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.