wailing men wielding machetes in a village at three in the morning.

Let me back up a bit: I just finished a week's worth of research in the Sine-Saloum Delta region of Senegal for a travel guidebook. The US Peace Corps volunteers, a motley collection of Americans focused on community development work, have been the Virgils to my Dante - shepherding me through some of the lower circles of hell, and showing me some glimpses of paradise. They have brought me to the resplendent waters of the Delta and have walked me passed bodies bent in despair. They have fed me the nectar from baobab trees, and offered me the scent of rancid palm wine. They have been my interlocutors, my defenders and my demystifiers of the unknown here. As they live and breathe the life of the Senegalese, you can imagine how fortunate I am to have their advice and admonitions.

But all journeys come to an end, and guides must leave you eventually. So as I walk home in the after-dusk of evening back to my camp, I am lastly accompanied by Heather, a volunteer in the small town of Missirah.

"So I hope the Concoran is not out tonight," she says conversationally. On our path, figures slink slowly into the shadows.

"Who? Wha..what's a Concoran?" I ask, nervously looking around.

"It's tribal I think... a man dresses up in a mask and shaggy costume and clangs machetes together. It's a ritual to protect children." She glances over at me. "I hope we don't run into him. You are not supposed to look him in the eye. If he catches up with you, he hits you."

I laugh. She doesn't laugh. I pick up the pace.

It's three in the morning, and the Concoran has ran past my hut four times, screeching in unearthly tones. I burrow under my blanket and secretly hope the hyenas eat him. Somewhere, not too far away, I hear what sounds like a gunshot. The dogs start madly barking. I try to blame my paranoia on the malaria meds.

"Did you hear that sound last night?" I ask Heather the next morning, "It sounded like a gunshot."

"Oh yeah," Heather says nodding, biting into her bean sandwich. "I wondered what that was. The Concoran was up as well. Really annoying, I couldn't sleep."

If it is as they say, and Virgil represents human rationality in a world that is constantly new, changing and terrifying, then I must be in very good hands.