LolooBucks

written Thursday, 20 September 2007

 

 

Yesterday I went to the weekly market, where I always buy some food supplies for my family (onions, garlic, spices), but where the exciting part for me is the chance to eat street food from the vendors there, just because it provides a change from the routine of the village diet.   I look forward to the market food all week - kinkeliba tea with condensed milk, bean sandwiches, fried doughballs with onioon sauce inside, yogurt with millet balls, frozen kool aid...

 

So it was very disappointing yesterday to discover that none of the bean sandwich ladies had beans, only bread and butter.   I guess they figured that since it's Ramadan almost everyone would be fasting and it's not worth it to cook the beans.

 

Which brought me and my volunteer friends back to our common topic of all the businesses we would open here if we had the money.   First on my list, of course, is an internet cafe closer to my village; and then I'd like to have a chain of boutiques (that's what the little village stores that just sell a few basic items are called) in every village, so that I could sell at lower wholesale prices like Wal-Mart, and of course they would have an expanded inventory compared to waht the boutiques usually sell.   But my idea this time was to compete with the bean sandwich ladies at the market by offering menu options, instead of just bean (or only butter) sandwiches and tea, to also offer coffee and omelette sandwiches (also popular in Senegal but not available at my market), and maybe some toubab-y food - juice, croissants, grilled cheese sandwiches... Oh, I can dream.   I decided that I would call my little restaurant LolooBucks (loloo is the Mandinka word for star.  I thought it was pretty clever, but it took my friends forever to figure it out, so I guess it's just dumb).

 

Anyway, so I've decided that this is what I will do if I ever win a millioon dollars (after I pay off my student loans, of course) - I will start lots of small businesses in villages in Senegal.  They will almost definitely lose money, but it would be a lot of fun.  And then if any of them did actually make money, I would turn the business over to a Senegalese person, and then slowly Senegal would become developed (that is, if you consider "development" to mean having a LolooBucks and a Toubab-Mart in every village). 

 

I am in a bit of a silly mood, if you can't tell....