This is real. Im writing this with the stub of a candle welded to a tin can. Everything is used here. Innovation, creativity born of lots of time and little resources. I am already changed, can't be who I am in Newark, NJ. Soon Julie's pen will run out and Tara's notebook, which fits; will be all used up. Will my Crested Butte sunglasses break? Theyres still a shine in all my stuff but none of Neil's. His box of art supplies has a few crumbled red charcoals and 3 fucia tan and light blue dried out markers, oh, and all the oil pastels which melt in the hot sun.
The moments hit me when, over a game of chess scratched with the blue marker and brown oil pastel; which, melted, held the paper pieces to the board when the wind blew through the tattered and sewn door curtain, onto a crate; Neil and I discussed:
Do you drink beer?
Yes, why?
Because we should go for a beer sometime.
We could drink enough beer to make a chess set, and buy some paints.
We should drink a beer for 500CFA ($1.00) and collect bottle caps off the floor and make a chess set.
The curtain flaps. The goats are blaah aa aa ing. Otherwise it is dead quiet. We are both covered in a thin layer of sweat and of course my stomach is clenched in a ball and burning and going numb but my body feels calm- I have no idea what's the world outside but I am in this muted hut playing chess with bright orange and blue cardstock pieces.
Standing by an abandoned well with Meryl in her tight purple tank top and black stretchies. She is blonde and tall and graceful. Her and Neil talk about summer sausage-whats that?-dried hunks of meat sticks-6 of them sent by her bother and boyfriend-they ate the last one when it was moldy-you'll get there-cooked it up in macaroni and cheese. This one Meryl wants to get some cheese from the toubab store- a Lebanese high end store with swiss cheese, lettuce and tomato for a great sandwich. This is a plan to eat a sandwich.
"Do you like oatmeal?" Neil asks me from the floor. He is falling asleep. He had a rat problem where the rats burrowed under his hut and the floor caved in-he brought this rock to put in and filled the burrows with water-this drugs the rats and they come out, stunned, and you can beat them to death. (How do you find out about this method?)
So Neil's family is pimp. I cannot believe that I am seeing kids who's legs are white with dirt and muzzles white with milk and snot. Everyone grabs food with their hands-hands are beautiful here. Their living room has plush velveteen couches and chairs and an oriental rug and a TV and DVD player-in an otherwise dusty and bare cement shell.
Pieces of normalcy-running-Neil in Nike shorts and imported Nike sneakers-(from Meryl's trio to her boyfriend's house in the islands off of Portugal)-down a pink sandy road-the New Yorker, Sony speakers-granted from the 90's whittled to a dull sheen-playing burnt CDs from a cassette player-talking of watching DVDs at Meryl's where she has wireless?
But then the goats are throwing themselves at the tin wall at almost a maddening decibal (Neil doesn't even notice) (and somehow sleeping outside a flap of gauze)-while Neil and I dump a whole roll of cookies into a wide tin cup of powdered milk-then scarf it down greedily (we had sent little Mohammad away because there is a huge pack of kids and we would have lost all our cookies). The cookies tasted so good-crunchy chocolate in the middle and the outsides melt off and crumble to the bottom.
I take a shower as the sun secedes to the stars-the sky is pink and deep blue and the village is coming alive-people are making dinner because it is dark and cool. One of my host brothers walks by the shredding hay gate as I stand right there-tall and naked and white-patting water in weird squishy sounds. This is beyond bizarre. But there is some default click in my brain that doesn't allow me to freak-unless I am speaking Oulof or don't understand a pair of eyes peering into me-I say this as I am washing my butt and thinking about the transfer of germs from hand to handle back to hand-to the soap-to my towel, and Julia, Sue, Tara, Reb, Anne, Monica, my mom, Jen, Aunt Joan, Jessica, would flip if they knew that I was right here, right now. What will it be like when they come to visit? Will they? I have to work to keep them all alive in my mind-though letters seem the only way-the immediacy of email will make them seem a part of this world and I will miss them. It almost seems better to forget, but in the end, what is there? Life or love? Will I come back? So far I have been living here in my mind my whole life.
Granted I have not yet gotten malaria.
Neil and I went on a walk to chase the ALLLLAH! Allahhh! Allah! that has been resonating through the night from what I imagine to be some shamanistic Senegalese durkah durkah jihad cult off in the night. They go on for hours and hours and at first I thought it was a drum possession session but now I think it is some incredibly loud speaker blasting from some darkened window. It is both. And after wandering blindly into Sateer's family compound and running into people in the dark-not being able to see and being deafened by the shouting "Allahs" in French I managed to comprehend that until 10:00 pm its the radio and then the festivities begin. Being too tired to join the real ceremonie-I am sure I will be lulled to bed by the surrounding sound conversion to Islam.
