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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