April 28

What is this thing? And if I could have it all the time, would I even want it? Is reality being wrapped in rapture all of the time, or is it the push and flow that we see usually, the screaming, the disgust, the symbiosis and the going your own ways. Maybe this is where freedom comes. 75% of the time you're mad at, disgusted by, tired of, or not thinking about your other and you're free to live your own life. 25% you're in love, and this adds that missing richness and means that you're not living life just for yourself, normalizes you, binds you into society and removes you from all the foggy and corroded parts of human nature.
But then, what is love? Is the love I'm looking for mere toleration? This love goes on and on, I can tolerate him, I'm comfortable with him, until I don't want him to leave, and then that is real love? Or more love, the seed, developed into fruit. Love cannot just be planted and grow -a full grown tree would die. The root system is critical.
But to accept this and surrender myself to this feels like I am letting myself die. But it also feels like growing up. How many ideals have I been coaxed to shed since coming to Senegal, since seeing life lived for survival and not idealistic self pleasure? Coaxed, willingly though regretfully, back into society, letting go of the wild nature artist lover self, letting go of my child. It does feel more comfortable, more stable, more normal. Less life on the anxious edges of elation and depression.
In Dakar I stood atop the light house, waves crashing below, like Ariel, and yet not a palpitation of the heart -not a cell in my body responding, calling -moving or wanting to move out there and become one with it. But I went home and cooked dinner for and had conversations with other, normal people.
I am loosing myself, the child that runs through the woods, the reckless artists who sits socially spaced out, forming ideas and running out to manifest them. A member of a community, a moving life form. I might be clinging to myself as a child...but would he want this life for me, this ceasing of "wearing my heart on my shoulders"?
(continue!!!!)

May 1 -(15 days to my one-year arrival in Nguekokh)

What's scary is that on this day I've realized what makes me think it will be any better to go back? Of course it will be delicious, snow and rain and all things cold -the things I was running away from before, my own kitchen. But the thought of finally being free from this two year bondage -from these necessary functions, it does not give me the same feeling of a healed bird released and flying back to its familiar perch. Up in the lush, swaying breeze.

*Peace Corps is weird. How would things be different if I was not in its grasp?

I am a changed person. Like a smoker -Senegal will leave its residue in my cells. Perhaps not like a smoker. Like one who's eating cheb-do I want this greasy heavy residue in my body?
Not when I'm walking in the 2:00 afternoon sun. The feeling that everything is dead -the opposite of freeze-dried --held, momentarily, in the bleaching, blinding, sterilizing sun. Strong enough that I don't mind brushing my eating hand against my douche.
Mangoes are a miracle in this environment. From these trees they survive as alien pod Gumbies against incredible odds -their green fruits appearing and growing bigger as waxy drops at the tips of branches -suddenly they're ripe and every blueblack kid in which all blinding light is absorbed is clutching an equally blazing soft mass of wet, swirling, deep orange. They don't look real. And they nourish you, sweet and juicy, like magic.
How I am changed is now I am sitting in a well ventilated (breeze) brightly painted (turquois with gently flowing curtains) room with an oldish man -grizzled grey hairs on a protruding jawbone, and legs and arms deep-blue sacks with the juice sucked out -and a bulging, tumerous stomach, looks like an uneven sack of mangoes -is gurgling and talking something furious. So is he -through gasps -we exchange profundities about human life -his eyes deux fois rolling back into his head as he visits his pain, deux fois jutting out in exuberance for his jolliness and the enpowering of our talk. A mouse darts in and out to investigate us -my hands and feet, my backpack -his head unawares and the bowl of dried out fish bones that his two year old grandson comes in to chew -I wash out without a second thought in which he puts 3 sections of pineapple from a jagged can at the side of the bed. The kid picks each piece apart and gums it, feeling it all around -then drooling as a response.
Farbara Bopp can't eat cheb anymore. All he eats are pineapples, oranges, apples. I split the cheb with his wife -thick and oily. Which is why I have a stomachache now.
We have talked about everything with alhumdulilahi's and maangi niro now and old man that has been a Muslim forever.

March 6 "And Now Its Time for Boring, Repetative Talk. Again. And yes, its navel gazing, more perhaps. It makes me annoyed, too.

