A few Thursdays ago, we left UGB and Saint Louis at six in the morning to head to Dakar for the Global Greens conference. Although we’re still not sure exactly what Global Greens is, we gathered that it’s a political movement (connected to the Green Parties of the world) that focuses most of its attention on the environment and keeping the planet clean. Also at the conference were the Global Young Greens, who focus on the same thing but house younger members, from their teens into their twenties. Each member in Global Greens and Global Young Greens is involved in the movement in their respective countries. At the conference, there were people from all over the world: the US, Brazil, France, Ukraine, Japan, the Philipines, the Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Senegal, and even Australia, and that’s only some. Each year the conference is held in a different country, and this year it happened to be held in Dakar while we were here in Senegal. Since our Senegal adviser, Papa Meissa Dieng, was responsible for much of the organization of the conference, he invited us to come as guests (you weren’t allowed in unless you had a lanyard and name tag).
By this time, we were almost three months into our stay here in Senegal, and pretty much over the worst part of the culture shock. But stepping past the gate of the hotel and walking into this conference was a whole different kind of culture shock. All of a sudden, while we had only been seeing the occasional tubaab (white, tourist) on the street, we were hit with at least a hundred at one time. We felt like we were in a different world; no one we met offered their hand for us to shake as is polite in Senegal, there were people walking around looking like stereotypical tourists—bucket hats, sunglasses, cargo shorts with long socks and Tevas, cameras around their necks— and weirdest of all people who didn’t know where we were from spoke to us in English. We had gotten so used to speaking to people we didn’t know in French, we continued to do it at the conference almost like a reflex. That first day we wandered around for a while confused and feeling like we were in a dream, and forgetting that we shouldn’t talk about someone in earshot because chances are they would understand what we were saying. But by the second and third day of the conference, we had met a bunch of people—some extremely nice, and some very important. The unfortunate part was that if we saw these people out on the streets of Dakar getting tricked by vendors with their Canons around their necks and the smell of sunscreen and bug spray radiating off their bodies, we wouldn’t be able to escape the fact that we knew them.
The rest of the weekend we went all over Dakar. We went to the African Renaissance Statue and were able to go inside of it, where there was a museum filled with art and history and a time line of Africa’s great achievements as a continent and the influence it had on important landmarks and education all over the world. Next we took an elevator all the way up to the man’s head, where you can look out the windows and see the ocean on one side and much of Dakar on the other.
Another day we went to the huge market near Independence Place to buy presents and cloth and a few other things. While we were trying to find these things near the center, we suddenly saw a bunch of flashing lights and a crowd forming around the rotary near the market. Next, a bunch of black SUVs drove into the center, and we were told that it was Macky Sall, the recently democratically-elected president of Senegal, and his caravan of protection. In a matter of seconds, the street near the market went from being normally crowded to being packed with people, running towards the circle to catch a glimpse of the president. And then he was gone, and the massive crowd disappeared, and I went back to trying to find a pair of jeans. We ended the day with buying ice cream at a place called N’ice Cream, and naturally I had to get the Obama flavor. We walked with our ice cream to the coast and stood on a cliff while eating, looking out at the Atlantic Ocean and the coastline. That night we went to a concert at a bar in the city and saw Didier Awadi, a Senegalese rapper and apparently one of the most well-known and respected hip-hop artists in West Africa. And on Monday night, one of the most successful and globally known Senegalese singers, Youssou Ndor, played a concert in the center of Dakar in celebration of the victory of his candidate for the presidency (after he found out he couldn’t run himself), Macky Sall. Dakar was packed for this concert, and the closest we were able to get was behind the stage a couple hundred yards back, but luckily this was close enough to see flashes of Youssou Ndor as he walked across the stage.
