Late every afternoon a fleet of bright wooden pirogues pulls up onto the small curving beach at Soumbédioune, on the Corniche Ouest, and the day's catch is hauled up the sand to be sorted, gutted, and sold to crowds of buyers waist-deep in fish. It is one of the best free shows in Dakar — chaotic, photogenic, smelly, and over within a couple of hours.
Above the beach, the Village Artisanal de Soumbédioune is a permanent crafts market: leather, masks, jewellery, drums, sand paintings, all aimed squarely at visitors. The quality varies, prices need to be talked down hard, and a hour browsing is the rough limit. The fish trade and the craft market sit a stone's throw apart but feel like different worlds.