stairs to nowhere

Everyday to get to my office I must climb over a cement barrier in order to cross the Route d'Aeroport highway. These barriers were constructed during the political push to make the (main) roads in Dakar more presentable. The road reconstruction was done for the 2008 Islamic Summit held in Dakar, where various leaders from Islamic nations came to a weeklong conference to talk about the issues plaguing Islam and predominately Islamic countries.

What came out of this conference was a lot of money from the visiting leaders, which has since disappeared into the pockets of various government officials. This is common knowledge, not a conspiracy theory. After the Summit work was stopped on the roads leaving the one in front of my office in limbo. This road, as I mentioned, is a highway with two lanes in each direction, making it a “big road” by Dakar standards.

The barriers that I must climb over everyday were built to prevent cars from making illegal turns, driving on the wrong side of the road, and to give order to the general chaos. It worked and traffic is much more orderly. The current problem is the pedestrians. Pedestrians are not going to walk five minutes out of their way to an intersection sans barrier. No, pedestrians are going to go through an obstacle course to cross the street. Mind you, the majority of the pedestrians are women wearing long skirts with babies on their backs. The barrier reaches my hip so most people have to do a mount-jump move or a swing-the leg-over maneuver. Either way is not easy. I once saw a woman with a baby on her back and butane burner on her head climbing over the cement obstacle. A new Olympic event…

Did I mention that stairs were built to provide a covered passageway over the highway? Yes, stairs were built but not the passageway. Apparently, there won’t be enough money for that construction for another year and a half. Pairs of stairs stick out of the ground like random sculptures dotting the highway landscape.

Street children like to climb and sit on those stairs that lead to nowhere. Sometimes after having climbed over the barrier about ten times in one day, that image becomes exemplary of Senegal’s future if changes aren’t made.