Thoughts

August 2026

• 1500F

  1500F is a normal budget for food per day in Dakar. You can eat for less, but with 1500F (US$2.60) you know you can be satisfied. That’s what this average Dakarois told me. Like many others, that’s someone who comes from outside Dakar and doesn’t have a kitchen. (Kind of someone like me?) My Dakarois explains: breakfast 300F (US$0.50), coffee with milk, bread, for lunch 700F (US$1.20), a meal in a gargote. dinner 500F (US$0.90), some sort of porridge with soured milk. So I give it a go. Breakfast wasn’t difficult, but I usually don’t eat much for breakfast. Coffee, and when I did eat, bread and butter. Probably less than 300F. I never found the gargote meal for 700F. I got a Thieboudienne for 1000F, but needed to add 100F to take it away. A good portion of tomato-stewed broken rice, small bits of vegetables, served with a bare hand, most very known to Europeans: carrot, turnip, cabbage, and some less like African eggplant. Some “fresh” fish, maybe not so fresh, and some fermented fish…

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• Instant

  I. In which the narrator confesses Now, I am a fusser. A fiddler. A snob. I treat making coffee as a serious job. I treat every brew like a small tense exam. I know where they grew, and I know who I am when the kettle goes hiss and the water goes pour in a slow snaily spiral — and counting — and more of the blooming, the swelling, the rising of cream, till the smell fills the kitchen like somebody's dream. I have views about roasting. I've views about grind. I own burrs. I own cones. I own quite a strong mind. And the truth, since we're here, and there's no one about: I am good at this. Really. Absurdly. Devout. II. In which none of that helps But some mornings I wake in a room I can't place, with my bag on the floor and the night on my face, and the power went off around quarter past three, and there's no one, and nothing, and nowhere, and me with a head like a drum and a mood like a stone, and I'd trade my whole kitchen for one cup alone. And there. By the kettle. Against the bare…

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April 2026

• siesta

  siesta

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• First

  There was once an asparagus.

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