Le Phare

We had our first "all by ourselves" family outing here in Dakar. It went really well. On a side note I feel like our pictures show such a tiny bit of our lives because of the fact that taking pictures is super sensitive here. We've heard stories of people getting very upset over photos taken of them and its very difficult to take a picture that accurately depicts life in Senegal (or at least Dakar) without the people! People are everywhere...culturally it is not normal to stay in your house all day..you go out to the road or wherever outside and be with the other people! But since we do not have a lot of real friendships yet with the people here we also don't have a "right" to take pictures and taking pictures of the city without people in them is impossible. Anyway...that's why you just see pictures of the "fun" and somewhat rare things we do for the most part.

Today we had a free day and decided to check out the center vehicle (and it was available which is rarely the case!) and go on a family outing. We stopped by the big grocery store here that is across town to get things that we can't get anywhere else and then drove up to the lighthouse or "le phare". The view was beautiful. The actual grounds were...well they were. I won't say too much about it except that the kids had fun despite the fact that there wasn't much to enjoy on the actual grounds. There were two sheep grazing up there, a cat, and some toddlers who belonged to...someone up there.  So we made the best of it and had fun with our pic-nic.  We tried not to think of the fancy french cheeses and baguettes that we had during our french pic-nics (bread machine bread, leftover hotdogs and cut up veggies had to suffice:).

One of the views...right now is one of the greenest times of year.

The lovely Liv.

Nice smiles from my pretty girl!

The three enjoying their picnic. 

The steps up to the lighthouse (not open to the public).

So handsome..one of the little Senegalese toddler girls kept trying to hold his hand.

Pretty and cheesey all at the same time!

Boys posing by the other view.

Mommy and her boy (with his mouth full of brea).

There was a nice little breeze every once in awhile too...

Voila...le phare

Notice the sheeps (is that how you say sheep in plural???)

The beaches are pretty...come visit!

Les trois enfants

Les deux se cachent...

Sheep...again

Marianna and her hot dog, Louis and Liv with their brownies

We were so thankful to have had a day where we felt like we could go and do something as simple as do some grocery shopping and visit a local monument.  We felt safe and everyone had a good time...a big accomplishment.  With the heat/humidity that was almost as much as we could reasonably "do" in a day, but little by little we'll get used to it and be able to handle more eventually!