GENERAL TRENDS
Senegal is a net importer of food. The northeast is the edge of the Sahel Desert; the south is lusher and more suitable to farmland, especially for peanuts; the west is a portal for fishermen. Simple carbs, MSG flavor packets, and peanut oil feature heavily because they are cheap and easy to find. By the same reasoning, fish is the most common source of protein. Produce, either local or imported from Europe, is about the same price as it is in America. However, it’s hard to find non-fruit/non-root vegetables (ex. brassicas), which will be expensive when found. Milk comes powdered. Industrial agriculture/CAFOs are still uncommon.

Fun fact: the Wolof slang for a badonkadonk (highly desirable) is jaayfondé, which literally means “to sell millet porridge.” The thinking goes that any woman who sells fondé must be sneaking handfuls of its richness, resulting in an admirable behind.

fondé is something kind of like this

BREAKFAST (NDEKKI)
Breakfast is bread (mburu) eaten between 8 and 11. Senegalese “Dakar” baguettes have a thin crust and an airy crumb with little gluten structure. Tapalapa, made in the south of the country, is made with harder flour, resulting in a denser, chewier texture. Pain miel is bread specked with some brown grains. Bakeries and boutiques also usually sell milk rolls. All of these breads become stale within hours except for tapalapa.

The most popular spreads are butter/margarine, Laughing Cow spreadable cheese product, and especially Chocopain, which is a Nutella-style chocolate and peanut spread. If you want something fancier, you can walk 100 meters in any direction and find a shack selling bread and toppings. These toppings include jam, mayonnaise, tuna, hardboiled or deep fried eggs, beans, peas, lentils, and ground meat. In case you’re in the mood for more carbs, you can also stuff your sandwich with french fries, spaghetti, or potatoes. British-style tea (black with sugar and milk) is the drink of choice.

Bean sandwiches are the motherdaddy of all breakfasts. And it’s not just me.

Kedougou has the best bean sandwiches. They also happen to be cheaper than they are in Dakar.

I have some more pictures of bean sandwiches but I’ll refrain.

LES REPAS: LUNCH (AÑ) AND DINNER (REER)
The traditional Senegalese meal is a one-course shared affair: a large bowl is placed on the ground, and people will sit in a circle around it. If the meal is a rice dish, the rice will fill the bowl halfway and “goodies” such as vegetables and meat will be piled in the center to share. Starting from the edge of the bowl, people use their right hands only (remember the “water” culture) to squish food into a ball, moving toward the center in a wedge shape. Because one is supposed to use only his or her right hand, teamwork is sometimes needed to rip apart a certain chunk of vegetable or meat.

Anyone who passes by is invited to eat; without chairs, utensils, or separate plates, the extra person is easily incorporated. Using the same logic, once you are full, you are not to wait until everyone is finished. You are instead to make your eating area look neat and then leave to make room for anyone else who might come by. Drinks are drunk after the meal, never during, to make sure you don’t get full from liquid. Senegalese-style tea (ataaya) is traditionally taken after each meal to digest.

eating around the bowl with my yaay and one of the maids, lunchtime. ceebuyapp.

LUNCH (AÑ)
Lunch, the main meal of the day, is a rice (ceeb, pronounced cheb) dish eaten between 1 and 4pm. This is a cultural remnant from French colonialism: during World War II, France required that all of its colonies to contribute to the cause. Vietnam sent rice. The French soldiers didn’t like it, so France traded it for other goods with colonies such as Senegal. Now, Senegal imports massive quantities of inexpensive broken white rice. These are some of the classics:
Ceebujën (rice of fish) – The national dish, invented in St. Louis, can be made “bu weex/blanc/white” or “bu honk/rouge/red.” “Rouge” adds more tomato/oil-based sauce to the lighter “blanc” version. Ceebujën is topped with bissap-stuffed fish, and a mélange of vegetables: carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, eggplant, jaxato (bitter “tomato”/eggplant), cabbage, and/or bissap. The bissap in this dish is hibiscus leaves pounded until they have a slimy texture.
Ceebuyapp (rice of meat) – Rice with a brown sauce and red meat. Sometimes comes with vegetables.
Yassa Jën/Ginaar (onion sauce fish/chicken) – Onions cooked until soft with a squeeze of lime, spread as a sauce with fish or chicken. My favorite dish, and it’s commonly liked by foreigners for its fresh flavors and because it feels lighter.
Mafe – A heavy peanut butter-based sauce with red meat.

ceebujen bu honk

yaasa ginaar (individual plate from school)

DINNER (REER)
Dinner is a smaller meal eaten between 8 and 11pm. It can range from bread with spaghetti, oil, and meat; to fish or chicken with french fries; to couscous with meat and root vegetables.

STREET FOOD
Roasted peanuts, sometimes pralined in a sugary coating, can be found on almost every street in Dakar in 25, 50, and 100CFA packets ($.05-$.20). Fruit stands, stocked with a minimum of bananas, apples, oranges, and mangoes (when in season), are just as ubiquitous. Some carry melons, grapefruits, clementines, and guavas. Other vendors may sell beignets, packaged cookies, or fataaya. You can also find coconuts. The beige-colored ones are for drinking and the dark brown ones are for eating. Watermelon vendors also often sell watermelon slices for snacking.

