Weekend and Streets

So I figured I'd put in a little something about what the streets are like here, but first a little about the weekend. It was nice to have a quiet Dakar, and made exploring a little easier. On Friday night, we went to a dance/party of sorts at a community center put on by a church called something along the lines of "Church of the Martyrs of Uganda." It was good dancing to Senegalese music and we were with several host siblings, so that was nice. On Saturday we had a cooking observation day followed by a family meeting. We got to peel vegetables and watch the different stages of making our lunch - a tomato sauce on rice with beef. Then we watched some of the making of the food for the family meeting in a massive pot. We had been excited for the Reunion, which, though I knew it meant meeting, would be a general get together. However, it seemed to be an actual business meeting - all the adults went into the salon and talked business almost the entire time while we watched tv with the other kids, three of whom were very sweet girls who had grown up in the U.S. Also - it was valentines day on Saturday and surprisingly, though there's no hallmark stuff here, everybody celebrates it! We kept on being asked if we were going out to celebrate it.
The next day, we got up very late and most of the day was relaxing, although we did take our first solo car rapide trip downtown and explored all over the place, which was nice. It seems like most if not all of Dakar is pretty safe during the day and people don't harass you for the most part. This brings me to the idea of what streets are like. I'll start with sidewalks. There are a few different varieties: the sandy shoulder, the "this was at one time a sidewalk but now it's mostly sand," the cobblestones, and occasionally an actual sidewalk. To add to this, sidewalks can be obstructed by a few different things: trees, cars that park there, and a few different kinds of shops (among other things). Shops along the street can be as simple as just selling shoes or cell phone covers. There are also women who sell little bags of peanuts and the local oranges. Then there are the slightly more permanent fruit stands that sell what looks like imported fruit (bananas, oranges, melons, tangerines etc.). Finally there are the little "alimentation general" stores that are tiny and yet seem to contain everything - they sell bread, candy, and then if you look closer they have eggs, and all sorts of general cooking supplies. There's one every couple of streets even in the very residential neighborhoods - we have one right next to our house where we buy our bread every morning. Sometimes they're in a building, sometimes they're just their own stall sitting in the sidewalk. Regardless they spill out and tend to be local hangouts.
All this to say that most of the walking happens in the streets. This also means that traffic is pretty slow, given that cars have to share not only with other cars (without the idea of traffic laws, signs, or a single stop light in the entire city), but horse drawn chariots that pick up trash, and people and the occasional goat. While this is totally hectic and accidents clearly do happen, it seems like for the most part no one's ever going fast enough to actually get hurt. They also use horns a lot more just to let pedestrians know that they're here. Taxis also honk whenever they see us as well, since there's a chance, as a westerner, that I'm totally lost. Of course there's much more to say about the experience of walking around here (particular examples come to mind), but I have to get offline soon. It's been great to hear from people lately, so keep that up :)
Sonya