I’m going to tell you a story… OK, perhaps I’ll tell you two. Naming no names of course…to spare my friends’ blushes!

Life in Dakar courts the bizarre on a daily basis. At least from an English girl’s point of view. After all, this is a place where you’ll see a man wash his sheep in the sea, Coke can be poured into a plastic bag as a shop take-out and the nightly weather sequence on TV boasts the strains of Kenny G… But now and then things happen which go above and beyond the daily realms of crazy. Like the sorry tale of my good friend whose maid’s sweet tooth led her to an unfortunate fate. (Help at home here is a cultural norm and very cheap – so if you have a ‘maid’ it doesn’t mean you’re posh…even maids have a maid..!) But I’ll get to that later.

My other story…well, it started with a ‘x’. The internationally recognised symbol for ‘kiss’...isn’t it? Seems not. This amusing – yet ‘tragic’ – tale is that of my former radio colleague (let’s call him K) who spectacularly misread a text I sent him. It was last summer and I was in the throes of The Big Break Up 2009 (ie. thoroughly miserable). K and I were good pals so I texted “You could bring over your laptop and we can watch a film x”. So K arrives, wearing his ‘boubou’ robe, laptop in tow. “I’ve got a film on here” he says. Clicks it open. Hmm interesting credits. Hang on...something not quite right about it. Oh yes, it’s porn.

My very British manners let me stutter “erm…?” for about 30 seconds until I was sure I wasn’t imagining what I was seeing. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I splutter, astounded yet tickled by the preposterousness of the situation. “But you said you wanted to watch ‘un film x’! (French for x-rated movie)”. Cringe. I cried laughing. K was appalled. So about my friend’s maid. This particular friend has a penchant for the ‘medicinal use’ of certain plants (shall we say). On the day in question they decided to make some fairy cakes – one batch ‘normal’ and a ‘special’ batch – which they left to cool on the sideboard in the kitchen. The maid was helping clear up…and decided to have a nibble…alas, taking a cake from the ‘special’ side.

The maid started to feel a tad strange. She had a lie down…but that didn’t help. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. So she called her sister, who took her home.

Her family decided that she must be possessed by ‘bad spirits’. (The belief in such things here still has an extremely firm hold, in all areas of society. I’ve been so intrigued by the concept that I went to see a marabou myself... but I’ll come to that another time…) Now, the only way to rid her of these ‘spirits’ was a traditional animist ritual presided over by her local marabou. My friend was consumed by guilt and felt compelled to attend. There was drumming, there was chanting…a chicken was sacrificed and its blood smeared onto the poor girl (…and not forgetting, poor chicken!) Things seemed to improve for the girl in the days that followed…though she didn’t return to work. It was felt the apartment may still be ‘unsafe’, the spirits may be lingering…probably just as well. My friend still feels terrible. They’ve never dared tell the truth. Except when exchanging their own Tales of the Slightly Ludicrous.

Staying with the strange - or at least the incongruous - as I write, my Abba album is having to belt its heart out to compete with the chants from the local mosque’s minaret. I’m eating a baguette wrapped in a Russian newspaper page from 2007 (oh dear!) And I know the bin man’s on his way on his horse and cart…I can hear him tooting on his whistle as he turns into my street. They always did say Africa has the power to turn ‘white folks’ mad. Or maybe it just attracts those who want to embrace ‘otherness’... and their own eccentricity. I guess I’m in the right place.