Sorry to drag my blog down to the level of a tv soap but I just finished watching every episode of Sex and the City ever made, or at least, it felt like it. So Carrie moves to a foreign country where she can't understand anyone and she doesn't have any friends. She hates it and her friends tell her to come back home. She makes tearful phone calls home from payphones and knows she made a big mistake, but doesn't know how to put it right without looking silly. Hmm, interesting.

Midnight. Stepping onto the ragged pavement outside a bar, I hissed at a passing taxi and it shuddered to a halt.

"I'm going to town. How much?" I asked the middle aged driver, who was wearing a worn white boubou and a blue wooly hat.

"Mil cinq cents," he said. "Is that OK?" He looked at me through the open passenger-side window.

"One thousand three hundred," I offered, knowing that with the change I had in my purse, that was the easiest amount.

Living in Senegal is tiring, and demanding. But when people ask me how it's tiring, I can't quite think of why. When you climb in a taxi in Dakar, not only do you have to bargain a price and deal with an irrate driver who knows you are rich from the colour of your skin and so assumes you are happy to pay more, but you must also instinctively know what's in your purse in the way of change. You don't have time to look and drivers may not have small notes or coins. If you end up at your destination and find out that you don't have the right money, then you just have to accept to pay more, or fight to pay less.

As the car rattled off along the dark road, he asked if I had the three hundred in change. He switched on a dim light so I could check, and I discovered that I was 10 francs (about one pence) off the right amount.

"No problem," he said sweetly. "Even if you were twenty five francs down, I'd let it go. I am tolerant." Switching the light off, he drove on.

We drove through the rough Medina neighbourhood, past girls sitting on the steps of a house while the boys made tea on a small charcoal burner, past fruit sellers with carts of plasticy apples and perfect plantation bananas. Everything seemed bright to me, shapes sharper, shadows more intriguing. Life feels intense again, and I feel more alive than I have in months. I have no idea why.

I spent my first month in Senegal, seven whole years ago, chasing Baaba Maal around the country and never, ever, meeting him. I know some of his musicians, family and friends, but seven years later, I have had more near misses with this Senegalese hero of mine, than I can now count.

Just as I consider that my life in Senegal may actually, one day, come to an end, I am starting to realise one of my few remaining Senegal dreams. To meet, interview and get to know, in some small way, this person who has inspired me through seven years of life in Africa, and life as a music journalist. I may finally be going to meet Baaba Maal.

On this Sunday afternoon, that prospect feels very, very good indeed.

Walking home from the pool, I happened on a song on my iPod which took me back to a feeling I had forgotten. Frank Sinatra, from an album I listened to when I was missing someone so much I thought I would just one day, simply cease being.

I walked through the darkening streets, listening, and passed the small Fula shop where I buy my gas. In a tall white building up above, I saw what I thought was a statue head posing in the window frame. It was a young black woman, a cloth covering her head as she gazed out the kitchen window. Framed in the adjacent window was her boss, watching the same evening scene, but from the heavily decorated living room window. Neither knew the other was there.

The holiday weekend. Everyone runs out to buy cloth. These remind me of women in burqas trapped behind bars.

I go into an office furniture shop to buy a swivel chair. I choose it, under the blank glare of a bored shop assistant, and go to the cash desk to pay.

I notice three credit card machines at the till.

"Oh!" I say, excited. "I can pay with a card?"

The assistant sucks her teeth at me. She half-closes her eyes to show that she is displeased. I have already said I will pay by cash and to change now would require her replacing a word on my bill with another.

"We prefer cash," she says, crawling over the words, every syllable a tremendous effort.

"I prefer to pay with a card," I say. I am, after all, the customer, I think, mistakenly.

She turns her head to the lady at the till, her eyes lingering over me as if she wishes me a painful death.

"The card machine doesn't work," says the lady behind the till.

There. That sorted that one out. Both ladies smile at me, unkindly.

