Hooray! I have unpacked my suitcases…or at least there is stuff strewn about my excellent little interim furnished apartment. I can now see what I brought with me, and it is immediately apparent that I am lacking food, and a decent-looking pair of shoes.
For the next two months I think I’ll be staying at the Green “A”, on the other side of the tip of Dakar. I love Google Maps!
The view isn’t as nice as at the hotel, but I’m not much of a resort person- so it’s a step in the right direction for the former grungy backpacker (now I just feel like a grungy naval officer). To make up for my lameness yesterday, I wandered around a bit and bought my first installment of groceries (even though I’m still not terribly hungry). I don’t have much here to cook with, but that’s probably best…let me give you an idea of what it is like to eat imported foods here in Senegal.
Even before I left the U.S. I knew that most things in Senegal were imported, and thus fairly expensive to purchase. Still, today I only brought 20,000CFA (about 42 dollars) with me to the Casino (supermarket). I wanted to do some price comparison and also see how far I could get with that much money. I have to admit, it was kinda tough to play it cool and walk through the aisles like it wasn’t the first time that I shopped in a Dakar supermarket. But it’s true- many things are very expensive and I have no clue how an average family can make it buying such “needs”. My guess is that many don’t, and this factors into the high petty crime rate. They probably also just eat à la sénégalaise (that’s me using my intel skills right there).
What follows is a breakdown of my receipt.
-Four-pack of the cheapest toilet paper I could find: $1.49 (I wasn’t gonna spend five minutes debating the merits of different bog rolls that all looked the same but had different prices!)
-Two bananas, one apple, one carrot (I forgot the bleach): $1.27
-One small jar of Nescafe: $5.70
-One litre of orange juice: $1.70
-One four pack of plain yogurt: $6.30 (the cheapest I could find)
-Six pack of eggs: $1.27
-Four slices of ham: $5.08 (I really never buy ham, and felt even more wrong buying ham in a Muslim country- but it seemed like a ton of people were just drawn to the ham section like bees around a hive, and I already had a jar of excellent mustard in my basket….)
-Box of Weetabix Cereal: $6.78 (this was the cheapest option- I wanted the $9 box of something else)
-Small jar of burn the hair off your feet French mustard: $1.38 (This stuff hurts so good, I really can’t get enough)
So that came up to about 31 dollars, working with an exchange rate of 470CFA to the dollar. Now that I look at it, really it’s not that bad at all. I kind of liken it to gas station Kwik E Mart prices at home. For those of you who have lived over here, I know what you are thinking, “Well duh- you want to eat like a Westerner, you’ll pay like a Westerner!” And you know what, really, the only thing that bums me out (but not that much) is the cereal price. But that’s because I’m your typical American cereal hound. I actually really like Senegalese food, and because I’ve been outed as “New England Frugal”, you can bet that I’ll be modifying my eating habits to do more as the Romans do.
Just need to get my digestive system right first.