Marché Sandagar, la plage and boulettes de poisson

kids playing at the beach

baby palm trees at the Radisson

WARC (West African Research Center) where I take French

rix au poisson at the WARC café

    Salaam aleikum! This weekend I had a very typical Dakar experience. On Saturday we went to the marché Sandagar, a huge outdoor market where you can buy absolutely everything. I took a cab from my house to the marché and my cabdriver, when he saw that I was white, goes “America? Barak Obama!” It was a fun ride. When I got to the market I met up with some of the other kids from the program. They had been at the market for a bit and a guy had latched onto them. He followed us around the market, trying to get us to come to his stand and assuring us that the Senegalese do not eat white people. It made me feel much better ☺
    After we left the marché we went to the Casino in the new mall on Corniche. The mall has a bunch of western stores but is not completely built, which is the case with a lot of buildings here. People build a bit of a house and move in and when they have extra money they build a bit more. The Casino is a French grocery store and all the customers are white. It was like walking into the store transported us to France. The contrast between the crazy, overwhelming market and the calm sterile Casino was totally in line with my experience here in Dakar. Muslim and Africa cultures mix with Western culture here so thoroughly that it is hard to tell how the two differentiate.
   Some notes on the food, because I think it’s uniform style and bizarre ingredients are really odd. For breakfast I have half a baguette (!) with butter and a cup of coffee. On my first night, Maman Niang gave me my own envelope of dried milk for my coffee and told me to keep it in my room. I am not sure what the logic behind that is. Lunch and dinner are gigantic communal meals that we eat from a big plate on the floor. There is always a starch/carb with a meat on top. The starches I have experienced are pasta, mashed potatoes, French fries and rice. The meat is fish, chicken and something very stringy that I think is beef. My favorite things are yassa poulet, which is chicken, rice and onions, and chebba jen (not the correct Wolof spelling), spicy rice with chicken, carrots and potatoes. The worst is anything with fish and palm oils or boulettes de poisson (fish meatballs with bones included). I am expected to eat a huge amount at each meal, so I always have to assure my host family that I have definitely had enough. The first Wolof word I learned is “Soonaa,” which means “I’m full.” There is also always baguette with every meal, I have never eaten so much white bread in my life!
    More soon. Love!

Comments

  1. Cecelia BrownAugust 10, 2010 at 6:00 PM

    Wow! It looks lovely, except maybe the big fish!
    Love you!
    Mum xxoo

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownAugust 11, 2010 at 5:51 PM

    bonjour ma petite princesse toubab
    it sounds like you are having a wonderful time! i just took a shot from an american barack obama shot glass. it is from washington, dc. but he is not really a toubab. well, kind of. yeah.

    also aleze, i love u. because youre lance my little toubab -joe. over n out, back to the highlighter

    it's funny because white bread is probably super toubaby and they eat it all the time. so who says senegalese don't eat white people.. perhaps you will learn the truth one day. one day.

    i love u baby bird. -joe

    xo, narre

    ReplyDelete

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