I stay with a French expat in her fancy apartment in the middle of the city. Tiled walls and running water; my wet belongings spread to dry all over the beautiful living room with the pretty carpet and couch. She is working for an NGO, running projects to benefit the local people; provided with an apartment most locals could never dream to afford. We go out for beers with her friends. All expats, all working with different projects, except for one guy who is local. Everybody talks fast and laughs loud. Everybody a little stiff. They order their own plates of food and I remember exactly how I am expected to act in these places, how I should stitch my sentences together and when to laugh.

But I get tired before I even begin. I speak too slow, don’t react in the right ways and I greet and look at all of the waiters, which no one else does.

I leave early with the key. The others want to go out to dance, I just want to be alone. It is dark, the streetlights are sharp yellow from high above. I pass by a pile of watermelons and the men covering them up for the day, bargain for a small one for a few hundred CFA, smile and laugh, finally relaxed in their care of giving me a good price and urging me to find cover from the coming rain. I turn into a cafe for the downpour, a single room lit by a single light, a rickety table and rickety benches, wood and with the plastic covers in shreds, people smacked and eating and waiting, just like me, for the rain to finish thundering down. The two young men next to me look cautious at first, but crack up and invite me to eat when I joke and greet them in Wolof. One of them starts detaching one of his bracelets to give me. I push it right back and tell him it looks better on him. People look at me with kindness in their eyes; no stiff laughter here. I slip out into the darkness before the rain ends, clutching my watermelon and energized, not minding getting wet. The street is mine and the rain is mine and I can be whoever I want. I stop by a smoking grill and order two skewers and chat with the men behind the grill and the men coming to buy. I ask for mayonnaise and no chili, walk back with everything in a plastic bag. I eat it all alone, with my hands.

The next day I leave the apartment.

…

The rain is coming on and off in busts, shorts storms. Water forms canals and rives, tears through and rearranges the sand streets. I follow the kids. They are excited but I am even more so; they see this ever week, but this is my first time. We leave the house after one of the rain showers and walk toward the noise, the shouting and the music.

The sky opens again and we take shelter under a corner of roof. It is crowded, people everywhere, and below us on the street a group of people runs by, egged on by the rain. Their feet splash through the puddles, their steps in unison, voices rising. They run, turn as a group, run the other way, singing, drumming, water splashing and pouring. Somewhere there, further down the street, the Kompu is coming.

I untangle myself from the crowd. Mémoor pulls at my arm as her little sister and brothers look on, the crowd watches, someone comments;
”Don’t let her go!” Another:
”Go, dance!”
And I wrap my protest and disobedience in a smile and a laugh, already unwrapping myself from he arm and heading down – me going is not a question – and the rain soaks my hair in seconds and I am swept up among the bodies, drums filling my head, singing, shouting. I head straight for the first group of women I see dancing, step ankle deep into the water, jump into the beat, copy their movements. They receive me with shouts and smiles, widen their circle for me, let me in. For a moment they stop, astonished, and I have to egg them on, remind them to dance with me; that this is not a show. We follow the drums. Then one of the women takes me by the hand and drags me further into the crowd, where the music is, in between the tightly packed bodies and into the small small circle of space just in front of the drummers. She pushes me in, gestures me to dance as the drummers look me over and I smile and gesture back
”Not without you!” and I pull her in and we dance. Our eyes are locked, our feet stomping in unison, our smiles reflecting. The drums follow our bodies and I align my self to them, the crowd shouting excited around me, rain pouring down. My slipper gets stuck in the mud and my foot comes out empty without it; my hair clings wet to my forehead, water has soaked through my clothes; we only laugh.

My moment passes and the crowd moves on. Mémoor shows up next to me, soaked and pulling me by my unwilling hand back in under the roof.
”Come ooon!” she says. I don’t want to disappoint her – she is too young to be put as responsible over someone like me – and so I follow her this time, though it will not be for long.

The masked creatures are coming; the Kompu. The women run from them, clear the space. Mémoor gabs my arm and jostles me into the nearest yard where all the other women and girls have gathered. This time, her fear is real; not just the simple worry of getting wet or losing me, her guest, in the crowd. She is really afraid of the Kompu.

We peek over the wall with the others. They are three, the masked dancers. Two wear brown cloths, covered from head to toe, with frays around the hands and feet. More frays are flowing down their backs behind the big masks that cover their heads. The third one is red. They walk with a swagger, backs straight and arms spread. They carry machetes. Boys and young men are gathered around them, running, shouting, egging them on. Their chests are expanded as if ready to fight, and some of the fear grips me, too; behind the masks they are unpredictable; capable to jump or throw themselves at any moment, heavy bodies, strong and fast. Are there really humans underneath the cloths? Or are they actually spirits?