What, how would I frame this past weekend's moments of social anxiety and final resolution to peace of soul, for the moment?
And where does "yourself" come from? From the faculty of faith, thank you, Matt Gates. God writes it on you, continuously, from moment to moment. "You" are the book he has written. (Can you point to, within the book, where "the book" is? I say no. It is a working, flowing, active, interrelated self.)
Poor __, when I scared her with the dark shadow that ran across my hazel green-flecked eyes when I remembered: hospital corners.
hanging out in the church and the school lot in the snow in my socks --
I am so happy to be free of that. In these months I feel alive in a sense that I have never felt before. I can hold people's gaze for longer without that shift of guilt, that shift of don't see me.
If I trace backwards from the present, have I been lazy/scared just in general, and in relation to self awareness and discovery? Is this 6-7 year noppelu something to be ashamed of or was it necessary? Thank you, __, for making me feel -wither way, it is tolerable, surmountable.

May 14, 2008

Remember _____'s crazy apartment. How I hit the ground running there and didn't need to think at all.
Large bean sandwich and coffee with sugar. Bassap (sucre). Gingembre (sucre). Tandarma (soaked in honey). Slice of cocoa. Begneit creme. 2 mangoes, small super ripe. Cere + mboum. A large amount of cookies. 2 cigarettes.
And sitting in the garage from 2pm to 5 pm -sitting in the car, my arms nailed to the pits between two people so I can't even sweat, and my butt bone falls asleep, jammed into my spine. (Why did I listen to ___ and buy menthols?)
How many worlds can I change over a few days -a day, even and still be myself? Where do I loose myself -so thinking about the things I love seems part of another world?
Happy to be back here where things are clear. Except for the people. But I know who I like. And the quiet of the stars. I will need this in my future.
I cannot be a slave. Sitting cross-legged on the window sill with crayons, listening to music that can make me cry -live music, its too simple tune stuck in my head. __ is angry and he hates society and I can't do it.
I come home and Lira's had a miscarriage. The soft little dome and softness in her eyes has gone. She looks darker. Nuul. She says she cut too much wood. Ligeey here is too hard, she says, and slams her fist, involuntarily, on the bed. Is this what I'm willing to accept? Yes, this is life.
The hyena's start to howl. A different cote.
Abdoulaye took her egg and ate it. I couldn't talk to him after that night he lost to the bright faced mourid. Is this what he wants to punish?
Projects I want to do:

1. work with primary school
2. and middle school......ONLY!
3. build garden tables
4. murals-kids design
5. mudstoves
6. grillage-private gardens
7. pepiniere!
8. artwork --trash; --murals
9. English Club --WWS!
10. summer camp

March 7 -A scary day

The thing I hate most in life is not being in control of my own life. Where does this come from? I remember the drawing I made when I was little of the girl with the determined face, pushing up towards the rainbowed sky, broken shackled on her arms and legs. I see myself as a fearsome child, throwing my hair in fits and squirming and reeling until I broke free of any touch. Most likely, this is just my nature. But could it come from being raised in a dictatorship? Sitting behind the bars of my window watching perfectly normal children play in the grass and the street. Wronged all the time, punished for months for some small crime. No one will ever cage me again. I roll away from it almost to an excess.

And here it is bordering on infuriating -it is infuriating when I have to try twice in the morning just to go outside -so people can come sit on my bed and talk about how hungry they are hinting at me for bread. Children obnoxiously screaming in fits of selfishness -the ugliest of human nature -for lack of mental stimulation and parental nurturing. And annoying men who just want to come and take a piece of the local toubab. Who don't see me for one second, but, Matt Gates, who am I? Maybe I can say what I'm not. I am that faith that I throw at the end of reason into the unfathomable. It is there that god makes his mark, and so I cannot know it. It just comes.

But yesterday here it is. The day before I am sitting in a group of women when they start asking if I want to find a husband here. Yes, of course. But how am I ever to explain what I'm looking for? Khady Ndao says she'll maay me her guest, her brother, he's 27. He's nice, he's good-looking, he has work. We sit for hours and he doesn't come.

