School visit and Taxi adventures

This morning the volunteers and I visited the school where, starting tomorrow, we will be teaching French and English, as well as playing games. Its very small, and they are re-doing the roof, but the kids are adorable and really enjoyed meeting us. They are so full of energy and jump all over you, tugging you this way and that: the girls want to start braiding your hair, and the boys want to play soccer. All of them speak Wolof, the primary tribal language of Senegal, though the older ones (5+ years) speak French too. So I chat with them in both, or at least I try. I've picked up a lot of words and phrases in Wolof, which is a really fun language to speak, though the Senegalese my age have really enjoyed mocking my Wolof skills... but I just spit some Akon and its even:-)

Anyhow, expect some stories about the school kids very soon. Our first full day with them is tomorrow!

After the school visit, me and two other volunteers hopped in a cab to get to the city-center of Dakar. I'm living in a suburb called Cambérène, which is about 45 minutes from "downtown", and is definately a village. In fact, only the "Plateau" neighborhood of Dakar (government buildings, banks, etc) bears some resemblance to a city.
Its really not far from Cambérène but the traffic is bad.
And so are the roads...they are currently building the first real highway here, and you can imagine what the work in progress looks like in this sand and dust covered place.
And so are the drivers...

Long story short, we got into accidents on our way to and from the center. On our way there, the taxi driver hit a young girl who was crossing the street. As the roads are dirt/sand, there are no separator lines, and she was in the middle of the street, getting ready to cross the second half. It would have been fine, but just as the cab driver was about to pass her, she takes a step back...
Thank goodness we were going relatively slowly and the cabs breaks worked. She was hit and fell to the ground, but got up covering her face and walked off. Of course, the driver stopped and got out and everyone gathered around. We did the same, and when we saw that despite the shock she was ok (a few cuts and bruises) we continued our journey by foot until we found another cab driver to accept our price for a ride into town.

On the way home, we were just leaving the center, and there were exits everywhere indicating the way to the airport, to the North, to the East, and somewhere in all this chaos a taxi brousse (the cheapest rides and known for their wrecklessness, they are brightly colored mini buses almost always full to the brim with passengers standing on the rear bumper of the bus) rams our taxi from the side (perpendicular) in an attempt to traverse the street at an traffic-light-less intersection. The driver got out, cursed a few times, yelled something in Wolof to those in the taxi brousse and got back in.
"C'est bon, on y va"
I asked if he was sure, and he smiled and said there was a big dent, but not to worry. He couldn't do much and it could have been worse.
I couldn't help but spend the rest of the ride imagining what would have happened in the exact same situation in the States. An appearence in court would certainly have been necessary.

Half an hour later we got to Cambérène. Indeed, there was an enormous dent.
But then again, he was right...it could have been much worse.
Inshallah