The lion is the national symbol of Senegal. The national football team is called The Lions of Teranga. In fact all of the national teams are the lions of something. Lions are used to advertise everything from butter to politicians to TV channels. The latest hit song from Youssou Ndour encourages people to be tenacious like a hungry lion when they encounter life’s obstacles. I have even heard stories of Presidents’ parading lions through the streets of Dakar for major state holidays. In other words if you are like me and think Americans have an infantile obsession with the bald eagle you should know that the Senegalese obsession with lions proves that the fixation with “national animals” can get much worse. In the US it’s ironic that the bald eagle would be the national symbol given that until recently it was endangered and can be found in Canada and Mexcio also. Then again what could be more American than destroying the environment and causing the extinction of species? But at least I am sure that the US has most of the world’s bald eagles, while I always clown the Senegalese because there have to be at least 20 countries in Africa (and yes there are that many African countries) that have more lions than Senegal. Shit there might be more lions in US zoos than in all of Senegal. Therefore I think it’s funny that they took an animal that many more countries have more “valid” claims to and have turned it into this central national symbol.
I am torn as to how to interpret it. On the one hand, it seems an admirable attempt on behalf of an impoverished group of people to venerate what little they have rather than focusing on how others have much more (i.e. Senegal may not have as much money or lions as other countries but it insists on being positive and focusing on what little it has rather than what it hasn’t). Analogous to the country seeing the glass as ¼ full rather than ¾ empty like it really is. On the other hand, it could be similar to the national obsession with fake hair and it’s like the exaggerated attempt to take what you would like but is denied to you because of your low status in the world system, a system that is rigged against you because the standards for success are arbitrarily set by those in power to meet their needs (in this analogy white people see lions and long, straight hair as cool and the Senegalese then want long, straight hair and lions even though their hair is short and nappy and they have few lions).
When I ask them where I might go as an American tourist to see lions in Senegal so that I can therefore better understand the national psyche, they all stammer and reluctantly concede that Senegal has few lions. At this point, if they are clever they point to the fact that Senegal is also shaped like a lion’s head, and hence the symbolism. This factoid aggravates me on many levels. First of all, it reinforces just how childish the obsession with lions is. Are we nine-year-olds giggling about why Montana has a face and why it’s staring at Idaho, or whether Florida is the US’ boot or its penis? Secondly, I think Senegal looks more like a fish (which to me makes more sense considering that they eat so much fish here) than a lion’s head (which I guess is like penis or boot, I say boot by the way). Third, Senegal’s shape has nothing to do with the “national” anything; its borders were drawn up by a French bureaucrat to meet the needs of the French colonial administration. Jokes aside, I am talking of how much more absurd nationalism and the idea of the “nation” seems in the younger nations of “post-colonial” Africa.
Senegal makes no sense as a country. To varying extents that is true of all the countries in sub-Saharan Africa (I would even push it to say that “nations” everywhere are a myth and we should have no national borders, kumbaya yall). The borders were drawn arbitrarily by colonial administrators and the results of intra-European rivalries in the 1880s and 90s. For example, the mouth of the Senegalese Lion (or Fish) is The Gambia. The Gambia (and yes, it’s always “The”) was a former British colony that basically just encompasses the Gambia River. It is tiny country, with less than 2 million inhabitants and being something ridiculous like only two miles wide at some points. Gambians are the same as the surrounding people in Senegal, except that instead of French the highest sectors of society are English speaking. There was a failed attempt at a Senegambian union several years ago, but I guess the idea just makes too much sense for politicians to make it happen. I would think that the weak argument of behalf of Senegalese nationhood—the fact that no notion of Senegal even existed before the French created it less than 120 years ago—would make it easier to merge countries like Senegal and the Gambia into Senegambia or (if God were just) all of sub-Saharan Africa into a United States of Africa. Instead it just means that the politicians have to exaggerate even more and pull out more of the usual tricks to convince people that “Senegal” actually exists. We end up with a national obsession with lions and notebooks for schoolchildren emblazoned with patriotic messages.
And like I said the case for nationhood truly is weak. There are several languages spoken, and even though Wolof is dominant it is still not spoken by all Senegalese (many of the villagers where I was for example spoke only Sereer). There are many ethnic groups so that contrary to say Somalia that is 90% ethnic Somali, no ethnic group has a majority. At least there is a unifying religion. But there wasn’t even an independence war around which to build a national mythology. It’s telling that the memorial at Independence Plaza while a tribute to fallen soldiers (always the military-nation connection, another reason to despise nationalism, kumbaya yall) is homage to martyrs who died for France. Imagine if the Washington Memorial was a memorial for American soldiers who died for England. The Senegalese are not as annoyingly or frighteningly jingoistic as Americans, nor do they insist on putting their flag everywhere from sidewalks to scandalous swimsuits like Brazilians, in fact they are no more patriotic than “average.” I just hoped that people would tone it down since it is an even more obviously fake country than all of the other already obviously fake countries. It’s like how you will often see black women in the US and wonder if they are wearing a weave, but you don’t want to say it because although it’s clearly fake it could be her hair. Here if you see a woman with hair below her chin it is definitely not hers.