Goodnight. My candle is in a puddle. And in the end of my traumatic shower scenario, it felt good to tightly wrap my 'real wax' panya around my waist. Now I will shut my aluminum doors to some crazed taliba (sic) on a rampage and listen to the bleating goats, who have convieniently awakened.
next day
I feel right.
Doina war-It is enough from a small field (lit); something weird
It would be weird to have enough food from a small field to feed everyone. The lack of light is doina war because you come upon these people when you're closer than your own hand and there you are-shapes in the dark. Today we went around looking for Saeer-he was supposed to deed us-we went to some random person's house that Neil had only been to once and washed our hands in bowls and ate with our hands-shaking the rice down into the crook of our fingers and pushing it into a wet, oily ball, with bits of fish and fish bones and scales. The taste is still in my mouth, rich and oily and questionable with kids eating right next to me-kids who wipe their butts with their hands and forget to wash and forget which hand to shake and which hand to eat.
Gnar.
White sand on black skin-this is why they look so knobby-we would too-seeing my white skin as white- as a bleached version, drained, creamy, albino? Large white eyes peering our of blue/black faces-the contrast is astonishing. They also have feet of a different breed-hard and flat and calloused. I wish I had those feet.
All we need to know is everywhere you will connect. Cultural barriers-like sleeping in grass huts-will compound stimuli-will confound. But everywhere people are the same-take away language and all you can do is communicate with subtle inflections of they eyes-the best is to keep a straight stare-don't move your eyelids or shift your gaze-what do these things mean? Moments of secrecy-why do I need to take them? If I am stepping back-I am introspecting, analyzing, judging, looking, peering, anything but maangi fi rekk (I am only here) my eyes move in a way I cannot control.
Maangi fi rekk.
1. Be only here.
2. Good humor. Always remain positive, relaxed, confident. No one should be able to move you from your center.
But how are you prudent without stepping back, assessing, making judgements, analyzing? I guess now it is the time to be condifent that I am well trained and my instinct will survive.
Tomorrow I will run at 6 am with the stars and the sun. Tonight I will try not to trap a mosquito in my net.
Yes so the beginning. Is it because I have lost weight? Is it because of my haircut (which is growing)? Is it because I shed the volume of 100 pounds in down and wool? (for Wolof.) My body feels just right in a zig zag curve on the hard bed in the grass hut-with the wind and the "In shah allahhhhhhhhhhhhhs" singing. My feet feel just right smooth and dry and a little gritty flicking off mosquitoes. My eyes feel just right squinting from the sun and taking in all and being befuddled and being vulnerable-and open. And questioning everything. My body is calm. My body is at peace. (Except for my stomach, and when this happens inshahallah I will transcend humanity because I will be perfect.) A close feeling to extasy yesterday after the run-my body tired and tinglying, I am calm but alive. The sand is green and orange.
still demyst
time is slow.
every move is graceful because every move takes time-as long as you wish. The movement of your arms-even your shoulder blades-the remote twitch of one singular muscle-can be a distinct and purposeful action.
Oh god, I sound like a hippie, yoga-doer.
I am want to describe the connection between Peace Corps Volunteers. The way they form the words-all differently-but all with a unique familiarity, comprehension. We are all here-with perfectly legitimate lives we do not hate and homes that can be in our own rooms on apple computers with gchat and Grey's Anatomy. We all collide (gently, loosly, sporatically, parallel) with women with laughs and sassy eyes and smooth shiny skin and the most beautiful casual clothes. You can't look at them with sympathy-they are living. We are living, in our private pods-space stations-how do they see us, our white, absent skin? With children that you can shide and pick up by the arms and pin with a clip. Do you want to touch them? They are just kids. They keep themselves busy all day. A toubab kid from Maryland-he doesn't know Wolof-takes the broom from a baby. You'd never see a Senegalese kid take something from another kid. What are they talking about-outside, a grass stick away-one long undulating conversation, exploration, of everything-chicken poop, soapy water drowning Neil's tree, scraps of plastic bottles, wires bent into horses with curly copper hair fit for a museum, thrown in the dust. How do they learn that? Never fight, rarely cry-don't go pick him up, he will stop soon and be happy. It's the community.
