Senegal is a country where, in the opposite of its neighbor, Mauritania, no local people with whom I have spoken to wants to leave.
The culture is strong. Every local love the rice and the cous-cous, the bread with meat and onions and the onion sauce. Do not forgetting about the Fatai. Every local love to dance and start to dance as soon the music starts. This unique way to dance. What I unfortunately could notice by (against my will) watching some local video clips, is that the culture of the country is suffering the same as Brazil: the new generation is throwing on the trash what used to be good, just caring about semi naked women shaking their bumps, cars, money. Ostentation. Every local will say “Salaam —” when getting on the bus or in whatever shop and they also will greet you when pass by on the streets. They are really smiley and friendly.
Of course there are some things that the new generation also brought strongly. The sexual tension is strong and you can feel everywhere, with everyone. It looks like that everything that is important is to find someone to date, so everyone should date. Of course you can imagine how weird I sound here. Some girls from the University had four or even ten boyfriends. I do not know how serious they take that but it was what they told me. The men who saw you on the streets just say “I will call you”. Taxi drivers, normal people and even the policeman. Some girls just give a wrong number and I bet some of them give the right one.
The beauty around the female is something extremely important. You see, there is something about the Senegalese women that is curious: a lot of them do not have long hair. For some reason that I do not know, probably biology, their hair simply just not grow up more than a few centimetres. So they do a small rasta with that and use wigs that they have in some different styles and colors. I was so surprise when I figure out how important this is for them.
So now you can imagine how contradictory is my situation in here: when I think I finally find a place where most of the woman are bald or have really small hair and then I will be just another one, they actually do not understand why someone who could have a natural long hair (they presume that as a white person I can) decide to become bald.
Even that most of then love to live in here, it is a safe country compared with the other African ones, I just do not get it. When I saw the situation of the streets, the busy full of people places all the time, the buses conditions, the pollution everywhere, the expensive cost of life (to a healthy one at least), I only can imagine that those people, the young ones at least, have no idea how the world is outside of here.
Is hard for me get a clean conclusion: I am judging the country based exactly in everything that I saw and lived, or I am being influenced buy the bad things that happening to me since the beginning? My watch got stolen, my backpack broken and all the bad people I have met… would that be the reason? Maybe in the future, after talk with more people who have being in here, I can figure that out.