Storm!

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I woke up this morning thinking the wind was strong enough to blow our apartment down. My curiosity popped me out of bed and sent me toward the window. Trash whipped in the street and people’s clothes tangled around their bodies. The cloud cover was a strange brown. “I forgot how close we are to the Sahara,” Comments my roommate when I pointed this out. “Maybe it’s sand?” Then it started to rain. In about 5 minutes the gutters on all the buildings were like waterfalls, and not ground-level gutters, but the roof ones. And not just one! There are probably 3 along the roof of the dorms across the way, and all three are going nuts!

When we left the apartment about an hour later, the rain was gone and everyone started to come outside. Apparently when the first few rains of the season come, the wind whips up all the dust on the ground and everyone shuts their windows and stays inside because it gets absolutely everywhere. The streets were covered in trash. That is one thing I have not mentioned about Dakar, there is no recycling and the trash service is pretty sketchy. Everyone just throws their trash on the ground, and coming from someone who is used to religiously recycling, who was willing to bring plastic bags from Atlanta back to Eugene to be recycled, it has been rather shocking. I have a hard time throwing away my toothpick.. it is still in my purse.. let along a piece of trash. Anyway. All the trash is swept against the walls of compounds and ignored. After the storm ALL of this was in the street. It covers the pavement completely. By the time we were out, some of it was starting to be swept up but it was still pretty bad.