REPORT – The Langue de Barbarie is one of the most densely populated territories in the world. In recent years, it has experienced increasingly violent swell episodes.
Special Envoy to Saint-Louis (Senegal)
They are officially called “mobile housing units”, but they are simple plastic prefabs placed in a dusty neighborhood in the commune of Gandon, in northern Senegal. The heat there is so stifling that Fatou Seck and her six children regularly sleep outside, on a colored mat stretched under an awning. They have been waiting for three years for the construction of permanent housing. “We lived by the ocean in St. Louis, but our house was swallowed up by the waves, and we lost everythingshe says. Life is hard here without the sea breeze. My mother died from the heat. We feel abandoned.” Her husband, Ibrahima, who is a fisherman, must now take the bus or a taxi to reach the sea, 7 kilometers away.
Like them, more than 1,500 people are housed in these temporary shelters away from the city center. All of them lived on the Langue de Barbarie, a long…
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