Where The Streets Have No Names

First, my big news of the day: I've been accepted to the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health! They just sent me an email actually. I applied to the Global Health MPH program.

Now time for a post that I've really been meaning to do since the beginning and which I think will be of particular interest to people who have lived in Dakar: things that have changed. Here is the list of the things that I have noticed so far.

-There are more and newer buses (not all of them are new but I think the fact that even some of them are new is a significant change). Now the buses come preatty much every 10-15 minutes, although I doubt they are on a schedule. They also go many more places. In addition, little white mini-bus things have been added to the public transit scene just about a month ago I've been told. I have no idea where they go or how much they cost, but they are running.

-There are street signs!!! I don't think any one really pays attention to them or uses them for that matter, but they have been put up. I found that pretty impressive. When I was here before in 2002-2003, I was very much bothered by the fact that street signs pretty much didn't exist. Now that they have been put up, it's not nearly as satisfying as I would have hoped. My host family lives on DD-21 and I live on KR-08 or something like that. Not too exciting. The letters come from the name of the neighborhood.

-There seems to be more of a presence of traffic cops directing traffic. This seems to make the traffic patterns a little less crazy. Thank goodness!

-Taxes and cars have stopped honking so much (thank goodness again!) and now flash their brights to get people's attention.

-The Mobil station by WARC has expanded! Now it's got 3 little fastfood places inside and a little jungle gym things for kids. I hardly even recognized the corner when I first saw it.

-There has been a strange emergence of amusement park type places. One is in Baobab and it is a bumper car thing. The other is an ACTUAL amusement park complete with a ferris wheel and located next to Terrou-bi Casino (not too surprising). I'm scared of it. It's way too wierd to have that in Dakar. Now when you look down the Corniche from Medina you see a ferris wheel in the distance!!

-Fewer people yelling toubab (white person/foreigner)!!

-People downtown seem to be less aggressive, but that could just be because I'm used to blowing them off and ignoring them now. Or maybr they've figured out that gtting aggressive and in people's faces doesn't make them want to buy things from you.

-The money has changed! The bills are smaller, the 5000 CFA is now green, a blue 2000 CFA bill has been added, and the 500 CFA bill has now been replaced with a coin.

-Somehow violet and red eyebrows have become trendy. Senegalese makeup can be strange and unnatural enough to begin with (mostly just for big occasions). Now many women have taken to plucking their eyebrows out and replacing them with red or violet lines. Granted, it doesn't look as wierd on them as it would look on me, but still.