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Africa » Senegal » Cape Verde Peninsula » Dakar
October 31st 2005
Published: October 31st 2005
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Hotel in St LouisHotel in St LouisHotel in St Louis

John and I on the balcony in the hotel in St Louis
October 31, 2005

Happy Hallowe’en!!! We wish we were there to celebrate with you, but more importantly, we wish we had the candy!! We’re counting down the days until we have complete control over our diet…we can’t wait. We’re really sad to be leaving Magueye’s house, because in a lot of ways our true Senegalese experience will end when we move out. While we’ll still really enjoy Dakar and the contact with the Senegalese through our placement, we’ll also be living much more like we would at home. We’re moving out this Friday, and Magueye is currently trying to find us a placement closer to where we’re going to live. Hopefully we’ll be able to get some good volunteering in before we leave…

This weekend was a true African adventure for us. We decided to head to St Louis, which was the colonial capital of west Africa. It’s an island that is connected to the mainland by a bridge and a peninsula (the land wraps around the island) by a bridge. It’s supposed to be a highlight of Senegal, and we thought we’d take advantage of going away for the weekend, before we start paying rent at the new place. So, we left French class a little early to get a good start on our trip. We’d been asking for days how long it would take to get there, a question to which we got no consistent answer. There are a lot of ‘factors’ here that can really change the duration of a car trip, a little rain can flood a whole route for example. Magueye told us to look for the ‘sept places’ cars - cars with seven seats, essentially a station wagon - at the Gare de Routieres Pompiers. So, with our bags in tow we battled for a reasonable taxi fare, and finally headed down to the station. The main road into Dakar passes by the station, and is always like a parking lot. So, as we were sitting in the car, waiting for the traffic to clear, the taxi driver told us it would be better for us to get out, cross the street and walk to the station, as it would take a really long time to get there in the car. We agreed, because sitting in a car that’s not moving at noon is like climbing into the oven. John, Marian and I
St LouisSt LouisSt Louis

Street in St Louis
were in the backseat of the car and started to climb out of the back. Alex got out of the front seat, and as he was climbing out, a dump truck next to us started moving and caught the door of the car and practically tore it off. The door was bent so far back that it was almost touching the hood. It was total chaos, with people yelling and honking, because the traffic had started to move. The taxi pulled off to the centre of the road, and we tried to check out the damage. John and I tried to hang back, so as not to get in the middle of a big Senegalese-Tubab argument, but this was pretty futile, since in about thirty seconds we were surrounded by thrity or fourty Senegalese who wanted to ‘help’. The taxi driver promptly asked Marian what she was going to do to fix it, and we were pretty worried that he was going to tell us that we should just pay him 300 dollars or something. Alex started demanding (in English because he doesn’t speak French) that the police be called. This was immediately rejected, and we were told that the
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St Louis from the bridge
police absolutely do not come for car accidents (I think that this is because there’s an accident about every thirty nanoseconds). The men did however, call over a mechanic to tell us how much we should pay. When the mechanic finally arrived, he told us to give them 10,000 CFA ($20!!!). We figured that for 20 dollars, it was better to just pay.

So, after that we headed over to the station. We were looking for the sept places (seven places) that Magueye told us to take. We found a mini-bus (kind of like a big kidnapper van) that would take us for half the price of the ‘sept places’ car, which should have been an indication of an African scam. So, we paid the lower fare and go into the bus with two other passengers. We hadn’t eaten lunch yet, so we prepared our bread with cheese (our staple) and began eating. People kept coming by with crap to sell us, and we bought some bananas, and Alex bought a switchblade knife. this was incredibly funny to us, as it’s completely unnecessary and we’re not completely sure that it would actually cut anything. John and Alex also bought basketball jerseys that look like they came out of the Goodwill pile from an elementary school team. John’s says ‘St Pius X. Plainview NY” on it, and Alex’s is “Seacoast”. Whoever previously owned Alex’s obviously didn’t like the number “4” as their number, and wrote in with a blue felt tip marker a “9” to make it a more respectable “94”. After being ripped off repeatedly for the Tubabs that we are, we were beginning to get a little annoyed that we hadn’t left for St Louis yet. We had been sitting in the parking lot in a stationary mini bus for two hours at this point. Marian and I got out to see if we could get our money back so we could take the ‘sept places’ instead, but couldn’t find the man who originally took our money. This is a great scam: once the person who you paid leaves, it is very hard to try to get money back. The man who we were talking to about a refund told us that even if we could find the man, a refund would be ‘impossible’ (a word that the Senegalese throw around like it’s their job. Many things are ‘impossible’ here, despite the fact that they are very much possible, and could be demonstrated as such at any time. For example, during French class, in a grammar section, I said that “if it were very sunny, I would play soccer on the beach”. The teacher laughed and told me that this was impossible. That it would be too hot to play on the beach if it were sunny. I had to explain to him that while it might be impractical, it was actually not impossible to play sports in the sun). Anyway, the hold up was that there was one more seat to be filled before the bus would leave, full, to go to St Louis. We waited an extra hour for a single person, so we could go. We considered paying for the spot, just so we’d be able to leave, but since we had already paid more than double than the rest of the non-Tubab passengers, we didn’t out of principle. So, after waiting for two and a half hours in the parking lot, the bus was full and we thought we were ready to leave. Unfortunately, this was just the beginning of the time to start loading an incredible amount of furniture onto the roof of the bus to take with us. Couldn’t have been done during the previous two and a half hours, nope, that was impossible. So, finally after three hours of waiting in the parking lot, we left for St Louis.

