Spices and Tastes of Senegal's Biggest Fish Market

M'BOUR, Senegal, Feb. 26, 2009— -- Senegal survives thanks to a few industries, one of which is fishing.

One of Senegal's biggest fish markets is in M'Bour, settled on a beach, facing the Atlantic Ocean.

Thousands of people flock to M'Bour every day to buy one of the best-quality fish in the country.

The place is crammed, and smelly.

Maodou, a guide who has lived and worked all his life in M'Bour, proudly showed off a shell which they call the local Camembert cheese, left to rot under the sun for three days before its eaten.

"The more rotten it is, the better," Maodou said recently of the soft shell.

"Look, it's still alive," he added, touching the decaying grayish shell with his finger to make sure that it was still moving.

As for Senegal's fish, there is tough competition to catch it.

Some fishermen travel all the way from Asia, thousands of miles away, to get to M'Bour.

But local fishermen, with their small wooden boats, called pirogues, still manage to catch some of the good fish such as red fish and rascal.

This rare fish is snatched right away and sent to Europe and Asia.

Walking between pans of sizzling octopus and women grinding fish, Maodou pointed to an elderly fisherman, squatting on the sand, who was cutting shark fins.

"This is for the Japanese," he said. "They think it's an aphrodisiac."

The rare species are sold by the "mareyeurs." They have their own space on the upper part of the market, with a concrete floor and a solid roof to protect them from the sun. The mareyeurs pack red fish and rascals in polystyrene boxes with ice and load them into air-conditioned trucks.

The local market is left with more common fish, such as herring, hawked by traders known as banabana. The luckiest of the banabana run tiny stands on the beach made of wood and plastic, while the others spread a cloth on the sand and put their fish on it.

Some of M'Bour's herring is actually cooked and sold right on the spot, for less than a dollar.

Herring as Fresh as It Could Be

People in M'Bour use a secret orange spice called jumbo to make the herring sing.

"This is something you can eat everyday," Maodou said. "Here, fishermen rarely have the time to go back home to eat, so they eat it here, right on the spot."

At sunset, after we nearly overthrew a pan of shells and took a little tour on a pirogue, we eventually ran out of gas and had to paddle back to the shore. Maodou took us to the stand where he has supper every day.

He installed a small wooden bench on the beach that we used as chairs, as well as a dinner table.

The herring was as fresh as it could possibly be; it had been caught only a few hours earlier.

It was served on a small metal plate, with bread, oil and pepper. Despite the simplicity of the ingredients and the flies swinging feverishly around the dinner, the herring was very tasty ... and spicy.

We were surrounded by a dozen talibes, the poor children who study the Koran and beg for food and money. Senegal counts thousands of them. They are easily recognizable in the streets because of the little metal cans they carry everywhere with them and stretch over the car windows to get a coin, a loaf of bread, half a can of Coke, anything they can possibly get.

As we were trying M'Bour's specialty, the talibes watched us with great interest and amusement, probably hoping to get some of our herring, eventually. As soon as we were done, Maodou answered their silent plead and placed the leftovers on the sand.

The children jumped on it and fought for it. In less than 10 seconds, our metal plate was spick-and-span.

As our visit neared to its end, we heard drums and songs in the far. It had been a long week for the fishermen and women of M'Bour.

But it was Friday, so the following day, men and women would rest. They wrapped the day with dances and celebrations, and good fish.

Muriel Barnier and Gallagher Fenwick contributed to this story.