Long Walks On The.....

Monday, June 12, 2006

I suppose I have come to figure out a solution to my transportation dilemma here in Dakar. For the most part, I feel as I am doing good in maneuvering around town on public transportation, but there are still many routes I have not come close to mastering, and other routes I have yet to discover their existence. For those routes that I am unsure of, the solution to the problem has been to walk. Sometimes, this solution has come in handy after riding a mode of transportation for an hour or two, only to realize I: missed my stop, rode the wrong bus, or had no clue what happened.

When I came up with this piece after walking home from the center for Micro-Gardening today, I was quite intrigued to look at my handy map of Dakar to figure out some of these distances. I couldn’t tell you how far my walk today was because the Center was off the map. On a side note, my walk home today was more out of curiosity then anything.

While the first time I walked many of these routes, it was typically out of frustration, but now, I kinda like to do it. While I didn’t have the aid of mapquest, here are the estimated lengths (in kilometers) of some of my walks:

Hopital Fann to Peace Corps Office – 4.5 K
Peace Corps Office to Place de France – 2.5 K
House to Regional House – 3.25 k (typically don’t walk this)

If I could walk or even bike to work or downtown, I would, but neither are feasible, for different reasons. Regardless, you have to realize that Dakar is like any other major city in the fact that it encompasses a large space, which for some reason, some don’t realize. Living in the very northern edge of the city has made learning the best, fastest (relative), and cheapest modes of transportation important as well as the actual layout of the city.