Dakar Underwater: Da fa doy

Flooding Flooding Flooding. Flooding in compartment 1-221-0-L: Dakar.

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 Away you drivers brandishing unseaworthy vehicles and stay the Hell off the streets until they’ve had a chance to drain. Pull on your galoshes, cuz it might not be until Tabaski before we get back to normal.



Dakar’s a bit of a mess right now, and no one should be surprised.



Take two minutes and watch this excellent video that was created three years ago. Even if you don’t speak French or Wolof, the tune is great and the images are striking. 

[A few notes on the video: Da fa doy, the song’s title, means “That’s enough.” 
You will see the word coupure, which means power cut. Also keep an eye out for a shot of the African Renaissance Monument under construction. At the end you’ll see two signs being held up- the first says “Mr. President, we call upon your sense of human decency to help fix this painful situation that we must endure.” The second sign is held by a boy and it says “Mr. President we could benefit from 40% of your budget being put towards education.” 

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Three years on: the rains keep coming, and the power cuts and flooding persist. What has been done?

Last night I was once again awoken by what sounded like a base drum banging against my bedroom window. The wind, rain and thunder that take over the night launch me out of bed à la General Quarters in a quasi-somnambulant state. I usually manage to make my way over to the circuit breaker and (hopefully) reset my power before looking out the window at the mess outside before I crawl blindly back into bed. I did this twice last night. 

But I’m not complaining- because at least I have circuit breakers that I am able to reset; heck, I have power to my house. And I don’t have to worry about whether my roof is going to withstand two solid hours of Mother Nature’s fury. Last night six people died in les banlieues after the rain caused walls to collapse and water went pouring into their homes.

Da fa dof. In the year two thousand and twelve, that is crazy to me.


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This morning I set out for my morning routine on foot. I didn’t get very far before I understood how bad the overnight rain must have been.

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Is it deep or shallow? In many cases you don’t know until you actually ford the puddle (this one was deceptively deep, by the way).

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People still gotta get to where they need to go. Life continues in a place that is in desperate need of an urban development overhaul- and I’m not just talking about my privileged part of town. Can someone tell me if Plan Jaxaay had any utility?

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Heading out to the corniche, there were major backups as people tried to squeeze through deviations that slowed the commute to a crawl.


The corniche is a fabulous addition to Dakar’s roadways, but the associated tunnels are notorious for flooding and bringing traffic to a standstill. Well the more sensible traffic, anyway.

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A closer look. You can tell that the water level was pretty high- and this motorist had no earthly excuse for thinking that this tunnel pond looked navigable. 

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Have you ever walked the beach after a hurricane and surveyed the items discarded by the sea? These four guys looked like toy cars that had been left behind by some little kid.

Later on in the afternoon, I caught a ride from a taximan whom I had previously dubbed as truly crazy. The problem was that I only realized this after agreeing to a price and getting into his car (yes, I do recognize the different drivers) so I was unfortunately committed to this gentleman’s wiles in order to get home in one piece. Hopefully.

As we got closer to my ‘hood, I saw the driver hesitate as we traveled up Canal Road. He wanted to turn around and go in a different direction, but I pressed him to continue on since we were getting close. “Non, non.” he says as points he points aheed “Baaxul.”  It’s not good.

I think he’s telling me that the road up ahead is closed, and that we should take a different way to get to the university. I ask him to take me as far as he can go and let me walk the rest- because although it is starting to rain again, I now want to see what’s so bad about the road up ahead.


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Yikes. Baaxul, indeed.

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I walk over to the canal and look over the side. The water is still high but I can see that at some point in the night the level was even higher and has since drained. It is now nowhere near as flooded as the underpass; maybe that’s because a canal is built to drain. Most of this nastiness went out into the ocean.

I won’t tell you that I saw a dude standing over the bridge with a fishing pole in hand-  he was actually hoping to capture something edible out of that canal water. I’d rather like to think that he was hoping to snare some quality junk that might have been floating by. Like a taxi.



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Alas, there really was only junk to be had in the canal after such a crazy rain.

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Flooding recovery efforts offer up quite a spectacle- and all manner of citizen was out watching this crew attempt to pump the water from the tunnel. As I perched on the side of the barrier, two talibés were sprawled on top with their empty tomato cans cast aside as they watched the men in action. I am sad to report that as soon as I took this photo, the guy on the left dropped the entire blue hose into the drink. I decided to move on so I wouldn’t have to witness the ensuing retrieval effort- but I kinda thought I should go back and find the guy with the fishing pole.

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I’m no CSI expert, but this was clearly the high water mark from last night. Amazing.

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I walked further up the road and made a U-turn in order to get back to my place. You can see that the southbound lane of the tunnel is closed off as well. Two watertight tunnels.

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Behold the construction sign that signaled 2011 as the completion date of this tunnel project. All told, it is an admittedly fabulous underpass if your country never experiences torrential rain. But this is Senegal pendant l’hivernage- I think that some of the details might merit revisiting.

There’s a whole lot more to this story of inondations than just some photos taken between Fass and Mermoz- but this at least gives you a glimpse into what the good people of Senegal must endure when the weather is hot and the rain is falling. Me, I deal with muddy feet and am able to wash it off as soon as I get home- but for the rest of the folks who don’t work in a hermetically sealed environment, this is a big issue that is not going to get better with time.

The Senegalese are a smart bunch- far smarter than me. I’m hopeful that they can take charge of this problem before ‘Da Fa Doy Version 2.0’ comes out. I don’t think that the melody will be quite as pretty- and Macky’s honeymoon period in office is officially over.