Diery Gueye doesn't have a bank account, a car or a house of his own, let alone a mortgage.
He hasn't heard of the global financial crisis that has sent markets tumbling and forced governments in the rich developed world to divvy up hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out collapsed banks and try to calm anguished homeowners and savers.
The only crisis he knows of is surviving day by day in his native Senegal, where the 45-year-old labourer barely earns enough to feed his wife and three kids and rent a room.
"It's tough ... sometimes I don't have work for two or three months," he says, speaking in the local Wolof language.
Welcome to Main Street Africa -- sprawling cities of dusty pavements, armies of poor and unemployed, chaotic traffic and bustling markets -- a world away from Europe or the United States in levels of individual wealth and of expectations.
In Senegal and across the world's poorest continent, millions in overcrowded cities and the remote bush eke out an existence on one or two dollars a day. Death, hunger and disease are the daily lot of many, especially in conflict zones like Darfur, Somalia, eastern Chad and Democratic Republic of Congo.
While African governments and educated elites are following the global banking crisis closely, the vast majority of their people have little grasp of sub-prime mortgages, toxic assets, bank bailouts and trillion dollar financial rescue plans.
But many do understand that when the rich world catches a financial fever, the planet's poorest may end up hurting too.
"I don't really know what it all means but I really hope that poverty here doesn't get worse just because they have problems," said Rose Camara, a Guinean housewife in Conakry.
"If the rich countries have problems, then that's going to end up coming here. You can count on it," said Ali Tapsoba, a garage worker in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou.
The debate is open on just how much Africa and its people will feel the pain of the financial turmoil in the rich world at a time the continent's economies had been growing at their fastest pace in decades.
There are those like Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade who believe the crisis will be "limited" for Africa, where banking systems and markets are poorly developed in many countries.
"This is marginal for 'deep Africa'. We're talking about 700 million peasants, poor people. For these people, as long as they have something to eat, they're not doing badly," Wade told Radio France International this month.
The octogenarian leader, who faces protests at home over power blackouts and high food and fuel prices, believes financial solutions alone will not solve the North's crisis.
Declaring "the survival of the world's growth is in Africa", he recommends Europe invest in African infrastructure projects, which he says will boost both European industrial output and African development, creating jobs in both continents.
But many, from the International Monetary Fund to the African Union, fear the developed world's credit crunch may choke aid, trade and investment to Africa, straining vulnerable economies already hurting from high food and fuel prices.
"The poorest countries don't have 700 billion dollars to bail out failing banks. The money invested in these problems in the North just isn't there in government budgets in developing countries," said Alexander Woollcombe, Food Security Advocacy Adviser of Oxfam GB's West Africa regional centre.
Major charities like Oxfam GB are expecting a fall off in aid donations. The British group is trimming its budgets by between 10 and 15 percent for next year, based on projections.
Oxfam GB has drawn up figures showing just how far $700 billion earmarked by the U.S government for a financial rescue plan could go in helping to solve the poor world's problems.
It says this is enough to eradicate all world poverty for over two years, based on a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) calculation that it would take $300 billion to get the entire global population over the $1 a day poverty line.
The $700 billion could clear -- almost twice over -- the $375 billion accumulated debt of the world's 49 poorest nations.
According to Oxfam, the US bailout figure is worth about 7 years of annual global aid levels ($104 billion in 2007).
The United States is also planning to inject $250 billion into its banks following European rescue pledges totalling more than $1.3 trillion.
Some analysts believe the predicted slowdown in world demand may cool off rocketing high food and fuel prices which have been throttling many poor food- and fuel-importing African economies
"So what we lose on one side, we could win on another," said Kalidou Diallo, assistant director of economic and financial studies at Guinea's Finance Ministry. But he and others say flagging demand could hit Africa's commodity exports too.
If the developed West cuts aid and investment, African states are saying they are ready to turn elsewhere.
"Our door is open. We're not blocking off our yard, we expect support from wherever we can get it," Cameroon Finance Minister Lazarre Essimi Menye told French radio.
Africa, he said, was already working with other major partners, like China.