Theres so much sense in it. Every day. Take your time. Do the wash. Make cheb-u-jen. Wash the dishes. Grace.
Its a weird spot to be in-this period of almost non-exsistance where I don't have any responsibilities-and don't fit in anywhere, a rarety in life probably reserved for those who go to Senegal to be a Peace Corps volunteer. Everyone loves you and cooks for you and you have a translator.
And they all think you're cute for being mute and you can't fuck up by talking.
Today I felt a little bit like Africa is real. I don't know what it is-being here a week and still getting tripped up by "How do you like Thies?" being on the computer being able to use gchat and blogs, feeling like I know Neil and I've only heen here 3 days, actually developing feelings tying me to this place.
...I am enchanted by beauty...
Last nigth we drank at the Catholic church big cheap beers and nasty wine, surrounded by the village drunks out not quite past sundown during Lent. The Catholics can drink, so why not make money off of their foyer? It was surreal-telling best drunk stories and in the background men chat and one real old drunk guy bets and plays with a turqois plastic seal "It lives in the sea and I don't know what it is and it has no ears and the children like it because it goes peep-peep." And now it is his only friend and he kisses it and tickles it and is as giddy as you can be in Ingidgen. Ingiddila.
By the way the scribble two pages ago is due to a rat that crawled a foot from my face, by the light of the candle, across Neil's hand. He's sleeping on the floor now. How would I handle rats?
The thing is, I can never escape me. Thats why I realize I am in Africa. And I think I like it anyway. How many times can I run away and make a new beginning? How many times can I ride the waves of freedom of identity? Stay positive. Live only now.
going
I feel the silence of a place when I leave and when I enter. I don't know how to explain it, sitting on the bus watching the great baobabs go by and realizing I'm not with Neil anymore. That we went from sitting on the bench in the hot sun spilling bissap on my toe to hugging briefly in front of a bus of happy Peace Corps volunteers-and then there I was-this world that has quickly become home was closed forever. Will I even remember it?
Stepping back onto the clean crunchy yellow sand of the Centre de Formation. The wind is blowing and it is quiet. How to forget about Ngidila and Neil and Meryl boiling beets and sitting like a good bunch of expatriates inside the crumbling walls of the Catholic Church?
Also that delirium-that vertigo of being on the border of so many realities-I see the PC kitchen and think this is so clean, such a nice place to work-then I switch the lens and see the flies and dirt in the tiles and stuff all over the floor and crusty bread left on the counter.
Don't you sometimes feel like everyone around you is crazy and you are the only one sane? Yes, most of the time I feel like I could be pretty normal if my body would just stay with me.
I feel like I was granted this magical perspective on Senegal-that Neil really loves it and his villagers love him. He gets it, and people appreciate that they are not a spectacle or an oddity but they are just them.
and now...stress.
Why am I here? Am I here if my father tries to convert me to Islam? Am I here if he makes advances on me or wont let me go to bed if I say that I am tired? Am I here if my host sister hates me because her strong eyes make me squirm? Do you have a computer, like Red? No, mine is old. How old? Pentium 2, Pentium 3? Oh shit. Computers are way older and they still use them. No je ne sais pas. Mais il est vieux. Il ne fonctionne pas. Does your mom have a computer? Yes. Does your souer have a computer? Yes. Does your mom drive? Yes. Have a car? Yes. Souer? Yes. Yes.
My sister works all the day to pay for her car.
Elle est brave.
What am I-here because Uncle Sev is right I don't know what else to do? For an adventure? To catch a boyfriend? Why am I here?
March 30, 2007
There is a smoking bowl of insense on my floor. And I cannot believe that it is humanly possible to live in this room at this moment. The air is 65% insense smoke and 45% something flammable that poured out of my lantern the other morning and I have been living with for 3 days = there is no room for oxygen. I am filthy. This is one of those cultural gaps, subtle, the slimy stain on my carpet that I put my shoes in when I take them off when I enter the room-this is the stain of a toubab. No Senegalese would leave their lantern tipped on the floor and go to school.
And my host father and sister are fighting...I think, what do they fight about? Is it me? I stand there thinking as they look through my pictures 1. do they think I look totally discheveled? 2. what do they think of my pictures all being friends but not of my family? They are interested in 1. what happened to my earrings? 2. if Anne is my sister. 3. Where I bought my purple dress (Tara.) 4. Who Kristy is (even though I said she was my cousin, a lot.) 5. If the plastic kayak from Florida is real. 6. How many months it snows in America. 7. Are we picking oranges? (At Monica's) 8. Why I cut my hair. 9. Where our family picture was taken (at my house).
