Dakar

My trip to Dakar was really fun and interesting. The big city is easier for me than the village because I am used to that kind of environment having live in Accra for so long. It took me a couple of days to figure out the bus situation. Dakar is so huge it takes the city buses an hour to get from the neighborhoon I was staying in to down town, where all the action really is.

I left September 15th for the garage to get a car to Dakar. The boat is currently broken so the only other way to travel (as far as I knew) was to take the fast car. I got in a taxi with a man and a young girl to the station. Come to find out they are also going to Dakar and stay in the same neighborhood as I am going to. The man offered to buy the tickets while I watched the little girl and the baggage. This took an hour because of the amount of people cramming towards the ticket "desk" no order no line, just cram forward. The drive to Dakar was uneventful and I found the Diatta's house with no problems.

I really enjoyed staying with the Diatta's. Roger Diatta's family is from Oussouye, he is Marcel's brother but moved to Dakar years ago for work. He started a church there for the Jola. His household is always buzzing with visitors from Ossouye and cousins, friends, children all jumbling around together in their tiny house. I slept in a room with six girls and this is typical each time I visit the family. There are always tons of people, which is actually comforting. We spent the evenings sitting outside and talking while the girls did each others hair and events of the day were discussed or there was no discussion at all, just relaxing inthe cool of the evening. Dakar was dreadfully hot when I was there. Each night I slept under my mosquito netting dripping with sweat.

Sunday I accompanied the family to church. For 13 years Roger's church met in his living room. In March of this year an American caught wind of the work and BOUGHT the church a huge compound close to Roger's house. The place is amazing!!!! Roger and his wife would not stop talking about how wonderful it was to go to church! With the new building the church has been growing. There were 15 visitors from the Cassamance region in Dakar for various reasons. Each one greated the church and explained where they were from in the Cassamance. The service is all in Jola with FRENCH translation.

While I was there I met a missionary couple working with New Tribes Mission. They invited me to lunch afterwards and we spent the entire day chatting about life and their work and training. I mentioned my trip to Dakar entailed purchasing a printer and a bicycle and the challenges of getting it back to Oussouye in tact. They then mentioned that their mission just happens to have a PLANE!!!! We made all the preparations for this and then they mentioned, they just happened to have a friend with a car who would be more than happy to help me purchase all of these things I needed. When I met him he was so nice and called himself "The servants servant." I have thought about that many times since.

The rest of the week consisted of me tooling around Dakar shopping and window shopping. Dakar is a crazy mishmash of people, cars, donkey carts, goods to buy, buses, big trucks, all sharing the same space.

Wednesday evening I went to stay with a family I had met in Ghana. They work for NGO's in Dakar and love having visitors. Their house was in a more affluent neighborhood and the house was affluent.....I really enjoyed chatting with the family and watching satalite tv for three days.

The trip was relaxing and very busy. Dakar is not as bad as I thought it might be. Always an adventure to be had in Dakar.