The Birthplace of an Ocean
From atop the Phares les Mamelles (Lighthouse of the Mamelles) one looks down over the modern city of Dakar, Senegal, colorful, vibrant dichotomies of history and society. Here ancient customs exist in tandem with modern technology. Electricity flows irregularly and unpredictably through a city where everyone packs a cellular phone. Islam and Christianity are practiced in a tolerant society characterized by acceptance and understanding of each other’s traditions and customs. Yet less than 100 miles to the east reside tribal peoples who blend Christianity and Islam with ancient animism. The friendliness and cheerfulness extended to resident and foreigner obscures a painful history of invaders from other lands kidnapping the African populace and exporting them into slavery. From the lighthouse on a particularly clear day, one can still see Goree Island, the slave prison which was the last sight the hostages saw of Africa as they drifted forever away from home.
Dr. Gary Bard, Chemistry professor at USF, traveled to Senegal during the 2009 Christmas break to view firsthand another dichotomy in Western Africa. Here he witnessed the evidence of a violent, explosive history and the resultant tranquility of a peaceful seashore.
Les Mamelles are situated atop a volcanic platform that marks the western tip of the continent of Africa. The platform forms a resilient cap on the seawardmost point of the Cape Verde Peninsula. Les Mamelles are a pair of ancient volcanoes that formed from small cindercones during the Paleogene Period of geologic history, a span of 37 million years beginning 65.5 million years ago, just after the sudden demise of the dinosaurs. They are appropriately (though merely coincidentally) named les Mamelles (the Breasts), for they nurtured the basalt base upon which the landscape of this point of Western Africa has grown. Still today you can see the vessiculated ash and cinders that were blasted for miles around the Cape Verde Peninsula. You can also see layer upon layer of alternating lavaflows and ash- and cinder-flows that poured from the volcanoes over an active lifetime of several million years. The outpourings of molten magma from Earth’s mantle built the mighty platform as well as the slopes of Les Mamelles.
The twin peaks are dormant today, a fraction of their maximum sizes. The ravages of weathering and erosion over the millions upon millions of years since their emergence have reduced them from mile-high shield volcanoes to a pair of almost inconspicuous hills less than 1000 feet high. Current volcanic activity takes place from similar volcanoes on the archipelagos of the Cape Verde Islands, 300 miles off the coast of Senegal. The volcanic products of the Cape Verde Islands are chemically similar to those of les Mamelles, attesting to a common magmatic origin. A hundred and fity million years before the eruptions of les Mamelles, the west coast of Africa was the birthsite of the Atlantic Ocean. The jigsaw puzzle fit of Africa and South America permit us, with a little imagination, to visualize the two continents astride each other. At that time, during the Jurassic Period of Earth history, a great rift rent apart a much larger, ancient continent. Since that time, the continents of South America and Africa have been pushed incrementally farther apart by forces emanating deep in the Earth’s interior. Today that rift stretches along the middle of the Atlantic Ocean from Iceland to the Antarctic.
Just as the landscape and foundations of the land of Senegal are associated with the movements and processes beyond the mainland, so the lives of the Senegalese peoples have been tied to the lives and ambitions of peoples around the world. Today, a lighthouse sits upon one of the two peaks of les Mamelles. On the other stands a 160 foot high bronze statue symbolizing Africa's coming of age. The monument, the inspiration of Senegal’s President, depicts an African family emerging from a volcano, gazing hopefully toward their future.
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Previously Featured
- Students on Pilgrimage to Assisi and Rome
- The Birthplace of an Ocean
- Serving One Another, Society, & the Church
- Our students try to give of themselves, “from head to toe.”
- Hands-on Learning with a Professional Artist
- Health and hunger: USF students give on two fronts
- USF unites local educators, students for Better Together Day of Service
- We the People