M. Sesay

Half-houses of intimacy: Taptomi, ansa belleh and drawback discourses in urban Sierra Leone

This article explores how intimacy in Freetown, Sierra Leone, is negotiated through local speech forms such as taptomi (‘stays with me’), ansa belleh (‘answering the belly’), marraide de pikin (‘marrying the child’) and close friend . These terms constitute what I call half-houses : provisional arrangements...