20 cents for this size

typical fruit stand

drinking out of a coconut

coconut slices, 5 cents each!

watermelon slices, $.10, watermelon vendor in the background

DRINKS
Bisaap is made from hibiscus flowers, which give the drink a rich, purple color. Mint and sugar are added.
Gingembre is a tangy drink made out from ginger root and sugar.
Bouye is the fruit of baobab trees. It’s pounded into a frothy, opaque drink that tastes slightly like a banana smoothie.
Ataaya is Chinese green tea is steeped until bitter and then mixed with massive amounts of sugar and poured between cups until it froths. Sometimes mint is added. You need to slurp the tea to be polite (you should sound like a Japanese person eating ramen).
Coffee comes in plastic Dixie-sized cups for 100CFA. You can get a cup of Nescafé, instant coffee mixed with sugar and water, or a Café Touba, which is coffee, sugar, and an herb. In my opinion, café touba tastes exactly like Chinese medicine.

dried hibiscus (bisaap) flowers

ataaya

cafe touba

RESTAURANT FOOD
Most restaurants feature Senegalese or French food. There is some Italian and “American” “fast food.” There is one Indian restaurant and one Korean restaurant and two or three Japanese restaurants in Dakar (and thus the whole of Senegal). Burritos don’t exist.
Senegalese burgers come packed with a ton of mayo and ketchup-like sauce, a slice of tomato and lettuce, a thin beef patty, a fried egg, and a handful of fries. Sometimes they come in a hollowed-out roll instead of a bun
Dibi is Senegalese barbecue. Traditional dibi is fresh mouton grilled over a fire and served with a side of onions and spicy mustard sauce. Dibi is especially delicious when it’s smoked in a closed oven. Modern dibiteries (a place that sells dibi) may also sell chicken dibi.
Nems are a Vietnamese-influenced Senegalese food. They’re basically thin egg rolls.
Fataaya are samosa-like fried dumplings, usually filled with meat.

Other unusual foods include ditakh, a green fruit that does in fact taste grassy.

ditakh

And this other mystery green fruit:

what is this?

Note: Wolof orthography is not completely standardized. I alternate between Wolof and French spellings, e.g. bisaap/bissap, ceebujën/thiéboudienne.

2. D had to work this morning so A took us for a stroll around Granollers, meeting him after his teaching session. We waited outside the school and watched the world go by, families, a man with a tree, a woman hurrying by with a cake, and round the corner, a wedding with explosive confetti and an amazingly long Limousine.

3. A cooked us a beautiful Senegalese chicken dish called Yassa which was utterly delicious and which again took us back to Senegal and our fabulous time there in April for the wedding.

 * kenkeliba – a Senegalese digestive herbal tea

* café touba - a Senegalese coffee drink with jar pepper

* amarula coffee - espresso and marula cream from South Africa

* ataaya - sweet Senegalese tea

Apart from that, the Senegalaise have fantastic traditions of mint tea and Café Touba.  The tea is a total artform and you see guys huddled around a stool on the street making pots of this mint tea stacked with sugar in it.  The only way to describe Café Touba is mint coffee…another specialty worth acquiring a taste for.

I can have a proper conversation with my family now and I’m starting to feel like it’s home away from home.  My mum tells me to eat more, my sisters and I talk about what they’ll wear to the wedding they’re going to on the weekend, my little brother is always doing his homework, we watch terrible French-dubbed Latino soaps…they’re a family, like any other, and they’re mine for six months!

However, I have to get used to certain social arrangements and the role of women in this society.  I’m not used to eating alone while someone is sweeping up around me. I would be most happy to help prepare meals, clean around the house etc, but it doesn’t seem to be the done thing for me to help out.  I guess you just accept it graciously and do what you can.

Similarly, I’m still adjusting to the socioeconomic disparity, to the fact that I undeniably look like another rich Western student and by most Senegalese people’s standards, I guess I am.  On Friday afternoons, the holy day, the cripples sit in a line at the entrance of the mosque, taking alms from the Islamic faithful as they attend their weekly prayer times.  In all honesty, I don’t know how to react to it, as I become acutely conscious of my own blessings.  You quickly realize that life is exceptionally paradoxical here.  What you think may help, might actually cause more harm.  What is so normal to you, suddenly appears lavishly unnecessary.  When you are responsible and take care of your own health and wellbeing, you’re conscious that it’s an opportunity not afforded to many others.   When you bargain the taxi driver down cause you know you’ve been overcharged, you reflect on the fact that it’s only a couple of dollars for you and it’s his livelihood.

One of the other American girls at the school is meant to be studying at the local university – however there have been so many riots and strikes there that she can’t get to class, and hence is probably not going to graduate this Spring.  However, she’s not just conscious of her own quandary, she’s thinking of the 60,000 students they enrolled (for a university with the capacity for 2000) who are missing out on their education.

This is life in Dakar, as much as the Cheikh Lo concerts and cultural sophistication.