The Fort de Podor is quieter this morning. Yesterday it was all ramparts and river views, but today I wanted to sit with it, the way you sit with an old photograph that you have only ever seen in a hurry. I walked up from the quay through Bir Podor, the oldest quarter after Mbodjène, and the streets are narrow, the banco houses pressing close against the dikes. The air is thick, 28 degrees already and it is not even nine, with the humidity sitting on your skin like a blanket you cannot take off.
I passed the hôtel de ville and the women's center, and I stopped to watch two women folding tie-dye fabrics in a doorway, their hands moving in a rhythm as old as the town itself. They waved me over, asked nanga def, that soft rolling greeting that means how are you, and I answered, and we stood there for a moment not saying anything. That is the thing about Podor. Nobody is in a hurry, and the ones who are, are usually from somewhere else. The town knows how to wait, and after four days here I am beginning to learn why.
Let me tell you a little of what this place has been, because the fort itself tells the story if you let it. Podor sits on Morfil Island, between the Senegal River and the Doué, and it was the heart of the Fouta Toro, the old state of Takrur that thrived long before the French arrived. The name, they say, comes from pot d'or, a pot of gold, though the gold that passed through here went through other hands. The first fort was raised in 1744, and the one standing now was rebuilt in 1854 on the orders of Louis Faidherbe, the same man who gave his name to the bridge in Saint-Louis.
I climbed the rampart steps again, slower this time, and stood looking out over the river to Mauritania on the far bank. The water is holding steady, they say, around 3.4 metres at the quay station — well below the alert level, which is a relief, because last year this same date the river was running a metre higher. I am told the flooding has been gentler this year, and you can see it in the fields and the gardens, everything greener, the river islands sitting fat and calm under the overcast sky. The light is soft, milky, the kind of light that makes the heat feel slightly less aggressive.
A group of children came up the steps behind me, laughing, and one of them, a boy of maybe ten, pointed at the river and said something in Foutanké that I only half caught. His friend translated into French: the boat will not come today, the water is too lazy. He was not wrong. A pirogue was crossing slowly, its engine a low murmur against the water, and the rhythm of it was hypnotic. I thought about the old river trade, the gum arabic and gold that moved through this quay, the houses like Maurel & Prom and CFAO that built their fortunes here, and then the N2 road came and took it all away, and the river trade collapsed like a story told too many times.
But the fort remains, restored between 2002 and 2005 with French support, and the Musée régional de Podor is inside it. I went in today because yesterday I only skimmed the surface. The museum is open Monday to Friday, nine to five, weekends by appointment, and the staff let me wander. There is a collection of photographs by Oumar Ly, black and white portraits of the region, faces that look out at you with a kind of quiet defiance. I stood in front of one of an old fisherman, his hands the size of dinner plates, and I felt something shift in my chest. This is the river, I thought. Not the colonial trade, not the fort itself, but the people who have lived on this water for centuries.
After the museum, I walked down to the Quai de Podor, the old wharf built under Faidherbe where the river trade was loaded. It is a calm place now, a few pirogues tied up, some fishermen mending nets, the Maison Foy standing at the corner as a reminder of the trading houses that once lined this water. I sat on a low wall and watched an older man bait a hook, his movements precise, unhurried. I asked him about the fishing, and he told me the subalbé fishermen keep their own epic singing tradition, a thing called Pékhane, songs that tell the story of the river and the catch. He hummed a few lines for me, his voice gravelly and warm, and the melody hung in the heavy air.
For lunch I went back to Restaurant chez Marie, because yesterday's thieboudienne was too good to leave behind. The national dish, ceebu jën, fish and rice, and Marie makes it with a smoky tomato sauce that I have been thinking about all night. A bowl there will set you back about 2,000 to 3,000 francs, which is maybe four to five dollars, and honestly it is the best value in town. I sat by the window, watching the street, and the rain began, not the hard thunderstorm that rolls in from Mali of an evening, but a steady, patient drizzle that dimpled the dust on the road. The whole street seemed to slow down. Even the moped that buzzed past was muted by the wet.
