I was supposed to be visiting Mali. Senegal isn’t Mali. Plans change. In this case, the security situation disintegrated rather precipitously over the last two years. I had vague plans to visit at some point; I have a friend teaching at an international school in Mali¹ and I’ve learned how helpful having a local around to navigate can be, particularly in places where you aren’t quite comfortable.² But by the time we actually nailed something down the ongoing risk of kidnappings and attacks on US citizens had made Mali a non-starter.³

So I suggested Senegal. Senegal’s one of those rarities in West Africa, a stable, developing democracy known for good governance. It’s been spared the kind of sectarian violence that’s plagued its neighbors. The current president is very popular, and even spearheaded a referendum to reduce the presidential term to five years from seven. And the economy, while still underdeveloped, is growing.

I booked in for the week between Christmas and the New Year, to see what that looked like. And I’m grateful for the time I had in Nigeria and Burkina Faso, because I don’t know what I would have made of Senegal without those points of reference. My friend and I mostly stayed in Dakar, wandering around the city and hanging out in the restaurants and beaches. The city’s got a lot more going on than Ouagadougou did. There’s still a fair number of dirt roads and sidewalks in most places are swarmed by parked cars and street vendors, but you don’t see the kind of bashed together roadside stalls made of cinder block and plastic tarps that were common in Burkina Faso. Most of the stores are, well, stores. The streets feel safe if you stick to places which are decently lit, same as any other city.⁴

That’s different from Nigeria, where the extreme disparity between the poorest and the richest of the residents seems to have fueled a huge boom in security services. Dakar lacks the new and shiny high-rises of Lagos, but it’s got a large number of buildings going up all the same. They’re just more modest, less out of place.

Senegal’s got a reputation for tourism, although there’s a limited amount of things to do in Dakar.⁵ We did pay someone to drive us out an hour to Lake Retba, a large salt water lake turned pink by the local algae.⁶ And we spent a half-day on the Île de Gorée, a quaint little island just off the coast with the rather disturbing history of being the largest slave-trading center on the western coast of Africa from the 15^th through the 19^th century.⁷

It’s a little weird being someplace for a fairly long time without doing the usual tourist thing but at the same time not exactly settling in. We hopped around to a couple hotels, which gave us insight into a couple different sections of the city. We tried a lot of restaurants, none of which were Senegalese.⁸ We were well-stocked for the holidays thanks to the American store just down the street from the US Embassy⁹ and bought a bottle of rum to ring in the New Year.¹⁰ We even saw Avatar: The Way of Water at a Pathé Cinema that looked like it opened the day before we got there.

So it feels like Dakar is progressing, in a way that a lot of the other countries in the region don’t. Burkina Faso felt stalled, while Nigeria felt like it was speed-running the golden age of the robber barons. Senegal is certainly not without its problems,¹¹ and I’m very aware how fragile these kind of things are — stability attracts economic investment, and it really only takes one botched presidential transition to drive it away — but it’s still inspiring to see. It’s got a long way to go. I’m rooting for them.

I’m visiting over the holidays. The end of the year is always a little rough for me. I’ve given up on having a Thanksgiving like I remember growing up and I’ve just about done the same for Christmas.¹² New Year’s Eve was always a disappointment, especially now that I can stay up until midnight any time I want. I’ve settled for finding a friend to hang out with so I’m not alone.¹³

Senegal is overwhelmingly Muslim so there was a notable lack of Christmas cheer or decor around, although that doesn’t stop many from the restaurants from shutting down for Christmas Eve. My friend and I booked a fancy Christmas Day brunch more to mark the occasion than anything else, for the grand price of 25,000 CFA¹⁴ each, or about 38€.

We considered doing something similar for New Year’s Eve, although the parties seemed to all be charging 75,000 or 100,000 CFA, prices that wouldn’t seem out of place in New York City. And I probably wouldn’t have blinked twice about dropping that in NYC.¹⁵ But the average wage in Senegal is 87,000 CFA per month. Both my friend and I felt pretty uncomfortable splashing out what amounted to more than 10% of the yearly salary for half the country. We stayed in and watched White Lotus.¹⁶

At a certain point you have to accept, if you’re in the United States or most of Europe and you’re able to afford to travel in the first place, that there’s going to be a significant wealth differential between you and the locals in most of the places you might consider visiting. I obviously don’t think that’s a reason not to travel.¹⁷ But I don’t think ignoring it is ethical either.

