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colleague respectfully, and enquired if they knew where we might find the mulat o or the American woman who had photographed my brother and his colleagues on the ferry the previous day.
    They laughed, heartily. ‘Ah! You mean Monsieur Longueur,’ the younger man said – fondly, I thought.
    ‘Monsieur Longueur?’ Miriam repeated.
    ‘Go to the dispensaire,’ the older man said, with a smile that revealed his missing front teeth. ‘There you’ll see the tallest fellow in the world!’
    ‘Ask for Ken,’ the younger fisherman added. ‘He’s staying in the little house right beside the dispensaire .’
    They returned to their work and we thanked them for their help and went on our way, continuing without stopping again until we came to the village.
    It had been quite some time since I had visited Goteye; the last time had been with Abdelkrim when he had been visiting a friend who had also later joined the Nigerien Guard. It was much larger, wealthier and closer to the river than Wadata, and although, at times, there was some rivalry between the residents of the two villages, usually concerning rights of pasture and competition for firewood, this was good-natured, for the most part.
    A wide, open space – known locally as the quadrangle – formed the centre of Goteye, and at one end of this area stood the village’s own school, comprising not just one small, open-sided reed structure like the one at Wadata, but four sizeable mud-brick buildings, each with a tin roof. Hordes of rowdy boys were playing soccer in front of the school and eventually, after a great deal of taunting and name-calling from them, we received directions to the dispensaire .
    As we approached the building, I began to question my resolve to have the mulatto photograph Miriam and me for Katie and Hope. Miriam was clearly faltering too, but we goaded each other on nervously. We had come too far to give up now.
    A girl no older than Fatima stopped pounding millet to stare at us as we passed; on her back a tiny baby slept soundly, despite the violent, jerking movement of the girl’s work.
    A smaller group of boys - each leading a thin, scruffy dog by a filthy scrap of twine - whistled at us, one of them calling out, ‘Wadata witches!’ I did my best to ignore the boys, but the dogs intrigued me. In Wadata there were very few dogs. Most of our older folk considered them vermin and, in an effort to despatch as many of them as possible, poisoned meat was regularly left out in our village. My parents discouraged any contact with such animals, but I had started to think of them somewhat differently ever since a little troop of strays had befriended Adamou and his mob. Furthermore, Katie and Hope had sent me a photograph of their own dogs: these animals were not scruffy nor were they thin. They had squat little bodies and long droopy ears and, with their large, round eyes set in baby-like faces, they were unlike any dog I had ever seen before.
    Like its school, Goteye’s dispensaire was considerably grander than Wadata’s.
    Sushie had a small consultation room, but all of her treatments were administered from behind a rattan screen in her modest compound. It was a proper, covered veranda, serving not only to provide shelter from the sun, but as a waiting area for patients. Two screened windows looked out onto the veranda and beneath them were narrow window-boxes filled with sweet-smelling, unfamiliar yellow blooms. On either side of the entrance, a row of tatty, wooden chairs were occupied by women and girls of various ages.
    ‘ Foyaney . Mate fu? You’re a long way from home, girlies,’ one of the older women said as we climbed the concrete steps to the veranda. ‘What brings you here?
    Have you fallen pregnant?’
    ‘ Bani samay walla . No, Mother,’ I answered, respectfully but a little embarrassed too. ‘We are looking for Monsieur Ken.’
    ‘Monsieur Longueur!’ a girl about my age exclaimed.
    All of the women laughed, even though