They think my mom is beautiful and they can't get over that I've had a dog for 12 years and he is blind. Woops. Il ne peut pas voir.
Top reason to travel to Africa: I found myself teeming with energy while waiting online at the bank today. Why's this? If I was waiting on line at the bank in good ol' NJ I would have had a sterility headache, drawn into a migraine by the constant shifting from auto-pilot to semi-presence. Why is it at this moment that I feel like I am anticipating something close to exstacy? I felt a similar feeling, well, am feeling that all the time...the rush of adrenaline as if I was getting attacked by a lion, and that is of being submerged in a language, immersed in desparation, at those last moments when your clinging to anything and grasping to the far reaches of your possibility, a stick, a branch, something to swim or to fight (I sound like a gospel preacher) and there it is, reproduced from the folds of your cerabellum, 6 years past implanted, les mots quelle vous choisez. It is absolutely breathtaking what the human mind can do and it is these situations, this is why standing on line at the bank is so exhilerating...adaptability. The ability to be yourself, anywhere. The world really circles around you, like a panorama. I am nothing but grateful.
I drew a picture in class today of the circles on my eyes. I go to sleep stinking of cheap Arabic smoking strings of insense wafting in from my sisters grated window over which hangs a huge tapestry of a rediculous looking marabout.
Am I grateful?
I can't do it without my body. I long to be in the mountains of Washington backpacking my way down the West Coast but instead my stomach is full of fried dough stuffed with spicy fish balls. I don't care. I am full for the first night ever. But I can't feel my body anymore and I was just starting to get it. Twisting my hips as I plunged into something equally mysterious-the deep snow of the Headwall. Namoon naa la.
nostalgia
I'm not going to try to make this sound eloquent because at this moment, the eloquence is gone. That's exactly why the sound of the airplane has fixed me. The drone of the engine, which meant so many dull and greyish things when I was looking out my sullen window, writing punishments or trapped inside watching TV while mommy and daddy slept on a Sunday afternoon.
Sometimes it meant lying crooked-legged on the cool blue grass while daddy mowed the back yard.
Warping in and out of my own body, I shift out and see my hands shuffling money over a paisly painted yellow and blue sheet covering my bed. Everything in this photo-frame has the sheen of Africa in My Imagination...but now, watching this movie from the real world my body feels angry from hearing my father, and now brother, scraping their sandals slowly back and forth in front of my door. I am full only on sugar-a feeling of adrenaline and headache and body lethargy. My EMS yellow camelback stocked with North Face sleeping bag and Nalgene bottle rests in view.
and now, the village
May 22ish
Being here is kind of like the worst horror film but also the most beautiful Sound of Music. At any time a snake (poisonous) may pop out of an abandoned box in the corner or a scorpion might crawl through a crack in my door. My black window creaks open and flutters my candle. And when I finally fall asleep-I'll probably bury myself in my sleeping bag even though I'm sweating because I moved my mosquito net outside and rats might crawl over my face. I'm pretty damn terrified and outside random animals fight or pull chains or eat my grass fence, but also my room is beautiful with four candles stuck to wine bottles and African drapery and bamboo furniture and a straw roof.
Well shit this is what I came here for right? I've been struggling with when to write-I come to notice that it isnt important as to when I write as to when I don't-because then I am having such experiences as I can't afford the time or the effort to put them into words. Like today seems exhausting so pardon me while I try.
Ate fish heads for dinner, a plate full of dried (some mud just fell on me from the roof) fish and we crunched up the bodies and ate them with onion sauce and bread and french fries, ate them all with our hands-10 people around one big silver plate.
My favorite part of the day was cooking lunch, which doesn't sound the same in English, togg-ing an, which is basically what the whole day centers around, that and for the guys dem-ing toll,-going to the fields. Togging an with sama waa kerr, my family. My moms-I have such strength in them-if this makes sense-right now I feel no strength in myself because I'm out of my element so much-if a snake dropped right now out of my ceiling I don't even have an EAP (a PC acronym). My moms give me strength-they have kids hanging off their legs and their backs, they cook in the cement sealed up kitchen in the heat of the day over an open flame-they have patience for popping boiling oil and flies and touching burning sticks and moving soapy oily water from one bowl to the next and I can't keep track but they don't waste a drip-seeing the kids splash sparkling clean water from the robinet as I fill my orange bucket for a bath-they're stealing. And by the night these woman dance by the starlight-and flashlight-beating silver bowls and gourds and plastic basins with flip flops or ammo shells. And don't think of them as these exotic women-don't "orientalize" or whatever it is them-there's no difference. I am here who I was in CB, In DC, in GB, and in Wayne. I fill the same role, and so do they. The magnificence is seeing life take place in a different setting. Seeing people play with different tools. Its facinating.
