A day of consuming. This morning I bought a phone card from a cheerful fellow who this evening remembered me. "Ah," he said. "My first client of the day," flapping his phone cards.

This evening I tried to buy some shoes. A friend A. told me on the phone where I could get some from his friend, and when I went down stairs to this guy's shop, A. rang him up and told him to make me a good deal. The guy, about 18, was instantly friendly to me, telling me the exact, non-inflated, price of the shoes which were stacked up like half-fallen dominoes on wooden shelves. But he didn't have any my size. I tried, in vain, to coax him into selling me something, asking him if he had something, anything, in my size, but he looked forlorn as he said no, nothing. He did, however, send me to his friend down the road who had exactly what I was looking for.

Down the road, a similar shack on the pavement had red shoes in my size. We chatted, bantered a little, and I decided to buy them. He asked 3 times the price, and I told him to cut the crap. He reduced the price a little and I walked away. You win some, you lose some. Neither my Wolof chatter nor my minutes of sitting about chatting would convince him to give me a fair price.

On my way home, I went into a shop to get change for a 100 franc coin. Since yesterday I have owed the paper shop around the corner 25 francs, and no one in Dakar seems to have the brassy coins anymore, perhaps because they are now worth so very little. The Mauritanian who sold me a sachet of water did not have the right coins, but a young guy who came in the shop after me had one, and offered it to me as a cadeau. I took it, reluctantly, realising as I walked away that in trying to pay back one debt I had created another.

"Excuse me, miss!" the guy called out as I walked down the street. "I really want to know your name. You are so nice!"

Eventually I gave him my name, paid back my debt to the paper shop owner, and retreated inside as quickly as I could.

I'm off back to London tonight and feeling strangely ambivalent about it. The down-side of being in a place where there is time and space to breath and be is that too much thinking goes on. Perhaps it is better to charge ahead through life and not think about anything much.

Yesterday P and I sat looking at some kids playing in the dramatically turquoise shore waters, kids covered in sand, plunging again and again into the shallow surf.

"Most Africans never get over their happy childhood," said P, who is probably right. What a great way to grow up.

I think P. will blog about Christmas decorations, for who could come to Dakar at this time and not be impressed by the extraordinary glitzy decorations which deck out every patisserie and street vendor's neck? Today I saw Santas swaying from left to right as they played the saxophone; yesterday my taxi door was opened by a Santa with a whited-out face.



Usually the Senegalese hate to have their picture taken, unless they know and trust you. This guy, with a fake pot-belly, was happy to be snapped; he was rightly proud of his costume.

Yesterday I was called by the mother of one of my little girls from Ziguinchor.

"I annoyed K. yesterday," said the mother, laughing. "And she told me, 'tonight I will kill you in your bed'. I told her, well, then you will lose your mother. And she said, 'No I won't, I have another mother. Rose will take care of me.'"

I am far away but I am not forgotten.

"Danke danke moi japal goor si n'iaye," said my shy friend El Hadj as we enjoyed the warm Sunday afternoon sun and smoothed little piles of sand with our hands. This Wolof phrase is used in almost every situation, and translates as 'slowly slowly catch a money in the forest.' "It doesn't interest me to know someone today and then tomorrow not even greet them when I see them. If you want to get to know a girl, you have to go slowly slowly, so that you can become her friend first."

El Hadj and I were talking about Senegal and the Senegalese. "I love seeing foreigners come to my country," he said. "If people come here to visit it means that we are at peace." But, he went on, he hates it when Senegalese act like idiots when they see a foreigner. "You see some guys, they call out to a girl, 'hey, la belle' and they think they will be able to catch her like that. No," he said, "first you must become her friend."

El Hadj went on to tell me, in hushed tones, that some white women come to Dakar and they get with one of these guys just for a week. That's why, he said, they keep chasing white women. They think that they are all easy.

'A dirty little bar' is what I call this place but it does actually have a name: 'R n B bar' flashes in green fluorescent piping near the doorway- some stiff saloon doors and a grimy brown curtain which sweeps over your face as you try to get inside. Once inside, there is nothing much to light the place, but a blue fluorescent string of lights over the back wall showed the elements of a drum kit lying in pieces on the floor, and a few empty chairs.

A musician approached us, in a red cap.

"Hello, have you come to see the soiree?" he asked. "It is going to start right now!"

P and I both looked incredulously at the pieces of drum kit and the empty chairs where the band would eventually sit.

"Right now. In half an hour."

I am lucky to have great blogger staying with me, whose blog about last night's dinner conversation eminently cheered me. The Dakar air is gritty today, a sand storm blowing somewhere far off, and even more gritty human relationships that I can not quite understand leave me feeling puzzled.

This afternoon at the small sports stadium in the medina, we watched pair after pair of muscular men punching and grappling at eachother in an attempt to throw the other onto his back during a traditional wrestling match. Behind us, the supporters of Gouygui and to our left, the young men and women supporting Building, aptly built as his name. For hours, the two combatants had been parading around the stadium, flanked by diamante-studded youths eager to get their share of the fame and massive fortune that falls to successful wrestlers in Senegal.

