Walking London After Walking Dakar
After my recent return from Dakar, I was sensitised to the way I walk London.
Walking is evidently the most organic form of movement known to us. It remains one of the healthiest ways of moving forward (or backward and sideways), both for the body (minimising all sorts of health risks and promoting healthy muscle growth) and the mind (creating social, meditative and reflexive moments). However, our economic notion of time has de-valued walking. In a world of “work-life balance” many seem to forget about the significance of the journey between these fixed silos. We eagerly add up the few steps made between mostly “work” and the bit of “life”, as we minimise the time we spend on the movement between all other elements of life.
I usually walk new cities. It’s the best way for me to grasp the atmosphere of different places, develop a sense of orientation and engage with people. Most recently, I travelled to Dakar for the first time. The capital of “teranga” is likely to be the most welcoming and heartwarming place I have ever visited, while most of it is not a conveniently walkable city. Viyé Diba describes the experience of walking on the busy roads and sidewalk trade-spaces of Dakar as one of “contourner et enjamber” (stepping around and over). Nevertheless, it is by walking the erratic and unpredictable streets of Dakar that I received spontaneous dinner invitations, became friends with Amadou who sold me the newspaper every day or realised that Burna Boy’s recent visit still echoed through everyone’s speakers. My point is, walking allowed me to settle and learn quickly in Dakar.
My return to the linear and relatively undisturbed walks of London made me ponder on not only how walking itself, but also the way we walk influences our experience and life in cities. I’ve attempted to structure three of my thoughts below:
- Pace: London is known for its pace. People adapt and adopt this in each of their practices, including walking. Strolling through Dakar more slowly created opportunities for interaction and moments for reflection or observation.
- Distraction: The structure and predictability of streets in London, allows people to focus on other things besides walking — i.e. being on their phones. This triggers tensions rather than bonds between each passerby. This shocked me after having gotten used to the more social streets of Dakar. (Reflecting on AbdouMaliq Simone’s work on “Screen”, I noted that this imposes “screens” between citizens, reducing their very agency to act as or place “screens” themselves.)
- Community: Tying in with the above, less distraction corresponded to more interaction on the streets of Dakar. I was greeted regularly. My walks were interrupted constantly. Walking was more of a social experience of its own, rather than a focused transition from King’s Cross to Euston station, while on a stressed call. Connecting this back to pace, this evidently makes the duration of your trip longer and delays your arrival to your intended destination (if not changing your destination as a whole).
Merely based on personal observation and acknowledging that this is the result of far more (and more complex) variables, the levels of fitness and obesity were far healthier in Dakar than on the average London sidewalk. Again, without wanting to suggest a clear relationship of causation, I do want to point out that 70% of Dakar moves on foot, while 39% of Londoners are walking all or part of their commute each day (a number that decreased as more people opted for private transport throughout the Covid pandemic).
However, it is important not to romanticise the realities of the above. For many in Dakar walking is not a choice, but the only option. This certainly impacts people’s ability to trade or to attend school, amongst other factors. Walking in Dakar is also more dangerous, especially for children. Nevertheless, while it is certainly safer and more predictable, I struggle to believe that sitting on the Northern Line for hours at peak time every day creates more just spaces, liveable places and loving people.
Beyond interrogating our choice of transport, my point is to invite you to think about how you move based on this choice. What is your intention? What is your state of mind? Are you listening to “Get Rich Or Die Tryin’” thinking about your next meeting, or are you paying attention to the mother and children next to you that might need a hand?
Yes, transport is the fastest-growing CO2 emissions problem. Yes, “if every Londoner walked 20 minutes every day £1.6 bn could be saved in NHS treatment costs”. But perhaps this thinking may be a part of the problem. Our lives have come to be shaped by the monetary value transported, so much so that the monetisation of our lives is meant to make us walk. I eagerly invite you to walk; but to walk a little slower, with a little fewer distractions, and maybe even smiling or greeting one or two people on your way. You might be “made to wait”, but my time in Dakar showed me that this will create moments of far greater value than the additional zoom meeting that you will squeeze into your day.
