Current Time in Thiès Nones, Senegal

Thies Nones lies in western Senegal, on the southern edge of the city of Thies, about seventy kilometres inland from the Atlantic coast and the capital, Dakar. It occupies gently rising ground on the Thies plateau, a landscape of baobabs, acacia scrub and cultivated fields that stands slightly higher and cooler than the surrounding plains. The area takes its name from the Noon people, one of the oldest communities of the region, whose villages have occupied these lands for centuries.

The locality is home to tens of thousands of residents and forms part of an urban area of more than three hundred thousand, since Thies is the second or third largest city in the country. Farming remains important on the outskirts, with millet, groundnuts, cassava and market vegetables grown for the city, while quarrying and phosphate mining in the district, the workshops of the national railway, textiles, food processing and trade provide employment in the wider area. Many residents commute into Thies or towards Dakar for work.

The Noon are a Cangin-speaking people, related to the Serer and distinct in language from the Wolof majority. They settled the plateau long before the colonial period, farming and resisting incorporation into the neighbouring kingdoms, and they preserved their own traditions of village organisation, wrestling, mask ceremonies and initiation rites. Their heartland lies precisely in the villages that now form the southern districts of Thies. The modern city itself grew from a French fort built in the 1860s and expanded enormously after the railway from Dakar to Saint-Louis and later to Bamako made Thies the junction and workshop town of the network, drawing workers from across the region. The great railway strike of 1947, the subject of the novel God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembene, took place here and became a landmark in the history of African labour.

Visitors to the area usually explore the wider city and the region around it. The tapestry workshops of Thies, established after independence, produce large woven works from designs by Senegalese artists and are exhibited internationally, and the regional museum occupies the old French fort. Nearby lie the pink waters of Lake Retba, the bird sanctuaries of the coast, the beaches of the Petite Cote at Saly and Mbour, and the Bandia wildlife reserve. In the Noon villages themselves, traditional houses, sacred groves and seasonal ceremonies still mark the calendar.

Daily life mixes Noon, Serer and Wolof traditions with the strong presence of Islam and of Catholic communities, and Senegalese wrestling is followed passionately. French is the language of administration and education, Wolof the common tongue of the street, and Noon is still spoken at home by many families. Thies has its own public university, a well regarded polytechnic school and teacher training institutes, and the toll motorway and the rebuilt railway put Dakar within an hour.

Thies Nones is important as the historic homeland of the Noon people and as part of a growing regional capital in western Senegal.