Keeping up with the Diops*!
*Diop is a common family name in Senegal. Being back in my home town of Dakar, there are few things that I started to notice. One of them is that Dakar became a big construction site with houses, buildings, roads and so on. Moreover, every single lot is taken, even in the remote places where people did not want to initially live in. At this rate, I am afraid that in the future my kids will not be able to purchase a house, let alone a lot in this small town. On top of that, Dakar is saturated. There is traffic almost everywhere, people are jammed in small apartments, and need to go outside to have a little air in this heat. Markets are so crowded, that they surpass their normal areas and come all the way to residential areas. Sometimes I feel like I live in Bombay or Tokyo. It can make one feel very claustrophobic. But one phenomenon that has hit me the first weeks since our return is the luxury that people wrap themselves around in this city. For a developing country, there are many...