This is hivernage, the peak of it, and the rhythm is unavoidable. The heat builds through the morning, the clouds gather in the afternoon, and the rain comes, sometimes soft, sometimes a hammer. It shapes everything — the gardens on Île à Morfil that I visited the other day, flooded and brilliant green, the river that reaches its crest and then holds, the very way people plan their days. You do not schedule anything between four and six in the afternoon because the sky might open at any moment. I have learned to carry a small umbrella and a dry bag for my phone, the two essentials of hivernage travel in this part of the country.
In the afternoon, after the rain eased, I walked to the Sinthiane quarter, the administrative heart of Podor, founded back in 1954. The Préfecture is there, and the Centre Médical, and the SONATEL office where I went on my first day to sort out a local SIM. I needed to check on my CIE card, the Carte d'Identité d'Étranger, the residence permit that every foreigner staying more than ninety days has to apply for. The process is processed through the Préfecture, and it requires patience more than anything else. I handed in my forms on day one, and the clerk told me to wait, then shrugged, an apology and a fact rolled into one. Today I went back and they told me it was still processing, to come again maybe Monday. I thanked them and left, because there is no point in being anything other than calm about these things.
On the way back, I stopped at the SISTERHOOD Coffee shop, which has become a kind of anchor for me here, a place of cool air and good coffee, and also, if I am honest, a connection to something familiar. A flat white there costs around 2,400 francs, and cents, about four dollars, which is a luxury by local standards, but worth it for the peace. I sat with my notebook, writing down the day's observations, when Baaba Maal's music started playing through the shop's small speaker. The owner, a young woman whose name is Aïssatou, smiled at me and said, Podor music, and I nodded.
Baaba Maal is from here, from the village of Podor itself, and his music is the sound of this river valley — the kora, the blues, the voice that somehow carries the whole history of the Fouta Toro. I listened to him in the market, I listened to him from the pirogue on the way to Île à Morfil, and now here, in a coffee shop, his songs feel like a soundtrack to the town itself. There is talk of a music festival called Les Blues du Fleuve, apparently listed for Podor on the 2026 events calendar, though I have not found confirmed dates near late August. Worth checking if you are planning a trip upriver, but do not build your itinerary around it yet. Aïssatou says she would love to see it bring people back to the river, the way the old trade once did.
I stayed at the coffee shop until the evening, watching the streets fill and then empty again, the market stalls packing up, the birds settling into the trees along the quay. The sun set early, light at 19:20, and the overcast turned the sky a deep, bruised purple. I walked back through Bir Podor as the first stars appeared between the clouds, the sounds of dinner rising from the houses — pots clattering, a radio, someone laughing. The temperature had dropped to a bearable 28 degrees, and the wind had picked up, carrying the smell of wet earth and something green, something alive.
Back at my lodging, a modest one-bedroom flat I have rented for the month — around 270,000 francs if you are curious, which is roughly 450 dollars, and on the higher side because it has a kitchen and running water — I made myself a simple dinner, some rice and vegetables from the market, and sat by the window. The river was a dark ribbon below, and I could just make out the lights of Mauritania across the water. The thought of crossing that border, of the Rosso ferry and the new bridge under construction, felt distant, a story for another day.
This week in Podor has taught me about waiting in a way that I did not expect to learn. The CIE card waits. The river waits, holding its level. The ferry waits for passengers who come eventually or not at all. And the town waits, not impatiently, but with the calm certainty of a place that has seen a nineteenth-century trade boom, a colonial fort, the arrival of the road that bypassed it, and the slow, patient work of rebuilding a life around a river that gives and takes on its own schedule.
There is something profound in that, somewhere I do not know — deeply. And this is where I want to tell you, if you are thinking of visiting, that the quiet of Podor is its greatest gift. Do not come here looking for nightlife. Come for the ramparts at dawn, for a bowl of thieboudienne at a wooden table by the quay, for the smell of rain on dust, for the chance to sit still long enough that you stop measuring time in hours and start measuring it in the movement of the river.
Everything I have talked about — the museum hours, the CIE process, the coffee shops, the festival that may or may not be happening — the practical details are all in the episode notes, with links to check current times and prices, because in a town like this, information travels as slowly as the water.
I am Fatou Diop, and I will be here, in Podor, on the bank of the river, waiting. Until next time.
The night has fully settled now, and I can hear the insects beginning their chorus from the gardens. A dog barks somewhere in Lao Demba, and then there is only the low, steady sound of the river moving past, a sound that asks for nothing, gives everything, and teaches anyone who listens to do the same.