Smelly fish guys
Ding dong….I’m so glad they’re not up on their English when I call out, “It’s the smelly fish guy”. He doesn’t have to wonder if I mean the smelly guy who sells fish, or the guy who sells smelly fish. It first happened when Allison and I were walking one dark evening on the way to make a social call. We were approached by a man who we would have taken for a “street person” in any other large city. The smelly, wild haired man thrust a grungy burlap sack at us, posing “Langouste, madame?”. Inside was the pile of angry lobsters, fresh from la mer. Startled, I pushed past without even asking, “c’est combien?”.
Weeks passed without another incident. I attended a lovely cooking get-together, this time chez Natalie, a French woman married to a Dane, involved in the shipping business. We watched studiously as she prepared Lotte Amoricaine and a French apple cake. She spoke, as she set the cognac aflame, of the hunky lotte filets and of the fish guy who came to her house to sell the catch of the day. I coveted her relationship with her fish guy. Why not me, I wondered to myself. Months had passed without me figuring out how to avoid the trop cher prices at the French fish boutiques, or the piles of flies at rest on the fish ladies’ wares.
Sure enough, the next day ….. ding dong. It’s a smelly guy at my gate, apporter-ing an old grungy Styrofoam box on his head, its lid held tight with an old grungy bicycle tube. His teeth clamped down on his cigarette as he spoke…..”Madam, bon jour, ca va bien?....Regard…..” Ahhhh, all the fruits of the sea, there at my doorstep. Yes….you nettoyer it, I’ll take it. He returns frequently, along with his competitors. Sometimes it’s a bag full of those yellow and black striped ones from “Nemo”. Sometimes it’s a skate he presents by holding it high by his fingers poked in the eye sockets. Sometimes it’s a school of little red ones. I try to hold out for the big fat filets he’ll make for me from lotte or thiof, a real prize worth all the waiting and hard bargaining.

Natalie’s “Lotte (monkfish) Amoricaine”

1kg monkfish
3 cloves garlic
3 shallots
2 onions
1 glass cognac
1 ½ glass white wine
½ can whole peeled tomatoes
1 spoon tomato paste
milk- a little

Fry fish lightly in oil and butter
Warm cognac separate-Do not boil
Pour cognac on fish and flambé
Take out fish
Add garlic, shallots, onions, and tomatoes to pan
Mix tomato paste and wine and add to pan
Simmer 20 min
Add milk
Return fish to the pan
Simmer 15 min

Super, s’il vous plait
“Super”…. “essence”…”gasoil”…..I’m still a little sketchy on what I should be asking for at the gas station. I understand that back home the gas prices are getting really bad. Tant pis…. say “au revoir” to $100US for a tank of gas here in Dakar. That’s $100US that we diplomats pay after we get excluded from paying the local tax. In the US you can now find a convenience store at every gas pump. Enormous diet sodas, snowballs, chips, M&M’s and Lottery tickets tempt us. At our local Dakar Shell or Elton station the convenience store looks very familiar from the outside. Once inside, your eyes come to rest not on over processed trans fats and stacks of 6 packs, but on the real fat of the land- Pate de Foie Gras, Tagliatelli, Cornichons, Bechamel, Espadon Fume, rice paper wrappers and oyster sauce, Belgian chocolate, whole aisles of European “cookies”. After roaming around in a haze, I settle on Langues du Chat et un morceau du Mimolette. The “Cat’s Tongues” should keep me going for a while. The marketing makes sense. Not every chump on the block in Africa drives a car. Voitures and a license to drive them are only for the very very upper crust, who might just pop in for a convenient bottle of port and a tin of smoked oysters after filling ‘er up.