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Mark Moxon's Travel Writing

Senegal: The Language Barrier

Thinking about it, Senegal is the first country I've been where the lingua franca between fellow travellers hasn't been English. It's often struck me how lucky I am to be able to speak English, not least because international travellers often speak English when they get together because that's the language they all have in common. In Senegal, though, it's completely different, and I get the feeling that this will be the case for all of the Francophone countries in West Africa, because the cultural mix of tourists is different.