Coffeehouses of Basse (Part 1 of 4)

Ebrima Ceessay

International Coffee Maker

No. 1 in Basse

Cafè

The café features both indoor and outdoor seating. Inside, you can surround yourself with posters of European football players (hence the café’s “international” designation) and men eating plates of freshly roasted meat. Outside, you can sit at a table on which will be displayed: four tins of NesCafé, six tins of Ovaltine (Be Bright, Be Active), six tins of evaporated milk (Super Savers: the price is always right), a box of Alokozay premium tea (Finest Selection), three buckets of mayonnaise, two knives and a spoon.


When you sit down, a section of the blue and white table cloth will be wiped clean for you. If you order half a loaf of bread with mayonnaise and a NesCafé, the server will kindly ask you how many spoons of sugar you would like in the NesCafé. He wants you to “control your sugar” because as an International Coffee Maker, he recognizes that Europeans may not want three spoonfuls of sugar in a coffee concoction also containing a generous helping of condensed milk. A European may prefer two spoonfuls.

As an International Coffee Maker, he also recognizes that even a white lady dressed in African clothes probably speaks English, so that is the language he will greet you in. But the white lady dressed in African clothes may be proud of her Pulaar, and will request the price with a “Dum ko jelu?”

He will reply in Mandinka.

You, the white lady, being less international than him, the International Coffee Maker, will have no idea what was said.

“I do not speak Mandinka,” you will say, in Pulaar, hinting that if he were to speak in Pulaar, you would understand.

He will reply in Wolof.

“I do not speak Wolof,” you will say, in Pulaar.

He will, finally, reply in Pulaar, but before giving the you the chance to prove you understand Pulaar, he will repeat in English, “Fifteen dalasis.”

Upon being paid, Ebrima Ceesay, International Coffee Maker, will congratulate you. “Congratulations,” he will say.