Dakar is a modern city. I went to the grocery store, I took Ubers (Yango being the Senegalese equivalent), and I went to the bank; but it’s the little differences that you have to get used to. For one thing, traffic is a big issue and public transit can be intimidating to try, as it works differently than in the US. When a driver is just trying to do their job, the last thing you want to do is gum up the works for everyone else trying to understand where you are going and what is expected of you.

I think for me it was a little hard to wrap my head around where I would purchase things I needed. In my opinion, there were fewer small “mom and pop” shops you would pop into dotted across the city, and many more markets where just about everything was being sold. As a result, I probably frequented the more touristy strip malls a little too much, but even that was interesting to experience. One big difference in Senegal was that just about everything needed to be paid in cash. A sit-down restaurant would likely take card, but just about everything else would require physical cash, which meant a lot of trips to my local ATM if I wanted to buy anything.

But adjusting my expectations was absolutely worth it, as although some things were not as I was used to, many of these differences had unique benefits.