For me that means thinking about where I’m spending money. I try to avoid international hotels or chain restaurants in favor of local shops and stores. I avoid resorts or places where it’s clear the money is largely not going to be directly circulating in the economy. We’re not going to save the world through capitalism, but if we’re forced to live with it we can at least try to be a little conscientious about how it works.

I’m sitting in the airport in Dakar waiting for a horrifically late flight leaving after midnight, taking me to Algiers and then on to Lyon. I arrived with my friend whose flight left quite sensibly in the afternoon. I couldn’t get a boarding pass online and the check in desk isn’t open until who knows when, so I’m stuck camped out on the floor in one of the few corners of the pre-security departures hall they’ve outfitted with working electrical plugs.

And that’s kind of a fitting goodbye to Senegal. There’s so much potential here. The airport’s reasonably modern and reasonably clean, and there’s a small snack bar with some comfortable couches and ample outlets along the back. But the snack bar’s closed, the outlets are turned off, and there’s no place to buy food or beverages until you’ve gotten through security which, by the time I get my boarding pass, will likely be closed.

It’s strange to be reminded of all the thousand little things that have to go right to support a modern economy. You need people to work the jobs and functional roads to get them to and from those jobs and a functioning electrical grid to keep the lights on and reliable shipments of prepackaged drinks and potato chips and sandwiches to put into the café to be sold by those people. The rail strikes in the UK last year revealed how monumentally screwed up all that can get with just a single disruption.

Places like Senegal are slowly putting all those pieces in place. It’s a horribly complicated puzzle. You need to build the roads to construct the power plants to electrify the residences where the people — who are supposed to built the roads — need to live. Senegal’s still getting it all together. But it’s close.

Next: Lyon (LYS) to Tel Aviv (TLV)
Prev: Christmas Day, 2022, Dakar

Footnotes

¹ The same one who was previously teaching at an international school in Burkina Faso

² By comfortable, here, I’m talking about developing a basic understanding of the culture: how to find a restaurant, or a movie theater, or navigate cabs around town. West Africa just has a different approach to all that than even North Africa does.

I don’t know how comfortable I’d ever be able to get in West Africa — my French simply isn’t great and this is a place where getting anything does requires negotiating endlessly with people — but I’m certainly getting closer, bit by bit.

³ The US government evacuated all non-emergency personnel back in July.

⁴ Although I did have some guys on a moped try to steal my wallet, zipping past and groping at my back and front pocket without slowing down. They missed.

⁵ I suspect most of the tourist activity happens in the various resorts dotting the countryside. I’m sure they’re nice.

⁶ At least, it’s pink in the photos online. Apparently there was a long rainy season and the lake is flooded, which drowns out the color of the algae. It was a disappointingly pedestrian blue when we visited.

⁷ According to UNESCO. The industry didn’t keep particularly great records, and some historians disagree.

⁸ The cuisine of Western Africa is not, to put it mildly, vegetarian friendly. But there’s a surprising number of people who have opened restaurants featuring their native food. There was an excellent Italian restaurant in the south of the city, but the standout was a Mexican food truck with really excellent tacos and burritos.

⁹ They had Nutter Butters. I can’t tell you how deliriously happy that made me.

¹⁰ The local store carried a $1, $2, $4, $8, and $15 bottle of rum. The $15 bottle of rum was Bacardi. The $8 bottle of rum was undrinkable. I’m surprised the cheaper ones weren’t eating their way through the bottles.

¹¹ Homosexuality is still criminalized, and there’s still regular angry protests by anti-LGBTQ groups for harsher penalties.

¹² Beyond just not being eight years old and thus having lost the frame of reference that made it possible — I still delight in opening up a massive Lego set, but I’m always the one who has to buy the damn thing in the first place — people just aren’t living the way they used to. My family’s mostly scattered across the United States which makes gathering together difficult, and even if we did it’s not like most of us live in a house big enough to actually host a holiday party.

¹³ Even then I’ve often failed, between the COVID lockdowns of 2020 and the COVID surges of 2021. I did spend a lovely New Year’s in 2021 with friends and an absolutely stonking amount of cheese.

¹⁴ Eight states in Africa all share the CFA franc, much as most of Europe shares the Euro.

¹⁵ I mean, I might have, if I had the option of a small get-together with friends and boardgames. And cheese. But the price wasn’t a deal breaker.

¹⁶ The latest season is excellent even if it is skewering desire rather than class. And as much as I’m reluctant to, I’m trying to keep focused on the similarities between the clueless tourists featured in the show and my own foibles.

¹⁷ Sitting at home doesn’t magically mean that exact same wealth disparity doesn’t exist, it just means that you’re not forced to come face to face with it.