Senegalese villages swallowed by the sea

Behind the remains of washed-away fences, crumbling houses dot an expanse of the northern Senegalese coastline where a swollen river and an advancing sea are swallowing villages whole.

The fishing community of Goxu Mbath is one of many districts in the city of Saint Louis, the former colonial capital of French West Africa that, little by little, is disappearing under water.

“The waves surprised us at night. It was October 20. The water hit hard and knocked down walls,” says Awa Sarr Fall, 68, outside her badly damaged oceanfront house.

“We are calling for the help of the state and we’re willing to move elsewhere.”

The village is on the Langue de Barbarie, a densely populated spit of land that is home to nearly 120,000 people.

Colourful dugout canoes are berthed on the sandy former peninsula, which protects the heart of the old colonial city from the Atlantic’s fearsome breakers.

An archipelago in the mouth of the Senegal River often referred to as the “Venice of Africa”, St Louis is anchored precariously between the fast-flowing currents of the swollen waterway and the ocean.

A 2008 UN-Habitat report listed the city of 250,000, which is plagued by flooding during the rainy season when the river overflows, as the most vulnerable in Africa to rising sea levels.

The upheavals “are in part linked to climate change”, but also “people have poorly designed their habitat space”, says Pape Gombo Lo, a professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar.