seasons nearly everything cooked in the commune.