Wednesday, October 22, 2008

The following is a photo of a "gravel-making business" that is close to our apartment. We walk by here every day on our way to get a taxi. A man sits inside the hut pounding rocks into smaller rocks. He does this all day long. His gravel that he has for sale is in the buckets.


Next is an office supply business in the heart of Dakar's business district.
Next is furniture manufacturing in our neighborhood.

Peanuts are one of the crops grown in Senegal, and peanuts are commonly sold in the market. Sometimes you see someone cooking the peanuts in a pot over a fire. The pot is filled with sand, which keeps the peanuts from burning. Once the peanuts are roasted, then the contents of the pot are poured into a strainer to remove the sand.
The bank is one of the nice buildings!
This shop sells camera supplies. One day we needed a battery for our Sony camera. A two hour walking search through the stores in our part of the city did not locate a battery. We were able to get a 40 minute taxi ride to the main business section of Dakar where we could purchase the battery at about 150% of what it would cost in the USA. Technology is scarce here.




Here you can see Ron at the doorway of one of the nicer businesses, a laundry. We stopped here to ask about laundry prices one day and met two very nice men who had spent time in the U.S. and who spoke very good English. They were so helpful to us. In fact, they gave us directions to several places that we had been looking for in our neighborhood. It is so nice to come across such friendly and helpful people! One of the men even took us to the closest grocery store in his brand new car (a Nissan Pathfinder with full leather interior) that he had just had shipped from the U.S. He told us he could resell it in Dakar for about three thousand dollars profit.

The nearest Mosque from our apartment was across the street from this laundry. As we were talking with the man who owned the laundry, we commented about how loud the calls to prayers were from the Mosque speakers. The man laughed and said "Yes, many of our people say that is nearly enough to cause them to leave our Muslim faith."

















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