I always though it an unkind stereotype that African women give birth and then carry on with their work.

This afternoon, I was chatting with M., the delightful woman who twice a week comes by, cleans my house and takes me from my solitary freelance hell. We talked about her impending birth.

"Aren't you tired yet,?" I asked her as she mopped the floors infront of me. I was sitting on the sofa fanning myself with a wicker fan, sweat running down my arms.

"No," M. giggled, herself sweating in the extraordinary heat.

"When I was pregant with my other son, I worked until nine months. On the Tuesday, I went to work and made breakfast for my boss. I cleaned the house as usual. Then I made the lunch." Still mopping the floors, every now and then whipping a cloth out of her housecoat andd giving something a polish, she laughed as she remembered the story.

"I carried on making the lunch until I couldn't go on. I called my boss and he took me to the hospital. At one pm, I gave birth to Mark."

Dakar is quite literally, on fire.

"A-ou?", the man in the scruffy blue security uniform barked at me as I tried to walk through the British Airways office door.

"A-ou?" I asked, incredulous "What does 'a-ou' mean?"

"Foi djem?" he replied, asking me in Wolof where I was going.

I think what you wanted to say was, 'Madam, can I help you?'. But I resisted the urge to say to this him, because he wouldn't get the irony.

Every building, car parking space and square inch of land in Dakar has a guard, from a man officially employed by a security company to stand with a baton infront of the office door, to a young boy who hangs out waiting for someone to park his car so he can earn some money looking after it. Even though these people belong to one of the friendliest populations on earth, once they get a cap and a uniform, they become gruff, mistrusting and often downright rude.

"Is there a press conference today?" I ask the guard at the ministry, knowing full well that there is but that I have not been invited.

"The press is here, yes," he says, questioningly, looking me up and down with a doubtful glare.

"Can I come in then?" I say, moving to get my press card from my bag.

" Well who are you?!" he shouts, turning to face me and drawing his large frame up to what feels like double my size.

"I'm press..." I say, feeling small.

The guard turns my card over and inspects it for a long time. "OK, go in," he conceeds, disappointed.

I go into the salle de presse and the air conditioning is on so high that the air is icy. The room, layered with red velvet curtains and stuffed full of highly polished wooden furniture, is also stuffed full of journalists. The ministers have not arrived yet, and when they do it is not the minister who I had expected to be there. A mis-print in the announcement in the paper means I was expecting someone from another country.

At the prime minister's office, the guards are more friendly. There are many more of them, perhaps giving them less chance to play the policeman.

I arrive at the impressively white building and am met by a policeman, a real one, wearing dark glasses and high leather boots. He is standing in full sun and I want to move into the shade but am afraid to move past the man, who no doubt carries a gun somewhere on that belt, in case he should think I was making a run for the prime minister himself.

I tell him I have a meeting with Mr. D. He almost smiles and waves me towards a guard in a cabin, just inside the front door.
Beside the guard's cabin is a suitcase which is half-covered in the celephane they use at airports. If it is half wrapped or half unwrapped I am not sure.

The second guard is polite. He adresses me as 'Vous' and 'Madam'. He asks my name. I tell him, but he struggles, as everyone does in this country, with the pronunciation. Eventually we decide on 'Kelton', which everyone can say. He shows me into a room, jammed full of sofas, too many for the space, and closes the heavy louvered doors, waving his hand infront of the air conditioner to check it is working. A moment later he comes back and gets a bag out of the gray cupboard wedged in the corner of the room. He puts something away in the bag, slides it back into place, and has to rearrange the cupboard door which has fallen off in the process.

"Yes, yes, hang on..." rustling amongst papers, lifting up files and discovering the telephone underneath.

"Yes, somewhere here I have a business card," says the ministerial press attache, who knows as well as I do that no such card exists.

"Oh," he looks at me with charmingly forlorn eyes, turning his back on the desk. "C'est fini."

