Sitting high up on the stands at Ibar Mar Diop Stadium in Dakar, a Senegalese won the long-jump competition and the Americans won most of the running races. We cracked peanuts, shivered in the shade, and I cheered the British competitors. AB said he could tell who they were because they seemed to always be at the back. The view of the Medina, buzzing with noise and energy, is one I will remember when I am back home.



At my favourite cafe in town, I had one farewell croissant and cafe au lait. For sale on the pavement outside the cafe, which I busily noted in my book as one of those useful pieces of information a writer sometimes has need for, was: phonecards, bathroom scales, an iron, Le Monde, sunglasses, calculator, coffee machine, head scarves, belts, door mats and an ab-stretcher.

In Senegal, when concerts or wrestling matches or any event where thousands of people are gathered in a tight space, come to an end, the place will empty in seconds. Patient people- not naturally disposed to hurrying- who have waited quietly for five hours to see one man throw the other down, or angry 20-somethings who have waited all evening for their rap group to come on stage, will suddenly be gripped by a fury to get out of the stadium, ignoring any encore or post-match activity, and will scatter chairs, climb over people, stampede: anything to be out of the stadium in seconds. Watching it, it's like someone pulls the bath plug and the whole world just drains away.

I've never understood it myself. J. and I were caught in a stampede at the stadium after one wrestling match, having sat all afternoon with the docile crowd who suddenly leapt to their feet and careered down the stands to push through the small exit door. In Ziguinchor, I asked T. what it was all about.

"We call it Se-tan," he said. "When the music is playing, Se-tan stands still and people are safe. But when it stops, he comes back again so people hurry home."

Se-tan. Satan. I get it.

A long morning of re-constructing my previous three months' writing and I felt I needed a long walk on the beach. Here and there, dotted along the wide white sandy stretch were the gnarled stumps of dead trees, twisted with fishing wire, blue and aquamarine ropes, a coat-hanger, someone's lost flip-flop. Some of the stumps were coated with greasy green seaweed that made them look like the hairy backs of deep-sea creatures. A lightbulb lay broken on the sand.

"What do you think of people who get annoyed quickly?" said A., one of the guesthouse's workers who had offered to accompany me on the long walk to the end of the island. As there was no one about, only a lonely fisherman straightening his nets, I had accepted A.'s offer of company, remembering what happened to Martha Gellhorn on a beach in Kenya. I didn't want to be raped in a place that had the illusion of being so cut off from the world that not even crime existed.

I wondered if A. was meaning me. I admit that things piss me off quickly and years of travel in slightly annoying places has done nothing to teach me that I always regret it afterwards; I am still the easiest person to annoy.

"Well," I said, trying to sound as cool as anything. "People are different all over the world. Some people store it up and let it out later, some people show their annoyance as it's happening." Was that a diplomatic response, I wondered hopefully.

"Yes but," went on A, starting to annoy me. "It's bad to get annoyed."

"Maybe," I said, singing to myself and looking out to sea, trying to block out the sound of his voice. "People are different."

"But you," he went on, really wanting a proper answer. "You're not like that. You're Seno-Gauloise now."

That did it. Dreadlocked ganja-smoking idiots in the centre of town accused me of being Seno-Gauloise, the supposedly flattering term that the Senegalese give to anyone who can say one word of Wolof and which means that you have transcended your Frenchness to become almost a Senegalese national. The jibe usually leads to an offer of some wood carving painted with black boot polish, and an accusation of being a racist if you don't give in and buy it. I usually respond by walking infront of a fast-moving taxi, hoping they will follow me and be run down.

I responded breathily to A. that I was neither Senegalese nor French.

"Yes but you're a toubab, and toubab is toubab." All whites are the same.

With no taxi in sight I raised my voice and said, "that pisses me off." We carried on our walk in silence and I wished, ashamed, that the sea would just go on and swallow me up.

There's nothing I loathe more than a wildlife bore. Animals more or less leave me cold, especially birds, but sailing up the Casamance River I was surprised by how lucky I felt to see dolphins, many of them in bouncing, leaping tribes, sailing alongside us.

I had it on good authority that in African cities from Abidjan to Kinshasa, Senegalese girls are famous for going all-out for their men. Clipping toe-nails, massaging, cooking and always being available, are female traits that I thought were common across west Africa, but, I am told, are particular to the Senegalese.

Yesterday I had lunch with A., a Senegalese male friend married to an exceedingly clever and feisty Senegalese woman. I began my sentence, "I hear that Senegalese women..." and he rolled his eyes and said, "yes, are mok-potch".


Mok-potch literally means "silky-thighs". She should be ready to attend to her man's every needs; sooth every ache and pain, cook anything he likes, look fabulous the whole time and of course be ready for whenever he feels like having sex.

I asked if it had anything to do with polygamy- the woman needing to be on her best behaviour to prevent him from looking elsewhere, but A. thinks not. "There are a lot of countries where polygamy is practised but the women are not mok-potch. Girls here are told from the moment they are born that this is what they must do, it's just the way our culture is."

The hot weather is here. The sea is a perfect blue, as is the sky.

Khadim Sarr, or 'Boy Sarr' as he is known amongst us wrestling fans (which I have become), threw Fifty Cent down in a sandy brawl which lasted less than a minute. Though Fifty Cent was the larger and uglier of the two, Boy Sarr was more technical and had him on his back in no time. The stadium erupted, the winning fans lighting fireworks amongst the dangerously packed crowd and spraying shreds of school exercise books like confetti into the wind, the losing crowd in tears, holding their heads in their hands and asking, 'why?'

The press area was full of radio journalists swanning around in fantastically-large and luxurious boubous. "You see these people?" my friend M. asked conspiratorially. "People pay them to say nice things. You don't see me wearing cloth like that, but then, I'm not a journalist."

It is the west African way to think that anyone who is doing well must be getting rich off bribes or government contracts. It is a way of belittling anyone's genuine efforts and successes, to bring them down to the level of his neighbour. In many cases it is true. But in most cases, I suspect, it is that people wear their best boubou to the event to cover up how much money they really have, for in this non-consumer society, money is still king.