The Copeland Ramblings/

Caca water!

Life is always an adventure here in Dakar! Today was NO exception!!! We are lovers of adventure. We love it when God puts adventure into our lives.  Living in Canada every now and then we would slide off the road from the snow storms…. we always got  a thrill from the adventures!

Today is our day off from class, so we decided to go to a somewhat nearby grocery store and get a few things and try out a little sandwich place, too.  Our car is getting its headlights fixed so we had to take a taxi. We found one easily and headed off. We arrived at the grocery store no problem. We went to a pretty touristy area of town and the grocery store is in a little mall. They have a dry cleaners and two Guess stores and a City Sport and a few other places.  It was nice… we did not find everything we were looking for but no worries. We then sit down at this little sandwich place and order paninis. Turns out the paninis were great except their flavor… they were curry chicken apparently… Oh well! While we are sitting there eating we notice it really starts to rain… like REALLY RAIN! We were a little bit worried since we had not expected rain at all…. We left our windows in our house wide open! I always leave our windows open since its so hot and humid. We have to have the air flow!

We sat and ate and tried to wait out the rain… but after a while we figured we should just go for it and get home. We waited at the door and tried to flag down a taxi. There was one sitting across the street and one of the mall workers flagged it over. We quickly hop in… getting soaked in the process. Normally we stand outside the taxi and discuss the price and where we are going. But this time we had no choice we hopped right in! To our surprise the driver was a woman. I have never seen or heard of a female taxi driver. Turns out she pretty much only works the touristy areas and drives people from hotels to touristy spots. But it worked out anyway. We payed about twice as we normally would… but she earned every penny!

This is where the adventures really start! We immediately noticed the roads were totally flooded every where we looked and went. The first thing we see is a HUGE truck fell off the side of the road… looked as if the road had given way on the edge and it was tilted over.  I have NO IDEA how they will get the truck out.

We continue on… we try route after route after route and every way we go we end up at a point that is not passable because of flooding. She, like most Senegalese taxi drivers, was being very creative and driving all over the place… driving over mediens and sidewalks, going down the wrong way on one way roads with huge buses driving straight for us. Not to mention, we could hardly see out the windows because of the moisture on the windows. We kept wiping them down so she could see out.

We then get to one point where we are at a stand still. We then notice in front of us a ways we see a HUGE pile of stacked bins of soda. Another huge truck had lost his back wheel. So they were unloading all of the soda that was in the truck… right onto the road. So the two lane road turned into a one lane road…. VERY normal for life in Dakar.  We continue on.

We finally get with in several blocks of our house. We knew she would not be able to get us past the market just down the road from us. So we get to the market and we said that there was no way she would be able to get us any further. So, much to her protest, we get out into the pouring rain… with kids and groceries in hand!

(The upper left hand corner of this picture is where we started walking.)

We are immediately soaked and in ankle deep waters. We call this water Caca water. Because the sewage pipes all over flow into the roads when it floods. Poor Canaan is instantly bawling… because he knows the water is dirty… we have been telling him for months not to get into the water because is its nasty! I was carrying all the groceries while Norm had Emmaus…. so Norm told me to give him the groceries and then I could carry Canaan. So now Norm has 5 bags of groceries and Emmaus, I have my bag packed with stuff and groceries and am holding Canaan who is sobbing. We trudge on! Through the water and rain! We got many looks of understanding and also looks of… wow… look… these white people are like us! They live in this too! It was  a good feeling to be locals!

(A view from our balcony)

We then get down to our building. This is the lowest part of the neighborhood! Its CHEST deep with water! We start carefully balancing ourselves around the edges of the waters so we didn’t fall in…. we would climb up on the steps of peoples homes and businesses and did our best to stay out of the water. We finally get to this point of deep waters or inching along a slopped piece of cement. We started for it… stuggling with the kids. A woman comes out screaming at us… no don’t go that way… we tried to explain we lived that way… finally we realize she wants us to go through her house to the ally way. What a sweet woman. She led us through to the ally and that way we got right next to our building. But the worst part was still to come! Our local metal worker, who works right in front of our apartment saw us and came wading across the water to help us! HOW SWEET! Thats what you get for taking the time to make friends! He took the groceries and stuck them in the little shack for their tools. Then he came and grabbed Canaan from me and let me inch along a 2 inch piece of cement. Then it was Norm’s turn… he had Emmaus and was holding on to a metal thing that holds bottles of gas. The door swung open and Norm fell into the water a little bit and got right back up.  Then we get to our building… but for some reason they have a fence along the middle of the fence (its always there… like it marks the change of property or something…) … making the steps impassable unless we go around the fence. So our friend Mali passes the kids over the fence and then shows us where to step in the water so we don’t fall! How nice of them to help us! Then we get past the fence and we are home free! We are soaked from head to toe… and a lot of  ”Caca water” all over! At least we didn’t have to get chest deep! While we were trying to get past the fence we noticed that there was a big truck in the middle of the water and there were about 15 men in there, chest deep, pushing the truck out! Incredible!

(Lots of water!!)

(This is a picture of our friend, Mali, cleaning up after a past flood)

We finally get up to our house to find water coming out our front door! Haha!

We had water in the living room, two bedrooms and the office. The clean up when smoothly and our neighbor came over to help us clean it up!

We can only laugh! This is so typical for life in Senegal! The flooding is slowly going away… we hope it will be gone by morning so we can get out if need be!

Thanks for reading about our crazy day! We hope some of you can someday come visit us and experience some of these fun adventures first hand!

Life goes on here in the flooded Parcelles Unite 14!

Here are a couple pics of what it looks like with no flooding:

On this day..

• A Good View - 2008
• San Diego - 2007