Oncl' Sam's

Today is the big festival of the mutton in Senegal and everything is shut. Shops, internet, transport. Everybody is at home slaughtering a sheep and letting its blood run into the earth, to keep the family well for the year ahead. They tell me that my neighbours will come to give me some meat later- at least, this is what happens in the countryside. But my street is new to me and even though the thought of mutton doesn't excite me much, because all the shops are shut I only have crispbread and peanut butter to eat so rather hope it does happen.

My flat is lovely to wake up in. My bedroom faces onto the end of the airfield (and this baobab tree, see photo) where planes don’t come and all I can hear in the mornings is birds perched on the distant baobab trees. Sometimes one comes knocking on my window.

After six months of living either in a compound with lots of people, or in other people’s houses as a kind of guest that never leaves, to live alone is a treat. I listen to the World Service almost all the time, catching those programmes you always seem to miss when there is going out to work to be done, or other people around. I work when I like, sometimes until two am and then go to the beach in the day. I eat chocolate for dinner, if I feel like it, and if I want to I can do quite a good job of forgetting I am in Africa. I think I will last much longer here if I have my own hideaway because in the end, we all hanker after the familiar, after crispbread and peanut butter instead of mutton intestines. But it doesn’t mean I love Africa any less.

Last night I finished work at midnight and I felt like dancing. I called my friend Gabi, a computer engineer and asked if he felt like going out. Taxi prices have shot up because everyone is saving for their sheep and I had long discussions with taxi men as to why I should have to pay more just because they have three wives and twenty children to feed. Gabi lives in a neighbourhood with a lot of Congolese and Ivorian people and there is a place there called ‘Oncl’ Sam’s’, a kind of warehouse filled with plastic furniture, florescent strip lights and hundreds of people grouped around tables groaning under the weight of empty beer bottles.

Gabi and I sat a table with some of his friends and I counted forty-five empty beer bottles on our table before my eyes blurred. There were girls twitching and grinding their bottoms to Congolese songs pumping out of a booth in the corner and men wearing sunglasses slumped low in their chairs, looking like they were going to fall asleep. Every now and then, they would leap up and dance in a row, all watching themselves in the huge mirrors that lined every inch of wall space, doing the most extraordinary dance moves, to great applause from their friends.

One girl in particular caught everyone's attention. She wore a very small pair of jeans and a g-string with a silver bow joining the threads together. She was a hit with the boys. The silver bow flashed and glinted under the harsh lights so that no one could take their eyes off it. Her perfectly round bottom became the focus point of the evening. Everyone was so beautifully turned out and I, as ever, felt like a refugee even though I was wearing a dress. I felt so white under those lights, and so old looking on at the scene of debauchery with wide-eyed shock. I had fun but I hope I never have to go there again, or if I do, I will make sure I wear much less clothing and drink a lot more beer.

I have a neighbour in Dakar who is a bit more up my street. She’s from Birmingham and lives alone, too. We said we would go out and listen to music together. It’s good to have friends.

Every afternoon this week, after I finish work, I have been going to the beach below the cliffs opposite my house. A lighthouse looms above it on the cliffs and the sea is calm, protected by the bay. I take Jane Austen and wield it at the boys like a sword and hope they will leave me alone. In this cold weather the sea is quite soft and peaceful and sometimes it rubs off on me.