Dakar, Senegal – On a weekday at Dakar’s open-air Fass Market, traders call out in a rhythmic buzz as some buyers approach from a nearby major highway: Boulevard du General de Gaulle, a road named after a former French president and a man not everyone here knows.
It irks meat seller Matar Seck that street names like these – remnants of a painful colonial past – exist at all. Standing in front of his stall where he patiently waited for a customer, Seck questioned the point of having an Avenue Faidherbe, named after a brutal colonial governor, or a Rue de Jules Ferry, after a French politician who once claimed colonialism was necessary. Like many Senegalese, Seck said he wants change.
