I arrived in Dakar right before Christmas, but it didn't seem like it because below the equator the seasons are opposite of the seasons above the equator. Also, West Africa has so many different religions that don't celebrate that particular holiday. There is little decoration and no Christmas caroling or music. My memories from there are spotty because I stayed very busy the 3 1/2 months, December to April that I was there. A baby grows and changes a lot during the 2nd half of it's 1st year.
When we first arrived, me carrying a baby and a diaper bag and pushing another bag along with my foot, we were put in line to go through customs. At the window I could not understand what anyone was saying. It was all French but with a thick accent-- then I heard Bob's voice behind a barrier so I could not see him, but he could hear me saying, ''I don't understand.'' And I heard him say, ''Tell them three days.'' Apparently I came in with a visitor's visa and the first thing we needed to do was take a taxi to the Global Marine office to give them my passport and visa to get it properly stamped. The city seemed to be in the desert and on the long ride from Dakar's airport I saw stretches of sand and buildings that looked like they were made of sand and people riding camels and cars, many more cars than I imagined would be with us on that desert road.
Beyond the desert we came into a city with storied buildings that seemed to have popped up out of nowhere. If it had not been for the buildings that were not tall enough to be called skyscrapers, I might have thought I was in Houston with the glass windows housing stores and shops of every ilk along the entirety of each city block. It looked a little like New Orleans with balconies on the faces of buildings and locked gates leading to courtyards between the walls and the glass of the doors and windows.
At the Global Marine office there was one secretary behind a desk who took my passport and said she would take care of it. She cooed over the baby Eva and told me where some American friends I knew , Gary and Callie Blackorby and their children Ronnie and Sissy, were living in Dakar.
The place Bob had rented was back toward the desert but I could see houses and businesses and a mosque. He'd rented the main part of a huge adobe house. We opened and entered through a locked gate in a rock wall in a silent neighborhood. The house was mostly empty and so huge and so empty our voices echoed. Bob said it was in the process of being furnished by the landlord. There was a mattrass in one room, and a chest of drawers.
That first night Eva slept in a drawer next to our bed. The kitchen was empty but had lots and lots of countertop and two cook stoves, a big one with an oven and another with two big burners, no oven, but a cupboard below that had a butane bottle inside. It was hot in Dakar, in our house, and tho there was a bathroom with a shower, the water was cold because we hadn't gotten fuel to light the little 5-gallon hot water heater.
There were windows but no way to close them and no screens. Bob told me the landlord had sent men to install screens, and that they'd put wooden slats into the centers of the ledges around the windows. As they were leaving and Bob was asking when they would return to install the screens, the foreman said to him, "Finis. Finis." I have seen that French word at the end of movies and think that it means, " The End."
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