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.