It's been a really long time since I saw my friend Now, who since selling his small shop in Dakar has moved back to home turf in Casamance. In the end he came up against all sorts of problems in Dakar- mostly spiteful rich neighbours wanting to make life difficult for him- and unable to make even basic ends meet, he moved to Bounkeling, a small town without electricity 200 kilometres north of Ziguinchor.

After spending three months in his home village- 25 kilometres from Bounkeling along a narrow sand track through the forest- vowing not to go back to commerce, he started to see business opportunities unfolding before him. Around his village are hundreds of farmers growing lemons, chillies, baobab fruit and rice, bountiful crops flourishing in the immensely fertile soil. Most of it goes to feed the families that grow it, some of it makes it to the weekly Sunday market in Bounkeling for trade between villages but hardly any of it goes further than that. While Dakar imports rice and onions from Thailand and Holland, Casamance remains largely cut off from trade because people want to eat 'exotic' imported food, not the boring stuff that comes from their own land.

Loading his capital- from the sale of the shop- into children's plastic sandals in Dakar, Now set off to make a small profit on it. He went to villages when he heard there was a Joola circumcision party going on and set up a stall, laying a mattress down at night to sleep and lighting a torch above the stall to keep thieves away. When he made a profit on that, he rented a small shop, a couple of rooms in a big empty house and procured a table in the market.

On Sundays he goes to the weekly market to buy onions, stock cubes, tomato paste and mustard (the mainstays of Senegalese cuisine) in bulk and then on hot afternoons on his porch he spoons everything into neat 25 franc plastic bags, twisting the bags into a knot around his thumb to close them, to sell during the week. His wit and charm means he has outstripped his competitor, a grumpy old man who sits at his table opposite, devoid now of customers. Women and girls flock to his table in the morning, and he greets them in Fula, Wolof, French, Mandinka or English, depending on which side of the Gambia border they have come from, giving them each a special name. The girls giggle as they toss onions into their shopping buckets and the women bring him presents of rice or fish as he enquires after the families back at the house. He's a natural-born salesman but he doesn't much care about the money side of it, it's the people who make him happy.

During the evenings where we lay a mat out on the porch, we talked a lot about our time in Dakar and the last couple of years which were difficult for us both, in different ways. He said when when Julia, Cecilia, Naomi and I one by one went off to other parts of the world, he felt like he was stuck in a bottle. He was working all hours of the day and night but not making enough to eat, which explains the constant illnesses. Also he didn't have anyone to share his different way of thinking with; no one appreciated the small garden we had set up and the neighbours, rich Senegalese and French, felt him a nuisance and did all they could to make him leave. Even though he kept the street clean, sold them packets of Malboro and provided a place to keep out of trouble for for the dozens of Fulas - most of them with failed farms behind them- who trekked in from Casamance and Guinea in the hope of finding work, they didn't like his shop, or his success, and made life impossible for him. In the end, he just wanted to sell the shop and never think about commerce again.

On Wednesday we borrowed a motorbike and went to visit his wife and kids in his father's village. We passed through fields of citrus fruits, wide swathes of forest where only the sound of a bell told us that there were cowheards nearby, and under grand baobab trees with their jewelry-like fruits hanging, silhouetted against the setting sun.

"Look at all this forest," said Now as he navigated the sandy track, making do without second gear which had failed just as soon as we left Bounkeling.

"People could farm here, there is nothing from here to the Gambia border and the forest belongs to no one. But people don't want to do anything with it."

As we brushed the hedges crowding on either side of the track, and I thought from time to time about MFDC rebels who might, or might not, be hiding out in wait for a profitable loot, the smell of lemon, thyme and chamomile thickened the air.

"You should write a story about the rocks," said Now, as the bike shuddered over yet another set of small boulders. "That's why I wanted to bring you here, because I know you will be able to write something about it."

This week I went shopping for underwear. It's the first time I have braved buying knickers in Senegal, but I thought it would be an interesting social experiment. I am still in research to find out where the latest national phrase has come from, 'salagne salagne', a word used by Youssou N'Dour in a song of the same name, so it seemed like a good part of the hunt.

One of the teenagers I hung out with last week said it was the phrase used for a woman 'who knew what to do to keep her man', and another (a man) said it could also be used for men, who should also try to do all they can to keep their woman. It is about wearing the right lingerie, having the appropriate number of bin-bin (waist beads) and burning the right kind of incense in the bedroom. But the phrase has also become a description for anything vaguely sexy, so when a woman wobbles down the street, men watching her disappear can be heard to mutter 'salagne salagne' as she goes and if a pair of sunglasses is adorned with diamante studs, 'salagne salagne' also fits. In a world where glitter = beauty, 'salagne salagne' can be heard at the moment just about everywhere.

At Sandaga market I entered one of the stall selling knickers. I wasn't prepared for a man to be doing the selling but it seems women sell bras, men sell pants.

