Kerewan, The Gambia, 2 February 2003
The day after the night of the party. Eating benachin at a shack in the middle of town. High tin roof, concrete walls with islands of yellow plaster on which sums have been scrawled. Enamel food bowls and dirt-scored jerrycans stacked beneath the counter. The proprietress a woman in late middle-age, though you can never tell. Her daughter nursing a child, a boy of maybe six months, on a breast furrowed with veins. The child holding his fistful of teat as we do the bagged water we drink at the low wood table. Across the table Laura, her collarbone twinkling with sweat, and Chad, hungover. From the radio a griot singing to us through the static of years. Leaning against the doorframe an older boy, watching us, his legs splashed with grey mud and a football sagging under the weight of his arm. Beyond him: dust, sun. For a moment an impossible nostalgia for this place seizes me.
