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.