Things to Do in Kaedi

Monday riverside market

The whole riverside explodes into color just after dawn. Indigo cloth flaps against mud-brick walls. Women from Fula villages balance calabashes of soured milk on their heads. The smell of charcoal-grilled liver drifts between the stalls. You'll hear donkeys complaining, radios crackling Hassaniya pop, and the wet slap of fish being slapped onto scales.

Sunset pirogue ride on the Gorgol

An old fisherman named Moktar keeps a painted canoe at the foot of the Dioura road. He poles upstream so slowly you can trail your fingers in the cool brown water while herons lift off the reeds. The boat rocks. The sky bruises purple. Someone on shore is usually roasting corn so the air tastes of smoke and river weed.

Kaedi Friday mosque tour

The Grand Mosque's mud minarets lean like tired candles. Inside, the floors are cool packed earth and shafts of light pick out flecks of straw in the walls. You'll take off your shoes, step through a doorway barely shoulder-wide, and smell damp clay and the faint sweetness of dates left for worshipers.

Camel market on the Kiffa road

Thursday morning the air outside town is thick with dust and animal breath. Herders shout prices. Camels groan like rusty gates. The ground is carpeted with droppings that crunch under flip-flops. If you're lucky a dealer will pour sweet tea from a tin kettle that's blackened by a thousand campfires.

Mosque garden lunch in Waly Diantang

A five-minute walk south of the hospital you'll find a shady plot where a woman named Awa serves rice with river-fried fish and tamarind sauce under a mango tree. Leaves rustle overhead. Goats nibble your shoelaces. The sauce stains your fingers orange for the rest ofof the afternoon.

Avenue de l'Indépendance mid-range hotels - basic A/C blocks above ground-floor phone shops, handy for morning bread.

Riverside campement on the north bank: grass huts with shared wells, frogs for company, cheaper than anything in town.

East-end neighborhood near the hospital - quiet after 9 p.m., family guesthouses that serve sugary coffee on tin balconies.

Market quarter rooftop rooms: you'll hear donkeys at dawn but you're steps from grilled meat smoke.

Mission catholique guesthouse, south of the cathedral: spartan cells, courtyard jam-packed with bougainvillea, book slots with the sisters early.

DIY camping in the acacia grove behind the stadium - ask the gardien for a bucket of water and pay him in tea leaves.