The ride itself was a bit ridiculous. The other passengers mocked us constantly, chastising us for not sharing our water with them. First, they were supposed to be fasting, and secondly, we didn’t like the idea of twenty strangers drinking out of our bottles. More importantly, each and every person on the bus could drink the water right out of the tap, and certainly didn’t need to drink our incredibly over-priced Tubab water. We were stopped many times on the way to St Louis by the police, most likely as a result of the precarious pile of furniture on the roof of the bus. We finally arrived in St Louis at 10:30, a full eight and a half hours after we left Magueye’s. When we did arrive, we asked a local man to point out on the map where we were, because we wanted to walk to the hotel. He confidently pointed to a spot on the map, so we started walking. After half an hour, we got into a cab because we were obviously not at the hotel. This is the point that we realized that we were not yet on the island, and still on the mainland, and the reason we couldn’t find the hotel was that we hadn’t crossed the bridge yet. When we finally arrived at the hotel, it was a great surprise. It was really nice with gorgeous views and really comfortable rooms. We were very pleasantly surprised.
We started out on Saturday morning by having the standard Senegalese breakfast (bread with butter), but since we were at a classy joint, they also gave us jam. We headed into town and we really impressed by the island. It’s very quaint with lots of colonial buildings, and a lot less trash than Dakar. We walked across the bridge from the island to the mainland, which was built by Gustav Eiffel and originally meant to cross the Danube. It was pretty impressive, as were the views of the island from the mainland. We walked around town for a few hours, enjoying the colonial buildings. We went back to the hotel for lunch, and ended up relaxing for a few hours in the room afterward. The heat was really bad, and it just drains us.

Before dinner Alex decided he wanted to buy a traditional Senegalese outfit. He bought a gray outfit, and some pointed leather sandals. It was hilarious. We decided to try a different place for dinner, and were really craving some of the European food that the guide book said St Louis was famour for. We headed to a restaurant where we could find pizza and pasta, and once entering found ourselves in Tubab land. We hadn’t seen so many white people concentrated in one place since we arrived in Dakar. There was even a white waitress. It was a really nice restaurant though, with gorgeous views of the river and bridge to the mainland. It would have been ideal, except that the restaurant and St Louis itself, seemed to be invaded by bugs that night. They were dropping out of the ceiling and were in our drinks, all over the table and in our hair. It was awful, and eventually we moved outside, where we could escape them a bit. We headed up to a different restaurant for dessert and actually ran into a girl that was also going through the Senevolu program. Marian and Alex had met her earlier, but she had been put in a placement in a rural town seven hours from Dakar, so we had never met her. She was also visiting st Louis for the weekend, and it was really weird to run into her. We arranged to meet her for lunch the next day, then headed back to the hotel.

We tried to find some cool souvenirs from St Louis the next morning, but couldn’t find anything that we could both fit into the suitcase and would actually want. So, we headed up to the restaurant to meet the Swedish girl for lunch before heading home to Dakar. She told us all about her placement in Louba. She was supposed to volunteer in one program, but then they didn’t need her, so she was put into a school. She said that the she went to the school to start work, and for two weeks, everyone, including the students, showed up except the teacher. He finally showed up this week, so they’re back in business. This is very Senegalese. Anyway, we headed to the station again, and were able to find the ‘sept places’ cars and get incredibly ripped off yet again. We agreed on a price that was more than double what the Senegalese would have paid, and were ready to leave. They tried to screw us by waiting for more people to fill it up. Since we had paid so much extra we thought we shouldn’t have to sit three to a seat for four hours, so we argued and made a scene until the guy agreed to leave. The ride home was great though, much quicker and more comfortable. We arrived home just in time for the traditional Senegalese dinner…unfortunately. We find it really ironic that we arrived the day Ramadan started and will move out the day it ends. The only time that we spent in the house with the family is the time that we end up eating in front of them while they fast. Bad timing.

We hope everyone had a great Halloween…have some extra candy for us!


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