Besides taxis, Dakar has four types of busses, and the most famous is called car rapide ("fast car" in English). These are small, colorful busses that were introduced to Dakar in the 1970s from France. These busses have no specific route, so they go wherever people need to go. All car rapides have gold and blue paint but also have paintings of Senegal's national symbols and leaders on them.
Besides car rapides, Senegal has bus routes all over the city and the banlieu ("suburbs" in French). There are also coach busses that take people to other cities in Senegal. Last week, my friends and I took a ten hour bus journey to Banjul, which is the capital of the Gambia, a country bordering Senegal!
At first, I was very nervous to take the taxi because I didn't know how to negotiate prices, and I was scared to speak French. Unlike American taxis or Ubers where your driver has a GPS, in Dakar you sometimes have to tell your driver where to go. Now that I've lived in Senegal for two months, I am more comfortable taking taxis. I now ask my drivers questions about Senegal or practice my Wolof. When riding in a taxi I always love to look out the window and admire the buildings and lively streets of Dakar!
In Senegal, there is a well-known saying: "The first price is never the final price." In Senegal, you negotiate the price of everything that isn't sold in a store. So far, I've negotiated the price of fabric, taxis and even fruits!
