Elections

Top: One of the many posters around town advertising the party of President Abdoulaye Wade. The party's slogan, SOPI, means "change" in Wolof.

Bottom: A poster featuring the ruling party's slate for the district of Dakar - the poster has been defaced by an opposition call to boycott.

On Sunday, Senegal will hold legislative elections, following the presidential elections in February that returned Abdoulaye Wade (who is over 80 years old) to power. Wade used to symbolize Senegalese democracy, since he came to power fairly and peacefully in 2000 after winning an election against the party which had held power since independence. However, lately he's turned more autocratic, briefly imprisoning a well-known journalist in 2004 and his main political opponent in 2005 (they've since "reconciled"), and otherwise throwing his weight around. (If you're at all interested in the press freedom angle, the briefing I wrote two years ago on Senegalese journalists' attempts to lobby for greater legal protection is still, sadly, relevant. Even though reforming colonial-era national security laws that threaten the media and political critics was one of Wade's campaign promises in 2000, they remain on the books today. The briefing (with pictures of Senegalese media outlets) is at: http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2005/senegal_05/senegal_05.html)

The presidential vote was generally considered free and fair, but the opposition said that Wade used state funds (likely, given that every single billboard in the city seems to have Wade's face on it) and shady voter registration tactics (more difficult to gauge) to ensure victory, and announced they would boycott the legislative elections. This was probably initially intended as a bargaining tactic, but instead of bringing the ruling party to the table, Wade rejected any move to negotiate. The result is that Wade's party will sweep the elections, with turnout assumed to be at a record low.

Commuting

There are seemingly endless ways to commute to work in Dakar, and I intend to try them all. While both SUVs and horse-carts abound in some neighborhoods, most people seem to rely on some form of mass transit. The most colorful are the "cars rapides," which are beautifully painted share-taxis that seat 8-10 people at a time; their routes are completely opaque but the young men hanging off the back doors are always eager to take your money (generally less than 100 CFA, or 20 cents, from what I understand) and usher you inside. Photos to come I hope.

Next up are the white-colored, larger vans that seat 15-20 people at a time; these seem to function similarly to the cars rapides.

At the top of the price scale are the taxis, which are barely functional yellow-and-black '80s-era Renaults. Besides getting picked up and dropped off at your door, the main advantage to taxis is that they have radios, which blast a mixture of mbalax dance music and impassioned Wolof-language talkshow debates. (It's possible to get a sense of what the debates are about by following the sprinkling of French mixed into the Wolof.) With an older driver you might get one of the Islamic prayer-oriented stations, which is much less fun. Using taxis for everyday movement can really add up - a trip across town can cost up to $4 dollars (including bargaining) if traffic is bad.

What I have settled on so far in terms of getting to work is the public bus system, newly put in place in the last two years. The buses are made by Tata, the giant Indian multinational, and bizarrely, for someone who has lived in India, they are clean, have plexiglass windows that open and close, and are considered an upscale alternative to the cars rapides. My route seems to feature mostly university students, well-dressed people commuting to work, and the occasional city policeman (commuting, not working on the bus).

The main annoyance to commuting at all in Dakar is the traffic, which is particularly bad in the bottleneck between the northern, more spread-out areas and the crowded downtown. The city is re-doing the main highway (see poster above), which could help eventually but is unlikely to be finished by the time I leave.

Stands that sell everything from phone cards to watermelons

Walking around northern Dakar

Some photos from my walk from the northern suburbs into the posh central neighborhood of Point E.

At top is a view of the street where the office is located, in a northern neighborhood called Mermoz. Not sure what the picture of the shrimp signifies.

Next is a quintessential Dakar scene: a horsecart on the main road, followed closely by a bulldozer headed to one of the city's ubiquitous construction sites.

Below is a street in Point E, home of Dakar's best outdoor music cafes, in addition to the Syrian Embassy and the West Africa Reuters bureau.

At bottom, a huge baobab tree shelters a bus station.

Arrival in Dakar

I arrived in Dakar after a day of transit from Paris which included flying out of Orly Airport in the middle of a thunderstorm. As we pulled away from the terminal, the captain announced that the entire air traffic control station was shutting down due to the storm (lashing rains and fierce lightning); then, merely 20 minutes later and with little explanation, the plane sidled over to the runway and proceeded to take off, bucking several times in heart-stopping descent before finally reaching cruising altitude above the clouds. This was Air Portugal, and for some reason the announcements ("we are entering some turbulence," repeatedly) were made only in Portuguese and English, much to the dismay of the French passengers, who were thoroughly confused by the time we touched down, two hours later, in Lisbon.

The flight to Dakar the same evening was much less eventful, though it too involved some miscommunication, as the driver had mistakenly assumed I was arriving the following night. At 2:30 in the morning, the Dakar airport is a noisy, bustling affair, since most flights from Europe and even elsewhere in Africa arrive and take off in the middle of the night. The arrivals hallway is gray and dingy, but it separates the arriving passengers, in their last peaceful moments of aloneness, from the dense, barely lit parking lot outside, which is filled with hawkers, taxi drivers, money changers, and other masses of milling people. A gendarme at the airport allowed me to use his cellphone in exchange for a 2-euro coin, and 30 minutes later I was greeted in a bear hug by Dieme, the driver, who had mercifully responded to his phone ringing at such an ungodly hour. Dieme deftly drove us through the breezy night in a very spiffy Toyota, his stereo blasting Youssou Ndour's radio frequency (RFM, which I have now settled on in the apartment - today we've had two hours of antique samba music, followed by French pop, followed by Arabic-language prayers, and now finally Youssou himself is gracing the airwaves), until we arrived in downtown, at the modernish 10-story apartment building where I am staying. My head hit the pillow at 4 am, just in time for the imam's first call to prayer at the gigantic '60s-era mosque next door.

I have the apartment to myself for the next few days. It's a nice place, with a little balcony (where I'm currently sitting, it's pretty great) as well as a good internet connection - what more can one ask for? It's located right in the congested Dakar downtown, blocks away from the sprawling outdoor Marché Sandaga, where one can buy everything from used car parts and cell-phones to clothing and Papa Wemba's latest hits on scratched-looking CDs. Most of the government buildings, banks, and travel agencies are also in this neighborhood, which is near where I stayed when I was here two years ago for the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day conference. (On the other hand, most expats and NGOs are based far to the north of downtown, in newly constructed, more spacious neighborhoods called Ngor, Mermoz, and Almadies.)

I received a fantastic walking tour around the neighborhood on Saturday, with my new boss pointing out a huge French-language bookstore, the main food market nearby, and the bus stop that will take me to work, as well as the best nearby CD stand. We stopped for fresh-squeezed juice at the French cultural institute, which is around the corner from the apartment and boasts a gorgeous outdoor restaurant as well as an open-air amphitheater with nightly performances of European and African musicians. I was also shown a huge, Lebanese-run supermarket near the once-majestic (now somewhat scuzzy) colonial-era Place de l'Independence that sells, along with all sorts of packaged products (I was ashamed at how happy I became at the prospect of Kelloggs cereal), ginger and bissap soda, a goat cheese made by a local monastery, and - love of my life - French yoghurt.

But air-conditioned supermarkets notwithstanding, most of the commerce in this neighborhood takes place on the street, where vendors wander around hawking mangos, melons, boxed juices, tetrapak milk, clothes hangers, wooden statues, ironing boards, and anything else you can think of. In addition there is a fruit-and-vegetable stand set up at every street corner. I plan on sampling every type of mango available.