They walk arm in arm. She’s well-dressed, giddy with joy, and wrinkled. He’s tall, inscrutable, and smooth — in both senses. Young with old. Black with white.
Stroll along the beach in the Senegalese fishing village of Mbour and you’re bound to see a couple like this.
A few steps inland, things are starkly different. The whole world neatly sorts itself into gender roles. Women rush across the sand-swept streets, babies on their backs, bowls on their heads, girlfriends at their side. (Homosexuality is illegal; same-sex affection is expected.) Clusters of taxi drivers (always male) sit in the shade, arms draped over each other’s shoulders. Waiting for customers, watching.
When it comes to sex, Senegal is a land of contrasts. My move to Mbour was a plunge into this disorienting world, a world at once more segregated and more sexualized than the worlds I’d come from (white, middle-class Poland and America). This is the story of that six-month plunge.
I moved to Senegal from Boston in January 2018, following my partner’s work.¹ At first, we lived in the capital, Dakar. For those initial seven months, I didn’t look anyone in the…