They pass by the yard where we hide and I yearn to follow and see them closer but Mémoor holds my arm in a tight grip. When the Kompus turn, the crowd runs the other way and Mémoor pulls me along. Herded by the running bodies we splash through puddles, turn as another one comes up ahead, passing and splitting the crowd and I want to linger to look closer and at the same time I hope that the head will not turn my way, that the creature will not see me and simply pass.

…

”Is it OK if I stay for another night?” It is evening and I have put off approaching my host to ask. He looks at me, slightly confused.
”It’s raining,” he says. The fact that I have sent a Couch-request for a specific date has no relevance; once I’m here, I am family and I stay for as long as I need. Traveling with the rain is out of question, and it is silly of me to even ask. I know this; my culture dictates me to ask though, to offer him a way out if he, for any reason, should want it. The merging of cultures is uncomfortable; I know I might come across as rude for even asking. But I do it for my sake. I don’t want to assume hospitality; I need to hear, in words, that it is OK.

From the pretty central apartment I have moved into a half-finished house on the edge of the city, a full family with elders and children, siblings with their spouses and a newborn baby. It is a Baye Fall house. My host is a lawyer but it is his younger sister who is put in charge of taking care for me after I’ve expressed my interest in cooking African foods.

Mémoor is around twenty, smiling and soft. She has had to quit school for the time being to stay at home and care for the family; it’s been two years already.

“Mee-moo, Mee-moo!” the small ones yell, and she breaks up every fight and opens every juice box and caresses every head and scolds every wrongdoing. The mother is gone, her auntie just had a baby, and the grandmother is too old to help out. The men have their own jobs. The family sits in front of the TV while Mémoor peels, washes, mashes, cuts and fries in the kitchen, counts the coins, washes dishes and laundry in the back and brings water. She smiles, but I can tell she is tired.
“But soon my auntie will help out, when she gets stronger,” she says. “And in some years my sister too, when she is older.”
“Will you finish your studies then?”
“Of course!”

We stroll slowly to the nearby store with one of the kids in tow. I watch her chatter with the vendor, fill the basket with a small bag of oil, stock cubes and spices. Then we head over to the women by vegetable stands across the road.
“Do you want children?” I ask her as we are heading home. The small one is clinging on her legs.
“Of course!” Her smile is wide.
“How many?”
“Four!” she says immediately. “Two boys and two girls. The girls will help around the house!” I laugh.
“Four, hah, you’re strong!”

Mémoor lets me peel and cut, pick the feathers from the chicken, pound the fish-paste and roll round fish-balls.
”Where did you learn how to do that?” she asks me, eyes wide, as I peel a clove of garlic. I laugh, bewildered.
”We have this in my home,” I tell her. She looks on in disbelief. I wonder what she imagines me cooking normally, if she can picture it at all.

She doesn’t let me wash the dishes.

We share the same bed. In the same room her little sister of twelve has another bed in the corner. The walls are raw concrete, the sockets not installed yet. Their clothes are piled along the walls, the mosquito nets suspended from the ceiling and pulled tight over the beds. Mémoor stays on her phone when she is free, scrolling on Tiktok. Before sleep she talks low to her love who is over in France and chats with her sister laying over in the other bed. She brings her phone screen over to my face to show me videos of the Baye Fall gatherings and her, all dressed up and singing with her friends in matching clothing. She shows me a photo of a dress, black and white and squared like a chess board.
“Buy this for me?” she asks.
“I would if I had the money,” I reply. Her sister farts from the other bed and Mémoor laughs and nudges my side.
“Did you hear that? She farted!” They both giggle.
“Yes, I heard,” I chuckle.
“She was afraid to do it in front of you before,” Mémoor continues, while the little one twists over in laughter.
“You’re gross!” Mémoor yells over the room. I only laugh. It’s nice to be in the middle of this, the family chaos. I prefer this to the tiled walls.

…

They have already stamped my passport and put in the visa sticker. My documents, fifteen minutes and 25 000 CFA cash on the table – that’s how easy it is for me. I revel in the infuriating privilege as I step out from the consulate and into the rain, the same person but now different, now with the right to move signed on paper in my hand. My gratefulness like a pea in the ocean of frustration that it is not this easy for everyone.

The day I leave the sky is clear and the puddles have almost all dried. They wave me off and I smile and detach myself in another anticipation of pain; more people to miss, more places to call home. But I am excited too. The border is not far away, about 14 km. My legs are rested and I turn eagerly into the highway and then the mud gruel that is the road to Guinea Bissau.

…

(This story told in pictures and video, part one, two and three.)