Thoughts

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 and mollusc; wow fishy! Some chili sauce, and some other sauce with peanut I think. Good, really glad to have a few vegetables, but I must say that I didn’t finish the fermented mollusc. My belly was fine in case you wonder; many of my Senegalese acquaintances were shocked that I’d eat this kind of food, they wouldn’t. In my experiment, I also made my own food. I bought simple ingredients and prepared simple meals. A large can of chickpeas (800g) gives 2 fulfilling meals, 1400F. Add some local avocado, a huge one costs 300F, a bit of fresh onion, oil, salt, vinegar, spices and eat with bread. It tasted really nice and I was glad to have some vegetables.

I had many snacks like mangoes and peanuts. I found that buying pre-cut mangos was a good deal: 100F for half a mango. There are 2 kinds: the soft juicy and sweet ones. Some slightly crunchier ones that are eaten with salt and chilli. A small bag of freshly roasted peanuts is 50F that’s also a good deal, and all the peanut roasters are usually very friendly older ladies.

In the evening, I know that there are some old serer ladies selling millet porridge. They actually set up shop very late; and it’s actually a bit stressful for me to buy something. There’s a line, they want to sell fast, they don’t speak French, except prices. From previous times, I remember that you tell them how much you want in monetary amount. 100F of this, 100F of that, and 100F of that. Thiakry, Fondé or Thiéré, any of those things is quite filling for 100F. It’s quite bland. Some are eaten with soured milk, and some with milk. And in all cases, sugar is added. I found some fresh soured milk, not made with powdered milk to have with my Fondé. A large pot of 1kg is 1200F and can be used a few times. I found some fresh milk to eat with Thiéré. That milk is strange; I’m confident it’s really fine to drink, but it’s kind of foamy. I try some, I don’t know how to describe it, it's very different to what I know. A lot fatter. Maybe less taste than the milk I know? and more “consistency”. In a future episode, I see the cows that give this milk and understand why it has nothing to do with the milk I know.

Overall, the experiment wasn’t so difficult to follow. I managed for ~4 days. When paying attention, $2.60 is totally feasible. But it might be possible to eat for that much or less in Europe. Food is pretty expensive in Dakar. It was a useful exercise to put things in perspective. It’s easy to slip into a sort of belief that living in Dakar makes you feel what it’s like for the average person. But, I had a decent place to sleep and wash. I didn’t have to do manual labor. And I didn’t try living without air condition; that last one would be really hard. What was interesting about the experiment was the "paying attention" bit. Now, I have money in perspective: a short taxi ride that’s 1500F, or a long one 2500F. I thought these were a bargain. Then I got some coffee from a nice café for 3000F. A brunch with a sea view 14000F. It’s easy to spend as much as in Europe, these places are totally out of bounds for normal people.

And... 1500F per day is still a large portion of an average budget; probably half of what my Dakarois friend earns a day.

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 wall. One sachet. Just one. Nescafé. That's all. A gram and a half of pure hope. And I stand in the dark with my head and this thing in my hand.

III. In which we ask where on earth it came from

And it grew about here. That's the joke of the thing. No mountain. No mist. No cool volcanic spring. Just robusta — squat, bitter, and stubborn, and cheap — on a red slope of ground that's too poor and too steep for a crop worth the name. Picked by hand. In the sun on a tarp in a yard. Turned. And sacked. And then run

down a road, to a shed like a town, where the burrs are the height of a man, where the roasting drum turns like a planet — and steam, and the blooming, the cream, and the smell fills the shed like somebody's dream — then a cold, and a vacuum, a cyclone of air, and the water goes out of it. All of it. There, at the end of the line, at the end of the roar, comes a dust that is patient. That waits. Nothing more.

Then the dust becomes sachets, the sachets a chain, and the chains go by lorry and pirogue and train to the kiosks, the bus parks, the glovebox, the shelf of a person who's holding together a self that is tired, that is far from its bed, that would ache for one hour of upright, one hour of awake. And they hang there like bunting, on strings, in the sun, over every last counter. One dose. And just one.

IV. In which I tear the notch

So I tear at the notch, and it gives, and it's done — no burrs and no bloom and no counting. No, none — and it whispers out powder like ash from a pan in a mug, in a glass, in a bowl, in a can. Then the water goes in, and the whole thing goes brown like a curtain, like weather, like night coming down, and it turns, and it darkens, and rises, and then it smells, oh it smells, like a morning again.

V. In which I am honest about it

Is it best? It is not. It is not even near. It is not what I'd make you at home with my gear. It has none of the peach and it has none of the plum, and it tastes, if I'm honest, a little bit glum.

But a perfect thing absent is nothing at all, and this one is present. And yes, it is small — but it's warm, and it's bitter, and it does what it said, and it lifts off the drum and the stone from my head.

So here's to the sachet, the plain and the rough. Not the best. Never best. But the one that's enough.

There was once an asparagus.