We stood and eyed the strip of cement, four inches wide, eight feet long, bounded on either side by murky pools of water, blockaded in the middle by the sandaled feet of a shop owner.
The strip was the last tough part of our journey. If we could cross the concrete, only three huge mounds of climbable rubble led uphill past the flood to solid ground. We could get to dinner dry. It was the 30th minute of our one-kilometer journey from the office to Ngor Beach, and we had come through a roller-coaster taxi ride and a hike through flooded backstreets to get to this point.
We held our breaths and stepped out onto the strip.
Dakar sees rain for three months of the year or less, and no one paid attention to these months when designing the city. On the last night of Will’s whirlwind visit from Accra, we left work to go to dinner on Ngor Island, just off the coast near the office. Getting there requires a pirogue ride. We didn’t expect that the journey would require another aquatic crossing. When we got close to the beach, we entered a surreal world of soft orange sunset light reflecting off the rivers which had replaced the streets. The taxi would go no further.
The side-alleys were knee-deep. Kids walked through the water, played in it, while adults with their worldly problems avoided it. An informal new sidewalk gave access to house steps and shop porches. Just as snow does every winter in the cities where I grew up, the natural world had invaded the human landscape, and the people adjusted.
We made it across the concrete strip, of course, and chalked up another little bit of unexpected happiness thrown our way by Dakar.