I’m in Dakar for a workshop/project launch
for a week. My first time in Africa.
There’s not been much time to get to know the outside world so far with
every day from 8.30 a.m. until 5.00 pm and crammed full of Powerpoint in the
Pullman Hotel.
But here are some notes anyhow which take
events from Sunday night until yesterday. More later…
View from my room, Island of Goree in the background
Pullman
Hotel – first impressions 19 Sept
Lobby, quiet hushed floorwalkers, dark oak
desk, ATM dispensing thousands of CFA for your Pound/Euro/Dollar…business
centre, Budget car hire desk with man in full national costume, asleep next to
a model of a 4 X 4 …over into the bar area and restaurant . bar leads off to
the left past the lifts, very low lighting, smoking permitted which completes
the feeling of being in a timewarp, orange / brown dark 1970s décor with low
chairs , businessmen and women,
sudden tv crews and local celebs, lone travelers splashing on a nice hotel for
the city – in the evening, bar has music with keyboard and vocal 70s / 80s soft
reggae/pop/soul…restaurant on the other side, brightly lit, spacious, airy
leading straight out onto the veranda and a wooden bridge over the road which
leads out onto a path and steps down to the coast and the pool, with the
Atlantic splashing out over the promenade and onto the loungers…the ocean there
is not swimmable, water quality poor and currents strong, beaches better
further up the peninsula or on the western side back up towards the airport…
Monday
night 20 Sept
Out for dinner down to Just 4 U…a long cab
ride diverted past floodedOutdoor bar area reached via a plank over some
wrecked piece of road – I don’t have repellent with me so feel a sense of panic
that we are outside –but negotiate a mosquito repellent coil. Is outdoor, no
music , Monday night very quiet, we take a table in the middle, family with
small child, bigger group, v beautiful serene barmaid/waitress. This time we
have Gazelle beer and although still full from lunch I order penne for us to
share for later. Thin feral cats and kittens wander begging between the tables.
We are a long way from the hotel but the
cab driver has waited for us. Back past the very dark roads and abandoned
buildings and up and away to the hotel.
Tuesday
night 21 Sept
Tuesday down to the pool after
the session
Warm water, birdsong, rich
little white
French kids and their Senegalese nannies, colonial feel down by the
pool, the
bar etc, loungers and the ocean beyond, swimming lengths with water at
eye
level looking across and out to sea, you feel you are out there…
In minibus through the streets to the
highway, looking out at Dakar on the way to Terrou-Bi, very plush
anywhere kind
of restaurant in a very posh hotel – with soft lighting and open doors
at the
back and breeze – on the western side of the peninsula- modern euro
cuisine
with some fusion and some African on the menu – global basically – out
the door
the moon is high and bright and looks beautiful through the fronds but
is very
hard to photograph, though Linda the research project director manages a
good job –
across the water, bizarrely is a funfair, with a little ferris wheel and
fairy
lights and helter skelters- glittering lights and lapping water and the
Dakar
moon. The funfair is called
Magicland.
Dakar Moon
Wednesday
evening 22 Sept – after sessions walk
Almost immediately leaving the hotel,
surrounded by people offering you cards, beads, art, phone cards etc etc and
blasted by heat, fumes, dust, light
they want to know your name, your time in
Senegal, what you think, will you go to their shop and on and on
The streets are full of cars, taxis,
weaving their way through, the pavements have crumbled and you walk in the
narrow roads but you get beeped the whole time…things calm a little further away from the
hotel so that the area around the hotel resembles an airlock, a decompression
zone through which you must pass from the opulence of the Pullman Hotel into
Dakar itself
Buildings on either side shops in doorways
a bizarre Carrefour store like encountering a Sainsburys or something, hardware
store everything shop selling hair colouring and hair care…
Coming out into a more open area we come
across a massive catholic church and go inside, cool and blue, with a dome and
a vision painted of salvation above and out the other side opposite the
ministry of communication, the road leads on down to the main market area and
the street hassle begins again in earnest as we meet someone who refers to
himself as Obama the president of the market place, we see the different
regions of the market and half guided and half trying to get away we find
ourselves in the art stall – I talk to a man called Pako who shows us his
friend’s stall – they are from the
south the Cassamanche region and selling paintings on glass, gouache/acrylic,
brightly coloured cartoons and one painting of Goree which I like. Carey starts
bartering for three small portraits and we use her nokia’s calculator to work
out the exchange rate and the amounts, the negotiations come thick and fast but
this is not hassle- just bartering – in between Pako asks me about his English
and reassures me throughout our conversation about teranga the hospitality of
Senegal, the language we are all using, how he doesn’t speak English very well,
how many days are we there etc etc I agree a price which he says is well below
what he would ask an American tourist. His judgement is that this pleases me…
We part and break away from them, and think
about a cab but carey recognizes a street she has been down and we get
ourselves back onto the Faure avenue that we know leads down towards the hotel
By now I am very hot and craving a drink of
anything though a beer begins to really appeal especially the Senegalese “Flag”
beer. Hassle begins again closer
to the hotel, the airlock effect with the numbers of streetsellers crowded
around the entrance area.
Into the cool of the lobby again and the
welcoming arms of the Pullman and its bar…
I'm not surprised but I never feel quite prepared 