Going to the fields with my brothers-they are my guides-they climb high into trees to get me every kind of fruit-I skipped breakfast that morning out of solidarite and guilt-the ripe fruits taste like heaven in the heat...red darkanse, did you know cashews grow on trees and have "cashew apples"- which have juice overflowing out of your mouth when you bite them and a perfect tart and sweet taste-but leave you cotton mouthed? Mangoes and tamarinds-suck on these they're like natures sour candies-put them with sugar and water and make a delicious sticky juice-half goes to me and half to my family-15 kids at once I've never seen people going at it like they did.
We go to the fields and rake dried dugub (millet) stalks-then Mamadou, he has a bright smile, piles on fire one by one, using one match and then carrying sticks from one pile to the next. The silouettes of my skinny black brothers against the African sun-a long flat plain of dusty golden ashes-and twisted trees in the distance...piles of burning rubbish and smoke misting the air-this would make any National Geographic and yet this is my afternoon-afterwards we race back barefoot and I get stickers stuck in the soft mollusk like pads of my feet-I wonder if they even stick in theirs, their feet are like rocks-why shoes?
There is no barrier between me and them-other than language-they're too young and I'm too new to understand it. We're just running-singing and laughing.
I'm kind of possessed right now-because I look up from writing and my eyes hurt and I realize I'm super tired...possessed by fear of rats crawling through the gaps in my hut when I blow out my candles. But if I do wake up tomorrow morning I have a sweet ripe mango for breakfast and coffee-and I'm going to listen to BBC and not open my door until 8, or maybe 9...and then go sell fish with Lira and Adama.
last
I wake up to women pounding millet in a mortar and pestle. My cashew trees are sprouting-pushing up out of thick green waxy shells. The miracle of tree survival here.
The idea of this concept, has just made me aware of how many good little things pile up in my day and comfort my spirit, though it seems like human nature, or at least my nature, is to have the bad things leave a deeper mark for the little good things to rush in and fill.
I'm going to throw all my physical pent up energy-which in the heat of the day with my back cramping against a stomachful of hot rice-dampens my spirit (here, discourage and pareseuse are one word)-into growing things in my backyard-and maybe with the kids.
This is a funny time-where I want to go back to the days of awe and exoticism, because I had such an infinately renewable source of energy and patience-but then I stop myself at the absolute rediculousness of exoticizing-of taking pictures-of women carrying colorful heavy pans of water on their heads-of pounding millet until I have blisters on my fingers and rivulets of sweat on my face.
But I am no longer bothered by insects crawling over my legs in bed-bees buzzing against my moustiquierre, and I no longeer think of ETing. I am a part of the community, even if everyone laughs at me at the well and repeats my Wolof in a high pitched, slow, almost Southern drawl.
Questions of development compounded by how and why they want it. Is it shame-because aren't they developed? In ways that we're not-in ways of the body being finer tuned than a machine because they do not break-the spirit because it does not wear down. In matters of laughter and easiness, friendliness, and large, gap-toothed, yellow-toothed, or broad white toothed smiles. In matters of knowing the land-being able to use every part of every tree and soil for food-to throw into the huge grinding machine of survival. A place where earn your daily bread still applies.
When I hear certains strains of pulling music-I am reminded of how I've lost (so quickly?) my free-spirit-city street walking-beer drinking self. Writing-having time to define and paw over the confines of my own existence. Here all of my energy is bent to figuring out my surroundings and in this way I am turning Senegalese-the day exists for survival-not the pondering of a convenient, miraculously invisible, means of existence. Who struggles for us in the US? Who has blisters on their hands?
Watching videos of Thanksgiving in Crested Butte, and reading the Poisonwood Bible, mixed in one night until 2 in the morning when the midnight creatures come out-howling jackals-and milk sugary coffee-and suddenly I felt the symptoms of a fever-my soul spread out too sparsly over the spectrum of my short life's wide experience.
I am not so homesick anymore- in fact my body is longing to go pound millet, walk in the hot sun, and hang out with the villagers speaking Wolof.
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