Cyber Cafes

The Internet Cafes are called Cyber Cafes in Dakar. It is easy to find one, but it is not always easy to find one that is open. Many are open for only a few hours during the day. Most are very tiny with no windows and no air conditioning. That makes one want to send emails very quickly! The keyboards are French, so the keys are arranged differently from the English ones, and on top of that, many of the markings on the keys do not reflect what the key actually is. It is very time-consuming to type a message! Another big problem is that the electricity is not reliable, and right in the middle of a long email message, the electricity may go out for several hours!
Following are photos of one of the cyber cafes. You can tell by the photos that the cyber cafes aren't exactly modern! The computers are old, and most are really slow.






We did eventually find one close to our apartment that is in much better condition, and it does have some air conditioning! None of the Cyber Cafes we visited had English speaking managers. Finding out what the cost would be or if we could print something was a guessing game. When we wanted to send photos from a USB memory stick, we asked for help in connecting the memory stick as we could see no port. By hand motions and holding up the memory stick, they were able to point to the back of the computer, where there was a connector. We could not see the connector; we had to feel with our hands to see where to plug in to the computer.