SENEGAL

Greetings WACCO Fans

This email comes to you from the town of Praia, the Capital of the country CAPE VERDE or CABO VERDE in Portuguese and covers the country of SENEGAL.

SENEGAL is a paradox. On the one hand it has a very progressive, growing and modernising city of Dakar and on the other hand the countryside is full of corrupt police stopping cars for bribes. We got caught up in the bribes, big time, because we were in a Gambian car with a Gambian driver and apparently the Senegalese police just do not like Gambians. The total journey between Banjul in THE GAMBIA and Dakar in SENEGAL is only 300km but it took us 12 hours to cover!!! The ferry crossing from Banjul to Barra took 3hrs because we missed the first ferry but the roads after that were fine - it is the constant stopping by corrupt cops that took the time. Some of them were only a few kilometres apart. We were stopped 6 times but only paid 2 bribes and wasted a lot of time on the other 4 just sitting it out after telling them we have no money - if you are in a hurry then you should pay… in total we paid 25USD but got asked to fork out nearly 100USD - bloody expensive if you consider our entire trip of car, driver and fuel cost $170USD.

The capital Dakar was a real surprise - mostly paved roads and an organised, more modern looking city centre. It suffers from chronic traffic problems and pollution but not as bad as Conakry given it has a ring road and a brand new Chinese built freeway running 50km out of Dakar since the airport is out here. This helped us immensely after all the time wasted on avoiding bribes. The city itself has some good cafe’s and easy to walk. Then came the Black African Civilisation Museum - a Dec 2018 masterpiece building with masterpiece exhibits that cover the full history of Blacks in Africa plus art and sculptures from all the most famous Black African artists - many of them very impressive. We spent hours in here. It was easily the BEST museum we have seen in all Africa and believe me we have seen tons of them… No visit to Dakar is complete without Goree Island that was the Senegalese departure point for slaves. The island itself is small and just 5km from the city centre and 20min by boat. It is full of colourful but run down Portuguese style houses with about 2,000 people actually living on the island via small gardens, fishing and goats. Dakar is also home to the African Renaissance Monument which is a huge 50m high bronze statue of a mum, dad and baby visible from every part of Dakar City Centre - an amazing work and was created not only to celebrate the free African but to try and get a listing as one of the wonders of the world - missed out on Earth but did make the Africa list… Dakar is certainly modernising and improving - feels and looks more like a Moroccan or Egyptian or East African city rather than one in rugged West Africa.

SENEGAL has a population of 16 million and almost entirely Muslim. French is the offical language due to colonisation by France with independence in 1960. Senegal is soccer mad and one of the best teams in Africa. Senegal has a lot bronze and oil. Dakar International Airport is 53k from the city and is brand new - another China contribution.

After experiencing the progress and offerings of Dakar and a brand new airport, it is hard to believe that there are crooked cops out there in the countryside - it is like two different countries...

Enjoy Senegal
John WACCO Golfin