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One of the very first recommendations I was given prior to move to Africa was: don't you dare to go out alone after dusk. And that's what I did that night. Don't misunderstand me, it wasn't midnight on a lonely road on the middle of nowhere, just a small walk around the block. I had my head spinning with pressure and the sweltering heat made me feel trapped. I needed fresh air. Here in Abidjan security is taken really serious and its normal having two or three security guards wandering around the block 24 hours a day. Unluckily or not, people here is not serious at all and you can see them napping under a three to survive the heat hours, or in groups talking creole and playing cards. I started walking, drifting around my nice state of cream colored low-lying houses, and regardless the humidity i started releasing all that pressure... so I walked, while I was trying to make up my thought, and walked until the control over my senses where restored and I could finally breathe. I felt the grass under my bare feet and realized I had reached that garden I spot from my room window but i hadn't time to visit yet; and I felt the breeze that caressed my back, and how it shivered by the contrast of its freshness and the permanent layer of sweat I had adopted since the second I put a feet on this country; and I heard unfamiliar rhythms coming from the end of the yard, so I followed them. I had read about Zauli but was the very first time I saw it. Raw, pure, rampant. In a circle people talked and laugh, some other stare, and others danced in a hectic move of legs with their trunk tied up and expression of pure joy. They were not wearing those colorful dresses and masks I'd seen on the internet but their work uniforms, aprons or simple dresses. I recognized some of the lazy guards, and felt awkward, out of place... like if I was violating a sacred ritual just for the fact of be standing five hundred meters from them, so I simply stared from afar siting in the grass like hypnotized by the beauty of those crazy legs dancing in unison. After fifteen minutes, that seemed a second, I see a tiny figure approaching to me. To my surprise, that cute baby girl not older than 5 years old, is lending her hand to me, inviting me to join. I didn't have time to think I just followed her and although I felt embarrassed at first, the drums kept playing and people join and leave the dancing core like my presence where nothing to care about so I started to unwind. Other kids approach, I guess curious about the update of their secret reunions, and some women follows. They tell me about the dance, the Loas venerated by their ancestors and how these meetings represent the celebration of their roots, when women were still permitted to dance and it represented the union of gods and humans as one. They no longer believe in that divinities but in what the rite represent: a shout to freedom, to self-determination. They dance to be together but also to prove they know where they come and their faith in the future to be good. I listened carefully, wanting the absorb every word they were saying, any sound I was listening and every move; and after another hour of dancing the group slowly disbands. After trying to put into words the gratitude I felt, I walked back home through the garden grass, step by step going back to reality. When I reached my door frame I felt the heavy weight I had left behind for a couple of hours in that yard, I closed my eyes and understood: I am still young enough, I had time figure it out, and one way or another I could find that same inner peace of those who believe, blindly, on their fate.