Dakar is a big, sprawling, unwieldy city, smack on Africa's most western point. Next stop: the Caribbean or Mexico.
The first thing you can't miss from the plane window is this colossal statue called the "African Renaissance." At 160-feet in length and perched on a 330-foot hill, it's gotta be the most butt ugly civic monument--ever. If you're guessing that this looks like something out of Stalinist Soviet Union, you're not far off. This thing was built by the North Koreans. Unveiled just a year ago to great fanfare with dozens of African leaders, the North Koreans, and America's own Jesse Jackson "this renaissance statue is a powerful idea from a powerful mind" in attendance, it seems the Senegalese people don't like it either: Muslims are offended, most people thought the money could be better used to improve the electric grid, tackle sewage problems, etc. Riot police had to be called out to control the angry crowds.
The first thing you can't miss from the plane window is this colossal statue called the "African Renaissance." At 160-feet in length and perched on a 330-foot hill, it's gotta be the most butt ugly civic monument--ever. If you're guessing that this looks like something out of Stalinist Soviet Union, you're not far off. This thing was built by the North Koreans. Unveiled just a year ago to great fanfare with dozens of African leaders, the North Koreans, and America's own Jesse Jackson "this renaissance statue is a powerful idea from a powerful mind" in attendance, it seems the Senegalese people don't like it either: Muslims are offended, most people thought the money could be better used to improve the electric grid, tackle sewage problems, etc. Riot police had to be called out to control the angry crowds.
This public works boondoggle cost over $27 million--just what a country with a failed electricity grid needs. It kind of looks like the guy is throwing the baby and the woman into the ocean.The president of Senegal has also said he owns the "intellectual property rights" of the statue and wants to collect a portion of the admittance from those who pay to climb up into the head of the male figure.
Today I go to the Embassy of Mauritania to apply for a transit visa. This process takes quite a bit of time. The guy behind the desk moves at about the speed of an old Dell computer with a 28.8 modem in a hot room. He examines every page of my passport and can't find my entry stamp into Senegal. "You have too many stamps," he says. The two-page form involves lengthy questions that delve into my parentage. And then there's a box where I have to list every country I've been to in the last ten years. This is hilarious! I look up at the consular officer, and he nods yes, I must fill this out. OK! I feel like one of those Ripley Believe it or Not freaks who can inscribe the entire Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin. I did leave out the really long names, like Trinidad and Tobago and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
I spend the afternoon out at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Ile de Gorée. The island is interesting, with some period architecture that's fixed up and some that is still in ruins, but in all it's more of a tourist excursion straight into the ranks of the crafts touts. Touts generally leave me alone, but just about everybody off the boat has somebody latched on to them around the island, which is very wearying. Gorée is supposed to be symbolic of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but very few slaves were shipped out of here; it was more of an administrative center.
More interesting is a mass demonstration today in Dakar against the government. It seems the president wants to change the re-election laws to his favor (and his son's favor), so he can be re-elected for a third term. I see all sorts of smoke plumes rising over Dakar from burnt out cars or buildings or whatever. Riot police are out with tear gas. When I come back to Dakar from Gorée, the demonstration is finished, but it takes some doing for my taxi to find a way around streets that aren't barricaded with all sorts of rocks and chunks of concrete.
Today I go to the Embassy of Mauritania to apply for a transit visa. This process takes quite a bit of time. The guy behind the desk moves at about the speed of an old Dell computer with a 28.8 modem in a hot room. He examines every page of my passport and can't find my entry stamp into Senegal. "You have too many stamps," he says. The two-page form involves lengthy questions that delve into my parentage. And then there's a box where I have to list every country I've been to in the last ten years. This is hilarious! I look up at the consular officer, and he nods yes, I must fill this out. OK! I feel like one of those Ripley Believe it or Not freaks who can inscribe the entire Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin. I did leave out the really long names, like Trinidad and Tobago and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
I spend the afternoon out at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Ile de Gorée. The island is interesting, with some period architecture that's fixed up and some that is still in ruins, but in all it's more of a tourist excursion straight into the ranks of the crafts touts. Touts generally leave me alone, but just about everybody off the boat has somebody latched on to them around the island, which is very wearying. Gorée is supposed to be symbolic of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but very few slaves were shipped out of here; it was more of an administrative center.
More interesting is a mass demonstration today in Dakar against the government. It seems the president wants to change the re-election laws to his favor (and his son's favor), so he can be re-elected for a third term. I see all sorts of smoke plumes rising over Dakar from burnt out cars or buildings or whatever. Riot police are out with tear gas. When I come back to Dakar from Gorée, the demonstration is finished, but it takes some doing for my taxi to find a way around streets that aren't barricaded with all sorts of rocks and chunks of concrete.
The approach to the Ile de Gorée
More Ile de Gorée
And more...
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