Liberté 6 is known for the market by the big roundabout under the overpass. From there, by the roundabout, one can take a number of buses that go into the city: Mermoz, Medina, Fann, all the way to downtown Plateau. The new, fast, clean and air con’d electric buses have started to run from just nearby, all the way to Petersen. One can also take the car rapids, the small, beat-up second hand-buses, going to Ouakame and back. Here people are packed and the bus-boys cling on to the back door while standing on the step outside, banging the buckled metal as a sign to the driver to leave or to stop.

The market continues to the East of the roundabout with the stands becoming shabbier and shabbier and the road becoming more and more riddled with potholes to finally be closed up completely and left for construction work. Before that the stalls bleed into the smaller side streets, mixing with noisy wood- and metal workshops, becoming Liberté 5 somewhere on the way; turning into small restaurants and lit-up shops and barbers’ until, suddenly, the next roundabout: again surrounded by a rowdy market, sheep corrals and the big bus station of Lib 5 with buses going long distance to St. Louis, Touba, Kaolack.

Going North from the roundabout of Liberté 6 the furniture stores line the road and soon (but where, exactly?) the cheaper Grand Yoff begins. Again big market, noisy workshops. Squeezed between the furniture shops I once find a small Moroccan shop and revel in spices; cumin which I haven’t seen for months, and cardamom! The shopkeep, busy taking stock, pauses and smiles when I greet him in Darija.

West is towards my block which is situated between two roads: the smaller one is still the market, stalls running on and among them a small street café run by a Baye Fall-guy who, in the beginning, is friendly when we chat but then turns more and more insistent and so I choose the other side each time I have to pass, only lifting an arm to greet and not stopping to answer his yelled questions of why I haven’t called.

The other road is a boulevard with a wide walkway in the middle. There is an outdoor gym, a playground, benches and trees alternating with the curved streetlights. Along this road are some finer eateries, a shisha place run by Lebanese whom my Algerian sister quickly befriends. They are open until 04 in the morning and we go there sometimes to use the wifi, sit in the colored lights and sweet-smelling shisha smoke and watch the men smack down playing cards over the table. They are Muslim but tattooed and smoking and I like teasing them for looking like the Mafia. They are friendly though; always offering us free drinks and making sure we are accompanied home, despite it being a five minute walk.

The big boulevard turns darker and sadder until it ends in another roundabout and if I go running, I run just until there for my short round. Many people run there after dark like me, many men; the women I’ve seen running I can count on one hand. But no one bothers me. They usually acknowledge me with a polite nod. I run past groups of men and women working out to loud music and instructors leading the movements. On the sides people serve sandwiches, coffee and cookies, fresh coconuts or benje, small round doughnuts. People sit on benches or play foosball, chat under the streetlights, the energy returning now that the sun is down; the ambience is always amazing.

But my quartier is only a short walk and a left turn from the roundabout. Just after the one bigger mosque and the small park if you’re coming on the boulevard. Sometimes sand is piled along the side of the smaller streets, some construction going on on one of the houses. Sometimes a sheep is tied to the half-finished house, probably belonging to one of the construction workers. The small streets here are lined only with apartment buildings and the noise from the big streets dies down. Small local shops take space in the lower floors with satchels hanging from lines behind the metal grids and shelves filled with products. A tailor’s workshop with the door open and a wooden desk outside just where the street turns, the tailors sometimes measuring fabric outside. (“Take me with you!” they will yell as I run past them when beginning my jogging round.)

My house is just by the crossing where four streets meet, a four-story apartment building. Slightly higher than the others around it until a few houses away, half-finished and enclosing our little valley around the crossroads. On the opposite side is a mosque and a beginning of an apartment building with reinforcing irons sticking up from the open top floor. People have fastened lines there, bringing their clothes to dry and the un-barred windows are shut with cardboard or sheet metal – I suspect people live there. On the street is also a furniture workshop: nail-gunshots reinforced by the echo between the houses and the saws going hot during the day. In a small shop a girl sells produce from Ghana and next to it, in the evenings, young men start up a street grill, their voices and laughter rising to my balcony. Some evenings a group gathers on their rooftop to drum and sing, lifting the spirits of the whole neighborhood.

