Dakar Doldrums

Wow! Made it! Just enough gas! Give me water! No more land! We can't go any further 'cause there ain't no more land!

The road that connects Kayes to Dakar is the same width as a residential street in the midwest. For hundreds of kilometers outside of Dakar the landscape is a flat plain of dry, trampled yellow grass and a few trees. I can now say with some authority that a lot of West Africa looks like that: like what's left after the state fair pulls out of town: an expanse of trampled grass and garbage strewn dirt where a few vendors linger to unload what's left of their goods: cigarettes and peanuts and plastic plates sold under bare bulbs on the side of the highway. The first change in scenery since day break came when I looked up from my book and saw the ocean where the plain had been and knew we were finally closing in on Dakar. Dakar: the only turn, a right, of the entire trip. It's quite a place! A real Europeany type city, which makes it too expensive and torturous for the likes of me. Ice cream palors, shoe stores, jewlers and restaurants! Lord save me, so many restaurants. The expensiveness is compromising my ability to enjoy; I get angry paying for things and try to reep small revenges and get my money's worth. I leave the fan running constantly in my $20 a night hotel room, and make a thurough mess of the bathroom thinking, well that's what they get for being so damned expensive. It leaves me with a bitter, frustrated, wasted feeling like I've spent a month and a half on a semi-rigorous diet only to blow it all two weeks from the end.

Okay, obviously that quote at the top is from On the Road, but slightly less obviously, so is the title of this blog. So, I propose to give a prize, a secret surprise prize from Dakar itself, to anyone who can tell me the real-life name of the character who is responsible for the phrase "Dakar Doldrums".