Streets and Dancing

In Dakar, you can find just about anything along the street. It is exactly the same way in Kaolack. In Dakar, you will find horse carts on the national highway on occasion and people pushing cars that aren't working and all sorts of things, but there is still a crazy order to things. In Kaolack… the order is even crazier. Cars fly by without regard to any pedestrian. Animals run across the street all the time… typically sheep, but sometimes cows as well. The main paved roads are big enough to support three lanes of traffic, but of course there aren't traffic lines painted on them. The vehicles on the street consist of horse and donkey carts, taxis, hundreds of little mopeds (the most unsafe ones you can find, and they're often skidding and falling over), the Kaolack equivalent of car rapides, the occasional personal or business car, and the even more rare bus. All the vehicles go so fast (except, of course, the animal carts). It just looks like a free for all out there, not exactly the safest thing ever. I live on a paved road like that, and whenever I'm with my host mom/sister she takes my hand before crossing and then runs when the coast seems clear. It's worse than Dakar, which I didn't think could exist.

Dancing is such an important part of life here. If music is on, someone is dancing. They don't sit like Americans and tap their feet or bop their heads. The Senegalese dance in their chairs or stand up and dance. I put music on in my room one of the first nights I was here, and little Maguette came in and started dancing. 30 seconds behind her was her mother who joined us and started dancing as well. My host mom/sister will dance whenever there is music on, even if it's a television commercial. It's so great! There's no shyness . Everyone just gets up and dances (and for the women of the house, except me, shirts tend to be optional). Before I left for Senegal I saw a YouTube video of a girl who was staying in Senegal, it was 3 minutes of a group of people in a living room sitting down with music on in the background, and as time went on different people would get up and start dancing and by the end she danced, too. I didn't realize until coming to Kaolack how normal that is in typical Senegalese society. So almost every day since coming here we have had some kind of dance party at the house, aside from the two days of parties for the returnees from Mecca. I always know for certain that if I put on music with any sort of dance beat to it, within a few minutes I will have company in my room who have arrived to dance.