I always buy the small stuff from the boy in the shop downstairs. In a wooden locker he stores the bread and from big plastic bins he and his brother portion spoonfuls of mustard, mayonnaise, butter and oil into small bags sold for a few coins. Behind the bars he has everything; bags of detergent and Café Touba, jars of mayo and tins of fish, several brands and sizes of chocolate spread, sachels of pepper, milk powder, chili; fresh mint, eggs, sugar and salt. We always chat and I practice my Wolof greetings and numbers with them, as well as my French, tentatively asking for one thing at a time, locking my eyes on the side to think before the number he tells me finally arrives in my brain and I hand the money through the small opening in the bars, receiving the change and the purchases. They are young; I am guessing about 15-16. But very mature for their age, with their calm temperament and discipline, working from early morning into late nights. Maybe the family has run into some trouble, I speculate, forcing these young boys to drop out from school and take a day job instead. One day out of curiosity I ask the older brother his age;
“I am twenty one,” he replies.

A little bit further down the road I buy my lentils, beans, hibiscus flowers and dried baobab fruit by the kilo from big sacks lining the doorway. The buff guy comes around the counter to weigh the products for me and then asks for my origin and phone number. He is smiling and joking and I smile and joke back as I reject him, pay for the stuff and without a trace of bad feelings head back and up the stairs to start cleaning the beans from small rocks, to start washing and soaking the hibiskus flowers for the bissap lemonade.

I am happy to find that the key to the front gate downstairs also, though with some difficulty, opens the door to the rooftop terrace. It is littered but spacious. In the corners are piles of old, weather-worn shoes and suitcases. Metal furniture-skeletons and an old rug litter the place. I come there to hang my laundry, to dance and work out and to watch the lights of Dakar in the distance between the houses when the sun sets, the bigger houses blocking out most but not all of the rhythmic flash from the lighthouse of Mamelles. Sometimes I bring my flirts and we play music from my little speaker and dance kizomba above all of it, seen only by the few people with windows or balconies on higher floors. Sometimes I come alone to think and stay until the mosquitoes biting at my ankles get too aggressive. I dream of restoring the furniture, weaving new seats and backrest and washing the floors from the shit and dust, but I never do.

When the first big rain comes in the beginning of July I go upstairs to look down. The point where the four streets meet are suddenly almost empty. The low hanging clouds have turned the world yellow and strange just before the sky breaks to release everything. A few people rush from shelter to shelter. Water flows furiously from the drainage pipes above and gathers in a brown stream flowing down the side streets, joining and heading down, down towards the boulevard. I rest my weight on the concrete wall of the terrace. I wonder where it goes. The rain hits me, big sparse drops on my back, water following my eyebrows and dripping down my nose. The floor of the terrace has become flooded despite the drainage pipes and my feet are submerged. I watch three teenage boys below who have come out and take turns playing in the water falling from a drainage pipe high up. They remove their shirts and let the water hit their shoulders and back, shouting and laughing. On the roof of the mosque across I spot a girl wearing only tights and a top. She is pacing around. I wonder how she got up there. By the edge of the roof she pauses, touches the leaves of the upper brances of an acacia tree with her fingers, then her face. She looks, too, at the boys, but I don’t think they notice her. She spots me and our eyes meet for a moment; another curious creature exploring, coming out to look att he world while most others have fled indoors.

The rain doesn’t stop and I don’t want to miss a moment of it. I want to see where the water goes and what happens in my ‘hood when it rains.

The market stalls are closed. I have never seen the market so empty before. Under the overpass people take shelter, sitting huddled on the edges and against their motos. Some pass by selling rain ponchos or bananas. They are watching cars hit the invisible edges of the sidewalks as they submerge in the deep puddles; here is where the water goes when it’s raining. They look at me but leave me be, me the strange white one, the toubab that has come out with nothing in my pockets, hair dripping wet, obviously choosing to be in the rain with nothing better to do unlike the others, who are caught in it. I watch the cars drive through the puddles too. Then I continue on my walk.

…

(This story told in pictures.)