Onion Sauce and Soul Music:
Opening an Outdoor Cafe in Senegal
Sunlight dances across the café terrace, casting shadows across the tables and chairs put out to serve uniform-clad students on their mid-morning school break. Splashes of light bounce off the passion fruit, bougainvillea and bean vines wrap and wind their way the around black metal and straw fencing. And there is the beloved mango tree, flowering with gorgeous pink and green blooms followed by hearty, heavy mangoes that tease and taunt visitors with the promise of sweet, luscious yellow fruit.
Legs crossed, with a warm smile and quiet confidence, Eddy, a regal, tall black man with short cropped salt-and-pepper hair and goatee, explains to those who ask what it is like living in Senegal, “I feel free here, Yes, I am tired some days. Exhausted on others. But, here, I feel free.”
Feeling free is in part because he is working for himself, which he says is far better than waking up everyday to work for someone else. And, much better than working with people, like some of his co-workers in Kentucky, who clearly did not like him simply because he is a black man.
As the mid-morning sun peeks through the flowering blooms and leaves, Eddy’s cell phone rings, again and again. Incessantly. The business day of Tangor Café and Diasporic Soul has begun. A business that Eddy manages with his cell phones and his reliable and ever-ready assistant, his fixer, Looky. Making calls. Taking calls. Making inquiries. Making connections. Sometimes even making magic happen. Leveraging relationships. And, social capital. Much like he did during his days when he ran his club, Bamboo, in Marseille, France. Or, when he helped brothers and sisters get a job as a workforce development professional in the Cincinnati metro area.
Now, he procures poulet. Restocks fries, hamburgers and fromage. Secures truck loads of building materials for the Café expansion that is underway. Tracks down and chats with the fishmongers. Souleyman in Yenn. Bilal in Kayar. Moussa in Dakar. Ibrahim in Somone. Because there simply is no Theibbu Jenn (the national dish of Senegal and, in spite of Ghanian and Nigerian lore, the real and original Jollof rice) for Friday’s plat du jour or Soupa Kandia on Wednesday if there is not fish on hand.
Eddy’s plant-filled oasis is located just off Senegal’s autoroute exit 12 and along Senegal’ route national (N2) in Sebikhotane. Sebi as it is called is located 32 kilometers outside of Dakar and is home to much of Eddy’s extended maternal family. In fact, Tangor Café refers to Tangor, a section of Sebikhotane where Eddy spent time with his beloved grandmother as a child.
Tangor Café plates a Senegalese plat du jour daily, including Theibbu Jean on Friday. They also serve up American-style fast food like burgers along with Senegalese fried chicken and fatayas, meat-filled pockets of fried dough stuffed with egg, fries, ketchup and mayonnaise that sell out daily. Visitors to the Café also get a taste of Diasporic Soul as they dine under the mango tree on the café’s beautiful, flower-filled terrace. Soul music from Nina Simone and James Brown to Janelle Monae and Kendrick Lamar is always playing in the café.
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“Because I spent time here as a kid with my grandmother and friends, I wanted to offer the Sebikhotane community a place to go, and eat out and hang out, particularly a place outdoors. Especially the young people in a country where the average age is 18. At the same time, because of my experience as a Diasporic Soul, I am always happy to welcome people from all over the world to our café. Cote d’Ivoire. Mali. Morocco. England. Japan. France. China. India. And, of course, from all over the US. Oakland. Chicago. Detroit. Raleigh. Atlanta. New York.”
When asked what made him and his wife pack and move, Eddy, recalls the Charleston Massacre at the Emmanuel AME church in South Carolina that marked the end of their 2015 vacation in Senegal.
“My wife and I were shocked and devastated. And, angry. And, then there was John Crawford and Tamir Rice in our back yard, Ohio. And, Michael Brown. And, Sandra Bland. And, Eric Gardner. And Phillip Castillo. And, too, there was the possibility of a Trump presidency.
We knew it was time to take a leap of faith in our lives, but we also felt like maybe Senegal would be better for us. It was so painfully clear that Black lives do not matter in the U.S. We felt like leaving was one way to resist. And, to have more peace. More freedom. We also wanted to create warm, welcoming, safe and healing space for our fellow Diasporic Souls to visit.
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