Desire in the Desert

AUTHOR’S NOTESenegal is a romantic country with its people all belonging to twenty different tribes who follow their own various religions. Much cultivation has taken place this century, but there is still desert stretching away to misty horizons with many proud Kasbahs perched on rocky pinnacles. There is also water. Rivers and Lelongs run like a pattern of lace through the land, each one ending in the ocean. In 1979 I found Dakar very different from the fishing village I describe in this novel. In fact I wrote a novel about it called Women Have Hearts. In this large attractive City, the Governor-President Leopold Sedar Senghor is France’s most famous Symbolist poet. His poems express vividly the concept of ‘Negritude’, which has been his passionate crusade since he was a young man. ‘Negritude’ is the music, the dancing and sculpture as well as the spirit of the black races. Senegal has a long history of the rivalry between England and France but it is now administered by France and its greatest export is peanuts. The Fulani founded a dynasty in about 1400 in the middle of Senegal. Today they are known for their success in raising cattle.