Transportation....to St. Louis

This weekend, I ventured up north to St. Louis du Sénégal, the town where European colonists first landed and then made it Sénégal's first capitol.

Getting there was an adventure in and of itself. My host father dropped me off Friday morning at Dakar's "gare routière"--literally a parking lot with destination signs and cars and trucks lined up to take people there. The second I got out of the car I was overwhelmed by people tugging me this way and that asking me where I was going, the prices they were offering, telling me to buy their bananas for the road, etc.
To get to St Louis there were two options: taxi brousse (a Peugot 505 station wagon without the wagon and with a third row of seats, which they also call "un sept places") or an overstuffed truck...cheaper but definately riskier.


I opted for taxi brousse (above) and it works like this: you pay for your seat
and whatever baggage you have and the Peugot doesn't take off until all 7 seats are filled. So there I was cramming into an old and rusty station wagon, embarking on an roadtrip with complete strangers! Of course before hitting the road I had to argue my way past pushy men who were trying to rip me off and make me pay twice the price for a backseat (the ones in front are hard to get, you have to bargain well or know
people!) Anyhow I ended up paying like all the other passengers and getting the middle seat in the second row. Good work Maya. Long story short, for the next four hours I was squeezed between a Wolof speaking business man dressed in traditional attire who was chatting on his cell and a really tired guy who fell asleep on me numerous times. I won't even begin to describe the conversations that were loudly occuring behind me...hilarious.

I got to the gare routière of St Louis mid-afternoon. Its located on Sor which is on the mainland and you have to take a bridge to St Louis, which is an island. I really wanted to see the bridge (Pont Faidherbe by Gustav Eiffel) and was convinced it was only 500m from the gare. Unfortunately, I had misread my Lonely Planet guide and it was actually 2.5 km away! Long story short, I tried to find it, got completely lost in this random village for a good hour, found my way back to the main road and walked in the direction I thought was the Pont. A car rapide came along and asked me where I was going. I told the guy and it was good, so I jumped in along with the Mamadou's and their mangoes and the live chickens they were transporting on the roof and rode for about half an hour.

I told the driver's assistant (he stands outside on the back like a garbage man and lets people in the car rapide) to drop me off after the bridge and he banged on the roof and the driver stopped to let me out. All that for 100 cfa (a dime). The taxi would have been ten bucks...just like in Manhattan.

Anyhow, I arrived unscathed and had a wonderful weekend in St. Louis. I met up with Nicole, who is there for 2 weeks to take French classes and volunteer as well. We ate on the terrace of a quaint restaurant (this was my first individual plate of food in over 3 weeks!) and as per usual, time flew by as we exchanged our stories and impressions of our time in Sénégal. I also organized a trip to a village en brousse (bush/backcountry) which required 8km of travel by donkey-driven chariot (my chauffeur below) under the sun. It was so worth it to spend the afternoon hanging out with the village people using the little Wolof I know and learn about their daily activities and customs.

I left for Dakar on Sunday, as I didn't want to miss out on the religious holiday and festivities on Monday and Tuesday...I will write about this in another entry!