Great Mosque, Touba, Senegal
During my trip to Senegal I had the opportunity to visit the Great Mosque in Touba. It was a very disconcerting experience. We took caution to cover ourselves up (long sleeves, long trousers) but apparently nog enough. Right after we exited our minibus we were shoved in a little alley and given more shawls to wrap around us as skirts and to cover our heads. The opposite happened when we left. This only to give you an idea how traditional this place actually is.
The mosque itself then. It’s stunning. Absolutely stunning. It’s marble and it’s shining and it’s sumptuous and it’s too much in a country with so much poverty. It’s quite overwhelming to be standing there, the marble hot from the sun warming the soles of my bare feet, looking up to the towers. Trying to take everything in. How much I adored the building, I couldn’t really get over the question ‘why?’. In the little town where we stayed during our volunteering work, the mosque was a square brick building, only a few square meters of size, and people would just as well worship there, like they did in Touba.
This being said, it’s still an amazing building, a work of art really, and it surprises me it’s not better known for in my opinion it’s surely one of the must-see sites when visiting Senegal.
