Potholes

First day in Senegal, and the most memorable aspect of the trip so far is the road, which I guess makes sense, since it's where I spent all day.

The flight from JFK arrived half an hour early, and customs took no time at all. I found colleagues on the bus from the plane to the terminal, and then was more than a little embarrassed that we had to wait at least half an hour before EngenderHealth Senegal staff showed up. The same people I've been struggling with for weeks to put this trip together. Well, at least the bicycle people are all quite nice, and all had traveled extensively before, so were used to things not always going exactly as planned.

Got on the road sometime after 7:00, headed immediately out of Dakar. We were a group of 11 traversing Senegal: five white boys, three Senegalese mechanics, one Senegalese public health worker, and two drivers. My map says the road from Dakar to Tambacounda is a "primary paved road," and judging by the highway number (N1) , it seems to be the main road across the country. About the first half wasn't bad--certainly no worse than FDR Drive in New York. But after our stop for lunch (an exercise in patience for this adopted New Yorker), the road deteriorated rather quickly. There were short stretches where the paved road we were on had an unpaved road alongside it, and we almost invariably took the unpaved parallel because it was smoother. Need I say more?

I couldn't help wondering, over and over, about the whole development exercise. Decent roads--so that people can get to jobs, goods can get to markets, patients can get to doctors, etc.--are pretty clearly a central part of development. So why is it so hard to get such a simple thing done?

Perhaps I'll have something more profound to say tomorrow.