"Oui Madame?" the stall-holder said as I entered a forest of dangling g-strings. "What do you want?"
"I just want to look," I said shyly as I leafed through a stack of nylon knickers.
"But do you want knickers," he said, holding up a massive pair of grey cotton briefs, "or do you want 'salagne salagne'?" He waved a tiny triangle of diamante-studded string in my face. I backed away.

At the next stall it was the same story. There's salagne salagne and there's something my granny might wear. What if I wanted salagne salagne but in my size? I searched for an hour through the market, men lining up along each side of the narrow alleyways which cut through the wobbly wooden shacks, hissing at anyone coming through and holding up the item of clothing they think might suit. I was offered stretchy nylon tops with incomprehensible slogans across the chest in numerous colours but always the same size: tiny size. Stretchy jeans too, but all for skinny girls. Where, I asked myself, are the clothes for the much-adored larger woman?

At HLM market the next day I found my answer.

"Hips," said the men whose stall I had stopped at. He fingered a pair of shorts, like the super-knickers which are meant to hold you in and make you smaller. But these had been pimped. They had foam padding all around them, and on the hips, extra layers of padding. My friend A., quite slim, asked the man if they were meant for people like her.

"Yes," he said, "for people with no bottom. But also for people like your friend," he said pointing to my hips.
"Even me?" I asked?
"Yes!" he said. "Even big girls like you."

That evening A. and I went to dinner with Omar and his family. We told his wife about our find. She roared with laughter and Omar looked horrified.

"Women trick men," he said, shaking his head. "They pretend they have more than they really do and the man is deceived."

What did Omar think about making your bum bigger to attract a man, we asked.

"It's not natural," he said. Breasts, bum, a woman should just be herself.

"Hello?"
"Bonjour Fatou," says the voice at the other end of the phone.
"Sorry, you've got the wrong number," I say to the man.

I hang up. A second later, the phone rings again. I ignore it. The fourth time it rings, I pick it up.

"Hello?"
"Excuse me, I know I've got the wrong number, but I wonder if you would allow me to get to know you..."
"What does that mean?" I ask, stunned.
"I said," he said. "I want to get to know you."
"No thanks, bye bye."

Though I hear that this- ringing a random number and hoping to get a girl or guy on the other end- is quite a popular, and successful, way of getting a spouse.

Having decided to give up smoking, I find myself tonight unable to sleep. It's not too late to pop out to see Souleymane Faye play his second set but since I'm in my pyjamas I decided I'd sit down instead and try to make headway again with the book I have wanted to write for about the last eight years. Staring at the blank page, unable now to sleep or write, I am reminded by this photo (of Baaba Maal's guitarists) of where this whole thing started.

At the end of 2001 I came to Dakar to write my dissertation about religion and Senegalese pop music and got it into my head that I could interview Baaba Maal, the musician I most admired, not just for his startlingly crystal voice and his moving, spiritually-infused lyrics, but also for his dedication to social and developmental issues. Through a contact in London I got the phone number of his manager in Dakar and when I arrived, terrified and unable to communicate with anyone, I tried giving him a ring. Of course I could interview him, the guy said, tomorrow would be fine.

Such was my naivety then that I thought it was really going to happen. What ensued was a month that touched me so deeply that Senegal became my life but the one thing that didn't happen was my interview with Baaba Maal. Desperate, I set off for Podor when I heard he had gone to his home town, and even slept the night in his brother's guesthouse, sad to find out that he had gone on to Matam, too far for me to go in the few days of my trip that remained. I didn't care all that much, because I had no schedule and no deadline to fulfil and anyway, by then I knew that one day I would meet my musical hero and ask him all the questions I wanted.

Since then I have managed to scrape a living through music journalism and I've had the opportunity to meet Baaba on many occasions. A couple of years ago he asked me why I had never interviewed him, but I said nothing. Last year I was commissioned a piece on him by a magazine but months of ringing various people came to nothing: it seemed it was never meant to be.

I still admire him, more now for his truly honest way of speaking about the things that many in and around Africa are afraid to broach, but I think the days for an interview are well and truly gone. Someone once suggested I write a book entitled 'How I Never Met Baaba Maal' and all the amazing people I met in the meantime. Sitting here at two in the morning, a blank page once again open infront of me, it doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

I have been reading, or re-reading- because it's one of those books that one reads so much about that I can't remember if I ever read it-, Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'. Amongst other timeless perceptions and descriptions of attitudes in Africa, I particularly loved this:

(Marlow, having reached the Congo, sets off on foot to meet his steam boat that will eventually take him up the River Congo.)

'Next day I left the station at last, with a caravan of sixty men, for a two-hundred-mile tramp. No use telling you much about that. Paths, paths, everywhere; a stamped-in network of paths spreading over the empty land, through long grass, through burnt grass, through thickets, down and up chilly ravines, up and down stony hills ablaze with heat; and a solitude, a solitude, nobody, not a hut.

The population had cleared out a long time ago. Well if a lot of mysterious niggers armed with all kinds of fearful weapons suddenly took to travelling on the road between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left to carry heavy loads for them, I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would be empty very soon."

