Dakar Day!

     I got up at 8:15 to a beautiful, sunny morning. I'm staying at Nyéléni maison sahel, which they call a "guest house," or really a bed and breakfast, in an undistinguished section of Dakar near the old airport, and right on the coast. Dakar, Senegal occupies a big spit of land that juts out into the Atlantic like an upside-down Cape Cod, and my B&B is about where the inverted Harwich would be. The downtown center would be Truro-Provincetown.

    Nyéléni maison sahel is owned and managed by the esteemed Mrs. Virginie Chambaz. I took this picture of her in her back yard garden: 

She is quiet and dignified and has decorated and groomed a beautiful oasis, indoors and out, on a grubby dirt road in crazy urban mixture of shanties, French colonial ruins, and modern, boxy concrete and cinder block apartments. Here is her garage, and an occupied ruin around the corner:

Here is the entrance to Mrs. Chamaz' charming house, and the way up to my room:

The man who let me in at 3:30am, Amadou, had asked me then for the time I wished to have my breakfast, and I came downstairs at 9 o'clock, the appointed hour. Mrs. Chambaz appears to have a woman working for her as cook, and perhaps maid. I didn't get her name, but you can get a glimpse of her in the previous video. I almost laughed when I saw her because in her position in the house, her appearance and  mannerisms, she reminded me of a pleasanter version of the shrew-like maid to the rich woman in the Billy Wilder movie "Witness for the Prosecution." 

    I had my breakfast on a narrow veranda in the back:

And a frangipani blossom Mrs. Chambaz plucked from her tree:

       I went back up to my room to bang away at my laptop for awhile. There is a mosque between Mrs. Chambaz' house and the water, and in the open window there was singing from the mosque mixed with the sound of the surf.

After a couple of hours, I was ready to explore the area. I grabbed my pack--purged of non-essentials--and found a path through a squalid vacant lot next to the house down to the shore. The coast is mostly dark, rounded, volcanic rock, and the water clear and mild temperature. There was a group of people washing their goats in the salt water nearby. I don't know where the goats came from--it was a pretty urban area. 

    I didn't have a lot of time as I wanted to catch the 2 o'clock ferry to Goree Island, which leaves from a wharf downtown near the tip of the peninsula, and I needed more XOF, or West African francs, after getting overcharged by the taxi last night. Mrs. Chambaz said there was an ATM about a mile away, so I started walking. I stopped at a supermarket and bought two bottles of water. 

    Occasionally, a rubber-tired, horse-drawn cart would clip-clop past, but I only saw one more later in the day, and I don't know why they have a place amongst all the careening Toyota beaters and motor scooters on the streets of Dakar.

    Speaking of beaters, this is a typical Dakar taxi, and one of the better-looking of the five that I rode in during my stay in Dakar:

    I flagged down a different one after getting some cash. You don't have to look for a taxi--they look for you, and give you a quick tap on the horn to let you know they think you're a sucker who'll pay double the going rate. I had learned my lesson last night, and I was going to nail down a firm price before getting in. I offered 2500 franc (about $4.30), he countered with 5000 (my bargaining was with the calculator on my phone; his was with fingers). I offered the same and he came down to 4000. I insisted and he waved me in. Once I got in and closed the door, he said "trois, trois" (for 3000). I shook my head and got out to walk away. He immediately shouted "allez, allez," and I got back in, thinking I had now mastered the science of taxi negotiation.

    Once the matter of price seems out of the way, everyone is friends again, and we had a pleasant conversation along the 20 minute ride, with neither side comprehending much. Taxi lesson 2 is that in the negotating phase, the driver either doesn't know where you want to go, or pretends later that he misunderstood. This driver was in the former case, because about 5 minutes in, he hands me his cell phone and indicates I should talk to someone on it. The person on the other end says in English, "What are you doing?" It took me a second to realize he was asking where I wanted to go. I told him and he said, "okay, okay--give me back," and I handed the phone back to the driver. 

    The ferry passes through the busy port of Dakar, and there were bulk carriers, a natural gas ship, fishing trawlers, tramp freighters, etc.

    The island of Goree was first settled by the Portuguese in the 15th century (having no water, no one had lived there prior). It's a Unesco World Heritage Site, and famous for the "House of Slaves," which was at one time thought to be a place of debarkation of slaves to the new world. From what wikipedia has taught me, there isn't much evidence to support that, but it is in a former colony and in a location, where many slaves were put on ships. Now, its actual history is brushed aside a bit and it symbolizes the slave trade.

        There are no cars on the island and no where to put them. It's small and compact, and meandering narrow streets between old colonial buildings lead to a tiny square here with a baobab tree, and they're steps leading to an abandoned fort. 

    I may or may not have done some Christmas shopping here:

    Many cats on the island. All small, slow-moving, and passive. And this one with only one eye:

The top of one hill had these amazing gun relics:

My favorite snack, picked up in Paris:

    And back to the mainland on the ferry...

    Next, I wanted to visit the African Renaissance Monument, a massive, Soviet-style statue on a hilltop, finished only about 12 years ago, and seems to reflect the ego of the Senegal president who is responsible for its construction.

    I was considering the bus, but it was a little crowded...

...so I took taxi number three:

    Then I got taxi number 4 to take me to the westernmost tip of the Dakar peninsula, which also happens to be the very westernmost tip of the continent of Africa. Near it is a cluster of shops and restaurants. I had an exhausting round of haggling over some trinkets with a very aggressive vendor. We kept reaching an impasse when he wanted to offer me more merchandise in lieu of the change I had coming to me.

    Once we got all that settled, I asked him if he knew how to get out to the very tip of land I was seeking, because the cluster of buildings with the restaurants seemed to block it. He said, "come with me," and led me through a warren of other vendors stalls, down some steps, into another building, down a hallway, and out a narrow gap in the wall, and...voila!..there was the jetty right on the point of land.

    I had been trying to get to this spot for sunset, and I did, only you couldn't see the setting sun behind the thick haze over the ocean--like the Caribbean haze. Anyway, I walked out to the end of the jetty and watched Jupiter ( I think) come out, and then the faintest wisp of a crescent new moon, sinking into the haze after the sun.

    After walking back from the edge of the (African) world, I decided to get dinner at the restaurant I had passed through with the "secret passageway." It had outdoor tables on a pier jutting out into the ocean. 

There was only one small group of people there, and I took the table which I judged, without contradiction I'm sure, to be the farthest west. So I'm just noting that on this night at least, as I watched the setting sun and moon and ate my dinner of Gambas al Ajillo (shrimp), I was the westernmost diner in Africa (my personal best geographically-placed meal).

   [ I have to leave the return to Nyeleni maison sahel and taxi ride number five--with my heaviest battle with a taxi driver--to another time. Plane to India about to start up!]