WOULD DAKAR LOOK LIKE PARIS?

These times, The city of Dakar is a riddle for many drivers, with traffic jams, nights and days. Manual workers or people with machineries are at work almost everywhere in various neighborhoods.
Depending on where you leave or go, you will either see a road , a bridge being built or buildings under construction.
The views of certain streets and places have drastically changed. I bet that someone who has left the city for a few years, thrown in one of those places, would really get lost. But there are no worries to get headaches from, many other things have still remained the same: Little street kids-Talibé- are still begging and "Car rapide"(1)-common public very old fashion and dangerous transportation vehicles- drivers did not change an once in being reckless, in spite of the new "Tata" buses shuttling from downtown to the far and away suburban areas of Pikine, Parcelles Assainies, Cambérène, Hamo, Ngor, Ouakam, Yoff la Sainte, Guédiawaye, Thiaroye Gare/Sur mer/Kao,Yeumbeul, Boune, Malika and Keur Massar. Is Dakar of 2007, capital of Senegal, on the move? But this city, which, back in 1854 was a village, will it ever look like Paris, even on the next fifty years ahead of us?
Next to me, someone ;"Yes.Dakar's gonna be in the next twenty years, an African version of Paris!"
Car Rapide: In Niger, there is an expression for a local vehicle similar to the car rapide which nigeriens call in Hausa'one of the native languages of the country) "Shiga da Arwalla" (Fais tes abbulitions avant de prendre place à bord). In Senegal, and specially in Dakar and its surrounding, car rapide are involved in most of the accidents with casualties.
Photos: Daour WADE, storyteller, scriptwriter & filmmaker
Copyright: Daour Wade-december-2007/ Email:mamdaw04@yahoo.fr

BAOBAB GARDEN

 

 

ONCE UPON A TIME, was a garden full of "neem" trees, between two roads in a neighborhood, its inhabitants called by the beautiful name of Baobab the totem tree of their african homeland. In sunny hot days, kids and youngters use to leave their homes to find freshy shades under the leavy trees. Next to them, lively parties of retired elders played cards, drinking the three senegalese tea cups, seated on mats, joking and laughing. On top of the trees escaped birds, neasted their littles, singing like town birds do.On the garden benches, tired visitors to the city, walkers, lovers or just nature homesick people would sit, to watch strolling cars, passing buses and horse cart driven. Like a wide and large green bed with little blue holes here and there, of these beautiful and healthy trees,showed parcels of sky high above, protecting each one of them against the heat. Then, on an early november morning , after a city short rainy season, groups of unknown men came in and shoped of all the tree leaves. There were some complaints on why this task was performed at this particularly hot period of the year, not to mention the world climate change in relation to the global warming of the Earth!The following day, no one could believe what the garden was looking like: It was as if a tsunami blew all the trees upside down. All of them were lying on the ground on their trunk, uprooted. An apocalyptic view of the day after the Tsunami in the Asian continent or hurricane Katrina, in Florida Usa.Who on earth, ordered this? How can trees be destroyed as if they were not beings but things? Why did these people acted as irresponsible ones? Do they know how long it takes to trees to grow that big? Have they only figured out, the ways in which theirs lives and those of human beings are related? Do they really care? I think its one of their least thought!

I dont need any explanations from you guys who are behind this disaster. What I think is: You should be sued and law should fall upon you. What you have done, isn't in any way the right thing.

Yesterday, Dec, 27, 2007, I saw a young man, standing in the middle of the desert garden, talking loudly to himself as a crazy one, complaining about the destruction of the garden, almost crying, asking unanswered questions to the unseen people who ones said:" Tomorrow, destroy the Baobab garden, so that we can build shops, fast foods and little grass looking like garden places, to get more money"This, unfortunately is not a tale. It's a real thing that has happened here in Sicap Baobabs, on a street called "Allées Seydou Nourou Tall", in the city of Dakar, the capital of Senegal, between november and december of the year 2007.

Photos by Daour Wade, storyteller, scriptwriter & filmmaker
Copyright: Daour Wade-Dec.2007
Email:

TALI JALLO "JALLO'S ROAD" (LA ROUTE DE JALLO)

It's a street in the suburb of Dakar - Senegal (West Africa) called Thiaroye -Gare where people are friendly, lively and very sharing as in many parts of Africa.

Years back, it is said that a great man, gifted with a rare entrepreneurial talent, came from the Republic of Guinea (Conakry), established in that area, and started an unknown business in those times: catching selling birds.

Then,one day, in the sixtees (?), grag father Jàllo got an unexpected visit from the first lady after Independence, Mrs Colette Senghor (wife of Senegal's first and late President and poet, the great Leopold Sedar Senghor, "the Universal") to buy some birds. The beautiful car of the french borne lady now a senegalese citizen, got stuck in the sandy road leading to grand father Jàllo's suburban home.

This incident, luckily turned out to be a good one for the people of Thiaroye Gare and even those leaving further away. In the same year, a "macadam"road was built which until now bares the Wolof (a local language, widely spoken in Senegal, a little in Mauritania and a bit more in the Gambia) name of "Tali Jàllo",-Jàllo's Road- after the name of the famous and successful bird seller who, years ago, has chosen to live there .

Photos by Daour Wade, storyteller, writer & filmmaker

copyright: Daour wade/dec.2007

mailto:mamdaw04@yahoo.fr