My father used to work in the docks at Gravesend so it's a particularly amusing image to me. I also like his descriptions of being under the weather a lot of the time, calling it "the playful paw-strokes of the wilderness, the preliminary trifling before the more serious onslaught which came in due course."

This morning, serious procrastination while oranges fall from the tree outside my window.

Last night I saw the new generation of African music, and it doesn't look too much like any other kind of pop, though with its own special Senegalese twist. Rousing anthems, screaming girls, a young guitarist who can play like any of the greats and a frontman with so much presence on stage that it was hard to take your eyes off him, even for all three hours of the concert.

Carlou D makes primarily spiritual pop music but some of his songs, to those who don't understand the language and cultural references, sound like classic Bon Jovi rock anthems. As he sang a duet with the soul singer of the group Daara J Family, I could, for the first time since I've been here, see the future of Senegalese music and imagine that it won't be too long before this stuff is a regular sound on international radio. What a nice feeling to know that other people might, after all this time, also recognise the value in what you love.

I've had a lot of time in the last couple of weeks to think over my years spent living here. I've met up with Senegalese friends I haven't seen in a couple of years, people I fell out with when I was wrought with exhaustion but couldn't get them to see my point of view or lend any sympathy, people who I felt were critical of me and the way I dealt with things here, and hence I let drop. I can see it from their point of view now- that I didn't need to fight every single little thing- but I'm also not sure if I could have lived it any other way. I like to throw myself headfirst into things and defend my values, sometimes regardless of who I might offend. I can see now that there was an easier way of doing things but I was too deeply mired in my own personal issues to recognise it.

I've been accused of being negative about Senegal and as a guest in this country, I suppose my criticisms should have been kept to myself. I know lots of people who have lived here years and not ever taken a bus or paid a water bill themselves. I know lots of Senegalese who avoid that chore, for the simple fact that the bureaucracy involved is soul-sapping. I suppose I should have tried to avoid it too or at least, not whined on about it afterwards. At the same time, since I've been working as a journalist I don't think I've written one story about war or famine but have tried to present the positive side of west Africa. But as a tourist said to me last night, it's just not easy to do things here, and I suppose to be able to write about all the good things, I had to process the difficult things too.

I expect the people who got sick of me complaining about Senegal have long ago given up reading my blog, in which case I am preaching to the converted. But as someone who feels very Senegalese at times, who has spent a third of her life living here, and who loves the country from its extraordinary hill-top monument down to the red beetles that come out when it's about to rain, I feel I need to assert my point. I've had a couple of tough years here and probably said too much about it, but this is a home for me and I'll try to keep writing good stuff about it as long as there's good stuff to write about. Last night's gig was a perfect microcosm of all the great things about this place.

I have known the waiter at Cafe L. so long now that I can no longer ask his name; it is shameful that I didn't get to know it when it became obvious that I was going to become a regular, more than eight years ago. He is always pleased to see me, and grins a stained-toothed smile when he sees me across the spluttering coffee machine. I haven't had to order my breakfast there for a long while, since he always brings me what I want as soon as I sit down.

On Sunday, I chose a blue formica table and sat down with a book, happy to have an hour to myself. An old Senegalese man in a khaki safari suit, short sleeves, sat down next to me and asked for an espresso and two croissants. The croissants steamed in their wire basket. When I asked for one too, he passed the basket my way, shaking it so that crumbs fell to the floor between our tables.

"Please-please," shake-shake, "it's an offer of the heart," he said.

The croissant was crisp, the inside seductively warm on the fingertips.

My neighbour left and I asked the waiter who he was.

"Ah, this man is a real Dakarois , I've known him since I was a boy. He was born in the house across the road."

We both peered out the window and past the air-conditioning units which spat water down the side of the decaying building.

"I've worked here for 22 years," he went on. "It used to be owned by the father, now it belongs to the daughter. They are my family now."

Looking out the window, I could see the balcony of my old apartment. The shutters were up, someone at home.

"They say, when you come to Senegal, you'll never be able to leave," he said when I told him there was someone else now living in my apartment.

"If you understand our customs, you'll understand why."

It's been ages since I went to Ngor island, and after what turned out to be a hard week's work, I was happy to get back there. The sky was a wonderful kind of patchwork and the light soft; after a week of hard sandy skies, the air felt warm and gentle.

A., a young Senegalese friend, saw me about to swim back across from the island. He asked, with his nervous stutter, if he could come too. He went into a shack on the beach and pulled on a faded pink rash guard, then set off, leading me through the rocks.

A. is a fisherman, and lives in Ngor village, a tightly-packed mound of houses on the edge of the Dakar peninsular. He grew up swimming and fishing with his father and probably never went to school. He can swim the 700 metres across from the island in a matter of minutes, whereas it takes me 20. As I pulled my weary body through the water, A. dove down to the sea bottom to have a look around. Needless to say he doesn't wear goggles.