Ramadan, jostling for bread in Senegal’s bakeries

The month of Ramadan, a period of fasting observed by Muslims all over the world, particularly in Senegal, sees fasting people, once the break of the fast approaches, storming the bakeries in front of which there is a very long queue, if not simply a great jostling, as everyone wants to buy a baguette.

It is Saturday, 1 May 2021, at the end of Avenue Habib Bourguiba, in the heart of the Senegalese capital, Dakar. Traffic is heavy, with vehicles and motorbikes fighting for priority under the watchful eye of a law enforcement officer trying to regulate traffic. It is difficult, especially in these hours of approaching the break that everyone wants to spend at home. The tension is perceptible among motorists, especially taxi drivers, who want to make as many trips as possible.
Bakery
Bakery

At the intersection of Avenue Bourguiba and the Route du Front de Terre, in this locality called Cité des Eaux, there is a bakery: La Brioche Dorée. Our attention is drawn by a queue, so long that it has been split in two. They were customers who had come to buy a baguette to break their fast during the month of Ramadan. They had to queue outside the bakery and wait their turn to get to the counter and hope to buy either bread or pastries.

« I come from the Brioche Dorée in Demba Diop (still located on Avenue Bourguiba, some two kilometres away), it was also a queue, a bigger crowd than here, » says a customer to another who was standing next to him. « It’s the same everywhere. I come from the Yellow Bakery (on the side of Sacré Coeur, some 5 kilometres away, towards the old runway of the Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport), it’s the same. I thought I would find fewer people here, unfortunately. We’ll just have to wait, our turn will probably come soon, if they hurry inside, » retorts the second.
Bakery
Bakery

« My dear, it’s the queue, you have to do what everyone else does. We’re all in a hurry to get home and have a good break, » a customer said to another who was obviously trying to jump the queue and get into the bakery to buy his bread, to avoid queuing like the others. Except that he was quickly called to order. The pace was reasonable, with an average of five customers served per minute. But not enough for those who were still outside.

Some of them were getting impatient, especially in view of all the people milling around who had not queued up but were still trying to get into the bakery. « Stop your childishness, » said an individual with an imposing voice. « How do you expect to come in right away, find people queuing, and try to help yourself before them? How do you expect to come in straight away, find people queuing, and then try to help yourself before they do? » he rants, before adding that « it’s disrespectful and wrong ».
Bakery
Bakery

« Everyone should mind their own business. There’s nothing to say that I’m trying to get inside to buy bread. I was trying to locate a friend who might be inside, » says the man, draped in a sky-blue boubou, in his late 40s. It happens that some people try to get the bread paid for by an acquaintance already inside the bakery, while others do it from outside, by handing over the money to a third party so that the latter can buy the bread for them without them having to queue.

All it takes is a quick phone call to an acquaintance inside the bakery, and the acquaintance will fill the order to serve the person waiting outside. « Who’s the last one here? » asks a lady who has just arrived. « It’s me, » replies a young boy of about fifteen. « I’m coming after you. I’m just going to buy some milk from the shop next door, » the lady continues. Okay, » says the teenager, who has the de facto task of informing the next person to come that there is a lady in the row right after him.

« In any case, it’s getting cold and it’s getting close to break-up time, they have to hurry up and free us », another customer, dressed in a T-shirt, complains at the beginning of the evening when the thermometer was showing 23 degrees. After three quarters, there was hardly anyone left in front of and inside the bakery. It was indeed 7.20 pm, practically the time of the break, and everyone managed to go home with their baguette and break their fast.