Dakar: the sights

In no particular order:
One of my first experiences was getting on to the elevator Friday evening with two guys in traditional African dress. One whipped out a cell phone camera while the other threw his arm around me, then they swapped. Um, sure, I guess so. They must have really wanted the picture, too, because I was coming from a run and was nice and nasty.

The TV selection was informative. French TV, as you might imagine, plus the staples like CNN and S1-3 (the sports channels over here). There was also Al-Jazeera and some Saudi station. (While flipping through I saw an ad for “Live Free or Die Hard” advertised just “Die Hard 4.” Intentional?) I did not see the Christian televangelist channel that’s always on in Nigeria. One of the French channels was anime dubbed over in French, which I found very funny. 

Beautiful sunset over the rocky coast.

While running on a treadmill I saw an Old El Paso taco seasoning ad. It was a good motivator for my run.

Dinner my first night was grilled fish and chips. It was like Nigeria – whole fish – but seasoned instead of sauced, and I liked it better. In Nigeria they give you a bowl of water and you eat the fish with your hands. There was no bowl here, so I proceeded with fork/knife, which is much harder.

I went through a food market that was very local. Lots of stalls of fresh veggies/fruit lying everywhere with hordes of flies. In the inner circles was the meat market. It looked mostly shut for the day, because there were only a few slabs of meat lying out (no ice or anything, many more flies) and there were fish and shrimp heads all over the floor.

Guess what I found?

For lunch on Saturday I popped into a shop to get a schwarma lunch. I changed to a burger since that’s what everyone else was getting, and this was not a traditional American burger. It was on a fluffy dinner roll, with one half mashed in and filled with mayo. The fries were put directly on the burger and lathered in ketchup, and then the meat and a fried egg were added. The guy added extra oil to the griddle halfway through because it obviously wasn’t greasy enough. The bill: $2

As I was driving I saw an imam teaching really young kids under a palm tree. In some places the kids are given to the imam and must beg for their own food. Not sure if that’s what this was, but they weren’t dressed too well.

Goree Island was a highlight. The official attraction is a slave house where a lot of slaves are said by some to have been held before being shipped to the New World. There is a lot of controversy over just how many came through here, and one guy really just pushed hard enough and loud enough to make it a tourist attraction and now it is a UNESCO site. After seeing it, I tend to side with those who think the number was on the small end if for no other reason than the place is really small.

 Life out in the open.

The highlight for me, however, was life on the island. It’s small – maybe 1km long and 0.5 km wide. In most places, people live in one place and work in another, and tourists rarely go into living areas. This island is so small that life is lived in the open (plus the heat probably makes the indoors unbearable). The colors were vibrant: houses painted red and green stood against the blue ocean and sky, dark people contrasted with white sand. Dirt here seemed to enhance the character rather than drown it. I had left my big camera, and this was probably the single place in my journeys where I wanted it most. Kids play in the streets, the whole island turned out for the community soccer game in the square, some teens sat on a corner playing the guitar and singing. Because of the number of tourists who come here, I had “cover” to sit in back alleys or on the side of the soccer field and watch undisturbed, though not unnoticed. I had to fight off two would-be tour guides to gain my peace while there, but I found exactly what I was looking for.