I have finally accomplished one of the few things that I really needed to do while I was in Dakar: two weeks after moving here, I finally bought a towel.

It was more complicated than you might think. Not all of the population uses towels—instead, the long wrap skirts that women wear to cover their legs when eating also do double duty as something to dry yourself with.

As a result, despite the fact that everyone in the program was on the lookout for me, it took a week for anyone to actually find towels in a store. Even then, that store was in the incredibly swanky mall downtown, and—because rich Dakarois will apparently pay through the nose for stupid things—cost 30,000 CFA ($15.00). For comparison, a large loaf of French bread (the favored breakfast, lunch, and dinner of everyone in the city) costs 100 CFA ($.20).

So, not wanting to pay through the nose for a towel—not to mention the cab fare that it would take to get to the insane mall and back—I bided my time. In the interim, I air dried and used a scarf that I had brought when I absolutely needed to dry my hair or wipe toothpaste grossness from my chin. (I am the sexiest international traveler.)
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