Can we talk about the weather? It’s been unseasonably cool here in Dakar- even for January. I’m not complaining, especially since the lower temps have made conditions ideal for running and other outdoor activities.
So the preceding thought was my biggest observation this morning as I set out for a pleasant walk through Marché Fass and over to Place de l’Obélisque. Everyone is out doing their everyday routine: baskets of fresh fish are being delivered to vending stalls, guys are walking down the street with big boards of sunglasses balanced atop their heads, and the comforting sound of what you’d call religious music radiates from tiny radios that occupy places of roadside commerce. I love Dakar in the morning.
The opposition says that today is the starting point of coordinated anti-Wade demonstrations around the country, and one place for protest is reported to be the Place de l’Obélisque. I’ve got nothing useful to add to what’s going on here, but as a toubab resident I still very much care about the Senegalese and the future of this great country.
Euronews does a great segment called No Comment. It’s essentially a montage of images that is streamed with no narrator offering viewers advice on how the images should be interpreted. I actually saw piece the first day I arrived in Dakar, and I found it to be extremely compelling.
So it is in the spirit of ‘No Comment’ that I want to provide a sampling of the images that I captured this morning down and around the Obelisk. But before I restrict my word count, I do however want to say one thing:
The tensions that we are seeing in Senegal right now have nothing to do with religion or ethnicity. You see this unfortunate kind of conflict taking place in other parts of Africa (the Boko Haram in Nigeria comes to mind), but Senegal has and remains to be a model for religious and ethnic tolerance. This statement is probably self-evident to all of you, but I don’t feel like I can say it enough.
