I’m not gonna complain about the humidity, therefore I need to find something else to tell you about.
So, here’s a glimpse of Megan’s Olmsted Experience, or rather what I like to call, Lifestyle of the White and Famous with the talibé children.
My typical morning:
Wake up: I open my eyes and do what I have done for years: “Where am I?” I ask myself. Oh yeah, I live in Africa.
Five minutes later: Espresso without fail. This leads me into some form of workout before getting ready for my charity work at the office.
Not long after espresso: Out the door and into the world. I make my way to the street, saying “Ça va” (how are you) to everything that moves, except for said talibé children. I hate that I have to walk by them as if they don’t exist at all.
Once in the street, I walk until a taxi notices that a toubab is wandering Dakar’s streets on foot. Soon enough, I am found out and one flags me down. Here is what my taxi fare negotiation sounds like (although it’s in French):
-Me: “I’m going to plateau I’ll pay 1500.”
-Taximan: “2000, C’est bon?”
-Me, using my inside voice: “No you overly optimistic and insufficiently practiced motorist, c’est pas bon. I already told you what I would pay.”
-Me, using my outside voice “No. 1500.”
I stand back from the car, pretending to look for another taxi. It is less than two seconds before I see his right hand rise up to give me the universal “Get in my crappy car, I agree to your fare” signal. I try to open up the door, but the car is in such a state of disrepair that the handle is broken on the outside. He leans back to jimmy the door open, and I finally get inside. The springs poke through the threadbare fabric of a backseat that clearly did not start out in this car. It makes me wonder how bad the original backseat must have looked, if someone had decided that this landfill treasure somehow qualified as an upgrade. This battery of mental observations takes less than two seconds, as I have long stopped caring about any of this.
I found this picture using Google. Looking at it, I assess that this would be one of the nicer-looking taxis buzzing about Dakar.
Once in the taxi, I allow the taximan about a 30 second window to engage me after offering up the requisite “Ça va?” If he doesn’t talk to me then I open a book, and keep one eye on the road to make sure he knows where we are going. Sometimes the drivers are chatty, other times they ignore me until they have some use for amplifying instructions. The questions I get are usually include the following:
- Do you have a husband?
- What is your name?
- Are you French? (this one is good for my ego, because it tells me that my accent can’t be all that bad)
- How long have you been in Senegal?
- Wait, where am I taking you again?
I know, I know- I’m totally selling you on coming to Dakar. But I maintain that I really like it here- primarily because I have long since learned to laugh at life.
More to follow tomorrow.