Gougui, dressed in a shell-studded loin-cloth, seemed the favourite to win, or at least the most popular. Building had less supporters and less of an entourage, but was eminently tall and quite handsome, except for his broken front teeth. The two stomped around, covered in talismans, herb-filled waters blessed by the most powerful marabouts in the land poured endlessly over their big bald heads and backs.

Finally they stepped into the sandy ring and started to batter eachother. Gougui's supporters, orange bandanas on their heads, were wild and festive, while Building's supporters, perhaps nervous that their hero couldn't pull it off, were less confident. Red beret policemen with ancient rifles knelt beside the ring to stop a pitch invasion, though when the invasion did finally happen, they could do nothing but stand back and watch impotently.

After a couple of minutes of cat-fisting, Building had Gougui on his back. The cry that went up from the loser's fanbase was one of terrific disappointment, and soon the girls had started to cry. The men just stood with their hands on their heads, a look of cold emptiness on each face. Their loss was palpable.

A trip to the supermarket to buy some of the fresh local milk that I so crave here.

"Hello Madam," says a young pretty girl dressed in the blue and white colours of the milk company. "Do you know about our product?
"Yes," I say, ever-impressed by this company who now seem to be doing customer satisfaction polls at the milk fridge.
"Oh," I go on, reaching my hand to the empty shelf. "Where's the milk?"
"Oh," she says, smiling unsympathetically. "There isn't any left."

Omar was shyly taking my bust measurement ("You have changed a bit since you went to England. I must re-do you") when he suddenly fell into fits of giggles and started scrabbling through his notebook to show me something.

Usually as discreet as your local doctor, he pulled up a page with some measurements on it, the usual stuff, until I saw that the measurements were not usual.

Longeur: 167
Poitrine: 147
Centure: 148

"The height is normal," he said, "but look at the rest. She is the biggest woman I have ever seen."

Omar, who still closes his eyes when he has to stretch a tape-measure around me, went on to tell me that when he wrapped the tape measure around this lady, he had to press himself against her or else his hands could not meet to take the dimension. He was terrified that she would think he was doing something inappropriate.

*****

An early morning fight in the local computer/telephone/printing/internet shop.

Customer: "I don't have the right money. Can I come back later with 1,000 francs?"
Boss: "Ah! I can't leave the till without the right money in it. Pay it now or leave your printing here and come back with the money and collect it."
"But I will bring the money, I promise."
"I can't leave the till with the wrong money inside it"
"Why don't you trust me?"
"It's not a question of trust. It's a question of accounting."
"Stop with this attitude. I will come back with the money."
"Attitude? Attitude? Get out of my shop, now!"

The boss, a fat, heaving man, comes around to the front of the desk, shoves the skinny man with the printing in his hand to the door, then pushes him out onto the pavement. The customer looks shocked, embarrassed and angry.

"Never darken my door again," says the boss, whose workers tidy him up and send him back to finish serving me.

On day one of leading my tour of Dakar, we were taken up into the lighthouse near where I used to live. I have always loved that place, it's the most westerly lighthouse on mainland Africa and feels completely forgotten, just an old building on a hill which despite its isolation and seeming neglect, is still functioning and essential to Dakar life.

The man working in the lighthouse, a young guy, took us all up into the tower, guided by some very well-polished brass banisters. One by one we climbed into the revolving cylinder of mirrors which reflects light from the tiniest little bulb dozens of kilometres out into the sea and across the city. Then he showed us a huge bulb, supposedly the first one used there, at the end of the 19th century, though I wonder if that's true because the glass would have had to be hand-blown. In any case, how would it have lasted 150 years of Senegalese man-handling?

Taking us out on to the terrace, our guide showed us a whole load of antennae. Some are for embassies, some for the national TV station, he said. And some, he went on, I can not tell you who they are for, because it is a secret.

It's that time of year again, the streets are literally lined with sheep, and headscarved-men sleeping in between, reposing in the soiled sand, watchmen over their numerous 4-legged wealth.

J and I went sheep shopping. Sunday night, a cool sea breeze, what more peaceful activity than walking out with a friend and perusing the wares on offer? The first place we stopped at, the watchman got up and kicked his sheep sharply in the ribs, pulling on its tail, hoping to make it stand and show us how big he was, how much meat on him.



I asked for the sheep's name. He reeled off the names of all three of his prize muttons, then told me that for £500 he could be mine. We walked on, tip-toeing through the sand to the next gathering of sheep and men, and were offered something slightly more affordable, at £300.

At the last place we stopped, a group of guys sat around an oil-drum fire and warmed themselves. We chatted to the man nearest the sheep; he asked if we had husbands.

"I am looking for a white wife," he told us hopefully.

"I am looking for a white sheep," I replied.

"Look," said another who had come over to see what all the chat was about. "Are you here to buy a sheep or just to talk?"

I said that talking and buying sheep went hand in hand.

"Yes," he conceded, "talking is an important part of life."