Playing Tourist in Dakar: Three Market Tour

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Photos (top to bottom):  the HLM Fabric Market (1-4, 6), Sandaga African Market (5, 7-8).  You'll find lots more photos from this day on BOT at www.becauseoftime.org/ISD/ScenesDakar.html (Gallery 26)

Twelve ISD staffers and visiting family, guided by A., wound through Dakar last Thursday, Thanksgiving Day.  The aim was to play tourist, so we visited the big African market, Sandaga, the more upscale, ex-pat frequented Kermel Market, had lunch at the quaint French Cultural Center, then navigated through the sprawling fabric market, HLM.

Photos 5, 7 & 8 were taken in and around Sandaga.  The market is, for the new visitor, daunting:  clogged with vendors selling goods from a thousand small stalls, winding through a labyrinth of aisles narrow enough for single-lane traffic, shoppers jostling past one another, with the potential for pickpockets, and the general feeling that we're not in Kansas.  My personal feelings about Sandaga have changed dramatically.  I was initially repulsed, but now view it as an immensely interesting place;  it's a milieu to experience, like Disney inside-out.  

While I was not privy to the lesson, W.'s father got a lesson in dental hygiene while in the market.  You'll note in photo 5 the stash of brushes in the background.  For an article regarding twig toothbrushes, see http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/wordpress/index.php/archives/2007/06/25/african-twig-toothbrush-offers-day-long-dental-carec/.

Photos 1-4 and 6 were taken in the fabric market, HLM.  Photo 6 shows a couple of sheep being lead through the market presumably for sale in advance of Tabaski, an important Moslem holiday coming up on the 8th or 9th of December.  (In part, families slaughter a sheep in remembrance of God's sparing Issac by the hand of his father, Abraham.  It's not a good day to be a sheep.)  Apparently, the sheep tagged with a red collar draw a premium price.

A. is shown in photo 3 bartering for fabric on behalf of one of our group.  Randi's in photo 4 checking-out potential family Christmas gifts.  Photo 2 is of an ice cream vendor peddling through the market complete with an elves hat and sunglasses.