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Developments:
A last meal in Kartong, lunch with Pa Mane in his compound. First, a peeled jackfruit and some oranges. Then a bonga fish on a bed of rice, with a peppery sauce, eaten in the traditional way from a large enamel bowl, the dish shared between the three of us. Three rounds of strong, sweet green tea to finish. The whole thing takes about four hours.
Pa's wife occasionally comes to talk to him, holding their newborn baby on her hip. Children from the household and from neighbouring compounds hang around, staring at the "toubabs" (the universal description of and greeting to white people) before sloping off to play in the dust.
Pa tells us how he came to marry his wife. When he was 26, his mother told him to go out and find a bride. She needed help around the compound, and she thought it high time he settled down. Pa was busy working, however, making bamboo furniture across the border in Senegal, and two years later he hadn't even begun his search. His mother took matters into her own hands, and found him a young prospective bride in a village a few miles up the coast. Having failed to find someone of his own choosing, Pa was pleased to be relieved of the responsibility. If, on meeting for the first time, either he or the girl had not been keen, they could have declined his mother's proposal. Happily for the latter, who has handed many of her household chores to her daughter-in-law, they liked each other enough to tie the knot.
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