I didn't know human beings could be so beautiful. Not necessarily (or not always) the kind of beauty that arouses sexual desire. The beauty of Senegalese women comes from the intense blackness of their skin, slightly tinted with gold or blue according to the effects of light and shadow. It also comes from their way of holding themselves upright, with their shoulders thrust back a little and their arms swinging in grand gestures; from the colours of their boubous, which are garish yet in harmony with their complexions, as well as from the nonchalance with which they let these garments float about their bodies. Often, the old women are no less alluring than the young, as if stoutness and wrinkles ended up contributing to the overall harmony of their appearance.


At times, I couldn't help stopping short in front of one of them, with my heart thumping as if at the sight of an apparition, yet without dreaming of making an approach: though they may be quite conscious of their good looks, their coquettishness is not directed at the white man I am. I look at them and tell myself I would like to live in their midst, if only to see them moving about me and occasionally meet their gaze.


Meanwhile I can only photograph them on the sly, through a telephoto lens, because they do not like to be caught without their consent. On the other hand, it sometimes happens that they spontaneously assume a pose in front of me, striking an attitude of great style and dignity. But this does not allow me to capture the beauty I see in their movements.


When I arrived here, I was planning a reportage on the government and administration of a newly-independent small African state. I expected to catch some comical situations, like republican guards sporting ostrich feathers in their helmets, or offical receptions with black men in dinner suits and their wives in long white robes. But very soon I came to realise that, though such situations might indeed arise, they would in no way be ridiculous: the Senegalese have assumed their new roles with such dignity and panache that it is their European models who risk looking like caricatures.


Official functions aside, Senegalese independence is relative. In the European part of the city, which looks like any small town in the South of France, one sees French soldiers and civil servants sitting at café tables, kiosks selling French newspapers and cinemas showing French films. Africa is represented principally by souvenir sellers who mob the pavements, hawking objects of "negro art" made perhaps in Marseille and on offer at exorbitant prices, like most of the products in the local market. For Senegal is part of the French monetary community: 100 CFA francs have a nominal value of two French francs but the same purchasing power as one, which makes Dakar one of the most expensive cities in the world.


The twin buildings of the High Court and the National Assembly are small marvels of contemporary architecture. Most of the senior magistrates, as well as the technical advisors to the army and the ministries, are French civil servants. In order to obtain an audience with Léopold Senghor, who is not only President of the Republic but also the most famous poet of francophone Africa, I presented my letters of recommendation to a French press officer who called up the President on a direct line and said, "Léopold, there's a journalist you should see straight away."


Rather than a limitation of sovereignty, the French presence should perhaps be interpreted as a mark of wisdom by Senghor and his entourage, who have understood that independence can only be achieved in stages. The Senegalese have neither a national tradition nor a common language. Native managers are scarce and the infrastructure is still rudimentary. The country does not even have its own telephone directory, just one which covers five or six other West African republics as well and which is not one tenth the thickness of the Paris directory.


All this does not prevent the Senegalese from being proud of their new state. A session of the National Assembly makes a fine spectacle: the deputies gather in their brand new chamber in front of a Lurçat tapestry well in harmony with their multi-coloured costumes and the large gestures accompanying the orators' speeches. Their French is enriched with African cadences and with terms borrowed from Senghor's poetical-revolutionary lexicon-such as "africanité" and "négritude". Sometimes this gives the impression of play-acting. Perhaps I was not the only one to feel this: I noticed a fellow photographer from the Senegalese press agency winking at the President as he let off the flash in his direction, as if to say, "Do you remember when we used to drink café-crème together at the tables outside Dupont Saint-Michel?"


Over the following days, as I recovered from my Brazilian fever, I extended the range of my walks. Thus I discovered the native quarter, the Medina, and watched the "tam-tam" performances in the evenings. Dakar is built on the Cape Verde peninsula, with the European city at the tip and the Medina on the wider part of the triangle. The Medina is a modest-but far from wretched-residential quarter with grid pattern streets and brick-built houses. (There are also some real shanty towns, but they are much further from the centre of town, where the Medina peters out into the bush.)


The tam-tam are dance competitions which take place at night in the presence of the locals and a few notables. The one I photographed must have been a particularly important occasion because it carried on over three successive evenings and was honoured by the presence of the Minister of Culture himself. The panel of judges was made up of notables' wives, who were all seated in the front row, all looking pretty, covered in jewels and dressed in bright colours. But, as soon as I saw the dancers step onto the stage, I had eyes only for them. They are working-class girls, often wives or girlfriends of the musicians, who perform for pleasure as well as in the hope of bumping up their monthly budget. They do not strip off their clothes but their expressions and moves would be no more erotic if they did.


The audience includes mothers and babes-in-arms, children, notables' wives, right up to the Minister and his family; all of whom gradually let themselves be carried away by the rhythm, first clapping their hands, then dancing in their seats. Finally the younger of the notables' wives cannot resist the urge to pit themselves against the dancers. The audience moves with the rhythm, men throw bank-notes to their favourite dancers, children invade the stage shrieking with joy. The frenzy mounts till all the performers are exhausted and bathed in sweat. Then, one after another, they finally collapse, juddering with their whole bodies as if in orgasm.


The way these people abandon themselves to rhythm, with increasingly unrestrained movements and as if pursuing a final orgasm, reminds me of the macumba ceremonies I saw in the terreiros of Rio or even, on other journeys, the trance rituals in the Baptist churches of Harlem. In fact, all these rites probably derive from tribal dances like the ones I've seen on documentaries filmed in deepest Africa. Though they come in various forms with seemingly different meanings, they all culminate in a kind of collective catharsis which seems to bring spiritual relief to the participants. And after all, this is not so very far removed from the pursuits of the young in our cities, with their more or less harmonious dances, whose names and styles may change but which all hark back to African origins. If the world is really to become one, this may turn out to be Africa's contribution.