The months of August and September serve as the primary rainy-season months in Senegal. We had relatively little rain during the first 20 days or so of August and we started to suspect people were exaggerating this whole “rainy season” phenomenon. Then, one Saturday, the skies opened up.
Buckets of rain covered Dakar, and because lack of planning is the name of the game with African infrastructure, few of the paved roads have adequate drainage systems.
The main road leading to the airport was so flooded that low-sitting taxis had to simply pull over and wait for the flood waters to dissipate. I was riding with a friend in her SUV and we plowed through the street water – though she, ahem, expressed doubt that we’d make it through the small river that had formed (she may or may not have dropped multiple panicked F-bombs).
Unpaved areas tell the tale of rain for days after it’s stopped. Some of the dirt roads collect puddles so big they are nearly impassable on foot.
Rachael Cullins is a twentysomething American girl living in Dakar, Senegal, with her husband and two dogs. She blogs about her adventures in Senegal and travels elsewhere in West Africa. She will reside in Dakar until summer 2013, when she and her family will move to another foreign post as part of her husband’s career with the U.S. government. In addition to West Africa, she has traveled to France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Italy and Costa Rica and plans to continually add to that list.
