Today I scratched an old ant bite, with a scattered spray paint scab and it dripped in two full, bright red blobs that shocked me. I put my leg down before Chris could see and there I saw a drop had fallen to the floor.
There was no dripping, no mess. Just two bright red droplets. Thick. And one on the floor of the center.
Joey's cat is laying on me purring.
A culture made of moments to moments-sewn together in a string with a history but no future. All these relationships that I thought I was building, trust, opening myself up completely so they can know who I really am. I am not racist. But in the end they are.
Last night we stayed up until 5:30 AM (they stayed up later) with lanterns. It was the severest form of hell God could arrange for me. Complications not prevoired, unfairness, favoritism, "segregation," I have involuntarily entered into a power/money battle that has instantly pitted me against friends and changed them.
Just last week I was swimming with Moudou Saar in the silhouetting sun-splashing on the beach and thinking I was one of God's miracles-this morning/last night by a stroke of fate that I could not prevoir/sort through in my blanket of deafening language and culture barriers
-this morning I sscrewed Moudou Saar and Ngorgi Diouf by a stroke of fate that made us sweep through their houses by night. It struck me-when we hit Ngorgi's house and I saw his tall dramatically angles coup against the sky-the sharply contrasted almost full moonlight against the black silhouette of his unroofed and un-grillaged poulai-NOT FINISHED adjust and see it in the night-God bless the ones who's thin strings of grillage caught the glint of the flashlight...
"Alright everybody in!"
But Ngorgi stumbled out seconds too late-pale and bald in the moonlight-and naked. Something struck me that I grabbed his shoulder and said "Ngorgi, why were you late?"
I knew this whole row was filled with unfinished bomb shelters who had just decided to follow me too late.
The tragedy of being Senegalese would befall them.
I saw Mamoud for the fist time as he is-not an infantile, little boy wrapped up in bright stripes and a worn out cap-but as a pot bellied black man with a balding greying head. But for the first time, I could think of him that way.
El Hadji was taller then then all-and dressed in well fitting grey pants and a grey and white and pink striped collared shirt. I felt my whole heart want to spill out to him like a rolled out carpet-his wife, an "intellectual" waiting at home for him, sick from a miscarriage, not wanting him to go out in the heat. Joking with Laity from her sickbed. Why would he do all this just for me? How heartbreaking how people treated him.
Just this morning:
Me: El Hadj's dad died in the night.
Abdoulaye: Doesn't even notice.
Pa Ndiaye: (with a powerful voice and a blank stare) All I know is what you guys did is wrong! You should have given the money to the village and had three people go along with him. Your affairs are not right! No one installs a project in the middle of the night. Why does El Hadj refuse to let anyone go with him?
(El Hadj's sneer last night-all my trouble with him in the past.)
Me: I walk away, in front of Ndiaye and Abdoulaye-with no response.
Contact severed: no forget.
At this time I am living present and immediate future-knowing that there is no future and only the past. How many other people have ever been in this tense? No, I am in this tense all alone because no one else has this overseeing view of time-can see the past of last night and the future of 3 days to change it-of this time pause of pergatory in Thies with no people and flowers and a cat-of all three times and permanence welding me to this moving moment which al is stagnant-contained-known.
Please make it be known that I love them.
Amongst all things-above all things perhaps in the night I see the men-giddy and black against the blue moonlit sky, with their lamp-brought picturesque only because of the circumstances, we are installers of light and warmth and 18/25 bright neon little chicks-chirping and terrified-the first of factory farming in Nguekokh.
To them it is money. To me it is these cases of chicks huddling as a mass (ndey saan) in their cartons in the dark dampness of El Hadj's back seat-these lives entrusted to us-no one gets it when I tell them now they have 18 new kids. These lives this light, this warmth, clean, precise, perfect-is a transfer of love ad hope from the American people. From me. These chicks are a gift of love from me-I have put my life, health, job, dignity, trust, on the line-not for BEthany, or Marc, or Chris, Mamadou, Mark Gizzi, or any of the SPA/PCPP committee-not for the educated teachers-or my friends in Djilor-but for these villagers-only. All my confidence in them. My hope in theirs.
My gift of love is crushed. El Hadj's dad is dead and so is an innocent chick strung out of Mbagnick Senghor's shitty cheating hut.
The villagers are outraged, hurt, betrayed and angry and I can not undivide them or make them all happy.
Mbagnick's dead chick.
The men are laughing and wonderful and competent-we work quickly and almost like Americans-and Ibu Tubey first steals mangoes and we eat them in the camp of lamp lighting factory at Moudou Ndiaye (Imam's) door.
Is there a curse on Nguekokh? This morning I stayed in bed hovering and thinking of what I could say to the burst of angry men-in my compound?-but it turns out that last night Laye Ndiaye and Matar's family whipped the shit out of someone in Djilor with fil de fer until he had cuts all up his arm.
Mbagnick (Capi) has thrown out Soda the Enchantress after knocking her up and not being able to lock her down.
How is Matar? I worry about him in this instant because I think he wants to be better than his family.
This morning Soda's little girl and Modou were screaming crying and terrified of me when I stumbled into their house to grab my lifeline and I ran away on the back of Badiane's moto as fast as I could-an unlucky hero.
There is a curse on Nguekokh and a sign from God that I cannot read. Suddenly I know its blackness just before I leave. I know another level of the real Senegal. I learned Wolof too well. I don't think I can leave them behind but we are so completely different. They need to see my life,
I am alone. No one knows what I know.
When my emotions are involved, when I'm invested anyway emotionally or physically, I cannot tell God's voice form my own. My own voice is too powerful and carries the strength of God in my own head. It can win me over like that.
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