A weekend in Dakar

After a busy week of work, it was great to spend my first weekend in Dakar. Since this blog is quickly becoming more of a documentation of my sight seeing and travel rather than climate information, I will comment that as far as the climate is concerned, it has been hot, muggy, and sunny every single day that I have been here. While the rains have started in the southern most portions of Senegal (and the timing is still pretty early for that), they will likely not start here in Dakar until late July. While the climate-scientist-in-training portion of me is a bit disappointed that I will not actually "see" the monsoon while I am here, I'm also a bit grateful that my first trip here will not fall during that time period, which can be challenging even (or especially) in the city. Because Dakar has been expanding so much in recent years, heavy rainfalls tend to flood the city easily as the rainwater runs off of the paved streets. With many of the remaining streets still made of dirt, this washes out numerous other roads and from what I have heard from those living here, can be very frustrating and difficult to manage. It also gets even and hotter and muggier of course! 

With that climate tidbit aside, now I can comment about my first real touristy few days here! Saturday was spent exploring various attractions in downtown Dakar. I met two Columbia colleagues at the university here and we quickly grabbed a cab downtown (there are no shortages of cabs in Dakar, but the key is negotiating a good price to your destination, which is much easier when you’re with French speakers, which luckily I was!). Our tour downtown included checking out Dakar's Independence Square and Presidential Palace. This portion of the city reminded me largely of your standard US city, although, sadly many parts tend to be run down. It was nice to walk around and see a new part of the city though.

Independence Square in Downtown Dakar

A guard outside the Presidential Palace. Supposedly they still have the same uniforms as they wore in WW2!

Me outside the Presidential Palace

The front of the Presidential Palace

We next visited the Musee de l’Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire, or the Museum of African Arts. It was a smaller museum but had a variety of African masks, jewelry, and headdresses that are used in various ceremonies throughout West Africa. Some of the headdresses were massive and made me wonder how strong you would have to be to hold them up! Photos weren’t allowed though so I’ll leave it to your imagination to try and picture some of these. After that, lunch was in order so we grabbed a bite to eat at the Institut Francais de Senegal. From what I have been told, the French Institute in Dakar is a place where Europeans especially visit to get their culture fix. The Institute has live music, movie screenings, and other events. It also had a great little restaurant where there was a jazz musician playing so we enjoyed our lunch with some music. Apparently the live music scene and especially jazz are also big in Dakar, so it was cool that this was coincidentally going on. I also had my first salad here (finally!) and it was so, so good to have fresh vegetables. While the Senegalese food I have had so far sometimes contains veggies, the staples are really rice, grains, and fish.

The restaurant and jazz musician at the French Institute

After lunch, we headed to N’gor Island. While the beach at N’gor and the Island have been busy during the week when I’ve visited, it was nothing compared to the weekend. You could barely see an inch of open sand on the beach and had to maneuver your way around tons of teenagers, who I think were probably celebrating the end of the school year. I guess the crowds make sense- more than half of Senegal's approximately 2 million inhabitants live in the city I've been told. We did manage to find some benches overlooking the sea on the Island though and spent some time just relaxing there and taking in the views, after first walking through some art displays in the various alleyways.

Local artists work on N'gor Island

The view of N'gor Village (where I live) from across the sea

Artsy bench

After an entire day spent in the sun, we all went home in the evening and crashed but not before I randomly met another Columbia student in the grocery store, a second funny coincidence in Senegal after my meeting the woman from CT. I decided that Sunday would be a good day to rest so I went to one of the big hotels here and sat on their very nice and uncrowded beach, which was super relaxing. Sunday evening and night was spent with new friends and friends of friends who took us to a local beach spot, called the Plage Mamelle. Unfortunately, it was cloudy by late afternoon but seeing the cliffs drop off and meet the water was still pretty stunning even in the dim light.

My relaxing beach day

A cool bird that joined me!

Some nice trees outside the hotel I visited

The cliffs at Plage Mamelle

Overall, the weekend was really nice, particularly getting out and meeting some new people who I will hopefully see a few more times before I leave and maybe even in NY after we all return (4 of the 8 in the group happened to be current Columbia students with a 5^th an alum). It was interesting to hear about what brought everyone here and really nice to have a mutual connection over which we could all bond. Monday morning I returned to the office, and funny coincidence number three happened: a man got on the same bus as me wearing a Connecticut Huskies tee shirt! That made me smile and then the day continued with the prospect of trying to write up various summaries of what I’ve done here and complete some more research before I head out next week. It looks like my accounts of the workshops will at least be published on different groups’ websites so I am particularly happy about that and will share when I can. Till next time!

-Catherine