"I saw you this morning; I said to myself, that girl there is not from around here, she doesn't know where she is going. Do you want to come now and have a glass of bissap at my mother's restaurant? It's very nice, and you can try an African dish."

After a long afternoon at the illegal immigration sit-in in Paris I went for a stoll around the 18th district, Chateau Rouge and along Rue des Poissoniers. I wanted to see migrants living in the outside world, on the Paris streets, perhaps offer myself some sense of hope that those who live underground will one day become part of those who live above ground. But all I saw were swathes of Africans swarming around the Chinese and Arabs earnestly selling fish and herbs and plantain, and groups of armed police wandering amongst them, sticking out as much as I was. The till at the KFC at Chateau Rouge was ten-deep with west Africans, and the tables were littered with chicken bones, and everything was sweaty. It was like being in Lagos- the chaos and shouting. It felt so odd to look up at the attractive French buildings high above the cacophony of the streets and remember that we were in France.

At a wig shop I watched women with skin burned pink by bleaching creams come in and demand this wig and that hair-piece, the one with the purple underneath and the tight-cropped blonde one. I unthinkingly told one woman that the wig she was trying on suited her, though it wasn't true- I was just trying to fit in. The manequins modeling the wigs did not seem very black, even though I was the only white person I saw- except for the police- the entire time I was there.