Coming Home

On Saturday night Ado and Aliou, friends from the neighbourhood, came to dinner. In the morning I went to my local market, a shed full of ladies at tables, each selling:

Three or four floppy carrots
Quarters of cabbage
MSG ‘stock’ cubes
Handful of dried fish pieces
Unknown green leaf with holes in it
Small sachets of pepper and chilli
Single cloves of garlic
Perfectly round white onions
One aubergine

I have a friend, Kris, who sells fish. Kris is very fat and quite beautiful, loud as you might imagine a fish seller, prone to cackling and trying to sell me off to the meat seller. She sold me some mackerel so I went home with a basket of fish and floppy carrots. With this and some spices I managed to secrete into my luggage from Brixton Wholefoods, I made a good hot curry, which went well with the salted and grilled fish (done by my kitchen aid, Mariam Tounkara) and a bowl of white rice, steamed by Tapha’s sister Rama.

Curry was good but I wished for double cream.

I made all of this with a small child on my back, Kati, who insisted on tasting everything that went into my mouth so that I dropped hot sauce on my shoulder as she tried to get it into her mouth.

Ado and Aliou came to eat, we sat on the mat outside the house, and I wished I’d made Senegalese food. Senegalese people don’t like to be surprised by food and I think the vegetable curry was a bit too much for them to bear. They left the bowl very early on in the proceedings. I was left with the children, who came to suck the fish heads, and we put in another twenty minute’s good work at the bowl before I felt so full I had to go and lie down.

At midnight I donned my new dress and went on the back of my motorbike to le Tamarinier, a bar in town. Tapha’s band were playing there, so I danced with Kris the fish seller and her enormously fat sister and brother until 4am. Kris is trying to win back her ex-boyfriend, zacharia, who plays in the band, so she made elaborate displays of affection during the concert, like rolling up very close to him and dancing, seductively placing bits of fresh coconut in his mouth while he strummed his guitar faster and faster. I’m not sure his motorbike will cope with them getting back together. It was always broken when he used to have to ferry her around town on it.

On Sunday morning, I was invited to lunch by Pap Toutti, the bassist in the band. We all met at Samuel’s house, a French engineer who is working in Ziguinchor on the new port. I went to discuss the band, which has run into recording problems because the man employed to record the album has given up working on it since he received the money. We decided that the band had to get its own speakers, since half the money they earn from concerts goes to hire the equipment. Samuel suggested a concert for his company working at the port, and instead of being paid the cash, Samuel will buy them the speakers with the money.

At three oclock, we decided to have a rehearsal that evening. I called Tapha, who organised going to le Tamarinier to pick up the instruments left there the night before and to hire the speakers for the evening. I sent Pap Tutti off on his bike to find Zacharia, who lives on the other side of town. I sent Matar, Tapha’s brother, on my bike to fetch Maho, the guitarist, and eventually all arrived except Maho, who was playing in another concert at the church. The rehearsal started less than an hour late, a miracle in precision timing, something that doesn’t come naturally to Ziguinchorois.

I was in charge of the children, who all poured in from the neighbourhood and battled for front row seats in the courtyard. There were a lot of tears as boys smacked girls and girls pushed boys off chairs. With Kati tied on my back I did the washing as the music played and made falafel for dinner. I sent Coyo, my kitchen aid, to the market to buy salad and bread, and then went off in search of mayonnaise.

I found a woman who sells mayonnaise by the spoon. One spoon = 50 francs, 5 pence. She was sitting outside her shop roasting peanuts. She only wanted to sell me the stuff if I brought her the bread to spread it on. I told her I wanted it in a little plastic sachet and would even pay her 50francs for the sachet. She couldn’t bring herself to do this; apparently it upset her delicate sense of order and balance to do something a bit out of the ordinary.

There was a lot of discussion. She continued roasting peanuts and Kati, now by my side and holding my hand, started chanting for peanuts. Eventually the woman squeezed herself through a narrow gap in the shop front and went backstage to put my mayonnaise in a bag. I started asking myself how long that pot had been sitting there open, unrefrigerated and what I might possibly catch from it. I decided salmonella was my best bet. She took a long time to measure out my two spoons of mayonnaise and when she came up for air, she was bent on the ground, I said it wasn’t enough. She said that two spoons of mayonnaise in a bag was smaller in quantity than two spoons of mayonnaise on bread.

Discouraged, I took my bag of warm salmonella back to the house where the band were really getting going and a group of women had gathered by the compound door and were dancing wildly. Someone came along to play the tama drum, a small drum that goes under the arm and changes pitch as it’s squeezed. I was set upon by the little girls who all wanted me to carry them so I danced instead. Tapha’s father came along to watch, very small these days, leaning on the front door frame.

This band, if they get themselves organised, will be the most popular band in Senegal one day. iIt's soulful, full of funk, one family of brothers making good sounds.

With rehearsal over, I set about frying the falafel. Falafel, I decided in England, was my best chance of eating enjoyable nutritious food. When I found chick peas in town, it was like all my christmases had come at once.

But the gas I cook on, a bottle with a small gas ring screwed into it, burns the food on one side and doesn’t get hot on the other. Also, the oil I used (Senegalese oil; I am trying to support local enterprise) somehow dissolved my falafel into a kind of chick pea and oil soup. It had to be thrown away.

It was only the first time I have cried from frustration since coming home so things are going quite well. I had rice and fish for dinner.