Where's your guest? I finally ask when conversation has died down -us picking every tree and leaf and seed and whittling it down to its very fibers -until it doesn't exist anymore. (Brain thinks words (already a process -brain feels, brain organizes, brain translates into english) which sends words to muscles, which translates into written english, hand and arm pulling into "h"'s and "i"'s, the paper -a ground to reach and stand on, helps. Watch the ball-point move up and down horizontally, these are my thoughts! And its so automatic! Writing is an incredible thing.) [Editors note: I was not stoned. This is an insight into the weight of time]

Anyway she goes to get her guest. He is one of those types who imitates the media, his movements mocking the gangly, spastic comedians of theatre, his clothes a mixture of rapper/skate boarder. He's "pretty" with a tiny knitted black cap and iridescent sunglasses, one earphone hanging from his ear. I decide to take control of the situation. I'm bored of falling into my traditional rut of relinquishing all my rights as an individual, and my rights as a woman, however imagined and created they may be. I'm going to make them respond, see if they come up with anything new and creative. I start bold. He's my husband. When are you going to bring my dad cola nuts? I want a tye-dye boubu with matching shoes and purse and earrings. Lets have the marriage in Nguekokh, its prettier and cleaner than Djilor. Ok, I'll see you tomorrow. You're going to come visit me? I refuse to give him my phone number, after he sees my cell phone, I think he catches on.

They annoyingly walk me to the edge of Djilor, something unnormal, and trapping me to their path in the sand, he has my bike -I cannot stop in the store and buy mangoes, I cannot jump on my bike and run. He is trapping me in his playful talk, I cannot make a polite, mildly humorous parting comment and leave in peace. He seems to be telling me -if I want to leave, if I am not interested, I have to be blunt and rude in front of Saku, and soil my relationship with her. [Editors note: She was my counterpart for ActionAid]

I am, and I finally get on my bike -pushing off the pedal in one long glide -my tires rudding against the pale red sand and mixed hardened ash white clay -I am free.

Only until tomorrow morning. Where he shows up under the juvenile mango tree outside the school yard, wearing the same thing. His mouth has a weird way of twitching -the corners pulling up in forced comfortability, his lips flattening and pursing to look attractive, as ease, in control, superior. His cheeks twitch and his eyes roll back into his head in annoyance, he's trying to suppress me, belittle me -get back on top of me. His position does not humble him, does not make him insecure -at least not in a way recognizable to him. No, if anything his primary response is infuriation -he laughs at me and tries to make me ashamed of myself. I feel a fire from the pit of my soul spread through my whole body -I will NOT be ashamed of me -however pimply, sweaty, and generally awkward I look./ And it doesn't matter if he's robbing me of the only nutrition I'm going to have that day -I finally understand gud naam, and I put my spoon down. He should be ashamed.

He refuses to talk to me for the rest of the day. If I'm not a girlfriend I'm not a person. I went from being an object of utmost value to something not even worth noticing. Why? I hurt his pride. I am nothing. I am trash. His jittering face turned to a sneer -(just like Mamadou)- he continues to laugh at me -though now it is beyond belittling me. Failing to respond to his maneuvers, he has done all that is left to his 7th grade mind. He has removed me from the circle of humanity, he has removed me from the realm of womanhood. The ultimate insult. But that's where I originated anyway. His brief efforts are the only thing that, outside my control or willingness, temporarily lifted me out.

He asked me immediately, when we finally entered my room -his eyes darting all over my body and mouth and face -his muscles firing -if I have a boyfriend. Yes. (What would I do if I didn't, which, in real terms of my heart I don't.) But don't I miss him, he pushes, with a flick of the eyelashes at my chest. Has it been a long time? Yes and no, and I will see him soon, thank you. How to I tell him, and others, Fary. Seynabu, Nabu Ndiaye (Salane says "Don't you know, its the law now that men can't hit their wives) all say, the women was going out and coming home late every day from work, her husband told her to stop, but she didn't listen, so he hit her. And she brought him to the police. No one should do that. No one should bring their husband to the police. He is their master, kilifa. He gives you a house and everything you need, of course you have to listen to him. How am I trapped in this conversation? I am wrong. I am forced to defend myself, like a spoiled selfish brat. How do I tell them that its his eyes, that don't see me as a person -that I refuse. I see myself, and in the future, whether he knows himself or not, or cares to know me, I know things that will come up, my ideals, my way of life, the things I refuse, the things I surrender to, that will make him despise me. That he will not be able to see or appreciate or love what will make it worth sticking around. This I have to prove to a 40 year old just married woman who's husband visits her 2 days a week to sleep in her chair and fills his belly (2 days in Passi, 2 days in Djilor, with his other wives) and they're already fighting. Again-get me out of here -but I am trapped by these stupid Senegalese rules. The only option left to me is to turn and twist my head and avert my gaze.

