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Published: April 4th 2008
Street in downtown Dakar
You can see a little local restaurant sign advertising yassa...I had the most amazing first day in Dakar...I knew immediately upon arriving at the hotel downtown in the middle of the night that I was going to love it once it came alive in the morning, and I wasn't wrong. I opened the french doors (which I have on two sides of my room, one set facing the courtyard, the other the street) to your "usual" (African usual, anyway) city hustle and bustle and the most perfect weather ever. Warm but breezy. I had a bunch of errands to run like buying a SIM card so my parents could finally relax, checking email, and paying for various plane tickets I supposedly have reserved on airlines that don't have websites 😊 Downtown Dakar is really chill, the people are super friendly (which is very typical I have found in Africa) and I love how it's full of huge, beautiful old trees. The very kind folks who run the Hotel Saint Louis Sun where I am staying--which I couldn't recommend more highly--were adorable in advising me to hop into a taxi immediately after getting cash from the ATM. Maybe I was swayed by the laid back atmosphere here but I didn't worry
too much. I don't mean to say that people don't get robbed, I am sure it happens and apparently even against locals, but in broad daylight on crowded streets, with my cash stowed in various strategically located money pockets sewn into my undergarments I felt bold enough to hoof it home. Anyway, back at the hotel the friendly staff were regaling me with dramatic stories of how they'd staved off gangs of thieves, and I remarked that I had felt pretty comfortable all day and so I must be pretty lucky. Then they all sort of acted like they had just figured something out, and laughed--I wasn't in on the joke but they finally explained it to me. They said, these gangs of thieves come from the banlieues (kind of like suburbs, except that outside the States that means poor not rich) into the city to scope out the "toubabs" (Ouolof for people with white skin) because if you have really white skin, you must be straight off the boat! Since I hadn't been harassed, they figured that it must be that the hoodlums think I am an Arab (there are a lot of Lebanese and Arab people here who
apparently are exempt from the usual harassment). In my experience, though, there are far more people looking out for you as a foreigner than people trying to mess with you, and those who are looking out for you are way more protective than they might need to be 😊
As I walked around the city I went into one little bodega to buy some water and juice for my room, and wanted some crackers but the marchand there didn't sell any so he sent me across the street to "Casa Italiano"--I was a little dubious but went anyway. It was all imported stuff at insane prices. They literally charged like $5 for a little packet of French biscuits. I marched right back to the bodega man and told him what they were charging over there! He laughed and sent me to a place on the corner run by a really sweet Arab guy who sold me all sorts of crackers for around $1. Like I said before I was really shocked that I didn't see more foreigners, considering what a Euro destination Senegal is. Fewer than most places we went in E. Africa. It must not be the season,
Me at the Hotel Saint Louis Sun
A sweet neighbor saw me taking photos of the hotel's lush courtyard and offered to take this for me. It's so rare to get a shot of yourself when you're traveling but I know it's more amusing for you reader folk than strangers or boring architectural sights :) though I can't understand why because the weather is totally ideal. It is really cool at night, and perfect during the day. A lot like Malawi in the winter. I have an a/c in my room but it's totally unnecessary. I spent a good little while in the afternoon trying to find a shop that would sell me a basic a/c adapter so i could charge my phone and my camera. I finally found a really sweet little arab merchant who told me about a shop near the big market that would sell me one for cheap. I don't know that I found the right place, but I wandered into an electronics shop where they sold things like t.v.s and really nice cameras. When I finally managed to explain what I was looking for, they handed me one and refused to let me pay for it! C'était un petit cadeau, they said. That's Africa for you.
Anyway, I went to Chez Loutcha for dinner. It's probably the most recommended place in the guides which is usually a bad sign, but it was actually fantastic. It's run by Cape Verdeans but they prepare a lot of Senegalese dishes and even
Ivoirienne ones, and all kinds of W. Africans flock there. The crowd was a mix of toubabs (us whiteys) and Africans. I was seated next to a guy from Cote d'Ivoire who gave me the low down on crossing from Sierra Leone to Ghana overland (sounds doable, in a security sense, but time consuming). He ordered Senegalese food like me. I got shrimp cooked in "yassa" which is a typical Senegalese sauce, onion based with a lot of mustard powder as seasoning. It was SOOO good., and there wasa constant soundtrack of upbeat Cape Verdean tunes. I was served enough for about 3 meals so they actually packed up the leftovers for me. (The dish was just over $10.)
