The tell-tale cup. Stationed at my desk to keep me awake.

Feeling parched in this perpetual heat? Are you in Senegal? Well you’re in luck because refreshment stations abound in this country, and you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg to get the local version of a Grande Latte Whatever. It’s all about convenience and value around these parts.

Here are some examples of To Go beverage options:

Behold the Roving Barista. This guy comes to you, with his own special blend of coffee (I’m pretty sure this stuff starts off in powder form). It is called Café Touba.

Juice and water vendors. Juice is BIG in this country; I think it largely takes the place of booze. There’s not much of an alcohol culture in this Muslim country- although it does peacefully co-exist. (Come to my house and I’ll show you a mean bissap and vodka cocktail)

All of this is riveting reporting for you I know, but today I want to shift gears and instead write about something even less sexy: 

Trash.

Is it a sign that I am acclimated to Senegal when I find great beauty in this photograph?

After countless attempts at keeping my father’s house a Crap Free Zone, I think I have a pretty sound appreciation for the amount of garbage that the human race generates. Each country shares in this culpability, and I am just now shedding some light on Senegal’s.

Every evening our class takes a break at 7pm. This allows time to respire a little, pray, or in my case go get some café touba. Luckily for our late classes the vendor who is conveniently perched on the front steps of the FASEG building is still around. His coffee is nice and strong but also not too sweet. With café touba you don’t have to feel bad about any sort of Latte Factor, because one modest cup only sets you back 10 cents. Indeed I am resplendent in my magnanimity as I hand over a coin to pay for a round of coffees for my classmates….

We have a new addition to our class, another American who is a Fulbright Scholar. This brings the white person count up to two in my program. She accompanied us to get coffee last night, and kind of threw everyone off guard when she responded to our offer to buy her a drink as well. Hesitating at first, she turns to me and says in English, “I’ll have one if I can re-use one of your cups.”

My classmates looked to me to translate what she just said, but I could immediately see that this was something cultural that wouldn’t make sense if I just repeated what she said directly. I knew what this toubab was trying to do. She was reacting to the observation that this country is absolutely paved with tiny plastic coffee cups and plastic drink bags. It’s a sip and drop society.

This photo was taken today at school, but really it could have been taken anywhere in Dakar.

Maybe I am part of the problem by laughing at this American’s futile aversion to the scads of vagrant plastic drinking receptacles lying around. I recognize that the mantra Reduce, Reuse, Recycle has been drilled into our tiny American skulls from an early age (I remember Chevy Chase telling us to “save water, shower with a friend” when I was in the fourth grade). But in cases like this one, I think you just need to go against your conventions and make some allowances that will assist you in gaining ground level entry into a different culture. 

Greenpeace please don’t come after me for saying that. I don’t want to spill my coffee as I run away.

In all fairness, there was more trash than usual in front of our building this afternoon.

I don’t know how to improve the trash problem across Dakar, nor do I even want to attempt changing an entire population’s day-to-day habits. As for the other toubab in my class, I offered to give her one of my rarely-used travel mugs – seeing as how I now stick to the orange single-use variety. She excitedly accepted my offer and today I handed it over when we reconvened back at FASEG. 

I can’t wait to see the barista’s face when she hands him that monstrosity and asks him to fill it with four ounces of liquid.