SENEGAL: Gay community plays it quietly in face of social taboos
Source: IRIN

DAKAR, 21 January (IRIN) - The meeting-place was at a noisy down-market street café where the waiter as well the clients were gay, but where everyone was staunchly pretending not to be. Senegal's homosexual men are peeping out from behind the mask, but social and religious taboos run strong.

"We are always pretending," said one of a couple of the leaders of the country's underground movement who had agreed to come out of the woodwork to talk to IRIN on condition of anonymity. "Sometimes we feel sick of the lies."