A Cup Of Cai: Sortie Pédagogique: Ville de Dakar

Hello from sauna-like conditions of my living room, I hope your week is going well. Today marks the first day of the new year according to the Muslim calender, and it is celebrated as Tamharit here in Senegal. In light of that, today is also a public holiday observing the new year, otherwise known as Hari Al-Hijra. Celebrations technically start the afternoon of the last day of the year and end the next day.

As part of traditional customs here, my host family cooked a dish of chehh, which is a red oil sauce made with sheep organs and a side of couscous. Usually the whole sheep head (from Tabaski celebrations???) is used to make the sauce, but my family only cooked it with kidneys (which I avoided) and some questionable pieces of sheep I choose to be ignorant about. Neighbours started coming in around 6 pm with homemade chehh, as a courteous offering. We had a really awesome spread of tomato and carrot salad, grilled chicken, and chehh. It was great. The following day (today), some of my family members fasted, so things were slow around the house, as was my progress with getting work done. I made egg sandwiches in the afternoon for myself and kids though, so at least I get to say I did something.

Adding to that things-accomplished list, I am sitting down to blog. Yes. Actually. Uploading pictures take up a lot of time and patience, so it is a feat that I'm proud of accomplishing today. Compared to almost-instant AirDrop functions, this is old tech. But still, it's good tech. So segway-ing into the meat of this post, some of my classmates and I went around Dakar on a Sunday morning to check out different neighbourhoods of the city. This field trip was part of my Urban Landscapes class, which is highly interesting. We have been covering history and origins of some of West African cities like Dakar, Saint Louis, Abidjan, Timbouktu, etc. for the past few weeks. Now, we're diving into Senegal's development since independance. I enjoy the class a lot, because it's just a fascinating way to learn a country's functions and cultures by looking at its cities and its characteristics.

Dakar on a Sunday morning is basically me on a Sunday morning, very much asleep. There was no traffic and the streets were close to being empty. It was a refreshing sight to take in, as I got pretty used to constant bottle-neck traffic and people on sidewalks shoving past car rapides. We went past Point E and ended up in one of the older neighbourhoods. Our professor gave us a bit of context of the architecture and housing planning situation. We then made our way (in our air conditioned private van lol) to the Medina quartier, which is one of the older and poorer neighbourhoods in the city. We went past informal Quran classes, shoe vendors "opening shop", washing ladies gathering piles of dirty laundry of the day, and informal fruit and peanut stands.

Next, we passed through a well-to-do neighbourhood and it was just a drastic change from cramped quarters to double-storied houses with lawns. All this was happening right next to Senegal's largest prison and a dangerous neighbourhood (in the words of my professor! Also he mentioned most people who get out of prison take up residence there..). A little further down the road, we were in the heart of Dakar's city center. We stopped and walked around a bit, while my professor pointed out certain features of the city.

We then headed past everything back into Ouakam, a neighbourhood in the north of Dakar. We stopped by Le Phares de Marmelles, which is Dakar's lighthouse. The view was amazing, overlooking the Renaissance monument, Almadies, and Yoff. Our professor also allowed us to take a tour of the lighthouse, which ended up being the highlight of this trip. The person in charge was extremely friendly, taking tourist money shots for us, and answering every question we threw at him. Definitely a place to check out, tourist or otherwise, when in Dakar!

After leaving Ouakam, we drove into the Almadies, which is the expat to-go place in Dakar. It was definitely gentrified and modernized, also with Senegal's poshest hotels. The Western-most point of the African continent is in this section of Dakar, located in the Sheraton hotel. We continued past Ouakam into Yoff, where the airport is located. We ended our trip at the beaches in N'gor, where traditional fishing activities are still practiced.

This coming weekend, we'll probably be taking a second field trip with this class to the outskirts of the city. Definitely snapping and writing up on the trip as well. I will be posting another post sometime over the weekend, about our visit to Toubab Dialow. Until then!