One of the things I was most excited about in Senegal is the music, so after dinner I was wandering around downtown hoping to find something but there aren't many places to go except sketchy bars (i.e. the kind of places Senegalese women don't go unless they're working) and serious expat haunts--definitely no live music. So I decided to call Badou, the super nice taxi driver the hotel had sent to the airport for me, to take me to the outskirts of town where all the live music venues are. I was not really thrilled at the idea of going alone, but figured I'm in Senegal and I'm not going to miss out and the hotel guy said it would be fine to go alone. So I called Badou, and it turned out he was at the best club in town, Just 4 U (terrible name! but it is THE place for mbalax), with another woman I didn't know who was apparently also staying at my hotel. He put me on the phone with her and they ended up driving into town to pick me up, and then after sitting at the Institut Francais for a while--a really nice place with an insanely huge tree and and awesome outdoor cinema full of intellectual types (both etrangers and senegalais) checking out the latest in trendy indie flicks--we drove out to Just 4 U and the music had just started. It is not a big place, it cost about $5 to get in that night because there was an awesome singer named Carlou-D playing. He is one of the most popular musicians in Senegal, I have seen his videos on t.v.! The music was just lovely. Apparently Just 4 U is kind of like the equivalent of one of those insanely trendy NYC clubs where you run into celebrities, because every other person at this place was some famous Senegalese rapper or singer and they all ended up on stage at some point or another. All the biggies have played there like Orchestre Baobab and Youssou. There were a few toubabs there but mostly locals. The venue is all outdoor, and they don't let people stand except on the very edges of the places, so it's not too crowded and not loud. It was a super fun night out. Helen, the woman I went with, is Dutch but lives in Geneva (so she knows Annecy--my old hometown just across the border--very well!) and was organizing an exhibition of African art around the subject of FGM (if you don't know what that is you need to look it up and get on the bandwagon--it's a huge deal in general but also really important in refugee law because it's the first ground on which women were recognized to get refugee status on the basis of gender). Anyway, she's super cool so we had a really nice time. The music was amazing (ici on dit "trop fort"!!), I ended up taking some videos. (Before you become too horrified at how hyper-blanche i must have looked taking tourist-to-the-max videos in this super hip club, don't worry--all the kids were doing it! Seriously, we were surrounded by tables of super-branchés Senegalese youth all with digital cameras or camera phones taking videos of this guy. Actually I think you might be able to see one such youngster in the video. Anyway it was worth it!) We couldn't understand why no one was dancing. A couple of people would get up to dance when it got really intense and dance for a second or two, but then sit back down immediately. They all knew all the words (which were a mix of Ouolof, French, and English). The only person who danced really was a super Frenchie middle aged guy in a suit who had some young hipster noir friends and they all went onto the dance floor together--more for laughs I think than anything else!
The concert ended at 2:30--!!-- and Badou took us home. I tried to get him to explain to us what exactly all those guys at the club are going to do in two and a half hours when they're called to prayer. Apparently, he said, clubs empty strictly at 4am when everyone rushes home to try and complete the last day's prayers before the next day begins at 5am (if you miss prayers one day, you can't make them up the next day.) There are mosques EVERYWHERE here...almost on every corner, and the standard greeting is "As-salaam alaaikum" which must be the most beautiful greeting ever. Today I passed a beauty parlor called JIHAD COIFFURE! I kid you not. Anyway I will surely be asleep for this morning's prayers but at some point my plan is to explore Dakar some more, go to the markets (and surely end up buying some more fabric despite having NO space whatsoever in my bag--the chitenje prints here are totally different).
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jim
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Now yer talkin'
food pics for dear ole dad, and a live music concert. hope he could get into it. what a treat, cape verdean music. i'm quite taken with it, have some cds from cape verde to play for you when you get back.