Point E

Point E carries a name off a land-survey map and nobody quite remembers why. It is a small district of low villas wedged between the university and the VDN which became, over twenty years, where Dakar goes out to dinner: the houses were turned into restaurants, terrace bars, physiotherapy practices and communications agencies, and you can still read the old floor plans in the shape of the dining rooms.

It is the live-music quarter. Just 4 U, on avenue Cheikh Anta Diop, has been booking the big names of mbalax and Senegalese jazz since the 1990s, with concerts that start at ten and end when they end; smaller stages have opened around it since. The rest of the night runs along a hundred metres: an Ivorian maquis, a Lebanese place, a pizzeria, shisha terraces, and café Touba sellers who hold out until three in the morning.

By day the district belongs to students and office workers: the campus is across the boulevard, offices occupy the upper floors, and the restaurants run set lunches the whole neighbourhood knows by heart. There is a small market, two supermarkets, pharmacies, and streets short enough for everything to be done on foot — which is rare in Dakar.

One thing to know before sleeping here: it is loud late, especially at weekends and especially on the avenue side. Take a room over the courtyard, or choose Mermoz a kilometre away if you plan to be in bed by ten.

More prosaically, Point E is also Dakar's district of clinics, dental practices and analysis laboratories: a good address if you travel with an elderly parent or a small child, because everything is five minutes away on foot rather than forty minutes of traffic. The quarter is small — you walk round it in a quarter of an hour — and that size is its main asset: restaurant, pharmacy, bank, mini-market and taxi all within the same radius, which is rare in a city built around the car.