Statutory Gape

There just wasn't enough time to get a true feel for Dakar during this past week's trip, but I will say one thing--that ethereal city by the sea possesses the most astonishing statue I've ever seen, and I have seen Michelangelo's "David," so that should tell you something.

I mean, I literally gasped when the taxi rounded a curve and there stood the massive bronze "African Renaissance Statue," commissioned by Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade. Even from a distance, you can tell it's just humongously imposing. And it instantly reignited all my childhood paranoia from watching those old Ray Harryhausen movies where statues came to life and climbed down off pedestals to wantonly lay waste. I reckon this behemoth bronze mother, father and baby trio could put a seriously fatal hurtin' on a dozen square miles of humanity if given half a chance.

Once I got over the shock, I tried to embrace the statue's aesthetic potential. It certainly has incredibly fluid lines. It's actually quite graceful, the way the woman's head is arched back, and how her right arm and leg are extended in parallel fashion. Even the baby is in on the the fluidity act, pointing in perfect symmetry as his powerfully muscled daddy hoists him to the heavens. I actually got all prosaic and stuff during that first viewing, noting that the family was facing inward, with their backs to the sea that had claimed so many lives during the Slavery era.

For the first 24 hours, I ain't gon' lie...I just thought it was frickin' kewl. But then somebody told me the Muslim community was offended by it because the woman's undergarment (actually the smutty squares of cloth I was hunting for, known as "pagnes,") was pointing directly toward Dakar's main mosque. Then somebody else told me the statue cost 21 million Euros. That's about $30 million US.

In a country where the gross national income stands at about $820 a year per family, it's actually nauseating to think how much food, clean water, medicine, and schooling $30 million dollars could provide.

THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS, people.

Now I just consider the Stupendo Statue as another jaw-dropping example of misplaced priorities. Another case of the sound and fury signifying nothing that plagues the African continent.