Though he refuses to talk to me and even tries to break me, I am forced to 'take care' of him. Lay out the basin (do I know the word for it?) and the bowl, and the spoons, get him water, buy him attaya -sit next to him. I want to scream and throw up and scratch his eyes out but I am tied here by these Senegalese rules or risk rupturing relationships in the village and never living down the talk. Tiring myself out defending or apologizing my actions until I die. What a horrible society! Get me out of here! Of course, it is worse for me in this way, because, being language deficient I do not benefit from the positives of communal think.

I hope in that moment -where I changed from ultimate object of desire to object of despise -there was a lag in which he felt the weight of my humanity. I think, or like to imagine, I might have seen it, a slacking of his eyelids. A scramble, a momentary loss of control immediately scooped up by falsities. But for a moment he fumbled. For a moment he was scared. He saw a human, but his pride made him forget it.

In that moment, what did he see? He saw his foolishness at the easiness with which he could catch a toubab. Hr realized the breadth between where I am and where he is. He asked me about my education. Did I graduate high school? Did I go to university? How many years?

Did he see anything about who I am? Was he even interested? I don't think so. There were plenty of opportunities to try to know -to get a key to see god from another radius. Instead he chose to tell me that my shirt was sexy and I shouldn't wear it. It was bad. And why did I have so many pimples on my chest? I never felt so full of pride to put a spoonful of lightly tomoatoed oily crunchy rice in my mouth -feel it go into my stomach. Eat it up. I'm gross. This is me. But control your mouth and your eyes. What you are doing is bad. But I can wear and do and say anything I want. I am human looking for another human.

So very few of us can understand.

Nguekokh-March 17, a year in

It starts with that sweet smell and stillness, timis' first arrival in Djilor. The smell of a thousand women cooking. All the children run in (no yelling toubab) for fear of jinnae, the men at the mosque singing throaty songs as they are now, outside my hut door (are they really the same people?)

I spend the first day in misery -the scorching sun, the bleached, pulverized sand, I'm falling with light and heat blindness from one to the other -but I can't tell what angle my body is playing to either -like skiing in a powder blizzard.

Everything I own is covered in a layer of dust. Petrified __(fill in the)___shit, horse, goat, chicken, human -and trash, no nutrients -this is dead soil, and its coating my bed and my pillows. I'm cleaning my dishes out on my hot steaming dirty slab of cement -sweat streaked down my side. This is the moments a grass hut does not seem so quaint but CRAZY. I sleep, curled up, fetal like, under the stars.

The second day is better-no longer so tired I want to drop -I wash clothes until I'm cross-eyed and weary from the heat.

But what I wanted to say, last night before I passed out face down with the candles and my back door wide open -was, its the people. They both draw me in and push me away.

The people just normal with normal xalaats and normal lives -living out here in the woods locked in by language and difficult living -its like I've passed into another world.

Are they my friends? Shooting the shit around the TV or all zigzagged on a single mat like a genie carpet out on the sand under the stars -Will they forget me? Me, not the legend of me. Will I forget them.

Ahmet Fall. Koumba Njong. Fary Sall. Diomaye Ndong. Seynabu Niin. Nabu Njay. Fatou Senghor.

May ? 19th (the days are passing slowly in this in between stage)

Tabanani(jatropha) -baaxul. They're against it! The teachers. Mooy, the one thing I thought was their way out of "poverty." A service to the world. But Ahmet Fall says that to grow food over fuel when food is not enough is a crime. Diomaye says yes, of course food is enough, for you guys. Fary -how can we baay (leave) peanuts, rice, corn, in pursuit of your other foods? This is part of our culture, and where would we be healthwise if we left peanuts and all the nutrients it has?

