Adventures with Angela: That Day!

Back in Dakar, we decided that Thursday would be the best day to go out to Gorée Island because there are always less people on a weekday than the weekend. We decided not to rush the morning and take the 12:15 ferry out, have lunch and spend the afternoon on the island. Although it’s only a 15 minute drive from Mermoz to the port, we decided to grab a taxi at 11am so we could get our tickets early and walk around downtown a little bit while we waited for the ferry. We hail a taxi and off we go, but then the taxi turns away from the Corniche (the road that follows the coast and has almost no traffic). Hum… maybe there’s an accident or something? Then he doesn’t take the other road that goes straight downtown, which would be faster than the Corniche if there wasn't a huge market halfway down that always impedes traffic. He heads towards where I teach… Hum… well he can technically turn right just after the university and get downtown from there, but then he doesn’t do that either. I finally ask him why he’s going the wrong direction, but he just says everything is fine and I’m thinking it’s a good thing we’re not in a hurry. Then he continues going the wrong direction, heading out of town? 10 more minutes go by and I ask him again why we’re going the wrong way and if he could please turn around. He refuses and we end up in the notoriously bad traffic at the HLM market. I’m thoroughly annoyed at this point, especially because he’s still going the wrong way, so now we’re sitting in traffic waiting to go farther in the wrong direction! Then I hear him ask another taxi driver going the other direction where the port for the ferry is! I was super annoyed at that point because he had said he knew where it was, and then when I suspected he didn’t know and tried to guide him, he refused to listen to me, still pretending he knew where he was going. We get all the way to the other side of town and he finally decides to go towards downtown, taking the highway, which is bumper to bumper traffic.

It was quite hot out, the fumes from the big trucks were killing us, and a trip that would normally take 15 minutes ended up taking an hour and a half, so we missed the ferry. This was the first time I’d ever done it, but I refused to pay him what we had negotiated and only gave him half while lecturing him on why he shouldn’t lie and say he knows where something is when he doesn’t, nor refuse to listen to his passengers (he was obviously quite young).

Because the ferry takes a break at the lunch hour, we weren’t going to be able to go at all that day because we wouldn’t have time to visit everything before they started closing. That meant we’d have to go on Saturday when it’s super busy. Oh well, we decided to hit a couple of museums. We went to IFAN: Musée de l'Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire or IFAN Museum of African Arts, one of the oldest art museums in West Africa. The building it is housed in was converted to a museum by Senghor in 1960 when the IFAN (Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire), which was founded by the French in 1936, was transferred to the University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD). Because it is one of the most prestigious centers for studying African culture, it houses some of the most important collections from Francophone Africa.  While we were there we saw masks, statues, clothes, jewelry, tapestries, and weaponry from all over West Africa.

Pre-colonial West African Empires

They labeled everything saying which people group/ancient kingdom the piece came from; the Wolof, Fulani, Igbo, Yoruba, Kangaba, The Kingdoms of Mali and Ghana, etc. and the corresponding modern-day country; Mali, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Guinea Bissau, Nigeria, Senegal, The Gambia, etc. The collection was very interesting and I’m glad we had the time to go!

At that point we hadn’t had any lunch, so we decided to go to a well-known western café not too far from there for a bite to eat and to decide what to do next. Over a hot turkey, cheese, and bell pepper wrap we decided we should stop at the Senghor museum, then go to the small mall across the street and get some bissap gelato before having dinner on the water. We taxied to the Senghor museum, just to find that it was closed because a pipe had burst… darn. It just wasn’t our day! Oh well, we had bissap gelato to get to, so we walked across to the mall just to find that the gelateria didn’t have half of their gelato that day and the bissap was one that they were missing L Man! 3 strikes, you’re out! We decided that our best bet at this point would be to throw in the towel, go downstairs to the restaurant on the water, have a cocktail and go home! Oh well… every trip has to have that one day when everything goes wrong!

When all else fails, go for cocktails!