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The women caught at the vortex of a changing continent have naturally experienced a certain confusion about their identity. The extensive sale of hair straighteners, skin-lightening creams and $20 wigs bears witness to this fact. Many would undoubtedly like to emulate the handful of women who have attained the sophistication that marks them as black Frenchwomen and black Englishwomen. One woman of such apparent glamour is Younouss N'Diaye, a sensuous actress and painter who lived in France for five years before returning to Dakar, where she appears on television and has starred in a Senegalese motion picture, Le Mandat.
Another is Janet Young, an ebullient West African who studied drama in London, traveled with her husband to the U.S., and now lives in Nairobi. Her husband teaches at University College, and she leads a busy suburban existence raising two children, learning Swahili and starting a drama group. "I've lived in England, where it is too cold," says Mrs. Young, "and in America, where it is too different. I know that I belong in Africa." The dilemma for most young women of the new Africa is that they have neither the means to live like Mrs. Young nor the wish to return to the tribal world they have left behind.