Arriving in Dakar 2

Before we left the airport, Ali took me to change some money, telling me he could get me a good rate (turned out that he was right). He took me into a small, crowded, and not too clean "store" where two men were sleeping on the floor.
When we left the airport, he hailed a car and told me to get in. I was a little scared. As we tried to leave the parking lot, a cabbie tried twice to cut us off because our driver wasn't an official cabbie. He was cheap though!

Arriving in Dakar

My good friend Barbara asked me this weekend what was the most surprising thing about Dakar for me. Great question! On reflection, I would say it's the physical chaos and lack of beauty. The second most surprising thing is how relatively not difficult it has been to get used to.

When I got to Dakar at 6:30am, I discovered that the person meant to me me wasn't there and my contact's phone wasn't working. A lovely man named Ali, who (I thought) worked for the airport, took me in hand and brought me to Yoff based on my information that I would be staying near Ecobank.