Le Monument de la Renaissance Africaine

Le Monument

We visited le Monument de la Renaissance Africaine a couple days ago, I think the day before yesterday anyway. It is a HUGE monument built by the current president, and is basically him, his wife, and his son overlooking Dakar. The people here are pretty mad at it, because it's this huge expensive monument with state of the art display systems and conference rooms inside (yes inside) the monument. All this in the face of poverty, it's such a stupid waste of money. And not only that but it's a representation of Wade with this chiseled body and beautiful wife (his is real life is white, by the way.. they kind of made a mistake there). But for us it's pretty cool to explore, and we went to the top, in Wade's hat. From there we could see all of Dakar, his "wife," and "son."

View from the top of the stairs-toward le Plateau 

View of woman from the hat

Model of Lutteurs, or wrestlers. Senegalese national sport. 

As a side note: today I learned an interesting cultural nuance. (And this probably why tourists are accepted only for their money. ha) Some Senegalese have a belief which stems from their ancestral pagan religion that when you take a picture of someone, you capture a piece of their soul. There is some connection between death and an image, that the soul will have a hard time moving on if it is caught in too many places. That's not an exact explanation, but it's the best I can do. This is not universal, but it is a general belief. So when you go into tourist mode, clicking away at pictures, you need to be careful who is in it. Always ask permission before taking a picture of someone, and be careful if you are taking pictures of groups in case someone gets offended... or before you get yourself into trouble. Just another fascinating cultural nuance. 

(However, I learned that many people are more than willing to be in a photo if you ask them politely. Just give them time to adjust their hair. For example, this guard shouldered his way into our photo, then promptly proposed to me.)

Roomies