This one is different. He had a card, which he sat down underneath the image of Jesus to write upon, and gave me his home phone number and postal address too.

It is the end of a long week, long because the heat is excrutiating, and because I can't seem to motivate myself to work. Nothing much is happening in the news; I have never known it this quiet. It is probably the quiet before the storm, or the fact that during Ramadan and The Heat, which have come together this year, no one can do anything of any use.

But on Fridays, a certain Central Bank in the region issues its treasury bill results. They have not been posted on the website so I opened my contacts spreadsheet and quickly picked off a number next to the name M.

"Hello M!" I positively bellowed down the phone. "This is Rose in Dakar!"

"Ah! Hello Rose," said the voice at the other end, which brought back memories of deep laughs and large bellies. "I thought you had abandoned me! I'm so happy to hear your voice."

We chatted a little about the weather and Ramadan and I told him I was joining my friends to break the fast with them this evening.

"And have you seen your friend, the governor, yet?" M. asked.

I was silent. Why was the treasury bill man asking me about the governor of another regional bank, who for six months I have been trying in interview, with no success?

Unless I wasn't talking to that M. I was infact talking to the other M. The Governor himself. They share the same name.

Once I realised that I had rung the mobile phone of the Governor by mistake, my face went cold and my hands, gripping the telephone receiver, went clammy. How could I have rung him and been so informal and friendly? He must think me very rude.

"No," I stammered. "I haven't been able to get him yet. His press people tell me he is very busy and can't possibly see me."

"Well," said M. incredulously, annoyed. "I will ring him myself and tell him he must see you. I know he would be delighted to meet with you if only he knew about you."

"Well thanks!" I had recovered by then, realising that west Africans love to be friendly and ring eachother up for no reason other than to say hi. People probably don't just ring up the Governor of the Central Bank for no reason, but then, we had shared tea and McVities Digestives in his office and got along just fine. We are friends now.

In Senegal during the holy month of Ramadan everything shuts down. The man on the corner who usually sells me newspapers is rarely there at 8 as he usually is, and there is a lot less traffic than usual. Friends who have never been grumpy start being short with me and I can walk all the way through Sandaga market without anyone trying to sell me phone credit. Clubs are empty or shut; those who do go out do so discretely.

On Saturday night, I went with two friends visiting from London to see Souleyman Faye play, forgetting it was Ramadan and the night was likely to be a quiet one. When we go to the bar, it was empty save for Souleymane and two band members sitting in a dark corner. Undeterred, I went over to announce our arrival. He humoured me, and got up to start the gig. A bass guitar, Souleyman on the lead, and Aziz, his faithful sabar drum player.



Even though there were only a handful of people in the audience, or perhaps because there were only a few people there, he gave it everything. Always introducing the song with some amusing anecdote in French or Wolof, he had the audience laughing before starting on a heart-breaking Wolof version of ‘ne me quitte pas’ or a rocking tale of the spirits of Dakar. He has an extraordinary voice, one which can make you forget there are only three people on stage when there should be seven and which can make you feel you are alone in the room with just the music, sung for you.

His final song launched mid-way into a cover of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s get it on’. He gave it a go, and it could have gone so badly wrong, but it totally worked.

www.myspace.com/souleymanfaye

*****

Minding my own business on Saturday, I noticed that what I thought was an ant bite on my leg had grown more swollen and itchy in the three days I had had it. On closer inspection, I noticed a black spot. On prodding with a needle, I had hooked a black tumba worm out of my leg.

These nasty little creatures come about when the fly lays an egg on wet sand or clothes hanging out to dry. You sit on the sand, or put the clothes on, and the larvae burrows into your skin. The egg hatches and a worm grows. Eventually, I imagine (mine never got the chance), it becomes a fly, and the whole process begins again. I’ve never heard of these worms in Senegal; it is much too tame here. But since regaling my friends with my war story, I’ve discovered that loads of people have had them, or know people who have, and they’re really rather common garden. What a disappointment.