Characteristic moments

Turns out that the lighthouse that I can see from my roof is for guiding aeroplanes (away from the hill it sits on, I suppose), not ships. As observations go, it’s not exactly profound, but it’s a good bit of lateral thinking.

I’m learning a lot from my French lessons. Not much French, but some interesting other things:

• I have the ability to get really angry at a language. I know that French grammar wasn’t made up just to annoy me, but it usually feels that way when I’m trying to understand yet another exception. Can anyone explain why it’s je me l’ai lancee, but je la lui ai lancee ?
  It’s very easy to look very stupid when you’re trying to do things in another language.
• Most lessons, Mme Diagne will slowly and clearly explain an element of a question that’s really obvious and basic, when I understand it perfectly and my problem is trying to remember the translation of a particular word. It makes me wonder how often over the years I’ve unfairly assumed a non-native English speaker is that bit slower or unobservant because they’re not grasping something really simple.
• I'm so lucky to be a native English speaker. Today I had two meetings where I had to work so hard to choose my words and make sure I got across precisely what I meant. If it’s taken me this long, and that’s still a challenge, I can only imagine what it would have been like trying in another language.

Another set of cultural differences have been coming out during introductions with the locals. At last week’s education workshop, the session began with each delegate announcing themselves. The westerners all used only their own first names, while the Africans generally introduced themselves as “Amadou Kane, but you can call me Amadou” (or whatever). The exception was an elegantly dressed West African who described herself as “Dr Elisabeth Sarr, but you can call me Dr Elisabeth”. So this week, I wasn’t surprised when my cleaner introduced herself as Mademoiselle Sagna, after I’d called myself Leo. But even so, I hadn’t expected the reaction I got the next day, when I asked her what her forename was and was told that it was Mademoiselle.

There’s a great passage in a book I’ve just finished, Sacred Hunger: “There are moments in anyone’s life when some blend of circumstances, some consonance of surroundings and situation and character, show him in a light peculiarly characteristic, make him seem more intensely himself – to the observer that is, the subject will not be aware of it. He seems to us then to be immobilized, taken out of time – or he steps, rather, into some much older story. He is there imperishably, always, always to be found there.” In defiance of the remark that the subject is unaware of it, I’m now forever wondering if some particular passing moment is my peculiarly characteristic one. On reflection, I’ve got a feeling that my imperishable moment is the one where I’m wondering which one is my moment.

Cultural instincts

A trip to a jazz restaurant with Amir prompts me to improve my opinion of Dakar a little more. I’ve never been anywhere in a developing country that has such excellent restaurant and bars. They’re a little repetitive: French with a preference for seafood, but all the decent ones have a lot of choice, aren’t particularly expensive, and generally serve very good meals. I may not have worked out where I can buy ingredients conveniently for cooking, but at least I can eat out well whenever I want.


Not many observations this week, as I spend much of it with Caitlin, an eloquent and pretty Harvard student, one of the two I met last weekend. A fine dinner in the Ethiopian restaurant, an evening with a bottle of wine on my roof: it’s a friendship crammed into the fleeting time we can spend together. On Thursday, she flies back to America and out of my life. My phonebook is surprisingly full, but I’m finding myself following up every opportunity for socialising, with an enthusiasm bordering on desperation. It takes more imagination to find people here, but the natural solitude of expat life (sadly, I’m no nearer getting to know any Dakarois outside the office) seems to make us all more open to spending time with one another.


I’m left with a vague feeling of unease by a friendly conversation with a middle-aged Brit during an education workshop. She warmly welcomes me to the continent, unboastingly talking about the 10 years she’s lived in Kenya. But something about the way she refers to Africa is unsettling: the image she conjures is one of an outsider, standing apart as a benevolent outsider in an undifferentiated land. I’m put in mind of the rural white settler, surrounded on his ranch by loyal servants and also of the godlike aid worker, adored by big-eyed children - the wife in The Constant Gardener. Yet this woman means nothing but to help, and no doubt is passionately anti-colonial and recognises the limits of Northern NGOs, and the importance of building up the capacity of local organisations. I wonder whether it’s ever possible, with our upbringing and cultural heritage, to break out from othering Africa, to realise that it’s no more suitable to being generalised about than is Europe.