Wax naa degg. We don't know where any of our shit comes from and who knows what comes of it (eating margarine?). Ahmet Fall: Do we develop for development or do we develop for people? Good question. We develop because we can, but no one is asking where we're going or why. "The African continent is full of rivers and dense forests. Look at the Senegal River!" So let Africa to itself. I am more and more feeling, among the educated folks, I shouldn't be here.

May 20, 2010

Li moo neex. This is what's good. Its midday (3), and despite prior thoughts because I was sweating inside a tin roof, its not that hot today. (I say that as beads of perspiration form on my face -though I am drinking a steaming mess cup of cafe saaf.) My armpits already wafting up a good odor, though minutes ago they were glistening, freshly de-haired and pale white in the sun, with drying bucket bath drops.

A cool shower in the hot sun -dreaded hair dripping over my orange bucket -I am now skilled at all sorts of bending.

And door closed-I can wear my loose cotton Lake Winnapesaukee dress, no silipu, my wet hair, already hot, tied up in my towel.

I have decided that an empty stomach is better than a full one because you have the scales to tip, but once you fill it up you put all your hopes to the other side to empty it back out again peacefully. Mooy, 'diges ak jamm,' rekk.

There is a time when your body shuts off/up -and then your thoughts are clear. You are free to act as pure spirit. Oh to transcend this line toujours. But then I would no longer be Fatou/Jaime, Walker on both sides of the world.

Also, today I did a CCBI lesson, a simple, but great one -and all I did was follow (what God said) (what I thought) (what my instinct told me) (what was right) (what was natural). Mooy, I let the faculty of faith take over. I am tired of the faculty of reason.

The faculty of reason leads you round and round again in endless interlinking circles, and if you try to pursue it to some goal or some end you will end up frustrated, lost, or wasting your time. Of course, submit yourself to the faculty of reason at some point in your life, (maybe earlier) to know its crevices, to know its reaches. But know it is so limited, and eventually you will know when and how to let it go. Faculty of faith pulls endlessly from the uncreated, the unknown. It writes, just let it do so. Relinquish that you can know your spot in the interlinking circles. You are an electron. Unknowable.

And thus I have the faith to go back home and live my life.

May 26, 2008 -A Bowl with 14 people

I can't help but not want to talk to Abdoulaye anymore when I think that Lira was pregnant again and lost her baby looking for wood to cook.

Abdoulaye's fire and brimstone hold on God which completely denies the spark in your eyes of really seeing him and feeling him at all moments.

God will cut off the arms of those who steal, kill those who have killed. What would God do with the man who only thinks of his penis because his stomach is never filled, thus perpetuating the problem in an endless cycle?

The man who wants wives for status taking what he doesn't deserve like a little child, chasing after 16 year old girls because his old wife is like a stretched out and deflated bladder.

But really maybe here I am being puritan and denying a basic human need. No, people should have sex, but self restraint should be exercised down to the point that you get what you want.

Condoms are a missing essential here. And thus, the problem of religion, binding us to old ideas and what people have told us to believe, instead of developing out personal relationship with god.

RELIGION IS BULLSHIT!

Men have sex with just one wife and love (what is this?) her, so when she gets old and exhausted after 30 years of life you don't go sniffing out a new hole. That's all it is. Who's hot.

Is love something that Westerners made up to be Puritan? What made ___ love ___ and he love her back? Is it more real than the smiles that will soon arise on these children's faces as they forget their shrunken stomachs and chase their metal loops through the sun?

Is having a stomach swollen with food any better?

At least she could have put the food into two bowls. That is just laziness.

***

"To end all hunger by 2015..." ~UN World Goals

?

What happens on the other end of the point when your stomach hardens and shrinks and folds in on itself like a dried raisin? Where your body feels like a sludgy mixture of soup u kaanja? Your brain dulls like an overused farm tool, your movements slow to the slow and grace of the African woman pulling her heavy soaking wash out of the basin to dry on the fence.

I can go to Kaolack and eat a salad or Dakar and eat ice cream. I can buy myself bread in the morning. But what happens when you are a little kid with no money and your stomach's not full? Or a teenager walking 3K in the hot midday sun from school with no breakfast and cooking lunch in between? What happens to your brain, your body, your capability to be creative and produce whats beyond your daily survival when every day your stomach's not full from birth to old age and you mostly never have extra funding? The community owns your share. You get to a point where you feel lazy about your own nutrition, the energy you put into getting it is more than your getting out of it -its better to just get used to it -let that craving part of you go to sleep.

