I have made it safely to Dakar, and although I have only been here for a little over a week, I feel so much more comfortable then I did before. The first 24 hours were pretty shocking, and I don’t think any of us were quite prepared for it. We left the plane, breeze through customs, get our bags from the only working carousel in the place and immediately are hassled by people taking our bags and asking us to take taxis. We saw our program director (Souleye), but he was very vague about where we were to go to find our bus, and we almost were dragged away by men telling us “come with us, we have taxi”, but finally we met Bouna (the assistant director) and he got us safely on the bus. That was our “Bienvenue à Dakar!” Here is a photo from the bus at 6 am of the airport at Dakar. Even at that hour, it was crowded!
The Airport of Dakar at 5:30 am
We stayed at the hotel “Good Rade”, from which the name “Île de Gorée” is derived (I believe “Rade” was the last name of the Portuguese man who settled it), which is a very nice, air conditioned hotel on the outskirts of Dakar, between the airport and the city center. On our first day, three of us went on a walk around the hotel, this here is the view from an overpass of the VDN, which is the major highway connecting the airport to the rest of the city. The yellow bus in the lower corner is called a “car rapide”, and is a cheap way to travel around (although none of us have tried it yet, we are all dying to jump on!)
. An aspect of the culture that I was perhaps not expecting was how much our French will not help us out. Although most people here speak French, everyone speaks Wolof, and many do not speak French. Therefore it’s very important for us to learn Wolof. However, its very nice that we can speak French (at least conversational, I can hold my own) because they assume we are European, as apparently most Americans don’t even bother to speak French). The people here is so friendly, I don’t think I have ever felt so welcomed into a culture. They willingly come up to you, even if they don’t want to sell you something, sometimes they just want to give you a high five or chat. Last friday we went out into Downtown Dakar, on our own (in groups of three) and had to navigate different areas of Dakar. Our groups chosen area was a traditional African Market. It was very crowded, smelly, dirty and sweaty, but what an experience! There were a lot of stalls along the street, but there was a huge covered market, that used every possible available space to sell goods. There were vegetable stands, fish, chickens (cooked, uncooked, alive, you name it), spices, beans, peanuts, dried flowers for juices, and anything you can imagine! The strangest part was seeing all the cut open fish heads, with blood everywhere and flies on everything. I would post a picture from this area, but we were not allowed to photograph, and I don’t think I could’ve gotten to my camera even if I had wanted to! For now this is all I have from my first week, next up I will explain more about our classes with SIT, as well as what my homestay is like! À bientôt!
A shot of the street portion of the market