I decided to visit Africa on a whim, not really knowing what I would find. The roundtrip flight from Spain wasn’t too bad and I didn’t know where I’d get this opportunity again.  

When I touched down, I didn’t really know what to expect. COVID was still a thing. When I first got to the airport it was kind of sparse in the hallways. They had nurses checking all of our COVID paperwork, but all of the hustle and bustle got worse as I reached the outside, even that late at night. I didn’t know how I’d get to my AirBnb but I took a look around and seemed to only have two options, either a public bus or a taxi. The public bus was daunting because I don’t speak Wolof and I didn’t even know where to get on at. I ended up encountering a scammer.  

I knew he was weird because he couldn’t look me in the eyes,. His eyes kept shifting from left to right as only an evil person’s would. I definitely got overcharged when he led me over to the taxi that would take me to Dakar. The, he did this weird predatorial thing once I got in the car. He stuck a leg in my taxi door and told me he needed coffee. He said that I wouldn’t want him to go without coffee would I? I’m not sure what that had to do with me but I just wanted to get away, so I just gave him the money.  

On the freeway at 1am, I first saw the genius that is Africa. I was on a three-lane highway, when a schoolbus packed with people drove down the middle of two lanes, creating an unofficial fourth lane. Clearly, even at 1am, people had places to go and things to do. I was so happy to see that. America would never, but that was neither here nor there, but at the same time, that was everywhere.  

When I got to my AirBnb, my host only had a moped. I had a huge, checked bag with me. I asked him how I was supposed to get to  the AirBnb with the luggage and he told me to hop on. I was like how, and he said, girl, this is Africa. I hopped on the the back and he grabbed my luggage and wheeled it down the street to my AirBnB. Just another example of ingenuity, and in the first night.  

Over the duration of my time there, I saw much more and understood why Europeans worked so hard to mischaracterize and hide Africa. People that spoke three, four, five languages. The businesses, whether they have overhead or were street vendors, I saw it in the mixture of the horses and buggy’s mixed with modern automobiles on the roads. It was in the lack of addresses in Dakar, but the cab drivers knowing the city like the back of their hand. I saw it in the negotiations of prices for items. I saw it in the grand street markets and the tailored clothing that draped Senegalese women’s bodies. I saw it in the African Renaissance Monument and the Mosque of the Divinity. 

That was the first time I had to confront my own internalized ideas of Africa. Why wouldn’t I expect to see genius in Africa, and not only in Africa but in the streets of Aix-en-Provence where I encountered immigrants from all over francophone Africa in the first place. I would say it was intimidating in a way, but at the same time it wasn’t. It was a bit freeing, and I just found myself wanting to join in.