What happens at this point? (I have definitely felt the point where my body dips below optimum nutritional value) though I don't know if any of them have, or have even felt what it feels like to be well nourished. Perhaps nothing. You forget and run and play. Your soul transcends the state of your body -you smile and laugh easily and are no longer a slave to your body's pangs of longing. You are an African. Not an American. And not any more or less tragic. Just a different pattern of settled dust.

June 4, 2008

So tired everything looks sick and green like my CreditArgicole bank paper at the bottom of my douche. Like Fary's evil black-toothed voice coming over the millet stalks. Like this one ant running in circles around my rusted tomato paste can. Like Marie brushing my chin after she tries to steal my credit. Using me -but,

How bad does it feel to come home? 10,000 mil on credit, 25,000 mil on ass. 10,000 mil I can give to Lira -why? Because of guilt, because of doe eyes? Because I see something in her I don't in others? Adama and her rough, horrible children.

An undeserved vacation. Trying to serve everyone and didn't serve anyone -including myself. I have to be done. I have lost god's voice again in the world of nit, and he totally goes from me when I don't take care of his vessel. Eating too much, drinking too much, not sleeping enough, running. He'll leave me when I get back on track.

Feeling so bad I shouldn't even write. Its back to that time where the sun's so hot it does freaky things to your body and you don't even own it anymore. Pimples -your skin puffs out -your face swells. I have totally wrecked my body -burned and leathery in the sun -I am starting to get wrinkles...

"The day she told Peace Corps she was leaving she got her period." Me, I am laying in dark spidery room, disoriented as to which way's up, two blinking orange lights. I had it when I lived in the mountains...for no one but myself.

Anyway -I wanted to write about the monkey. The one moment of fuzzy wonderfulness in my day.

After __ left me, down the sand path strut walk with a local -follow charette brief touch on the lips -see you 4th of July. His eyes are -angry or disgusted. He left me in our grass room with a halo of white mosquito net. I went on and dreamed of the misty morning and the coolness -and parting over the water like the time at Winnapesaukee.

But I could not get up. Sleep, when its allowed to fall, and it tries to take its time -falls heavy. I am almost always below the line. Except when I came back from Dakar. I first knew what it meant to be awake and alive here.

I woke up at 10:37. Already, the sun was hot. But with my newly acquired sundress I skipped down to the kayaks like stranded missus -where's my parasol -and finally parted the water with my bough.

Around the bend and my disparate colors bounce awkwardly off the slate blue water and the sky and trees pale with heat. The problem of waccing. I put all my gear in the front of the boat and I slid, muscles contracting, off the rear -longitudinally.

All I ever want is to be suspended in water free from fear. My kayak free on its own -I see dark low long tailed shapes darting, marching through the woods. Monkeys!

I sink in the water -dreads floating like a halo -and swim silently over to the mangrove cove. There I see the monkeys darting and diving, They perhaps all saw me bu mu des benn. He was climbing up the tree foraging and then came down -I was sure he saw me on the decent. But he might not of. He scurried around in other activities before turning to me -black faced -and began calling out in an incredibly loud, not so monkeyish, eerie voice -full of clicks and screeches.

At first I thought it was calling others for food, but none responded and none came. And this call was far too loud. It radiated and echoed and I thought maybe I could ask the campement if they heard it. And I remember Vieux telling me when we were running one day that the birds only screech like that when they've seen another human or a predator -so you can know.

And he was looking right at me. I had trumped him. I had snuck up on him when he didn't know, and he was totally freaked out and warning the others. Maybe it was an ambush! Well, I got to thinking an ambush might be a proper response on their part -monkeys with glaring teeth -and so I started to move quicker out of there -to which he responded even louder -and as I swam to my kayak which had drifted into another cove -he had climbed all the way to the top of the highest tree -a sentinel! to keep watch over me, calling loudly, echoing out and above the other animals.

As I paddled safely back to where he was -he descended the tree and arretted his calls -perhaps thinking he was under attack and running, hiding, or surrendering. Or maybe finally knowing I had come in peace.