Conversation with Caitlin turns to a friend of hers, who claims that she expects to have difficulties readjusting to eating with cutlery, rather than fingers, when she returns to America from Senegal. We make fun of the idea that whatever’s done in Africa must be more in tune with our natural instincts: as if it's artificial to do anything other than hiss to catch people’s attention, as is done here. But then I spend a morning with Amir in HLM market looking for fabric to get shirts made, and don’t fully manage to work out which are the materials that won’t look pretentious in Oxford. For her part, I suspect that Caitlin’s going to take a little time to give up her (newly-discovered, I assume) habit of using French words in English sentences, which seems natural here, but in America will come across as very affected.


At the risk of sounding a bit Daily Telegraph, my little street has reminded me how little sense of community spirit we have in Britain these days. Every day when I’m coming home from work, the kids on the street pause from playing football to say hi to me, and if I pass any of them on their own, they’ll put their hand out for a high-five: it seems no-one’s told them about Stranger Danger. I exchange asalamu aleikums with the adults, despite obviously being an outsider, and on weekend evenings, the street’s lined with people sitting outside their houses, enjoying the warm nights.

Tribal rituals

An afternoon in the museum proves unexpectedly enlightening of Western culture. With no apparent self-consciousness, the display is of West Africans engaged in tribal rituals. In about ten scenes in all, models of black Africans are dressed up in animal masks, some in clothes that cover every inch of skin, others in bizarre and inexplicable poses. I find it hard to believe that any major Western museum would dare put on this display for fear of being denounced as racist. But here, there seems no suggestion of sneering. I wondered whether there’s an urban/rural split, and the display reflects urban Senegalese putting on a freak show of their rural traditions, but Tendayi discounts that on the basis that even the urban people are too close to their heritage for it to be possible. We’re obviously missing out a lot on our understanding of Africa if we don’t possess the language to talk about this kind of reality.


I take Michel’s advice, and follow the stairs past my flat onto an undiscovered flat roof. My perception of Dakar changes in an instant. Above the smogy, smelly, relentless city of street level, there’s a captivating and serene mosaic of pastel-coloured images. Open roofs spread to the horizon in three directions, and the sea takes on the red of the setting sun, far closer than I’d realised. A small pocket of high-rise buildings in centreville show unexpectedly imaginative architecture, and streetlights begin to flick on, a cluster at a time. Around me, children and youths begin to fill the terraces, playing football, exercising, drinking tea. It’s yet another male space, but the lines of washing hint at a different gender balance in the daytime. I go up again a few hours later, and watch the beam of the lighthouse swing across the moonlit city. It’s a third space for me, along with my flat and below the surface of the swimming pool, where I can completely relax.


Kate gets asked to go to Lebanon, starting in five days. She gets the boss’s approval, calls her husband, then starts making plans. It’s a moment that reminds me of one of the things that attracted me to this work in the first place.


Kate’s not going to Lebanon. It’s too much of a security risk to send a Jew now things are getting even messier over there. No-one’s arguing with the decision, but as she put it: “I guess it’s because of the Star of David tattooed on my forehead”.


A few days ago, I described Dakar as relentless, and today I’m reminded why. I take an unplanned trip to the artisan’s market, lost while looking for a shop Michel had recommended. Since I’m there, I have a wander round, and spend an hour fighting off stall-holders dragging me to look at their crafts – occasionally literally. It’s alarming how few different things are actually for sale among the hundred or so shops: endless wooden masks, elephants and sets of monkeys that I’m repeatedly told neither see, hear, nor speak any evil. Almost every shop sells the same designs, with only the smallest variations. At least it has the advantage that I can look around until I find the perfect design of a particular statute – or at least I’d be able to if the salesmen aren’t so humour-sapping in their aggressiveness.


I see a different side of life a couple of hours later when a torrential downpour forces me into a tiny silversmith’s hut with the Mauritanian silversmith, an Italian man, and two Harvard students. I’m reminded how easily friendships can be made as we talk easily while drinking the Mauritanian’s tea.

