Multi-wife management

In any conversation about Senegalese culture, polygamy is pretty much top of the list. Not only is it arguably the most difficult aspect of life for westerners to really get their heads around, but it is increasingly the source of heated, if both good natured and light hearted, debate amongst the Dakarois.

A friend of mine has 3 wives. He is the first to acknowledge that his life is extraordinarily complicated. Recently his second wife was all wrong with her timing and managed to give birth to his fifth child while he was on rotation with wife 3. They were sound asleep when the phone rang at 3am to announce the happy event. Wife no. 3's reaction? 'This woman is making my life a misery - she won't even let me get a full night's sleep now!'

As he says, complicated.

Trash

The trash that you notice as a new arrival in Dakar, much like many other highly populated cities in the developing world, tends to fade into the background and become commonplace after a while. Every now and again, perhaps with the rain and the related odours it brings, the piles of rubbish appear once again in sharper relief. I suppose this has to be a good thing, since the minute we all stop noticing, any chance of making things better goes out of the window.