Banjul, The Gambia – The women arrive laughing before anyone hears them sing. More than a dozen of them are dressed in oversized men’s shirts and loose trousers to show they are as strong as men. Upon their heads are brightly coloured headscarves of yellow, red and green.

They tease one another as an empty plastic water bucket is turned upside down and beaten like a drum.

The hollow beat fills the compound as voices rise in Mandinka, one woman leading a verse before the others answer in chorus.

“Domori wo nteh’mang’na domorilan n’konobeh faring’neh sankuruwayang, nteh’mang’na domorila sankuruwayang. Meyeng naati wo tanbi’ta wola leh,” they sing.

“I did not come here for food; my stomach is already full. I have come for something greater than that.”

At weddings and naming ceremonies, they are entertainers, drawing crowds with jokes, dancing and song. The small donations they sometimes receive at these events can help support the group and their activities. But beneath the laughter is another story.

At 84, Mentending Trawally is slight and stooped, her face lined by time. A yellow veil frames her face, covering her ears. She no longer sings as loudly as she once did.

When the Kanyeleng, whose tradition offers solidarity to women who have experienced infertility and child loss, gather on a Sunday evening in July in the shade of a house in Bakau, a coastal town on the outskirts of Banjul, it is younger voices that now carry the songs she first learned as a teenager.

Thirteen women sit shoulder to shoulder as the late afternoon heat begins to soften, some swaying gently to the rhythm, others clapping in time. Outside the compound gate, neighbourhood children stand on tiptoe, peering through the entrance as the singing spills into the street.

Trawally sits among them, gently tapping her feet against the ground, smiling whenever someone forgets a verse she still knows by heart. Age has slowed her body, but it has not dimmed the songs that have stayed with her for more than seven decades.

“I was born into Kanyeleng,” she says.

Neighbourhood children linger outside the compound gate, drawn by the rhythm of the singing and the hollow beat of the improvised drum. Dressed in T-shirts and shorts, they peek through the entrance.

To a visitor, it looks like a celebration.

Trawally smiles. “Outsiders see only the performance,” she says. “They do not see the grief that created it.”