I found an interesting description of the Sandaga market on reddit. The thread, by the user jchapstick, has made it to the website's bestof. Here is an excerpt of the story :
"So we're in downtown Dakar, Senegal, "The Capital of West Africa", a huge, smoggy metropolis where there's desert sand in the streets and goats with saggy teats tied up on the sidewalks. Minarets mark the skyline, and many men dress in robes. With all the tourism, Dakar is also the home of the most persistent, pestering hustler kids in the world, the legendary faux-types ("foh-teep"). They follow you like crazy, hoping for a bit of change, or more likely, a finder's fee from whatever vendors you might visit in your travels. [...] My appetite whetted, a few days later I decided to brave the central market on foot."
I had already experienced two attempted robberies on the street in Dakar, so this time I left everything of value at the hotel, including my wedding ring. I went out in thin shorts, busted trainers and a t-shirt, with only a record cover in my hand to show what I was looking for, because my French stinks. No surprise, the second I left the hotel I was followed and hounded by a young faux-type, who would never leave my side until I returned to the hotel hours later. The money was in my shoe, 30 bucks or so in Senegalese currency.
After a long walk in the insane heat, we reached Sandaga market, found a CD seller, and showed him my album cover. In American-accented English, the CD seller said smoothly, "Oh, for that kind of thing you have to go to the Black Market." But he looked at me like I was an idiot for wanting records in the first place. Good sign. Imagine. This is a street market in central Dakar, Senegal, a city where the vast majority lives in tin-roof slums with open sewers. In this market there's total chaos in every direction, thousands of people buying and selling everything from a live chicken to a translucent toilet seat. Nobody's paying taxes on any of this informal commerce, and yet one of the sellers tells me to go to the "Black Market"!?!?! I'm like, 'If this guy calls it the Black Market, it must really be the Black Market.' So I am a little scared, but the hustler kid shows me the way.
We walk another ten minutes through the heat, trash, livestock and traffic to find it--a whole city block of shanty buildings and narrow alleys oozing grey water, little kids covered with mud, a totally fucking horribly scary shithole. [...] Salle des Ventes, I think they called it.
We approach the entrance and I am just mobbed by young, loud, dirty, stoned and/or drunken crazy-looking dudes, asking me what I need, literally shoving each other out of the way to get my business. I show them the record cover and they start bickering over who's going to get what part of the sale, who's going to lead me around, what size of a cut my faux-type is going to get, etc. Heated discussion. I lean on a car to wait for them to figure it out. Eventually, what I guess is the Main Dude of the Black Market emerges from out of the spooky entrance, a cigarette in his mouth and an ice-cold look in his eye. He looks me up and down, tells the other guys to lay off and leads me into the center of the block, which is like the freakiest walk I have ever taken.
There's broken and salvaged crap everywhere, scrap re-bar and wood with nails sticking out, cast-off plastic parts of old appliances, dirty piles of cloth, whatever. There's no electricity, so everything's dark except where the sun peeks in. The odor is noisome, as probably dozens of people live and defecate here. The place is like the Senegalese version of a thrift store, where various private scroungers hawk their used furniture, used washing machines, you name it. But this being a country that's 95 percent Muslim, there's also a little baby mosque in there, and guys praying.
We get into the inner sanctum, which is a furniture factory of sorts, where the Main Dude has a crew building couches and coffee tables. It's actually kind of nice in the middle there, with all the new furniture to sit on. And it's great to get out of the insane heat, but still my senses are screaming for me to run out of here and never look back. I have definitely given my self over to forces beyond my control. Everyone is yelling at each other, looking at me like a piece of meat. The Dude offers me a cigarette, which I refuse politely. He sends someone to get me a stick of gum and proceeds to roll himself a thin joint. He doesn't offer, but I am in no mood to be stoned, anyway. [...]"
To read the whole story.
What the market actually looks like:
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