An attention-seeking saxophonist

There’s something magnificent about the extent of the job creation here. To go swimming, I interact with no fewer than eight people – from the guard standing next to the ticket seller to the second attendant at the lockers – before I’m allowed in the water. Buying a drink in any bar requires getting a ticket from one person before claiming the drink from another, as if the country’s governed by some archaic regulations prohibiting the direct sale of alcohol. And the other day I took a call from the office secretary, who connected me to the secretary in another office, who then in turn connected me to the person who wanted to talk to me. But that one just made me feel important.


I’m lucky enough to be at Just 4 U with Tendayi on Saturday night, when a band are playing a series of flawless covers of Orchestra Baobab classics. So flawless in fact, that I wonder if they might actually be Senegal’s most successful band themselves (the review that got me into them: http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,,786661,00.html) Their showmanship is encapsulated in the attention-seeking saxophonist, who spends the night making eye contact with different members of the audience, then chuckling to them as if sharing a private joke. My own interaction with him passes the bounds of the familiar when Tendayi finally persuades me to dance. Gyrating awkwardly among a crowd of graceful Dakarois, my self-consciousness reaches new heights when I realise that the saxophonist is good-naturedly parodying my every move. At least Tendayi doesn’t get away unmocked: after her fourth toilet trip, the performer makes a joke to her from the stage about the weakness of her bladder.


Hinesh tells me he’s surprised that I’m not hanging out more with the other people in the office, going to dinner with them, swilling Guinness in the Irish pub etc. He’s right, it’s not what I expected: particularly given the general lack of things to do here, I’d have thought spending time with other people from the office would be the main social activity. I wonder what it is people do in the evenings. Perhaps there are social circles that I’m not in on (I assumed this was the case for a while, on the grounds that I wasn’t here long enough to get really integrated), but I don’t hear people making plans or talking about great nights out. Still, now Amir’s moved into the flat, at least there’s someone to talk to in the evenings – and he’s started talking about having a flat party, so maybe my work social life is picking up.


I suddenly hit a point on the line between anger and despair when I’m putting two boxloads of books away into the Resource Centre: a library in the office, with walls lined with books, journals and magazines about development, emergency response, conflict resolution and so on. Each book had no doubt been written by an expert on the subject, who’d devoted months or years to crystallising their knowledge into this transmittable form. As far as I know, no-one has used the Resource Centre since I’ve been in the office, and as I understand it, no-one used it for some time before then either. If development practitioners aren’t reading these specialist materials, who is? How much difference does the publication of each one make to the people the authors are trying to help? Of course research is crucial to making development work, but the vast weight of the paperwork is surely excessive. I leave feeling like these clever people are wasting their talents writing books that few people are reading. It seems another case of the failure of the development world to take a step back and consider every bit of work in the context of their overall objective.


Turns out that the reason the band last weekend were able to do such flawless Orchestra Baobab covers was that they really were the Mercury Award-winning band themselves. In an open-aired bar, with a crowd of no more than 70 people, my excitement’s doubled at the prospect of going to see them again in the same place tonight. Writing this with a mug of earl grey (with milk, sorry George) in one hand and a piece of cake in the other, I reckon birthdays in Dakar aren’t so bad.

The night turns out to be as fun as I’d hoped, especially thanks to Tendayi’s friend, Malik, who works behind the bar in Just 4 U. A Thierry Henry look-alike, he discovers our fascination with the Orchestra Baobab saxophonist, Issa, and sends the musician to our table in the middle of the set, along with a birthday bottle of wine. We talk – well, Isa talks, incessantly, and I do my best to understand one word in ten – while he drinks our wine and periodically interrupts himself to join in with his band from our table. Isa tells us that he’s been with Orchestra Baobab for 30 years, and that although he did leave for a while, the rest of the band was nothing without him, and begged him to come back. Tendayi and I conclude that he’s just as crazy as we’d guessed last weekend, but we’re both happy to have made such an unexpected new friend.