The City of Dakar sits on a peninsula which juts out the bulbous, westernmost edge of the continent. It looks like a diving board. The Hotel Le Meridien sits on the very palmy edge of that diving board, and I write in my hotel room by the sound of alternating Arabic and French television commercials. I have discovered that the Jolly Green Giant has the same "ho, ho, ho…" in Francophone Africa as it does in the states.
I'm not sure what it is- maybe the digesting of the blackened fillet of thiof grilled over open flame or the very long day of paper cuts and deep, dark acquisition quarries, but tonight I lack any drive of propriety to find a different way of saying the following; "Getting here from Liberia absolutely sucked."
An hour long drive from the hotel in Monrovia to the airport at Robertsfield would be the most pleasant leg of the journey that day. Then Air Nigeria told me that my carryon luggage wasn't carry-on-able and the travel day declined from there. The formerly Virgin Nigeria Boeing 737 was three hours late arriving. Clouds shrouded the jungles of the Liberian interior and the Ivory Coast on our way to Accra - the wrong way to Senegal, but the only connecting flight up the coast outside of flying back to Europe or the States. We were met in Accra by a nice representative of the airline who proceeded to guide us over and around immigration to transit to our flight onwards. He neglected to inform his colleagues at the airline however, and we were soon directed back to customs. We waited in Accra for another late arriving flight, and arrived in the Gambia, and then Senegal, where our expediter failed to show. Delirious with a lack of sleep, we waited for our hotel shuttle for 30 minutes, only to, after the 15 minute ride, to wait for one hour in the hotel lobby at sunrise as they shuttled out the Emirati flight attendants who had been sleeping in our beds. The good news was, however, that my bed was still warm when I laid down- twenty hours after I'd left the hotel in Monrovia.
I immediately fell in love with Senegal. I suppose however, that one could conceivably fall in love with just the climate here in April. It reminded me of an unfathomably sunny December in Santa Barbara. Dakar is precisely one part desert and one part ocean. No more, no less.
But I knew after breathing it in that it was more than just the weather. Senegal reminded me of many of my favorite places. The Atlantic was just as boisterous, but only a touch of gray as it is in Maryland. I dreamt of the prettiest corners of Sedona. I marveled at what Durango what look like if the sea swept in over Utah. In the narrow port passages with locals swimming between the plodding boats, the afternoon muezzin bouncing off the minarets - a moment that felt of back home in Crimea.
And the human beings in Dakar are gorgeous - Higher cheeks than any model in Paris, with smiles that would light up the Marianas Trench. They have the clearest complexions. They are tall, slender and athletic. Women adorned in colorful, elaborate dresses and head scarves. Men don long brilliant white robes. The Senegalese walk like movie stars on the Red Carpet, yet totally unconscious or unpretentious of their superior posture and movement. And they are the first people outside of Europe, Oceania or North America that I have ever seen running alongside the road for exercise.
One could easily forget in being blinded by all these strikingly clear images that Dakar is a dusty, place - a port, yes, but nonetheless an outpost, if not a gateway, of the Sahara. Dakar is like one large construction site - the oldest unfinished place I've ever been.
In my fifth week of anti-malarials ridiculous and ridiculously magnificent dreams steal sleep from me. It took me the weekend and a week of office work before I had real time and energy to venture out into Dakar. I hopped a cab down to the port of Dakar and took the ferry to the island of Goree.
Goree is a French colonial town frozen in time. It's about half a mile wide and sits about a mile offshore from Dakar. Only a few thousand people live there, but on a sunny Saturday in May it is hardly a peaceful place (picture Colonial Williamsburg on a weekend in July, except in Africa). Goree was used as a stopover for Dutch, English and French slave ships in the 17th and 18th centuries. It has a star shaped fortress with rusting cannons. Cats doze in the shade along the dirt pathways. The roads were never paved.
I walked around in the sun lazily and played a lethargic tourist; while deflecting pleas for guided tours, I let the relentless local vendors take advantage of me as I plundered souvenirs for my many nieces.
My work here has coasted by quickly; living out of a hotel room is not a new experience for me, but living out of one that has its own in-room plumbing is.
Meanwhile in the evenings after work, I eat at my favorite ocean-front restaurants: there's Le Recife with its great green garlic olives and spectacular, manicured view, and Restaurant Ngor, with excellent fish and giant garlic shrimp served with green beans and a French baguette smothered in vinegar-based Dijon. As an appetizer (called entrée here) I nibble on slightly worn copies of the Atlantic Monthly that I picked up at the Embassy in Monrovia. In between columns, I gaze out at the big blue waves of the water bearing the same name.
I pay the check and look forward to the affordable Bordeaux and BBC that await me. Vultures line the palm trees on the walk back to the hotel. A stunning peacock runs across the road, screaming a hideous shriek. Girls stop to chat with one another, hands on hips, resting large trays of fruit on their heads.
The clear blue skies and brilliant, blinding sun have subsided over the past couple of days. The sky is hazing over with the encroaching sands of the Sahara.
