Get Your Tear-Gas Masks Here

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Peripatetic people can swell with pride over their ability to pop up anywhere around the globe. The Lebanese will often tell you for example that “wherever you go in the world, you will find Lebanese.” It can be code for how far some people will go to try and make it, and, in some cases, thrive. Same with the Senegalese. I used to notice the Senegalese strivers on the streets of New York City and how, whenever it rained, they’d be the first ones in the aisles of the job-lot stores, buying a gross of umbrellas, and unloading them in the proverbial New York minute.

So what did I see yesterday back in the home of the Senegalese – Dakar – in the middle of running skirmishes between stone-throwing youth and tear-gas launching national police?

Young, enterprising kids selling masks to stop the effects of the tear gas. The first price quoted was 200 CFA francs (a little less than 50 cents). By the time the fracas had calmed down, the price had dropped to 100 CFA. They know the meaning of market research.

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