Saudade à Dakar

Dakar on a Sunday night, in the neighborhood called "Zone A." Its wide avenues and narrow sandy streets are dark. Because of the heat people are wandering around, outside their homes. The streets are noisy and lively. Tiny stores, open all night are lit up with coloured neonlights, drawing halos of light on the pavements.
There's a distant sound of musical instruments being tuned up, violin’s pizzicati, a ukulele getting ready to be played...
At the end of a narrow alley, a small sign lit up by a green light. We are at “The Islands” (Les îles), a Cape Verdian oasis in the heart of the big Senegalese city, one of the most popular and welcoming place for the Cape Verdian diaspora to meet.
Around the small dance floor, a patchwork of mosaic, and behind the few tables and chairs, with an electric neonlight around the palm tree, six musicians are sitting and playing a nostalgic music, sweet and melancholic mornas, more rhythmic coladeras, sad music that is made to be danced to.
This place, and the people singing and dancing here express the meaning of that word and concept heard in every Portuguese-speaking culture, saudade.