Mobil is the Spot

People here hang out at gas stations. There are a couple of Mobil On-The-Run stations that have some fast-food restaurants serving pizza (Nando’s) and hamburgers along with a small convenience store where you can buy stuff like milk, yogurt, chips, soda and oatmeal. For some reason this means that the ExxonMobil Corporation in addition to recording the two highest corporate profits ever (setting the record in 2005 only to break it in 2006, will 2007 be a three-peat?) also owns the coolest places to hang out in Dakar on a Friday night. In the US, the gas station is somewhere you go get gas or stop by (quickly) to pick up cigarettes or a Snapple. You don’t chill there, but here people come and hang. There are various theories as to why this happens: 1. they serve as good meeting locations in a city with few landmarks (what are you supposed to say stop at the dusty road by the mosque?) 2. they are air-conditioned 3. you can sit there and they won’t harass you to buy anything 4. you can drink alcohol all day long far from your family in a country where everyone drinks but no one does so where they might get “caught.” People here treat alcohol like Americans do marijuana. It’s publicly condemned and widely available; some will flaunt their use while most who do it try to hide it from their families. 5. They have an internet connection and items like yogurt that the boutique doesn’t have.

The story of how Caitlin and I went to the dunes in the north starts at the Mobil station by where she was staying. Although we went on Saturday morning and were back by Sunday night it felt like several days in two. When I got to the Mobil station mad early, the crazy French dude was already there. Even though it was time for bread and cheese he asked me if I had a lighter and when I replied that I didn’t he looked at me like I was the crazy one. Smoking cigarettes is one of the Senegalese learned very well from the French. It’s impossible to go out here and not come home smelling like an ashtray. That Mobil station is also probably the only place on Earth where the women’s bathroom stinks more than the men’s. Which reminds me of reason number for why people go there: they actually have soap in the bathroom.