Tuesday, June 26, 2012

An Evening Out for IceCream AND THEN SOME...



At La Poupponiere, I met another young volunteer as myself, from France - Elle s'appelle Anna :) I thought it would be fun if we hung out after work – so the plan was to go for icecream in CentreVille at a big glacerie and then have dinner with my host family. As I said, that was the PLAN.

We left work and took a bus thing, it wasn’t a carre but it was the same fare. These buses are bigger than the carres but just as untrustworthy looking. We were travelling to a location that neither of us had ever visited, but hey it was all part of the adventure right?!

The apprenti tried to rob us when I gave him our fare (I believed it to be 100CFA for each of us as I usually pay the same to go home), but the other people in the bus shouted things at him in Wolof (in our defence I suppose) that I even ended up getting change for the ride. Mid-drive the bus emptied and we had to switch buses, so we had to run to hop onto the next bus which refused to slow down. When that bus stopped we were in the middle of a market, with no idea where to go.
This is Marche Sandaga in CentreVille, Dakar 

About to ask a vendor on the road, a man came up to us and asked if we needed help. I think his name was Mabengue or something like that (let’s call him M) – he became our tour guide as he guided us through precarious streets and vendors only too eager to sell us their wares.

We found the icecream place and were only too happy to choose from so many lovely flavours. It was so good! We both had an ‘American Cornet’ with two flavours. M waited for us patiently and spoke to us in either French or English (He speaks French, English and Spanish).

This icecream was too good!

After M took us around – literally to see the market - Marche Sandaga. It was much more than we bargained for! We went to where the craftsman where making their wooden crafts and viewed the process and many beautiful finished pieces.

The Senegalese vendors didn't mind us taking pictures, but they always wanted to be in them too!

 We visited other stores and saw lovely African cloth and clothes and bags and tablecloths and just about everything one could possibly make with such cloth. 

This is M showing off a robe in his store - all part of the marketing

We also viewed art made from different coloured sand and other tapestries. We were all very good friends of the vendors who promised they would sell to us at a very good price because we were “amis”.
Anna and I in one of the magasins :)


Before long, it was already dark and we had to return to my house for dinner. However, our dear friend M didn’t understand that we had to go. We were on Senegalese time and so it only got later and later as photos were requested of us in each vendor’s store. Finally, we walked out to take a carre to my house – but we found no luck – all the carres going in that direction were already full. So after another long time waiting in a bustling crowd we decided to just take a taxi. Thinking that our adventures were done for the night, we agreed on a price with the taximan (one has to do that here or they will expect you to pay an exorbitant fee at drop-off) and were on our way to my house.

2/3 of the way there the car started sputtering.(I must say even taxis aren’t maintained too well – so cheap and more expensive ways of transport all seem a bit risqué in the end.) Well, suddenly the taxi stopped – in the middle of the road. The taximan ended up pushing us in the car (with the help of people he enlisted on the road) to a nearby gas station.
Yes, I took a pic of the taximan steering our broken down taxi lol

 He didn’t want to lose us as customers and told us to wait as we could be pushed the rest of the way because it wasn’t too far. Really now? It was too much too handle and it was already 9 o clock. We ended up paying him 2/3 the fee and found another taxi home.

When we finally reached Mermoz, I introduced my family to Anna and we had a good dinner recounting the events of the evening. Haha, so much for an evening just for icecream – oui, c’est la vie! – a Dakar!

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