Higher urinals

I feel a desperate – and, really, unjustified – desire to namedrop one Tom Skitt, after he’s mentioned in George Alagiah’s autobiography. In fact, Alagiah describes him as ‘an old friend from our college days in Durham... He is the kind of white man who never gets rich in Africa but leaves Africa all the richer for his passage through it’. Truth be told, I’ve never met, spoken to, or even exchanged emails with Mr Skitt, but a couple of weeks ago, I used an article he wrote (for my predecessor) in the latest West Africa News. Which is hardly a claim to fame. But the whole thing reminds me once again how small the NGO world is. And with the number of new friends and contacts I’m making out here, it’s an unavoidable realisation that who you know can go a long way towards making up for what you don’t know.


I’m intrigued by the question of what the locals make of me and Amir. He doesn’t speak a word of French, so whenever the two of us are out (which is several times a week), I do all the talking. Occasionally, the taxi driver, shop keeper etc, will say something to Amir in Wolof, and it becomes obvious that he’s foreign. But usually, they carry on speaking to me in French, leaving Amir out of the conversation. So at least sometimes, people must assume that this Senegalese bloke has got a white guy (who can’t really speak French) to do his business for him, while he stands back, aloof.


Dinner with Odette on Saturday night – as well as giving me my first Senegalese food poisoning – prompts me to wonder again about Western non-Muslim perceptions of Islam. I think it’s pretty much the only time I’ve had an extended conversation with a Muslim woman, but it’s so utterly unlike how three months ago I would have imagined an ‘extended conversation with a Muslim woman’. The only time her religion comes up is when I ask her about it directly, and I find it almost impossible to spot any attitude of hers that seems exotic to me, and which I can identify as specifically Islamic. She doesn’t seem any less Islamic than most of the rest of the people in this city, but when we (non-Muslims) in the West try to visualise Islam, I doubt many of us think of Odette. I’m sure there are several reasons for this – particularly the success of Arab Muslims in capturing media attention and interest – but we’re missing out on so much understanding of Islam by ignoring Senegal. It would be like we thought only of Bush or Pat Robertson as the typical Christian, and ignored Rowan Williams.


Two months in, and I start having something like the work-based social life I’d expected before I came here. Dinner, a couple of bottles of wine and Batman Begins at Matt’s beautiful house; a farewell party for one of the bosses, ending with a crowd at a nearby nightclub.


The nightclub seems familiar on the surface, but there are small differences. It’s English-language music (though I do leave at 3am, before the night really gets going), and sitting down, with the music too loud to talk seems just as popular as back home. But it’s disconcerting being in a club where few people have had a drop to drink (how can you dance like a fool if you know people are going to remember in the morning? It makes me realise how far most social interaction in Britain is based on alcohol), and shocking to see the women leaving their bags and drinks at their tables without a second thought while they dance (shocking because I think few people would contemplate doing that at home, and we’ve accepted that: fear of crime has become normalised). My favourite little difference, though, was in the bathroom: I know I’m in a place where people are that bit taller when the urinals are six inches higher than any back home.