LIFESTYLE

Two Missing Smartphones, and Meeting People’s Daily Needs in Senegal

By Sam P.K. Collins WI Staff Writer

This is the second installment in a series about Sam P.K. Collins’ travels to Dakar, Senegal.

Not long after publishing the first installment of my Dakar, Sen- egal series, my phone and that of my significant other disappeared from our hotel room.

Last I recall, we were watching Youtube documentaries on her phone in the wee hours of the morning. Once she fell asleep and my eyelids grew heavy, I threw our phones on the bed and turned to my side in preparation for a good sleep.

When I woke up out of my slumber four hours later, I searched the bed for my phone, as I always do as a force of habit. Unfortunately, we never found my phone or hers. They weren’t on our bed where we left it. Neither were they underneath the bed or anywhere else in the room. During our search, I found that the balcony door, which was closed earlier in the night, was wide open.

I’ll let you, the reader, put two and two together.

This situation became somewhat of a setback in what has otherwise been a relaxing and eye-opening experience. However, as I repeated in my inner-D.C. voice throughout that day, someone out there around the hotel caught us loafin’, even though we had taken extreme precautions to not be on the receiving end of a scheme.

In the days preceding and following that incident, my significant other and I would often walk the streets of Ngor, Dakar -- along what’s called the Airport Route

-- and the Alimades where all the popular nightclubs are located, all in search of a good time.

Indeed, we found several places to have a good time. We also found panhandlers of different ages.

In Dakar, panhandling is an industry and family activity. Sometimes, groups of children may walk up to you with buckets in hand, motioning their hand toward their face in request of some money. Other times, it might be an elderly woman in a Muslim shawl or a man with a physical disability.

In other instances, as I had witnessed firsthand, a little girl might leave her mother and siblings on the curb to chase someone and pull them by the arm in the hopes that they provide some funds.

I’m not going to lie. When that little girl did that, the D.C. in me turned around quickly and yelled, not seeing who I was yelling at at that moment. When I looked to my left and looked down to see the little girl, I grew embarrassed and apologized repeatedly as she grew startled.

Minutes later, I circled back to break the young sister off with a 500 CFA, what’s almost a U.S. dollar.

These moments, and other mo- ments from Ngor, continued to stay with me throughout my stay. Students who navigate Senegal’s public education system often experience more difficulty in passing through the secondary tertiary levels if they don’t make the mark on their exams. Those who don’t fulfill requirements to pass through the next level are funneled off into trades that might not be lucrative.

This situation bears a striking similarity to what our Black children experience in the U.S. In the absence of quality education and a social safety net, people are left to participate in alternative economic systems and revert to habits that destroy people, or at the very least inconvenience them, as had been the case for my significant other and me when our phones disappeared.

In the ongoing fight for African liberation, we must be cognizant that we’re in the period of class struggle where the enemies of progress aren’t only Europeans, but those with significant economic means who perpetuate systems that exploit families, and most especially children.

Read more on washingtoninformer.com. WI

@SamPKCollins

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