Tomorrow my sister is getting married. She is my sister in the African sense, and in that we all need someone who is slightly more than a friend when stuck in far away places.

This afternoon I told MH, my smiling bonne, that my sister was getting married.

"Yala moila-la," she replied gravely, and muttered some incantations about dieu being grand and 'it'll come, inshallah'.

I pressed her to tell me what she meant.

"Well, your sister is getting married and you, you are not married. So I am asking god to bring you a husband too."

All the Senegalese people around me who care about me, and that does not included almost every taxi driver I meet, seem disproportionately concerned that Julia is getting married and I remain a spinster. MH looked horrified when I, perhaps unfairly, for it was only to make a point that this line of conversation is futile, retorted that God was useless in this sense. She has gone silently back to shelling broad beans.