Dakar

We stayed in the Ganalé Hotel, recommended to us by VSO colleagues. It had a funky bar with great ambiance, subdued lighting and old musical instruments decorating the walls.  Discrete Western and African music filled the bar with the latest romantic tempos.  Even the bar stools were famous in Dakar.  The legs from shop window manikins were bolted onto the high bar stools.  These were painted as if the legs wore frilly knickers and fishnet stockings.  Strangers to the bar often did a double take as they thought they saw a man standing at the bar wearing fishnet stockings.  It was a fun place and an excellent start to an evening in the city.  After a drink we moved on to the Farid restaurant, reputed to be best Lebanese restaurant in Dakar, located in Rue Vincens a narrow side street, just off Avenue Georges Pompidou, the main drag.  As we entered, the waiter glided between the twelve discrete tables set out in the dark wood panelled restaurant.  Each table was immaculately laid out with a crisp white table cloth and two sets of silver cutlery. A single red rose in a cut glass vial added a spark of colour whilst a candle in a coloured glass candle holder illuminated the faces of the diners in romantic gleams of soft light.  The food was excellent, well balanced blends of delicate Lebanese flavours. This contrast to Gambia was amazing and we started to plan the next few days and finding the embassies to get our visas .

The next day we chatted to the local taxi drivers and negotiated a rate for taking us to the Burkina Faso embassy.  What at first sight seemed like a relatively easy job with a good guide book, a map of Dakar and a local taxi driver was far from straightforward.  The problem was that the embassy had moved.  Our friendly taxi driver Omar was however tenacious and resourceful. Having arrived at the given address and realised that the embassy was no more he asked at local shops and chatted to old men sitting smoking outside their houses.  There was consensus that the Burkina Faso chaps had up sticks and moved. Eventually someone thought they knew the general area of town were the new embassy was located.  So we went there and Omar diplomatically pumped the locals for intelligence on the migratory embassy.  Whilst Margaret spoke French and better Wolof than I Omar knew the local dialects and could more readily plumb the nuances of the garbled explanations.  He reported back regularly on the latest piece of fragmentary evidence.  We felt we were getting closer when two small boys on bicycles reported to Omar that they could lead us to a side street and the missing embassy. Omar seemed cautious about this lead and thought it might be just a scam, but we followed the two bicycles in Omar’s taxi.  Sure enough there it was, in an out of the way side street across the city from its first location.  The boys were rewarded by an amount advised by Omar and we rang the bell on the gates.  The caretaker, with a huge grin and missing front tooth, advised us that the embassy was closed for the day but would be open the next day and gave us the phone number.  Omar took us back to the Ganalé and had to be pressed to accept a fare which we thought commensurate with all the assistance he had given us. We agreed to meet next day to try again and braced ourselves for long bureaucratic delays.

The next day dawned bright and early at the Burkina Faso embassy.  A delightfully efficient embassy clerk took our details and gave us forms to fill in.  She asked us to return in the afternoon to collect our passports and visas.  At two o clock we had three month, multiple entry visas.  She said she was delighted that we wanted to visit Burkina and hoped we had a wonderful trip.  Omar waited patiently outside ready to take us to the Mali embassy.  He had already made discrete enquires and confirmed that it was located where our ‘Rough Guide to West Africa’ said it was.  We noted the new address and telephone number of the Burkina embassy and passed these on to the ‘Rough Guide.’ Our reception at the Mali embassy was similarly friendly but the guard told us it would closed during the public holiday, next day.

This article is part of a series describing our tour of West Africa
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