Public transportation in Dakar is an interesting process. There are buses which is conform to what one would see in documentaries on most of the African cities: colorful, full to the brim (and more) with passengers with some of them holding on any protuberances outside of the buses, move with the help of the spirits and marabouts’ blessings.
I have not taken one so far… For reasons you, my Dear Readers, may understand.
Then you have taxis.
They are plentiful and one will find one easily in any time of the day. The interesting part of that is the fare negotiation.
Usually, the not-too-wrong process is as follows:
- you hail a taxi or the taxi driver saw your lost foreigner face from afar (he horns at you)
- you tell him roughly the area you want to go (no need for details at this point)
- he tells you the price for clueless foreigner
- you offer half of it
- he will usually settle for the middle point
- Now, you have 2 possibilities:
- 1) you are tired/in a hurry/not feeling right applying all the OB shit: you accept
- 2) you hassle for 500Fr CFA less and threaten to go away and see his colleagues instead
Also, bear in mind that the price is the same whatever the state of the car.
My best experience was with a brand new Iranian taxi (IKCO) which I have mistaken for a Chinese one (logo is a horse head).
My worst was with a taxi which the exhaust pipe seemed to be leaking inside.
The average taxi usually looks like that in Dakar:
After you get into the taxi, you begin giving out precisions on your final destination. In the more complicated cases, you may have to micromanage him so that he brings you to the desired spot (and sometimes in broken Senegalese French… a very interesting experience).
So far, I have always arrived at my desired destination in one piece, for which I am grateful.
Impressions and Thoughts from Dakar 