I arrived in Senegal around midnight and battled my way through the eager drivers/touts/who-knows-what-alls who haunt the airport to find my host awaiting me with a smile and a taxi. I had come for a week and, through the fabulous connections I’ve made in Tunis, had arranged to stay in the apartment of two Tunisian students in Dakar. One (my friend’s cousin) is studying medicine while his roommate is doing dentistry, as does their Moroccan friend and constant companion. They speak Arabic, of course, fluent French, and thankfully some lovely English as well. It is possible that they also speak Spanish and Italian and Sanskrit and Klingon and so on. I didn’t ask because the aforementioned lingual trifecta was intimidating enough to my tired brain.
Dakar sits on a sort of craggy peninsula in the Atlantic ocean. This means that the city is lined with beaches and corniches, and there are many little islands which invite visitors and wild eagles to enjoys their vistas. In other words, it’s beautiful.
On my first day, my host gave me a walking tour of downtown Dakar, which was a mile or so from his apartment. We saw the market (intimidatingly crowded), the big grocery store (granny smith apples!), and the big blue ocean. Everywhere we went, people were busily merely milling or aggressively selling things. Every commercial item is available on the streets of Dakar, from towels to tweety birds. I saw a man peddling a tantalizing bowl of green beans, and another tried to convince me I needed one of the American flag air fresheners I saw in nearly every cab.
Here is a borrowed story about the street sales (as I remember it): Once, my host encountered a man whose entire sales stock consisted of a cup of nails and a single shoe. When he asked the salesman what someone would do with one shoe, the response was “Just wait.”
Elsewhere, many men were exercising in the beaming sunlight. This is the most physically fit city I’ve ever experienced: turn a street corner and you may come across someone doing pushups, walk on any sidewalk and you’ll be passed by joggers upon joggers, none of whom appear to be struggling much. And on the beaches, groups of men do sit-ups, squats, run laps and swim, all with intensity. The below picture shows about 30 men working out on the beach - when I passed this beach previously, there were perhaps twice as many people sweating there!
My own fitness was called into question when I visited the Hotel Independence. According to my Lonely Planet guidebook, this hotel boats a roof-top bar with panoramic views of the city. That sounded good to me, but when I arrived at the darkened premises, I discovered that the hotel is, in fact, closed. It has been closed for two years (another person told me that its closure is due to unpaid rent), so that the entire place is covered in many layers of dust. All of the place that I could see was so covered, I should say: there was only spotty electricity. Still, I asked one of the two men sitting in the lobby whether I could see the views. He was agreeable, and dug out his flashlight. “This way!” he chirped, and I followed him past the elevators (out of order, all) and up the stairs. And up more stairs. Finally, after about 10 stories my breathing was a tad heavy and my guide chastised me: “You’re tired? This is not difficult!” He hadn’t even missed a step, and claimed to take those stairs 10 times a day, all 16 stories of them! Once was enough for me, and the effort made the views (although not my pictures of them, unfortunately) all the more spectacular.
Since I had mentioned my mania for museums, my host took me to one he had seen in passing but had never visited: Musee des Forces Armees. It was spectacular. I don’t suppose they got many visitors, although I can’t understand why. Before we were able to see the exhibits, the uniformed soldier who had greeted us had to hunt down an official to sell us tickets. Then another uniformed man guided us (in French, of course) through the dioramas and antique weapons upstairs. He did not allow me to take photos, unfortunately, so you’ll have to imagine mannequins in traditional and army uniforms posed in recreated foxholes and the like - some of the mannequins and elegantly-shaped, African-looking faces. Others were clearly white mannequins hastily painted black. And one figure, meant to represent a French general, sported a fabulous and gigantic mustache!
Downstairs, the museum presented an exhibit honoring their country’s involvement in the liberation of Kuwait. It was perhaps the most fabulously kitschy display I’ve seen outside of Cairo’s military museum, and I took the opportunity to photograph it (against the rules! Bad tourist!) when our guide was called away for a moment. I then gave him my most innocent face to smooth things over.
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