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Should I get into my 2002 car and drive alone to Biarritz, just with my music, to meet with all my friends and experience the World Surfing Championship from within? Yes, obviously! That May, I said ‘yes’ to a Dominican 5-day trip in Biarritz without knowing that I was saying ‘yes’ to a trip of undefined duration to a heart of many hearts in Dakar. The night that I was the most tired, we ended up in the same bar that we used to go every night, and an African song shook off my exhaustion and hazily introduced me to a dance partner that months later, would reveal to me Dakar and its reality. It was already September; The baggage claim conveyor belt was full of big suitcases, and around there were many colorful giant backpacks and many colorfull people. I was feeling completely strange in that airport and in that scene. Without thinking too much, I went out to the street and there, in the middle of the noise, big suitcases and darkness, I was rescued by a disheveled head and an indomitable heart and, together, but still strangers to each other, we went away in a taxi. That night, with my sandals, I explored extremely narrow dirt roads, dark streets, labyrinthian streets. Streets with rats, streets full of life, streets full of camaraderie, streets that were completely confusing for me, streets filled with an alternate reality. Those streets ended in an unfinished building’s rooftop. This building with no walls opened its doors to me; in this building with no walls, everything was shared, tea was shared without question, the bed was shared without hesitation, the food was shared, the smoke, the laughter was shared, and the calm and peace towards life was shared. High up in the building was the rooftop, a rooftop full of bricks and rusty rebar, with a view to other unfinished buildings and, at the end, the sea. A different sea, a sea that seemed like a portrait hanging on an unfinished wall in that unfinished building. It was fourteen days, during which, I met the son of an ambassador who did not want to drink alcohol in front of his cousin, and a cousin who did not want to drink alcohol in front of the ambassador’s son. I met the person who knows the most about the life in the most hidden hideaway in Gorée Island. I met children that obey, I met a mother who struggles and smiles, I met many neighbors that greet and, without knowing who am I, know that they want to greet me..I met people that do not cry and do not want to see you cry; I met a watchman that bribed me; I met an artist who made portraits with butterfly wings; I met waiters; I met absent-minded husbands. I met a girl who has dreams and fulfills them. I met guys that are brothers without being brothers. I met a woman that did not know how to count, and I also counted on many other people who didn’t know how, either. And, I met an indomitable heart, that gets up late and lies down late; that communicates just a little, but expresses so much, a heart that everybody greets, a person for whom bad intentions do not exist, someone that does not care about you but who cares too much, someone who bashed their present into existence, listening to nobody but itself, someone who lives in an unfinished building, and, from a rooftop full of rusty rebar, looks to the sea that surf and share with their people, the sea that breaks barriers, the sea that always is, the sea that balances him, the sea that soaks with life and soaks with future, the sea that gives choices others wish to take away, the sea in which that indomitable lion he always believes in puts into surf. Those fourteen days made me closer to Dakar’s heart and its hearts, and filled a big carry-on bag I packed with broken schemes and pending reflections, Just thinking it all started with an African song on a tired night during a completely different five day trip to Biarritz.