High Prices from Senegal; where pots are getting smaller and citizens angrier

Current, coming right back at you, with spaghettis with an s, no fancy editing yet, though, at this point.

A woman in a courtyard of Dakar prepares one of Senegal’s most popular dishes. It’s a spicy combination of seafood called shrimp Thiebou Diem.

But ingredients to prepare it are getting costlier and costlier.

People have always shared meals here, but now it seems the pots are getting smaller and smaller and those around it more numerous.

Like elsewhere in the ever so slowly developing world, residents angry at rising prices are regularly taking to the streets wanting the government to do something, anything immediate to make eating affordable again.

Families who used to be able to afford spaghettis cant even buy a package of spaghettis anymore.

Imported rice is off limits for many Senegalese, some of them now turning to locally made rice, which to many still tastes strange, and is hard to find in big cities.

The usual response is a security crackdown.

Protests are prevented from taking place longer than a few minutes, for fear they will degenerate into all out burning and looting.

Organizers are detained, while government officials make promises that are never materialized.

To make matters worse, the government is trying to complete a facelift of the city to attract outside investors. This means authorities are destroying informal street stalls, the very place where prices are the least expensive.

So now vendors battle the elements and the dust, defying authorities by setting up their stalls, in the same place where they were destroyed.

One woman a mother of three and street food seller explains it is the military who broke down her stall during a nighttime raid and ripped her tent she had bought with the help of a non-governmental organization.

She says she is just working to feed her family, and selling vegetables at more reasonable prices than elsewhere. What is wrong with that she asks?