First Impressions

I arrived in Dakar at just after 4:30 am local time. So my very first impression of Senegal was "It's dark. And it's hot." The humid 84 degree air hit me like a wall as I stepped of the plane where I had literally been shivering (downside of exit row) minutes before. Now I'm not going to go on too much about the weather here because I just noticed that back in Boston it will hit 100 today, but I will say this: though the heat and humidity of the day isn't all that much of a shock to my system, at night it's a different story. It doesn't cool off at night - it was 88 when I went to bed at 10pm. I'll have more to say about sleeping later, but for now I'll focus on my first impressions.

After navigating customs and immigration, I spotted Iain, my contact through WEC who was there to pick me up and bring me back to his home in Popenguine, where he and his wife Linda live. He was, as I suspected, pretty easy to spot: the lone Scotsman in a sea of African faces. I was to spend my first two night outside of the city for orientation and to adjust the the culture and time change at a more lesiurely pace before heading back into Dakar and the House of Hope. Iain whisked me away in his SUV and we made our way through the darkness out of Dakar.

I always find driving in different countries fascinating. Whether it's driving on the wrong side of the road, going counter-clockwise around roundabouts in England or narrowly avoiding being sideswiped by an 18-wheeler in Costa Rica, I'm struck by how different driving is in the U.S. from the rest of the world. It's SO easy to drive in America - the roads are well-paved, well-lit, well-marked, straight, and plenty wide. And we mostly drive automatics. It's really too easy I think, and it appears most of my fellow Americans agree - that's why you'll see us texting, eating, singing, shaving, applying makeup...basically focusing on anything but the road. Drivers simply can't afford to do that anywhere else. Senegal, I learned quickly, is no exception. We exited the airport onto a newly constructed highway that could easily be confused for an American interstate...that is until Iain had to hit the brakes from 60 mph to avoid hitting some men casually sauntering across the 4 lanes of traffic. Though this section of road was built to modern standards, it was not only for the use of cars. In addition to swerving and braking to avoid pedestrians, we had to allow for slow moving buses with young men hanging off the back and my personal favorite - carts pulled by donkeys. Imagine slowing for a cart doing 6 mph on the expressway! The road got even more congested once the freeway ended and we got onto a 2 lane road, but we managed to make it the 70 km to Popenguine in about 90 minutes.

Iain's wife Linda prepared my first Senegalese meal: a variation of the national dish, Thieboudienne. It consists of fish and vegetables over rice. I found it very tasty and if I hadn't been half-asleep I would have remembered to take a picture of it to post here. We ate it "Senegalese-style" which is to say we all ate from a large circular plate, each of us taking a third of the pie, so to speak. We used only a spoon in our right hand. It's important to note that we used only our right hand because in Senegalese culture (or it might be Muslim culture in general, I forget) the left hand is unclean as it was historically used for wiping your bottom. So clearly you'd want to keep that left hand away from the food. Left-handers don't exist in Senegal; natural lefties are forced to switch over to their right side. So it's a safe bet that the Red Sox won't find any left-handed bullpen help in Senegal.

More on my stay in Popenguine, my first conversations (Hmmmm "conversation" might be a bit of an overstatement seeing as all I could manage in French was "Hi. How are you? I'm well.") with the Senegalese, and sleeping in a mosquito net in my next post. Oh and some pictures too!